The House of Baklava (or an Interlude on Turkish Politics)

Yesterday the Turkish people cast their votes. In a few days, new representatives will be inaugurated into the Parliament -- the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (Turkey's Grand National Assembly). Of course, as always, I should have written more earlier, but let me catch you up a bit...

A few weeks ago, a friend and I went on a party propaganda photo shoot. We scoured the city for pictures of flags and posters. For the last few weeks, the city has been bedecked in lines of multicolored flags across every intersection and major avenue. Sometimes the territory was staked out by a single party, sometimes the flags competed for attention, trying to be the highest and the biggest.

Unlike in the United States, where much of campaigning happens on TV or in booths, here the whole capital city was a playground for political party canvassing. Besides flags, there were clever slogans at every bus stop, stickers plastered on the escalator, billboards, graffiti...

But the most visible campaigns happened live on the city streets. Every few hours, a convoy of buses and cars would drive by, blaring nationalistic songs and waving Turkish and party flags. At least twice a day, our Turkish class on the 6th floor of Atatürk Bulvarı would be interrupted by megaphoned slogans. The largest group I saw had about 4 buses and at least 20 cars (I counted), driving slowly across all three lanes of traffic...

Sometimes the bigger political parties -- the AK Party, the CHP, the MHP (more on these later) -- blared by. But often, it was the smaller parties, those parties not expected to garner a single seat in the new assembly.* They were just making noise, it seemed, just trying to get their voices heard (if not listened to)...


The day was hot. The kind of hot where holding my camera in the sun burned my fingers, where flies sweated, where the sun seemed lost in the shimmering glare of the sky... We wandered into a shady side street and suddenly came across Kocatepe Mosque, the biggest mosque in Ankara, its four white minnarets gleaming.

And on the same street, right across from the mosque, were the AK Party's headquarters. The AKP (the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party) has been in Parliament since 2002. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is Turkey's current prime minister.

Yesterday, the AKP was the overwhelming leader, getting about 47% of the popular vote. Of the Parliament's 550 seats, its representatives will now hold at least 340.

We walked past the headquarters, the party's flags cascading from top to bottom. The next buiding was a small cafe we first called "House of Baklava." Perfect, I thought. Eating my favorite Turkish dessert near a beautiful mosque, and next to the ruling party's headquarters. A little corner of Turkey's essence.

But then it got better, but also less simple... Turns out the cafe was called "Hoş Sofra," or "Pleasant Table." (We'd mistaken part of the menu for the name.) And when I first asked for baklava, the restaurant's single employee brought me burekas instead...

Then he took away our napkins. And then the salt and pepper. For the restaurant's four outside tables, there was exactly one napkin holder. One salt and pepper holder. One ashtray, one toothpick tray, one sugar bowl. One worker. He bustled from table to table, moving items from one customer to another.

But somehow, in typical Turkish fashion, it all worked out. The lady who smoked got her ashtray, we got our napkins back when we needed them (the cafe's owner finally understood my Turkish and brought me the baklava, and a cup of free tea besides).
The owner even had time to slip us a couple of business cards. "Do come again," he smiled from beneath his thick moustache.

And then the processions started. As we sipped our free tea and nibbled on baklava, first the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) drove by, horns blaring, then the CHP in a smaller van, then a few other parties. All did their best to make the most noise in front of the AKP headquarters.

It didn't get violent, and it didn't get nasty. The party vans just drove by, and some of the AKP guys came outside to stare, but that's about it.

And at that moment I had so much hope for Turkey, and so much love for it. It wasn't always running smoothly, (and the baklava was a bit stale :) ), but somehow it worked. Needs were satisfied (despite a slight delay), opposing voices were heard, religion was visible but not overbearing...

Of course, it was just a feeling, a somewhat naive conception strongly colored by heat and sugar... But I can still hope...

This morning as I walked to class, the flags were gone. I saw just one red scrap still curled against a tree trunk. No more blaring horns, no more noise.

And what about those other 48 parties? How will they get their voices heard now? Is Turkey the kind of country in which consensus can be built, in which even after elections, the majority listens to the needs of the minority?

I guess we'll see over the coming weeks...

*Turkey has 51 officially registered parties, of which 13 participated in yesterday's elections (along with independent, unaffiliated representatives). Only those who receive at least 10% of the vote (in each election block) get seats in the National Assembly. Only three parties (AKP, CHP, and MHP), along with independent representatives, will be part of the new government...