Lessons learned

(An Egyptian obelisk, some Arabic calligraphy on the walls of the Topkapi Palace, inside the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, and one of the hallways of the absolutely massive Grand Bazaar)

So it's my third day in Istanbul and I'm getting the hang of it. I'm staying in a section called Sultanahmet, which is the section of Istanbul which has the most ancient sites to see, and as a result is fueled by a tourist industry that would make Walt Disney roll over in his cryogenic grave. Because of this, most everyone here speaks at least some English, which means I really don't have to use my Azeri, but I still speak it with the hotel staff and store clerks to get brownie points for being pseudo-Turkish. This also means that half the people here are tourists from all over the place. I've never heard so many different languages spoken in one place in my life. Last night I had some beers and played poker with 2 Russian guys, 2 Slovakian girls, an Irish woman, a Kiwi, 3 Turks and a Kurd. Since I was the only one who spoke the respective languages known by each group I ended up being the default translator when they didn't understand each other. It was nice, I talked with the Turks a lot about the differences between here and AZ, and was once again reminded that my Russian is terrible.

I'm starting to notice the differences and, sometimes more striking, the similarities between here and Azerbaijan. The food is similar in restaurants, the language is similar, the customs are similar. However, this is definitely not Azerbaijan. For one, I'm beginning to find that most people here understand Azeri, but with some difficulty. At first I thought it was just because the languages are far more different than most Azeris are willing to admit, but it turns out that a lot of the words that Azerbaijanis use are actually old Turkish words which have been phased out or replaced in modern Turkish. Also, a lot of words in Azeri have been borrowed from Arabic or Persian, and more recently Russian, for which Turks have either their own original words or have adapted from European languages. Also different is the sounds in the language. After speaking and hearing Azeri for a year I have gotten used to the phonetics of the language. It has many sounds which are strange to the English speaker's ear, but which have a soft quality to them which in my opinion makes the language flow easily. But in Turkish many of these sounds are hardened, making it a harsher sounding language. Many words in which Azeri uses the sound "g" is replaced by "k" in Turkish, and "d" becomes "t". Also almost all the normal greetings are different in Turkish, so every time I say "salam aleykum" to someone, instead of responding "aleykum a salam" they say "merheba", which might as well be Vietnamese to me.

Also different is the religious observance. Both Azerbaijan and Turkish are muslim nations, but with significant differences. Firstly, Azerbaijan is the only nation other than Iran which has Shia Islam as its state religion. Turkey, like most of the rest of the muslim world, is Sunni. This carries with it some cultural differences, most of which are slight and are mainly related to expectations of religious observance. However, unlike Turkey, Azerbaijan spent 70 years under the rule of the officially atheist Soviet Union. As a result, people are more likely to have 5 shots of vodka than pray 5 times a day. There is a mosque in Ujar, and it plays the call to prayer 5 times a day, but hardly anyone actually prays and even less go to the mosque itself. That is absolutely not the case here. First off, there are like a billion mosques here, and when the call to prayer plays it comes from every direction at once. I've counted no less than 15 mosques within sight of my hotel's rooftop terrace, and those are just the ones that are nearby. And, when the call to prayer plays, people pray. Not just in the mosque, but everywhere. In the halls of the grand bazaar (pictured above), in the parks, even on the sidewalk, you will see groups of dozens, sometimes hundreds of people lined up on their prayer rugs. I've never seen anything like this in Azerbaijan, even in bigger cities, even on Friday, which is the most important day of prayer in Islam. Furthermore, right now it's Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. From sunrise to sunset the observant obstain from food during this month, and break fast after the last call to prayer. Here it's taken seriously, and you can see hundreds of people gathered in the park between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia waiting for the last call, and then they break out their meals en masse and break fast together. In Azerbaijan, fasting essentially means that people don't drink alcohol (or at least less alcohol)...at best. For two nations that are considered so similar, it sometimes appears to be two different worlds.

More to come later.