October 11

(in which our heroes discuss religion)

First thing today (after petting the friendly monastery cat) was a talk with the imam of a local mosque. The original plan was that we would be speaking with the imam of the church-turned-mosque that is out-of-the-way and has few if any congregants... this man was going to be fairly young, with the lowest level of qualifications to be an imam in Turkey (they are all civil servants). But it seems that he just resigned his post (probably looking to move up?) so instead we talked to the imam of the big mosque in town, who was much more experienced. He took questions from all of us, and then we took some questions from him. Occasionally Alp would pre-answer questions that he thought were too basic, though, once, the imam figured out the question and answer well enough to contradict Alp's answer.

So while he was being translated, he knew a good deal of English. But when you are trying to explain things and be learned, you don't want to stumble on words and have simple grammar.

It would be neat to have some revelation at this point, but, there was nothing huge. I kind of have a basic stereotype image in my head of an imam as an older guy with a beard, but that's probably all from the Iranian side. The guy we met is middle-aged a t most, and generally seemed to be what I'd expect from a middle aged leader in any religion these days. He has a set of ideals he advocates, some of which I agree with and some not, and he is aware, perhaps uneasily, of how far society is from some of those ideals. I feel like the common answer, wherever you go, is to make sure youre there for people when they realize that society isn't doing all that they need.

The thing that made me think more is the way they have handled their interaction between church and state. We have Separation (more or less); a stronger tie between them suggests sharia and Christian fundamentalism. Turkey's method is the other direction - the government has oversight over the religion, not the other way around.

Some things got short answers, and a few things got him going. He dodged questions touching on the state of Turkish politics, which I can't blame him for, given the state of Turkish politics. He mentioned a couple of facts I didn't know about -- Tunisia actually has a setup which is much like Turkey's, at least in theory -- with Islam as the state religion, but with imams as civil servants. The imam felt that Indonesia is the country with conditions most like Turkey's, i.e. firm ascendancy of civil law rather than religious law, and (if I'm gathering correctly) a sense that religious leaders shouldn't be running the country. Though, as Alp has said a few times, Turkey is not out of the woods on that one.

The imam's questions to us were for the Catholics -- how did they feel about the new Pope. The theme of the answers was a lot of anxiety over church reforms being turned back, and a lack of voice in church affairs by the lower levels. I don't remember Alp's comments (from the imam) exactly, but I think the gist of it was the imam being concerned about whether the social and doctrinal disagreements were eroding faith/trust/whatever between them and the church leadership.

The average age of his congregation is sixty, so there is a lot of the same "youth turning away from the church" that ew see. How is it that both of our societies are so threatened by a more religious minority?

Lots of little slivers of very interesting data. Too bad we only had a few hours. I would love to have time to really dig into some of the things that flew by.

Next visit: to the little mosque with no congregation. It is on the site of a 4th century church, but most of what is currently standing was build in the 1800s (?) and then later restored/refurbished (badly). Like so many Greek elements in Cappadocia, it was suddenly abandoned in 1922; then it was converted to a mosque. [Aside -- build and refurbished by the Romanov dynasty of Russia. Russia asserted protective rights over Orthodox Christianity under the tsars.] A nice little place. They were filming something for the Culture Ministry later in the day, so there were some very out-of-genre elements.

"Convert it to a mosque" seems to be less about appropriation and more about the best way to get money from the government to take care of it. At least, that was something Alp suggested.

After a bus ride, we stopped off at the largest of the medieval-era caravanserais (the Sultanhani Caravanserai in Aksaray). These were the truck stops of the Silk Road of the pre-Ottoman era (and, I imagine, during it.) Caravans could stay free of charge, and merchants could even deposit goods (for ~10 years) if they were heading in the wrong direction to sell them. These were big, solid structures, the size of a football field at least, with walls thick enough that the hangar-sized enclosed end was cool even on an 80-degree day. Alp says that tourists who come here in high summer don't want to leave to walk back to the bus.

So far the weather has been perfect - somewhere between "sunglasses required" and "light jacket required" for everything. September tours apparently got rained on a lot.

Some of us climbed the central structure -- a simple mosque of the period -- whose crumbling upper levels would have sent a US-based safety inspector scrambling for the yellow "DO NOT CROSS!! DEATH AWAITS!!" tape. It was awesome. Marleigh has pictures! (And Dave, and Chris, and perhaps Ted...)

(By which he means "Laura had already wandered away with the camera when we went climbing..."). And I think it was called a "mesquit".

Toward dusk -- Konya. Konya is the center of Sufi-ism, and also the most conservative city in Turkey, according to Alp. I will have to work some to figure that out, as it doesn't really jive with my extremely limited understanding of Sufi-ism.

There are many more headscarves and full length coats for women. Though most of the older women everywhere have had headscarves.

Before taking a walk around Konya, we sat down with Alp and explained some of our nerd conventions, such as "Head lemming" and "Hive-mind." It turns out he's been to Boston as well... have to ask him more about what he may have missed.