I raised my hands in surprise -- what had so upset him on a crystal winter night in Istanbul? He pointed to pallets of paving stones piled outside the Lutfi Kirdar Convention Center and said they had just rebuilt the whole plaza last summer and it disgusted him to see the job being done again, probably by the same contractor.I confessed that earlier in the evening I had tripped on a loose square of granite while walking across to the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, but I had dismissed it as more of the same old business of slapdash work.
Sidewalks and pavements pose a real challenge for government contractors: You have to make it look good and feel sound in order to collect the final payment, but just problematic enough to demand redoing part or most of the job six months later.
Perhaps 20 years in İstanbul have jaded me to civic wrongdoing, but the wonderful music I heard also helped drive away any resentment about someone’s nephew needing a shot of easy municipal money.
What kind of a country is this? I’ll tell you, it’s the kind that gave me the chance to attend a free performance by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Rome… an aggrandizing name for the chamber orchestra of Santa Cecilia. Well, they couldn’t very well call it the Harmonophobic Orchestra of Rome.
The concert was sponsored by Tofaş, represented in person by CEO Ali Pandır, and I received an invitation for being on the mailing list of the Italian Cultural Center and the Turkish-Italian Friendship Association. They didn’t even care that I own a Renault.
The conductor, Uto Ughi, is a violin virtuoso and knows how to play an audience as well as his rare Guarneri del Gesu violin from 1744, known as “Cariplo.” He let the orchestra play the first suite on its own, then he stepped in to lead the Mozart and Paganini numbers. For an encore, he chose to play the rousing “Carmen Fantasy,” by Sarasate, whom he referred to as the Paganini of Spain. The crowd clapped and cheered, so he honored us with a second encore, something to help us go home and go to sleep, he said. Debussy, I’m not sure what he played, but as he drew his bow down on the extended final note, the lady sitting next to me dried a tear from her eye.
Such transcendent beauty helps put the day-to-day troubles of life in perspective. Then last weekend I went to Antalya and met fellow journalists from more than 20 countries around the region and the world, many of them on their first visit to Turkey. We’re standing around the hotel lobby and someone says: So tell me about this Ergenekon case, what’s that about?
Well how much time do you have? Newly elected Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD) Chairwoman Ümit Boyner said that the state should proceed quickly with its Ergenekon investigation and devote more resources to ensure a thorough and professional job of trying those suspected of conspiring to overthrow the government.
Boyner also said that Turkey’s problems are structural, so if you indict 200 Ergenekon suspects and leave the constitutional infrastructure in place, you are not solving anything. Recall South Africa at the end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s rise to power. He sought reconciliation between whites and blacks, and while Turkey’s problem is ideological rather than racial, the dynamics are similar in that ours is not one that can be wiped clean at once.
If you try to rip out every secularist conspirator, root and branch, you’ll end up splitting the society and doing as much harm as good. Now that we’ve gone this far, there’s no putting the genie back in the lamp, but the good of the country and the security of society call for a stop. Make the examples at hand and be done with it, then we can get back to enjoying the sublime sound of music -- with jackhammers on percussion.
