Huliganov’s Turkish Experience #21 – Journey home from Turkey

Original YT playout date: 4 May 2008
Duration: 14:08

The 21st and final part of Huliganov’s Turkish experience – final that is until I go back there in 2014, This rounds off the current series, and some folks from Turkey who watched all 21 episodes concluded that I came away with a better understanding of Turkey than most visitors they know about, which I took as a great compliment. I think Turkey’s a fantastic place. Much better than I thought it would be.

Before my first visit I did not want Turkey to join the EU because they might spoil it by introducing Islam. Now I’m more worried that the EU could actually ruin their successes, built originally by the massive statesman Ataturk. They have a secular society, which means that although Islam is the majority religion, most people in the big cities are fairly disinterested and the clerics and zealots don’t get to push everyone else around. They know how to deal with Islam in their society, we don’t. We give the Islamic pushers more room to manoeuvre than they get in Turkey, and the EU would probably end up telling Turkey to give more freedom to the religious conservatives, allowing them to wear their scarfs in Parliament, etc, as well as forcing them to stop preparing certain local delicacies which we think are not healthy, like sheeps’ intestines.

In the end one way or another, we may be destined never to be in the same Union, but we should be close friends with Turkey, and allow them the best trade and mobility relations with our countries.”
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Huliganov’s Turkish Experience #16 – Eating in Kutahya

Original playout date: 29 March 2008
Duration: 5:33

Scenes from two fine meals, incorporating perfect Turkish hospitality, fine food, fine ceramic and football with Fenerbahce.

Black carrot juice with spices – a fine drink they should sell over here too. It sounds like I am saying “blackcurrant juice” but it is actually black carrots. Checking this out, I note that what this is is not a separate species, just the purple form which is actually the way they looked as they came into Europe in the tenth Century AD, along the silk road, while the orange version we know and love was only emerging in Afghanistan at around that time, and arrived some time later.

Carrots are one vegetable with quite interesting comparative etymologies, having clumps of similar words for them in similar languages, but these don’t really resemble one another. I hope to enlarge on that one day in a series of etymological articles.

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Huliganov’s Turkish Experience #5 – A Passage to Asia

Original playout date: 8 February 2008
Duration: 14:00

We drive to Bolu. Anyone that thinks that Turkey is of necessity a warm country is in for a surprise. But the snow on the mountains here is a new thing – it never used to be like that in the last century. While North East Europe experiences more mild winters, here the climate change seems to be in the reverse direction.

***Statistics and Credits***
Views at the time added to HTV: 650
Likes at the time added to HTV: 5
Dislikes at time added to HTV: 0
Popularity % ” ” ” =L/(L+D): 100.0%
Comments at time added: 1
Total interactions at time added: 6
Total interactions to views 0.9%
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – medium use
Location: Istanbul to Bolu, Turkey
Other people featured: Colleagues, including Eren Canbolat
Genre: Travel
Music used: Fatih Erkoc
Languages used: English, Turkish
Animals/plants featured: Naturally occuring vegetation