wh-Atatürk

I sit here on this hand made wooden chair, one of 16 around me, each with its own unique similarity. Four for four glass top tables. Breakfast is about to be served. I find it strange that each has a chess boards looking through? The same space is spotted with potted olive trees geraniums (Pelargonium ??), ribs of coral decorations. Tiles from Arabic shrines with white on blue with turquoise edges, and prequels to mosaics lying spotted between the pot plants and urchin shells and brass bowels on a terracotta tiled floor. The white sheets hanging like washing over many lines provide little protection from the coming heat, but much desired shade. Yet out the door is a paved road with out any of the paving. This is a diamond in the back streets of Ayvalik.
But neither decoration nor chess board hanging on the wall opposite me grabs my attention. But the wall itself!
Catching the morning sun at its pinnacle where the regular brick work has been white washed with cement. But where the brick work ends and the ground floor begins, it is the fractured rock face of three by seven meters that is a painting unto itself. An image of Istanbul and Turchia at large.
The local stone is only a small contribution of the diversity. The pastel off terracotta, the rust stains bleed, the orange peel left to dry, the white basalt, the sulpher, the polished tanned leather, black lava, purple white, turquoise rock. Carved in regular patterns by time, polished by erosion, fractured by chisels, sharp, rough, smooth. With the odd brick in between. But what is the cement that bounds such a diverse people? What fills the cracks between the differences of the imperfect match?

Istanbul, is not Paris of the east, not the London of Asia, but the cross roads of a cosmopolitan nation. Some place where the definition of east and west breaks down, it is the east of the west, and the west of the east. A place where no one gives a damn if you are from Asia or Europe. Where the beauty of the people is that you can't say they are from Turkey, where the tourist and the local are indistinguishable. The waterway divides the land brings with it the instrument that stirs the blood of many people into a polished granite with all its textures and characters, and beauty and depth of strange complexity that you can not find fault.


I wonder how control and death at these cross roads in time and space will be in the future. Will the people be pulled apart by those at its borders, will the rocks be grouped together that the picture disappears and the wall collapses? This life line to the north, it is the vein from the black sea to the "good" life of the Mediterranean. It is an artery red and green beacons, the to and fro.

But the blood red flag that flies all over the land is both a pleasure and a paradox. Nationalist pride, to symbolise the fight against a secular state. A proud nation, but are there to many "bears"? People selling their nation short in western eyes. Not great bears, but wild creatures, people with out culture or class in a classical city that bears the fruit of architecture and arts. Symbols of the highest form of knowledge and progress. The bear without education? Blind faith, laïcité or nationalist? I question what gives an educated vote.



The wood slate buildings next to the stables down quaint little cobble streets, by rock walls and collapsed roofs from years gone by. With sky scrapers on the horizon, following the contours of the valleys, while ancient landmarks crown hill tops like tiaras. Seven hills, seven thousand dishes to desire, from old and new. Who are the turks? Where is Turkmenistan? It is not a place but a distinguished character of Atatürk that defines the ambition of half the nation. And the character of the other great leader corrupted by the west that defines the other half of the nation. But what about the third half, the half that decides the future?