Tag Archives: breaking rules

Van Waveren Tapes make you shiver…

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   Van Waveren Tapes form a strange and highly intriguing documentary. I went to the cinema to see it, just because I read the story of its creation in a newspaper. A guy bought a lot of tapes on one of our famous Dutch flee markets, the Waterloo Plein in Amsterdam, and discovered a life story that played mainly in the years ’70 and ’80. The tapes were made by someone who taped many or maybe all of his phone conversations and who also talked to his tapes just for himself. Who would buy tapes like that? And who would be able to make a movie out of it? A guy like that is 100% original and a great artist!

Like in a detective, the story unfolds step by step. When you watch this documentary, you realize that the scenes are not spoken by actors, but real life conversations. It made me shiver to enter this closely into a personal and rather tragic life. The maker did an extremely good job: this movie keeps your attention until the very last minute… and it makes you think about life in an extraordinary way.

When I tried to reserve cards for the cinema, the girl at the phone told me ‘it is not  necessary because nobody will show up’. Then she corrected herself and said ‘it will not be very busy’. Indeed there appeared to be only nine of us in total. All of us very impressed and very enthusiast. Don’t miss it. This is not the kind of thing you can see every day!

Other documentaries you are probably interested in:
Visages villages: the brilliance of the normal
The hunt for my father
Taxi Teheran

Istanbul: mysterious tickets after Süleymaniye Mosque donation

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Süleymaniye Mosque

On leaving the beautiful Süleymaniye Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) I gave a donation to a guy sitting at the exit of the Mosque with a sign ‘donations for the Mosque’. As the entrance was free and usually the maintenance of this kind of buildings is enormous in costs, it seemed reasonable to have some contribution. I gave money and got a few blue tickets in return for that. I looked at them and thought, why do I get this kind of tickets? I gave a donation, but what is this for?
As my brains couldn’t find a solution, I started to think the Dutch way. This must be a proof for tax administration that a donation was made, I thought. In the Netherlands this exists; for income that is spent in gifts to good aims, citizens don’t need to pay taxes. But you must be able to proof that you gave away that money. I suggested the Turks might have the same system and that the tickets I got at the Süleymaniye Mosque served to prove to Turkish taxes that this money was really spent as a gift. But I also know that perspectives can be coloured too much by national perspective. The reason why I got the tickets could be completely different.
So in the restaurant, close to Süleymaniye, where we had dinner after visiting the Mosque, I showed my newly acquired tickets to the staff and asked them for the meaning of them. The staff was very surprised about it: ‘we have never seen these tickets before’. They started to question me ‘the Mosque is free to visit, why did you give them money?’.  I tried to explain to them the idea, or should I say idealism, of donations but my table company destroyed it all by saying ‘she wanted to feel good about herself’, making everybody burst out in laughter as if I were the kind of fool that was hardly seen in this part of Istanbul.
The restaurant staff explained to me ‘the government takes care of the Mosque, they don’t need your money’. Hey, I don’t give up that easily so I responded in an utmost surprised way ‘ah, I thought Turkey has a separation of state and religion’. ‘Well yes’, they replied, ‘the state doesn’t pay any money but local government does, the city of Istanbul is taking care of the Mosque’. I thought that the separation of state and religion also involved local government as well as national government but they thought that local was completely different from national and showed surprise that the City of Amsterdam is not giving money to churches or mosques ‘Istanbul is very social but Amsterdam is not’.
Soon enough, we started to talk Turkish instead of English and we jumped from the way Christians were treated in the South-East of Turkey to the way Muslems were treated in Greece and Bulgaria. I got a bit upset and so did they, and they had the superiority of language, meaningful in situations like the moment where I said that the monasteries in the North (güney) had a hard time under Turkish government when they declared there were no monasteries in the North – like I usually do, I mixed the words South and North (kuzey versus güney); a problem of mastering a language that weakened my arguments because they wouldn’t notice that I was not telling an ‘untruth’ but making a language mistake.
We didn’t really find a solution for Muslems in Greece and Bulgaria or for Christians in South East Turkey but we had a drink together to close the discussion. The only problem that lasts now is that my question about the tickets was left unanswered: why does a tourist who gives a donation to the Süleymaniye Mosque get tickets showing the period, the amount and the purpose of the donation? If you, reader, know the answer, please send me a message because I really like to know after all…

Other blogs you might like:
Istanbul and souvenirs with a religious component
Agios Nikolaos
Istanbul street cats

Istanbul religious souvenirs

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Istanbul religious souvenirs

Changes can sometimes be perceived in small signs that function as a symbol for deeper lying norms and values. One of those signs in Istanbul is the way souvenir shops deal with presents that have a religious component. When I was here twenty years ago, the presents with different religious background were thoroughly separated from each other. For example in the jewelry market, jewelry with the ‘bismallah’ sign were sold in shops with a muslem owner, golden crosses were sold in shops with a christian owner. In that time there was no mixed collection of presents with religious component to be found at the same shop; absolutely nowhere!
This is something that has really changed now. In many shops it is possible to find articles with islamic, christian and jewish meaning all together not just in the same shop, but also on the same shelve. For someone like me who missed 20 years of Istanbul development, it feels like a radical change. I asked some questions about it in one souvenir shop and the workers there kindly explained to me that they believe in and respect all the prophets. I tried to explain them how this was in the years ’70, ’80, even begin ’90 but they kept telling me how they feel about it now. They couldn’t explain history to me, why it was different before and why it changed. They had Maria and Jesus hanging in their shop next to islamic holy artefacts, see the picture above, and considered that as normal.
I cannot analyze this yet, it would need a more indept insight but as said I have seen this mixture in many shops in Istanbul city already. These are small signs for what could be a more fundamental change. My first and overall impression is that the selfconfidence of the Turks has increased a lot in daily life, and tolerance often comes with selfconfidence. Another way of looking at it could be that the Christian minorities form no more threat whatsoever to the Turks which allows a different attitude. Finally, it is also possible to look at this businesswise. The Turks were always good in customer service, eager to help customers out, create strong relationships and earn some money; maybe they have just added these new products to their buckets…

Other interesting blogs:
Minorities in Gaziantep
Istanbul: mysterious tickets
Mikve Israel-Immanuel synagogue
Ramallah: Jews removing Christians from Middle East

Mavi Kösk Blue House – Northern Cyprus heritage (6)

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mavi kösk blue house    Mavi Kösk Blue House

There are several sites describing the beauty of the Mavi Kösk Blue House between Camlibell and Sadrazam Köy. Although it is recent heritage (built in 1956) and most probably some army propaganda (see: http://www.cyprus44.com/forums/48200.asp), worth a visit everybody said. Info sites mention large opening hours so what could go wrong? But when I arrived, I was not rewarded by an entrance ticket but by learning more about car diversity.

The Mavi Kösk Blue House lies in a military camp so you pass along a soldiers barrier before approaching it. It is close to the monastery Agios Pandeleimon that I also visited. But I couldn’t pass, the guy said, because my car was a rental car from the South of Cyprus. First I thought he made a joke, but he was serious. Here I am, a Dutch person speaking quite some Turkish and visiting Northern Cyprus since many years and I was left out while others entered because I had the wrong car. Being discriminated because of your car only, I really never heard about that kind of ‘ayrimcilik’ before. Neither is it mentioned on any site about the Blue House, but the guy seriously told me ‘go change your car’, these were the rules. My offer to park the car and walk to the Mavi Kösk Blue House (only 500-1000 meters) was fiercely rejected because civilians can’t walk on a military site. Could have known that, Turks never walk anyway.

They didn’t offer me a hike to make the bridge between these few meters, they really sent me off. I think it was my first time in thirty years meeting with Turks that hospitality was denied. My experience so far was: they always find a solution, especially when you speak the language and know the culture. So they left me in shock.

It made me think of Germany some time ago. In the Netherlands, we used to drive the car we want. One could see a millionaire in a Fiat (a former Prime Minister was known for that) and a poor man in a BMW. In Germany this was not possible at that time. Every class had its car and everybody sticked with the rules and that made the world orderly and predictable. Germany changed, and so will hopefully one day the Turkish army. It is not the car that is the enemy, but the person inside it. The next spy might show up in a Turkish car….or in a car rented in the North of Cyprus. Hope Turkish soldiers will learn to see the difference 🙂

Other blogs you may like:
Elections in Turkey
A kastel is not a castle in Gaziantep
Museum of the history of Cypriot coinage
Alaniçi: moving memories of 1955 – 1974 (5)