Youth are Key to Turkey's Future

Much has happened in Turkey in the nine months since I began writing this blog. In my first post, I mentioned “different forces” that are shaping Turkey’s future. These forces have continued their work, making Turkey weave a zigzag course towards an unknown future. These developments include

• the supposed military-organized bombing of a Kurdish bookstore in Şemdeli
• the PKK’s own bombings in İstanbul and elsewhere
• the first joint conference about the “Armenian issue” held at a private university in İstanbul to the chagrin of the Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek
• the abandoning of Orhan Pamuk’s trial (in light of major European opposition. Many other journalists are still held, also charged with violating article 301 by publicly denigrating Turkish identity)
• the assassination of a prominent judge by an Islamic fundamentalist angered over the court’s ruling forbidding schoolteachers from wearing the headscarf not only in school, but also on the way to school
• the attacks on Catholic priests in Trabzon, Izmir, and Samsun
• the Turkish government’s reception of a Hamas delegation in February; and
• the many steps and setbacks on the road to EU accession

It is clear that Turkey has a range of powers, both internal and external, that are eager to usher Turkey toward their own vision of the future, be it Western, Islamic, strict nationalist Kemalist, or an unlikely combination of those.

While it is difficult to say which power has the upper hand, youth are one group that does have a major influence due to sheer numbers.













How this populous group reacts to these forces has the potential to change Turkey’s future. While most students are eager to see a Turkey that emphasizes equality of opportunity, especially economic and educational, many students seem content to wait for the government to provide this equality. Given the distaste that most students have for the political process and politicians, this willingness to wait does not bode well for Turkey’s political future. Many students fail to vote regularly, either as a conscious choice or because of the bureaucracy involved in absentee voting.

The majority of students, Kurds excepted, have adopted an ambivalent attitude towards EU accession. While many are eager for the opportunities membership offers and the structural benefits that the process brings, they are skeptical about EU intentions and eager to see reforms generated within Turkey’s own government.

On the whole, however, Turkish students have a strong degree of social consciousness, and if given the opportunity, they may find their voices outside of the political arena. As the strength and reach of civil society grows, I predict that an increasing number of students will find this solution to social woes appealing because of its action and often-apolitical nature. Whatever happens with these students, it is clear that harnessing the energy and power of this large demographic will be a boon to the group that caught them.

This will be my last regular post on this blog. I may, from time to time, post links to articles about Turkey, so feel free to keep checking…

Turkish Hospitality (tea?)

I just received a knock on my hotel room door from one of the men who worked there, wanting to know if I would like any tea or coffee. This is not unusual in Turkey, where showing hospitality seems to be perceived as a privilege and not doing so is unthinkable.














Because of Turkish hospitality, I have had the opportunity to meet and speak with many people, from a Syrian priest in Diyarbakır, to a middle-aged woman near Kaş who looks after her 26 year-old mentally-handicapped son, a ceramics maker in İstanbul just embarking on his career, and a radiologist in Van who spent three days looking after myself and a friend. Anyone and everyone is willing to sit you down and make you some tea for no motive other than that you are a guest.













I’ve had to put aside my skepticism and fear that comes with such treatment. Indeed, I feel that we in the United States can prize our individualism to a fault. By doing everything ourselves, we lose the vulnerability and indebtedness that comes with putting ourselves in someone else’s care. And by being too busy to give our time to guests and strangers, we close off avenues of connections with others.

These connections have made my time in Turkey a more rich and memorable experience. Furthermore, it has shown me that perhaps nothing is more important than other people, and that to welcome others unconditionally is to acknowledge that every person has the capacity to both give and receive, to provide and to need, regardless of one’s station in life.













It would be impossible for me to have successfully completed my project and lived such a full year without the hospitality of hundreds of people. Several people stick out in my mind and though they will likely never read this blog, I would like to acknowledge them: Orhun in Konya, Burçin and Mert in Erzurum, Nadir in Van, the Zoral family and Sidika in İzmir, the automotive man in Nevşehir, the bus company in Batman, the students on the dolmuş in Hasankeyf, Şadullah in Istanbul, Engin Bey and İbrahim Bey in Van, Özgül and Mine at ARI Movement, Hakan in Ankara, Harika in Van, and the hundreds of people who have given me directions or gone out of their way to show me where to go.

“Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene…”

This phrase, which roughly translates to “how happy I am to call myself a Turk,”is one of the favorite slogans of the Turkish government as well as some Turkish citizens. It is emblazoned on mugs and on walls in buildings. Do an Internet search for this phrase and one finds websites started by Turkish people and others who love Turkey or being Turkish. In the East, around cities such as Diyarbakır and Van, this slogan has been cut into hillsides, visible for miles around.


(This photo is of a Kurdish boy playing the saz. His father is in jail, though I don't know why.)

The interesting part about the latter point is that this exuberant statement of national pride occurs in areas where ethnic Turks are likely a minority. In fact, it seems that Atatürk’s policy of creating a Turk identity where there was none before (previously all had been Ottoman) is unraveling.

The most notable ethnic group living within Turkey is the Kurds, who are a majority throughout much of Turkey’s Southeast, but a large minority in Istanbul. It is not unlikely for a waiter, carpet salesman, or shop owner answer to the question of “where are you from?” with “I am Kurdish.” In Van it seems that everyone is Kurdish, and while Turkish language is written everywhere, it is often that one hears Kurdish spoken. I spent one interesting evening with the contractor in charge of reconstruction of the Armenian Church on Akdamar Island near Van, Turkey. He and his colleague are also Kurdish and proceeded to play Kurdish music (on their cell phones, no less) all evening. They said that they speak Kurdish at home with their families.

(A Syrian priest and his son. They speak Aramaic in their home.)













Kurdish isn’t the only “foreign” language spoken in the Southeast. One is also likely to hear Arabic, especially as one nears the borders of Iraq and Syria. Nor is Arabic the language of the older generation; children are just as likely to speak it. One tobacco-seller said that his family is Syrian by recent ancestry. Others who are Syrian by ancestry are Syrian Christians, some of whom are learning or speaking Aramaic. For a list of many of the languages spoken in Turkey (incomplete, however, for it does not include Armenian, Aramaic, and probably a few others), check this website.

Given that Turkey has Turkish-Armenians, -Bulgarians, -Jews, -Kurds, -Syrians and others, Turkey’s policy of “Turkishness” seems dated, and it appears that many in the population agree. In my opinion, one of Turkey’s biggest challenges in the next decade or two will be to accept the notion that one can be both a Turkish citizen and ethnically something else. It is easy for most Americans to accept this notion, as from birth the U.S. was intended as a new home for immigrants. However, in Turkey the concept of “one Turk” gives legitimacy to borders that were wrought out of war, falsely establishing an historic Turkish homeland. In truth, the nation of Turkey encompasses a multi-cultural region rich in ancient languages and cultures. In my opinion, the sooner the Turkish government recognizes this and develops policies to encourage and protect these traditions, the sooner Turkey will become a thriving and integrated nation.

More to Come...

During the next two weeks, I will be posting the backlog of entries that occured while I was on the road the past three weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to read my article in the Spring 2006 edition of Turkish Policy Quarterly. It contains findings from the first half of my research. The article can be accessed here.

Freedom’s Stalemate

Located 2 hours away from the Iranian border, Van is a provincial town of 400,000 with global problems. Turkey’s Southeast, where Van is located, is visibly less “Turkish” than other parts of Turkey. One of its most notable landmarks is an Armenian church located on secluded Akdamar Island. While the Armenians are gone as a result of the 1915 genocide, other cultures remain and try to thrive, most notably the Kurds.

Turkey’s so-called “Kurdish Issue” is a problem with implications for Turkey, the United States and Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other countries along the Southeastern border. To better understand this issue, one needs to understand the way in which the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. At the end of World War I, the Allied Powers divided the fallen Ottoman Empire into many protectorates that would be ruled by one of the Allied nations. Under the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, Istanbul would be ruled by international powers, Turkey’s western coast would be given to Greece, and Turkey would have been about half its current size. The treaty also made a provision for a Greater Armenia that would include lands traditionally claimed by Armenians, mainly in Turkey’s Northeast and also provided for Kurdistan in Turkey’s Southeast, as seen on this map.

Along came Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s charismatic and revered leader who formed an army from the remnants of the Ottoman one and fought to create the borders of modern Turkey. While signed by the Ottoman Government, the Treaty of Sevres was never signed by the Sultan and was later rejected by Atatürk’s republican movement and never came into effect. However, it lingers in the minds of many Turks, who are aware of their borders’ militant birth. (Photo of high school students from the town of Bingol.)













While Armenia was downsized to a small piece of land in Eastern Armenia, Kurdistan was erased from the map altogether. As a result, there are roughly 25 million Kurds living throughout a region shared by Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria as well as Armenia, Lebanon, and Azerbaijan. The Kurds living within Turkey were subjected to Atatürk’s policy of creating a nation of “Turks” out of the ashes of an empire where groups has previously seen themselves as distinct ethnic groups. To that end, Kurds were prohibited from using their own language, from celebrating their culture, and were renamed “mountain Turks.”

Under the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) many Kurds have been fighting for rights from broadcasting and teaching in Kurdish and being able to write Kurdish as their ethnicity on Turkey’s identity cards, to the release of captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the creation of Kurdistan. During the 1980’s and 1990’s the Turkish Government and many political and militant Kurds fought a war during which some 30,000 people, mainly Kurds, were killed. This tragic history lingers over Southeast Turkey, as the government and Kurds maintain a delicate relationship that was recently disturbed when Turkish security forces allegedly bombed a Kurdish bookstore in the town of Şemdeli.

One can see the wariness that accompanies this precarious balance. The Jandarma, a branch of the Turkish military, guards the entrance to the university in Van, as well as every building on campus. They briefly arrested one of my American friends also doing research because they wanted to know whether she had permission to survey students in one of the campus cafes. This security struck me as both excessive and provocative until I met with a student group that works on a variety of levels from benign to active and perhaps militant. Their activities include collecting blood types from its members for targeted blood drives and offering Kurdish language classes, to providing a haven for those expelled from the University for Kurdish activities and publishing a Kurdish journal to having a secret library of Ocalan’s books (one isn’t a problem, apparently, but having many is) and hanging pictures of “the martyred” on the walls—those killed by Turkish security forces and those who were suicide bombers. “We are at war,” these students say, “we are not free.” (Photo of journal article and picture about protests at Yüzüncu Yil University in Van.)














In this situation it seems that no one is free—not the Kurds who have few rights and no territory of their own, nor the Turkish government which is obligated to defend its borders, nor the non-militant citizens who often must move from destroyed villages to the cities to escape the violence perpetrated by both sides.

With the United States’ incursion into Iraq, regional balances are shifting. Turkey is keeping a close eye on the situation in Iraq. Any movement toward civil war or greater autonomy for the Kurds in Northern Iraq could have consequences for Turkey. I have heard it said that should Iraq descend into full civil war, there is a chance that Turkey would enter Iraq if need be to maintain their own territorial integrity. While the chances of this happening are slim, it is worth noting that the U.S. does not act in a vacuum. It is no wonder then, that in this town located closer to Iran than to Ankara, the question on everyone's mind is "will the U.S. go to war with Iran?" Consequences of actions know no borders, and as Turkey and the PKK continue their sometimes hot, sometimes cold war, shifting politics in neighboring countries are bound to have an impact in Turkey.

What Happened to the Refugee Students?

In one of my first postings, I mentioned volunteering at the Refugee School in Istanbul, a school staffed with volunteers who provide otherwise unavailable educational opportunities to refugee children in Istanbul.

The school is open to children ages 6-15, and this year students came from Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Ukraine, Tanzania, Sudan, Somalia, and Sri Lanka. The school is a gift for these kids, who cannot attend Turkish school because they aren’t citizens. Twice a week, for 3 /12 hours, they receive lessons in English, Math, Music, Geography, Health, Art, PE and other subjects. Seven hours per week may not be much, but it makes a big difference. I spoke with one former student (one of my favorites) visiting from Ankara where he moved a few months ago and asked him how Ankara was. “It is bad,” he said. “We have nothing, no school.”














Attending and running a school under such uncertain circumstances is difficult at best. Each week brings a different group of children—attendance is often spotty. Furthermore, the school decided to close for a month in February and March following several attacks on clergy in Turkey. (The non-denominational school is located in a church.)

This is not a one-way education, as I have learned from these kids. We are currently working on a mural, with the original theme being “the future.” When brainstorming what they wanted in the future, the students gave answers that included satellite dishes, computers, big televisions, large houses and the like. At first this struck me as a rather materialistic theme for a mural. However, I learned that these children are often sleeping five to a bed under highly unstable circumstances. The big home with comforts familiar to many reading this blog represent both financial and psychological stability for these kids.
















With changes to U.S. immigration policy likely in the future, I feel that it is a good time to draw attention to illegal immigrant children. (For an interesting article, click here.) To those who say that allowing illegal immigrant children to attend school in the U.S. encourages leeching off tax-payers’ resources, I would argue that for children who have little else in their lives, school is a necessary place for stability and growth, regardless of official status.

Trabzon and Erzurum

Trabzon and Erzurum are in Turkey’s Northeast. The former city is lush with vegetation, perches on the Black Sea, and is only a few hours from the Georgian border. Because of this proximity, there are many immigrants from former Soviet countries, and some of the shop signs are in Russian. “Natashas,” the euphemistic name for prostitutes in Turkey, derives from the common female name in many former Soviet countries. Many natashas set up shop in Trabzon, becoming the catalysts for divorce, a source of sexually transmitted infections, and often the mothers of secret second-families for area men.














Over the mountains from Trabzon, Erzurum is isolated on a high, dry plateau. The university is the life-blood of the town; most of the town grew during the past 50 years, when the university was founded. It is a conservative city, but the student population provides contrast because many students come from other cities and towns in Turkey. While there is not a lot to do there, there is a fantastic hole-in-the-wall burger joint that was playing hip-hop videos while I enjoyed the closest thing to a cheeseburger I’ve tasted in awhile. It was a new kind of culture shock, leaving that restaurant and walking onto the dusty streets of Erzurum, where women walked, swathed in black robes.

The following are several points that caught my attention.

1) Over coffee with several female students at Trabzon’s university, one of my American Fulbright friends asked where a woman goes if she is raped or the victim of domestic violence. “She can go to Purple Roof,” an organization in Turkey that provides haven for women, they said. “Really?” replied my friend with curiosity; “there’s a Purple Roof in Trabzon?” “No,” answered the students, “there’s one in Istanbul.” Istanbul is at least a thousand miles from Trabzon. “Can she go to the police?” we asked. “She can go,” they said, “but the police will say ‘it is not my problem.’”














2) Apparently another problem in Turkey is that of other countries stirring up ethnic divisions in the unified Turkish identity. “Some of the people, other countries, they don’t want to see a very powerful Turkey,” said one student, so they stir up divisions between Left and Right, and between ethnic groups. “They want Turkish people to fight against each other. They want them to say ‘we are not brothers.’” This theme of foreign countries “mixing” in the politics of Turkey came up several times. Some of the allegedly guilty countries? Syria, Germany, the US, and Israel. Compounding the problem of divisions within the country is the lack of common identity that many students see. This was a new theme in these cities: the anxiety over maintaining a common Turkish identity.

3) While many students hope to one-day study abroad in Europe and the U.S., there is a strong strain of anti-American Policy-ism in several of the students that I interviewed. “America hasn’t signed the













Kyoto Agreement, it is America that causes war and famine in the world, also America that pollutes the world the most,” said one passionate student studying for his PhD in education. One student mentioned the “bullshit of George W. Bush” as a problem with democratic systems. In response to the question “what are you most concerned about for the future?” several students have said “the United States.”

4) “Global climate change.” “Finding renewable energy sources.” “The environment.” All of these answers were in response to “what are you concerned about for the future?” No one in the previous three-dozen interviews mentioned the environment as a concern, but thousands of miles from Euro-centered Istanbul, many students are giving serious thought to the causes and consequences of climate change. I have yet to learn why I stumbled across the anomaly, as the students giving these answers were in different departments at different universities. I find it both intriguing and encouraging.