The likeness of being

As an Indian who spends several months a year in Turkey, I experience a strange schizophrenia — same yet different.

The Indian influence, of course, is seen everywhere around the world. But Turkey has relatively few Indians — so few that wearing a sari or a bindi will still draw curious glances, and inquiries as to where you come from (Kazakhstan? Azerbaijan? Oh, HINDISTAN?)

And yet, everywhere I go in Turkey, I see India reflected.

To begin with, there is the language. Turkish has an estimated 3,000 words in common with Hindi, which creep up on you at odd times.

It’s disorienting, sometimes, to come across the coffee chain called KahveDuniya, the world of coffee. Or see sebji and badem onthe menu. Or “Dikkat!” on traffic signs, which means ‘beware’ in Turkish.

Sometimes this clash of cultures makes for interesting juxtapositions; the Turkish word for single, for instance, is bekaar . Or when I met a taxi driver called Celebi, which, it turned out, is pronounced Jalebi.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is to Turkey what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is to India.

Ataturk’s striking, patrician face is everywhere, from coins and currency notes to cafes and restaurants.

Now, the authoritarian Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is trying to establish his own personal cult: slapping posters of himself on bus stops and buildings, gazing into a presumably glorious future of Turkey.

Just as in India, the Turkish people like a charismatic hero, but heroes can often overdo the compulsory hero-worship, as the beleaguered Erdogan is now finding out.

Traffic in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, is vicious, and you are guaranteed to spend hours in clogged streets while cursing at their similarly relaxed approach to driving.

Every taxi-driver knows a shortcut, but often, as back home in India, shortcuts make for fairly long delays.

Like Indian metros, Istanbul is going through a frenzy of construction. Most television advertisements are for posh apartment buildings, with pools, gyms and beautiful women dressed in floating white, identical to the DLF ads for Gurgaon monstrosities.

And they too grapple with balancing environmental concerns with economic development. Istanbullus are now debating the construction of a new, third airport, which will destroy much-needed green space.

Other similarities are more frightening. Like India, Turkey is becoming increasingly conservative. Lately, Erdogan has been taking on the role of the pater familias : telling Turkish women to have at least three children or more, urging people to drink yoghurt rather than alcohol, trying to curb abortion rights and droning on at length about the decline of family values.

Sounds familiar? Like India, liberal Istanbullus are feeling increasingly bullied, more so after the brutal tear-gassing of the Taksim Gezi park protesters last summer in which nearly a dozen people were killed and thousands injured.

At every social meeting, politics is hotly debated, and many worry deeply about the future of Turkey.

Currently, much like our own coalition-era neta s, Erdogan is embroiled in a corruption scandal and a power struggle with his former allies, the Gulenists.

In tapes that have been leaked on the internet recently, Erdogan is heard talking to his son Bilal on the best way to hide large sums of money.

And, like every other Indian politician, he is taking the easiest way out: blaming the foreign hand for plotting to topple his government.

Turkey is a secular country, in theory. In practice, it often remains confused over its national identity. Currently, a national debate rages over the possible conversion of the iconic Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque.

Hagia Sophia was once a Byzantine cathedral, but the Ottoman ruler Sultan Mehmet converted it into a mosque. Then Ataturk, the champion of secularism, turned it into a museum in 1935.

Now, rightwing groups are calling for it to be turned back into a mosque, to the dismay of Christian minorities. It’s Babri redux, only with priceless mosaics at stake.

Free speech in Turkey, like India, is endangered. And like communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal did in India, Erdogan says this is for the Turkish people’s own good. The government has just introduced restrictions on the internet and social media.

Erdogan says it’s to prevent “blackmail and immorality”. His opponents think, not unreasonably, that it’s to prevent revelations of his corruption.

Meanwhile, Turkey is the world’s biggest jailor of journalists. Authors, like in India, have to worry about who might take offence. The country’s two best known authors, Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, have both been prosecuted for talking about Kurdish genocide and religion, though in Shafak’s case, the case was dropped later.

This summer, Turkey heads to the polls, as we do. Erdogan is expected to stay in power, but with a reduced majority and some of his power eroded.

Either way, like India, Turkey is at a historical crossroads.

The writer is a journalist who splits her time between Istanbul and Bangalore

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