Alrighty, and now for a complete change of format

Since Blogger/Blogspot has decided not to either a) be speedy at uploading pictures or b) accept my pictures as reasonable file sizes, I will no longer be posting the texts of my postcards up here. Perhaps phrases, but free-writing sounds much more interesting, anyway.

Tomorrow morning we leave Ankara for Istanbul. It is a 6-hour bus ride that accommodates the rider with television, headsets, a food and beverage service cart, and plush seats that lean much farther back than the knee space allows. Altogether, a very nice experience. However, I will mention you should not take the headsets. Otherwise, your professor will be called by the friend that bought the bus tickets because she got called by the bus station manager saying that someone took ALL of the headsets! (Even though it was only two of us). Altogether, a thoroughly enjoyable opportunity. The riders are given a rest stop halfway through that is either for 30 or 45 minutes. Oh, did I mention there is a bathroom on the bus?

Onto Ankara....
Our itinerary for the first full day was to split our time between two obvious representations of the question of Turkish identity. Turkey is a secular state. It has a sizeable Muslim population, even if the level of religiosity is relatively low. What does that mean for the psyche of a Turk?

What we were presented with in the morning was the Anitkabir--the tomb of the Father of the Turks, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. We entered from the wrong side initially, but walked around the outside to enter from the proper steps. On the left, are statues of the agricultural workers. On the right are statues of women of Turkey. There were two compartments that described the construction effort of the Anitkabir, and the meaning behind the layout of the memorial. Walking along the path (it was a rather long and skinny event) to the actual tomb, the sides were adorned with red roses and statues of majestic lions. One professor shared an anecdote that I particularly liked:

I was here with an archeologist friend of mine a while back, and he told me that the placement of the stones with the grass growing up in between like this was constructed in order that you must watch your step so that you do not twist an ankle. Therefore, you must bow your head while approaching Ataturk's tomb.

Whether or not its an accurate reasoning for the structural placement of the stones, I found it very difficult to walk without looking down, and ended up bowing my head, unintentionally.

What is so fascinating about the Anitkabir is that, well, the Turkish identity is so fabulously constructed, and Ataturk's tomb clearly was made to support everything he promoted in his lifetime. It's lavish, it's modern; the format of the construction has pre-Ottoman ties, as part of the narrative of the Turkish identity is to demonstrate that the Ottoman Empire is not necessarily the past that needs the emphasis, but that Turkey is a state with a long history.

And now I'm tired, so this will be continued tomorrow and you will never see this sentence again!!