Impromptu meeting with Ali Bardakoglu

Today it seemed like I was having trouble getting the permission I needed for part of my project, so at one point Pinar suggested I call Dr. Ali Bardakoglu, president of the Diyanet, to see if he could help.

Right, I thought. It was great that I got a half hour of his time last year, but what are the chances I could reach him by just calling up out of the blue?

Not more than five minutes later, I see a familiar-looking man off in the distance walking across ISAM’s courtyard into a nearby building.  I asked security who it was, thinking that it was possibly the mufti of Istanbul, whose picture I had seen online.

Nope.  It was Dr. Bardakoglu himself.

I couldn’t believe it.  It was like having the imam I wanted to talk to a few weeks ago choose to sit next to me in the library.  I knew that the mufti of Istanbul came to ISAM from time to time, but I never thought Dr. Bardakoglu did (that’s partly why I didn’t recognize him).

He’d come to ISAM for a meeting and was pressed for time, but he had a moment between calls, so we were able to chat for a few minutes.

Kismet?

This experience brought me back to the post I wrote last year about my interview with Dr. Bardakoglu — when I reread it tonight I realized I was about to conclude yet another post with the phrase, “You can’t plan this stuff.”

Now I’m starting to wonder how much serendipity plays into the average research project. Any thoughts?