That night, one of them walked into a place in Barcelona where I felt safe and didn't bother to cover the horrible nazi tattoo on his back. Instead, he acted as if he was doing the most natural thing in the world.
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How did an urban legend about a street in Istanbul named after a Japanese admiral turn into a gateway drug for fascist ideology?
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Istanbul discourse is a dangerous quagmire of clichés, of which "bRidGe BeTweEn eASt aNd wEsT" is but one. But those of us who have lived here long enough are hyper-sensitive to the political intentions behind every statement concerning Istanbul.
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I had begun considering Pakistan nothing greater than, and I quote an actual sentence I once said, “a lifeless soulless husk; just a place on the world map next to giants like China.” So as this kid silently bops his head to AJJ, I think back to the first time I found life in Pakistan when I visited Sehwan Sharif.
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Beirut never healed. It just learned to accept its predicament. Beirut, like our parents, is not resilient. It is broken.
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A recent article on the Independent talks about the “changing face of tourism” in Turkey and how it supposedly “burnt a vital bridge between East and West.” In the article, Şebnem Arsu writes about the recent hike of Arab tourists; basically freaking out because some Arab shops have opened instead of Turkish ones and because European tourists have become less visible.
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“Cities are unpredictable’’ says writer Teju Cole in his book Open City; “Once you give up insisting on stereotypes, you can really start to see’’. Seeing beyond one’s sight is often difficult especially in project-streets like İstiklal which are designed to hide the unwanted with either a secular Western facade or AKP’s money-drawing-shopping-star-project-district. In both cases, the real makers of the city are sacrificed in the name of formal, structural change.
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At that moment I realized that abolitionist laws — which were primarily pushed by the American Christian Right and were later adopted by Western feminist schools — are now being lobbied for by middle class feminist activists from developing countries who care little about actually protecting women, but would rather turn to the West for their moral compass.
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In the 1930’s, the Turkish state usurped the Surp Agop cemetery in Istanbul. Tombstones from the cemetery were used to construct the National radio station headquarters and the stairs for the famous Gezi park. Why is this act of violence forgotten? Why does symbolic oppression often take precedence over real violence and injustice?
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