Our town, oh, our town!

The identification with the hometown and "the Honor of the hometown," (God, the "H" word again) sometimes leads to absurd behavior. The people of the northern town of Rize, for example, were very peeved when the British police named a money-laundering operation after their hometown.

The Federation of the Rize Associations held a protest with kemence (their traditional musical instrument) in front of the British Consulate in Istanbul, and invited the consul-general to Rize to see "what a nice, honest town that was."

Ah, but the following development shows the British courtesy. Daily Radikal quoted a spokesman from the Scotland Yard who said that they had no idea that Rize was a town in Turkey. According to the spokesman, the name was picked out from a list and he regretted any offense caused to the people of the Turkish town of Rize.

Kars, Erzurum, Rize show same reaction
Kars has shown a similar reaction to Turkey’s Nobel-winning author Orhan Pamuk after his book "Kar" (Snow) which showed their eastern town as a gloomy, dark, conservative and xenophobic place. A critic summed up the reaction to Orhan Pamuk in Kars by paraphrasing Orhan Pamuk’s own opening line in another book, "The New Life:" "I wrote a book and the doors of a city were slammed in my face." (The original quote, from "The New Life" is: "I read a book and my whole life has changed.")

Another reaction for the town’s Honor came from Erzurum. A certain columnist, who combines an excellent knowledge of history, sociology and international relations with a wry sense of irony, wrote about his travels to this city, which he defined as "the capital of Love-it-or-Leave-it" culture. Paying a visit to the city during the fasting month of Ramadan, the columnist (no, no names today) bitterly complained about lack of open restaurants and the general signs of kitsch, conservatism and lack of tolerance. Then he observed: "If you don’t like Erzurum, go to the mountains" Ñ a reference not to the resistance but to the hedonism in the nearby skiing center, Palandöken, where you can have frivolity, food and good fÉ fun.

What is so wrong with being conservative?
Hate-mail poured in, including open letters from every civil society imaginable in Erzurum. Some objected to being labeled conservative, others asked just what was wrong with conservatism.

When it comes to the defending the beauty of their city, the girls of Adana are a good example.

Some years ago, Mrs Şirin Dürüst Yalçın, then dubbed "The Queen of Kitsch" with her gaudy style, admitted a certain admiration for Paris Hilton and said that she modeled her style on her. One sardonic member of the press wrote that although Mrs Yalçın (God knows what her last name is nowadays) cannot be Paris Hilton. "All she can be, with her exaggerated style, is Adana Hilton," he said in a nasty dig at the southern town which is known for its rather heavy food and heavy-handed ways of displaying wealth.

It was then, dear reader, letters from girls of Adana poured in, protesting the comparison!