My Problem with Watching Kung-Fu Panda in Turkish: Thoughts on a Global Hollywood

“You are almost ready to be entrusted with the secret ingredient of my secret ingredient soup. And then you will fulfill your destiny and take over the restaurant just as I took it over from my father who took it over from his father who won it from a friend in a game of mahjong.”

-Mr. Ping, Kung-Fu Panda

A few weeks ago, I was on a bus from Batman to Van and, to kill time during the 6-hour ride, I was flipping through the movies and television programs available on the bus’ TV system. Turkish buses have entertainment systems that are more advanced than those on most U.S. airplanes or buses. Some are equipped with satellite television while others feature a library of programs saved on a central hard-drive that you can start whenever you want. This bus was of the latter variety, and I found Kung-Fu Panda among the available movies. I had never seen the movie before, and I prefer cartoons to other programs when watching TV in another language because cartoons are generally easier to understand, so I flipped it on and started watching.

Now, I don’t speak enough Turkish to understand all the dialogue, but I was still able to follow what went on in the movie: lazy panda with dreams of becoming a kung-fu master accidently fulfills some prophecy about the coming of a great warrior, and thus is taken into the temple. At the same time, one of the most fearsome evil warriors escapes from his imprisonment, and so the master at the temple must train the panda to be a kung-fu master, despite his obvious lack of ability at the beginning.

All in all, it’s an enjoyable movie, and it certainly helped me pass the time during this voyage. However, while I was watching I couldn’t shake the feeling that relationship that existed between who this movie was about, who produced the movie, and who this movie was reaching, was troubling. I realized while watching this movie that problems arise when we allow the American film industry to mediate between non-American cultures and interpret these cultures for the rest of the world.

I’m not going to claim that Kung Fu Panda is racist in any way. First of all, I didn’t understand enough of the movie to make a claim about this subject, one way or another, and second of all, that’s not at all my aim in writing this. Besides, I doubt that actors such as Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan would agree to appear in a film that gravely misappropriates their culture.

This is the vision of China that the makers of Kung-Fu Panda spread throughout the world

My argument, however, stems from the basic problem that Kung Fu Panda is an American film, with an American producer, American directors,and four American writers, yet it is about Chinese culture. And needless to say, in a children’s movie, the object is never to paint an accurate portrayal of the culture in question. Instead, Kung-Fu Panda seems to represent an Americanized version of what China. It is a spunky, sassy, and action-packed world filled with animals, mysticism, and wonder. I believe this movie represents China as an American child would like to imagine it; indeed, it seems the writers knew their audience, and played to them well.

However, the problem we face is this: In today’s international film industry, we are never writing for our national audience anymore. A blockbuster film such as Kung-Fu Panda is now seen all over the world, interacting with local cultural mindsets everywhere it is shown. For example, Andrew Lam notes that the reaction to Kung-Fu Panda in China was disparate. Although some Chinese intellectuals claimed that the movie was horrific in the way it sought to sell Chinese culture back to its people, the film was wildly popular in China. He himself conjectures that this sort of cultural exchange between China and the U.S., whereby the U.S. holds up a fun-house mirror to China, may be a good thing.

Here in Turkey, however, I can’t be so optimistic. Very few foreigners live in Turkey. Outside of the major cities and universities, there are practically none. The current flow of refugees coming from Syria adds to the diversity in the southeast, but generally immigration does not seem to be incredibly common either. As a result, Turkey is quite ethnically homogenous. In fact, its one sizable minority, the Kurds, have been a topic of contention for many years, to say the least. Thus, Turkish people generally have little to know direct experience with other cultures. My guess is that the vast majority of Turkish citizens will never see China in person. Many have probably never met or talked to a Chinese person, and many never will.

And so, the problem I have with Kung-Fu Panda lies in the fact that, in the absence of direct experience with other cultures, movies and television shows become one of the main conduits through which people can learn about these cultures. I feel that this is likely the case in Turkey, as well as in other countries where common citizens are wealthy enough to go to the cinema, but not wealthy enough to travel extensively outside of the country. So, I fear that in these countries, viewers will fail to distinguish between the true cultural elements contained in films like KFP and the creative liberties taken by the film’s writers. By constructing an Americanized, romanticized vision of China and shipping it all over the world, we are unknowingly imprinting that vision onto other peoples’ ideas of what China is really like.

“But that’s ridiculous,” you’re probably saying as you watch a panda on stilts fight a power-hungry tiger for possession of a magical scroll, “there’s no way that anybody could think this is real.”

If you don't come from the culture depicted here, it can be hard to tell how much of this is accurate, and how much of it stems from American exoticization and romanticization

Well of course. I would guess that nobody in this world would believe that China is actually a place where pandas, monkeys, storks, and tigers fight using kung-fu and magic. However, Kung-Fu Panda bases itself on some true aspects of Chinese culture, and then supplements those realities with American stereotypes and far-fetched fantasy. When you are within the culture that produced the film, or the one that is predicted, it is much easier to know where reality ends and the creative liberties begin. When you are sitting on the outside, however, it impossible to know the difference and you will undoubtedly mesh the two in your mind.

And that is why I am unease about the size and power of Hollywood. In every country, you have your domestic cinema, to be sure, but from what I’m seen, these films are usually more… well… domestic in nature. So, if you’re going to movies and want to see something… exotic, well then, no matter where you are in the world, you’re probably viewing something that made by American hands, meaning that the foreign cultures you’re seeing have passed through an American lens before they reach you. At the most benign, it means that cultures have been simplified or romanticized during the film-making process. At the worst, you’ll end up watching a film filled with stereotypes Americans hold about the culture.

And this is how we portrayed the Middle East

So, if you want to learn about the China or Japan, we have some kung-fu and ninja fights that you’ll love! Want to know what French is like? One order of Ratatouille, coming right up! Let’s see… Scandinavia? So you want vikings, right? Yeah, I think we can do vikings. Oh, you want to see the Middle East… Would you like to see Aladdin? Or something a tad more… violent?

In short, the current system needs to change. American filmmakers need to be more conscious of whom their movies are ultimately going to, and what messages they send to these audiences. More importantly, the film industry must become much more international and multifaceted, either through the international emergence of other national cinemas (look for the emergence of Indian, Japanese, French, and German films onto this stage in the coming years) or the internationalization of Hollywood itself.

For an example of this, look no further than the movie franchise we've been discussing. As it turns out, the third installment of the Kung-Fu Panda franchise will be produced in China as a co-production between American and Chinese film studios. I consider this development to be a welcome change that gives Chinese artists much more influence over how their culture is percivied worldwide, but still consider it troubling that this sort of collaboration did not exist until two KFP movies had already been made. In general, this sort of international collaboration needs to become much more commonplace when films' storylines stray across national borders, or else moviegoers around the world will continue to be bombarded with American cultural ideals in the guise of messengers from other cultures.

Why Tourism Can Be Problematic for Cross-Cultural Understanding (My Love/Hate Relationship with İstanbul)

So now we can start seeing the terrorists… I mean, the tourists.

-Our cab driver, upon arriving at a tourist attraction in Istanbul

For those of you who have no interest in hearing me prattle about "culture," "understanding," and other nonsense, here is a picture of İstanbul being beautiful

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Istanbul for the better part of a week when my parents came to visit me in Turkey for Kurban Bayramı, the Muslim holiday that celebrates the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. During this week, we did most of the common things to do in Istanbul: we saw the Aya Sofya and the other great mosques in the city, such as the Blue Mosque and Suleymaniye Mosque, we took a cruise up the Bosphorus, and we toured Istiklal Street and its many bars, shops, and restaurants.

And it was an absolutely wonderful week. I’m glad I got to see many of the sights in Istanbul for a second time, as many of them, especially the view from the Bosphorus, the Aya Sofya, and the Suleymaniye Mosque, are absolutely amazing. In addition, it’s certainly true that, no matter how many times you’ve been to Istanbul, you’ll always keep finding amazing cafes, restaurants, and sights you never know existed before. İstanbul truly is one of the most amazing, vibrant, and historical cities in the world.

The caveat to that, of course, is that İstanbul is one of the most amazing, vibrant, and historical cities in the world. And with that comes baggage. More specifically, it brings baggage stored in large, bright, gaudy suitcases – perhaps with a cruise line or travel agency logo on it – carried by many, many tourists. We unwittingly visited Istanbul during the heart of cruise season, so every day, as we went out, we were surrounded by the countless droves of tourists who flock to the city this time of year.

As I write this, I recognize that I am myself a visitor to this country, and I also spend my weekends visiting other parts of the country and seeing their important cultural and/or geographic landmarks. So, you may think that my problem is simply one of hypocrisy, that I am just one tourist complaining about how everyone else is making the local attractions so crowded, without understanding the negative externality I exert on others.

It’s not that, however. I promise my issue represents something more than one donkey’s complaint that he is surrounded by a bunch of asses. It is instead something deeper, because when I talk about a “tourist,” I define the term incredibly narrowly. A tourist is not merely any person who travels for pleasure, but is specifically the type of person who seeks to maintain his or her way of life to the fullest extent possible while visiting another culture. In this way, I distinguish the tourist from what I call “the traveler” who strives to understand and take part in the local culture to the fullest extent possible while visiting another country.

These distinctions had been in circulating in my mind for quite some time, ever since my fellow English teaching colleague, Ebrahim, introduced them to me two years ago, during my first stay in Turkey. It was not until this past trip to Istanbul, however, that I finally understood, or was able to put into words, why I have a problem with tourists.

My problem is that, I believe that tourism—which I define as the economic systems and interactions that are created by the actions of tourists, again not travelers—is bad for cross-cultural understanding.

I understand that this is quite the contentious claim, especially since most scholars would argue that, overall, intercultural contact leads to increased inter-group understanding. However, if you travel to a different country but want to keep things around you as familiar and comfortable as possible, there are a number of companies that offer these services. You can choose a hotel or cruise ship where you’re afforded all the conveniences you’re used to, with people who are hired to wait on you and speak in your own language, or you can go on a guided tour where your guide will take care of almost everything for you, from food to transportation to deciding what is worth seeing in the first place. A tourist could spend an entire vacation relying on these types of services, thereby saving themselves the trouble of having to navigate these issues themselves. And many people do just that.

And none of this is wrong per se. I mean, if you have the means to afford these services, why not by yourself a little piece of mind while you’re traveling, right? So you can actually enjoy your vacation, right? My problem with these programs however, is that when you’re on these tours, or a cruise ship, the entire goal is to keep you from interacting with a local resident of the place you’re visiting. The ones you do interact with are paid employees at the hotel or with the tour company; they are given money to treat you subserviently, in a way. So, to put this in a different way, to engage in this kind of tourism usually means that you are unintentionally ignoring or delegitimizing the local culture or population. At its worst, tourism is about seeing “the sights,” usually historical buildings, and focusing solely on these sorts of attractions. If this is the aim of tourism, then it defines a country such as Turkey by what happened there hundreds or thousands of years ago, while ignoring, either willfully or unwittingly, the millions of people that call this country home and their culture.

This is a beautiful, awe-inspiring house of worship

To see an example of this, let’s visit the Blue Mosque, which was packed with visitors during my trip to Istanbul. Of course, my problem with it being crowded was partially hypocritical whining, the “why is it so crowded?” complaint. However, I think more of it came from the comportment of the visitors while they were in the mosque. Outside the structure, there were numerous signs asking guests to remain respectfully quiet. Once inside the mosque, I could see that these signs were to no avail. A noticeable din developed in the visitor’s side of the mosque as tour guides rattled off factoids to their followers, fathers pointed out parts of the mosque to their sons and daughters, and everybody snapped pictures.

And all the while I bit my tongue.

Because, while all of this was going on, people were praying at the front of the mosque. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to visit a mosque when it’s almost empty, then you’ll know that –like entering a church – one of the greatest aspects of the visit is the sense of reverence you feel as the walk in and the size, beauty, and silence of the space hit you at once. Upon walking in, you can understand its function and beauty as a house of worship and you can instantly appreciate that, allowing you to connect with the culture that built it, even if you don’t subscribe to the same faith. Needless to say, this atmosphere is largely undone when there is the constant buzz of a crowd milling through the back of the structure. While I was there, it no longer felt like a house of worship, but instead like a museum or any other tourist attraction.

And this is a tourist trap

I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I had gone there wanting to pray.

And that’s my point about tourism, summed up in this example. In my eyes, the crowd of tourists defines the Blue Mosque only as a beautiful structure, or a historic building. In doing so, it ignores the significance the building has for the residents of Istanbul. In fact, the actions of the tourists can actually undermine its value as a house of worship for the locals, in the way I just described. If I were a devout Muslim in Istanbul, I’d almost certainly find myself choosing to avoid the noisy crowd of non-believers at the Blue Mosque, despite its historical significance, and opt for a quieter place to pray instead.

In this way, from the side of the locals, tourism might be viewed as the newest wave of colonialism: with their money, they can change respected and revered cultural symbols into tourist traps surrounded by hotels and gift shops. Within the most touristy areas of the world’s most famous cities, I wouldn’t be surprised if the locals feel marginalized within their own milieu. To make matters worse, since tourists bring money, the businessmen/women in touristy areas will of course jack up their prices, further driving away the everyday inhabitants of these amazing areas. This process leads to the development of touristic ghettos, filled with pricey hotels and restaurants and located far from poorer neighborhoods in these cities. In some beach towns, the problem is even worse, as actual walls and fences are built keep unwanted intruders off the premises of pricey hotels. Beach resorts in Mexico represent an extreme example of this, as cartel violence in some areas leads to the complete walling-off and isolation of these resorts. These conditions lead to a stark separation between foreigners and locals. All too often, this line can fall squarely along economic divides.

So yes, if I was a local living in a popular tourist destination, I would probably feel resentful.

Of course, the problem isn’t all with the tourists. As I referenced before, due to the wealth disparity I just mentioned and perhaps a touch of resentment, some “entrepreneurs” see tourists as their golden ticket to a better life. With gouged prices or flat out scams, some business owners in these areas might try to siphon off as much tourist money as they can in a given season. It goes without saying that there are a significant number of friendly, good-hearted, respectable people in the tourism industry. However, the problem remains that economic pressures lead many local businessmen/women to become much more pushy, aggressive, or unscrupulous when it comes to making a sale, or the price at which the sale is made.

And unfortunately, these pushy, aggressive, or unscrupulous shop owners or tour guides are a noticeable proportion of the locals that tourists will actually meet, because most tourists don’t really interact with true locals all that often. Moreover, the everyday, decent people that live in these cities often have no reason to break through this aforementioned invisible divide and meet tourists. I would absolutely agree with the statement that intercultural contact, in general, breeds intercultural understanding, but I fear that tourism, as I define it, does not cause intercultural contact. Instead, it fosters contact only between the tourists and the people that seek to make money from them. Meanwhile, the true locals of a city never meet the tourists. They may only see them walking around, sporting clothes or comportment they see as “different,” without ever gaining the opportunity to understand it. Worse yet, they may only come into contact with the effects of tourism, the creation of the touristic ghettos I described above.

As such, this sort of interplay does not lead to understanding, I think. Instead, it merely leads to a simplification and stereotyping of different cultures. The locals come to see foreigners as camera-toting, helpless individuals who have little respect for the local culture, yet can get whatever they want thanks to the money they have. When it comes to the tourists, they may come to see the locals in two separate ways: either as the helpful, polite, and respectful people that work in the hotels and restaurants (these perceptions may unfortunately be clouded by the air of servitude, however) or the shifty, untrustworthy con artists looking to nickel and dime them out of every last dollar/pound/euro.

I worry that these perceptions tend to stick because the nature of tourism keeps the true members of the local society away from true members of the local society. Indeed, some tourists chasing “authentic culture” may instead find belly dancers in Turkey, or snake charmers in Morocco (neither of these things are originally from the country they were mentioned with). Tourists, I fear, are not given authenticity. Instead, they are offered a hyper-romanticized version of what the country used to be (or in some cases, what another country used to be. See: snake charmers in Morocco) and so they go back home detailing how amazing Turkey or whatever-country-they-visited was, when in fact they never actually experienced the true nature of the country, or its people, or its culture. Their visit lead to no understanding (well, maybe they had some good chats with tourists from other wealthy nations), instead it simply reinforced harmful stereotypes, both in their minds and in the minds of others.

This post is a plea to all my friends and family and others: everyone I know, as well as those I do not. When you visit another country next, please aim to make yourself a traveler, and not a tourist. Please step outside of your comfort zone and try to interact with the people and cultural symbols that are real and authentic. Try to leave the beaten path and connect with someone completely different from yourself. This post is not intended to be a damnation of certain people for the way they travel. There is no hard-and-fast line between the tourist and the traveler. Rather, it is a spectrum onto which we fall, based on the choices we make: pricey hotel or bed-and-breakfast, McDonald’s or authentic cuisine, hiring a tour guide or asking a random shop keeper for recommendations. I have done many touristy things in the past, and indeed, nobody has a perfect track record in terms of being the perfect cultural ambassador. Too often, our fear or discomfort holds us back from engaging in a truly new and different experience. But I beg you to make a conscious effort to make choices – small choices even – that affirm and support the lives and culture of the local people in the place you’re visiting, in lieu of spending your time in ritzy hotels, restaurants, and resorts that are clearly catering to your ilk.

As I said, I have gone the touristy route a number of time, more often than I’d like to admit, and sometimes the experiences have turned out fantastically. However, more often than not, I end up feeling cheated, like I paid too much for something that wasn’t as great as advertised and like I missed out on a real experience. The next time you travel, I encourage you to be wary of the prepackaged touristy experiences that attempt to tell you how to experience another country and what that country is. Instead, make your own itinerary and discover what life is like there for yourself. I assure you, you’ll end up enjoying it more if you take the time to truly discover and connect with this other culture and, more importantly, the world will be a better place because of it.

Why Learning Turkish Is Easier Than You Think

I ended my intro to Turkey by pointing out that most people probably think Turkish is an incredibly hard language to learn, if they know it's a language at all. That's not an unreasonable thing to think, though. I mean, look at the languages around it geographically. Neither, Arabic, Farsi, Greek, nor Bulgarian take the Roman Alphabet, so it wouldn't be ridiculous to assume that Turkey also uses some similar sort of non-Western alphabet, right? In addition, someone who knew a bit about the origins of the Turkish people might point out that they actually came from Central Asia, which is about as far from the birthplace of English as you can get, and that Turkish isn't even in the same language family as English. It's instead in the same family as languages like Mongolian, Japanese, and Korean, as well as its closer Central Asian relatives.

So, after all that, you might guess that Turkish may be one of the most foreign, bizarre, and irregular languages you might ever encounter, right?

In my opinion, not so. In fact, I consider it to be quite easy to pick up, even compared to the close relative of English I studied previously, French. Others might disagree with me on this point, but to back up this claim, I've offered a few simple reasons why Turkish is easier to learn that you think it is. Oh, I've also thrown in a lot of examples, so I can trick you into learning some Turkish while I'm at it.

Reason 1-3: Turkish uses the Roman Alphabet, and the sounds are not only incredibly similar to those in English, but almost entirely regular in their pronunciation.

As I mentioned in my first post, Turkish used to be written using an alphabet very similar to that of Farsi, but this was changed in the 1920s to a Roman alphabet. If you'd like someone to thank for that, send your regards to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (more on him at a later time).

In addition, possibly because of this late change, Turkish spelling is entire different from English in a very pleasing way: the spelling is completely phonemic, meaning that every letter makes the same sound every single time. No dealing with silent letters, or C's and X's that change sounds depending on where you find them. No more wondering what happened to the words schism or rhombus that made them that way. Instead the Turkish language almost always follows the sounds laid out in this alphabet:

A - an "ah" sound, like the vowel sound in pot, lot, John, and rob.
B - the B we all know and love, like in Bob, bet, or bits.
C - First difference, this is the sound we normally write as "J", such as in Judge Judy
Ç - First new letter, this is our "Ch" sound, like in cheddar cheese.
D - No difference here, D as in difference.
E - The Turkish E is always pronounced like the one in bet or lend.
F - Same F, as in fife, or fig. 
G - Same G, like in giga or gag. 
Ğ - This is where it gets tricky. This is a soft (yumaşak) G, which is silent and just elongates the vowel preceding it. For example, if you say the Turkish word değil (which means "not") it sounds like you're saying day eel (like a watersnake that's strictly on a 9 AM - 9 PM schedule) 
H - Same H really, like in human or hah. 
I - The ı (without a dot), is pronounced like the English short i, like in bit or fig.
İ - This i (with the dot), is a longer, back vowel, like the vowel in beet or leaf. 
J - Another difference, this is pronounced like a "zj"sound at the end of garage or montage. 
K - No differences, keep the K's the same. 
L - No change, let the L's live. 
M - Same, M's remain. 
N - No difference, N's not affected. 
O - Ok, so the O's are pronounced exactly as you would would say the letter O in the English alphabet, like the "O" in okay. 
Ö - Here's where it gets tricky. To make this sound, start with the O I just described in move it to the back of your mouth. The sound is a lot like our vowel in bird, so the Turkish word dört (which is the number 4), sounds a lot like the English word dirt. 
P - P as in polite, pink, or pottery. 
R - R remains really close to our R. 
S - The same, S is an S, like in sound or silent. 
Ş - This is the "sh" sound we have for shoe, ship, or shawl. 
T - T is the same, like in tit for tat. 
U - The Turkish U is like our "oo", as in noose or goose. Also like the "U" in ruse or muse. 
Ü - Just like the umlauted Ö, take the Turkish "U" sound and move it to the back of your mouth. It'll sound like the German or French "U." If you don't know it, look at Youtube videos of French people saying tuer or fuer. You can also liken it to the sound we make when we say few. 
V - Here's the last tricky one, it fluctuates between a "V" and a "W" sound, so the Turkish word tuvalet sounds very similar to its English cognate: toilet. Think of it as the V in the word voila. 
Y - Here, it's just Y as a consonant, non of this "occasionally a vowel" monkey business. It's Y as in yams or young. 
Z - And Z is essentially the same, as in zoo or Zap Zone.

"Alright, so what does all that mean to me?" you might wonder. Well, this helps make Turkish easy to learn for two reasons. First of all, the sounds are incredibly similar to our own, and many of the letters are exactly the same as we know them. This makes it Turkish fairly easy to pronounce as an English speaker, as long as you keep the pronunciation of each letter in mind.

Secondly, because pronunciation is uniform, it means that you can pronounce any word as soon as you see it. Imagine a non-native English speaker looking at the words tough, though, and thought. They would have no clue how to pronounce those words until somebody told them how. By contrast, even if you see the sentence Afyonkarahisarlılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız? (more on that later), you'll know how to pronounce it even if you've never heard it before.

Reason 4: Turkish is logical, structured, and almost mathematical.

The reason Turkish is so orderly is because it forms meaning by adding suffixes to word roots, whereas in English we would add completely different words. Many prepositions, grammatical structures, and changes in parts of speech are expressed through the addition of suffixes. Thankfully, these suffixes are always the same, and their place in the word is strictly rule-governed. There are very very few exceptions to these rules.

Unfortunately, this can lead to some dauntingly long words. The longest word in Turkish is the one I wrote above in the sentence Afyonkarahisarlılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız? The sentence roughly means "Are you one of those people that we could not make to be from Afyonkarahisar?" (The city's name translates to "Black Opium Fortress," but thankfully it is usually just called "Afyon.") The fact that two Turkish words can translate into 15 English words just goes to show how differently the two languages express grammar structures

That being said, this ordered nature of Turkish makes it quite easy to understand. After all, if I see a word I do not know, I can still figure out (or guess) what it means as long as I know the meaning of its stem, and the meaning of all the suffixes in it. For example, if I come across the word temizlenebileceksiniz (which I haven't, I just put it together a minute ago), I can still figure out what it means, because I know that temiz means "clean" (as an adj.), the -le suffix means "take that thing and turn it into a verb," the -n suffix after that makes it passive, the -ebil suffix means "can" or "able to," the -ecek suffix is future tense, and the -siniz suffix is for second person plural. So, by thinking it out, I can figure out that this word means "You (all) will be able to become clean." Of course, these are strange examples, but hopefully you get the point by now. If you know enough Turkish, you can look at a long word you've never seen before, and not only will you be able to pronounce it, but you can start to figure out what it means before you even ask someone or consult a dictionary.

Reason 5: Turkish contains cognates on top of cognates

For the last 900 years, Turkish people have been sandwiched between the East and West, and anything that went from one side to the other invariably went through what is now Turkey. As a result, Turkish contains loads of cognates with multiple other languages, including English, French, Arabic, Farsi, and Greek. One of my site-mates here in Malatya speaks Urdu, and as she's learning Turkish, she'll usually say "Ohh, that's the same as in Urdu." So the chances are, if you know English and another language, you probably already know a fair amount of Turkish words. The cool thing is, though, the spelling will always be changed to make sure the pronunciation matches the Turkish alphabet, leading to some interesting spellings:

Reception - Resepsiyon
Calcium - Kalsiyum
Military police - Jandarma (from the French gendarme)
Energy - Enerji
Photograph - Fotoğraf
TV - Televizyon
Comical/Funny - Komik
Lodgement - Lojman

If the pronunciation seems off on some of these, it's because most of them came to Turkish through French (according to some guy on the Internet, Turkish and French have over 7000 words in common), meaning that they reflect the French pronunciation. If you've taken French or Arabic, you're in luck. In addition, the more modern the word is, the more likely it'll be a cognate with English. So, if you're ever in Turkey, keep an eye out for these cognates. You'll be able to spot a good number of them if you're vigilant.

For the sake of space, I'll leave out my Survival Turkish words for now and just make it a separate post later. In addition, I promise the next post will be actually talk about things I'm doing, and will include more pictures. Until next time, görüşürüz!

That means "See you later."

Turkey 101: Some FAQs about Turkey

I decided a long time ago that the first blog post I should write while in Turkey should actually be a response to questions I received before actually coming to Turkey. After I told most people that I'll be spending a year here, many of their eyes would light up and they would tell me how excited they were for me. However, as I talk to people about my work and what I'll be doing, I've learned that many people aren't quite sure what Turkey is like. As a country nestled between the Middle East on one side and Europe on the other, many Americans don't quite know where to put it in their minds, or how to classify it. In order to present a relatively helpful introduction to the country, I thought I would answer some of the questions I've been asked the most about my new home:

"You'll be living in Turkey next year? Will you be OK?"

It's a vague question that's a little difficult to answer, but I think the reason most people ask it is because they know Turkey is near countries such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and they lump it in with the rest of the Middle East. In reality, however, Turkey is one of the most stable countries in it's region, even when you compare it to some of its wholly-European neighbors (take a look at Greece, for example). The democratically-elected AK Party has enjoyed stable support for the past 10 years, and the country's economy has boomed during that time period. It has been the target of some bombings over the past years, perpetrated either by armed Kurdish separatists groups or actors in Syria's ongoing struggle. These remain isolated incidents, however, and overall Turkey is a beautiful and growing country that draws millions of tourists every year.

"You'll be living in southeast Turkey next year? Will you be OK?"

Haha, don't worry, I'm totally fine. I live on a quiet college campus six miles from the center of a city famous for its apricots. My next-door neighbor is a mosque, and there's a mountain in my backyard. Nothing happens where I live.

Seriously though, Malatya is five hours from the Syrian border, and there has been no trouble with the Syrian civil war in this area. Turkey has opened its borders to a huge number of Syrian refugees, and there is a refugee camp near Malatya, but these refugees camps have great accommodations and there have been no tensions between the refugees and the locals. There has been absolutely no spill-over from the violence into this area. The Syrian war is a great tragedy that has unfairly affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, but there is no need to worry about me during this conflict.

"Are the people living in Turkey Muslim? Are they Arabs?"

The population of Turkey is 99% Muslim, but a large number of that population are secular Muslims, similar to how many Americans might be secular or atheist, but culturally Jewish or Christian. In fact, Turkey is built on a long tradition of state secularism, but the ruling political party has been changing to a more religious orientation over the past few years.

The largest ethnic group in Turkey is comprised of Turks. They have a completely different ethnic history and origin from Arabs, as they originally came from Central Asian and have more cultural similarities to the people living in Turkmenistan and surrounding areas than they do the people living in Saudi Arabia. It's also important to note that Turkish people may get offended if you confuse the two (imagine the reaction if you told an Irish person that everyone in Ireland was British). So, please keep that in mind if you're ever visiting Turkey or talking to someone from the country.

However, not all the people living in Turkey are ethnic Turks. There are also a number of Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Azerbaijanis, and other ethnic groups scattered throughout the country.

"What language do they speak in Turkey? Is Turkish a language?"

Good question, and yes! Turkish is a separate language of its own. Again, it's not closely related to any of the other languages in the region other than Azeri (the language spoken in Azerbaijan). However, it does contain a number of cognates with Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, as well as French and English. This highlights Turkey's unique origins, as well as its interesting position as a bridge between the East and the West.

"Turkish must be hard to learn. Don't they use a different alphabet?"

Actually, they used to, but they don't anymore. Turkish changed to the Roman alphabet in the 1920s, when the republic was founded. In addition, it's not that hard to pick up. The next post will actually be on Turkish, so tune back in for a better introduction!

"Are you excited to go?"

I most certainly was, and I could not be more excited to be here. That's all for today. See you next time.