It was left to the skeletal crews manning the newsrooms to plough the wires for off-beat stories of two-headed cows or Guinness Book of Records-breaking gatherings of people dressed as Smurfs. July and August, in the world of journalism, was the “silly season” -- when investigative reports into global warming meant cracking an egg on the sidewalk to see if it would fry. But we have become accustomed to earnestness the whole year round. Will Turkish politicians and Turkish generals manage to square their differences? Will the polarization of Turkish society over the issue run off the scale? And does anyone have the courage to say, “Let's call a truce until autumn -- it's too darn hot”? This is all by way of an excuse for my decision to play hooky from the great issues of the day and disappear off to Kütahya, a city a half-day's journey from İstanbul. The purpose of the visit was to attend the opening of a museum dedicated to the great diarist Evliya Çelebi, whose 40-year account of his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond is one of the great, relatively unsung literary accomplishments of the 17th century. Evliya was from a Kütahya family, and whether he was actually born there himself matters little to city elders determined to claim him as a local son. The city is best known for the İznik-style ceramics it produces and its large porcelain factories near the clay pits out of town. Now it is trying to make its claim as a historical center. The big story in the local press was that the city's large employer, Kütahya Porselen, was bidding for the famous but insolvent German porcelain maker, Rosenthal -- which, if it comes to pass, will be a takeover no less impressive an acquisition than the Turkish confectioner Ülker's purchase of Godiva chocolates. A villager we met at the opening of a restored mausoleum turns out to be no bumpkin but spends his time marketing dried fruit to confectionary firms in Scotland. If the rest of Turkey seems immersed in a crisis of identity, torn between East and West, no one seems to have told the people of Kütahya.
I don't suppose there is an authentic Anatolian voice but this bustling mid-size city close to the birthplace of the Ottoman dynasty is far enough from both Ankara and İstanbul to have a personality all its own. Our hotel was a remarkably well-restored 19th century family mansion on a street where there were other equally well-restored stucco and wooden houses. In the evening, I attend a concert of tasavuf -- or religiously inspired mystic -- music organized by the same society that established the Evliya Çelebi museum. The municipal theater is like a bread oven, and the event has the air of a well-organized amateur talent contest, which it makes it all the more unexpected that the music is so captivating, the singing and playing so committed and the evening so much fun.
Two days later I am in Kuruçeşme on the Bosporus, trying to keep pace with the thousands bopping up and down to the beat of Santana, a highlight of the Istanbul Jazz Festival. It's a slick event (all the more so since the organizers had arranged for boat companies to ferry passengers from transport hubs around the city to prevent the traffic congestion from being totally grotesque). The crowd doesn't quite appear to be the types who would sit through three hours of classical Turkish music in Kütahya -- but then I suppose they might say the same thing about me.
I am wary about jumping to the conclusion that Turkey is divided into two cultures. The editor of İstanbul's trendy music magazine, Roll, smartly points out the role the Santana ballad “Europe” has in Turkish life. It is played at most weddings for the married couple's first dance and hence is the sound track for even conservative couples' first display of public intimacy. At one stage, Carlos Santana intoned (no one said he could sing) John Coltrane's “A Love Supreme” against a light panel of a heart wrapped in thorns -- a bit of ecclesiastic kitsch which the concertgoers in Kütahya would find a little bit quaint. “Peace and love,” says Santana and tells us that old hippies never die. The crowd is there to lose itself in the music and doesn't need convincing. And in Kütahya, they sing to the same beat.
