Spectator's Journal/Letter from Bodrum
Greer, Herb
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL LETTER FROM BODRUM by Herb Greer Bodrum, Turkey t4V or Americans," I said to Ah.1.. med, "Turkey is a bird that goes gobble, gobble. You eat it at Thanksgiving and...
...So," I said to him, "you have a lot of things wrong in Turkey...
...Then they went back to London and boasted in the Observer about what they had done...
...With thirty, no one knows...
...Forrest McDonald, Uniqrrsity of liabama "Professor Allen is to he congratulated for bringing together in a single volume those writings that reflect Washington's role in and contributions to the birth of our republic...
...And please don't tell me about human rights...
...I asked...
...Great reading but also more than that...
...They repaid his hospitality by insulting him, claiming he was encouraging the Turkish police to torture these "dissidents...
...Because if they take three or four and send them back to the village, everyone will know who gave information and those three or four will be killed...
...He was a conservative Turk, while Ahmed and Turgut were more or less liberal...
...In Britain and Europe, too...
...Not just our Kurds," he said...
...It makes us feel superior, at least morally...
...Mail to: Liberty Fund, Inc...
...Every country," said Thrgut, "has a few stupid people...
...What would you do...
...The others nodded...
...They complain about the torture, and the village where thirty people were taken away...
...Because we are building a dam on the Euphrates River there, and Syria wants to stop it...
...Unfortunately," I said, "there are more than a few...
...The president is too weak...
...Haldun smiled...
...Price Amount ^ Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Hardcover $26.00 Liberty Fund, Inc...
...1950...
...O LibertyPtess/LibertyClassics GEORGE WASHINGTON: A COLLECTION Compiled and Edited by William B. Allen Aril 1989 marks the bicentennial of George Washington's presidency, yet this is the only one-volume compilation of his writings in print...
...What do you need, really...
...In 1840...
...Midnight Express and all that...
...They think we shouldn't have such bases...
...Haldun kept up with the British press, and asked me about something he had seen in the London Observer...
...Ataturk wanted the politics to go straight, like this-' he held up his hands to indicate a corridor...
...Four of us—me, Ahmed, Haldun, and Turgut—were strolling along the waterfront of Herb Giver is an American writer and playwright living in England Bodrum, on Turkey's Aegean coast...
...There are Iranian Kurds...
...We need a strong leader...
...Miller and Pinter also wrote," I said, "that this treatment destroyed the lives of the people who were tortured...
...Strong leader...
...I said the wrong thing a few years ago...
...The government is no good, they are weak...
...As long as their bases are safe," said Haldun, "they will understand...
...He was dark, with large soft eyes, and slimly built, looking rather like a refugee from the Caucasus mountains...
...On a popular level we like this image...
...Haldun leaned forward, forehead wrinkled...
...You know why we have Kurdish terrorism in eastern Turkey...
...dollars...
...Sultans, decadent Orientals in pointed slippers who like little boys and fat women, oily Levantine merchants and brutal police who torture people...
...We don't have slaves in ihrkey...
...I got six years...
...Yeah, but this is 1989 now," I pointed out...
...Do you think," I asked, "that the Americans will understand this...
...Syria is helping those...
...Through his selections and organization, he reveals salient dimensions of Washington's status as 'father' of our country often ignored by contemporary scholars...
...Paperback 9.50 Subtotal Indiana residents add 5% sales tax Total Name Address City/State/Zip We pay book rate postage...
...He turned to me...
...Ahmed looked at the table for a few moments...
...We moved into a cafe, sat down, and ordered some bottles of excellent Turkish beer...
...Please allow approximately 4 weeks for delivery...
...You can't help that...
...Sure...
...We guaranteed water to Syria, but still Assad, that bastard, wants to stop the dam...
...When the politics go too far to the right, the 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 army comes down, boom...
...Your police are tough, right...
...What you have is dissidents who get tortured...
...The same again, on the other side...
...I don't like this government," said Ahmed...
...I don't understand people like you," he said to them...
...The medieval castle at the harbor mouth now brooded over an array of shop-filled covered streets, souvenir shops, racks of postcards, and expensive waterside cafes...
...I was trying to explain to the Turks why most Americans know little and care less about them, although Turkey is a bridge between the Islamic World and the West, a member of NATO, and one of the strategic hinges of the Eastern Mediterranean...
...They smiled ruefully...
...But you're a democracy, right...
...There are some," I said, "who don't care about the bases...
...That was a stupid thing to write...
...But the government is too weak...
...All right, the Kurds...
...Did you see what those idiots wrote in London...
...What about the dissidents...
...Then some idiot comes from outside and cries that they are hurting people, that nothing else is happening...
...Bozuk isn't much help," I said...
...What we need," he said at last, "is a strong leader...
...But the peculiar intensity of his brown eyes was not European...
...0 Please send me a copy of your latest catalogue...
...the hands doubled into fists and struck like hammers...
...My Turkish friends and I threaded our way past tanned American girls in well-filled loose T-shirts, who were being ogled by stolid German tourists in white hats, shorts, and running shoes...
...All you do is complain...
...By the entrance to the castle and its museum of underwater archaeology there were two camels which you could hire for a lurching ride up and down the quai...
...A hmed was looking uncomfortable about all this...
...People get hurt...
...Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter had traveled to Turkey, talked to some "dissidents," and been invited to dinner by the American ambassador...
...Turgut, an advertising executive from Istanbul, had the look of a clean-cut California beach bum with his shock of red hair and long, almost Scandinavian jaw...
...The torture is true," said Turgut...
...But what can you do about it...
...You know why the army took so many...
...The trouble is," I said, "that for us, Turkey is all mixed up with the Orient Express, belly dancers, Turkish delight, the mysteries of the East, and so on...
...Which Americans...
...It provides a privileged experience, that of reliving with the greatest of Americans his public career, through a judicious and well-annotated selection of his own writings...
...Iraq is helping them and the Syrian Kurds...
...It was no longer the sleepy sponge-fishing village I had known in the sixties...
...You eat it at Thanksgiving and Christmas and then you forget about it...
...George Carey, Georgetown University 743 pages...
...I mentioned another incident I knew of, in which the army had come into an eastern Turkish village and taken away thirty of the male population...
...And that will make us all better...
...I was tortured...
...And the rest...
...These people are not dissidents...
...I knew the story...
...Ahmed, a Laz from the north of Turkey, worked in Istanbul as a salesman...
...And the Russians are helping all of them...
...Hardcover $26.00 0-86597-059-9 Paperback $ 9.50 0-86597-060-2 Liberty Fund edition, 1988 Please send me: George Washington: .4 Collection Liberty Fund edition, 1988 Quan...
...He indicated how the soles of his feet had been beaten...
...The ones who come here on holiday...
...Thrgut laughed...
...Like Miller and Pinter...
...Washington must now he acknowledged as a man of considerable political insight...
...Haldun, a heavy, big-shouldered university professor from Ankara, was blond and blue-eyed —a Kurd, in fact—and solemn...
...You mean the Kurds...
...411 orders must be prepaid in U.S...
...He can't, but he gives the Kurds money and arms to attack us and try...
...All they care about is the sun and the beach and the postcards...
...Then, when the politics go too far to the left, the army comes down, boom...
...They think that if you take the bases out of Turkey there will be human rights...
...The harbor was dredged out to make a crowded marina, the esplanade was lined with travel agencies, charter firms, small hotels, and restaurants ("Chinese Home Cooking") catering to the flocks of summer tourists, so many of them that the new mayor had been elected on a "no more beds in Bodrum" platform...
...You're the liberal here...
...Amnesty International," says Haldun, "is not interested in any of that...
...The Brits and the Americans tend to see it through a fog of clichés from Ottoman times...
...The ones who read the papers...
...Inshallah," I agreed...
...How were your human rights after sixty years...
...4 4 W hat about the torture...
...You know how it works here...
...The Kurds think they can make a nation out of all this, but all they can make is trouble...
...The economy is bozuk (kaput), everything is bozuk, they don't know what to do...
...Turgut shrugged...
...I looked at the others, then back at Ahmed...
...Then there are the Iraqi Kurds...
...7440 North Shadeland Avenue...
...It's better to be good than have bases...
...I asked...
...The army, too...
...X101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 43...
...None of my companions fitted the Asiatic stereotype of a Turk...
...asked Ahmed, with a crooked smile...
...the playwrights...
...Printed throughout in two colors with 15 illustrations...
...Not too many, inshallah," said Haldun...
...What, another Ataturk...
...When you do that," he said, "you can't do it case by case...
...The country is a mess...
...Sort of...
...They are terrorists...
...We have been a democracy since when...
...Haldun was showing some irritation...
...You don't know what to do...
...But not because the Americans said so...
...We drank our beers and got up to go...
...Since Ataturk changed the country sixty years ago," he said, "it has been like this: the real foundation of Turkey is the army...
...Then there are the Turkish Kurds...
...Iran is helping them...
...You had slaves...
...I mean, anyone can complain and say bozuk...
...Dept...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
