Alla Turca: Etymology: Italian, in the Turkish manner,
First Known Use: circa 1811, in the meaning defined above.
Last month a lady whom I have seen first time asked me to fill out a paper at my workplace. When I looked at it, I saw an exam paper with questions about the “Work Safety or Occupational Health and Safety” and I have been asked to sign another paper as if I had this education and passed. Pursuant to Article 16 of Law No. 6331, employers are obliged to inform employees on the health and safety risks of the workplace, the protective measures to be taken against such risks, the rights and obligations of employees under Law No. 6331 and the persons in charge of first aid, extraordinary circumstances, disasters, firefighting and evacuation procedures. Article 17 of Law No. 6331 provides that employers shall arrange educational training on occupational health and safety related matters. Such training shall be repeated to the extent new risks and circumstances arise in the workplace. What was performed in mode “alla turca” instead was just signing a paper to be presented to the authorities, in case and sham exam.
I play oud, like to join choirs and participated a few performance, but not anymore. Why? Because the performance was “alla turca”. How? You in a choir get together to practice for a concert be planned in future. At my first experience I could not understand why we, instrument players, were not forced to play very good. We were just playing with singers but nobody chief, or choirmaster, whatever you call it, at our choir interested whether we were playing good or bad. When the performance time I understood why? Because the organizer hires the professional instrument players and put the microphones only in front of their instruments and we were there as mannequin (konu mankeni). Later I have learned that in all of this types of choirs this was the way, name “Türk sanat müziği amatör korosu konseri” but players or music by only professional paid musicians, always “alla turca”.
December 25, I run Grand Atatürk Race organized by TAF. There was a mess at the beginning till at the end. When we finish the race there was a crowd of layabout but no authorized one to show where the bus where we were changing clothes. We had to wander around for a long time to find the bus by ourselves and some got sick because of freezing weather. Events from start even very late registration and status(written document explaining the routes, rules) were very “alla turca-mış gibi.”
When I travel intercity I saw lots of water fountain around the roads that I drive, but most of them has no water, running, either broken or plugged, destroyed, with lots of garbage, plastics, wet wipes around.
Universities, most of them look like they provide higher level education, but do they? When I was teaching a course at one university in English, assuming that every student can follow English lecture, because they were either passed the level exam or attended one year only English Language education. They were supposed to learn English. But in reality they even cannot differentiate the language. I put a slide at the first class in Italian just to be able to understand the language level of the class so that I can give my lecture in English, no body could understand whether the text laying in front of them in English or not.
We call it in Turkish “-mış gibi yapmak”, in english “pretend”. So pretending about everything is a very normal beyond a way of doing everything here.
Pretending doing science, -bilim yapmış gibi…
Pretending doing sport, spor yapmış gibi…
Pretending doing music, müzik yapmış gibi…