A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat

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Summary: Classic British Travelogue -- History It's Not
Review: This book isn't quite history; it's more of a travelogue. The travelogue's attempts to describe Turkey viewed through fez-colored glasses falls a little short, but the historical aspects of Seal's wanderings are on-key. The delvings into Western newspaper correspondents he presents are fascinating, if blatantly discriminatory (we'll not forget this was in the 1920s, and said correspondents were imperial Brits who still believed in Piltdown Man). Seal spends a good deal of time in rural Turkey, running into strange individuals and quietly mocking them in imitable fashion (we here at History House have come to recognize dry wit ubiquitous to British travel writers). To be frank, he made us long for the apparently unavailable 1839 book Character and Costume in Turkey and Italy, by Thomas Allom, which was written at the transitional moment between the turban and the fez and filled with all manner of dress idiosyncrasies. He tries to make it all heartwarming in the end, but the fact of the matter is that he searches Turkey all over for a damn fez and never really finds one. Instead he scratches his head over the Turkish dichotomy of Islamism versus Europeanism, which is a phenomenon that many modern Turkish politicians, and Turks themselves, seem to be trying to straddle. Go figure. [HistoryHouse.com]

Rating:
Summary: A witty personal view
Review: This book worked well for me for several reasons: (1) It is written with wit and dash, (2) it is not sentimental, and (3) it presented to me a more profound Turkey from the sunny and one-dimensional picture shown to me as a tourist. His impressions from his travels seem honest enough, though I haven't the expertise to judge his analysis. Pinch of salt in hand (this being a personal impression by a non-expert), I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Rating:
Summary: A witty personal view
Review: This book worked well for me for several reasons: (1) It is written with wit and dash, (2) it is not sentimental, and (3) it presented to me a more profound Turkey from the sunny and one-dimensional picture shown to me as a tourist. His impressions from his travels seem honest enough, though I haven't the expertise to judge his analysis. Pinch of salt in hand (this being a personal impression by a non-expert), I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not good
Review: This is fiction, not travel writing! Turkey is a very nice place to which this book does not do justice.

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Summary: Poor sociology
Review: This is poor sociology. I recommend Mary Lee Settle's ``Turkish Reflections'' instead.

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Summary: I love learning when I think I'm only having fun
Review: This was a great, good pleasure to read, terribly fun and interesting. This was a travel book of exotic cities, a history book of conflicting cultures, a sociology text on east vs. west, and a philosophical treatise on the meaning of symbol and national identity. Maybe if I knew more about Turkey I would have been less impressed, but for someone looking for lite learning -- this is terrific. I'd like to know of books like this on other countries.

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Summary: Watch out - this book has a hidden agenda.
Review: Venomously biased, full of distortions, mis-translation, andmis-quoted sources. Unless you already know a lot about Turkey andthe Turkish language, stay away from this one. This book is adeliberate attempt to mislead. It disguises a deep-rooted contempt ofTurkish culture and Turkish people behind a thin veneer of poisonousjokes. Its mean-spirited political agenda is never stated clearly- never out in the open, where the average reader might have enoughinformation to argue with Seal's reasoning. Instead, the bias stickslike mud between the lines. This is an exercise in classic yellowjournalism, communicating emotional bias in place of facts and reason.

Seal quotes sources out of context for the specific purpose ofobscuring or reversing the original author's intent. For example, areference to the classic travel account, "On Horseback Through AsiaMinor," by Capt. Frederick Burnaby, directly reverses theexplicitly stated position of Burnaby. In 1876 Burnaby traveledthrough Turkey to investigate the rumors of Turkish atrocities whichwere current in Europe at that time. Burnaby found NO evidence tosupport those rumors - instead, he was impressed with the fairnessof Turkish treatment of the Armenians, and he was unimpressed with thecleanliness of the Armenians. Seal, the rumor-monger for a new age,takes one line of Burnaby out of context, and uses it to support hiscontention that the Turkish people are racist and unfair to Armeniansand Kurds - and always have been. I only happened to catch thisbecause I had just finished reading Burnaby myself - but it callsinto question the honesty of all Seal's other references. Be warnedthat if you read this book, you will need to check every reference foraccuracy and context.

I have lived five years in Turkey as aforeigner, and I speak Turkish - better than Seal, apparently. Ican attest that Seal's attempt to portray the Turkish people as racistor ethnocentric is grossly unfair.

Seal claims to be fluent inTurkish, but his writing is filled with mis-translations anddistortions. For example, he goes far out of his way, to a remotevillage, looking for the most reactionary backwaters of Turkishculture. During this excursion, he claims to be communicating withhis guide entirely in Turkish (unlikely). The guide, a man fromIstanbul (who almost certainly speaks good English) brings twoshotguns, to shoot "Kurds." In Turkish, the word for Kurdishsounds very like the word for 'wolf' - especially to foreignears. So of course the shotguns are for wolves. For an veryinexperienced Turkish speaker, it might be possible to make thismistake, on first hearing, but for the misunderstanding to continue hemust be willing to believe the worst - that an educated man fromIstanbul might go out shooting Kurds in the country on the weekend.Seal allows his "joke" to go on for almost four pages, and eventhen does not clearly explain his mistake, thus leaving a residue ofsuspicion, distrust, and ill-will.

He makes a routine practice ofchanging the names of Turkish towns - improvising mis-translationsand using those in place of the honorable old names. He calls thetown of Gaziantep 'Warrior Pistachio' - just to be funny. But,while Gazi does mean something which might be translated as warrior,Antep does NOT mean pistachio. Many pistachio's are called 'Antep'because that is where they come from, just as we might talk aboutWashington apples, or Florida oranges. He calls a village hospital'Blackberry General,' when in fact the name of the town does notmean Blackberry, and the direct translation of "Hastanesi" issimply 'Hospital,' NOT 'General.'

Seal says you have to besuspicious of any language which does not have its own word for sex.As always, his jokes are all at the expense of Turkey, always laughingAT his subject. But consider this: how good can Seal's Turkish reallybe if he doesn't even know any words for 'sex?' There are probablyas many words in Turkish as in English. (I don't know exactly - Ihaven't counted.)

Seal definitely has some political/racial axesto grind (especially with regard to the Kurds) but, beyond that, whathe really seems to want most is for Turkey to devolve back a hundredyears, to return to the bad old days of the declining Ottoman Empire.In this light, he resents and ridicules every advance the Republic ofTurkey has made in the direction of modernization, and he mocksAtaturk - whose reforms prevent him from being able to effectivelylook down his disdainfully Imperialist nose, and thereby considerhimself a real adventurer.

Seal travels around Turkey asking aboutfezzes and Sultans, and congratulating himself on how he has struck anerve. He thinks upsetting people is a point for his side, but thereality is that some of his questions and presumptions are asinappropriate and offensive as a foreign tourist traveling around theAmerican South hoping to photograph smiling African-Americans pickingcotton by hand. If that same foreigner also interviewed KKK membersand visited the Arian Nation (while ridiculing all other views), andthen wrote about his experiences as the "REAL" America, whatwould we think of that? That's what Seal has done with Turkey.

Heclearly despises his subject. Seal has carefully constructed anemotionally charged image of Turkey as a country which usurps power,and has no right even to exist. To this end, he painstakingly seeksout all the lunatics, fundamentalists, and reactionaries, and pointsout every Turkish transgression he can find, whether factuallygrounded or not. If you have lived in Turkey, speak Turkish, and havedone some reading, you may want to read this for the purposes ofargument. Otherwise steer clear.

The best contemporary Turkishtravel book I know is sadly out of print, but you might find it [online]: "Journey to Kars," by Phillip Glazebrook. If youcan't find that, Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections" is alsovery informative, and well researched.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read!Don't miss this one.
Review: very nice, well written and just plain fun. would like to see the author return to turkey in his books!

Rating:
Summary: Fun to read while in country
Review: Whether or not to read this book shold be determined by the type of information you are pursuing. When I travel around a country (and my wife and I have spent about 1 month traveling around Turkey) I like to do so with at least three books: 1. a good travel guide (in our case we use only the Lonely Planet guides, they are the bible for travelers), 2. a good comprehensive history and 3. a good lighthearted read of the people, history, culture, etc.

'A Fez of the Heart' falls into the latter. It is a very enjoyable book about the travels of an young man returning to Turkey and getting educated in its recent (post WWI) history. The education is comical and caused both my wife and I to laugh out loud. The plot pertaining to seeking out anything to do with a fez is a clever cover to explain the author's presence and wanderings.

This book should not be read as a cultural barometer nor a factual history of Turkey. It is a pleasant and humorous read that left me with the desire to get to better undersand elements of Turkey's recent past.

If that is what you are looking for you will not do any better than 'A Fez of the Heart'.

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