Before going back to the hotel we returned to the Grand Bazaar to pick up a few souvenirs and such.
Walking back through the streets, which were a lot quieter now that the sun had gone down, I saw a shoe-shiner drop his brush as he walked ahead of us. I jogged up and grabbed it to hand it back to him.
He let forth a big grin and thanked me and insisted on shining my shoes. "This is my cousin", he kept saying to me as he worked, pointing to the older guy standing beside him. After he finished one shoe he asked us to move over to a darker corner, away from the busy area of the street.
If my brain had been working properly I would have recognized the alarm bells.
He went back to work on my other shoe and his 'cousin' insisted on working on Lindsay's shoes. Lindsay told me later that as he worked he told her he was the brother of the guy shining my shoes. After asking me a few more random chitchat questions, the shoe-shiner told me that his kids were in the hospital. It dawned on me that gratitude was not the reason my shoes were being shined.
He finished, and then told me matter-of-factly that it would be ten euros. Feeling a bit awkward, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few Turkish liras. (In hindsight, I shouldn't even have done this). Not enough, he told me. "This is all I have," I replied. He began to tell me what the regular price for having your shoes shined was, and told me he wanted the "purple money" (Euros). "Don't worry, I can give you change" he said. That's when I lost it on him.
I started railing about how I did a nice thing for him and the only thing he could think about was how much money he could get out of me. There was no way in hell I was going to pay for a shoeshine I didn't ask for. I told him he could keep the liras for his kids in the hospital, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. I grabbed Lindsay's arm and stormed off.
I was in a very bad mood after this. I had only been in the tourist district for 24 hours and I was already sick of being fleeced by salesman on every corner. It was time for something different.
We went back to the hotel and, after taking a few minutes to get off our feet, we talked to the front desk guy about going to Taksim Square, which I had read was the "heart of Istanbul". It was across the water and so was going to take a bit of work to get there.
Turns out that Istanbul has a modern and very nice transit system, which is limited in scope but is growing every year. Luckily, it would take us exactly where we wanted to go.
First by tram...
Then by Metro (which basically went straight uphill).
We climbed up the stairs from the Metro station at Taksim Square and our jaws dropped. I thought for a moment we had gotten off in the shopping district in Amsterdam.
It was a completely cosmopolitan shopping district, jammed with people and bright lights. It couldn't be more opposite to everything we had seen so far in Istanbul.
I knew that Turkey had a Westernized side to it, but I wasn't prepared for how thoroughly Western it was. Again, I'm sure that Istanbul is not representative of most of the country, but it was still a shock. There were night clubs, movie shops, lingerie stores (with those sexy, sexy photos in the windows), fashion outlets, and cafes all down the street. I found multiple book stores that looked like any Coles or Chapters store in Canada.
Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, but this ain't your typical Muslim country. (Typical in the sense of how most Muslim countries in the world are, not on Islam itself). The constitution, brought in by Ataturk in 1923, guarantees freedom of religion and contains a fierce seperation of Church and State. It is illegal to wear any 'theo-politic clothing', which includes the Islamic headscarf, in any school, university, or government building. Faith-based schools are outlawed.
The military considers itself the upholder of Ataturkian secularism and has not been shy about it. Since 1960 there have been four coup d'etats, carried out when the government was perceived to be inching towards Communism or Islamism. The most recent was in 1997. In each case military rule was eventually handed back over to civilians and democracy was restored. This past spring it was looking very much like another coup was in the works, as the military was growing restive--both the current Prime Minister and President have Islamist backgrounds and have wives who wear the headscarf. Calm heads prevailed.
It is due to this secularism that Turkey has toed a Western line. They have been a NATO member for 50 years, are in talks to join the EU, and have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. (I actually noticed right away in the airport that there were flights scheduled to Tel Aviv.) The EU negotiations are going to be lengthy. This is partly due to concern over the military's interference in democratic governance. But Turkey also has a fierce nationalism (note the giant red flag in the sqaure above; this flag was found everywhere in the city) which makes it illegal to insult Ataturk or "Turkish identity", and illegal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide after WWI. Free speech is also going to need some work.
Well, there's also quite a bit of resistance to Turkey joining the EU from countries who already have large restive Muslim populations--France and The Netherlands particularly. They're quite wary about opening their borders up to 72 million more Muslims, many of whom live in the impoverished Turkish countryside.
At any rate, being in the Taksim Square area gave me a lot of hope for the future of the country. There was so much buzz in the air, so much diversity; in the history and politics section of the book store (which is really the only section I ever go to), there was a real battle of ideas and philosophy going on. This could have been any street in any city in North America or Europe. Muslim countries so often bring up a picture of war, poverty, oil, dictatorship, and subjugation of women. It doesn't have to be that way.
In the middle of the square was a large memorial statue to the war of independence. Front and center was--who else--good ol' Ataturk.
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