When I am driving, often another driver will flash his lights and wave his arms at me. When I first started driving I did not think much of it. Then I will discover a little further down the road there was a bad accident or a stalled car or road work and I needed to detour.Detour signs are not common here. Also there is no radio station that informs drivers about road work, traffic accidents, etc. We just learn these things as we drive. I pay a little more attention now when I see another driver waving his hands emphatically or flashing his lights.
A TZ reader wrote to me recently and shared how she gets tired of being told what to do. Last time I gave the full text of what she wrote; as a summary she said she felt like she is being treated like a child and gets really frustrated when people always tell her where to sit and to avoid a breeze or to not do this or that ... she thinks to herself, “Oh no! More advice.”
However you long you stay in Turkey, I think people will want to give you advice because they are trying to help you. It sounds like Fiona, who wrote in and comes from a similar culture to mine where people just let people find out for themselves.
Maybe we are used to getting advice from our mothers or older sisters. Maybe we came abroad to try to get away from that advice. But in an individualistic society, we don’t expect to get advice from people we don’t know very well, and particularly not from strangers on the street.
But Turkey is not an individualistic society. It is a community or group-based society. People feel a greater sense of responsibility for their friends. Telling you what to do, or what not to do, is not a sign of interfering in someone else’s business. It is a sign that they care.
If your Turkish friend thought you needed some help and advice and didn’t open their mouth they would feel hard and uncaring. The advice they give is given from a standpoint of being your friend. Real friends give you advice.
This can take a little getting used to. If you feel that they are meddling in your private business, just try to remember that they are really intending to help.
It is harder when the advice comes from a different cultural viewpoint. An English friend came to Turkey with her 8-month-old daughter. The climate in May and June was much warmer than they had been used to in freezing cold Yorkshire, and so she didn’t wrap her daughter up in hat and gloves when they went out. She was continually being warned by ladies in the street that she must wrap her daughter up more, or Sarah would get a cold and die. She began to feel that the Turks thought she was a bad mother. “My daughter will boil if I put woolen hat and gloves on her,” she exclaimed to me, and continued, “It is amazing anyone in England lives to the age of 2, as we are all taken out without hat and gloves in this weather.”
Other examples of summer advice range from “Don’t eat ice cream: you will get a sore throat,” through “Don’t drink a cold drink when sweating,” (ditto for the results: as an American in Turkey I normally terrify my friends by putting ice in my coke) to “Don’t walk on the floor with bare feet” (result: you will get a “mikrop”). Of course, the really iniquitous bit of advice for the foreigner who is perspiring profusely in an un-air-conditioned minibus or dolmuş: “Don’t open that window, the breeze will give us all a sore neck.”
I have lived here quite successfully for over 25 years and done all of these things and stayed healthy. The thing that can make you ill is getting angry at all the advice.
What is the best way to handle it? If you can, just ignore this type of advice. Grow a thick skin, and smile inside when someone warns you about having the air conditioner too high, or having an ice cream. Don’t let it wind you up.
And if you can remember that your Turkish friend is just giving you advice because your welfare really matters to him or her, then you can smile genuinely on the outside, too.
Note: Keep your questions and observations coming: I want to ensure this column is a help to you, Today’s Zaman’s readers. Email: c.mcpherson@todayszaman.com
