Everybody get jingoistic with it!

During my first day in Turkey, I was taken aback by the quantity of Turkish national flags that were draped about the city. The city was literally awash with crescent moons. Turkish flags were festooned everywhere I went: hanging from the mosques, flying from everything that even resembled a flag pole, on the side of every large building visible from the Bosphorus, and in nearly every child's hand. While Turkey has a perfectly nice flag, I initially found all this more than a little disconcerting. That red and white flags were plastered to the side of anything stationary seemed - to me, at least - eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany. And I think we can all agree that the rise of Nazism was not one Western civilization's proudest moments.

Fortunately, I was walking outside Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque one night and found a large banner (which the Turkish government had been kind enough to translate to English). As it would happen, October 29 is Turkey's "Republic Day," which commemorates the formation of the Republic of Turkey (and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire) on October 29, 1923. This, it turns out, explained the abundance of flags; the Turks were simply celebrating an annual holiday. Well, in that case, break out the flags! Surely there are a few spare square centimeters that don't have one yet...