Hoşça kalın (Goodbye)

So, its been almost two days since everyone left, and I’ve been left in the city on my own. I’ve moved from the nice, comparatively quiet Beyoglu district of the city to Sultanhament, which is easily the most touristy section of the city, and as a result significantly louder. The hostel that I’m now staying at is populated by people from all over the planet. In fact, last night I was sitting at a table sharing drinks with an Aussie, a Swede, a German, another American and even a Turk (granted he works at the hostel). As we were talking, I began to realize how incredibly diverse this city truly is. Everyone that I was talking to really had only been in a few select areas of the city, predominantly the common tourist spots, and as a result their experiences and interactions with people had all been very similar to each other, and fairly non-representative of the rest of this massive city. Having had access to the majority of the city and having been encouraged to just go explore allowed us to really see how broad and colorful this city truly is. We were able to see the city for almost everything that it is, a dynamic blend of, old and new, traditional and modern, religious and secular, chaotic and quiet, and so much more. At the end of the day, however, I have to say that I was not all that surprised by much of what I saw. As I said initially in my first blog, Istanbul, and Turkey for that matter, are incredibly similar to Israel, despite a massive population difference (The population of Istanbul is approximately double the size of the entire state of Israel). In fact, the number or Turk’s that I talked to and stated that opinion to had all told me that they had heard that comparison before. None of that is to say though, that this city is not inspiring, there were any number of times on this trip that I found myself left speechless by many of the things that I was seeing.
As the theme of our program was East meets West, I have come to understand the Turkey truly has come a long way from where it once was yet still has a long way to come, but unfortunately recently it seems as though there has been a recent shift backwards in its progress. Turkey is both modern in so many ways (technology, trends, media), but at the same time incredibly stuck in the past (toilets). As both myself, and my compatriots have discussed there are many problems with the government in Ankara that are making life and progress increasingly difficult in Turkey. For example the governments fear of extremism, its neighbors, the West, and even youtube.com (yes, youtube is banned in Turkey, for fear of messages containing dissatisfaction with the government being posted) have actually caused the government to shy away from, or become more confrontational with these problems, instead of standing up and actually attempting to rationally deal with them, which has caused even more dissatisfaction within the country. Turkey is quite capable of dealing with its problems, and becoming a truly prosperous, and contented place, but for any of that to happen both the government and the people within the country need to face its problems head on, and begin having an actual dialogue, not to mention putting its democracy to use. Turkey has a long road ahead, but it can undoubtedly get there.