Mathematical Communities

Nesin Math Village: Mathematics as a Revolutionary Act GIZEM KARAALI

This column is a forum for discussion of mathematical communities throughout the world, and through all time. Our definition of ‘‘mathematical community’’ is the broadest: ‘‘schools’’ of mathematics, circles of correspondence, mathematical societies, student organizations, extra-curricular educational activities (math camps, math museums, math clubs), and more. What we say about the communities is just as unrestricted. We welcome contributions from mathematicians of all kinds and in all places, and also from scientists, historians, anthropologists, and others.

â Submissions should be uploaded to http://tmin.edmgr.com or sent directly to Marjorie Senechal, [email protected]

erched right next to a tiny little mountain village in the Turkish Aegean, you will find, beyond the olive trees and the vines, slate boards full of scrawls, a brand new stone library with volumes and volumes of the mathematical classics, and enthusiastic mathematicians huddled together over cups of tea and a problem. This is an account of my visit to the Nesin Mathematics Village, a possibly unique experiment in building a mathematical community in one of the most unexpected places on earth (Figure 1). …

P

I squeeze into an orange car with all my belongings and look out its open window as the rolling hills of the Aegean pass by. I got off the plane in Izmir eager to walk about and stretch my legs, but we had to rush to meet the shuttle driver sent there to fetch us. Grateful though a bit restless, I sit there and try to think of what the next few days may have in store. Whatever you do, don’t look at the road. Turkish drivers drive as if traffic is a vicious video game, where the goal is not to survive but to score big. (I know. My father was one.) Outside, fields full of summer’s bounty pass by. Then the road shrinks and the little car carrying our party starts climbing. Eventually ancient olive trees give way to sprawling vineyards, and then we find ourselves in a little mountain village once called C¸irkince by its original inhabitants, ‘‘kind of ugly,’’ in order to dissuade curious visitors. Today the secret is out and its current name is S¸irince, ‘‘kind of cute,’’ certainly a more apt description (Figure 2). Tourists visiting nearby Ephesus twelve kilometers away (Figure 3) will occasionally take the ride to drink its wine and see its Orthodox Greek church. S¸irince has a poignant history involving lost homelands and broken friendships. And though in the summers it is bustling with its growing tourism industry, it is still a village, where ‘‘birds chirp, donkeys bray, goats baa, mourning doves coo, dogs bark, roosters crow, children play, a tractor passes.’’1 But we are not quite yet at our destination. We pass the little town of six hundred, and find an even narrower path for the orange car, which in its current surroundings is starting to feel like a clumsy giant barely holding on to the winding unpaved road. Still no need to worry, because our driver has played this game several million times before, and just around the time I start wondering about dinner, we arrive. I get out of the car and look around. S¸irince was small, but where we are now is tiny! Stone houses, sprawling trees, plants of many kinds all over the place, butterflies as big as my toddler’s palm, and a hand-laid cobblestone path in front of me. Later I’ll hear the frogs, I’ll get acquainted with the big ants and the ginormous spiders, and each of the many many

1

http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/Aegean/Ephesus/sirince/, accessed January 2, 2014. This website has information about S¸irince and some nice pictures, too. And of course there is always the google alternative; simply enter in ‘‘Sirince’’; google is smart enough not to need the tailed S to get you the right information.

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DOI 10.1007/s00283-014-9453-5

Figure 1. A panoramic view of the mountain range, with both S¸irince and the Math Village in sight. Photograph taken by Stephan Ramon Garcia from atop a nearby observation tower (Hodri Meydan Kulesi).

cats of the village will eventually pay a visit at my dinner table, but at this first moment, I just breathe in the fresh mountain air and the scent of the wildflowers along with it. … The name Nesin might sound familiar. It is almost a household name in Turkey. Most have heard of Aziz Nesin (1915–1995), the prolific and restless satirist (Figure 4) whose plays and short stories amused their readers amid pointed remarks about Turkish democracy, bureaucracy, willful ignorance, intellectual snobbery and hubris, and most recently religious fanaticism. His unabashedly atheistic stance during the early 1990s became controversial in the

AUTHOR

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GIZEM KARAALI is the associate editor of

The Mathematical Intelligencer. She earned her mathematics Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and now teaches at Pomona College. Her mathematical research lies in the representation theory of Lie superalgebras and super quantum groups; her scholarly interests also include humanistic mathematics, pedagogy, and quantitative literacy. Among many other activities, Gizem is a founding editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (http://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/). In whatever spare time she has, she likes traveling, reading and writing, walking alone and with friends, and playing with and cooking for her two young children. She likes symmetric and colorful patterns and hopes to learn to make beautiful things by hand one day. Department of Mathematics Pomona College 640 North College Avenue Claremont, CA 91711 USA e-mail: [email protected]

2

http://www.nesinvakfi.org, accessed January 2, 2014.

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Figure 2. A street in S¸irince.

Turkish public sphere, especially as the latter evolved into a more openly conservative one. For the readers of this magazine, the son Ali Nesin is perhaps a more kindred spirit. Ali Nesin, a logician and algebraist by training (Yale Ph.D., 1985), spent several years in the United States, at both Notre Dame University and the University of California, Irvine. When his father passed away he returned to Turkey to take over the Nesin Foundation, a nonprofit organization Aziz Nesin had founded in 1973 to provide educational opportunities for children who did not have them.2 The Math Village is a new venture of the Foundation. The polymath-entrepreneur Sevan Nis¸ anyan, an old friend of Ali Nesin and one of the main pillars of the Village, tells the story: ‘‘We used to talk […] about the ideal educational environment, the architecture, the setting, the operation and so on. We looked […] at medieval monasteries and old Turkish medreses. And then one day, all of a sudden, it started looking doable.’’

Figure 3. Ephesus is one of the best preserved ancient ruins in Turkey and only a short drive away from S¸irince.

Figure 4. A caricature of Aziz Nesin hung on the wall of our little village home.

If you ask the Turkish establishment, both Nesins, the father and the son, have been perpetual troublemakers. Aziz Nesin repeatedly and pointedly spoke up about free speech and its violation, led the Turkish Writers Union at a critical time, and was the target of many death threats, most recently from radical Islamist organizations. Ali Nesin was charged with inciting rebellion in the army during his compulsory military training. And so when the latter joined forces with Nis¸ anyan, another known ‘‘troublemaker,’’ the fruit of their efforts would of course be suspect. ‘‘We tried to get permission to build,’’ says Nis¸ anyan. ‘‘The application was mired down in a bureaucratic swamp— Turkey, you may know, is famous for its bureaucratic

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swamps. So one day in 2007 we said, hell, permit or no permit, we are going to go ahead. We built a bunch of absolutely primitive shelters—you know, stone and adobe huts, tree houses, tents, an outdoor kitchen. A sort of rustic camp with some faux-Roman ruins scattered though it. We had a big tree growing out of the main lecture hall. Within three months, we were ready to host our first summer school of 60-plus students. We had some star lecturers from Russia, the UK, Israel, and so on. They loved it. And the students loved it.’’ The story keeps showing up in the Turkish newspapers. Every now and then there is a new report from the authorities pointing out that the Village was built without the proper permissions. Every now and then this leads to a declaration from the same authorities that the Village or some building in it will have to be torn down. (The most recent report was dated September 2013.) The Jandarma, rural security forces, come to arrest construction workers (who I believe are eventually released). And yet, the Village goes on. ‘‘K€ oy hep devam ediyor,’’ says Ali Nesin, the Village keeps on keeping on. … So what happens at the Village? This is a full-blown math institute, lively with mathematical activities running yearround. A large segment of the activities target domestic student groups; there is a large educational component integrated into the mission of the Village. There are several research conferences held there as well. Individual researchers can also make use of the Village if they like. The Nesin Village website describes it best:3 At the Mathematics Village one can do mathematics of any kind and at any level. For example, this is how a typical summer school goes: Some of us stay in the stone houses while others stay in tents. We wake up at 7 in the morning. There are lectures between 8:00 and 12:00 and from 16:00 to 20:00. High school students attend all the lectures (8 hours in total, 4 lectures a day each lasting two hours). University students attend at least two lectures a day. Professional mathematicians give these lectures, but sometimes students can give a lecture or one or two seminars on a given subject. At night, students work alone or in groups. Thursday is our day off. Students organize into groups of three and these groups accomplish chores such as cleaning (bathrooms included!), cooking, dishwashing, and gardening, in rotation. Researchers can bury themselves in their work and not speak to anyone if they so desire. Outside the summer months, friendly or family meetings, or even honeymoons may be organized at the Village. At the beginning, you might have had visions of Oberwolfach, or if you are based in North America as I am, you might have thought of BIRS (Banff International Research Station) in Calgary, MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) in Berkeley, or AIM (American Institute of Mathematics) in Palo Alto. Now tents or students doing the dishes and the gardening might give you a hint that this is not Banff anymore. Maybe more like summer camp for naughty

http://matematikkoyu.org/eng/about/faq.php, accessed January 2, 2014.

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Figure 5. The path to our little cottage on the left, and a shared courtyard that is attached to it on the right.

Figure 6. An outside classroom on the left, and a series of beds for those who want to take a nap in between intense episodes of math on the right.

kids? But no, this is indeed a math institute, only a la Turca style. Let us read on. On the same website, the accommodations and offerings are summarized as follows: Aside from 4 delicious meals a day and lodging, [the Village] offers mathematical training, a natural environment, and peace. We have a closed lecture theatre and an openair amphitheatre, each having the capacity to seat 60. We also have bleachers which seat 200 students at a time. For groups of 20-30 people, we have small bowers. We have terraces for those who want to study quietly. There is no swimming pool, public broadcasting of music, or television. We try to protect our village from factors which could be detrimental to concentration. We have double rooms as well as ‘‘dorms’’ for 4, 6, 8, or 10 people. The Village houses are made of stone, mud, and hay. VIP may prefer the more comfortable pensions of the nearby village of S¸irince. Having been there, I offer you my own brief recap of a typical weeklong stay at the Nesin Math Village: a rustic village home (Figure 5), mosquitos, delicious and healthy comfort food served four times a day, smoking everywhere 48

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(it seems Turkish intellectuals smoke incessantly!), and of course mathematics. Anyone who is there on a program is deep in concentration, and mathematical conversations are everywhere. Random slate boards and little groups of tables are sprinkled about the premises and the scribbles on the boards and the contents of the ashtrays show that they are all clearly used. Mathematics is in the air. Anything for the nonmathematicians? Kids especially will love exploring the grounds, observing the noisy but shy frogs in the little pond under the mulberry trees, or climbing on the latter to eat some fresh off the branches. Mine also enjoyed the mega-abacus (Figure 7). But do make sure your baby doesn’t swallow a quarter-sized spider; mine did try. … Saturday, June 15, 2013, was our last day in the Math Village. And that coincided with the official opening ceremony of the newest construction on site: a central library that would also house a large lecture hall (Figure 8). Of course there were no officials invited, but there was a big red ribbon as is traditional in Turkish opening ceremonies, and a giant pair of

Figure 7. A large working abacus welcomes visitors to the Nesin Math Village. In the background is the Sevan Nis¸ anyan Library. Figure 9. The buffet dinner following the opening ceremony.

placed along the path to the dining commons was a feast set up for all, and we all enjoyed the culinary talents of the kitchen staff (Figure 9). …

Figure 8. The interior of the Sevan Nis¸ anyan Library, which opened its doors on June 15, 2013.

scissors. And there were two speeches, one by Ali Nesin and one by Sevan Nis¸ anyan. The latter seemed rather touched by the Foundation’s decision to name the building after him. … In his speech Nesin said that Anatolia is undergoing transformation, going through revolutionary changes. And that the Math Village is a part of this change. Some might think that he was referring to the Gezi Park events that had begun in Istanbul that May and had sparked protests across the nation. But I think that he was talking about a more significant awakening among the Turkish people, demanding better education, more opportunities for intellectual development, and more respect for all human rights. In any case, Nesin probably did not feel the need to say anything openly political. It was a good day at the Village and it was a time to celebrate. And celebrate we did. On tables

€ In his brief speech that day, Nis¸ anyan said, ‘‘Ne guzel hayaller var! Yapacak c¸ok ßs ey var.’’ There are many beautiful dreams and so much to do! Later on he told me: ‘‘I dream of a whole series of similar institutions, all here within this lovely valley near S¸irince. There must be a social sciences academy, a divinity school, an art school, an archaeological institute. The theater school (which is more like a theater commune) came to life already this year. The divinity thing is homeless yet, but this summer we held a couple of lovely conferences within the mathematics grounds and I hope it will just grow from there. Mathematics was just the first step, really.’’ Mathematics as the first step to what, exactly? A whole new way of learning and living. A whole new way of being. There are those who see education as a subversive, or possibly, a revolutionary act; now, on the mountains of the Turkish Aegean, we see that mathematics itself can be subversive or revolutionary. Nis¸ anyan is more careful with his words: ‘‘There is [a] vast amount of room for all sorts of unorthodox and creative ideas in the world. [The Math Village] was just one such idea. It’s the product of two crazy old pals, a mathematician and a builderphilosopher, getting together to realize their dream. I don’t really believe that our experience is generalizable. That is, you can’t just copy what we did and expect the magic to work in the same way. But I am sure other people can be inspired by what we did, and maybe get up their courage to do similarly wild things, maybe in a totally different field.’’ Here is to that hope!

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