Sold out souls in Ankara

Ankara Kalesi'nde, June 2018 (c) D.Neubacher

When visiting a country full of contradictions, you should not be surprised to meet a carpet shop owner called Satılmış. Right after my friends and I entered his little shop, located in one of the narrow alleys of Ankara Kalesi, I felt once more the urge to learn more about the people of this intangible city. Therefore, it did not take me a minute of hesitation to accept Satılmış' invitation to sit down and chat a bit. After he put my newest acquisition of beautiful Turkish decorations into a plastic bag, we found ourselves sitting in the shade of colorful Kilims, sipping at tea glasses filled with the sweetest apple tea I've ever drunk, and listening to Satılmış' words.

Without pause he told us of his brain aneurysm six months ago, his excuse for not keeping fasting during Ramazan and his decision to get an assistant to help him with the work in the shop. During our conversation he seemed to have mentioned all family members, relatives and friends of relatives (or of his neigbours' friends and relatives who confusingly enough might be still considered relatives here) who are living in Poland, Germany or America. He does not understand at all, why some blame his friend's son for marrying a western woman, Satılmış said while sending a grin into my direction. Open-mindedness is important to him, he said - especially if you are earning money from tourists, I added to myself.

Satılmış is one of many men and women of business in Turkey who are severely suffering from the highly tensed political situation. For almost two years the Turks (almost 80 millions of people!) have been living in a state of emergency by now. Neither the unmistakable buses carrying the candidates' voices through the streets of the capital, nor the  floods of wallpaper and the thousands of Turkish flags showing the patriotic psychosis of the country can hide the fact that the war of democracy has been lost a long time ago. The upcoming elections do not seem to bring any relief into this pressure chamber. People like Satılmış might need to wait many more hot and calm seasons till the masses of western tourists swarming through the old town of Ankara will return.

My friends and I were already heading through the crazy traffic of Ankara's streets, passing the leftovers of a bombed house in the middle of a vivid shopping area, when I asked them about the meaning of the shop owner's name that remained in my thoughts. Satılmış means "sold out", I learned and wondered, if this old man was aware of all the contradictions his country and its people are dealing with every day. 

When I took this photo of him he might have sensed a bit of my hope for him to live long enough to see a future of sold out Kilims - bought by Western tourists. Before continuing the tourist's daily duties of permanent consumption, I sent Satılmış a portion of this hope - may it be even sweeter than his apple tea and keeping a smile on his face.