in age-old format, or risk causing grave offence. You must also be wise to traditional practices. I once offered to pay for a freshly fried doughnut ( lokma ) handed to me by a kind man on a street corner in Selçuk, noticing too late the surrounding mill of people and remembering that the public distribution of this particular sweet is traditional on the part of a recently bereaved Turkish family. The money in my hand seemed suddenly sordid as I fumbled for the correct words of condolence for this grieving man.
Turkey has retained a sense of community in which everyone is involved in everyone else’s affairs, their good news and their bad, and this is formalised in language – people communicate, on all levels. The village-like interdependency of Turkish society has remained despite the huge urbanisation of the last few decades, and has thrived with technology like mobile phones and Skype. The average Turk speaks to their family several times a day and will know the details of their ex-neighbour’s second divorce settlement or a distant cousin’s circumcision ceremony via an impressive network ofgossip intelligence. I soon noticed that Turks communicate not only with their closest circles but also with complete strangers much more readily than Europeans, at least in informal situations.
In Turkey, if you have even a brief exchange with someone working – at a desk, hauling concrete, cooking – you wish him or her well as you leave: Kolay gelsin , which literally means ‘May it come easily.’ I have become so used to saying this that when I visit England I have to stop my impulse to translate the phrase into English. Approximations are always clumsy: ‘Take it easy’ sounds American and slightly patronising to an English ear. ‘Good luck’ is portentous and uncalled for. In fact, the expression itself is uncalled for in England because there is no expectation that a stranger will take any interest in your activities, or vice versa. In Turkey, recognition of others is natural, even if it is just in the form of an offhand, oft-repeated expression. Kolay gelsin is a simple sign of solidarity which transcends social class, promising nothing while radiating good will. Turks have a lovely way of saying goodbye to someone: Güle güle ,which literally means ‘[Go] laughing’.
There are plenty of other phrases like this: Geçmiş olsun – ‘May it pass’ – is what you say to someone who is ill or generally having a tough time. ‘Get well soon’ is the less frequently repeated and more specifically medical equivalent in English, but it doesn’t cover the pan-sympathetic sense of the Turkish, which can refer to someone’s financial troubles or just a bad hair day. It is such a simple phrase, little more than a voiced smile, but equally cheering.
I am certainly not saying that Turkey is a socialist country, or particularly socially progressive, but it does have this indelible,shared humanity which persists despite – or perhaps because of – the upheavals of its troubled past and present. I can sense a similar atmosphere in descriptions of Britain during the world wars, when people united in fear and unaccustomed hardship. That was temporary. In the relatively emergency-free society of today’s Britain, everyone minds their own business, even if this is belied by the cowardly anonymity of a Facebook profile.
The downside of the importance Turks place on social expression is the huge capacity to get it wrong and cause offence. Turks are notoriously sensitive. If the offender is a bumbling foreigner on uncertain ground, he or she is benignly forgiven, but less fortunate are offenders in the international political arena. In August 2012 the Turkish media and main opposition party responded with hysteria to a photograph published by the White House of President Obama holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone to Prime Minister Erdoğan about the Syrian crisis. The photo was deemed highly offensive, the
Turkey has retained a sense of community in which everyone is involved in everyone else’s affairs, their good news and their bad, and this is formalised in language – people communicate, on all levels. The village-like interdependency of Turkish society has remained despite the huge urbanisation of the last few decades, and has thrived with technology like mobile phones and Skype. The average Turk speaks to their family several times a day and will know the details of their ex-neighbour’s second divorce settlement or a distant cousin’s circumcision ceremony via an impressive network ofgossip intelligence. I soon noticed that Turks communicate not only with their closest circles but also with complete strangers much more readily than Europeans, at least in informal situations.
In Turkey, if you have even a brief exchange with someone working – at a desk, hauling concrete, cooking – you wish him or her well as you leave: Kolay gelsin , which literally means ‘May it come easily.’ I have become so used to saying this that when I visit England I have to stop my impulse to translate the phrase into English. Approximations are always clumsy: ‘Take it easy’ sounds American and slightly patronising to an English ear. ‘Good luck’ is portentous and uncalled for. In fact, the expression itself is uncalled for in England because there is no expectation that a stranger will take any interest in your activities, or vice versa. In Turkey, recognition of others is natural, even if it is just in the form of an offhand, oft-repeated expression. Kolay gelsin is a simple sign of solidarity which transcends social class, promising nothing while radiating good will. Turks have a lovely way of saying goodbye to someone: Güle güle ,which literally means ‘[Go] laughing’.
There are plenty of other phrases like this: Geçmiş olsun – ‘May it pass’ – is what you say to someone who is ill or generally having a tough time. ‘Get well soon’ is the less frequently repeated and more specifically medical equivalent in English, but it doesn’t cover the pan-sympathetic sense of the Turkish, which can refer to someone’s financial troubles or just a bad hair day. It is such a simple phrase, little more than a voiced smile, but equally cheering.
I am certainly not saying that Turkey is a socialist country, or particularly socially progressive, but it does have this indelible,shared humanity which persists despite – or perhaps because of – the upheavals of its troubled past and present. I can sense a similar atmosphere in descriptions of Britain during the world wars, when people united in fear and unaccustomed hardship. That was temporary. In the relatively emergency-free society of today’s Britain, everyone minds their own business, even if this is belied by the cowardly anonymity of a Facebook profile.
The downside of the importance Turks place on social expression is the huge capacity to get it wrong and cause offence. Turks are notoriously sensitive. If the offender is a bumbling foreigner on uncertain ground, he or she is benignly forgiven, but less fortunate are offenders in the international political arena. In August 2012 the Turkish media and main opposition party responded with hysteria to a photograph published by the White House of President Obama holding a baseball bat while talking on the phone to Prime Minister Erdoğan about the Syrian crisis. The photo was deemed highly offensive, the
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