In a move to set a world record, a young Turkish man studied extremely hard for months to prepare for the notoriously difficult centralized college entrance exam. We're talking really burning the midnight oil here, too, since the man is already in a college studying construction engineering. But he has a very special world's record in mind and he needed to study to be sure he knew the right answers.
So he could answer them incorrectly.
"I'm confident. It's a very high possibility that I will end up with zero correct answers," he told Anatolia news agency.
Boyar has been the focus of media attention since he announced last month he would attempt to give wrong answers to all 180 questions in protest against the country's notoriously complicated university entrance exam, an ordeal for students and families.
Boyar, who is already studying construction engineering at a leading Ankara university, explained that he studied hard ahead of the exam because he still had to find the right answers before marking a wrong one.
Since four wrong answers eliminate one correct one, Boyar is aiming at a total of minus 45 points.
For Turkish youths, the centralized exam is a culmination of years of study, both at schools and on costly private courses. Only about a quarter succeed.
And you thought the SATs were tough. Well, best of luck to Mr. Boyar. Or should that be worst of luck? One is unsure of the proper phrasing in a case like this.
Elsewhere in Turkey, The Turkish public broadcasting company is busily defending it's decision to ban Disney's Winnie The Pooh and other western cartoons that feature characters who happen to be pigs. Like Piglet.
Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) said late Saturday media reports that "Winnie the Pooh" and other cartoons featuring pigs had been barred "are untrue and aim to discredit the institution".
In a statement carried by the Anatolia news agency, TRT said it had acquired the exclusive right to broadcast Walt Disney's cartoons and movies in Turkey but added, "the Walt Disney materials have not been acquired yet… (and) therefore the cartoon 'Winnie the Pooh' does not exist in TRT records and archives".
Islam regards pigs as unclean and prohibits the consumption of pork.
TRT is controlled by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government, which is under fire for seeking to raise the profile of Islam in mainly Muslim but strictly secular Turkey.
Nice of them to be so careful about licensing, isn't it? I mean they get exclusive rights, then fail to actually, you know, acquire the material for broadcast. But it's not about Piglet. Really. Honest. Trust us.
And finally, here's a really well written portrait of a Turkish café and the people who work from it daily.
Time passes. The man nestled in the corner, a dentist playing hooky with a hookah, slips an X-ray back into a teal folder labeled "Confi-Dent," pulls out a toothpick and polices his teeth. Two girls and three boys pass a comic book between them. Tea is ordered.
"I wish I'd left," says a teenager, smiling nervously. His fingertips pull the ends of his sweater into his palms. "If I'd left, it wouldn't have happened."
Someone, it seems, had jumped out a window at a party. "The cops came," his friend says. But he's smiling. Everyone is.
One set of beanbags over, a man takes a sheaf of currency from a business associate. Big bills. He holds a 100-lira note to the pale sunlight. The watermark emerges: the ghost image of Kemal Ataturk, founder of Turkey, arching an eyebrow at the bearer. "You have to be careful," the man says. "They even make fake coins. I'm serious."
The approach of 4 p.m. finds the man with the scarf, named Ahmet, bent over a crossword puzzle. In Turkish newspapers they take up a whole page, the boxes an inch square, as if the whole nation were nearsighted.
" Buyrun!" a waiter calls to a clutch of three young men in black. "If you please!" They keep walking.
The sycamore branches riffle, the breeze slackening like the afternoon. A customer approaches the cashier to settle up. Ahmet hovers.
Read the whole thing. You can hear the wind in the sycamore branches.
