PREPARATIONS COMPLETE !

Yesterday Lee picked up and re-read an article from the New York Times by Joshua Hammer entitled "Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul"  (NYT, Sunday, February 2, 2014).  When he read it initially back in February, much of the content went over his head -- the places visited, the cultural references, the names mentioned didn't resonate at all.

NOBEL PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR ORHAN PAMUK IN THE BALAT NEIGHBORHOOD 

OF ISTANBUL, NEAR THE GOLDEN HORN

Now, just a scant two months later, much of the article's content strikes something of a familiar cord.  The walking tour taken by the reporter and the novelist moves from one "familiar" location to another.  The references to Sufi practioners and volume-filled bookstores and sidewalk cafes and coffee houses reflect observations and recomendations and insights found in other accounts he's read.  Istanbul (and to a lesser extent, all of Turkey) now seems just a little less remote and "unknown" than it did earlier in the year before we began our preparations.

Travel does indeed broaden the mind - even before one leaves home!

A LAST MINUTE DISCOVERY: MORE TO READ!

LEFT TO RIGHT: Kate Pietro, Linda Holman, Heidi Makela, Peggy Sloan, Diane Hartt, and Sue Selden

Last Friday (April 25, 2014), while Heidi was hosting a Braemar Road Ladies Lunch, Lee wandered out to Eton Square for lunch at the Original Pancake House and a bit of browsing at Barnes and Noble.  At the bookstore he happened across (and bought) ISTANBUL:THE COLLECTED TRAVELER - AN INSPIRED COMPANION GUIDE, edited by Barrie Kerper.

This turned out to be an inspired purchase.  The volume is made up of a wide-ranging selection of essays and excerpts from observations written by numerous travelers over the centuries who have visited and been inspired by their sojourns in various parts of Turkey (not just Istanbul).  Already Lee (somewhat numbed by his ongoing slog through modern Turkish history) has read entertaining rifts on Topkapi Palace and the Chora Church which have heightened his anticipation of our upcoming visits to both.  (Worthy quotations to be incorporated into this blog have also been copied out for safe keeping!)

At nearly 600 pages - and with references to additional online resources -- the anthology is likely to add a great deal of pleasurable reading on our travels and to our understanding and appreciation of sites visited.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVE

As a university-level instructor in Japanese and Chinese history, Lee has always been aware of the desireability of presenting the East Asian past as much as feasible from an "insider's" point of view.  That is, instead of looking at history in Japan or China from the perspective of an American or other Westerner, he always attempted to portray it in a specifically Japanese or Chinese context.  This approach encouraged students to attempt, at least, to see things -- cultural constructs; particular events; the process of change, growth and development -- from another, often unfamiliar and strange, angle.  The upshot: whether or not the historical content of the course itself stuck, students would at the very least take away with them the ability to empathize with other points of view, to consider the possibility of another perspective, whether or not they agreed with it.

For him, the dicotomy considered was the gap between "East" and "West" -- the world of East Asia on the one hand versus the European / American perspective on the other.  In so doing, he created another gap as well, one just now becoming obvious.  He omitted from consideration altogether the interplay between East and West that marks the historical narrative impacting life and cultural developments in what is often termed "the Middle East" of which Turkey comprises a large proportion.

As the locus of the Ottomon Empire (1259 - 1924), modern Turkey controlled large parts of Africa, the Arab world, South and Central Asia, its authority even reaching well into modern Europe.  Any contemporary map of Turkey illustrates this centrality equally well: the modern state is surrounded by Bulgaria, Russia, Albania, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Greek islands.  

About the only indication of this important intermediary position Lee recalls considering in teaching about interactions between Europe and East Asia came in establishing the role played by "the Arab world" in the transmission of Christianity to China during the Tang Dynasty and the bureaucratic ideal from China to Venice in the sixteenth century.  Otherwise, this part of the world remained terra incognito throughout his teaching career.

Reading about the challenges Turkey has faced over the past couple of centuries as first the Ottoman Empire and then the modern Turkish state attempted to modernize without westernizing itself out of (cultural) existence has instilled a greater appreciation for this area of the world as an important part of the global historical narrative.  Even taking this perspective into account fails to do justice to all the earlier history centered here as wave after wave of change swept over the area from every conceivable  direction.  

A new and enlarged historical world view is clearly in the process of emerging!  Stay tuned for more revelations ...

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Carter Vaughn Findley writes the kind of history that Lee most enjoys reading.  His TURKEY, ISLAM, NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY would never strike anyone as a real page turner; however, his narrative accomplishes a good deal in terms of pulling together historical data (political, military, economic, social and literary) in such a way as to turn the conclusions reached by monographic research into useful and insightful knowledge that helps animate the present through an understanding of the past.

From the onset of European expansionism in the eighteenth century well into the twentieth century, the challenges faced first by the Ottoman Empire and later by the Turkish nation state were comprised of essentially the same external and internal issues: how to maintain the integrity of the empire / nation in the face of external aggression by neighboring states and growing internal ethnic and religious division.  

Early in the nineteenth century, following a period of nascent democratic political movement, Sultan Abdulhamid  reasserted autocratic control and personally presided over an effort at widespread modernization induced by prevailing Western influences at work throughout the wider world.  Changes introduced, unfortunately, only furthered the dismemberment and division of the Ottoman Empire as Europeans acquired more and more control over peripheral areas and differing Greek / Kurdish / Armenian /  Bulgarian / Balkan / Islamic / Christian / Jewish issues further divided the Sultan's subjects into contentious subcategories.  The emergence of the Young Turks at the turn of the twentieth century did little to solve the resulting disarray (aside from eventually ending the Sultanate altogether and presiding over the rise of a secular and military alternative which, in turn, set the stage for the current state of affairs).

The complex struggles faced since the early decades of the nineteenth century have been daunting indeed.  Furthermore, what we now think of as "Turkey" didn't even emerge on the scene until after World War I .  Yet the historical record, however, multifaceted and confusing, still impacts the present.  As a result, having become somewhat familiar with what took place over the past couple of centuries, Lee looks forward especially to seeing the influences of prior events, personalities and institutions on contemporary life and culture as we explore both that past (plus even earlier times!) and the present in today's Turkey..

IN PREPARATION ...

Turkey, although on our list of "places we most want to visit", nonetheless has never been very high in our collective consciousness in terms of what we actually know about the country, its history and culture.  This has meant facing a steep learning curve as we prepare for our trip.

Heidi has the advantage here.  She had already successfully completed two CSU courses on Middle Eastern History and was enrolled in a third this semester.  The disadvantage she faced, of course, was that the courses covered much more than just Turkey, confusing and complicating things quite a bit.  Nonetheless she now knows a good deal more than Lee about the larger context, culturally, religiously and historically speaking.

Lee's approach initially emphasized making the most of our itinerary by undertaking research on the 'net.  That proved daunting as the complexity of the historical and cultural layers became more and more apparent.  Who were the Selyuks?  Which came first, the Byzantine or the Ottoman empire?   What was the distinction between a Vizier, a Calif and a Sultan?  How did the Armenians and the Kurds fit into the historical narrative?

He ended up with more questions than answers as he delved deeper into the available information!

In the end, both of us turned to books to develop some level of understanding of just what we were getting ourselves into.  For Heidi, two titles by Stephen Kinzer, CRESCENT AND STAR and RESET: IRAN, TURKEY AND AMERICA'S FUTURE, helped paint a picture of both the recent past and some of the contemporary issues being faced both here and abroad.  Lee found TURKEY: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW by the journalist Andrew Finkel useful in providing background on the present state of affairs and TURKEY, ISLAM, NATIONALISM AND MODERNITY for providing a fascinating cultural history overview of Turkey's struggle to modernize in the face of both external threat and internal religious and ethnic division.

We also came across subtitled episodes of MAGNIFICENT CENTURY, a long-running and very popular Turkish television series focused on the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Hurrem Sultan, a kidnapped slave who eventually became Sultana.   These made us even more anxious to spend time exploring the Topkapi palace in Istanbul and the luxurious historical artifacts on display there.

STILL ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO PRESENT THE PERFECT SLIDE SHOW

I have attempted for several days at this juncture to regain my earlier "mastery" over the embedded slide show formula that I used in my BEAUTIFUL BARCELONA blog.

So far, my online searches and experiments with various apps have not produced exactly what I am looking for.  This time around I have copied over to this post the entire HTML code from an entry in BEAUTIFUL BARCELONA that displayed the associated slide show perfectly..

Now all I need to do is see if I can altered the code appropriately and pull together a set of images that will be displayed the way I'd like them to be seen!

Next all I need to do is figure out how to center the slide show...

ANOTHER SLIDE SHOW OR TWO

Interestingly, when searching out a suitable slide show format, I attempted to sign up for a beta version of  SHARALIKE only to find I already had an account!  Here is a link to that first effort at using the app to pull together a sequence of images, in this instance depicting Olivia's birthday party ...

CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE THE SLIDE SET

In this case, I am most interested in seeing just how quickly a show like this can be inserted into a blog post ...

Here's another version of "Winter Flowers 2014" as put together in HAIKU DECK ...

HOSTING A SLIDE SHOW ...

Each time I begin a new series of blog postings, I get online and attempt to ascertain what innovative technology might have been developed that could be incorporated.  Usually I'm most interested in slide show features allowing the display of the maximum number of images in the smallest amount of space.  Here're my first samples, using an embedded link to a PICASA web album (over to the right) and a SHARLIKE link accessible by clicking on the image below.

The twelve images shown to the right are those now on display on our family room wall.  They depict scenes from Chicago, Grand Teton Nationall Park, Niagra-on-the-Lake, Big Sur in California, Hakone in Japan, India, Costa Rica and Oak Park.  The second, very brief, slide show (with music, even!) features some images of fresh flowers that bloomed during the course of this long, long Winter just now slipping into history.

ESCAPING A LATE WINTER

Five months ago snow fell for the first time in the Cleveland area.  The winter's blustery cold never released its hold over the season to follow.  Our latest (one hesitates to say "final") snowfall occurred just last Tuesday on April 15th.

During that entire period, seldom did a day of sunshine and warmth break through, an occasional occurrence we've grown accustomed to around here as an assurance that the weather, indeed, is capable of changing for the better ...

So it is that our upcoming Overseas Adventure Travel tour of Turkey beginning May 3rd comes at an even more appropriate time than originally intended.  We assumed we' be leaving behind a glorious Spring; instead, we will be escaping an extended Winter.  That's all to the good, I guess.

These first few blog postings, as usual, are intended simply to get me used to the routine.  They will also allow me to catch up with the latest technological developments occurring since I last kept a travel blog.  Even now I'm typing on a portable Logitech Bluetooth keyboard connected to an iPad Air rather than on the mini-laptop I have used most recently.  I wonder what other new possibilities will suggest themselves over the days ahead.