Culture Shock! Turkey
by Arın Bayraktaroğlu
Golly...Can our intrepid reviewer ever really be shocked?!
Well, let's just find out ...
Generally my friends and family were openly sceptical when I said I was
quitting my job to move to Turkey. My mother burst into tears and was
convinced I had lost my mind.
Before moving to Turkey, I looked
everywhere for something that would give me some idea of how different
it would be to actually live here. Certainly the myths of what people
thought it would be like were "interesting".
Most Westerners have a rather stereotypical idea of what to expect in
Turkey. For many, it is televised flashes of Middle Eastern riot scenes
or quaint biblical vistas with Mother-Mary-lookalikes riding on
donkeys. Then too, we can't underestimate the impact of the movie
industry and Midnight Express and the seething underworld of poppies
and white slavers. Deep down though, I think it goes back to the
Crusades and how we thought we were the good guys in that one...
Culture Shock! Turkey is an excellent intro into the "real" world.
And most
of the initial culture shock I experienced in moving here was that it
was a great deal more modern than I'd ever expected.
This little book gets right down to the nitty gritty: sex, politics,
religion, headscarfs, patriotism. It covers a little deeper than
surface level for all these things, and it also gets into the social
circumstances of hospitality, giftgiving and gift-receiving, funerals,
circumcisions, and hiring household help. Few stones are left unturned.
There is also a nice little section on language, that is quite well
done. Good little formulaic expressions and what they mean and when to
use them, as well as social interaction words, numbers, requests,
offers, thanks, direction and bargaining words. Basically, it is an
excellent book to walk you around life's little cultural mud holes.
It has a good index, a short and a lightweight bibliography, but the
last chapter is a cultural challenge quiz that I found lacking...
You see, I've encountered much more interesting and useful cultural challenges to
use as examples! And I disagreed with her suggestion when dealing with
cabdrivers, who may not know the way to your destination
-- because I have gotten into many cabs (in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir)
and been assured by the driver that he knew my destination address
exactly. But when we reached the
general destination area, out of the car he'd pop --
to ask for directions from assorted cigarette vendors and restauranteurs and the odd pedestrian...
It's part of the game.
The one glaring omission by the writer was her underestimation of the culture
shock for the typical American housewife -- in her quest to satisfy generic domestic needs.
In Turkey there are little quirky things that say
quietly inside your head, "We're not in Kansas, anymore, Toto..."
Fresh meats and produce, while incredibly good and fresh, are often
not packaged -- and come with no
directions. Now, you may scoff and say that that's the way it should
be, but after 25 years of cooking up American meals one tends to develop
a fondness for certain shortcuts.
The local butcher shop (kasap) is filled with carcasses hanging from
the ceiling and when you ask for your "et" (meat) it must be in
kilograms or fractions thereof. (How many dictionaries cover that???)
The manav is your fruit and vegetable seller and if he likes you he
gives you the undented stuff...also in kilograms. (Do you know how many
green peppers vs. potatoes are in one kilogram...? I do.)
Substitutions for familiar foods can be confusing, too. For instance,
the 16 oz. can (except it's in liters) of tomatoes I was going to use for
spaghetti sauce, turned out to be tomato paste!
Spices do not come in
small jars clearly marked -- they come in 40 lbs. bags [Ed. Warning !
Our reviewer does exaggerate at times...Or, maybe you guessed already?] with names that don't
translate -- and everyone thinks I'm insane for wanting 3 tablespoons!
(Well to be fair, I suppose they could think I was insane for other
reasons too...)
And when you enter the open-air seafood market?... Large, many-colored, sea fish stare at you disconcertingly.
(I am not kidding...The eyes really do follow you around the room...)
Oh, I almost forgot...The kitchen oven is marked in Celsius -- not Fahrenheit -- making
for occasionally charred baked goods. Yes, more than once. Sigh...
And one last thing...If you had to survive on just the fresh baked bread, the yogurt and
the honey, you could live forever in Turkey. Ummm...
Ms. Bayraktaroglu covers most of the standard, run of the mill, "culture
shock" type things you will come across. And she does it very well. But
we all bring our own version of "culture" with us and we see
civilization through the sunglasses of our own experience. You can
never be completely prepared to come to Turkey, but you will be
constantly -- and for the most part, pleasantly -- surprised.
JS (April '97)
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