Istanbul's choice

As I was reading Istanbul’s Choice by Asu Aksoy, I am reminded of a conversation I had with my cousin. She was telling me about her experience studying abroad in Turkey. In short, she had a great time there. She especially loved Istanbul. I guess I was a somewhat surprised because I had always thought of Turkey as an “old country” with very conservative people. Fun would not be the first word that comes to my mind if I had to describe Turkey. When I saw pictures of my cousin and her friends at a night-club and swimming in their bikini’s, I was really confused. My cousin finally explained that Turkey is actually quite liberal and resembles the western world. Thus, I was less surprise when Aksoy stated, “Istanbul is regarded as one of the most dynamic cities in the world, open to change and indeed changing fast. It amazes how much globalization has affected our world. I guess it is not hard to imagine that this force could affect major changes in a country. The article said that after WWII around the time before 1980’s, Turkey had a policy of Import Substitution Modality. This policy promoted local trading, and discouraged imports from the industrialized markets. In other words, Turkey was resistant to globalization. However, like many other policies of isolationism, this economic one soon died. It was replaced with progressing new markets, consumerism and industry. Of course, with this follows a city with more openness to new cultures. “neoliberalism brings together very different constituencies with diverse lifestyles, values, beliefs and practices”. I thought that this article brought up an interesting, but ironic trend in globalization. Although globalization promotes many developing countries to become more open and encourages diversity. At the same time, the exchange of products has caused the people in many of these countries to become more homogenized. Shawn showed us this effect with his pop-out book which showed men in Paris, shanghai, and New York wearing similar outfits. It was hard to distinguish the people between these three cities.