A Turkish Dilemma

Iason Athanasiadis will be speaking at Southern Illinois University - Carbondale on October 12 at 10 a.m. in Quigley 208. Iason has reported for the Pulitzer Center from Greece, Turkey and Iran.

ISTANBUL — Ottoman fezzes and false moustaches abounded. A man dressed as the Grim Reaper waited at a tram stop. As the masked revelers made their way down Istanbul’s most famous pedestrian thoroughfare, well-dressed diners gaped from the area’s hundreds of restaurants and taverns. With their eccentric procession, these fancily dressed merrygoers revived a bawdy working-class carnival, known as Baklahorani, banned by the Turkish authorities during World War II.

In the 1920's Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's founder, forged the country in a strictly secular model, despite its largely Muslim population.

ISTANBUL — A gay peasant, a nymphomaniac and a lecherous imam all figure in a bawdy theatrical play about Turkey highlighting contemporary issues such as consumerism, emigration and the proliferation of a confessional talk-show culture.