I understand that a coup attempt is no trivial matter, but as with any problem, how one reacts is key.
Ezra Mannix
Writer | Communications Leader
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Thoughts on the coup attempt
It’s after one o’clock in the morning and there are reports of shots being fired in different parts of the city. The coup reactions have filtered down to the people and people are moving through the stages of grief, to anger. Erdoğan told everyone to not accept what is going on right now and get on the street.
We are sitting in utter disbelief (UPDATE: the parliament building is damaged). The newsman asked Erdoğan if he is still the head of the armed forces, but its clear that he is panicking about what is going on. He is trying to remain strong but it seems like he doesn’t know what is happening. If it’s acting, it’s pretty good. TV is showing shots of people on the streets marching, for the time being it’s peaceful, and no one seems to be hurt. It’s important not to panic.
You realize how quickly you yourself can get swept up in the hysteria. People are making runs on banks. We get a call from a friend who says there is a huge line at the Garanti ATM. She’s always a bit hysterical, you try to convince yourself. Abdullah Gul is on Factime, he is shouting, clearly in Freak Out Mode, but he isn’t saying anything about how scared it is. He is saying Turkey isn’t Africa! Turkey is Africa right now. Turkey is every unstable country. Stability can be only skin deep here. A bubble.
My wife is telling everyone to take a shower and go to sleep; hopefully everything will be OK tomorrow. For those who lived through the 1980 coup, this is like a bad nightmare, the clown from Stephen King’s It, coming back to torment the people. Erdoğan said everyone on your feet. How could the military not have thought about what kind of reaction this would bring? How could Facetime be so powerful? Do we forget that it’s a two way street? The good guys and the bad guys can use video chatting?
It’s after 1 am. The call to prayer is being read. That’s a bad sign, a really scary sign. A little Iranian flavor. The ezan is going off again. More than a half hour continuously, calling people to the streets.
It’s the next morning at around 9 AM the day after. We look out the window. The garbage truck is making rounds. We walk to the hypermarket and buy some groceries for breakfast. The store manager says yeah, everyone was uncomfortable last night; we don’t want people to be uncomfortable. Other than that, people are working, construction on the new apartment building, like thousands being built all the time, resumes.
The fact is, the vast majority of people do not want this, nor do world leaders. As bad as Erdoğan is, with unconstitutional reforms, restriction of the press, disregard for other perspectives, closed mindedness. As bad as it is to have imams calling people out on the streets to support Islam/Erdoğan etc. — and this IS scarier than a military coup — a coup is not what the vast majority of people want. We need to face this.
But why? If he were so popular, why would he stage this bold and deadly play? Perhaps Erdoğan want early elections to hasten the process of direct presidential elections, because the opening the conflict with the PKK hasn’t hastened this enough. What I found most strange is how the so-called fringe faction of military perpetrating this could get so far as to take over TRT, the state broadcasting company. He might want to appear all the more powerful so that.
Journalist Ilber Ortayli and Andrew Anglin have noted that they went about the coup all wrong. First you capture the leaders, then the media, then you shut down the internet, then you tell the people to take to the streets to support the coup. In this case, it was all done backwards. The people defending the regime took to the streets, and the perpetrators told everyone to go home.
I do not necessarily support these theories. It looks like the coup attempt is real. It’s past noon now, and Prime Minister Yıldırım is speaking. Let’s see what happens. Perhaps we will never know.
A Weekend in a Sivas Village
It’s 11:03 pm and we’re traveling on the otoyol somewhere near Adapazarı. Ten middle-aged passengers on this chartered Metro Turizm bus are dancing the halay in the aisle. What’s all the commotion? A Turkish wedding on a bus? A young man going to military service?
Strange. All was quiet 10 minutes earlier, when a middle-aged man who had been sitting across from us, a man with missing front teeth and toxic foot odor, was watching Turkish soaps on his in-seat TV screen. Then, the trip leader, Ali, walked up to is seat.
“Hey, you’ve got fans on this bus, man.”
“Fans?” stinky feet replied, head craning toward the back of the bus, lips pulled back in a devious smile.
Suddenly, he stood up, went to the back whipped out a bağlama went to the front of the bus and into a scratchy PA microphone, proceeded to whip the passengers into a frenzy of finger holding and kerchief waving that’s part and parcel of any proper halay dance. I learned later that this he wasn’t just any passenger with bad foot odor, but a semi-famous musician rented for the weekend, for the sole purpose of belting out Türku folk tunes for the 40 or so passengers. This would go on for most of the bus ride. Most of the 13-hour bus ride.
All the passengers are members of the Kabakçevliği village association (dernek), which supports the village where my father in law was born, the youngest of four children, in relative poverty. Hundreds of Turkish villages have these associations in the big cities to support their memleketler, fundraising to make modest infrastructural improvements to their villages.
Dancing the halay in Kabakçevliği. One of the many halays that were danced.
The passengers on that fateful night were normal Istanbul residents, but in their hearts, still part of cold, dry Kabakçevliği, with its year-round population of 20 souls. Kabakçevliği is in the southern part of Sivas province, where the Black Sea meets the east-central Anatolian basin and range.
We got onto this party bus after waiting in a June evening from the side of an 8-lane highway in sprawl hell of Kartal, Istanbul, watching as the minaret lights came on signaling Ramadan’s iftar feast.
When we boarded, we were greeted not with the usual hoş geldiniz, nor even handshakes, but with kisses, more kisses from near strangers in five minutes than I received from strangers in my 28 years living in America.
They would say things like: Ah, Zeynep! It’s me, Auntie so and so, we came to your wedding! Ah, you probably could understand even what was going on that day, but such a beautiful wedding.
Sivas village breakfast
Everyone was related to each other in some distant way. There was Seher, Zeynep’s aunt’s husband’s daughter from his other wife (he took two wives) and her sister Gülüzar. There were the children of Ahmet Baba’s kirve, or godfather, and a gaggle of laughing, food sharing, mostly middle-aged Istanbul residents.
On our way, we passed through Bolu, then Ankara, all in the wee hours. I fell asleep and was roused at about 5 a.m. by the freezing cold. Despite being June and being on the same latitude as Washington D.C., the central Anatolia plain in Yozgat and Çorum is regularly near freezing at night in June. Zeynep and I huddled together to keep warm. When I awoke and looked out at the misty plain, I got a first glimpse at the cool mists on the valley floors, and thought about how beautiful this region is at dawn and dusk before the oppressive daytime sunshine.
It’s about 8:30 now and everyone is awake. We’ve just crossed the sinner. Welcome to Sivas! Everyone let out a cheer. It was time for live music and the morning halay, of course! Stinky feet struck me as a
Villagers and their Istanbul kin (Ali Abi holds the bağlama).
coarse and rude man. But he was no slack with the bağlama.
After passing the Sivas city center and driving two more hours, we finally arrived at the village at around 11 a.m. The village itself is, well, ugly. It’s motley collection of earthen barns, soulless newer homes, and just a couple of older farm houses with character, one of which belonged to Zeynep’s Aunt Kiraz, who never left the village, lived a hard life, and died in 2013. We were greeted off the bus with more kisses, a zurna (clarinet like instrument) and darbuka (drums) the traditional two-piece band of Anatolian weddings, sonnets and getting off cramped buses.
One thing was oddly missing in Kabakçevliği, but I couldn’t put my finger on until Zeynep pointed it out: there’s no mosque.
Atatürk and Hussayn Ali are often pictured in Alevi living rooms.
Kabakçevliği is an Alevi village. It’s too small for a market, let alone a house of worship (the closest cem evi is in nearby Çetinkaya). The residents fast to mourn the death Hussayn ibn Ali, Muhammad’s grandson and the first Shia imam, but they don’t fast during Ramadan. Alevis are often staunch Kemalists. The result is, in Alevi homes, one often finds a portrait of Atatürk next to one of Ali.
And they drink alcohol. To drink scotch in the middle of the day in a Turkish village during Ramadan is s strange feeling, yet that’s what stinky feet and the crew were doing minutes before we got back on the bus that Sunday afternoon. In that way I felt as though I were in a poor village in the Andalusia plain or southern Italy.
Pastoral, high desert scenery marks the nature immediately surrounding the village, and early June is the peak of spring in Sivas. Waves of green grain, poplars lining streambeds that are their own little lush oases. Sivas city center is more forested, but as one drives south toward Kabakçevliği and further toward Malatya, the rolling hills and painted mountains take over, with their little canyon gullies pinched whittled the mountainsides, their folds accentuated by the evening shadows.
Life’s not easy in rural Sivas, which is why it is said that more descendants of migrants in Istanbul call Sivas their memleket than any other province in Turkey. Balkan migrants are concentrated around Bayrampaşa. Kurdish migrants from the deep southeast in Sultanbeyli. Where do Sivas people settle in the büyükşehir? Everywhere. They are Okies and Istanbul is California in the depression that was Turkey from the 60s to 80’s.
But they shared everything with us. When we arrived, it was a late breakfast at Mustafa and Gülcan’s house, one of three newer houses in Kabakçevliği. We ate a lavaş-like bread called şaç ekmeği. Eggs, three types of cheeses. The only thing not from the village was the olives.
We then went for a walk to the poplars, Ahmet Baba (Zeynep’s dad), regaled us with a story of riding a
horse as a small child. The horse was spooked by a snake, stood up on two legs, bolted back for the village, dragging Ahmet on the ground.
Afternoon was the party. We ate kavurma, a simple beef sauté, rice and ayran. Stinky feet was joined by a keyboard musician and some giant speakers. And guess what time it was? Afternoon halay time! Interspersed with halay was the sema, a simple Alevi circle folk dance. I had a chance to leave the party and walk around the defunct schoolhouse, with its requisite ne mutlu Türküm diyene (how happy it is that I am a Turk) barely visible on the outside wall. The old blackboard was still there.
My father-in-law in front of the derelict village schoolhouse that he attended in the 60’s.
The region is perhaps most famous for Sivas kangal (Kangal is a town in Sivas), a breed of livestock guardian dog that is recognized by the American Kennel Club. No Sivas village is complete without one, and we saw two mama kangal — bountiful and big nipples swaying from their chests — and their cute pups, both in Kabakçevliği, and Güneypınar, where we overnighted with Hatice, Seher and Gülüzar’s sister.
A one-month old Kangal puppy.
On Sunday afternoon, it was time to board the bus for the long trip home. Our sixty-hour trip in total included 28 hours by bus, Throw in 8 hours sleeping in the middle, and we were left with a total of 24 hours in Kabakçevliği and Güneypınar. But 24 hours village time equals at least 100 Istanbul clock revolutions. Indeed, a lot was packed into the trip. Lots of cheese, at least three different kinds per meal. Lots, of tea, at least 10 glasses per day. Lot’s of kisses, the human bonds are true.
It made me think how the bonds I’ve made in Turkey branched out like Anatolian poplar roots. Thirty-nine months ago, I was let into my father-in-law’s life. On a cold rainy day in March, I came to the Şentürk house in Maltepe for dinner. For Ahmet Baba, first he was hesitant to allow this newcomer — a foreigner, an American, a non-Muslim, and a non-Alevi, no less — fully into his life. Now his village accepts me.
Why was it easy for me to be warmly accepted by my in-laws? Perhaps it was the hardships that the Ahmet Baba himself faced when he got married to a Sunni father in law, in getting married, or being Alevi, with their Sufi acceptance of other ethnic groups, or being a staunch Kemalist. Or, maybe its simply embracing modern, globalized life. Whatever it was, I realized I had it easy in the way no villager ever had in Kabakçevliği.
The last seven years in Turkey flashed by in a minute. I think back to that Anatolian bus ride, a broken heater the only thing marring it. I think of stinky feet, with his bağlama in hand, singing master Aşık Veysel’s classic song “Uzun ince bir yoldayım”, and the Anatolian countryside passing by in a flash, like the last seven years in Turkey.
If I think about it deeply
It appears I’m far at first sight
While my road is a minute long
I walk all day, I walk all night
Refugees with degrees: Eyad Abdulkader, Part 1
With the agreement to return Syrian refugees to Turkey, it’s worth remembering that despite what Amnesty international says about Turkey being unfit for refugees, Turkey has a number of educated refugees and displaced persons who are making their way in Turkey doing things like NGO work, translating, teaching English, and more. This post is profiling one such refugee (though he isn’t technically a refugee, it’s close enough), Eyad Abdulkader.
With his soft eyes and timid smile, Eyad is a thoughtful man, wise beyond his 28 years. Cut from an academician cloth, he came to Turkey to do a masters in classical Ottoman literature before the war.
In March, Eyad came to Istanbul from his home in Gaziantep, where he does part-time NGO work, for a short vacation. He agreed to let me interview him for ezramannix.com. We went to Sahtin (which means afiyet olsun in Arabic), the Syrian shawarma place in Aksaray where I interviewed Monte. (Eyad gave the Halep kebap three stars out of five).
In this first of a two-part interview, this Simpsons lover, reciter of hundreds of poems, skilled cook, heavy smoker, matte tea lover, bookworm, polyglot (he’s fluent in Ottoman Turkish) opened up to me and my wife Zeynep about his life: growing up under the Assads, the revolution, the war, living in Turkey, being away from his family, what he misses about pre-war Syria, and more.
Could you tell us a bit where you are from what you studied in your home country, and what you study now?
I’m from Aleppo, studied there at Aleppo University. I studied Turkish literature there and I am doing masters in classic Turkish/Ottoman literature now at Ataturk University in Erzurum. I am currently in the thesis stage.
Why Turkish literature?
Well, I was curious about literature. I could study either English literature or Turkish literature. It was a new thing for me so I chose Turkish literature.
Could you tell us about your childhood?
It was pretty normal and comfortable. I am the youngest child, the prince (laughs).
What did your parents do before the war?
My father was a civil servant and my mother a housewife. We are siblings, 2 boys and 2 girls. We were middle class, a little bit upper middle class maybe (laughs).
Eyad at Sahtin, ready to devour hummus, thoom, and tabouli
What did you think about the government growing up? I know Syrians don’t talk much about politics.
Yeah. My childhood was the period of “the father”. (Hafez Assad, the first Assad, father of the current Bashar Assad). We couldn’t talk about anything. My parents couldn’t talk about anything related to him. People had his picture everywhere, in books, in the streets.
Like Ataturk here?
Much more. The police and intelligence were everywhere. They could interfere with everything without a show of paper work. I was 13 years old when he died. I’m sorry to say I was happy.
There was some hope at that time, right? Bashar, the son, was educated in the west and people thought there would be some more freedoms, right?
Yes, people were hopeful, but there were some red flags in the beginning. For example, the Syrian constitution said you have to be 40 years old to be president, but he was 36, and in, like, 5 minutes they changed the constitution in the parliament.
That’s a bad sign.
However, he started to talk about his liberal opinions and liberal life. He started to talk to the opposition. They made a proposal. They called it the glasnost of Damascus. But after two days he arrested all of them, all the people who made the proposal, and Bashar said the president should be Muslim, male and from the Baath party. From that point on, we knew it would continue the same way.
In the Arab spring, what sort of role did you play?
Well, when the Arab spring started I was enrolled in my studies at Gaziantep University. I did a masters in Gaziantep, but I couldn’t continue. I was worried for Syria, because I couldn’t imagine it would arrive at this point, especially after Mubarak and Ben Ali left. I thought (the regime) in Syria wouldn’t last more than one month.
Then, there was kind of announcement on social media that there would be a big demonstration in Damascus, so on the 4th of February In 2011, I was in Damascus waiting. The protestors couldn’t do anything. By coincidence I saw 5 or 6 of my friends. They were waiting for the demonstration to begin. I went to Damascus for one day. When I couldn’t do anything I came back to Aleppo, then Gaziantep.
Can you tell me about the Massacre of Homs?
It was a kind of strike. They gathered in Homs at Ramadan. There were religious people, they started to pray, then people who were atheists or not religious started to protect them.
Sort of like a brotherhood?
Yeah, but then the police started to open fire. Police killed around 300 people.
300?
Yes. Now, going back to this brotherhood, these demonstrations used to be on Fridays after prayer. A lot of Christian friends were waiting outside of the mosque to join them. I remember in the first Easter after the revolution, the regime started to think that these people who were demonstrating were radicals who would burn the church, so it was I and some of my friends who were worried the regime would do a provocation, so we went to the church and stood outside the church to check if anybody would come and do anything.
Did anyone attack the church?
No.
So it was propaganda.
Yeah.
What do you think was the root cause of the police killing people?
We have a concept in Syria Syria Al Assad, which means Assad’s Syria. They started to educate people based on one ideology: Assad is the leader; he will do everything for the country. They think of the whole country as Assad.
Hmm. One and the same.
We thought we needed Assad or no one would come. Why? I don’t know. It was Stockholm syndrome. Forty years of the “baba”, and 10 years of the son, it was not an easy experience for the Syrian people. Every 10 years we had this sort of thing, he bombed Hama in 1982for 27 days. Now when you visit Hama you can see how the people are worried and sad, and see the buildings have bullets inside the buildings. They left it there to remind the people that we could do it anytime. The brother of Assad (Rifaat) had a favorite quote “I don’t want Hama on the map.”
That’s the worst. They are letting ISIS do the dirty work.
Yeah.
So the war breaks out during Ramadan, what did you do after the massacre of Homs?
I was in Turkey. I was watching it live. I didn’t think something like that would happen. I watched a live broadcast on YouTube.
What did you do?
I was traumatized. I couldn’t do anything. I called my parents. What could I do?
Is your family in Aleppo OK?
Yeah, my family in Aleppo is OK because my parents are really old, my brothers and sisters don’t have any activities related to the government, so I was relieved.
What are your brothers and sisters doing now?
My brother now is doing nothing. He was a guitar teacher. Now I am trying to bring him here, because he can’t do anything there. All of them are in Syria.
What’s the challenge of bringing them to Turkey?
A lot of challenges. My parents don’t want to come here. The second thing is the border is closed.
Did it used to be easier?
Yes. Now it’s harder.
The parents don’t want to leave?
Yeah. I mean, they love their country.
What’s daily life like for them now?
My parents are retired now. They roam around town or a few hours visiting my sisters and they come home.
What do your sisters do?
One is a housewife; the other is an nuclear engineer.
A nuclear engineer?
Yeah, she is working in a hospital. Her work is related more the biomedical engineering.
Do you have any friends or relatives who were killed?
A lot. Friends and relatives. Some died in shelling, some died in torture. For some, I hadn’t heard anything and suddenly I saw their picture on Facebook. It’s not easy.
I’ll never forget my friend Maher, his smiley face. He was older than me but had a childish face. He was a lawyer, he had 2 kids, he was active in civil society. He never held a gun, but one day he had been arrested in Aleppo and his body saw the light of the freedom in Damascus after several months.. I saw his name on Facebook among tens of name who died under torture.
Were you living in Aleppo at anytime during the war?
I used to visit Aleppo a lot during the war. I visited a lot. I stayed for six months during the war because there was a gap of teachers in the universities.
Ah, you were teaching for a while.
Yeah. The university stayed open. I was teaching there, but they asked me to report the students.
Really?
Yeah, but when I refused, it became a little dangerous for me.
What did you teach?
Three subjects: poetry, theatre and Turkic literature.
Could you explain this reporting students a bit more?
The head of the department asked me to report some students if they are against Assad or not, or if they are demonstrating or not. So I refused in some way that they wouldn’t put me in a dangerous position, but I couldn’t, so they started to threaten me and pressure me, so I said sorry, I can’t do it. After that, I left the regime area.
Was the head of the department also pro Assad, or was he receiving pressure from someone else?
She was clearly pro-Assad, and she reported a lot of professors at the university who were later killed.
This is like some Stalinist purge.
For sure. Now I think she is working in some place in Damascus related to the presidential issue. So I left the regime area immediately and I came to Turkey to start my life.
The strange thing is, she called me three times on my Turkish number and said ‘Eyad, we need you at the university, so come,’ and it was a kind of game. She was trying to pull me in to arrest me.
Wow. Why do you think that?
Because she is a… you know what. She was pro-Assad, from the Bath party, so…yeah. And nobody likes her, really.
I see. She didn’t get to were she was with her talents, she was a party person. So this was 2012 and you were only about 25.
Yes. They asked me because they said ‘you are the same age with the students more or less, so you can be like friends with them and ask them and figure out their opinions’.
Ha, the “buddy” teacher. So you came back to Turkey for studies. Did you resume your masters?
No. I started fresh because I changed my school and specialities. I was in modern, now I’m studying classical Turkish literature.
And then you started to learn Ottoman Turkish as a language?
Yeah. I go only once per month because my advisor is really cool with me. He used to be my teacher in Syria, a Turkish man.
What do you think about the war now?
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I want to follow every event inside Syria to know what’s going on, and the other side, as a student, a master’s student who deals with studying as well as my NGO work.
What’s your thesis on?
It’s on a poetry book written in Arabic by an Ottoman poet in the 15th century in Damascus, so I am working on translating it to Turkish and adding commentary.
When was the last time you went to Syria and how often do you go?
Now I am going once per year.
That’s it?
Last time was four months ago.
How much time do you spend there per visit?
One week.
That’s it?
If I spend a lot of time with my family it will be harder to leave. I don’t want to live this, and I don’t want them to live this. To see them, I have to call them to come to the opposition area because I can’t go to the regime area. I have to cross the border. Plus, that lady (the former head of the university department) reported me. So there is some military intelligence.
Do you see your parents in their homes, or do you go somewhere else to visit with them?
We have a kind of country house. So they go there, it’s in the opposition area, so I go there.
Were there any dangerous situations moving around the country?
Yeah, it’s getting harder to move outside of Aleppo. The only people I used to see are my father, brother and mother. I haven’t seen my sisters or nieces for five years. One of my nieces is going to university next year.
What do you miss most about old Syria?
I miss my home (smiles). I miss the old streets and alleyways. I like to come to Istanbul because I can feel the same shape of the narrow alleyways. It’s like the old Aleppo. When I come to Istanbul, I explore the buildings. Aleppo used to have a lot of churches, here also. I go into the churches to feel that I am inside Aleppo.
End of PART ONE