Children of the Riots

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Leonidas. Hence, it will be in English, our very own Common Tongue that is good but was never enough for us.

For the last month I have been living in a Kingdom; I wish it was one of the fictional 7 but unfortunately this is one of the few actual kingdoms left on the planet we call Earth. As I just put a cross mark on the western shores of the Persian Gulf on the map of “My Places”, I also became a fan of the Al Jazeera tv network broadcasting across the gulf from Qatar. This week I found this brilliant documentary on the network about Leo’s homeland, which in fact inspired me to write this post. I also took the name of the documentary as the title of my post.

I know it’s a little bit long, but please watch it when you have time and watch it without any media founded prejudgment. Later you can continue on reading my very own Greek experience.

In the spring of 2009, I left my homeland for a year long stay at Vienna, capital city of Austria. Along the way I had lots of expectations; none came true actually. But the least expected, never imagined ones happened in this gorgeous city of central Europe.

Being born in central Anatolia, lived along the coast of Mediterranean, I always know Greece as the country across the sea of Aegean, and Greeks as the people whom once betray & betrayed and crossed the narrow sea, literally.

Last century was full of sad stories; exiles, wars, blood and sorrow, that we kept telling to our children. Even the history classes in Greek & Turkish high schools have been teaching the same events in different perspectives, or not teaching at all. After so many generations, two nations once lived happily together are now too far away, even far away than the narrow sea between us.

So on that very evening, in that very dorm room when Leonidas first introduced himself as “Greek”, he became the very first Greek I ever met. My initial thoughts were; “Oh my god, he will probably go wash his very hand that we shake a few seconds ago” which never happened actually.

He was indeed friendly, welcoming and talkative; three adjectives that is deeply missing among Austrians. In the next 24 hours we started sharing a single network outlet with the longest cat-5 cable of ever known in human history. Later he bought a hub for multiplying the network outlet, so we can use it at the same time. But the cable stayed, connecting both our rooms and in a sense building our friendship. Like his other stories, “Leo and the battle for a decent network connection” is a very long -but never sad- story. At the end he managed to get a refund from the Austrians, even if he never demanded it.

We eventually started having a beer or two (with peanuts for sure); either at the patio that our dorm rooms are sharing or at the bar downstairs. Movies and meals were next; in a very short time we were inseparable. How did it happen? I still don’t have any idea. He was for sure one of the greatest discoveries of me. Along the way I even tried to convert him; he was ready to make the switch until the time he discovered the “rule of circumcision”.

Among the 11 months of my exile in Vienna, Leo actually/physically stayed there for 3-4 months. But we did manage to build an amazing friendship in such a short time, that I still kept bragging about.

Yes, I am still so proud, why shouldn’t I? We were born on different sides of the narrow sea, have grown among two nations not liking each other at all and raised by hearing horror stories of each other. But none of them were successful; at the end humanity was the sole winner of our story.

After meeting with Leo, flood gates were broken and Greeks started to pour into my life, both literally and physically. Leo was the kind of guy who deeply loves “company”. There was not a single time he was alone along the road between Athens and Vienna, and add Greeks, who certainly love travelling, to this story; you should get the picture now. 

My observation is that just 15 minutes was more than enough for making friends with a Greek. The rules are pretty much simple; be yourself and leave European formality at the door, keep repeating how much you love “baklava” (that’s their weakest point) and never ever mention the word “Cyprus”.

I met amazing human beings whom were born across the narrow sea, all more than friendly, all too much like me or like my friends back at homeland. None of them was ever slightly rude to me, or tried to put the sorrows of the last century between us. For sure we have discussed all the sensitive issues of the last century, and even talked about the “Cyprus” and I never felt or observed any kind of terror wildly used among our media outlets. I just met human beings whom loved talking about their ancestral homes in Little Asia and willing to put everything aside in exchange of some respect and humanity.

For sure, not all Greeks are like the one I am lucky to met with. This is actually true for my side of the story; both nations have their extremists and will always have them. Unfortunately there is still no cure for such illness, but as I personally proved there is still hope.

My great Greek experience was not only on comparing our nations and finding out our common words, but mostly about observing the children of a great nation whom once represent the sole civilization on our planet. Thousands of years have passed since the first democracies of ancient Greek cities, but their children are still proud and they should be proud of it. It’s the first thing I see among them, proud and dignity. 

Hundreds of years of Ottoman rule made us alike a lot, yes, but what happened in the last century separated us a lot as well. Turks have faced three military coups in the last 50 years, among them the last one was for sure the harshest one. We were simply broken after the coup; especially the left wing of the society is still in ruins now. But Greeks managed to overthrow their own dictator back in 70s and there were not broken like us, especially leftist were still proud of 17th of November. So they were rebellious, ready to object and ready to ignite with the first touch of a fire. That was the second thing and probably the most I admire among them; their never ending rebellion for everything.

Since I left Vienna, I kept a special eye on news across the sea for my loved ones living there. Many things happen in the one and half year after. I know many Turks laughing at the things happening there, not simply at their ancestral enemy but especially at the European Union to whom we built a national anger over the course of years waiting to be accepted within the union.

I am angry as well, but my anger and frustration aims at the financial politics and policies of the so called human civilization. I have been watching, listening and reading about the financial system that we adore and love with the name of capitalism, and I still do not understand how we manage to worship it and put all our faith in such a system which is broken from the very beginning. Hence I was furious when I watch media gurus blaming solely Greeks for the mistakes of such a system. As if European banks and global financial institutions were absolutely innocent. I simply cannot accept rescuing of a totally broken financial system over the ruins of a nation or it seems to be of nations.

I know that I have started my post with Leo and on the way changed the subject to the financial crisis at hand. That was mostly intentionally, since our general attitude towards this crisis as one of the major problems of our civilization that we need to cure in expense of anything. At this point we are simply missing the most important factor; the humans. After a daylong marathon with any of the news media outlet you could easily become one of those, who were brain washed on their cozy sofas and started blaming other human beings instead of blaming the financial system. Are we that lost? I hope not.

Finally here is my last picture from Vienna with Leo & Dimitri. It was a spring like day; a sunny February day with degrees a little bit over 0 and we were hanging out at Stephansplatz.

Lately I have been thinking of revisiting Vienna, not in winter of course, but since Leo left the city for good I found it hard to be there without him. May be one day we both have another amazing journey from Venice to Vienna where I would be DJing and he would be driving.

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