Dolmuş down to the bank to change euros to Turkish lira. Have not been changing them ahead of necessity as the lira continues to fall, although not precipitously so if you wait you get more lira per euro. More or less balanced by prices creeping up. Don’t think our Italian wine is actually any more expensive in euros - or for that matter other major currencies - than when we came, but it does cost a few more lira.
Stop on the way back to buy whole wheat flour, which our supermarket seems to have run out of. Also raw peanuts and beautifully ripe strawberries. Attracted by the scent before we actually see them in the bin.
Second stop at Altınbaşak, little family run restaurant. They have both chicken and lamb doner kabobs, but it’s the lamb we’ve come for. If it were any later than lunch time there’d be none left. May of course help that it’s Ramadan and less busy. We like to eat outside - half a dozen small tables on the front veranda, immediately outside the window to the kitchen and a couple of feet away from the passing world. Accompanied on the deck by three small cats who give up hoping we’re about to share our lunch and head off to nap under a nearby table.
Meanwhile, in an interesting case, the Republic of Turkey has just been fined €9,000 by the European Court of Human Rights for the imprisonment of a Turkish Cypriot conscientious objector. The ECHR ruled that Turkey had violated the objector’s “freedom of thought and conscience”. Not the same young man as the one who was jailed here in January for refusing on conscientious grounds to report for military service, but presumably there is a precedent that may apply in his case as well. This objector, Murat Kanatli, has refused to report for military service in the North since 2009, and was sentenced to 10 days in prison by a military court. He applied to the ECHR citing Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights re freedom of conscience. The interesting bit is that the court agreed that the case could be taken against Turkey as the TRNC could be considered a sub-administration of Turkey, despite North Cyprus acting as an independent entity. It’s unlikely to result in large numbers of conscientious objectors in future, but who knows where else it may lead.
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