Category Archives: Journalism

Eastward bound…

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Holy crap, I’m in Istanbul (redux)

Posted on by
Reply

This was my email to a list of friends and fam­ily that I sent out after I landed in Istan­bul and started my trip. Except for some minor edit­ing (typos, spelling errors, con­ti­nu­ity and some gram­mar clean-up) this is what went out, more or less (except for really stu­pid, per­sonal stuff.) This entry was emailed July 2, 2002 while I was over­look­ing the Bosporus, the nar­row strait that divides the city and the two con­ti­nents of Europe and Asia.
This is the first entry of a con­tin­u­ing series of my emails and jour­nal entries of my trip over there. It’s designed to whet your appetite so you will send me back. (Hint: Donate but­ton is over to the right.)
From: Christopher Allbritton
Date: Tue Jul 2, 2002 3:20:59 AM US/Pacific

Istan­bul!
I landed at Atatürk Inter­na­tional yes­ter­day at 3 p.m. or so after a cou­ple of hours cool­ing my heels in Budapest. Took a bus to Tak­sim, the cen­tral plaza in the “mod­ern” part of the city, and from there, I took a taxi up to Boğazi’i Uni­ver­sity, where I’m stay­ing thanks to the hos­pi­tal­ity of Prof. Deniz Ilgaz.
Damn, this is a con­fus­ing place. The street energy is like New York at a rave but with­out the feel­good vibe. The taxi dri­vers are homi­ci­dal (and sui­ci­dal) and the cars bear the scars of numer­ous encoun­ters with bumpers and doors and hap­less pedes­tri­ans. The city passes by in a blur, but ancient struc­tures exist among mod­ern sky­scrap­ers and west­ern fast­food chains. It’s all a bit over­whelm­ing.
And Turk­ish is just impos­si­ble. But first, some basic geog­ra­phy: Istan­bul is divided in half by the Bosporus, duh, into Euro­pean and Asian (Ana­to­lian) sides. The Euro­pean side is fur­ther divided into North and South parts by the Golden Horn, a great nat­ural har­bor. South is the old, Ottoman city with all the tourist stuff (Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque, yadda yadda yadda.) In the 19th cen­tury this part of the city, called Eminönü, was left to the Sul­tans as an Ottoman play­ground with harems, palaces, hookahs, and the whole Dis­ney­land on opium thing. The north­ern part, (Bey­oğlu) where I’m stay­ing, was mod­ern­ized, with street­cars, tele­phones, plumb­ing, etc. So I have to go into Eminönü to get my press creds. The office is housed in one of innu­mer­able palaces on the Bosporus. And there are a lot of them.
[Editor’s note: Here lie three para­graphs that detail the dynam­ics of a par­tic­u­larly bad liai­son I had while in Ger­many. It really doesn’t do any­one any good to rehash this stuff, so I cut them.]
Back to Turkey. I took out 200,000,000 Turk­ish Lira from my account at the air­port yes­ter­day. I’ve never with­drawn 200 mil­lion of any­thing before, so I felt like a real rich guy. (It’s about $125 or so.) I still have, after pay­ing for a cou­ple of meals, a taxi ride and a bus ride, … Uh, shit. A whole lot of zeros. Actu­ally, I still have 178 mil­lion TL, or about $111.25… Jesus, all of that cost just under $15? I could live like a king in Istan­bul if I had dol­lars com­ing in.
I’m stay­ing in an antique Ottoman house near the Bosporus ( Boğazi’i in Turk­ish, don’t ask me how to pro­nounce it.) From my win­dow, I can see the old fortress Hisar, the fort built by Sul­tan Fatih to con­quer Con­stan­tino­ple in 1453. There’s an even older fort on the oppo­site side, the Asian side, built by the Byzan­tines, and I don’t mean the East­ern Roman Empire. I mean the peo­ple who built the city of Byzan­tium that pre­dates even Emperor Con­stan­tine, who founded Con­stan­tino­ple in AD 338, if I recall the date cor­rectly.
At any rate, it’s really, really old.
And why did they change the name from Con­stan­tino­ple? That’s nobody’s busi­ness but the Turks. (Actu­ally, it’s a cor­rup­tion of a Greek term that means “in the city.”)
Today, at 2:30, I meet with Kemal Kiriş’i, a Boğazi’i Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor who wrote a book on the Kurds and now deals with EU-Turkey issues. I think he will be very infor­ma­tive. After that, I have to go in to the old city, across the Golden Horn, and pick up my press cre­den­tials. That should take the bet­ter part of the rest of the day. Then I’m meet­ing some peo­ple I’ve been email­ing for din­ner and that’s that. Whew!
On Thurs­day, in cel­e­bra­tion of July 4, I will get on a bus to Ankara, where I will meet my fixer. We’ll work on some logis­tics and plan for a few days and then head out to Diyarbakir and the rest of the coun­try. It’s a shame I won’t have more time in Istan­bul, as it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing city. Big­ger than NYC, too. Nine mil­lion peo­ple (although that’s only about 5.625 peo­ple thanks to the exchange rate.)
So that’s it. All is well, and I have my own Inter­net access. Life is good.