Okay, in for a dime in for a dollar.
Back to this alleged photo of peaceful Baghdad taken by California congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian. (Read the post below, if you haven’t already. It’ll be hard to follow this post without that background.)
Like a lot readers who’ve written in in response to the post below and a lot of commenters on other sites, I really feel like this looks like this photograph wasn’t taken in Baghdad but rather somewhere in Turkey. But as is so often the case in life, this seems like one of those cases where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So I’ve held back.
But the more I hear from readers the more I think this might actually be a photograph taken in Turkey.
This picture below is a blown up section from the upper right hand portion of the original photo on Kaloogian’s website.
With the white arrows I’ve highlighted what appear to be cedillas under the roman ‘C’ and ‘S’ on the yellow sign.
Add in the other contextual clues and that looks very much like the Turkish alphabet. And in fact the letters ‘C A R S I’ (which seems to be what this sign says) make a word in Turkish, ‘carsi’ which means ‘shopping center’ or ‘market.’
It really all does seem to fall into place, doesn’t it?
Late Update: A commenter at Will Bunch’s site points out that the “Edo” sign on the lower left (see the full size photo in the original post) appears to be that of this Turkish ice cream company. Turkish alphabet, Turkish words, Turkish fast food franchises. Eventually you’ve got to wonder whether this photograph might have been taken in Turkey.
Even Later Update: Now there’s some Kaloogian bamboozlement humor too.
