Gazi Antep or Gaziantep? That is my question...

image via digitaltrends.com

Being a creature who loves the world of words, I generally pay attention to roots/stems, possible origins of a word, etc. A few things about the town names in Turkey which I've observed:

Gaziantep might have been Gazi Antep, and I sort of figured this out in a weird way. Ask someone from that town where they're from and they might tell you they are "Antepli", or from Antep. So what's the Gazi part about? Lucky for me (and you) I travel with my handy-dandy reference guide - erm - husband. Gazi can also be spelled ghazi and means warrior. Warriors are from Antep, I guess?

How about Kahramanmaraş?  Kahramanmaraş or Kahraman Maraş. I like the ice cream from there - or at least the guy in Mersin who's from there makes good ice cream, maybe it has something to do with that? Nope. For Maraş, we honor the hero.

Then there's Şanliurfa, or Şanli Urfa, aka famous, but for what? I found all kinds of foods like kebab and cheese, etc, but you know Gazi Antep has plenty of yummy stuff too.

There are probably other examples and I've noticed the trend doesn't apply to just cities. Example: Fatih Sultan Mehmet. The guy's name was Mehmet! Fatih=Victor Now we have Fatihs and Sultans and Mehmets...but that's another story.

Imagine if we had names like that. Instead of New York, it could have been Opulent York or maybeVogue York, although I suppose at the time it was named, NY was neither of those things.

Founder President George?

Perhaps I need to work on the embellishment technique.

So:

Who is the hero of Maraş? Who is the Warrior of Antep? Why is Urfa famous? Well, that seems to be my homework for the week. That and the gypsy girl from Gaziantep.

Gaziantep "Antep the Victorious Warrior"

Blue Plate Special

via PlakayaYaz.com

A new, base model Honda Accord costs about $50,000 USD in Turkey today. That's pretty steep compared to what I can get it for here in NC. The car isn't any different, but each country has a different tax schedule and the result is less car for your money in a lot of locales, not just Turkey. I've a client who says he paid $90,000 for a Honda Odyssey in Singapore recently. No wonder the rest of the world drives small cars, right?

So what does that have to do with Blue Plates?

In Turkey, an expat can get around the tax. Sort of. If you bring a car in and intend to take it back out with you, then you can get blue plates. Mavi Plaka they call it. I call it: Stop that driver and see if she has any Marlboros...but that's another post. I'm a foreigner, so techically I can import a car, go through (a million) hoops and mayhaps get away with paying less than the dealer MSRP in Istanbul. Well...let's just say hindsight is 20/20.

I put my 3 month old Acura on a boat and picked it up at the seaport in Turkey. Then it got interesting. I was an expat, but I was married to a Turk and apparently that was a problem, even though the car was in my name. I couldn't get blue plates. I couldn't get yellow temporary plates. I had to import the car and then get white ones. Just get divorced, says the attorney. Ha! I drove around with (blue) CT plates and no one asked me why.

Six + months of headache and miles of red tape later, I got the priviledge of paying my tax to the Turkish government and went to get my plates. According to the logic, they should be white because I paid the tax, right? Well, no. I got blue ones.

And wouldn't you know...we moved to Abu Dhabi shortly after.