Seven Oaks Magazine.

On a budget such as mine, the trade of “travel writing” is often a difficult one to ply, no matter how honed the craft; despite the invariable thematic and aesthetic strength of my sundry attempts at documenting my various journeys, past works such as “An Afternoon on the Skytrain” or “From Manchu Wok to Orange Julius: Metrotown Mall has Two Food Courts” have simply gathered dust, curling and yellowing (like the autumn-hued wrapper of an Egg McMuffin, dancing with the wind on the North-East parkade at dusk) on the submissions desks of some of the finest publications in the country.

So for a young, budding travel writer such as I to be offered – after a year of juggling anti-depressants and calls from the collection agency (my collection agency uses Big Band jazz as its hold music; is that allowed?) – a short-term job Inside The System, promising to reinvigorate the tortured psyche and empty wallet alike with a sell-out’s paycheque while working in Istanbul was a miracle that could hardly have been turned down. Surely socialism could wait a month while I helped pimp some Young Turk IMF beneficiaries to American media markets? Maybe not. But unfortunately, that eternal moral experiment was cut short, rendered mostly moot by health concerns forcing me to turn heel relatively early, with only a couple of weeks on the Dark Side under my belt -- nevertheless, I did make it past the Skytrain.

My flight East left from Seattle , flying to Amsterdam before finally through to Turkey . Given the gravity of my apostasy, I had vowed that, to make up for my transgression, I would tell any American who asked me why I was flying to Holland that “it’s just not easy enough to get my hands on state-sanctioned drugs or homosexuality in Canada .” But nobody asked. Instead, I sat next to a young Dutchman who pounded Heinekens all the way to his home country, and who explained his sophisticated take on Europe ’s immigration issues something akin to thus: “The Turkish are nice people, but the ones that come are very poor. They really like Allah.” He even emphasized the “Al” syllable, with the effect of rendering even more inappropriately colloquial the appellation. There is no God but Al, and he is a real stand up guy.

In many ways, Turkey is a very different place than what I’m used to on Canada’s West Coast – the old churches here, for instance, are Byzantine, while the architecture I’m used to is Roman (like the two-story “Vancouver Specials” built by East Van Italians in the 60s and 70s). Instead of Larry Campbell, they have the Blue Mosque; instead of Gordon Campbell, they have what seems to be thousands of dirty, garbage-eating stray cats. In fact, there are two, perhaps eerily complimentary ubiquitous features on the streets of Istanbul : the aforementioned felines, and an endless, inexhaustible collection of wig shops.

But culturally, Turkey is familiar ground, united to me and to the world through the emerging international ethos whose basic tenets were summed up best by a man shouting loudly on the small path outside the internet café off the breathtaking Istiklal street:

Fuck you America !

Even without homos getting married, or glaucoma cases smoking legal pot, or lesbians baking hash-brownies with money from the Canada Pension Plan, Turkey is a country considered to be in the vanguard of the “new” global anti-Americanism, par excellence. While this rejection of Washington’s foreign policy has made travel and investment awkward for our neighbours past the toll booths, I must say that it has made life much easier for me here, as a quick “Not American – No George Bush” and a wave of the hand melts suspicious glances into handshakes, smiles and what are, by my calculations, liras off on kebaps with fries already inside.

I’m afraid I don’t share the panic of those commentators, even on the left, who see big problems in the global hatred of Washington, because despite all the hand-wringing and moaning about the “anti-imperialism of fools” and the shallowness of anti-Bushism, the fact of the matter is this: people in the “anti-American” countries of the world tend, on the whole, to have a better idea of what’s going on in the world than those who aren’t. And the Turkish take on imperialism strikes me as especially valid; an understanding borne not only of the fact that they’re Muslim, and the Muslims are on the receiving end of Empire today, nor is it an understanding borne out exclusively by the proximity of the EU-thirsty country to the emerging rivals of U.S. hegemony in Europe and China.

Instead, I imagine that here they know Empire – and its finite, impermanent nature – from the inside out. Istanbul is a city aware that it was once the seat of power in the world (with all the hubris and enormity of London a century ago or New York today) and now wrestles with the diktats of the IMF.

Special concessions -- such as the " Free Trade Zones and Industrial Free Zones" prided by Iktib, the Istanbul Textile & Apparel Exporters' Associations as "tool[s] of market orientation" -- recall their precedents in the Ottoman Capitulations, the set of privileges used by the West to run roughshod over the waning Sick Man of Europe so many years ago.

In many ways, Turkish society has the potential for what is so sorely, flagrantly and destructively lacking in our corner of the world: The Long View of Empire. They’ve seen the sun rise in the East, and can surmise that it will set in the West. And all that highlights the grave danger of living in a world run by people who didn’t start paying attention until high noon, Texas time.