Carpetblogger

Great Bayrams of History

It's a bad week to be a sheep, goat or cow in Muslim countries. Friday is Kurban Bayram (Eid Al Adha in Arabic), or the Feast of the Sacrifice. It's a time for charity and paranoia, reflection on topics such as "Is it better to be the first sheep or the last sheep?" and annual visits to Cowshwitz.

After last year's experience, we're abstaining from Bayram this year, although the giant, muddy fair-ground sized Kesim Yeri (butchery place) we saw on multiple trips to the airport today was mighty tempting. We prefer our bayrams less industrialized, anyway (Our first bayram, in Baku 2005 here and here.)

Iyi Bayramlar!

Carpetblog Reruns: Thanksgivings in Crapistan

Because we post once a month on this blog whether we have something to say or not and because it's Thanksgiving and because we like to remember better days, here are some of our favorite Thanksgiving posts from years past. You may have heard some of these stories once or twice but perhaps you don't already know:

Why We Hate Bulgaria (2007)

How to prepare Istanbul Thanksgiving dinner for 35 people arriving from four continents, including members of Baghdad's only heavy metal band (2007)

Where to get cow heads and booze at the Teze Bazaar in Baku (2006)

 How to buy a Turkey in Baku (2005)

Days are dark here at Carpetblog World Headquarters but, as we re-read these posts, we are struck by how many of the key characters in them are still intimately involved in our life. For this, we are thankful.

Thanksgiving and Bayram coincide this year, so, in violation of our new posting policy, tomorrow we'll post re-runs of our favorite Butchery Day posts. This year, we decline to participate in the bloodshed however.

Annus Horribilis Continues: May the Better Dog Rest in Peace

It is an indisputable fact that Whitney was always the Second Carpetdog. Mo, who died in January, visited a dog neurologist. Whit was lucky if she got wormed. Mo was a interactive, manipulative personality who overreacted to every real or imagined slight. Whitney was content to lie quietly under a table and have her ears scratched. Mo never met anyone who could throw a ball more times than he could bring it back. Whitney only put a ball in her mouth when she thought the novelty would draw someone's attention away from Mo for a few minutes. Mo sucked the air out of a room. Whit was referred to as the supermodel -- beautiful but a bit dim.

For ten years, every anti-social or irksome dog habit was blamed on her. The carpets were always covered in her hair. She was the one who barked her head off when someone came to the door. She shredded the mail. She woke up every morning at six asking to go out. Her insecurity was the reason we could never take dogs to an outdoor cafe or tie them up outside the supermarket while we shopped.

In early December, Mo began to spectacularly disintegrate. Within six weeks, he was gone. Simultaneously, in what at the we interpreted to be one of her most ineffective attention-getting gambits, Whitney's nose would, upon occasion, expel gallons of blood. Preoccupied as we were with the decline and fall of The Most Precious Dog, we did not pay as much attention to this as it might have merited. We feel bad about this.

After Dr. Elif exhausted all diagnostic options (make no mistake, there is a wing named after us at the Anipoli Veterinary Clinic in Cihangir), she recommended we take Whitney to the Istanbul University Veterinary Hospital, under the suspicion that the bleeding and breathing problems were caused by a tumor in her snout. If you don't comprehend the depth of dread this recommendation inspired, you don't read this blog very often. Revisit some of our Azeri vet experiences.

We really should have posted at the time about the experience of hiring a dog taxi to take us halfway to Bulgaria for the surgery (it might not have been far, but anywhere we can't walk to is halfway to Bulgaria) on a gray, wet March day.  As always, Dr. Elif went far, far beyond the call of duty, setting up all the logistics ahead of time, ensuring that a slightly mental, barely literate yabancı could deliver a sick dog to the correct surgeon. (We know this is a digression, but it's a good story and it's not been told yet).

The vet hospital was neither new, nor shiny nor very technologically advanced, but it was clean and staffed by compassionate young students with whom Whitty trotted off to the surgery while we hyperventilated. Since the waiting facilities were sparse, we explored the stables (racehorses are treated there) and petted the giant Kangals (dun colored, black-pointed Turkish shepherds) that made up most of the clinic's incoming patients. Occasionally, a vet assistant came out to ask us to purchase more gauze or a different gauge needle from the on-site pharmacy (patients are responsible for providing all the necessary equipment for the surgery). 

After several hours, Dr. Murat emerged from surgery proudly holding a gelatinous grey mass in his palm. It was just a small portion of the tumor he removed from her sinus cavity. It was so big he was unable to get all of it, he said, and he suspected it was Transitional Cell Carcinoma, one of the most common -- and untreatable -- cancers in dogs. He wrapped it in a paper towel, handed it over to a vet student and instructed us both to carry it over to the human part of the hospital to have it biopsied. 

Dr. Murat's diagnosis was correct. He prescribed an anti-inflammatory that would mitigate, but not cure. He gave her a few months to live.

For five months Whit lived, despite everyone's predictions, quite comfortably with a giant tumor in her head. During this time, something funny happened. She emerged from her role as the quiet dog that no one ever paid any attention to become the dog about whom everyone said, "what a nice dog this is! Why didn't you tell us she was so sweet?"

We could take her to a cafe and she'd lie quietly beneath the table. There was hardly any hair on the carpets. We sometimes didn't notice if someone came to the front door. In fact, in a household that was often maligned by mailmen and meter readers for its decibel output, she was a silent, polite doorway greeter. Sometimes we got to sleep until 8:30 am. She seemed to smirk at us. We feel bad about this, too.

Last night, we came home from dinner with dear friends who, having known Whitty for almost half her life, offered toasts to her memory and made delicious food. But we opened the front door to silence. It was the worst silence we have ever heard.

O Silent* Ramazan Night!

*If by silent, we mean "drums and drum-set car alarms at 3am." This post is a total lie.

The first year in Turkey, it was a charming cultural tradition to be appreciated and embraced. The second year, it was an annoyance to be avoided. The third year, it has become a target for open hostility.  (Some day we'll do a post comparing and contrasting Ramazan in all the countries we've had the good fortune to visit during the Holy Month, particularly the Qat-fueled all night parties in Sana'a we saw last year. It's all fun for a couple of days. A month is too much).

Astute readers know that Ramazan, the Muslim holy month of daylight fasting which starts today, begins about two weeks earlier every year. This has practical implications for everyone, believers and infidels alike.

For example, it's much easier to fast in December when days are very short and cool than it is to fast in July and August, when days are very long and hot. Ramadan is going to be a summer holiday for the next few years. It also means that the drummers, an old Ottoman tradition in which guys with drums troll neighborhoods waking people pre-dawn for sahur (pre-dawn meal), start earlier and earlier. This year, drumming would probably start around 3 am. Every day. For 30 days. Also, it being August, people like to sleep with their windows open, even if their bedroom overlooks the Sokak. Our Sokak seems to be home to some heavy sleepers and drummers like to pay special attention to it. After a month of this, even the most ardent cultural relativist begins to fantasize about beebee guns and water balloons.

Recognizing that most people own modern conveniences such as "alarm clocks," that some drummers are opportunists who accept tips to not drum on certain streets and that some harass residents at the end of Ramazan for tips, some municipalities have banned drumming. We applaud those municipalities, but until now, ours has not been one of them. 

As the Turkish Life has noted, "I'm just waiting for some mayor to say 'Globalization has given us McDonald's and TV dinners. You can easily eat throughout the year without killing a big cow at Kurban Bayramı. And if you want to show off to the neighbors, well, that's what fancy cars and iPhones are for.'"

But! TL has issued a late report that drumming in Beyoğlu has been banned this year. Despite heavy skepticism in Yabancı Köy about any ban not involving YouTube actually being observed in Turkey, it appears to be the case. No drumming last night! It may be a peaceful month after all, inşallah.

Ask Carpetblogger: How Stupid Am I?

The current story about three Americans who have been "detained" by Iran while hiking in Kurdistan (aka Northern Iraq) near the poorly marked Iranian border reminded us of a conversation with a colleague last week at a party in Islamabad. In our line of work, where solid yet realistic security information is hard to come by or contradictory, it can be hard to assess which in-country activities are perfectly fine, which are risky and which are fucking stupid. It is often necessary to rely on one's best judgment. My colleague described her personal assessment system: "If something happens to me, are my friends going to mock me and say I deserved it?"

We rely on the same system! It's more effective at preventing you from doing stupid shit than listening to overprotective employer-funded security firms. It's crowd-sourced security! Using this system, we elected not to conduct field tests in random neighborhoods in Rawalpindi and came home safely, having suffered no mocking (for that particular activity, at least).

A variation on this conversation also occurred in Istanbul while our Greek journalist friend was held in solitary confinement in Iran on espionage charges for three weeks. Even though he was doing something important and fun (covering the Iranian election), how much sympathy did he deserve for getting into the jam in the first place? Some argued that, since he knew the risks going in, not much. (Iason, we'll let you know who we're not going to call first if we ever get kidnapped by the Taliban).

Because we live to serve, we've developed this informative graph that will help you decide if you should take the risk of your friends mocking you for doing something stupid in a shitty place. We worry, however, that we've given too much weight to the boring/interesting part of the Y axis, thus uncharacteristically diminishing the importance of the "how much money is at stake?" factor.

 

We rate the story about the hiking Americans as follows: Traveling to Northern Iraq barely merits a shrug. There are a few tourists and lots and lots of people work and move around freely in Erbil and Suleymaniye. For now, it's not unpredictably violent like Baghdad. But hiking anywhere near the Iranian border without a local guide, especially given the current environment? That's exactly the type of activity that would make your friends in Erbil accuse you of fucktardery, especially since it was an elective activity. Sneaking into North Korea on behalf of an online TV station no one watches? Unfathomingly retarded.

Sometimes, the system fails, as it did last year when a friend was killed in a Kabul suicide attack while working out at the Serena, a relatively low-risk activity at the time. When things like that happen, your friends will be silent for a minute, then make a similar calculation: "well, that would never happen to me because I would never do X, Y or Z."

Well, I would never work for the US Government.

Well, I would never stay in a hotel that's such an obvious target.

Well, I would never go the gym after work.

Sometimes, it's best to to sit in the bar.

Carpetblog's Round Up of Expat Shopping

It's a little known fact that Istanbul expats want for very little. If we're willing to pay for it, we can get almost anything we want, including the two big ones: pig products and booze. We bitch and moan about scarcity/price of both but, having recently spent a week in Islamabad, we should shut up.

There comes a time, however, when an ingredient for a Thai or Indian or even American dish is needed and doesn't exist in Istanbul. Sometimes, the finding of a random American product is much more important than the having (Oooo! Look! Duncan Hines brownie mix! Want!) of it. Sometimes, it's easier to buy a product on the road that you know you can find in Istanbul but not without a lot of effort (such as putting on shoes). Highly valued, expensive seasonal fruits or unusual cheeses can also be carried in (Mangos and Litchis from Pakistan! Avacados from Israel! Limes from the UK!)  Often though, the point is simply to return with perishable/breakable/potentially poisonous item that none of your friends has yet thought of smuggling in.

We've been on the road a lot lately. We count our food and wine acquisitions among our greatest accomplishments of the year. For example, we brought 14 liters of wine and booze, a kilo of Boerewores (South African sausages), ostrich pate, game sausage and several packets of biltong (jerky) back from South Africa. This, we'd like to point out, was a personal best in terms of quantity and quality. We also pulled off a stunning and unlikely-to-be-repeated hand-off of imported goods (mostly English cheese and bacon) in Istanbul during a 30 minute layover (having too little time to hit the duty free was a personal failure) between international flights. It's not easy being a part of ILIQTT (Istanbul Liquor Transport Team), but membership has benefits,

What follows is an Expat's Guide to Foreign Product Procurement, Duty Free Shopping and Helpful Packing Hints, sponsored by ILIQTT. Motto: Don't argue with us. We're professionals.

(A primer for American readers: if you don't live somewhere where imported goods or "vices" like liquor are taxed onerously, you will never understand the appeal of duty free. Prices are higher than you would pay in the product's home country but far, far less than you would pay in your destination country. We want a piece of this racket.)

Best Duty Free Overall: Dubai wins. It's practically a shopping mall. Electronics are cheaper there than in most places outside the U.S. Lots of high end makeup, too. It doesn't have anything interesting or unusual though. Neither does the entire Gulf so don't blame the Emiratis.

Best Wine Duty Free: Johannesburg offers hundreds of local varietals and helpful wine stewards to help you choose. There are purchase limits though, and prices are much higher than in the wine shops. Still, if you can't hit a local wine store, it'll do. The exchange rate with the dollar is favorable so you can get delicious and unusual bargains. It also has a wide selection of products made of kudu (an antelope) and ostrich. Both are tasty! Buy some and serve it with a Cape Shiraz for Sunday Dinner.

Most Disappointing Wine Duty Free: Tbilisi. Sure, there's a huge supply but of only of the most well-known mass market brands at huge mark-ups. Stock up at World of Wine/Urine in downtown instead.

Best Duty Free Selection of Obscure European Liquors: Tel Aviv. Did your people brew it from plums in a Moldovan shtetl? Then it's probably in Tel Aviv Duty Free. Better still, Tel Aviv doesn't limit your purchases. It's pretty much as much as you can carry and think you can get away with smuggling in to your destination.

Best Wine Transport Mechanism: Box wine. If your mother drank her Carlo Rossi Rose out of a box when you were 10, you might laugh, but box wine rules. A five liter box maximizes space and is stable in a typical rolling suitcase. If you care about excess baggage charges, plan for two kilos a box. If you're coming from Lebanon, South Africa or France, pack a five liter box and your Istanbul friends will thank you profusely and finish it in one night.

Best Wine Transport Mechanism, Runner up: Wine Skins. A clever FOC (Friend of Carpetblog) who is a superior problem solver gifted a package of this genius product on her recent visit. It's as simple as wine bottle shaped bubble wrap and it's awesome. We leave several in our suitcase so we don't forget to carry them with us when we travel. We heart them.

Best Duty Free Scotch: We don't drink brown liquor but we know people who do and we aim to please. The Scotch Usta in the Stansted Airport offers helpful suggestions of obscure scotches that taste like ones your Scotch drinking friends like but may not have tried and make you look smart.

Best Source of American Products: Pakistan. We can't explain it, but there are real American brands in the supermarkets of Lahore and Islamabad: French's mustard, Duncan Hines cake mix, Pam cooking spray, Ziploc bags, Jif peanut butter, El Paso refried beans -- the list is endless. It almost makes a trip to Islamabad worth it. Almost.

Best, Cheapest Supply of Books in English: Again, Islamabad. Saeed Bookshop in the Jinnah Market has an amazing supply and most cover prices are less than $10. The international terminal in Islamabad has a good selection too. Since books in Istanbul are often double the cover price, this almost makes a trip to Islamabad worth it. Almost. The Karachi domestic terminal also has a great selection. We advise against a special trip, though. Nothing is worth a trip to Karachi.

Best Selection of Subcontinental Spices and Ingredients: Any Gulf supermarket. Let's say, for the sake of argument, you don't want to go to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, but you crave and can't find such cuisines in your own city of 18 million (Is Istanbul the biggest city in the world without a Pakistani restaurant? Discuss). Since these countries' populations keep the Gulf states functioning, their culinary needs are well served in every major supermarket in the UAE, KSA or Qatar.

Best Place to Buy an Electronic Haddith Organizer and Tang at the Same Time: Jeddah. An absolutely perverse selection of orange colored products (Tang, Tide), religious frippery and rip off Chinese products. Not to be missed for the freak factor.

Most Underperforming Duty Free: Kyiv. With all the different vodkas available in that country, the offerings at the Duty Free are lame. Actually, this could be said for the whole of the FSU. But because vodka is so cheap and plentiful in every supermarket, it's worth bringing an extra suitcase and cushioning the bottles with pork loin. There are 54 breeds of pigs in Ukraine. Try one today!

Worst Duty Free: Putting Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia aside, Doha has terrible duty free. It's half-assed, poorly laid out and they funnel you in there straight out of passport control. Doha airport is terrible in general. We avoid it. Also, Duty Free at Turkey's border with Bulgaria is also particularly grim.

Got any other hints?

Open Letter to Zafer Isik, Yabanci Subesi Resolution Manager

Sayın Zafer Bey!

Back in January, we posted about our experience obtaining our residence permit at the Yabancı Şubesi (Foreigner Office) in the İstanbul Emniyet (Police Headquarters), an experience we compare unfavorably to visiting a Central Asian gynecologist. We commended your operation for gradually imposing order by requiring folks to take a number and reducing the number of windows one has to visit and the number of stamps necessary to just one. We took this as a sign that, over the three years we have been obtaining residence permits, Turkey is, yavaş yavaş, becoming more civilized.

Well! After that post, you kindly left a comment, which we ignored at the time, because, just like the gynecologist, we avoid thinking about the Yabancı Şubesi except the one day a year when we have to go there, asking us to provide some constructive criticism*. Little did we know that you already had some improvements in mind for the operation that closely track the kind we might have suggested.  You should have run them past us! We would like credit for them (Your original comment along with a hasty translation are below).

Recent reports from the Correspondent Formerly of Kathmandu and Beirut and Now of Istanbul indicate that the changes made since January, are in a word, awesome. If you follow her work, you know she specializes in reporting on Epic Failures for Carpetblog. Based on her experience at the Yabancı Şubesi, one might conclude its management has been turned over to a pack of wild dogs. But we think that's unfair.

Gone was that experiment with internet-based appointments (did anyone really think that would work?). On her first visit, she was told that in order to get a number to turn in the documents for her permit, she would have to get in line across the street from the Emniyet, starting at 2 am. She did this and was relieved to see an orderly and friendly group already formed. She took the 18th place in line and made friends.

When 8:30am rolled around and numbers were handed out, she was discouraged to receive number 74. How did this happen? Comrades-in-line deduced that the first 50 numbers had been sold by an "entrepreneur" who, after "picking a fight" with other line-standers, was "detained" by the police with a show of force so convincing observers concluded the entrepreneur could only be another police officer. The ability to pretend you're not doing what you're doing is what separates Turkish police and waiters from all those yahoos in FSU. We admire that. Those people are savages.

After navigating the YS's signless maze (you might consider posting directional signs in Turkish, though definitely not in any other language), CFKBNI finally coughed up more than 770 YTL for a document that confers few meaningful benefits. We paid less than 600 YTL three years ago. Inflation! You have it! Play that card if it's your hand. Carpetblog approves, as long as you don't use the extra fees to improve the Yabancı Şubesi customer service.

We here at Carpetblog were becoming worried that Turkey was losing that developing world "edge" that foreigners always appreciate, especially when it comes to dealing with police and bureaucracies. We are relieved our fears were misplaced! If CFKBNI's experience this week was any indication, the Istanbul Emniyet has become concerned, too, and opted to rely on its old skool habits for dealing with "visitors."

*Just FYI, our contract with the "Constructive" Division of the Criticism Department expired long ago.

Original Post:
26 Ocak 2009'daki Yabancılar Şube ziyaretiniz ve yaşadıklarınıza ait
deneyimlerinize yer verdiğiniz yazınızı okudum.

Önerilerinizin yapıcı olacağı ve daha faydalı olacağına inandığınız
düşünceşerinizi, bizimle paylaşmanız.. saat 03.37 olmasına rağmen iyi niyetli yaklaşımlara her zaman açık olan emniyet teşkilatını memnun edici motivasyona taşıyacaktır. Yazınızdaki tutum ötesinde, gözlemlerinizin sizde olması gereken çözüm
önerisi nedir? konusundaki fikirlerinizide oraya taşımış olmanız bizleri mutlu ederdi.

Yanıtınızı bekler, iyi niyetli ve yapıcı olacak önerileriniz için şimdiden teşekür ederim.

Zafer Işık
İst. Em. Md.lüğü Yabancılar Şube Çözüm Ortağı
Yönetici

Translation:
I read your writing regarding your visit to the Yabancilar Subesi on 26 January 2009 and your experience.

With the belief that you intend your proposals to be constructive and more beneficial share with us ... Despite the fact that the hour is 3:37 a.m., the police staff, which is always open to good-intentioned approaches, that carry a motivation that will please the police staff.

Besides/beyond the manner of your writing, had you included in that writing your ideas on proposals for solutions, which your observations surely must have given you, that would have made us happy.

I am awaiting your response, I thank you in advance for your suggestions that will be good intentioned and constructive.

Zafer Isik, Istanbul Police Department's Yabancilar Sube's manager of
resolution partner

Are you a Mesopotamiac?

Then maybe you might like these photos from our June trip to Gazıantep, Glorious Urfa (not to be confused with other, less glorious imitations), Diyarbakır and Nemrut Dağ.

"Don't Say 'Nothing Will Happen to Me,' OK?"

Sometimes you come across an ad campaign that's so fucking brilliant that every time it comes on TV, you roll on the floor laughing, even though you don't understand every word of the copy.

A Turkish brand of condoms called "Okey" is running a broadcast and outdoor campaign called "'Bana bir şey olmaz deme' okey, mi?" This translates to: "Don't say 'Nothing will happen to me,' OK?"

We first noticed this campaign when an ad featuring four guys installing a klima ran a thousand times a night. In it, one guys climbs a ladder, another guy hangs out the window upside down installing the kilma, a the third guy holds the second guy's legs and the fourth "assists." Astute readers know that something very similar happened on our sokak! (Trust me, you don't need to understand Turkish to find these ads funny).

Then, the second ad in the campaign appeared. It showed a guy carrying at least 12 damacan (water bottles) strapped to the back of his scooter. Have you ever ordered  multiple bottles at a time?  Then you know that no matter how many you order, the sucu will deliver them all at once.

The third one -- and my personal favorite -- has 15 dudes holding up a truck while another guy welds its undercarriage. In need of a tea break, they prop it up with 2x4s. Malaasef, we can't find it anywhere online.

Do we really need to explain why these ads are funny? They are funny because every scene happens all the time here! This agency, whoever they are (and there's reason to believe there's a yabancı behind the creative because Turks are typically unwilling to make fun of themselves to this degree), made an entire ad campaign featuring Turknology!  If we were a creative director, we would make an ad of an usta sticking a screwdriver in an electrical socket to determine if it's working. Nothing is funnier than Turknology. 

There are other ads from an earlier campaign -- someone sticking a fork in a toaster, a guy talking on a cell phone during a flight, a guy adjusting a TV antennae during a lighting storm -- but they just don't convey the same sense of abject Turkishness as the ones running now (although, if you're in Turkey, your inability to watch these ads on YouTube meets and exceeds your daily recommended allowance of Turkishness).

We don't know if these ads effectively sell condoms to Turks. We may not be the target demographic, but if we needed condoms, we would totally buy "Okey."

Carpetblog Recommends: Istanbul Personal Shopper

Are planning a visit to Istanbul and worry that you will enter the Grand Bazaar and not see anything but fake leather fur-lined jackets marketed to the devushka demographic?

Do you fear you enter the Bazaar and never find your way out?

Do you hate bargaining?

Are you an Istanbul expat and concerned that your guests will deduct a bottle of duty free wine every time they suspect you are making up answers to their touristic-related questions?

Are you an Istanbul expat who hates the Grand Bazaar with the white hot passion of a thousand suns and would pay any sum to never have to set foot in there again?

Do you fall into any of these categories? If so, we cannot more highly recommend our friend, Istanbul Personal Shopper! ISP recently took the Outlaws on a day-long tour of the GB and they returned with tales of having lunch at a lokanta on the roof, finding excellent bargains on cool stuff and confidently walking away from shopkeepers who wouldn't bargain. They also had the experience of walking around Sultanahmet with someone who knows why the Blue Mosque has six minarets and other, even more obscure facts about this historic city.

ISP is an American expat who is ordinary in every way except she loves the Grand Bazaar.  She is not a member of Istanbul's professional tout class and knows all the parts of the bazaar that aren't completely tacky and annoying. She knows her textiles, too, and will adapt your tour to fit any obscure interest you might have. Check out her website to learn more. The Washington Post loves her too!

Call her next time you have visitors in town/you visit Istanbul and tell her Carpetblog sent you. Her prices are reasonable, your guests will be thrilled and you won't have to go the the GB. Everyone wins!

Kebabingo

We would never dream of stepping on the toes of the increasingly awesome Istanbul Eats but until they develop a franchise called Gaziantep Eats or Urfa Eats, we feel  confident that we can weigh in on dining options in these Eastern paradises without stealing their thunder. We're also not likely to be as nice as they are.

There's an increasingly common meme around Istanbul that is most easily summarized as "Gaziantep has awesome food." We take mild issue with this assessment. It is true that this provincial city of 2 million about 100 kms from the Syrian border has surprisingly tasty food, given where it's located (the baklava is, without question, awesome). And compared to, say, the food in Urfa, it is pretty good (but truthfully, most things compare favorably if Urfa sets the baseline).

 Gaziantep cuisine is heavily meat-based and by meat we mean "sheep." You can make a kebab better by adding cracked wheat and sprinkling pistachios on it, but it still won't be good. It will always be poor quality meat cut without any apparent skill and cooked within an inch of its life. If you go to Gaziantep, you will eat a lot of kebab and some of it will be better than kebab you have had elsewhere. The rest of it will taste and look exactly the same. We didn't come across any particularly interesting vegetable dishes or anything we hadn't already tried in Istanbul. Lahmacun (a Turkish pizza), the other specialty of Gaziantep, is pretty much the same no matter where you go. Given the buzz, we expected something more, something different.

What Gaziantep does have is an aggressive civic boosterism project that's promoting the "Gaziantep has awesome food" meme. We admire the ballsiness of this effort, even if we disagree a bit with the premise. In fact, there's a Gaziantep Cuisine Museum which is located in a traditional stone house and is well worth a visit if you happen to be in town. There is also reputedly a woman who is promoting Gaziantep cuisine but unfortunately we were unable to track her or her restaurant down.

If you are looking for a decent meal and you have all of Eastern Anatolia at your  disposal, go to Mardin. Mardin perches on a rocky hillside, overlooking the vast Syrian plain. It's got an interesting mix of Turks, Kurds (oops sorry, Mountain Turks), Syriac Christians and Arabs. This, in our estimation, is more promising recipe for a surprising meal than a handful of extra pistachios. Accordingly, it has a gem of a restaurant, Cercis Murat.

 We had tried Cercis Murat's branch in the wealthy Asian Istanbul suburb of Bostancı a few months back. It was memorable mostly because we took a boat to get there and it seemed like we traveled practically to Beijing for dinner, but also because they stuck a bunch of stuff we didn't order on the bill (seriously, how many yabancı women order beet juice with dinner? Did they think we wouldn't notice?). The very fact we've considered going back is a testament to the quality of the food. Surprisingly, when Carpetblog's Paris Correspondent wrote about it here, she didn't mention we were with her.

Mardinese (we made that word up ourselves so please credit accordingly) food seems to be influenced as much by Arabs as by Turks but the whole is better than the sum of the parts. The mezze at Cercis Murat reminds us a great deal of those at Çiya, which is an Istanbul favorite. Made with pomegranates, dried tomatoes, walnuts, capers and whole green lentils and served in copper ayran spoons, they are genuinely different from typical Turkish food. For that, we bestow praise. If you're still hungry after the mezze sampler plate, order Dobo (lamb shoulder stuffed with garlic on rice), but temper your expectations, especially if you've ever had plov.

Van in Northeastern Turkey gets a lot of praise for its breakfasts (even here!) and there are Van Kahvaltı Sofrasılar all over town. Why has no one ever mentioned the awesomeness of Diyarbakır kahvaltı? Is it because people, rightfully, hesitate to use the word "awesome" and "Diyarbakır" in the same sentence? Well, in the old Han across from the Ulu Camii in D'bak there are half a dozen breakfast places and they rock. We had fresh yogurt with fruit and fruit syrup, bal kaymak (honey with clotted creme) with pistachio, fresh butter with walnuts and honey, a delicious tomato and eggplant ezme (sort of like a salsa) and white cheese that was genuinely complex and tasty. That, and the carpet shop across the street, make D'bak famous for more than just Kurdish separatism and 40% unemployment in our book.

Oh, did we forget to mention Urfa? Seriously, there is nothing more boring than an Urfa kebab, no matter what anyone from the Urfa booster club tells you. It's simply a blander, greasier version of an Adana kebab.

*Kebabingo is what you say when you have already eaten every single kebab offered on the standard Lokanta menu in Eastern Turkey.

Mesopotamia Rocks!

Great News! Carpetblogger has found inspiration in Eastern Turkey!

We've stood/fallen into both the Tigris and the Euphrates. We've fallen in love with  Anatolian kilims all over again (though we may just start calling them what they are -- Kurdish kilims). We've won multiple cards of Kababingo. We've seen seven year old girls with mustaches. We've searched the bazaars for the best weapon to raise the stakes in the arms race on our Sokak back at home. We've tasted watermelons grown in pools of pigeon shit. We drove up to the Syria/Iraq/Turkey border and resisted the urge to drop off the Producer who forgot to bring any form of ID with him on that particular day trip. We've heard the jingle of racing pigeons wearing bracelets and earrings (srsly!). We appealed to the authorities to hurry up and flood Hasankeyf already, the place is a shithole.

We report. You decide.

Are you bored with Carpetblog?

We are, but we're on Twitter now. We're probably no more likely to update there than here because Twitter is ridiculous. But, everyone we know is doing it and we've done far more ridiculous things because everyone we know is doing them. The risk seems low.

We're in Eastern Turkey all this week so if we get involved in a blood feud or go to an honor killing (they're getting so touristy these days....), we'll tweet the shit right out of it. Follow Carpetblogger on Twitter at CEQuirk

Update on THY "Wrong Runway Landing Pilot"

Newsflash!

Thanks to astute, Turkish-reading Short Blonde Neighbor, the "wrong runway landing" pilot has resigned, ostensibly because of withering mockery from this blog. Our Turkish isn't that great but we're pretty sure we're credited in that story.

Also, according to the unimpeachably accurate Trend News, "Reasons of this landing were connected with the pilot's mistake. The evacuated passengers are interested in this case and intend to file a suit to compensate a moral damage."

Carpetblogger is still standing by to negotiate on behalf of the morally damaged Kathmandu Correspondent. We'll aim much, much higher than the five kupati she might otherwise deserve due to pre-existing damage.

As big fans as we are are post-Soviet conspiracy theories, we're not buying rumors that the plane was filled with Ukrainian special forces (CKC says the plane was half full, mostly of Israeli tourists) or the former interior minister, with whom the government wanted to consult. They totally would have used AeroSvit for that mission then promoted the pilot.

Open Letter to Turkish Airlines

 Sayın THY!

We think that flying planes must be a really hard job. There are so many things to keep track of and gauges and dials to watch and procedures to follow. And, to think, you might be expected to do all this with only a few tea breaks on a two-hour flight. Exhausting!

To us, one of the hardest part of flying planes must be knowing where the airport is. You're expected to accurately land your plane on a little strip of tarmac, in between mountains and buildings and other obstacles, sometimes even in the dark, every single time! If only there were some modern technologies available that could tell you the precise coordinates of the Tbilisi airport instead of, just as an example we're going to pull out of our ass,  a military airstrip 20 kms from the Tbilisi airport.

Normally, we might let a "WTF?" incident like this pass unremarked upon, but Carpetblog's Kathmandu Correspondent happened to be on the flight and provided illuminating details. We felt this story needed to be told from the perspective of someone who had her photo taken by uniformed Georgian soldiers with camera phones as she deplaned, 20 kms from her actual destination. "The flight crew refused to believe me when I told them we  weren't actually at the Tbilisi airport and responded, 'of course this is Tbilisi.  We have very professional pilots. How could we not be in Tbilisi?'" She also notes, "when the pilot realized the mistake, he turned the plane around and tried to take off again but was stopped by military vehicles screaming down the runway."  Also? Apparently, there were actual sheep on the runway. You can't pay for illumination like that, can you?

We here at Carpetblog can hardly blame the THY crew. For all they know, all 737 passenger jets landing in Tbilisi are met by tanks. Those Caucasians are unpredictable and hotheaded. And it's super easy to get a pock-marked military runway recently bombed by the Russians mixed up with the runway of the Tbilisi international airport, which was designed and built by Turks.

But, then again, we're just a blogger, not a pilot. No one has ever asked us to land a plane  at the correct airport. If they did, they would have to expect a bit of trial and a lot of error. Fortunately, though, if our current gig as an incisive social commentator doesn't pan out, Turkish Airlines is hiring pilots! We're filling out our application STAT! We know exactly where the Tbilisi airport is, although our skills with the A320 flight panel are, admittedly, a bit rusty.

So, THY, should you be paying attention, Carpetblog's Kathmandu Correspondent is seeking redress. We are here to broker the deal, subject to the usual agency fees (upgrades work!). If you don't believe the impact of a Carpetblog open letter to an airline, google AeroSvit. We hope you get your plane back. Call us!

Hugs,

Carpetblogger