"Dear, damned, distracting town."
-Alexander Pope on London

Global Cities

It was only fitting to go to the Global Cities exhibition at Tate Modern after having talked about being ordinary in London. Crowds by Eva Koch captured exactly what I was trying to explain.

The exhibition was really inspiring. It gave a good glimpse into the life in far away cities, and showed that the problems are very similar across the board. (I thought it was a good glimpse because the videos of Istanbul really felt like home.) Cities guarantee exciting lives. Large numbers of people lead to multiplied possibilities: Possibilities for all kinds of jobs, different people, art events, festivals, clubs, restaurants, neighborhoods. The freedom brought by anonymity. Big cities continue to attract people like magnets.

But the diversity and size that makes cities so exciting is also what makes them overwhelming and dangerous. As new people from different socio-economic backgrounds come to the city, they struggle to survive. Some of them have no choice but to live in slums, creating circles of poverty around the city. Some of them are pushed inwards because the well-off want to live in their own segregated paradise in the suburbs. Public transportation and sewage systems are pushed to their limits, and there is no open space to get away from the hustle and bustle. As inequalities rise, some neighborhoods become no-go crime zones. Middle class tries to protect themselves by bullet-proof cars, picket fences and alarm systems. Surviving in the city is an occupation and challenge in itself, taking much energy. But it also seems like the best thing anyone can do with one's time in this world.

I see this as an example of how individual rational choice does not lead to socially optimal outcomes. The individual choices add up to something diverse and exciting, a spontaneity and variety that couldn't be planned by any central planner, but also to something ugly and overwhelming. The city as an organism may seem very exciting and inspiring. But each individual in it, while contributing to it and enjoying it, also suffers from being a teeny weeny particle in this mighty organism. A cell in the blood circulating through the streets. The organism doesn't really care about you, you have to go by its rules to survive. Each city comes with its own terms and conditions that limit its constituents' freedom. But again, it's the price we all pay for constant stimulation.

Weakness and Meanness

Why are we meanest to the people who clearly love us, who are the most vulnerable in front of us? Why are we impatient, tactless, thoughtless with the ones that care the most for us, do the most for us? I frown at my family like I can to no other. I say whatever to my closest friends. Because I know they will stay. I'm horrible to guys who make the mistake of liking me. Because I know I've already won them. There is nothing to be won anymore. They are not interesting anymore. There is no challenge.

I'm strong against someone because I don't care. Somebody else is strong against me because they don't care. They will just read what I write for them and they will find it cheesy, pathetic. I will read what the others write for me and I will find it cheesy, pathetic.

Even now, writing this, I know I'm being weak and uninteresting and unmysterious. But the unfairness in this actually breaks my heart, that's why I'm writing it. The only way to win the admiration of people is to stay independent of their influence, out of their reach. Loving someone is not enough reason to be loved back. Being strong and independent is what makes people admirable.

My application essay to Georgetown and other places. I wrote it five years ago, and it still rings true. Here you go:

application essay

I run away from regrets. To run away from regrets, I must confront my fears and laziness and longing for security. That lag is what shapes my life and decisions.

I adore beauty. Beautiful songs, places, people, sights, smells, food, books. I'm trying to expand myself: To hear more of good music, read more of good books, meet more of good people. I travel to cities like Istanbul, Rome, Milan, London, Berlin, Bremen and Prague. According to me, all of these cities, including my hometown, Izmir, are like stages, which host many stories and people. All the actors and actresses leave their signs on the streets, bridges, buildings, leave their scent in the air. I read books as good as Jitterbug Perfume, 1984 and My Name Is Red. I like those unique books and their authors who look at the world from a different point of view than everyone else. I see movies as good as the Fight Club, the Matrix, American Beauty and Moulin Rouge. I am astonished by all the big and interesting inventions and discoveries made by determined people. I know people who are intelligent but who still remain down-to-earth. My parents are such people and I learn so much from them!

However, I’m never completely happy and peaceful. As I look at all the beautiful things, I get jealous. When I read a good sentence from a book, when I see a good illustration in a painting, when I hear a good song, my admiration and joy mixes with annoyance. How happy I would get if I was a beautiful person and if I created beautiful things!

I see myself a part of a big picture. I’m curious, I want to rise on my toes to see and understand more. Only when I understand more of this world, I will be able to create meaningful things. I know that I have to open eyes, observe and understand; I have to live, work, read, see, sacrifice and collect information. I know that I have to MAKE myself more beautiful to make the picture more beautiful. The easiest thing I can change and develop in this picture is myself.

My way of expressing myself has been writing up to now. It's like collecting a lot of things in you and reorganizing them in an original way. I want to produce a lot and affect a lot of people. I love to write essays on subjects I “understand”, and therefore have something to say about.

I’m sometimes bored of my every day life. Through all my responsibilities, I hardly see the beauty. I want amazing surprises to happen suddenly. Though, when opportunities do come, I can’t find the courage in myself to decide right away. I want to avoid risks.

Even right now, I’m running away from regrets. I’m working hard on an essay. I know I won’t be able to live a satisfactory life if I don’t try hard enough to reach my goals. I will have to bare regrets if I don’t live a full life. I know I have to take away so much from the world and give so much in return. I remember a saying by Lord Tennyson, a famous English poet, and repeat it to myself with a smile: So many worlds, so much to do; so little done, such things to be!

looking out of the bus window

you see a lot of people walking fast. fat people. good-looking people. well-dressed bankers. lawyers. people with thinning hair and receding hairlines. blonde frizzy hair, burnt from too much intervention. huge afros. red beautiful hair that moves as one mass. tired people. people walking fast, ignited with an unexplainable source of motivation. people waiting for the bus. crazy guy with horribly long rasta hair. two japanese men passed out from the gentle massage at the hair dresser. people talking on the phone with a smile on their faces. couples kissing. really handsome guys with perfect hair. middle aged fit women with a really rough mask on their faces, like they've been out in the cold for too long. old, tired men in trenchcoats with sleepy eyes. women in suits, tights and sneakers. small fat women. women checking themselves out on shop windows. sometimes I just pick one person and look at them hard. sometimes they have a smile for no apparent reason. interesting thing watching people when they are not interacting with anyone, when they are walking alone, submerged in their own thoughts and worries. some of them self-conscious with muscles on their faces twitching, some of them truly lost in thought. all these cells in the blood that circulates in the london streets. addicted to running. then, each of these cells has a life. each of them is in a bloated, all-so-important bubble of their own. imagine everyone having a life just like your own! so much information, so much memory and emotion, yet each of them a huge isolated bubble. they have hopes, disappointments, connections, people who care for them. and then they are just a cell in blood, so ordinary. no apparent reason to pay attention to them separately, because they are all like one another. london will spit them out soon.

how many people really pay attention to me? I think I'm so special, but noone seems to care. where do I stand on that big, invisible ladder that ranks people? we are immune to even the best now, because there are too many of them, so who should care about me when I'm clearly not the best? I hate it when people on the street look through me, turning their eyes quickly, not finding me interesting enough to really look at. I would always imagine passerby's admired me, but now I know they don't. but how many of them catch my attention anyway? we just pass by. nowadays I feel very ordinary, very unimportant. I hate that.

Turkish Elections

The incumbent Justice and Development Party has won the parliamentary elections. This result was expected, and I don't get those that are so angry and disappointed at it. Here are vote and MP distributions in 2002 and today, as of now:

AKP - 2002: 34.43%, 365; 2007: 46.62%, 340
CHP - 2002: 19.41%, 177; 2007: 20.91%, 111
MHP - 2002: 8.35%, 0; 2007: 14.27%, 71
Independents - 2002: 0.96%, 8; 2007: 5.7%, 28.

If I were in Turkey today, I would have voted for AKP. It's not because I agree with the fellows at the Economist. Having spent some time in Turkey recently, I am well aware of the government's flaws, double standards and negligence, as well as the corruption allegations that seem well-founded. Despite some journalists' willingness to portray a different picture, much went wrong during their term, and we shouldn't forget. The murder of the Council of State judges, the murder of Hrant Dink, Article 301 and rising nationalism, the uneasy current account deficit, wide-spread unemployment among the youth, soaring crime rates, unbelievably atrocious crime stories, the EU disappointment, horrendous public transportation, the derailed fast train, worries over earthquakes, drought, erosion and forest fires that remain unaddressed, the deep divides in the society - and those are not only religious or ethnic divides, they are divides between rich and poor, educated and ignorant. They simply did not do enough. And they also did not lift the headscarf ban.

But let's take a look at AKP's rivals: CHP, one that does not formulate any policy except for stirring up fear and anger against religious fundamentalists, foreign investors, businessmen, European Union. They make up the "secular elite" alongside the military, and them branding themselves secular is not enough reason for anyone to vote for them. Their leader Deniz Baykal is famous for both his ambition that undermines the success of his own party and his incompetence.

I don't need to say much about the blind, irrational nationalism of MHP. Their increasing popularity is the only thing that truly disturbs me about this election. They are abusing the sentiment about the increasing clashes between the PKK and Turkish soldiers in the South East. Although the injustices done to Kurds by the Turkish state are clear, nothing can justify the violence inflicted by the PKK. Especially after reading Mutluluk by Zülfü Livaneli, I appreciate more and more the difficulty and meaning of what our soldiers are doing there, of course all we can do is imagine, there is no way to truly understand. It is so appalling and two-faced that the US and Iraqi Kurds are not trying in good faith to stop PKK. All the same, I find it very dangerous that growing numbers of people go for the hate-inflicting, "testosterone-driven" nationalism.

Finally, Mehmet Ağar's centre-right DP lost miserably, getting only 5.43% of the vote, despite its equivalent ANAP's failure to enter the election after a doomed merger between the parties. Ağar's alleged association with the "deep state" was a big liability, although the media seemed to forget the accusations and the trials. AKP gained much ground in centre-right to the expense of DP and ANAP. Centre right is the most favourable place to stand in Turkish political spectrum.

More people will be represented in this parliament than the last one, which is good. Running independent enabled Kurdish candidates in the eastern and south eastern provinces to get around the 10% threshold for political parties. They came first in Tunceli, Muş, Diyarbakır, Şırnak, Hakkari and Iğdır. AKP increased its votes but will have a healthier, smaller majority, forcing it to come up with a compromise candidate for President (unless they try to push through the referendum option immediately.)

A new party is desperately needed. A new party made up of liberal-minded, well-qualified, idealistic yet practical people. People who won't try to gain support by simply standing on one side or the other of the religious and ethnical divides, but instead work for better education and employment for all in good faith. People who understand the world economy and the importance of being open and competitive. A party that's not just the best option among the bad.

Daria

When you tried to kiss me
I only bit your tongue
When you tried to get me together
I only came undone

When you tried to tell me
The one for me was you
I was in your mattress
Back in 1982

Daria
I won't be soothed
Daria (yeah)
I won't be soothed over
Like smoothed over
Like milk silk a bedspread or a quilt
Icing on a cake
Or a serene translucent lake

Daria
Daria
Daria
I won't be soothed
I won't be soothed

When you tried to tell me
Of all the love you had
I was cleaning oil from beaches
Seeing only what was bad

When you tried to feed me
I only shut my mouth
Food got on your apron
And you told me to get out

Daria
I won't be soothed
Daria (yeah)
I won't be soothed over,
Like smoothed over,
Like milk, silk, a bedspread, or a quilt
Icing on a cake
Or a serene translucent lake

Daria
Daria
Daria
Daria
Daria
Daria
Daria
I won't be soothed
I won't be soothed

(Cake)

About being ordinary... and more

I haven't been writing since I came back to London, I miss sitting down and collecting my thoughts. I've been working, socializing and trying to work on my dissertation - very inefficiently and unsuccessfully. I want to use the Varieties of Capitalism approach to explain differences in corporate governance and countries' approaches to crossborder M&As - and maybe private equity? Disclosure? As you see I have no clue! And I don't know what I can add to the existing literature. I'm hoping to read more and more and hopefully I'll come up with a revelation.

Since I last wrote here, I finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith, went to the Cake concert in O2 arena, saw La Vie en Rose and Good Night and Good Luck, went to a really fun barbecue afternoon and a Forro place on Brick Lane. I downloaded lots of music on ITunes, all of Cake's albums (their music is so vibrant and cheerful and alive, with colorful and upbeat layers - and one layer is a recurring, hypnotic melody), Meteora by Linkin Park (I saw them on their Live Earth concert in Tokyo -on TV, but they were still amazing), and Işık Doğudan Yükselir by Sezen Aksu. Remember what I told in my previous post about music that connects directly to your heart and stirs something in you? After elementary school, I went to this road trip with my parents on the Black Sea coast. It was an amazing trip, I remember it really fondly, and this album played on tape the whole time. Davet is the sexiest song you can ever hear, and I was aware of this even when I was ten. The hazelnuts on the beach in Akçakoca, the dark shadows of the grapevines in Safranbolu, the dark green and the water lilies in Abant... I was reading Ayn Rand's the Fountainhead the whole time. From the book I remember the ice blue backless dress Dominique wears and the granite, and that's about it. So that was twelve years ago... Wow. Will those days ever come back? After years, last year in Spring Break I took a road trip in California, and that was amazing, too. I feel completely free when I'm going in the car. I feel cool and calm inside yet excited and expectant - happy, I guess.

There is so much to see and watch, so much to hear, so much history, so much variety, it blows my mind. As Orhan Pamuk wrote once, it is so tempting to stay at the point where you could do anything, actually committing to nothing. As a student I was always sure I'd do something big. I was learning something important and meaningful that would bring me somewhere. Once you actually start working, you sit on an office floor next to tens of other people, you make little money, and you ask yourself whether someone else could do what you're doing just as well as you do. And you wonder whether you should be doing something else. Or whether this leads to something bigger. I think the trick is to be able to content with what you are doing, and try to do your best at it, while always, always keeping your initial dreams at the back of your head. It's important to be content and calm, because it enables you to do something rather than continuously and restlessly searching. But now and then I should remember the initial dream and ask (again calmly) whether my job is leading me there on the greater scheme of things. Because habit makes people numb, and daily rituals and schedules are too comfortable to change, especially when you get efficient and good at something. So it's important to stop and ask every once in a while - is this really what I want to do?

Political Quiz

I used to call myself a liberal when it comes to personal freedoms and a conservative when it comes to economic freedoms. I found out this position is called a libertarian, but I also realized I'm in fact NOT one.

In most cases I believe in individual responsibility, and I'm against policies that don't give people (and companies) enough incentives to work and improve their life standards (or efficiency). But there are important exceptions where people don't have enough information, where they don't make rational decisions even when they do have the information, and their choices may have important externalities on the society. Nick Barr's class on Economics of Social Policy made me recognize these cases and converted me from an American-educated free market advocate into a centrist, if not a liberal. Sometimes private insurance leaves large groups in the society uninsured, as in the case of health insurance. Similarly, if student loans were left to markets alone, many students would not be able to receive them. Discretionary subsidies to businesses cannot be justified, but businesses may need government encouragement to increase their R&D spending.

In matters of personal freedoms too, I believe in individual responsibility and choice as long as they don't interfere with or harm others' lives. Based on this basic principle, I would argue for gay rights, but I would be against free possession and use of drugs. High demand for drugs will push poor groups in the society to become suppliers. A system that punishes poor suppliers while protecting rich demanders makes no sense to me. I'm also against free possession of guns.

I took this quiz and found out that my views make me a centrist leaning left.

Back to Black

I don't really have much knowledge on music, I'm like a clean white board, very easy to influence. I try to keep an open mind, try new things and catch up. Sometimes I'm doing something else, and someone's (or my own) ITunes library is on, and a song I've never heard before grabs my attention because it's so good. Some songs need a second chance and take listening to a few times before they grow on you. Some songs I only like, some songs I love. I listen to them over and over and over until they grow old. Then they re-appear unexpectedly after a while, in shuffle or on the radio.

What touches me most is Turkish music played with traditional instruments, like kanun, ud, and ney and clarinet. Hearing a good piece can make me really homesick in a few moments and I'll want to move back for good as soon as possible. They pull invisible strings attached directly to my heart. Then sometimes a real American song will come along in someone else's library, like John Mayer or Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews, and I will miss the uncomplicated, blunt and noisy American spirit. Or a German song that used to play in clubs all the time when we were in Munich.

I think there is something wrong if you're showing a conscious effort to understand and like a piece of music. I don't want to see music as an intellectual endeavour. I don't really like discussing about music, because I don't know much about it and I don't put much thought into it, I don't really have strong opinions. I just feel if a song doesn't grab me, it's not good for me now. It's the same thing with literature. Maybe I should be in a different state of mind to like a song or book, and I'm not there yet. Maybe I will come across it at a better time and it will hit me then.

What I love nowadays is Amy Winehouse. I had been listening to a lot of Nina Simone and Sade during exams time. Nina Simone has an attitude, she's independent. But it's not because she's so sensible and rational, she admits to being in love with someone that doesn't make sense, and she doesn't mind fighting for him. In "Do What You Gotta Do," she says:

Man I can understand how it might be
Kinda hard to love a girl like me
I don't blame you much for wanting to be free
I just wanted you to know
I've loved you better that your own kin did
From the very start
It's my own fault
What happens to my heart
You see I've always known you'd go

Now I know it'll make you feel sad
And make you feel so bad
They say you don't treat me like you should
They got ways to make you feels no good
I guess they got no way to know
I've had my eyes wide open from the start
And man you never lied to me
The part of you that they'll never see
Is the part you've shown to me

So you just do what you gotta do
My wild sweet love
Though it may mean that I'll never kiss
Those sweet lips again
Pay that no mind
Find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

Sade is a bit more mellow, calm and fragile:

You think I'd leave your side baby
You know me better than that
You think I'd leave you down when you're down on your knees
I wouldn't do that

Amy is strong and weak and hurt and blunt and sincere all at once. Her music is soulful and sexy, her voice is amazing. She doesn't care in In My Bed:

you'll never get my mind right
like two ships passing in the night
in the night, in the night
want the same thing where we lay
otherwise mine's a different way
a different way from where I'm going

oh, it's you again listen this isn't a reunion
so sorry if i turn my head
yours is a familliar face
but that don't make your place safe
in my bed my bed my bed

She's in love in Back to Black:

You went back to what you know
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I'll go back to black

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to.....

I go back to us

I love you much
It's not enough
You love blow and I love puff
And life is like a pipe
And I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to...

black.

The Welcome Lightness of Losing

I'm writing this by the pool but in fact I started working a couple of weeks ago. My first real, paid job. Soon after I realized they expected me to show up on time and really, efficiently work for seven hours (unlike previous internships), the rush hour in London was overwhelming and just plain horrible, I wouldn't be best friends with my co-workers, and office life was monotonous. I hope to feel better (or think less) when I get a better hang of things. On top of all this, London proved to be unexpectedly cold and rainy in the summer, and they put a car full of explosives in the neighborhood I work. I'm just hoping that the odds that the same area is targeted for a second time are pretty low, unless the city is in war!

The day before my first day of work, I heard back from the FT about the internship prize I had applied for a couple of months ago. Working for the FT is my dream (although I barely read it unless I have to for work or school!) I do want to travel to developing countries and talk to people and help their plight (or uncover a plot) by writing just, honest, direct stories. That is as meaningful as it gets, something that will set me apart from everyone else in all those offices across the world. I imagined myself in cargo trousers - that special young fearless idealist journalist woman. Somebody finally discovered my huuuuuge potential.

Too much happiness makes you a little unstable and annoying, but I tried to keep my balance. I saw myself too good for my job (not exactly the best attitude to start a job when you clearly have a lot to learn!) but I did my best to keep my vanity to myself. I took pride in my modesty and tried to work hard.

Now, to keep the long story short, as there's nothing exciting about the post-interview wait and playing the interview scene over and over in your head, weighing your pros and cons, I didn't get the internship. That shouldn't come as a surprise because I haven't done anything that I aspire to do yet. I just feel much more clear-headed and balanced now. I'm excited about my life and projects again. Steve Jobs likes to tell how getting fired from the board of Apple turned out to be a good thing for him. Starting fresh is great because it is humbling. You realize your real value, and you are ready to learn and work hard to increase it.

Meaning (2)

I had a history teacher in middle school who would rub his thumb to his index finger and say it with an all-knowing grin on his face - "it's all about the money." He prided himself for being so enlightened despite being a history teacher - you know you can get bogged down in so many beside-the-point details when you teach history. You might get carried away talking about battles and castles and tents and rivalries and power and the eccentric traits of the leader and revenge and honour and pride and love. My history teacher had a thing for horses and Turks' horsemenship, for example. But he didn't let any of it blur his sight and blind his judgement. He knew that the reason for all wars was money.

That's nothing original. Why do the Westerners intervene in Iraq of all places? Are we supposed to believe they are so idealistic? It's the same story all over again - the elites mobilize the masses for purely economic reasons, personal ambitions and grudges. They use idealistic motives, heroic stories and well-substantiated fear to add some meaning to the story. Otherwise, how could young people be convinced to put their lives at stake?

As more people die, the fog of irrationality and myth thickens, it becomes all the more difficult to admit to mistakes. How can one explain - were all those lives lost and taken simply because of poor judgment, poor foresight? Was it just senseless war?

Then the variables shift, your foreign presence tips the balances and it is no longer reasonable to go out of a place you weren't supposed to go into in the first place. The stalemate becomes the new status quo. People who invested their lives in it cannot bring themselves to accept anything short of victory. You can't close down a factory that continues to run losses, because the sunk costs are already too large. The wrestler who loses always wants another round.

As time goes by, the war takes on a meaning of itself, one that is independent of the initial motives and goals. The lives and time lost give it a new meaning. That is when it becomes so difficult to give up and walk away.

the best song ever:
Love Will Come Through

If I told you a secret
You won't tell a soul
Will you hold it and keep it alive

Cause it's burning a hole
And I can't get to sleep
And I can't live alone in this lie

So look up
Take it away
Don't look da-da-da- down the mountain

If the world isn't turning
Your heart won't return
Anyone, anything, anyhow

So take me don't leave me
Take me don't leave me
Baby, love will come through it's just waiting for you

Well I stand at the crossroads
Of highroads and lowroads
And I got a feeling it's right

If it's real what I'm feeling
There's no makebelieving
The sound of the wings of the flight
of a dove

Take it away
Don't look da-da-da down the mountain

If the world isn't turning
Your heart won't return
anyone anything anyhow...

So take me don't leave me
Take me don't leave me
Baby, love will come through it's just waiting for you

So look up
Take it away
Don't look da-da-da- down
If the world isn't turning
Your heart won't return anyone anything anyhow...

So take me don't leave me
Take me don't leave me
Baby, love will come through it's just waiting for you
Love will come through
Love will come through
Love will come through

(Travis)

“...İstanbul’un kargacık burgacık sokaklarından, Berlin’deki gibi ıhlamurlu, Paris’teki gibi yıldız biçiminde ve Petersburg’daki gibi köprülü bulvarlar açabilmek için, bütün ömrünce akşamları emekli paşalarımızın Batılılar gibi tasmalarla gezdireceği köpeklerini sıçtırabilecekleri modern kaldırımlar düşledikten sonra, hayallerinin hiçbirini gerçekleştiremeden ölüp mezarı kaybolan hayalperestlerin... mankenlerini gördüler.... ‘Kahve Manzaraları’ arasında, başları omuzlarının arasında kaybolan işsizleri, dama ya da tavla oynarken yaşadıkları yüzyılı ve kendi kimliklerini mutlulukla unutabilen talihlileri, ellerinde çay bardaklarını tutarken ve ucuz sigaraları içerken kaybettikleri varoluş nedenlerini hatırlamaya çalışır gibi sonsuzdaki bir noktaya bakan, kendi iç düşüncelerine çekilen ya da oraya da çekilemedikleri için oyun kağıtlarını, zarları ya da birbirlerini hırpalayan vatandaşları gördüler...

...Çıplak ampullerin ışığı altındaki mankenler, kimi zaman Galip’e, unutulmuş bir otobüs durağında hiçbir zaman gelmeyecek bir otobüsü beklerken üzerleri yüzyılların toz ve çamuruyla kaplanan sabırlı vatandaşları, kimi zaman, İstanbul sokaklarında yürürken duyduğu bir yanılsamayı, bütün mutsuzların birbirleriyle kardeş olduğu duygusunu hatırlatıyordu.” Orhan Pamuk, Kara Kitap, sf. 186, 187.

How We Are

In the Black Book, Orhan Pamuk describes an underground city populated by mannequins. These are the mannequins of ordinary Turkish people in the middle of their ordinary, daily activities, like playing backgammon in a coffee house or waiting for a bus that will never come, demonstrating gestures and characteristics particular to Turks. There is always the melancholy, the sadness of being ordinary, backward, poor. There's nothing glamorous and light about being a Turk.

Actually one never knows how one really is, and one might think one is something else. But one is nevertheless how one is, and one always remains so. Only a careful outsider can understand how pitiable one really is.

Today I went to How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition in Tate Britain. I realized how pitiable Britain is despite it being Britain. Industrial revolution, two wars, the decline of industry in the 70's and 80's, and everyone who lost out. There is much that is ordinary, tacky and ugly. Orphans, veterans, miners, marines, jobless, punks, black, young girls, party scenes, office scenes, emptied slums.

Most of the people whose photos I saw are long gone. But there are many more of them outside, struggling to find some peace and meaning in this not-so-special world. People in London are not happy.

"Information and calculation about a collective good is often itself a collective good. Consider a typical member of a large organisation who is deciding how much time to devote to studying the policies or leadership of the organization. The more time the member devotes to this matter, the greater the likelihood that his or her voting and advocacy will favor effective policies and leadership for the organization. This typical member will, however, get only a small share of the gain from the more effective policies and leadership: in the aggregate, the other members will get almost all the gains, so that the individual member does not have an incentive to devote nearly as much time to fact-finding and thinking about the organization as would be in the group interest. Each of the members of the group would be better off if they all could be coerced into spending more time finding out how to vote to make the organisation best further their interest. This is dramatically evident in the case of the typical voter in a national election in a large country. The gain to such a voter from studying issues and candidates until it is clear what vote is truly in his or her interest is given by the difference in the value to the individual of the "right" election outcome as compared with the "wrong" outcome, multiplied by the probability a change in the individual's vote will alter the outcome of the election. Since the probability that a typical voter will change the outcome of the election is vanishingly small, the typical citizen is usually "rationally ignorant" about public affairs. Often, information about public affairs is so interesting or entertaining that it pays to acquire it for there reasons alone - this appears to be the single most important source of exceptions to the generalization that typical citizens are rationally ignorant about public affairs.

Individuals in a few special vocations can receive considerable rewards in private goods if they acquire exceptional knowledge of public goods. Politicians, lobbyists, journalists, and social scientists, for example, may earn more money, power, or prestige from knowledge of this or that public business. Occasionally, exceptional knowledge of public policy can generate exceptional profits in stock exchanges or other markets. Withal, the typical citizen will find that his or her income and life chances will not be improved by zealous study of public affairs, or even of any single collective good." Marcur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Chapter 2

Rational Ignorance

In Border I wrote, "you try to convince a world that doesn't care that your story has a point to it." In Thailand and Turkey, I explained the importance of education in a democracy, and the role of media in providing that information. But I know that these things are important to me because I invested in them, and I do expect a private benefit from them. It's unrealistic and naive of me to expect others to get excited about what I care.

Bell Jar

I've been wanting to put down a few quotes from Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar for a while... I read it long, long ago (six years?) but I still remember it sometimes, because she describes a certain mood better than I can. And that mood keeps coming back to me since high school, a mood that distorts my view of things for the worse and inhibits me from just doing.

I stole these from here and here.

[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. ~Chapter 15

How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again? ~Chapter 20

...I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. ~Chapter 7

"So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state."

"...I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't...and this made me even sadder and more tired."

My middle school English teacher Ms. Johnson (I'm totally not kidding!) gave us the print-outs of this song in class and made us write the lyrics by hand. she was a little crazy.

desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
you been out ridin' fences for so long now.
oh, you're a hard one,
i know that you got your reasons,
these things that are pleasin' you can hurt you somehow.
don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy,
she'll beat you if she's able,
you know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.
now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table,
but you only want the ones that you can't get.

desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger,
your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home.
and freedom, oh, freedom, well, that's just some people talkin',
your prison is walkin' through this world all alone.

don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
the sky won't snow and the sun won't shine,
it's hard to tell the nighttime from the day.
you're losin' all your highs and lows,
ain't it funny how the feelin' goes away?

desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
come down from your fences, open the gate.
it may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you,
you better let somebody love you,
you better let somebody love you,
you better let somebody love you,
before it's too late.

Credibility-Commitment Problem

This is in fact the first thing that was exciting enough to talk about here! That's why I'm breaking my promise not to post anything until the end of the exams. Quite fittingly, this is exactly the problem I will talk about, the inability of people to keep their promises!

The inability of an actor to credibly commit to a long-term decision, goal or promise arises from the mismatch of short-term and long-term interests, i.e. the time inconsistency problem. (I will draw upon the works of Majone and Rodrik here.) The actor knows what's best for him/her in the long-run and makes a promise. But such a situation arises now that the actor feels compelled to deviate from the optimal long-term strategy. The other actors in the interaction expect this, and the prevailing outcome is suboptimal. The inability of an actors to generate trust on others hurts them before everone else.

The first example Rodrik gives is a democratic country's attitude towards a dictator abroad. The democratic country disapproves of the undemocratic regime and the dictator's illegitimate actions and promises to impose sanctions on the dictator. However, when the possibility of his own people toppling him becomes a reality, the Westerners agree to provide him exile to prevent a civil war. This does not exactly have the effect of discouraging the dictator from being a dictator!

Another example is a government striving to get a multinational company invest in its territory. It provides various incentives to lure the company, but the company isn't sure whether those incentives will be reversed after it undertakes the costly investment. If the government cannot find a way to convince the company, it may well lose a big opportunity that will create much output and employment.

Then there is monetary policy. The government knows that it should stick to a low-inflation policy. (We are assuming there is no independent central bank.) However, a recession (and/or large government debt) makes it very attractive to create surprise inflation. That way, the government will be able to boost output and employment by diminishing real costs. Moreover, it will be able to reduce the real value of its debt. The other players know this and adjust their expectations. Because they expect higher inflation, they bargain for higher wages. In the end the economy ends up having a higher inflation rate than it could have had the government been able to credibly commit to price stability (for a given unemployment level.)

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that elected officials stay in office only for a limited time. The long-term gains of sticking to a policy are after the next election, while the short-term gains from deviation are here and now (the shorter the time horizon in the game, the greater the incentives to cheat.) Moreover, newly elected governments can always renege on their predecessors' promises.

Governments have to come up with ways to tie their own hands. Delegation of powers to an independent, unelected agency with different interests may be the solution. This is the reason behind the creation of independent central banks. Governments give the responsibility of monetary policy to an independent body that doesn't have to care about the next election, but faces great reputational costs from deviating from its optimal long-run policy. However, a national central bank can still be persuaded to respond to a deep recession or unsustainable government debt. Therefore, joining a fixed-exchange rate regime or the Eurozone is an even more credible commitment device. By giving up control over their monetary policies countries attach a new cost to surprise inflation. When they can no longer devalue their currency, higher inflation directly translates into a loss of competitiveness in the world market.

Delegation of powers is not limited to monetary policy. Member states in the EU delegated powers of agenda-setting and law enforcement to the European Commission, which brings them to the European Court of Justice if they violate the Competition Policy. If they didn't tie their own hands this way, it would be politically impossible for them to cut state aid. But then their own exporters would also suffer from state aid abroad.

The credibility-commitment problem, of course, affects our daily lives as well. The grand example is how people never show up for study groups! And I'm sure we all heard of the ham-egg sandwich.

I won't post anything here until June 15 at the earliest.

... but I'll just say one thing:
you see the real character (or lack thereof) of a person:
a) when they are drunk
b) when you travel with them
c) during exams time

"Morality: Morality is a way to stop players from playing the best strategy for themselves. Morality persuades the players to cooperate by increasing the costs from cheating. These costs take the form of "reputation costs". You try to be a nice friend, a loyal wife, devoted mother, or honest business partner, in order to avoid these reputation costs. Playing another strategy would have been more profitable without these reputation costs," taken from Miscallenous Lessons of Life.


Water

Deepa Mehta's Water is a beautiful movie. It's about how religious rules and interpretations, purely based on practical reasons, become an instrument of abuse and subordination. They are accepted (or largely overlooked) not only by those who are favoured or remain unaffected, but also by the victims. The mere existence of the rule is supposedly enough to justify their undeserved suffering. The rule cannot be questioned or falsified, after all, it is to be believed in unconditionally. The cost of questioning or breaking the rule is to be reborn as a jackal.

The afterlife (or the role played by chance in this life, and everybody's vulnerability to bad luck) is nothing but a switch from an unrepeated game to a repeated one. Justice will be done: players will be rewarded for their submission and punished for their diversion.

Some rules do have a point, they are based on lessons taken from experience. They are there for a reason, you run the risk of hurting yourself or someone else if you break that rule. Unfortunately not everyone is responsible or thoughtful enough to be decent people without the fear of a penalty being imposed on them. (Here I must point out the importance of information exchange -gossip, that is!- in giving people a bad name!)

But some rules are just non-sense, no matter how hard people try to justify them. The mere existence of a rule is not enough for it to be meaningful. If a rule doesn't make sense to me, if it won't make me or someone else better off, I won't follow it. If it's not there to help me, then it is there to oppress me.

But then, I have a choice. A critical mind, however necessary, is not always enough to stand up against a rule. The costs are too high: Disapproval and even exclusion from one's family and community. Emotions tied to memory, home and tradition are strong.

I tried to explain in the Eye and Paternalism and Tolerance that simply telling people that their beliefs are wrong and backward will not convince them. They have to decide for themselves. Hence I'm against a headscarf ban in universities and public service. But I have to qualify that argument now, because I realize that some younger girls don't really have the choice. A headscarf ban for younger students would be in order to give them the time and freedom to make up their minds. The same argument justifies state intervention to make sure that young girls are sent to school.

Gözlerim gözünde aşkı seçmiyor
Onlardan kalbime sevda geçmiyor
Ben yordum ruhumu biraz da sen yor
Çünkü bence şimdi herkes gibisin

Yolunu beklerken daha dün gece
Kaçıyorum bugün senden gizlice
Kalbime baktım da işte iyice
Anladım ki sen de herkes gibisin

Büsbütün unuttum seni eminim
Maziye karıştı şimdi yeminim
Kalbimde senin için yok bile kinim
Bence sen de şimdi herkes gibisin

Nâzım Hikmet Ran 334 (1918) - Yaz - Kadıköy

Question of the Day

There are 18 topics in a full-unit course, and the professor will ask 10 questions in the exam. (We assume each question is about one topic and only one question can be asked on each topic.) I'm supposed to answer 3 of these questions.

How many topics should I study for to make sure that I have studied for at least 3 of the topics that appear on the exam?

I know it is solved by combinations, but I don't know how! Help me out!

See the comments for the answer :)

Life for Rent

I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize that once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mindthat your heart ain't exactly breaking
It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I've always thought that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world aloneand live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

Dido

"I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy. Our civilization is too mechanical. We can make the fantastic real, and then it is more real than that which actually exists." Salvador Dalí

Surreal Things

In a dream you experience something that is not real, that is not happening and that has not happened. But why are you having that dream but not any other dream? Your dream must be connected to your waking life somehow. Each object in a dream takes on a meaning that is different than its real function. (Sometimes its meaning is related to its function, if not, why would that specific object be assigned that meaning?) The object becomes a symbol of your real experiences and feelings. Objects are like words, they make up a language that can tell you something real about you, more real than what you're aware of. Dream interpretation is really translation from that language.

As far as I understand, the clever, original idea that inspired surrealism was to give objects new meanings, just like in a dream. Objects stand in unusual, unreal settings and sequences. Each becomes a symbol of something other than itself, and the whole composition may be telling a story. (Maybe not, because some pieces didn't lend themselves to easy interpretation. Did they mean anything? I don't know.) In literature, too, things often exist and happen for a reason, there is a reason why they happen that is beyond their literal meaning.

Isn't the concept of "design" borne out of the effort to give objects a bigger meaning than their bare functions? We want our watch, our blouse, our jewellery, our car to tell something about us, to become symbols of us. We want them to tell a story - a story that is... us. We want to have something coherent, something unique and meaningful about us.

I just wanted to tell that the below post was written in a moment of disappointment... Which is no excuse, and I'm still behind what I wrote. What is written is written and can't be taken back, but I don't feel that way anymore. May 21, 2007.

Girls' Code

I have a few regular readers and they make me so happy by coming back often. I only know some of them, and finding out the identity of the others might creep me out, so I want to thank you without asking any questions :) I don't want to disappoint you now, I want to write good stuff.

Today's topic is girl friendships. I'm sure there are books about this, but if they want a new one, they should commission me, for I am the expert. I grew up in a family with many women and relatively few men, and I've always been in large circles of girl-friends. In elementary school we used to have a talent show every year, where we danced to pop songs with my six or seven girlfriends. I was in another group in middle school, and our pastime was to call our crushes out of the blue and break into their lockers, but the group broke in half when we started high school and some of us proved to be more alternative-minded. I got into trouble for my girlfriends, too, I once got a disciplinary warning for having helped a friend write a hate-letter to a boy. Of course there was nothing in that for me, but I guess I was proud that my literary skills were being appreciated. She annoyed me much by crying the whole time we were getting scolded.

Since elementary school, the rituals of girl groups didn't change much. Pyjama parties where everyone tell their little secrets, little comments, little questions that aim to put the respondent on the spot, competition. And all those silly things I told you about. We are all way over 20 now, and still every conversation culminates in one topic. Those girls magazines and soap operas really shouldn't worry about coming up with anything new - we will read the same stories and relationship advice over and over as if we never heard them before.

Looking back on it, I realize how funny it all was. I was reading and writing and attending philosophy olympics and science fairs - and my friends did, too, but we also did those silly, childish, shallow things. It's no different from a gang of boys, who would do anything to belong to a group. We didn't have a mind of our own.

Why did we do that? The girls group provides a comfortable caccoon of social interaction and information. You stand in a hall of mirrors, all those girls in the mirrors understand you, reassure you, encourage you, tell you their weaknesses and desires, you tell them your weaknesses and desires, you find out everybody has the same weaknesses and desires. Everybody is loving and sharing and understanding.

Not always. Sometimes they do or say something that makes you realize that your friend isn't so benevolent, after all. They bring up something you shared with them long ago. They ask you a question and you know they know the answer, but they take the pleasure of hearing it from you. What's the point, I used to ask myself. I always wondered, what's the point in all this meanness? Aren't they scared of losing their friend? How will I trust this girl again?

There's always that underlying competition, there's always schadenfreude, but shouldn't we try to go over and beyond that and genuinely wish each other well? Maybe I'm kidding myself. Too many times I took pride in being better than a girl in something or another. Too many times I was bitter that I did worse than my friend. I tried to hide it as well as I could. When inequalities grew larger, we could no longer sustain the friendship. It was no longer reassuring and comfortable, one of us had grown out of the caccoon.

Maybe this is how it should be. Being good for the sake of being good is out of fashion. People see relationships as sources of personal fulfillment, and they don't feel much responsibility towards a relationship that isn't fun and light. Maybe I shouldn't expect anyone to go out of their way not to hurt my feelings. I shouldn't expect anyone to constrain themselves for me.

Smartening up

After plenty of disappointment (ok I must be just here, I have SO MUCH to be thankful about), I am now faster at seeing when something is not feasible. I don't even have to be told something is not working. Before this I would somehow manage to believe otherwise until I actually hear it from various credible sources. I would believe that things always had the potential to turn out for the better. I believed things happened for a reason.

This must be learning by doing, this is maturity, realism, rationalism. Now I know what I expect, and I know I won't be able to expect less (why should I?), I know what's realistically possible and what's not, so there's no point in naivete and stupidity. And I don't even need to be told that. Silence is enough. How convenient is that?

Economics and Identity

Last week I went to George Akerlof's lecture on Economics and Identity. It was about how people's identity shapes their utility functions. People's views on how they should behave and how others should behave determine the utility they get out of their actions, and hence their choices.

Classic economists would agree that people's identity matters in the utility they gain, but they would claim that it is already accounted for in the utility function. People's unique tastes (and hence their identities) are reflected in their unique indifference curves. One's tastes and identity are nobody's business and taken as a given.

Akerlof, on the other hand, thinks identity can be economists' business. A person's (or group's) identity and the ways it plays into the utility function can be identified. Identity is not simply tastes that inexplicably differ from person to person. Members of the same group expect similar things from themselves and life. It is a systemic element of the utility function.

Akerlof gave examples. The first one was the high school drop-out, unemployment and crime rates among African Americans. The identity, the alternative culture reinforces itself, low expectations lead to low performance where success becomes the exception.

The example on housewives was especially telling because it showed how identity can change over time. There was a time when women could live up to the society's and their own expectations by tending to their children and husbands. They were happy. Expectations shifted over time. Now women in the western societies are expected to live up to their "potential," both in their private life and in the workplace. They are the most fierce judges of themselves. Their happiness depends on success on both fronts, and they make their choices accordingly.

People's ideas on how they should behave and how others should behave can change. If such a change is desirable for economic, political or social purposes, policies can be designed to make that change come along. This gives policy-makers a chance to alter people's utility functions, which wouldn't be possible if they were just seen as tastes. Another example Akerlof gave was school policies that failed to change students' identities because they simply catered to them.

This idea has striking parallels with constructivism in political theory. Constructivism argues that without any material change in the pay-offs associated with different options, people can still change their minds because they view these options differently. One idea goes out of fashion and another one replaces it. Of course, this takes away from the prediction power of a theory that would simply assume rationality.

The contribution Akerlof makes is in the same vein as Daniel Kahneman's. Kahneman showed that people cannot objectively judge the utilities they will gain from different options. Therefore an economist will find it very difficult to predict a person's actions correctly by simply assigning each option a utility value.

Akerlof's explanation not only adds to the scope of policy making, but it may actually improve the explanatory power of economics, because it allows a peek into the utility function. Only if economists are open-minded, of course.

Emit Remmus

it keeps playing in my head!

Who should be our next president?

Since I came back to Turkey a month ago, everybody seems to be concerned with one thing: Who should be our next president?

Actually, we already know the answer of another question. Who will be the next president? Unless he gives it up himself, which is unlikely, our prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be the next president.

It's hopeless: Some try to stretch the law in place to come up with a magic interpretation that will render Justice and Development Party (JDP) unable to elect him. Some say it is undemocratic that a parliament gets to pick the president only five months before its term ends. Others say it is undemocratic that a parliament that represents only 52 % of the votes gets to elect the president (thanks to the general election threshold and the weakness of the alternatives, only 1/3 of the vote was enough for JDP to secure 2/3 of the seats in the parliament.) Some remind Erdoğan's conviction for reciting a non-laicist poem. Some try to convince Erdoğan by claiming it would be strategically wrong to leave his party right before the general elections.

What is unnerving to all is how beautifully everything played out for Erdoğan and his party. After struggling with current president Ahmet Necdet Sezer's vetoes and filings at the Constitutional Court, it will be lovely to have one of their own up there, especially if they can secure the majority of the parliament again in the upcoming general election. All the appointments and legislation will be streamlined. If an opposition coalition comes to power, a president with a JDP past will be a nightmare.

Does it have to be Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? There are plenty within the party who would be happy to "take on the duty," they could even find someone whose wife doesn't wear a headscarf. In situations like this, however, usually the party leader is the presidential candidate. How could he pick a candidate "among equals" without making the others upset? Moreover, he has a stubborn streak which would keep him from backing down against criticism.

The Chief of Staff Yaşar Büyükanıt spoke in a press conference last week. Among other things (the situation in Northern Iraq and the comments of Kurdish leader Barzani, the clashes with the terrorists in the South East which left many soldiers dead, and the alleged coup plans in 2004 which resulted in harsh investigations of the magazine that published the story) he naturally touched on the presidency elections. He said our next president should genuinely believe in Kemalist principles and secularism. JDP said he was describing their unannounced candidate.

A couple of days later, this time President Ahmet Necdet Sezer made a harsh speech at a military school for airforce officers. Sezer was the head judge of the Constitutional Court before his presidency. The PM of the time, Bülent Ecevit, did not have a chance to run because he wasn't a college graduate. The coalition came up with the "compromise" candidate Sezer, and when Sezer scolded Ecevit because he didn't do enough to fight corruption, the 2001 financial crisis broke out. In short Sezer is a principled, blunt man who is not afraid to tip the balances by voicing his opinions.

His speech was clearly the result of careful analysis. I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusions about the independence of the judiciary, the need to reduce the 10 % general election threshold and limit the immunity of the parliamentarians, the need to improve democracy within the political parties and the dangers of media agglomeration. By being so cross with the government, he said he tried to protect the republican and laicist principles and prevent the "tyranny of the majority."

Sezer's opinions, however, are very static. They are so static that they can be called a belief. Sezer believes in the NATION STATE and the need to protect it against the big threats and conspiracies and games. He is the prototype of the "defender of the laicist republican NATION STATE." Of course, those who spend their lives serving the state legitimate their existence and powers with its sustainable strength. He said "the regime" had never been faced with a bigger threat. Laicism could not be "reduced to religious freedoms" because the "conditions" in Turkey called for a wider interpretation (which justified the protection of our state against anti-laicist tendencies, of course.)

Those who spoke of a more democratic state in fact wanted to turn Turkey into a moderate Islamic state, he said. "Without domestic peace, political stability, economic development and the advancement of the society has no meaning." The "outside powers" wanted to weaken the role of the military because the "global system" wanted to divide and weaken the "nation state." He was cautious of privatization of sensitive sectors. See the comments section for an except from his speech that sums this line of thinking beautifully.

Sezer never mentioned Article 301 or Freedom of Expression in his speech. Neither did he mention the investigation over Hrant Dink's assasination. His cold reception of Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize is still at the back of my mind. He said every effort should be made to improve our defense capabilities, but he didn't say a word about education.

Then finally Atatürkçü Düşünce Derneği (Kemalist Thought Association) organized a rally in Ankara on April 14. Although the rally addressed wider issues than simply the presidential election, its urgency clearly stemmed from Erdoğan's looming presidency. According to estimates, some 300,000 people joined the rally, chanting "Turkey is laicist and will remain that way." Some professors made speeches. They resorted to enthusiastic, simple slogans against the conspiracies of global powers. The lack of rational argument in their speeches and the fervor in their voices reminded me of the fetwas of Imams. Yes, to me, this rally wasn't any different from a rally by religious fundamentalists. Their beliefs were unfalsifiable because they didn't want to hear anything else. They say they want to bring the light, but they are the ones who keep Turkey in darkness.

Should Recep Tayyip Erdoğan become the next president? No. At first his liberalism seemed fresh to people like me who were sick of corrupt politicians, the sleaze and unlawfulness of the "deep state," and the secularist establishment with their nationalist, anti-globalization rhetoric. But he proved much of the suspicions against him correct. He didn't do anything to change Article 301. He didn't do anything to improve our education system. He didn't do anything to improve the independence of the judiciary. (How can one forget the attacks on the Danıştay (Council of State) judges who approved a verdict against the headscarf?) He started a campaign to appoint his supporters everywhere. He didn't remove the immunity of the parliamentarians as he promised. He has sketchy business relations. He's acted immaturely in many occasions and has a bad temper. I would rather have a more refined person be our president.

Will he become the president? Yes. The opposition proved over and over again that they are self-interested and incompetent. They wouldn't reduce the general election threshold because it was in their advantage. They don't say anything against Article 301. They are not capable of concrete policy-making. They are responsible for the exceptionally favorable situation JDP finds itself in now. They deserve the outcome.

"Suddenly, it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room." My Name is Red, pg. 496

"I understand Tamina's self-reproaches. When Papa died, I did the same. I could not forgive myself for asking him so little, for knowing so little about him, for allowing myself to lack him...
A symphony is a musical epic. We might say that it is like a voyage leading from one thing to another, farther and farther away through the infinitude of the exterior world. Variations are also like a voyage. But that voyage does not lead through the infinitude of the exterior world. In one of his pensées, Pascal says that man lives between the abyss of the infinitely large and the abyss of the infinitely small. The voyage of variations leads into that other infinitude, into the infinite diversity of the interior world lying hidden in all things.
...
That the infinitude of the exterior world escapes us we accept as natural. But we reproach ourselves until the end of our lives for lacking that other infinitude. We ponder the infinitude of the stars but are unconcerned about the infinitude our papa has within him.
It is not surprising that in his later years variations became the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well (as Tamina and I know) that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities." pg. 225-227.
"Memories are scattered all over the immense world, and it takes voyaging to find them and make them leave their refuge!" pg. 229, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

800 words

For a talent contest I'm supposed to write 800 words to describe a person who is important to me. It's the hardest thing I've tried to write so far. Upfront I decided not to write about someone in my family, it's just too difficult to share someone dear to me with strangers. Maybe it's too difficult to analyze a person who's dear to me and confront what I find out. Then I tried writing about someone semi-important to me. But I don't know him that well, and I pictured him getting so angry that I'm describing him to people. I realized I don't know him that well, anyway. Then finally I asked my mom and she suggested a person. (First she suggested I should write about a friend whom I love, I get angry at, and I decide to love again in the end... I told her it happens with all my friends, but sometimes I remain in the "angry" phase.) I will try to write about him. But not only him. I will try to write 800 words about everyone who's important to me. I will think about people, how they are.

Tonight my parents and I watched Ferzan Özpetek's Saturno Contro. It reminded me there are two things that matter in life: The love you feel towards people you shared something with, whatever that is. The people whom you're comfortable around. And the loss of those people. There are no rules when it comes to those things. It's not black and white, it's not pure or simple. So now I will write about a friend who taught me that.

Ms. L forwarded this to me, enjoy :)

Unlocking The Wanderlust

Submitted by Howard Hudson on Tue, 2007-01-23 14:37.

Ever wondered where you're going in life? I suppose we all do sooner orlater, unless everything is perfect. I've been thinking about all thetravelling I do, of making new friends from Italy, Spain, Flanders:wondering if it's one priceless experience after another or more of a series of costly diversions. Costly in the sense of time, and if these friends arearound for the long haul or are simply transitory.

Many of my friends are settling, marrying and having kids – but for now I'm still enjoying the wandering. More and more though I'm questioning the motivations. One of these was an idea put in my head by an older woman: that all we ever do is swap one prison for another. She had moved from the badgering of her mother to the bullying of her husband at an early age, so she was always forced to compromise. We've lived totally different lives but her words seem to have become part of me. Will I ever be satisfied? Why do I always feel the need to escape?

People talk about biological clocks: tick, tick, ticking away for womenaround my age. Ok, so I'm not getting any younger and I don't want to be a Charlie Chaplin dad, but I'm thinking more about a wanderlust clock. Where to next I think: but is this wanderlust or restlessness? Should I keep pushing the boat out? This many questions means it's time to hole up or cut loose.

The problem is that I keep doing both. Like flirting, flitting from one place to another is like dipping your toes in the water and never going swimming. It means nothing unless you really get in. Total immersion is an addiction: learning a language, finding your niche in a foreign city, and really getting to know the locals and their culture.

But like relationships, when do you know you've found the right one, that you've found something that will last? You try, you fail. You try again, you become more cautious or more bold, depending on your experiences. You find a place or person that feels right, that keeps you calm but also on your toes. But after a time they change and you realise you need to evolve with them, keeping up with their pace of change… unless you set the pace. But then you're the one who's always restive, which is as paradoxical as it sounds.

restivec.1410, restyffe "not moving forward," from M.Fr. restif (fem. restive)"motionless," from rester "to remain" (see rest (2)). Sense of "unmanageable" (1687) evolved via notion of a horse refusing to go forward.

Rome encapsulates a lot of this, beautiful as it is. Visit for a week and you'll have a great time. Live here for a year or two, and you'll feel it getting under your skin… like a chilli pepper itch. Scratching is oddly satisfying for a while but you wonder if it'll always feel that way. I said to Mia, my assistant, the other day how this place is "fantastic yet frustrating as hell". She replied: "Damn, you got the definition I've been looking for for the past 10 years". So will Rome just be another stop-off, like London, Florence, Brussels and Barcelona? Is the prison a state of mind, like a little black cloud thatfollows us around? More importantly, does a person or place exist that could settle all the restiveness? I've got a sneaking suspicion that it's as much a sign of the times – of being part of the Easyjet/Erasmus generation – as something in my mind.

Source: http://www.stirredup.net/blogs

“Olmak istediğim kişiydi göz. Ben önce ‘göz’ü değil, O’nu yaratmıştım, olmak istediğim kişiyi. Olmak istediğim ‘O’ da kendinden bana uzanan o korkunç, boğucu bakışı salıvermişti üzerime.
...
Bazı ipuçları, O’nu kendi hayat malzemem ve anılarımdan çıkardığımı gösteriyordu. Taklit etmek istediğim O’nda çocukluğumda okuduğum bazı resimli roman kahramanlarına, bazı yabancı dergilerde resimlerini gördüğüm düşünür ‘yazar’ların, ve bu kasıntılı kişilerin kütüphanelerinin, çalışma masalarının ya da ‘derin ve anlamlı’ düşüncelerini geliştirdikleri kutsal mekanların önünde fotoğrafçılara verdikleri pozların etkisi vardı.” sf. 118.

The Eye

In the Black Book, Cemil tells about "the eye" that's always following him to fix its gaze on him, to criticize him and judge him and look down on him. The eye is in Cemil's mind, yet looking at him from outside, the eye is his ideal, the person he always wanted to be. The eye is a childhood hero, it's a prototype of those intellectual writers he has always admired. The eye keeps following him and always belittling him. Cemil knows that the eye is disappointed in him. When he looks at himself from outside, knowing what he aspired to become, he is disappointed in himself.

Anybody who is looking at you, but who is different from you, who is foreign to you, opens the third eye. You start seeing through this new eye, but it is gazing straight at you, your life from outside. You start thinking how that person must be seeing you, your life. It's a whole new level of awareness. You are a rabbit caught in the headlight.

When your friend visits your room, you become aware of the dust and the hair and the empty wall. When you present someone dear to you to a stranger, you start seeing the weaknesses and the peculiarities in that person, you are full of love and shame. When you are around foreigners in your country, you start pondering what you would have seen and thought if you were visiting your country for the first time. If you are catching up with an old friend after a long time, you realize how little you have accomplished of everything you aspired to do. If you are opening your heart to people, the third eye is looking at you, pointing at the contrast between your life and theirs, amazed and disapproving.

The next stage is anger and defense. You yourself might be aware of the flaw, the weakness, the peculiarity. You know that your room, your family, your home, your country, you are like that. In your mind, you see the problem areas, and in a liberal, rational moment you could admit to them. You would agree with the critiques. But you wouldn't let them say a word.

I can criticize my country, my family, my fears, my weaknesses, my way of living, but you can't. You don't have a right to, simply because you don't know enough. You can't put me on the spot and force me to admit to them and expect me to be ashamed. If you do, you will induce me to defend anything - I will defend the uneducated, I will defend the lazy, I will defend the ultra-conservative and the religious, I will defend the corrupt. I will do all that irrationally but strongly and with my heart, because these things are dear to me.

Thoughtfulness

"Being thoughtful is more important than being smart," says my grandma.

I didn't care about what that meant because I wasn't thoughtful then. I'm sure there are times when I'm still not thoughtful, I'm not exactly sure when, because when you are not thoughtful, you are not thinking, and because you are not thinking, you are unaware that you are not thinking. Indifference is bliss. What I know is that I'm more thoughtful than before, and it's difficult. I think about people, about giving everyone his/her due right in my life, including myself, but I know that I'm not successful all the time. I feel more and more torn between different lives, people and places that cannot be reconciled. And in return, I expect everyone to give me my due right, I expect them to be as thoughtful, but people are not even aware. They are not aware of the sacrifice or favour I'm voluntarily doing for them (they didn't ask for it in the first place, but they don't mind accepting it), how uneasy I feel when I realize that I'm doing injustice to someone. When they don't live up to my expectations, I'm just disappointed in them, and angry at myself for having bothered. And they will think I'm a difficult, disagreeable person when I'm disappointed in them, or just stop being as helpful, because they don't know the reason. Sometimes I think that they do it on purpose, because not having thought of that is unimaginable for me - but I guess thoughtlessness is a bliss that cannot be reached by conscious effort. Some people are born with it.

So now I understand my parents. I understand the sacrifices they made for me, which I enjoyed immensely despite not having asked for it in the first place. (It doesn't matter if you ask for something or not. If you accept it, you should at least be aware that somebody is doing something for you.) And I understand their deep disappointment every time they saw me bored, lazy, cross, unhappy: Just thoughtless. I understand why they argued with me, why they were tired.

My grandmother also says "sorry" is not enough. I can't forget or forgive thoughtlessness by a simple "sorry." But I will be very happy and grateful if I see real signs of thought. If you lack that, we are just not meant to get along.

I finally got published in the Beaver... There's a mistake though, the first paragraph ("the lead") should have quotation marks, because it was a quote by Bob Hancké... This bothers me.

http://thebeaveronline.co.uk/Features/in-2007-how-fabian-is-lse

(As this link does not work anymore, here is the article:)

In 2007, how Fabian is the LSE?

“When my father was my age, they thought that the revolution was around the corner, and my father always asked me why I’m so interested in what the Central Bank is doing and all that stuff, I said ‘because right now it’s not any longer about the world that’s going to come, but it’s about keeping unemployment down, keeping poverty down.’ Among the faculty what looks like pragmatism is coming to terms with how the terms of the debate shifted over the years.”

Although the terms of the debate shifted in the left-wing, the Fabian ideal lives on, says Bob Hancké of the European Institute. Social justice remains a very important priority when academics do their research, and the research is very much policy-oriented: LSE academics think about the ways they can actually influence the world to bring about social justice.

The LSE motto is “rerum cognoscere causas: to understand the causes of things,” as Eddy Fonyodi, President of the Grimshaw Club, tells me excitedly. Once you can make sense of the world around you, you can work towards changing it for the better. “They all work towards the same goal: Improvement of the society. To bridge the gap between academia and reality, to make a difference in the world and you can see that, both academics and students do amazing things to change the world.”

This very goal, however, requires flexibility, ability to look at the issue at hand from different perspectives.

“As society changes new questions arise so you have to adapt to be able to investigate the new and the challenging questions. To face the challenges that arise you also have to change yourself, your understanding.”

Nick Barr, Professor of Public Economics at the European Institute and a policy adviser, defines socialism “not in terms of its means but in terms of its objectives. Socialism is about the pursuit of egalitarian objectives. ” He says New Labour has the same goals as the Old Labour, but “it is more open-minded about how to achieve them…”

Higher education finance is a case where Nick Barr’s own views changed over the years. “I used to regard student loans as a nasty right-wing plot,” he says. “The logic of the argument turned me around 180 degrees. I realized that higher education financed by the tax payer is the average person paying for the degree of people who come disproportionately from better-off backgrounds, and it’s deeply regressive.”

Students may be very sensitive about tuition fees, but there is a perception that they are much less politically active than in the 1970’s. Hancké thinks this is a myth. “You always had students who knew exactly that they were coming to a place like the LSE for the return on the investment,” he says.

The real difference is, again, the terms of the debate. “When I was a student in the 80’s you had a lot of Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyite groups,” he explains. “[They debated on] the footnote in the Capital, you either have to interpret it like that or like that, and on the basis of that you wouldn’t speak to each other anymore… You were against the environment or in favour of the environment; Greens were the only ones who were in favour of the environment. Now [students] are fed up with the strict party politics but they care about big issues.”

Hancké describes this as a movement from a 1-0 world to a continuous world, where “different parties can start picking up bits and pieces.” He thinks this allows an accounting and finance student to bring his skills into a discussion about carbon emissions offsetting. He suggests that the Student Union can organize roundtable discussions where students from different disciplines discuss policy challenges.

Julian Le Grand is a professor at the Social Policy Department, who advised Tony Blair in health policy. He explains that while students do not call themselves Marxist or socialist any more, quite a few would have anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation views. However, they do not present a real alternative.

“Their analyses certainly haven’t got anything like the power of the Marxist view,” he says. “That was a very clear view – one that I think was wrong, but nonetheless, a clear analysis and a clear set of ideas as to what should be done. I don’t think there’s any equivalent to that among students today - or indeed among intellectuals of any kind.”

Hancké agrees. “My cohort didn’t come up with a lot of new ideas about where you might be looking. If I look at the courses I’m teaching, the kind of debates we have there, it’s not that we didn’t have ideas, it’s just that they were never put together in a way that they could have the battle of ideas.”

He thinks that the decentralized structure of the LSE does not encourage integrated thinking. Some academics start centres such as the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, but they remain focused on one policy area. “You could probably put together a reader on alternatives to neo liberal thinking based on a lot of the research that takes place at the LSE. You need to ask somebody who would take in the research and say, ‘This is the political implication of what this research tells you. In terms of policy alternatives, this is where you might want to look on the basis of this research.’”

On an optimistic note, the LSE might be more Fabian than we think! When in doubt, there is nothing more reassuring than asking an American. Looking at students protesting and handing out flyers, Dillon Green, a postgraduate student at the European Institute, concludes that the LSE is “even more left-wing than Berkeley.”

Dillon, too, has his reservations. “You have this dichotomy between the social scientists who are all anti-globalisation and the kids who are doing finance and economics who all want to be investment bankers. The problem is that the investment bankers don’t seem to be that politically active and motivated, they are too busy trying to get jobs at the investment banks.”

Impressionism

On another bright, sunny London day (I think this is the fourth day in a row?), I went to two exhibitions at the National Gallery, Manet to Picasso and Renoir Landscapes. I loved both of them. The first one was like a crash course in impressionism and beyond: There were pieces from Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne, Sisley, Degas, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Picasso (albeit with only one piece :) These painters no longer tried to imitate the world to the smallest detail (it was already done before), but they sought to capture the feeling, the impression someone gets when he sees the world. Think about it: When you look at a crowded square or a landscape, you cannot pay attention to every single detail of every object simultaneously. What you get is an overall impression, overall feeling.

Their world is beautiful, mellow, optimistic, full of soft, warm rays of light, soft, warm patches of shadow. I feel happy when I look at them, like I would in the country side, on the coast, in a picnic, in the first warm and sunny days of spring, in a crowded square in Paris. Renoir Landscapes were the most beautiful things I've seen in my entire life.

But then, they were at the right place, at the right time: The world they were looking at was beautiful. Their talent was to capture that feeling. The breeze isn't there, the air isn't there, the smells and the sounds aren't there, but these paintings still manage to give the feeling of joy and gratitude.

If what you see is ugly and you capture that, does that count as talent as well?

Then I stepped out of the National Gallery and stood on top of the stairs for a moment to look: the Trafalgar Square was there with its moving, mixing crowd, transparent pools, red buses,
the guy playing a strange violin, the buildings and the street leading up to the Big Ben, the different, sharper, more daring light of spring. Framed in the columns of the Gallery, it was a painting. It was so beautiful.

Gilbert and George and Art

Yesterday I went to Gilbert & George exhibition at Tate Modern. The artists lived and created art in London's East End (on Fournier Street close to Spitalfields, my neighborhood!) since early 70's. Trained as sculptors, they started out as "living sculptures," and soon after they started making photomontages, usually taking themselves as subjects, alongside views of dirty London streets, water poddles, flashlights, cherry blossoms, their bare wooden apartment, young boys, crosses, graffitti, sex ads, tabloid headlines, Gincko leaves, people who look like they belong to the fringes: Muslims, black people, "white trash." (Not to mention penises, spunk, shit and their own arses.) They force you to look at your own dark side in the eye. (And this exhibition forces London to look at her dark side in the eye.)

As it happens when I see modern art most of the time, I was quick to conclude that these artists could not do anything else with their lives, so they decided to do this (continuing in the Hincal Uluç vein, who rightly wrote once that he couldn't be convinced that a black square is art, and even Ertuğrul Özkök vein, "let's all admit our unliberal, intolerant side and relax now!") This alludes to a lack of talent, motivation, structure and patience in everything else that would earn them their living and respect, rather than a specific talent, motivation, structure and patience in art. When I look at an art piece, I'd like to see traces of talent, genius (something new, creative, something that would uncover an idea or emotion in me I didn't realize was there), beauty and discipline. I'd like to see advancement, something greater than myself, something I wouldn't have been able to do. To me, an artist, and any other discipline, should try to rise above and beyond himself, his daily life, his human instincts in his work, rather than making money and a reputation of them. (Advancement, not democracy!!)

So here I am, sounding like your mother or teacher. Being the reflective person I am, of course, this is not the end of the story. Firstly, looking at it from an economic point of view, these artists seem to have made a living with their work. (Watch the videos on the Tate web-site, they look like they made quite a lot since they were able to invest in that technology!) So there are people who like their art, who find something in it. What they are doing clearly has value. (At the same time, sometimes I wonder whether critiques are afraid of criticizing art just because they don't want to sound unliberal.)

They also seem to be working very hard while they are creating their art, albeit its ugliness much of the time. But then, we want creativity, we want new things that would speak to the society we live in now. So we can no longer expect the beauty and technique of Renaissance painting or impressionists or surrealists. That's all been done before. So we have to keep an open mind.

Furthermore, who am I to judge, right? Of course it doesn't speak to much in me because I've mostly been one of the privileged as a Caucasian woman from a middle class background. I don't understand those in the minority, gays, poor, excluded. But I know that most of the time, it takes patience, hard work and structure to improve your life. So while it is interesting and important to recognize, I don't see much to be proud of in clinging on to that alternative culture. The message about racism and religious fundamentalism, while original and interesting at the time, although still relevant, is not that original anymore.

But even to me, there were a few highlights. The sex ads, tabloid headlines and images of my neighborhood - contrasted against cherry blossoms. And the red.

Definitely worth seeing since it sparked so much to talk about!