Children line up for morning assembly at a Kurdish village school in Kars province. GEORGE GEORGIOU[/caption]
önlük [EARN-look] n. apron, uniform
If somebody asked me to choose a single sound that summed up my childhood summer holidays, I would probably pick the tune played by the ice-cream van as it drove down the hill towards my street. But that was south London. Many Turks of a similar age—children in the early 1980s—might well say that it was the ad for school uniforms made by an entrepreneur called Veysi Balin.
Every August, as the new school year approached, the ad would be aired repeatedly on public radio and television, puncturing the commentary on the Sunday afternoon football league match every time the ball went out of play.
[blockquote]“We are Balins in our school aprons.
Toot, toot, tooooot!
On go our collars then we run to school and we play all day.
We are Balins.
Toot, toot, tooooot!”[/blockquote]
It began with a sound like a train whistle; a nod, perhaps, to Veysi Balin's childhood spent selling water out of an earthenware jar to travelers on the platform of Diyarbakır Station. Then came the absurd little jingle and the punch line: “Balin's school aprons across the nation.”
In Veysi Balin's day, the önlük were black. For primary school boys, they took the form of a long-sleeved jacket in thick cotton. Girls had dresses in the same material. Both sexes rounded the whole thing off with simple white collars like the ruff of a New England Puritan. Then, in the mid-1980s, the decision was made to change the color from black to blue. Balin moved into jeans and the ad stopped.
But the önlük did not disappear. If anything, they became more visible. The blue the government had chosen was a rich blue, darker than cornflowers, and immediately recognizable. In the morning, at lunchtime, and in the evening, as children make their way to and from school in towns across Anatolia—brown and grey streets surrounded by brown and grey steppe and brown and grey mountain—it is almost as if pieces of dark sky have detached themselves and wandered down to earth.
I suspect it is the fear of losing that bold bit of color more than anything else that fueled opposition to the decision taken last autumn by Turkey's minister of education to abolish the önlük once and for all. The decision seemed logical at the time. The government had appeared intent on softening some of the more distastefully authoritarian aspects of the country's educational system, throw-offs from the days of military rule, like the obligatory temples to Atatürk in every classroom and the bi-weekly parades where children line up in the playground and swear to sacrifice themselves for the country. Seen from afar, the önlük must have seemed part of that system.
[caption id="attachment_55240665" align="alignright" width="234"]
School girls in uniform in eastern Anatolia, Turkey. VANESSA WINSHIP [/caption]
I say “from afar,” because when you look closely you realize that the uniforms Turkish primary school children wear are, in fact, not uniform at all. Yes, the blue is always the same blue. But the önlük, particularly in poorer and more rural parts of the country, are more often than not home-made. Each has a slightly different shape. Some have pleats. Some have slightly leg-of-mutton shoulders. Some have belts. Some have pockets. Some have decorative buttons. Some are topped with collars as delicate as lace. Almost all are embellished with embroidered patterns and shapes: butterflies, hearts, flowers, loops and curlicues.
Last month, six months after the original decision to dispense with the önlük, Turkey's new minister of education decided to partially go back on his predecessor's decision. Under new regulations that are due to come into force in the new academic year, school authorities, in consultation with parents, will have the power to decide whether to continue using the önlük, to make it optional or to get rid of it all together. It sounds as though that particular tone of blue may not entirely disappear from Turkish streets, not for the time being at least. I, for one, am glad.
