In fact, other than the elderly and children, you will hardly find anyone on the streets at that time of day. Here in Turkey, though, people of all ages are to be found at any hour of every day walking down streets in numbers we would really rather not see.In the West, from Sunday night until Friday -- in other words, the business week -- bars and restaurants generally shut down at 11 p.m., and public services, including buses, wind down at around 11:30 p.m. The aim here is to ensure that after going out to eat and drink, people get home by midnight and are able to get up and go to work the next morning on time. This is a program which you can see in effect in particular in England. On Friday and Saturday nights, nightclubs are open until the next morning's light. As for Turkey, we have here in this nation an incredible level of imbalance when it comes to this question. You can stay out all throughout the week, drinking until the morning light, and then throw up on the municipal bus as you head home. I suppose you could call this freedom.
Westerners are also quite surprised by the sheer number of armed security (police, soldiers, private security guards, etc.) present everywhere. They are also quite amazed when they see for the first time the enormity of the Turkish Parliament. Parliament employs 4,766 people. Over 7,000 people visit Parliament per day on average. On Tuesdays and Fridays, when group meetings are held, visitor numbers rise to around 10,000 a day. All this means the number of weekly visitors to Parliament is around 40,000 -- or in monthly terms, 160,000.
A Westerner might also have trouble understanding why it is that alcohol and cigarettes are allowed at sports clubs and university campuses here. They would find it illogical. But in order to understand the presence of alcohol and cigarettes in places where sports and healthy lifestyles are being encouraged, you need to know Turkey well. A Westerner likewise would definitely not understand how it is that people can take alcoholic drinks and consume them either on the streets or in parks used by children here. If you so much as try to drink alcohol on a street in the West, or even worse, in a children's park, you will definitely be thrown in prison for some time. Another kind of person Westerners wouldn't understand in Turkey is the middle class Turkish citizen who likes to walk his or her dog in parks and lets them use these parks as bathrooms and who interprets as animal rights the idea of protecting street dogs by keeping them on the streets. In the West, when your dog relieves itself on the street, you have to see that the feces are put into a bag and thrown into the trash, or else you face a stiff fine.
And what is there to say about our taste for guns here in Turkey? The tradition of using weddings as an opportunity to "hunt" friends and relatives like birds by shooting bullets into the air in order to celebrate must be one particularly unique to us.
Another thing foreigners have a hard time understanding is why it is that Turks, who normally appear to be quite harmonious and easygoing people, turn into monsters when they get behind the wheel of a car. "I am in control," is what we seem to be saying when we get our hands on the steering wheel. No one stops anymore at red lights in Turkey. Pedestrians have no rights. Stepping on the gas pedal is seen as a sign of power.
In general, carelessness reigns in Turkey. But as for Westerners, they are always amazed by the incredible level of care shown to the order on our dinner tables, both at homes and in restaurants. Maybe we are not aware, but even if our cars stray onto pedestrian sidewalks, our spoons, forks and napkins are always in place. A delicious soup precedes our main dishes. And if you eat white beans, you can be sure it will be accompanied by a wonderful pilav and a "çoban" salad in the middle of the table, later to be followed by dessert, fruit, tea and some Turkish coffee at the end. And so, the design and harmony of a dinner table -- which might seem normal to a Turk -- is for a Westerner as gorgeous and balanced as a concert.
Turks tend to use blonds in their commercials while most Turks are brunettes. While institutions' libraries in the West are generally located on the spacious, well-lighted middle floors of buildings, these same sorts of libraries in Turkey are generally found in basement floors. This is especially the case in public buildings. When a ceremony is held to signal the start of construction of a new building, Europeans such as the Dutch have a "roofing" ceremony, whereas the Turks call this the "foundation laying" ceremony.
