This is the sec­ond of my posts from Turkey, made after I arrived in Ankara. Prior to my arrival, I met with Turan Cey­lan, the man­ager of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Istan­bul. He’s a Kur­dish suc­cess story, one of many in Istan­bul where many Kurds have set­tled after the PKK trou­bles in the south­east dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s. I didn’t get much to get out of the inter­view, except that he is pro-EU (he’s a busi­ness­man) and he believes that dis­crim­i­na­tion against Kurds is blown way out of pro­por­tion by West­ern press (which is easy for him to say; he comes from a rich fam­ily that runs one of the largest con­struc­tion firms in Turkey.)

This was an atti­tude I dis­cov­ered among many middle-class Istan­bul res­i­dents. Aydin Kudu, my orig­i­nal fixer before he suf­fered a hip injury, had me over for din­ner and dur­ing the post-prandial tea, he and Raia, his girl­friend and some­times partner-guide, said the same thing: There is no dis­crim­i­na­tion in Turkey; Kurds can do what­ever they like, as long as they don’t break any laws.

On one level, they have a point. At least one pres­i­dent of Turkey, Turgut Ozal, has claimed Kur­dish ances­try and Istan­bul has seen a num­ber of Kurds other than Cey­lan rise to suc­cess in the busi­ness­world. But there is a great deal of unknown truth in the state­ment that “Kurds can do what­ever they like, as long as they don’t break any laws.” But until recently, it was ille­gal to be Kur­dish. It was ille­gal to teach or sing in Kur­dish. Yes, Kurds could suc­ceed in Turkey, but only if they assim­i­lated and acted Turk­ish. And even then, if someone’s ID card listed them as hail­ing from the south­east, they would often be greeted with sus­pi­cion and had a harder time find­ing jobs in the more cos­mopoli­tan west­ern part of the country.

At any rate, this gave me much to think about. So after a cou­ple of days, I took a bus from Tak­sim in Istan­bul where Aykut Uzun, my fixer, met me. After five hours on the road in Turkey, I was glad to see him.

From: Christopher Allbritton

Date: Fri Jul 5, 2002 10:39:41 PM America/New_York

The call for prayer is echo­ing out­side my win­dow, here in Ankara. The sun is slip­ping between the high-rise apart­ments in this for­mer squat­ters’ ‘hood in which I’ve found myself. (Now, it’s expen­sive apart­ments owned by Ankara’s yup­pie class.) I’m stay­ing with Aykut and his wife, and I’ve just seen on the news that the UN has failed to reach an agree­ment with Iraq on the return of arms inspec­tors and that the NYTimes has pub­lished a front-page story out­lin­ing plans for a three-pronged attack on Iraq.

Fuck­ing hell. I’m going to be there in a week.

But, at last, it begins. The “fail­ure” of the UN to reach an agree­ment will be the green light the US is look­ing for to begin assem­bling coali­tion forces to invade. I won’t be sur­prised to find a num­ber of Amer­i­cans in south­east Turkey, all with good pos­ture and no hair.

This is most incon­ve­nient. And just think, two days ago, I was walk­ing along the Bosporus with Tuba, a pretty Turk­ish stu­dent who was help­ing me with the prob­lems of admin­is­tra­tion at Bogaza’i Uni­ver­sity, buy­ing grilled fish, freshly caught, from a boat bob­bing along the rim of Europe and then sit­ting in a caf’ high on a hill watch­ing the boats pass up and down between the Black Sea and the Sea of Mamara.

And it’s not just incon­ve­nient for me. Aykut, my fixer, is in the tourism busi­ness, and he esti­mates that the rest of this year and most of next is shot to hell with the Amer­i­cans run­ning about and shoot­ing things. War zones don’t attract tourists much. (And worse, the ones that do come don’t spend any money.) As we spoke his wife, Muhab­bet, rubbed her fore­head and looked wor­ried. She’s a school­teacher and together, they have a 5-year-old daugh­ter, Zeynbe, to raise. If the tourism busi­ness falls off  —  again  —  then things will be very tight for them.

Now, we’re off to Diyarbakir on Sun­day after we’ve had a chance to touch bases with the local Iraqi oppo­si­tion groups in Ankara. Also, HADEP, the Kur­dish party here in Turkey. They’re all made up of your usual sus­pects of left­ists, rad­i­cals, eth­nic nation­als. These peo­ple will never accom­plish any­thing in a mil­i­tary state with their approach, sadly.

Today, I also reg­is­tered with the US embassy in Ankara. Some­how I expected some­thing a lit­tle, well, nicer. I mean d’cor. Instead it was all ‘Fortress Amer­ica’ and grim con­crete walls, scuffed linoleum tiles all lighted by flick­er­ing flu­o­res­cent tubes hang­ing from the ceil­ing. Hon­estly, who wants to apply for a visa under those con­di­tions? The peo­ple were quite help­ful, if some­what alarmed when I casu­ally men­tioned, ‘I’m think­ing of going to Iraq, any law against that?’

Well! that sparked some inter­est in the bored Cit­i­zens Ser­vices drone behind his bul­let­proof glass. A Turk, he went and got a smooth talk­ing Amer­i­can. Turns out it would be against the law, sort of, for me to go. But I’m an accred­ited jour­nal­ist on assign­ment, so it’s cool. Well, ‘cool’ isn’t the word that Chris, the smooth talk­ing Amer­i­can, would use but not ille­gal. (By the way, I would need a spe­cial pass­port from the State Dept. if I weren’t an accred­ited journalist.)

Any­way, all is well here, but com­pli­cated and try­ing. Some­times I’m over­whelmed with a feel­ing that I really want to go home and for­get all this adven­tur­ing busi­ness. Phones work weird, Turk­ish is very dif­fi­cult and it’s hot. But peo­ple have been most friendly, pretty hon­est and Ana­to­lia is a beau­ti­ful land­scape, all rolling hills and maple trees. Oh, and the food is good.

So that’s it for now. Will try to write more as I can, but for now know that email might be more rare until I return from Iraq on July 21. Try not to worry.