Article by Zachar
If there’s any country that deserves my hatred, it would be Turkey. The way the Turkish government sneers at human rights and freedom of speech, the unapologetic occupation and cultural destruction of Afrin and other areas of Syria, and its blind ultra-nationalism are impossible to excuse. Yet, from my experience, the average Turkish person will do just that: make excuses or more likely become belligerent with anyone who questions the misery that’s inflicted by the Turkish government.
The problems with Turkey don’t end with politics. In the two years that I lived in Turkey, trying to remember the number of times I’ve seen a woman being harassed in public or minorities being put down through blatant racism, is like trying to count leaves on a tree. The recent pogrom (mob violence against an ethnicity) against Syrian refugees in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, hardly comes as a surprise. The pogrom could have been against the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Zazas, Jews, or other minorities; but they’ve already all been chased away or killed in previous pogroms and genocides throughout Turkey’s 100 years of independence.
Yet, there are few places I would rather live in than Turkey. There are few countries I love more. There are few people I love more than the Turkish people. Yes, there are deep problems in Turkish culture and I hate that the average Turkish person won’t look put a mirror to their country so they can fix these problems, but my love is real, and more importantly, I don’t see myself as somehow better than a Turkish person. I’m not looking down or up when giving these criticisms. I’m only looking across this screen at the person reading them, from one human to another.
In my two years of living in Turkey, there were so many times when I told myself that I couldn’t take it anymore and that I needed to leave. Maybe a taxi would almost hit me, or a strange man on the metro would hassle me for money, or hassle the woman next to me for existing, and I would start making plans in my mind to leave. After some late-night conversations with Turkish people, I discovered that this rash desire to leave Turkey is shared by Turkish people as well.
But then I would wake up the next day and see another side of this country. I would see people singing to each other in the streets for no reason other than to enjoy themselves. I would watch the way Turkish people cared for the homeless; both human and animal. I saw the same selflessness being applied to neighbourhood children and elderly, who were taken care of by the community, rather than being the sole responsibility of their family.
Yes, there was so much racism in Turkey, but how could I forget the time I was mistaken for a Syrian refugee and offered endless cups of tea, coffee, and cigarettes from the Turkish barber whose shop I was sitting outside of? He kept asking me if I was OK until we both realized the misunderstanding. Then he insisted on another round of tea. Yes, in Turkey some scammers flocked to me because I was a Westerner, but there were more Turkish people that I met on the bus who invited me into their houses for dinner, or shop owners that gave me groceries for free because I was new to their country.
I’m talking about these things because the average person can understand them without having lived in Turkey. The real reason I love Turkey isn’t as easily defined. It has to do with the infinite combination of smells in the bazaar I lived in, hearing the five calls to prayer echo across the city during the day, and raki-filled Gypsy music drifting through my window on summer nights. How can I explain the feeling of always being saturated in nostalgic mysticism, or the possibility that entering into any pharmacy might result in having tea with the pharmacist for hours, exchanging secret stories and life lessons?
This article is titled, “The Danger of Turkish Books.” Now comes the reason for this. As time separates me from the years I lived in Turkey and the years I’ve lived since then, the memories of the joy and mystery I found in this country have inevitably faded. My perception of Turkey has been altered by political events – almost none of them reflective of my experience living there.
I feel that I’m becoming more ignorant with each new political action in Turkey. As an American, I have the same feeling about my own country. Maybe these days this is something that anyone in the world can relate to about their own country.
It was the recent anti-Syrian pogrom in Ankara in which mobs of Turkish people flooded into a Syrian neighbourhood, destroying shops, burning cars, and attacking children, that brought out the worst of my negative feelings and bad memories of what life in Turkey can be like.
Even though I lived in Turkey during the 2016 attempted-coup when a similar kind of madness took place across the country, this week’s pogrom was the first time Turkey no longer had room in my heart. Dear Turkey, enjoy your bad economy, enjoy your wildfires, enjoy your oppression. Why should I care about your hardship if your people are attacking children because they’re not the same race as you?
I might have remained in this state of ignorance forever, but a day before the pogrom, I happened to start reading a book called, “Three Daughters of Eve” by the Turkish author, Elif Şafak (anglicized as Elif Shafak). A lot of the book takes place in Istanbul, in 2016, the same year I began living in Turkey.
Şafak’s book brought me right back to 2016, to Istanbul, and back to all the things I liked and hated and loved about Turkey. Her pages whisked me past the years of bleak news stories and returned me to the reality of this intensely imperfect and intensely warm country.
To be clear, “Three Daughters of Eve” doesn’t paint an ideal portrait of Turkish life. The story starts with an ever-worsening series of events involving the protagonist and explicitly points out that these are all normal things that happen every day when living in Istanbul. It didn’t matter to me. All I needed for my empathy to return was to be reminded of what real life was like in Turkey. Then the political barriers holding back my compassion were shattered.
This is why books are so dangerous. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a book by Elif Şafak, the stupid news feed on my phone would’ve been able to convince me into losing my love for Turkey, which I usually hold dearly against the hurricane of bad press. Without this love, I could’ve drifted away from my Turkish friends and even the Turkish piece of me that was formed by the two years of living there.
Without this book I might have been just another mind weaponized by the news feed and used in the political battles that are being waged between all of us. Instead, I read a book that reminded me that my mind should be formed from my own experiences. The news of a pogrom in Turkey’s capital isn’t cast aside, but instead of giving up on Turkey, or in contemporary words, “cancelling it,” the thoughts that stem from my burning passion for this country have been reignited by Elif Şafak.
Within this new frame of mind, not influenced by anger, but out of love, I remember a quote by American, Soviet-born robot scientist and podcaster, Lex Fridman, who said something like, “To solve a country’s humanitarian issues, it’s better to promote that county’s best side and support the society into becoming the best they can be.”
When I imagine Turkey’s best side, I think of the warmest, most fun people, living in a beautiful country with the freshest and most delicious food in the world. I like that solution. It’s a lot nicer than getting behind political bickering that goes nowhere, sanctions that make everyone’s lives worse, loss of friendships, and more hate.
So please Turkey, there’s already too much hate in this world and not enough love. Remember who you are, not who your enemies are. I’ll remember you too. Let’s get out a bottle of raki and talk all night about each other’s countries and cultures. I’ll tell you the secret about this book that destroyed my hatred for you. But let’s keep our voices down. That kind of talk is dangerous. Şerefe.
Baghdad to Mars 