Tosun Terzioğlu

We saw him in newspapers with his comments about Sabancı University or current issues. We ran into him as he removed his tray in the cafeteria or rode his bicycle around the campus. He had never said anything about his childhood memories, games, punishments, and what it meant to be a child in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

In this issue, we talk to our president Tosun Terzioğlu.

When and where were you born?
I was born in 1942. We were living in Laleli, Istanbul. Koska Avenue, number 10. It was a very cold winter. My mother slipped and fell in front of the butcher’s, and I guess that is why I was born 10-15 days prematurely. Actually, that’s where my name comes from. I was so thin due to the premature birth that my father would jokingly say that I was transparent. My first name Ahmet was already decided. But since my father be-lieved that I would grow up to be a “tosun” (big and healthy new born baby), so I was called Tosun.

Where did you spend your childhood?
In Laleli, where my primary school was. The Koca Ragıp Paşa School. It’s still there. I was the only child. A good part of my childhood, especially the summers, was spent at the Turgutalp village of Manisa, where my mother’s family lived. I used to play games, fish in the nearby stream, and take my grandmother’s cows to the pasture.

Turkey was a much, much poorer country

What do you remember about being a child in the 1940s?
Turkey was a much, much poorer nation. For instance, we had a concept called playing out in the field. Later, I realized that the “field” was actually the ruins of a fire. A great house had burnt down and its plot was left wild. Some plots had walls and basements remaining. Poor people would live in those ruins; poverty was everywhere. There was a soup shop at the corner of the Koska Avenue. We don’t have that kind of soup shops anymore. Pilaf was a welcome addition to the menu, only in the 1950s. Istanbul was very poor and small. For example, there were picnic areas in Mecidiyeköy. In other words, you would say you were “going to the countryside” when you left for Mecidiyeköy. One of the first newspaper headlines I remember was “Bandits rob passengers at Hacı Osman”. Hacı Osman is the road that connects Büyükdere to Maslak today. If bandits were to attempt highway robbery today, they would immediately be flattened by cars. Turkey was very different back then. Life was much slower. The trip from Istanbul to Soma (Turgutalp was connected to the Soma township) would take a whole day. We would first go to Bandırma by ferryboat, and then take the train. Supposedly, the train was to cover the distance in 5 hours, but we would consider ourselves lucky if it did so in 6 hours. There was this uphill track outbound from Bandırma, where the engine would be stretched beyond its capacity. The train would slow down so much that teenagers would jump down, climb the nearby plum trees to gather some fruit, and then jump back on the train with ease.

You said you would play in the field. What games did you play?
Football, of course! With a small, plastic ball. It was hard because the field was never flat. Which team would attach downhill first was very important when choosing sides. We never did find out which side had the advantage. I think attacking uphill in the second half was harder. Apart from that, there was tip-cat. There was one other game that I loved: Puddles would form in the fields after rain. We would dig canals from one puddle to the other and watch the water flow, and sometimes throw things into the current. In other words, we played with mud. I say puddle, but they were pools of mud, nothing else. Our school had a garden, but it was strictly forbidden to play in there. We were once caught playing football when we were in the 4th grade. What’s worse, the teacher on duty was Ms. Fatma, my class teacher. Consequences were bad because she was the teacher in duty. We had plenty of punishments in school, and they did include bodily punishment.

Which brings us to the question: What punishments did you receive in school?
Our principal was quite vicious and he would punish us by beating us with rulers of various lengths. Unfortunately, we were so accustomed to these punishments that we would do nothing against them. I mean, if our misdemeanor deserved the half-meter stick (for instance, not standing in line properly), but we took a beating with a meter stick, we would be angry at that, but we would never even think of objecting to the principal for using the meter stick instead of the half-meter.

I never liked school much.

Were there any rules in school that you found absurd?
Plenty of them. I remember ceremonies that took just too long. We would take part in an April 23rd ceremony at the Beyazıt Square. We did countless rehearsals. Then, on the 23rd of April, we went out there far too early, and it was raining relentlessly. We had no shelter, and had to stand under the rain for over two hours. We were literally drenched. Finally, the parade began. We were supposed to salute the district administrator of Eminönü, I think. During the rehearsals, they had instructed us over and over again to watch whether we took a left step or a right step, file off properly, and keep in line. When we got to the parade area, we were greeted with huge puddles. They were so large we couldn’t even skip over them. Finally, my friend behind me said, “Never mind, just wade through them; we’re soaked as it is.” Shoes were a great problem back then, because they would literally disintegrate when wet, cardboard and stuff would come out of their sides. Anyway, as we passed before the district administrator, we received the “Look right!” command. We were supposed to salute him, so we were parading in front of him like troops. I looked right and saw that the poor man was also shivering with cold. He had a brown topcoat. He had lifted its collar and shrunk inside it, trying to salute us.
In the end, he was a young man, shivering in the cold. I remember that there was not a spot of me that remained dry that day. Thankfully, our house was very close. The ceremony ended and we returned home. I remember undressing completely, putting on warm clothes, and trying to warm up in a corner. Of course, we didn’t have instant hot water then. The heater would have to be fired up first. In short, these lengthy ceremonies I have always disliked. They never told us why we were going there either. They would just order us to be somewhere and wait for a couple of hours. This is going to be a confession, but I never liked school much; this includes Robert College. It always felt like a loss of freedom. In Robert College, I would get awful grades in the first exams, and recover later. I was a good student, but I didn’t like school. I did like the university though.

My first contribution to mathematics was ill-received

Have you been interested in mathematics since childhood?
Of course; my father was a mathematician. But my first contribution to mathematics was ill-received. My father had a study in our house in Laleli. I was warned not to enter there, because my father was “doing math” in there. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued, and the room had no lock. I went in there one day. I saw beautiful sheets of paper on my father’s desk. I found out later on that they were glossy paper. My father had drawn these intricate figures with drawing ink. They were geometrical figures. He was writing a book on geometry those days. I found the drawing ink and added to the figures my father had drawn. As expected, I tipped over the inkwell and spilled it all over the sheets. I tried cleaning up the mess with other papers. Then I ran. I didn’t know that glossy paper was very expensive and hard to find those days. My father came home and saw the horror. I couldn’t mop up all the ink, of course. He had a very beautiful desk, which I use at home now. The ink had penetrated into the wood. “What is this; what did you do?” he asked. I replied, “I did math.” My first contribution to math got me punished. That stain is still on the desk, after all those years and being cleaned and polished many times.