Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

by Suzy Hansen

political party names seemed to crop up every year: the Republican People’s Party and the Democrat Party, the Justice and Development Party and the Motherland Party, the National Salvation Party and the National Order Party and the National Development Party, the People’s Labor Party and the People’s Democracy Party, the Great Turkey Party and the New Turkey Party. The Communist Party still existed. The so-called Islamist political party embraced the West, and the secularist party did not. The Islamist party was capitalist, the secularist party was not. The country had been America’s and Israel’s staunchest ally, but the Turkish people liked neither very much. The head scarf was banned on university campuses and in government institutions, but you couldn’t drink alcohol within one hundred feet of a mosque. Women had gotten the