My trip to Turkey was eleven days of my life, and nine and a half of those actually in the country. This is a limited time to get a sense of what the country is like, but here are my thoughts, and my prayers.
One is not very long in the country before you know you are in a Muslim country. It is not just that the country has a high Muslim population, which is between 98 and 99%. It is an officially Muslim country. The flag boldly says so. The presence of mosques and minarets every few blocks in the city and somewhat more spread out but prevalent in the villages says so. The loudspeakers with prayer calls already recorded loudly proclaiming in Arabic what everyone’s responsibility is says so. The way more than usual the number of women in head scarves to full burkas says so. We see that here in the U.S., but not as much. However, one sees far less of it than one might expect given the architecture and flag.
On the other hand, the loudspeakers do not have the same effect on everyone. One does not see a rush of shopkeepers, pedestrians, and consumers rushing from the street to pray somewhere. Many, many seem to ignore it.
One also sees something on faces I could describe as distractedness, sadness, weariness, wariness, darkness, or oppression. Do they know something worse is coming at the hands of their president, who is making alliances with history’s bad guys? “Turkey has always been on the wrong side of history,” our travel guide said. Our Turkish guides spoke carefully and in general terms of their government, if they mention it at all. One said, “We drink a lot,” to which I observed that I though Muslims didn’t drink. It became clear that there are Muslims who follow the rules, devoutly, and there are most of the population who lives around rather than by those rules.
We met Christians who live below the radar. We met a girl (Muslim) from Australia to have plastic surgery on her nose, apparently a big industry. We met people trying to make a living. The service in hotels and restaurants was very good, the food excellent, the service on the airlines and tour buses wonderful, the technology up to par (better than average cell phone service), and a lot of Western and American influence on billboards, fashion. Poverty was not overly visible. The street dogs bothered me a lot, though I am more concerned about humans.
At a gathering of old friends and colleagues last night, several asked about my trip and impressions. The spiritual ones stay with me the most. One said she had been in Ephesus in the 1970s on a trip, but there was not much excavation there then. “Oh, there is a lot,” I assured her. The government is putting money into that for tourism and to seem respectable to the world. That is good for the rest of us; is it good for the Turkish citizens?
Please pray that this country will not continue in the direction of radicalization that it is; that the Christian population will not be jailed or deported just for expressing their human rights. They are of course a more collectivist culture than we are—every culture in the world is more collectivist than the U.S.--so protest and resistance is a different matter for them. But they have something to fear, as do we.
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