Hello my little snuggle buns! This month I would like to talk about Turkish history! Dear me, it’s all around us! But how much do we yakbancis (‘foreigner’ in Arabic!) really know about it? Well here’s a crash course! First there was King Midas and the Hitittes who came from Summeria and beat the Trojans under Agamemnun to form an empire with Egygpt’s Tutanhkamun (coincidence?) until the Romans came (they were everywhere!) and Cleopatra and Anthony died on a Turkish beach! But then the Saljooks came from Tajikmanistan and after defeating the Mongolians under Tamburlaine they created the Otomman empire that conquered Istanbul and Vienna from the Bizantines and made it Constantanople under the last great president Attaturk, who defeated Jacob Stalin and established the modern Islamic secular Turkish peoples republic in NATO! Then everybody had to wear hats! They also had a harem! My husband Phil and I went to see the harem in Topkappi but it was closed, and then when it opened there was a guided tour, which we were late for, so we made it to the next one but found out we had to get a separate ticket, and they told us that it was the last tour of the day, so we bought a ticket anyway to go the next day, but then the next day they told us that the ticket from the day before was invalid, and we missed that tour as well, so instead we went to Dolgmabche palace, but we were late there too and had to buy about four different tickets and the harem was closed for lunch, then it re-opened, but it was basically just a big carpeted living room with chandeliers! Goodness me, I don’t want to confuse you with too much history all at once, so toodle-oo till next month my little paddle pops!
