The colors of the Turkish flag are simple--bright red, bright white--but have borne many legends of flag-origination. The Turkish flag, therefore, is clever, not the sort of flag to dismiss unthinkingly, no not at all.
The symbols of the Turkish flag are simple--a crescent, a star--but bear many meanings.
The crescent of white seems to escape Earth's red shadow as in the distance a tilted star pulsates its light. Or the crescent is a kind of open mouth ever about to taste a tumbling star, which--ah,no--never tumbles close enough.
The flag says nothing. It is a flag, and so it lets its colors and lines do the talking. The flag has something but says it tersely, "Keep it simple, people: two colors, two symbols." The flag is garrulous, saying many things at once, as the voices of a city do, as a breeze off the bright Bosphorus does.
The Turkish flag is not busy like the Union Jack or Old Glory. It tends to its business of being a flag efficiently. The flag knows what to do with light, and when the wind blows, it knows precisely how to wave.
I think I understand the Turkish a flag a little better now, having seen it flying from a standard near the Golden Horn.
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