Pontificating on TEFL & Turkish Culture

Jana pulls up, sets her feet, and launches another three-pointer. The Turkish adolescent moans "Oh no" as the ball swishes cleanly through the net. She gets another round of applause from the boys we are playing with. I haven't received any vocal praise. Then again, I am not a girl, and in Turkey, girls don't play basketball. They swim and play tennis, but the physical nature of basketball is too much for the country's conservative nature. What makes the applause so great is that Jana is one of the best players on the court, and she isn't afraid to drive inside for a close shot. The Turkish boys are friendly and my fear of her being molested in some way is put to rest. The game is spirited and fast, and I think the Turks are pleased to play against citizens of the sport's original country.

Unfortunately, my citizenship does not help on the football pitch (soccer field). Although I am in better shape than almost every player, I imagine myself to resemble a chicken with its head cut off, seemingly purposeless in the direction I run. I manage to muff a number of shots on goal, and after a couple of miserable attempts at dribbling downfield, I resort to passing as quickly as possible so as to avoid further embarrassment. Maybe I could blame my clumsiness on the time. Due to work during the day, Turkish men (women don't play football) usually don't play until late at night, our game having started at 11 P.M. These late-night matches are a national custom, and on the ride home I see many brightly-lit fields filled with men, their inherently Turkish bellies protruding out at the mid-section. A stranger named Karim is driving me home, and there is a little conversation though he has forgotten much of his English. Due to this, I am not sure whether, after my confession of poor football skill, he actually said, "You are really bad."

Every country has its taboos concerning appropriate topics that can be discussed, and Turkish tend to be more open and direct than the American and British person is comfortable with. Karim's brazen remark caught me off-guard, but should it have? My female colleagues describe how they have, on numerous occasions, been approached by a student who, utilizing the indirect question form, pleasantly remarks "You've gained a few kilos, haven't you?" They, of course, respond "Why yes I have, thank you for noticing and being so kind as to inform me of my appearance." Actually, their response was closer to silence, though the Turks do not seem to notice. Here are a few more cultural differences I have observed:

▪ The Turks are very generous with their food. They always offer me a portion of a snack, regardless of whether it is a bag of pretzels or a candy bar. The candy bar is particularly difficult for me since personally I know that if I buy a Snickers bar, I just do not want to share that small treat with anyone. I must learn from their openhandedness.
▪ A spotlessly clean house is a Turkish requirement, and the American standard of "clean" does not float here. We actually have a cleaning lady which makes me feel like a rich colonialist.
▪ Since I don't speak Turkish, the popular newspapers here can be divided into two categories. One would be the serious press of long articles and small pictures. The other is the equivalent of USA Today, except that the pages are plastered with pictures of non-Middle Eastern women in scanty clothing. This blatant appeal to eros seems an aberration in a culture where I never see a woman's midriff, low-cut tops are rare, and the naked legs of the fairer sex are never seen, that is except on the front page of eighty percent of the newspapers. My theory is that these pictures are a product of a self-deceiving, conservative society who would like to perceive the West as licentious while Turkish women are chaste and pure. If so, it is a cover for the Turkish man who is practically expected to have extramarital affairs.

"Our work keeps us free of three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty." So says Voltaire's Turk at the end of his masterpiece Candide, as a guiding principle for how humans should conduct their lives. Ironically, this race that Voltaire despised so much has taken the message to heart with the average person working around sixty hours a week. A six-day week is quite usual here, working ten hours a day to make a decent living. It is the requisite life in a developing economy that wishes to raise itself to the top tier of nations. For a foreigner, it is equally difficult. I did not come here to be overloaded with work, but rather to explore a culture, and yet this very culture wishes to sweep me off with the current to the perpetual grindstone. I presently work six days, accumulating a mass sum of forty-five hours a week. Throughout the month I have the opportunity to teach eight different classes ranging from 10-year old children at the elementary level to high school advanced to university students to adults and even an exam class for those who would like to study at a North American school. Some classes are good, some are dull. After two distinguished years in the illustrious profession of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), I have come to the pragmatic philosophy that as a teacher, I can only prove to be a conduit, a spark plug while the student must provide the steady energy that powers language learning. I have often taught the identical lesson to two different groups with drastically different but predictable results. The enthusiastic class thrives and indubitable progress is made. I feel like the world's greatest teacher, like a conductor directing the execution of his masterpiece, and I leave work energized. Meanwhile, their counterpart, the slugs, bring time to a halt. The clocks melt languidly on the wall as in a Salvador Dali painting, the energy level in the classroom approaches absolute zero, and I feel like an oompa-loompa kicking at a hibernating grizzly bear with my short stubby orange legs, attempting to rouse the slumbering beast to a communication exercise. More to the point, the TEFL teacher must guard against the idealistic notion that he or she can inspire a class if only the lesson were a bit more creative, if only I could find something that interested them, if only a bit more time had been spent combing the dark entrails of the internet, if only I could find something that interested them (hey, what am I, a dancing monkey or something?), if only, if only, if only...yet I, along with the U.S. government must desist. Just as public spending will never sustainably fill the gap that the American consumer has vacated for vogue thrift, so I must come to terms with the unquenchable vacuum that encompasses the indifferent language student. On the sanguine side of things, I have had the privilege to teach many ebullient pupils, and it is always a fulfilling pleasure to work with these lovely people.

Izmir, or Smyrna if you are Greek

I have a commanding view of Izmir from my location, the Kedifekale. It is the excessively restored fortress of Alexander the Great who built the new city around this high hill according to the bidding of goddesses who visited him when he slept there. There is not much left. Some walls, a large Turkish flag flying overhead, a cistern that dates to the Byzantines, and one tower. Urban topography and wealth usually have a positive correlation, but here the relationship has been inverted, and the summit is reserved for squatters from the eastern parts of Turkey. Butting up against Alex's walls, their ramshackle huts provoke pangs of conscience in this tourist. Alexander's empire was remarkable, stretching from Greece to present-day Pakistan. And he is one fallacious reason for the disastrous Greek "liberation" of Smyrna that resulted in the massacring of Turks and Greeks.



I begin walking down the hill and pass some roadwork, the heavy machinery digging away around the underground pipes. The great thing is that all the menfolk are perched on the edge of the hole, peering down, turning the construction into a community event, although the men must leave shortly for the Friday sermon. I visit the local ethnographic museum, and it is well done. Since I am not much of a museum connoisseur, the highlight was learning about camel fighting. The camels can fight for up to forty-five minutes, using their head, teeth, and bodies to force their opponent to the ground, whereupon the winner is declared. Camels are so awkward, which is why I thought the fights to be silly, but upon closer inspection I think it looks quite vicious actually. Another highlight was the circumcision room, where an expression of absolute terror is worn by a young male mannequin as he looks at the bed where this painful rite of passage will happen. Poor guy.



From there I walk along the boardwalk. Izmir was once the great cosmopolitan city of the Ottoman Empire, a great port city where commerce flowed and diplomats, foreigner merchants, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Turks lived happily side by side for centuries. It was nicknamed "infidel Smyrna" since most of the population was not Muslim, and the architecture was European though almost all of it was burned in the fire that destroyed three-fourths of the city in 1922. The seaside promenade is still fantastic, and it is here that the Turkish Greeks celebrated as Greek soldiers landed, taking Smyrna from the dying hands of the Ottoman Empire. In the name of Christ these soldiers came to restore Greek Byzantium, to convert back the mosque to its original use as a church. Instead, they re-enacted the horrors of the Crusades, slaughtering the Muslims, raping the women and killing any Turkish merchant who would not sing the Greek national anthem, all of this in the name of their bloody religion! But their spiritual zeal was all for not, as they overextended themselves in the interior of Turkey and were consequently defeated and driven back to Smyrna and subsequently Greece. In defeated retreat, they did manage to bless the Turks with Christian charity by ransacking and burning every village and farm along their path back to Smyrna.

The 29th of October is a holiday in Turkey, celebrating the creation of the country in 1923. The modern state of Turkey rose out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire's death, the burnt land the retreating Greeks left, the incineration of the Greek's empire-building blueprints, and the great fire that destroyed Smyrna. In the metro a historical display has photos of the Greek's landing. A vivid portrait shows a Greek soldier standing over a dazed elderly Muslim who sits on the dirt road while blood pours from his temple. The soldier is depicted in motion, his rifle raised high for maximum force as he will swing the heavy butt of the weapon into the man's head. Another photo depicts the western clothing of the residents, the architecture akin to Paris or Riga. Then there are the photos of the fire. Nobody knows who started it, but it happened, and a lot of people died. Maybe the Armenians, maybe those pyro Greeks who wanted to leave the Turks nothing, or possibly the Turks who hated the European city that represented the civilization that destroyed their empire. But one significant part of the story is not depicted in the display, and that is the Greeks and foreigners who fled to the waterfront once it became clear that the Turks were bent on repeating the atrocities of the Greeks. Here over 200,000 refugees found deliverance from Allied warships though they did not intervene till thousands had died, drowning in the bay. Yes, that picture had somehow been lost.



On Thursday, the holiday is celebrated. Turkish flags are everywhere. Ataturk, the father, creator, lord, and god of Turkey is ubiquitous. He is Turkey's George Washington, but inexpressibly so much more. There are no Greeks here, the cosmopolitan nature of the city is gone, though it has retained the liberality of its past. Izmir is known as the most liberal city, and the sea of conservative headscarves that is Bursa is not to be seen here. It is sad for me, sad to know the history of this place and the atrocities committed in the name of God and nationalism. A great work of historical fiction that I read on the war between the Greeks and Turks was Birds Without Wings, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in this part of the world. The author, Louis de Bernieres, writes passionately against the brutalities of this war and I think his words are appropriate to share:

So don't misunderstand me, it isn't that I think the Old Greeks are worse than the Turks. What irritates me is that they think they're so much better when really they're exactly the same. God made them Cain and Abel, and whichever one happens to have the upper hand takes his turn as Cain. Whoever is unfortunate enough to be playing the role of Abel seizes the opportunity to bemoan the barbarism of the other. If I ever get to meet God In Person I shall suggest quite forcefully that He impartially abolish their religions, and then they will be friends for ever.

His analogy is perfect, though I disagree with his prescribed cure. As far as abolishing militant, political religion, used for furthering national ambitions and greed, then yes I agree. But what the Greeks did was to imitate not Christ but the Crusaders, that bloody lot that enraged the Muslim world even to this day. The biblical Jesus did not set out to create an earthly kingdom. He was apolitical. James, his disciple and half-brother, said "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (1:27). Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for them, not rape, murder and pillage in hateful hysteria. Those are the relevant guidelines of the faith I practice.