I bought a car recently, my first since leaving California for Paris 25 years ago. I haven’t missed owning one and really haven’t needed one until just 11 months ago, when my wife gave birth to the fourth member of our family.
Over the years I have been quite satisfied to use public transportation. When in 1984 I moved to France, its unrivaled train and metro systems taught me that I could live without my own wheels. This is no small lesson for someone born and bred in Southern California car culture.
After moving to Bursa, Turkey in 1990, I found the efficient system of shared taxis and intercity buses continued to preclude any urge to have my own car.
Well, perhaps that isn’t altogether true. It did occur to me soon after getting here that a car would be useful to explore Turkey off the beaten path, and I might have been convinced to buy one but for a series of incidents that happened in my first year here. It put me off from driving to an extent from which I’ve never fully recovered.
My First Turkish Road Trip
About six months into my tenure in Bursa, my newly found girlfriend and I thought we’d have a picnic in a mountain village about an hour outside town. On the day of our outing, the plan was for her to pick me up in her car. (As a foreign teacher, I was quite used to, and happy, being chauffeured around Turkey.) When she arrived, however, she said she was feeling out of sorts and that I would have to do the day’s driving.
My instincts implored me to decline. Firstly, as I explained to my friend, a foreigner doesn’t want to risk an accident while driving someone else’s car, especially if he or she doesn’t have a valid driving license, Turkish or otherwise (my California license was 2 years expired). But also, and this seemed the more important point to me, I hadn’t had any experience driving in a foreign country, and Turkish driving behavior seemed a lot different from what I was used to.
All this seemed pretty ridiculous to her, however. Hadn’t I driven for 20 years in California? And since we were going to take a mountain road to a village, it wasn’t like we were going to be in heavy traffic, was it?
So I gave in. I told myself that indeed I was a practiced driver and surely could drive for a few hours in the country. Besides, in California I had spent much time and money restoring a car, and once you have put thousands of dollars into the aesthetics of a car body, you learn to drive it like you were transporting Cesium 139 in a Dixie cup. My ultra-defensive driving posture would, I figured, keep me safe.
I keep a lot of pictures like this photo of me and my car- a Peugeot 403, a '64 Valiant (I got free), a 356 Porsche- which would suggest that a car relationship is important in my life. Having denied myself one for the last 25 years may not have been good for my soul.
Suddenly feeling the man for the task, I boldly took hold of the wheel and started us on our journey. Perhaps a little too slowly given the flow of traffic- most drivers were blasting their horns at me- I finally made my way out of the city limits. This hadn't been accomplished, I might add, without the constant, voiced irritation of my girlfriend, who at one point ridiculed me for moving through traffic with all the reluctance of a minesweeper.
During the ascent of the mountain road, as we were going around one bend on what became an altogether rather twisty road, we were suddenly surprised by a farmer on his tractor parked in the middle of our lane. Luckily, I hadn’t been going fast and was able to jerk the car to the side of the road and come to a sliding stop.
After some deep breathing and a joint invocation of holy beings (in this case, one Jesus H. Christ and one Al-lah-lah-lah), we got on the road again. I told myself that if I had feared something would happen, it already had, and now was the time to relax.
In fact, we had a lovely picnic without further incident, and when at dusk we started on our way down the mountain, I was pretty much feeling undaunted by the Turkish road.
We were, however, in store for more surprises. Halfway down, again going around a bend, we met another farmer and tractor. This one was apparently moving slightly but it had no lights, front or back, and I only missed hitting it because I was able to swerve into the left lane. I guess you could say we were fortunate because no oncoming car was in the lane.
But I wouldn’t describe us as lucky at all. As I cut into the left lane, I hadn’t seen a minibus that had started to pass us- yes, coming from nowhere, he had started to pass around a curve- and he sideswiped our car with a loud thump. Right away I slowed and pulled off to the side of the road, naturally expecting the driver to join me in assessing the damages to our cars.
It appeared, however, that I was mistaken and that stopping after an accident was not a custom indigenous to the part of Turkey we were in. The minibus driver continued jauntily on his way as though absolutely nothing had happened.
As he disappeared down the road, we turned to inspect the left side of our car. We found a 4-foot-long grate traversing both doors with a slight indentation. My friend looked to be in apoplexy, but also gave me the feeling that I had done something wrong. If she hadn’t been feeling so distressed, I’m sure she would have taken the wheel from me.
It was here that my friend took it upon herself to inform me that people driving in village areas usually drive as they want, without regard to the traffic rules. So you have to be careful. Especially with tractors.
On the last stretch home, we were not speaking to each other. Until, that is, when at a stoplight in the town of Bursa, we were rear-ended in a jolt, complete with the screech, the bam and the tinkling glass.
To add insult to injury, when we got out to look at the back of our car, the other driver started yelling at me. (Some gall, I thought, at the time, though since then I have understood that my presumption that I could not be at fault in a rear-ender was purely an American, not Turkish, idea.) The inspection of damage showed we had a small bumper dent and a broken taillight lens, but because I had no license, our first thought was to get out of there before the police found us.
As he apparently had no car insurance, the other driver was also eager to get going before the police arrived. So, after exchanging license and phone numbers, we both took off.
Back at my apartment, my girlfriend recounted in English what the driver had yelled at me. He was arguing that I was 100% at fault. I had stopped without warning at a yellow traffic light, which no normal driver does. You stop at red, not yellow lights, he was adamant in pointing out. She seemed to agree with him.
(All these years later, I can say that no Turkish driver, normal or otherwise, stops at yellow lights. For fear of whiplash, not even do I. That I did stop that day I now see as a foreign action that no Turk would have anticipated.)
Before she left that day, my girlfriend thankfully began rapprochement. She admitted that perhaps I had been the victim of Turkish drivers, and that no one could have expected me to be prepared for what I had encountered. Feeling relieved, I too wanted to show there were no hard feelings, and I offered to pay for half the day’s damage.
She declined, however, saying that only she could take responsibility for the dents, and that my money would be hard to explain. That is, she would have trouble accounting for its provenance without the risk of an embarrassing revelation. The car, she told me, was her husband’s personal vehicle.
I like this Turkish road sign because you can make it mean anything you want. I usually call it the "What the Fuck!" sign.
What Price a Deal ?
Although I have said the events of this day put me off from driving for the next twenty years, there was actually a time about five years later when I very nearly became a car owner.
I had met a U.S. Air Force sergeant who was stationed at a small cold war missile base in Balikesir. He was about to finish his stint, and before he moved back to the States he wanted to sell his 6-year-old Chevy Malibu. It had blue license plates, meaning it was registered to a non-Turkish citizen, and under Turkish law at the time, it could only be sold to another foreigner. Unfortunately for him, foreign persons were few and far between at this time, and he was having difficulty finding a buyer. Thus, he had had to lower the price considerably, and by the time he offered it to me, one week before his departure, it was only $100.
You can bet I nearly tripped over myself getting the money together. However, when less than an hour after meeting the sergeant I presented him with a $100 bill, he said he would not accept it until I had got certain papers. These included in part an insurance bond and a customs clearance.
The sergeant had pretty much spelled out that these would not be easy to get. Fortunately, the manager of my school, who had no car himself and imagined all sorts of new possibilities in his life if I acquired one, graciously offered to take over the task of getting the papers. As I’ve always said, who better to go up to the front lines against the Turkish bureaucracy than another Turk.
After about three days of leg work, we found out the following: 1) For customs clearance, we would have to drive the car to Istanbul (about 6 hours away) and pay several hundred dollars for the correct papers; 2) For the insurance bond for foreigners, we would have to put up about $10,000 cash deposit in a bank; and 3) Since the car was not purchased in but brought into Turkey it would have to go out of the country every 3 months and then come back in to get a new customs stamp.
The first and third requirements were daunting but do-able. The second was in the end the deal breaker. We tried for several days to work out a way with the bank to put up the bond but it was to no avail. Reluctantly, we threw in the towel.
A few days after we gave up, we heard that customs had informed the sergeant that since he had not sold the car, he would have to deliver it to Istanbul so that it could be auctioned off (for the benefit of the Turkish government). They might as well have asked him to wash and wax it and leave it with a full tank of gas. In his final salute to Turkey, he abandoned the car on a residential street.
Our giving up was all for the better. The Chevy was worth its price but certainly not what we would have had to do and pay to legalize it. If there was any lesson for me in what we had gone through, it seemed to be that a foreigner in Turkey was better off not getting involved with car ownership, be it a Chevy or even a BMW for $100.
The Man Who Would be King
I remained more than quite content for a long time- the next 12 years, in fact- to continue with the bus and my parasitic habit of asking students to drive me to local places when public transport wouldn’t get me there. Then, after my first son was born in 2002 and we were having to lug him and his baby things on and off buses, my wife began campaigning for a family car.
Being quite opposed to the idea of car purchase- and remember, this resistance wasn't borne of cheapness but rather of trauma- I tried my best to counter it by pointing out the economic savings in taking the bus. I succeeded fending it off for the next six years this way, until, when family member number four arrived, the economic savings line was blown to hell.
I have to admit that I myself began to see numerous advantages in having my own car. Not only would gas be cheaper than four bus tickets, but the convenience of going where I wanted when I wanted- and faster, too- without being subservient to bus times and routes seemed now an attractive option in my life. Just the prospect of having my own car brought on in me a startling feeling of power. After all my years in Turkey being a dependent traveler, I knew it was now time to be my own man.
For us Americans, the family car may be a bigger deal. After I bought my car and started transporting my family around, I felt we had achieved some sort of added validity. I think this is because the family car is a small but integral part of the American dream I carry around.
So crumbled my resolve against car ownership, and before I knew it I was checking out the cars in several local dealerships with my father-in-law. I settled on a black Ford Connect Tourneo which, as a masculine, ergonomic and practical car, was a far cry from the cute, pretty green Fiat with the automatic transmission that my wife had been campaigning for.
Since we had to get it home someway, I had to suddenly face driving my spanking new $25,000 car from the dealership to my house in Ayvalik, about 45 minutes away.
After a 12-year hiatus from driving in Turkey, you can imagine that this task, getting back in the saddle, was more than a little intimidating. Remembering the last time I drove in Turkey, I began to fear for the car’s, not to mention my own, safe arrival.
Thusly, we decided that I would follow behind my father-in-law at reduced speed while staying close to the right shoulder of the highway. Sort of like the old geezers I used to ridicule on California highways.
Because Turkish drivers generally go about 15-20 miles over the speed limit, and we were going at least 20 miles under the limit, cars wound up swishing past us at almost supersonic speeds, many blasting their horn in annoyance, as we crawled our way to Ayvalik.
And the Meek Shall Get Stoned
Then, as we entered a road construction zone, things turned nightmarish. The road department had covered a freshly laid layer of asphalt not with pea gravel, as you would expect, but with stones the size of unshelled peanuts. When cars raced past me, the stones were thrown up into the air by their rear wheels. We collided with them when they were in mid-air, which, because we and the stones were both moving through space in opposite directions, resulted in quite an impact.
As 20-30 rocks rained down on my car, I began cursing and screaming- “What kind of fucking highway department is this in Turkey?” among other things- and pulled off to the side of the road to take refuge. But there was no respite; passing cars continued to spray us as we sat there. The only way to stop the assault, I quickly concluded, was to get back in traffic and not let anyone pass me so as to keep ahead of the stones.
Somehow, I pulled this off. I managed to get bold enough not only to stay with the flow of traffic but to actually pass some drivers. At one point, when I zoomed past two or three cars in one swoop, I have to admit to sadistic pleasure. When I saw in my rear view mirror that I was sending off my own shower of stones to those behind me, I couldn’t resist feeling the pleasure of revenge, and I let off a little maniacal cackle.
But I felt no real joy when I finally made it to my home. My $25,000 car was no longer a virgin. I found two chips in the paint on one side and one solid identation in the nose of the front hood. The bliss of new car ownership, which had almost caused me to glow at the dealership, had after only a couple of hours been extinguished- Hell, more like assassinated by the collusion of the dumb ass Turkish highway department and crazy Turkish drivers.
To make matters worse, my wife couldn’t help pointing out that the Fiat dealership was on the other side the road construction, and I would have been spared all my pain if only I had accepted her wisdom about car choice.
The feelings of utter hopelessness that I had as I watched rocks bounce off my shiny new car and of being a victim of the highway department’s incompetence soon grew into bona fide rage. This not only kept me from sleeping well for the next few nights but led me in an obsession where I wanted to talk about my rocks experience with anybody who would lend me an ear.
Most listeners pointed out that such things have happened to nearly everybody in Turkey. If you look at windshields of cars, they said, even the brand new ones, you’ll see that no one has been spared. All have at least one substantial chip in the glass complete with spider webbing. This is all thanks to the highway department’s use of oversized gravel when paving.
One student of mine suggested that I could become a national hero if I took the initiative and brought suit against the Turkish highway department. The courts would listen to a foreigner, he said, and millions of Turks with disfigured cars would be brought justice.
I took to the idea right away. Although it was mostly because I wanted a way to work out my anger, I have to admit I also fantasized about becoming a national hero to the Turkish car owner: “English teacher throws the national highway department to the mat,” might be a newspaper headline to accompany the cheers heard everywhere.
Before visiting my lawyer, I worked up some evidence. I did some Google research on correct gravel size in asphalting, and I made a video of the portion of highway with the killer rocks. In addition, I found a couple of people who would testify that they had had a similar experience to mine.
This is one of the short videos I made before I went to my lawyer.
When I had just begun to present my case to my lawyer, however, he was quick to point out that, though I had some pictures of large rocks and others of a ding in my car, I had no proof of a causal connection between the rocks and the ding. That would, moreover, be the crux of my case. Turkish courts, he said, don’t give much credence to conjecture; they want things in writing or in pictures. If I had a video of the rocks hitting my car (Damn! Don’t you always leave your camera at home when you need it most?) I might stand a chance.
I had a brief moment when I considered going back to the scene of the crime and taking a video of more rocks hitting my car, but the absurdity and masochism of such an act convinced me just to give up my crusade. The lawyer concurred with the wisdom of my decision.
So now I just live with my anger. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t seem to diminish. This is because whenever I approach my car from the front, which is almost every day, my rage is exacerbated by the sight of the ding placed squarely in the middle of the nose of the front hood. And just like with someone who has really put you off, I have started to look in the opposite direction when I am passing.
This sign has just recently been added to the construction zone, probably after a rash of complaints. As if a warning allowed you to take action to avoid being hit!
Inertia Sminertia
(If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that although we have a house on the island of Cunda in Ayvalik on the Aegean coast, we live by necessity five days a week in an inland town called Balikesir, where I teach English at a private school.)
If my relationship with my car has suffered for aesthetic reasons, several months of driving in Turkey have nearly brought us to divorce court. This is to say that I’m beginning to regret getting the car and now thinking of getting rid of it.
There’s a recklessness and craziness among Turkish drivers that makes any highway trip a truly hair-raising experience, worse even than I remember on the road 20 years ago. After every major excursion, I literally thank God that my family has arrived unscathed, and I wonder if we shouldn’t get back to taking the bus. Let me describe a road trip for you.
When we go to Ayvalik from my job in Balikesir we have about a two-hour trip through hilly, mountainous countryside on a two-lane highway. I can state without exaggeration that on every trip we have met at least one instance of the following hazards: A car in the midst of passing another coming head on in our lane, requiring us to brake and go to the right side; or a car ahead of us stopped for some reason and blocking the lane. The latter can be an unpleasant surprise after dark.
On one of our first trips using our car, to Ayvalik, we had three brushes with a head on, and on the return, we came upon two vehicles stopped in our lane. The second stopped vehicle, which we met at night, was a truck that had apparently conked out on a grade. The driver had left it without any lights on whatsoever and had not placed any roadside emergency warnings. Luckily, my front seat passenger, my visiting sister from California, saw it in time for us to slow down and avoid a collision.
After this trip, my sister started to call Turkish driving behavior ‘insane.” And I know she meant more than merely careless or dangerous. She, like other foreign guests have commented to me, was referring to behavior wherein there seems to be a total absence of normal human risk aversion.
There are plentiful Turkish traffic manoeuvres which raise the hair on the back of your neck, but this particular one- the old 'slip back in a second before the estimated time of impact' stunt- is by far the most frequent. Note that there is an element of "chicken" here. The truck driver didn't slow down because he would consider it backing down.
Part of the explanation for this behavior is that Turks are a very impatient lot. They don’t like queues and will do anything to beat waiting in line. Likewise, they don’t like cars in front of them on the road. They will begin to pass even if they are going straight uphill around a blind curve in a snowstorm.
But this doesn’t explain everything- not the cars stopped in the middle of the road, for example. There has to be another common denominator that explains their total lack of fear in risky situations.
After some months of driving experience and observation in Turkey, I would submit that this common denominator is- and I can’t think of another way of describing it - the under-appreciation of inertia.
I’ve considered whether it might be an ignorance of inertia, but having checked the primary and secondary school science curriculum, I’m confident the basic idea was put in everybody’s head at some point.
For those of you a long time out of science class, inertia is usually taught as the resistance of a body to change in motion. It explains why when you jump off a speeding train you will probably break every bone in your body. If the train is a French TGV traveling at 200 KPH, then before you hit the ground you will be hurling through space at the same speed. That’s a whole lot of “resistance” on impact.
In cars, the law of inertia readily explains why people die in collisions. When a car crashes into a tree, it’s not the car hitting the tree that injures or kills, say, the front seat passenger. It’s the secondary collision of the passenger against the dashboard or windshield. This results from the fact that the passenger was traveling at the same speed as the car and when the car met the tree, he or she, not wanting to stop, kept going.
The way Turks drive you would think that they had devised a secret escape-from-inertia plan, whereby at the moment before a head on collision they could just bail out of the car and land upright on two feet.
Actually, misunderstandings about inertia are not confined to Turkey. I remember sometime in the seventies reading an Ann Landers column where a woman wanted her to settle a bet about whether jumping up in a falling elevator at the last moment could save your life. In her answer, Ann asked a professor at some university for his input. He invoked the law of inertia, of course, and pointed out anyone in the falling elevator, which might approach 100 MPH, would be traveling the same speed as the elevator at impact. Jumping up before it hit bottom would counter the falling speed only insignificantly, not enough to make any difference. No matter what you did, you’d be a pancake, concluded Ann.
Much to my surprise, I found that people are still asking the falling elevator question at Internet sites such as Yahoo and, believe it or not,the falling elevator was a topic on the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters
Also, you can find that there is lots of discussion about what really happens when you jump off a speeding train. I came across one poster who seemed to think that when you jump off the train, you “disconnect” yourself from the train’s speed. I’m sure he was thinking of scenes in films we have all watched where, after leaping off a train, the character somersaults a couple of times and then, without batting an eye, gets up and brushes himself off.
I would, in fact, propose that at least part of the source of these fallacies about inertia held by the Turks (and by us) is Hollywood. Unfortunately, since a lot of our world knowledge comes from TV and films, doesn’t this mean that when something is misrepresented, people worldwide can be infected with a misconception?
Without even looking, I have come across 2 films with dubious scenes in which the character’s physical actions seem to defy inertia.
In Diplomatic Courier, a Film Noir from 1952 that I recently acquired, the protagonist, thinking his life is in danger as he is being pursued by a car of enemy agents in Trieste, decides to jump out of the car he is riding in.
Lest you think that 50 years later Hollywood is more faithful to the laws of science, I happened to watch a film called Screwed (2000) on TV the other night and was astounded to see how easy it was for a dog to jump out of a fast moving van.
In this scene, the two guys in the van have kidnapped the dog from an old lady for ransom.
If the van is traveling at 40 mph, the dog is, too. So, in reality, when the dog jumps out away from the van- it's like the falling elevator- he counters the van's velocity only insignificantly and would, if this accurately represented the laws of physics, tumble violently in the direction the van is moving. He would probably break a lot of his bones before coming to a stop. Of course, that's not very appropriate for a comedy film.
Bring On Broderick Crawford
If Americans have a better idea of the dangers brought by inertia than Turks, it may be in part because we have seen educational clips on the subject on TV and at school to counter Hollywood’s viral rendition of physics. Two I well remember seeing in my formative years in California, which I know had a great effect on my driving attitudes, are the one from the California Highway Patrol showing the dangers of tailgating and the slowmotion video of crash test dummies with and without seat belts in a car hitting a wall.
In all my years in Turkey, I don’t recall seeing public service spots on either of these subjects, or, for that matter, any issue of driving safety. Since almost all Turks tailgate as standard procedure before passing- we’re talking 3 feet clearance at 80 MPH- and 90% of them seem to have abhorrence for seat belts, it’s high time the government seriously approached traffic safety through the mass media.
Since Turkey has one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world, changing driving habits should be a matter of Turkish pride for the government. Yet, their efforts have been far from serious, more like pathetic. A big part of its campaign, mostly seen on posters in public buildings, is to warn people of the ‘Traffic Monster.” Unfortunately, its rendition is rather lame- it reminds me of the Ghost Buster’s logo- and foolishly suggests that the culprit for traffic deaths is an entity “out there.” I would advise captioning the poster with the words, “Don’t look now, but the traffic monster is you!
"Don't Be a Traffic Monster," it says.
The other front of the government’s efforts, the "educational" one, is in primary schools, where they give students as young as fifth graders lessons called “Traffic” as part of a weekly curriculum. What 11-year-olds with no understanding of what it is to drive can gain from such a course is a mystery- even to them, if you ask them: one student reported to me that after a year's curriculum he had learnt "to read some traffic signs, walk on the left side of the road, and stuff like that." Well, that's getting to the crux of the traffic problem.
If they spent a part of the class time objectifying some of the more dangerous driving practices of the public- after all, people learn to drive by watching others- they might start to change driving behavior. Even more important would be to have them question their mother or father as a model of good driving. It could be said that kids learn to drive primarily from the backseat of the family car. This means that if Dad passes cars on curves going uphill, junior will probably do the same. For no less than the public's survival, this learning cycle has to be sabotaged.
Also, the course might include something about the resistance to change of an object in motion.
If there's anyone who could whip these Turkish traffic morons into shape, it's the no-nonsense Chief Dan Matthews, aka Broderick Crawford, from the 50s TV show "Highway Patrol."
Do as the Romans?
Turkish driving is outrageous by any standard (yes, even compared to the Italians!), but what makes it even more dangerous is being an American driver in the midst of it. I’ve mentioned how my stopping at a yellow light caused me to be rear-ended because it was simply not expected. That’s an example of a piece of driving behavior learned in one society that cannot be safely transplanted to another. I’ve got hundreds of such pieces.
Today, for example, driving from Ayvalik to Balikesir we met quite a few trucks on curvy grades. Most of the time I stayed behind them because I couldn’t see well enough up the road to be sure of passing clearance. I thought I was being a good driver. Yet, by being the cautious, defensive American driver I was creating a dangerous situation for everybody. The cars behind me were infuriated that I wouldn’t pass and drivers 3 or 4 cars back jumped out to pass the whole group, resulting in several edge-of-your-seat moments. Several blasted their horns furiously as they passed me. I’m sure that if it were in their cultural repertoire, they would have given me the finger.
If the moral here is to adopt the customs and practices of your host country, I’m not capable of driving like a Turk even if I wanted. This is, however, exactly the advice of a friend who was a long-time driving instructor in England. If you want to stay alive in what is a fairly dangerous state of affairs, he says, you shouldn't trip up the Turks with your culturally based driving peculiarities and thereby make the situation more life-threatening than it already is.
He has been here for 10 years and in fact now drives exactly like a Turk (that is, totally dissing inertia). When I go along with him in his car on errands in the city, I find myself hanging on for life, gripping my own seat belt as we rocket down narrow, twisting streets all the while miraculously swerving out of the way of oncoming cars. It’s not unlike the Cyclone at Coney Island.
Rights of Passage
The best way to understand the difference between Turkish and American driving habits is to consider how each behaves at a four-way stop.
When I was home last and rented a car for a few days, I was reminded how civil American drivers can be, at least in comparison to Turks. In Santa Barbara I came upon a residential 4-way stop, and because I was going to turn left, I waited first for an oncoming car to pass. As I did, another car appeared on my right. Remembering vaguely that the car on the right had the right of way- it has been 40 years since I read the DMV manual- I deferred to my newly arrived friend to make the first move. He, however, wanting to be the more gracious, motioned me to pull out. We had a momentary standoff as each of us beckoned the other to go first, but the game was suddenly changed by the appearance of a third car. Since I was on this new car’s right, I figured I had priority over him and discounted his presence. However, as I pulled out expecting both cars now to grant me passage- somebody had to get the ball rolling- each of them had simultaneously made a move into the intersection, the guy on the right apparently giving up on me to make the first move. But then, seeing me, both cars stopped abruptly in the middle of the intersection, as though they had realized a faux pas, and ever so courteously backed up to let me through. I almost felt embarrassed to go on my way.
For contrast, watch the action at a comparable 4-way stop in Turkey. There is a level of aggressiveness and daring that makes for the opposite of what occurs in the States. If there are 4 cars at a 4-way at the same time, probably all will try to be the first to pull out. The actual order of passage will be determined by levels of chutzpah, as in a game of chicken: to be number 1, just lurch through the intersection regardless of whether the other cars have made their move. It helps if you rev your engine and burn your tires. It’s a bit like 4 cats meeting and establishing a dominance hierarchy, only a bit faster and nastier.
This is the back of our new car after traversing the infamous construction zone a few times.
You may hear that people are the same wherever you go, but I've really only found two universals in my travels. The first one is the compulsion to write "Wash Me"- or Beni Yıka, or Lave-Moi, or whatever- on dusty cars with your index finger.
(The other, if you're wondering, is to keep a container of assorted ball point pens on your desk, none of which write.)
The Miracle of the American Crosswalk
I know there are those in America who lament that the level of driving civility is declining; among other things, they point to increasing instances of road rage. But I would contend that we retain 80% of our traditional manners, even in a place like L.A.
One way to witness American courteousness is to observe any crosswalk in America and see how respectful drivers are to pedestrians. Their behavior can be found hardly anywhere else in the world.
Cross any street in Europe (with few exceptions) or in Asia at a crosswalk without traffic lights and drivers won’t even slow down as they approach you. Often they speed up to scare you. The unwritten law seems to be that a pedestrian should be wary of cars, not vice verse. If there are lights, don’t count on a green light for pedestrians to give you right of way either. Here in Turkey, I estimate that after 10 P.M., 1 in 5 drivers run red lights if they have “judged” the way is clear.
Now place yourself in an American city of any size at a crosswalk without traffic lights. Stand at the curb and see what happens. Not only will cars stop, but they will continue to wait even if you don’t step into the crosswalk.
Many of my students in both France and Turkey have come back from a stay in the States and have reported on this traffic behavior as a most curious cultural phenomenon. One French student who stayed in Seattle for a couple of weeks told me that during the first day of his wanderings he had been genuinely mystified by American drivers. He had been walking around the city with his guidebook and when he came to an intersection he would often unfold the map to get his bearings. As he did so, he noticed that cars would stop. At first he had no idea why, but after it had happened a couple of times, he realized that when he read his map he had positioned himself right next to a crosswalk, and the stopped cars were expecting him to cross. American drivers, he thought, have to be the best mannered in the world.
But even after he started to do his map reading away from crosswalks, there were a couple of instances during his roaming when he inadvertently caused cars to stop. Not wanting to appear impolite, now that he understood the reason they stopped, he told me that he crossed the street for no other reason than to oblige the drivers.
If you were from Europe, or especially from Turkey, the causal inference between standing on the curb and stopping cars would not be obvious by any means; it would just not be in your world experience to have had a car stop to let you cross the street. It was for my French friend, and many others I’ve talked to- none of whom you would call pro-American- a most pleasant discovery about the country and people.
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Would that crossing the street was the major problem I had with Turkish drivers. As I’ve said, what I’m scared of is driving on the highway with them, which is pretty much the purpose for which we bought the car.
After every one of our excursions there has been a sobered pause where I feel that my passengers and I are lucky to be alive. Then I wonder if I should continue driving or go back to public transports and count on a longer life.
The way things stack up at present, I’m ready to sell the car. Although it’s primarily because of how off putting it is to drive is here, there are a few more things that have entered into this decision:
1.) At both our houses in Ayvalik and Balikesir, there has been no place to park our car.
For the first month of our car ownership we were forced to park about 10 minutes from our house on Cunda. This is because we have narrow cobblestone streets that are only occasionally wide enough to allow for a parked car and clearance for through traffic. Most available spaces have been taken.
Then one of our neighbors told us we could park in a space between his house and an old abandoned Greek house. Being a believer in the caveat “There’s no free lunch, especially in Turkey,” I was suspicious of the offer. I wondered why our other neighbors with whom he was chummier hadn’t taken it.
As it turned out, there was in fact no price tag on the offer. But the reason he had offered it to us was mainly because no one else in the neighborhood was interested. They didn’t want to park there because the space was also the residence of a goat.
But not to worry, as our neighbor explained, because the goat, which lived in a converted packing crate, was on a tether that prevented him from getting into mischief. Still, he advised, one had to be careful and be sure to park out his reach, otherwise the goat might try to gnaw the paint off the front of the car.
We took the space, feeling goat vigilance was a small price to pay for a parking place nearly outside our front door. After only 3 months, however, our privileged parking was ended when the old Greek house on one side of our space collapsed during a small earthquake. We were in Balikesir at the time and our neighbor telephoned us to tell us how fortunate we were to have left Cunda the night before because rubble had come crashing down right where our car would have been. Although the goat and his residence were unscathed, we were advised that we would have to scout out a new parking place.
Rather than lucky, I felt regret at having left Cunda when I did, as though there had been a missed opportunity. If our car had been buried, wouldn’t I have suddenly been freed from the stresses of driving in Turkey, including not in the least that of always having to find a parking spot?
Our car was usually parked under the rubble on the far right, behind which you see the goat's residence.
When I lamented that I had moved our car the night before the house collapsed, I was thinking that our car insurer would reimburse us for our loss. Though my wife was quick to point out that in Turkey there could be no clause protecting anyone from falling Greek houses, I still insist that it must be somewhere after the clause about gnawing goats.
The parking problem in Balikesir is worse for us because during the daytime there is hardly any place to park even 10 minutes away. We live near the city center and so, as as a policeman has explained to me, the streets have to be free and clear in the day. Accordingly, virtually every single street in the vicinity has a sign with a P in a red circle with slash.
However, there is one small side street near our house that the city has overlooked in its sign posting. If you park there, so everyone has understood, the police don’t ticket. But since it can accommodate only about 15 cars, and there must be 50 personal vehicles belonging to our neighborhood, you can be sure an empty space is as rare as …well… a courteous driver in Turkey.
We’re parked there at the moment, and I’m not moving the car out unless I’m at gunpoint, and even then I might resist. I’m sure those of you who live in cities with lots of cars and few parking places will understand this.
When we come back from a trip, there is, of course, never a free space waiting for us. What we do is pull into a nearby pay lot and then, from our apartment, monitor the parking situation on the side street, which is visible through our living room window. When we see a space vacated, I run down 4 flights to the pay lot, scramble into the car, and then peel over to the empty spot. If my son is around, I have him stand in the space until I can get there.
To pare down my “arrival time” from the lot to the parking place, I have actually practiced sticking in the ignition key and slamming the door shut at the same time. Also, it helps that the lot attendant knows my routine. When he sees me scurrying to my car in my slippers, he doesn’t expect me to stop the car at the gate and pay.
When I get a good space- defined by good visibility from our living room, on a wider portion of the narrow street so as to keep the car from being sideswiped- you can read the gloating on my face as I stand at the window at night admiring it, “How ‘bout that space, huh? When was the last time you got a space like that?”
2.) Since I don’t want to give up a good parking space unless I absolutely have to, I don’t use the car for errands in the city. This means we are taking buses and taxis like we did before we spent $25,000 on the car. This has made me feel like an idiot.
This is the way I'd like to work out my feelings towards Turkish drivers.
3.) Just recently my father-in-law telephoned to remind us that the tax was due on our new car.
I couldn’t imagine what he meant.
We had paid, when we bought the car off the lot, Value Added Tax of 18%. (There’s an additional, hefty tax for cars imported into Turkey, but I don’t think we had to pay this because our model Ford is, I’ve been told, assembled in Turkey.) Then there are the license plate and registration fees we paid, which are more taxes no matter what you call them.
Moreover, just recently I was told I can no longer use my California license and that I need to get a Turkish one. That's all well and good, but this requirement appears to be just another pretext for revenue collection, as I will have had to spend close to $500 on 7 different nonsensical documents from various bureaucratic agencies, including a doctor’s report on ears, nose and throat. (Perhaps we are lucky because under the old law a psychiatric evaluation was necessary.)
Anyway, what other tax could we have missed?
As my father-in-law explained, slightly amused as always at my outrage at some of Turkey’s practices, there is a tax you have to pay just for owning a car. Ours, he had learned, would be about $1000, every year.
Isn’t this adding insult to injury? How much more am I going to pay to keep something that I regret buying in the first place?
A student of mine tells me it could be worse. His father, who owns a BMW SUV, pays close to $8,000 a year for the privilege of owning it.
The Only Way to Fly
As I write this, I can see about 100 meters away through the window our car sitting forlorn, in the midst of gathering yet another layer of city dust and carbon emissions. It has been in the same spot for the last 4 weeks, and will most likely be there for at least another month. As I’ve said, nothing short of a mass evacuation of the city, a forced one, could get me to move it.
I’m not even using it for longer trips, such as to Ayvalik. During this past winter and early spring, my wife has preferred to stay in Balikesir and not go to Ayvalik because she is caring for our new baby. This has meant that I am on my own when I go to Ayvalik. Since for one person there is no compelling economic reason to take the car, I have elected to take the bus.
But this decision has really nothing to do with money. I’ve been taking the bus because it pardons me from having to drive. During every trip, I sit back enjoying, not the scenery, but the fact that I’m not the one behind the wheel.
Whereas not long ago I was swearing at the bus company for overselling tickets, broken seat backs and pathetic reading lights, I have come to a new found appreciation and respect for this slow, lumbering vehicle they call an “otobus.” I’m back to taking it weekly, only this time with a smile.
Once again, as has always been my preferred place on the bus, you will find me every Saturday morning in aisle seat number 34. I’m right back where I started, only I have learned my lesson well.