Day 2

Today was busy with visits to a private university, a newspaper, a little “free choice” time (I had a Turkish bath), and dinner at a family’s home. We started at 8:30 AM and got back to the hotel at 10:30 PM so it was a long day. We were to have a boat trip on the Bosphorus River today but once again it rained all day.

So in my growing up and what little I remember about the history of this part of the world I somehow missed the part where you connect all of the dots. I read about Troy (I even saw that bad movie), I know something about St. Paul and the Letter to the Ephesians as well as Mt. Ararat, I vaguely remember hearing of the eastern spice route/trade, the Ottomans and the Hittites, and from my fraternity world (Phi Mu Alpha) and some play I barely recall being a part of in high school I’d heard about Thracians. What I didn’t realize was that all of these things are a part of Anatolia and modern day Turkey. My apologies to any history teacher that tried to teach me these things. Enough of my confessions of ignorance for one day.

This was final exam week at Fatih University so the students were a little sparse and looked ready for a holiday. Fatih is a private university started in 1996 – up until 1980 all institutions of education had to be run by the state and still to this day all public and private institutions are governed by the state. Fatih has a student population of roughly 11,260 and they pride themselves as an international university and in fact, they have about 700 students from outside Turkey. In part they accomplish this by only charging international student half the tuition that Turkish students pay (basically opposite of what we do in the U.S.). Here high school students take exit exam in general knowledge and then the subject areas that they are interested in. Based on those exams they are given a spot in a public university (the university has no real say in who they get) or are accepted into a private university. There is no tuition charge for those lucky enough to make it into a public institution, which is only about 10% of those taking the exams. Many of things I accustom to where similar here in that they have student affairs professionals; they have residence halls, which at Fatih they call hostels, and there are lots of student groups and organizations. One slight difference is its against the law to have religious groups/clubs, though when the different cultural groups hold their Spring Festival as a celebration of all cultures many have components of their faith traditions. This did lead to an interesting topic that came up several times today and that’s the philosophical approaches to secularism. Dr. Yel described them is a French approach of “distance from all” and an American approach of “equal inclusion of all.” We did clear up some misconceptions for our hosts as well because he thought that everyone in the US was religious – no atheist or agnostics. I wonder where people here would get that understanding? There are so my other things I learned but too much for this entry.

We had a fascinating visit as well to Zaman, the largest print newspaper in Turkey. The readership of the Zaman (which means Times) is around 850,000 per day. Not large by U.S. standards perhaps but Mr. Yilmaz explained that not very many in Turkey read the paper. We talked in depth about the freedom of the press here and the difference between the elected “government” and the “state” or as he defined it as the judiciary, the lobbies, and the military (even with a democratic government Turkey has had 6 military coups in modern times). Our discussions also focused on the current reactions in Turkey and the surrounding Muslim countries to the Israeli attack on the aid flotillas. As usual I was struck by the multitude of perspectives on any given situation or action and the need to honestly listen and validate these sometimes dramatically different experiences and perceptions. We ended the day with a lovely dinner and in the Istanbul home of a current IU political science doctoral student. I loved the food but as usual I really loved the involved and dynamic cross-cultural dialogues.

It’s past midnight here and we start tomorrow at 8:00 so I better turn in. Oh, did I tell you we’ve had cucumbers at all three meals each day and that I love cucumbers – I’m sure Jim’s glad to be missing out on those.

Turkish Tea included after every meal.

IST Old City Walls