Time for celebration
The mood in my area of Ankara has turned joyful since Sunday night. Ignoring Ramadan time, people are out in the streets, drinking, smoking, and engaging in feverish conversations with friends and neighbours. The topic: the recent municipal elections in which the leading party didn’t gain or even lost the country’s main cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Antalya (in that order by population rank). Instead, the opposition party founded by Ataturk a century ago, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), took control. In Istanbul and Ankara, the incumbent mayors remain for a second term.
It was such a cause for celebration in urban Turkey that it was accepted not to turn up for work on Monday morning due to late-night partying the evening before. I understood it when B, the lady who helps us with household duties, came on Tuesday instead. She was so cheerful that she had to tell me, overcoming my inability to understand the language with Google translate.
In my local café, fellow customers were in the same spirit, using a few words of French or English to share the happy news with me. This area is already liberal during Ramadan time -people do not hide to eat and drink during the day-, it became even more so with the election results.
Being a shrewd politician, the current President quickly turned the unfavourable results into a positive outcome. “Democracy is the winner of the election,” he stated on the main Turkish media, TRT. “We will respect the will of the people. It is time for self-criticism.” Local people here are sceptical of his words. They have seen previous times when the elections results were contested, but it seems that this time, the results are too much in favour of the opposition to do so. At least, they are more hopeful.
That said, Turkiye remains a deeply divided country between the secular Republicans and partisans of a Muslim rule. Because of my European origin and the area where I live, I am mainly in contact with the liberal part of the city. However, when I wander around Ulus, the more traditional neighbourhood, I see that the restaurants are empty and the kebab shops dormant, waiting for the break of the fast. It seems that it will take me some time to enter the deeper layers of this fascinating country.
© D. Magada
