Necla Kelek undertook to explore her home country anew: from European Istanbul to wild Kurdistan, to fantastic beaches and the majestic mountains of Anatolia. She found a country by whose rich historic heritage and beauty travellers cannot help but feeling fascinated. But the inhabitants of the former Ottoman world empire appear strangely void, homeless, as if they were floating on a raft through a foreign world.
In Ankara, Necla Kelek sees her favourite uncle, a man of the Republic, being buried and with him the idea to remodel Turkey as a country with a European spirit. »We have come to terms with history«, announces President Gül. »Our religion is without fault«, says Prime Minister Erdogan. But the genocide of the Armenians is a taboo up to the present day; Christians still hide behind walls in order to be able to live their faith. Kelek’s encounter with the military forces shows the former elite’s will to self-assertion, her visit at the National Board for Religion, a multi-billion missionary agency, the rise of new powers. With bewilderment, she registers in the East-Anatolian home of her childhood that the public places have become free of women – men exclusively dominate the street scene. She tells about the life of a successful female factory manager who, being unmarried, is controlled by her tea boy; but also about many who are not willing to accept the new Islamic cultural standard – such as the belly-dancer from the Bosporus, the women fighting against honour killings, the police officer with whose help the author freed a young Kurd with German passport from the clutches of her family.
Kelek’s report from the heart of Turkey discloses the jaggedness under the surface of a modern country, the torn mentalities, the political inconsistencies, the social gaps into which Turkey increasingly falls. Where does Turkey come from, where is it heading?
