Collaborations

A common saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” and generally I agree. When two people work together, twice as many viewpoints are expressed, twice as many ideas are created, twice as much work is done. Collaborations can be magical; they combine two separate entities, fusing them together to fashion something entirely new and unique. In fact, this maxim that two is better than one is one that is actually far-reaching and can be applied to more than just minds. Think of all the examples of extraordinary collaborations: peanut butter and jelly, Sonny and Cher, the country of Turkey. Yes, the nation of Turkey is a prime example of the power of combinations.
Turkey is a country that was built on the concept of combining distinct ideas. The title of this program, When East Meets West, embraces this very notion. However, more than just two hemispheres collide within Turkey. As well as encompassing a mix of Eastern and Western cultures, Turkey also merges the religious with the secular and the traditional with the modern. Turkey is located at a very unique location on the globe, the meeting point of the European and Asian continents. So, it has long been at the cross point of two cultures and therefore has been exposed to and taken on many elements of each. Turkey also has a history of fusing both the religious and the secular. Upon its formal creation as a nation, Ataturk made the decision to make Turkey a completely secular nation. Religion and state were to be entirely separate. Yet, this secular nation was created on top of a strong Muslim heritage. The people who now identify themselves as Turks had forever before identified themselves as Muslims, and though this religious identity was forced into the private sector it was not eliminated. So today, Turkey faces a complex dynamic, playing the secular nature of the state against the religiosity of its history. Another collaboration that exists within Turkey is that of the modern with the traditional. While Turkey remains proud of and tied to its Ottoman and Islamic traditions, it is also a very modern nation. Ataturk was determined for Turkey to be Westernized and modern, and his determination has been engrained into the minds of the Turkish people.
I am very curious to see these combinations at work in Turkey, to see whether they will be as prevalent in everyday life as I imagine they will be. Moreover, I am interested as to what type of collaborations they will be. I believe that there are two types of collaborations, one resembling chocolate milk and one similar to Simon and Garfunkel. Will the East and the West, the religious and the secular, the modern and the traditional completely combine, as in chocolate milk, to form an entirely new creation, or will they remain separate, as Simon and Garfunkel, simply living together side-by-side in one place? Most of all, I am curious to see if Turkey will uphold the motto that two is better than one. Are two continents, two religions, two cultures all within a single country really better than one? These next two weeks will tell and I cannot wait to find out :)