These are rather old words. New generation don´t know what they mean and usually use them incorrectly. Anyway...

I think wine helps...

"Kadrimi bilmeyen" must be an ellipsis for "kadir kiymet bilmek".

Kadir = brightness.

Kıymet = value They are usually used together to give the meaning : appreciate someone, to be aware of how valuable someone is...

Deli_kizin, I normally don´t watch TV so much but you gave me the idea to see Bu Kalp Seni Unutur mu?. I couldn´t quite make it to the end but at least it made me remember my early teenager days.

I remember the day when the coup D´Etat happened. I was 13 years old then and had had my first date with a girl the night before. I was very happy and filled with hopel. Early next morning, my father woke me up saying the army had declared a coup D´Etat and that there would be a curfew that day. Well, the curfew was mostly for grown ups and we got out beginning from the first day. We saw all the tanks that had ruined the main roads, the soldiers in the streets and everything.

Turkish people supported the move, they crowded the places where Evren gave a speech and voted for the referandum that would change the constititution and confirm Kenan Evren as the legitimate president of the country with a record high voter participation and a record high support for the coup D´Etat. This was quite saddening for both the left and right militants. After having sacrificed everything for the sake of the country, they saw the crowds applaud their downfall, support the tortures they were subjected to and endorse the evaporation of their comrades.

In those days, everyone was supporting the new regime and no one was moving a finger to protest it. It is only now, after a few decades that we see TV shows bold enough to cover the topic.

Like said in Spartacus the movie, Rome is The mob so are Istanbul and entire Turkey...

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You have a point there. One needs to be very selective and careful when presenting children with entertaining or educational materials. We shouldn´t consider them as potential receivers of a certain political, religious point of view, mentality etc. These matters must be at the discretion of parents in the first place. It would still be a good parenting practice to allow a child to use his/her own mind to make decisions. Where simple decisions are all that they can make, sophisticated notions should not be imposed on them. They must be allowed to develop their own points of view gradually. I feel this would be healthier.

The problem is those dark alleys will always exist. In my way of thinking both evil and good develop equally. The better you think the world is getting, the worse certain aspects of it will become. This point of view has been advocated by dialectical materialism and has its roots in Socrates and even earlier in zoroastrianism.

Zoroaster intruduced a celestial God with two spirits good and bad. Believers would have to choose one of them. He professed, there would be an eternal fight between these which has been proven thus far. Socrates believed life is a transition into more sophisticated forms perpetually. Hegel introduced thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Marx combined Hegel´s thought about dialectic process with Feuerbach´s materialism to create dialectic materialism.

I tend to share the thoughts developed in this circle. Things indeed get more sophisticated by time but evil aspects of human and society follow the same track too. 

The common aspect of all these philosophers was the fact that they opened up a frontier against the idealist or romantic thinking that allows completely disregarding certain intrinsic aspects of a subject (in this case human) and replace them with principles, ethic codes etc which can only exist in an ideal world.

I believe those dark alleys will always exist and they will probably be even more threatening. You had better hold on to your wallet. Keep an eye on your children and beloved ones. Unless we can find a formula to distibute wealth equally, we can expect much improvement in any of the social parameters.

Did you know that the biggest harm Hagia Sophia ever endured was done by the Christian crusaders who set out on a holy quest only to turn into pillagers astounded by the riches of the Byzantium.

True, the problem was not the richness of the city. True, poverty and hunger have always been the main culprit but tell me have we ever been able to solve this problem? In the world, affluence is invariably rare and preferential. A lot of other crimes are connected with lack deprivation too. 

P.S. I have no problems with sensually provocative women. There is indeed a shortage of them...

When I have a fat wallet on me, I tend to stay away from dark streets where I may get into trouble. I know this is a violation or in other words a limitation on my personal freedom. I know there is law and order but like a famous old Tracy Chapman song goes,".. the police always come late, if they come at all." I have learned the hard way that it is wrong to assume that this world is an ideal place, we humans are not, to start with.  Whatever we may be objecting or standing by, there are the seeds of corruption, indecency and therefore a potential to limit others´ freedoms in all of us. Those of us believed to be completely the other way around are depicted on the walls of churches with halos above their heads...

There is a Ukrainian feminist group appearing in news these days. They seem to take every opportunity to get rid of their clothes to protest attempts to violate their freedoms. In the end, they use their bodies to draw public attention. They use the ever lasting appetite in men for the female figure. Without a doubt, many women do use their bodies to get silly men to do whatever they want them to do.

If there should be resolution about this, there must first of all be some sort of consistency. If one defends that women must have complete authority over what to wear, this must also include hijab no matter how repulsive the idea may sound to some of us.

I don´t associate with people who wear hijab. Her hijab is a clear cut indication of the fact that we cannot see eye to eye in many things. Still, it is her life, her decision and she is not very different from those Ukrainian feminists in this regard.

I don´t believe in destiny either at least not in the religious sense. Neverheless, I don´t believe that coincidences govern everything that happens around us either. Beginning from the smallest particles of matter everything interacts with itself in line with a certain set of protocols. Matter itself is organized by a mastermind or some sort of entity whose reasoning is reminiscient to some extent of and vastly superior to ours. This does not necessarily have to be God. Maybe there is indeed God and we are living and dying according God´s will. I just don´t know anyhing about this.  I am just not very satisfied by either Jesus or Mohammad. I tend to believe if God communicated with us God would certainly arrange it in a more persuasive manner. Now that God must have enough means to get a message through.

We are currently still driven by the winds of individualism that have opened up the doors of freedom to many of us. We feel able, confident omniscient and omnipotent. It sometimes hurts to remember though that we don´t know the first thing about neither fate nor the nature of our very own existance. 

 Konya is renowned to be one of the most conservative cities in Turkey. Still, it is a fairly big city, there are many different types of people living there. The general attitude towards outsiders seems to be good. They try to do everything to please you when you visit their restaurants etc as a tourist. Last time I was there, the waiter very politely led us to the premises of the old mansion that the restaurant was located in getting me to wear a freaky red garment - a replica of the what used to be worn by kadis of olden times. He even put a giant white turban on my head completing the scene with a rosary having very large beads.

He took a picture of mine in that costume and went on to rave about the history of the mansion and the location in general. Considering the little price I paid on the traditional kabobs and their special sour okra soup, this was way too much attention than I´d expected.

Still there are all sorts of people and families everywhere. I would expect them to be a bit more conservative than the average. Should they try to force you to do things you wouldn´t want to do, it all  boils down to what extent your boy friend can and will protect you from that.

At the end of the day, no matter how conservative the family can be, it is you and him who will decide on things. Such situations are good opportunities to test how deep your love is.

Well, I picture myself trying in vain to say the name of this unpronounceable booze in a Polish liquor shop. The shopkeeper doesn´t  quite like the slurry speech I produce as I hopelessly keep repeating zdzlbo, zdzlbo, no, no, zdzþbpr.  He kicks me out saying don´t come back for a drink before you sober up...