At dinner that evening, we talked about Turkey, my sister- and brother-in-law shaking their heads in wonder—and envy. They wished that India, in the same time period, could have made this much progress.

After living somewhere for awhile—or visiting a place multiple times—you start to develop opinions. I’ve been to India eight times, most recently this past month, and Turkey was my home from 2010 to 2013. Here, in an attempt to cross-pollinate, I present some comparisons and contrasts. Caveat: terrorism currently affects both countries, Turkey more so at this moment. That topic—and an evaluation of top leadership in both countries—is beyond the scope of this essay. So, please try to disengage from recent perceptions as depicted in the media.

Turkey, which emerged in the late 1940s from military dictatorship, strikes visitors as an orderly place. Turks enjoy smooth roads, clean air, and firm law enforcement. Few bars on windows indicate that the country feels fairly secure from petty crime. Turks revere the idea of government and laud the person who pays the most taxes each year.

India, with a democratic tradition also dating to the 1940s, appears chaotic. Garbage lies in the streets. Cities seem unplanned. The air in cities like Delhi is foul. Indians seem to expect little from their government. My husband long ago told me that his middle-class family does not vote. Why? Because their votes are swamped by the vast, poverty-stricken majority.

Turkey was never colonized. Indeed as Ottomans, Turks were themselves colonizers for centuries. India was colonized, primarily by the British, for over three centuries. Both countries, in throwing off their pasts, went through population exchanges. Turkey in 1923 expelling its citizens of Greek origin, and India in 1947, when Pakistan was created. Apprentices of the great Turkish architect, Mimar Sinan, helped design the Taj Mahal.

Nearly all of Turkey’s citizens are Muslims, and its Kurdish minority looks and worships just like the Turkish majority. By contrast, all religions reside on the Indian subcontinent: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikkism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism. You can be on the steps of a Hindu temple and hear the Muslim ezan loud and clear. It is surely easier to govern, easier to get citizens to pull together, in a homogenous country.

Turkey is most impressive in that it accomplished so very much in the middle years of the twentieth century. While India has also made progress, what impresses me most about that country is the creativity and brainpower of the people it sends to the U.S. Surely no other immigrant group in the U.S. has been so dazzlingly successful.

Two countries with much to admire: India for its brilliant human exports and Turkey for its successful, up-by-the-bootstraps century.

I would rather live in Turkey than in India. But I do think that homogenous countries are at a disadvantage in today’s world. There is simply a dearth of different ideas, and citizens are not called on to be flexible and creative. Turkey should loosen up a little in order for the full flower of its people’s creativity to blossom. Now that you have mastered control, Turkey, start learning to embrace complexity and diversity. Open yourself to diversity, to messiness, and even to a little dirt. It will be good for your soul.

People from heterogenous countries are wizards of adaptability. That trait helps them as they go out into the world and that, I believe, is the secret of the Indian sauce. Nice work, Indians, but do try lift up those who work for your public sector. Without good government, life can be nightmarish.

The post Some Thoughts on India and Turkey appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Turkey had given Sankar and me an unexpected gift. Living there, we had uncovered a strong mutual interest in history, something that had lain dormant throughout our marriage. After visiting historic sites in nearly all parts of the country, in late summer of 2012, we were heading out to see something very much in the present.

The war in Syria was in its eighteenth month. What had begun with high hopes as part of the 2011 Arab Spring, had turned into a savage struggle. For sixteen months, with no resolution in sight, Syrians had been fleeing the violence, crossing into neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. At this point, Turkey had opened three refugee camps along the Syrian border and was planning for  seven more.

The Turkish government had contracted 3M to design and install an automated system to help the refugees move in and out of camps and to provide them access to modest resources. There was one in place now, at Turkey’s largest camp near Kilis, alongside the Syrian border. The project team was planning an evaluation visit, and Sankar, who was responsible for government business, asked me if I‘d like to come along. I jumped at the chance; it was the closest I was going to get to a conflict that had the world’s attention.

On a Friday morning in August, I took a forty-minute flight with Bahar, a 3M engineer, from Istanbul to Gaziantep. There she and I met up with Sankar; systems expert Fatih Bey; and Sean Bai, originally from China, an executive for 3M’s Cogent subsidiary in California, which had designed the system. We drove a half hour south from Gaziantep to Kilis, where we stopped for coffee and tost (grilled sandwiches).

I knew Turks were concerned about the huge influx of foreigners and the growing amount of resources being spent on them. Still, I didn’t expect to hear a team member voice the “welfare queen” complaint, “I would like to be given a free house to live in and money so that I wouldn’t have to work.”

From Kilis, it was only a few kilometers to the camp. Syria lay to its south: rows of green plantings the height of corn, and a dry-looking, distant mountain. No fighting was evident; at that time much of northern Syria was in rebel hands, and ISIS had not yet appeared on the scene.

Built for 20,000 people in a large field, the camp looked more like a tidy, high-security trailer court than the tattered, pungent place I’d imagined. It was surrounded by sturdy layers of green, wire-topped fencing. Alongside a thirty-foot high metal arch that spanned the road, a cinder block administration building greeted visitors. Military guards waved our van in after Fatih presented identification. Several refugees, slim, with dark hair and sun-darkened skin, and dressed in T shirts, baseball caps and jeans, were filing through a turnstile embedded in the fence. They looked no different from Turks, but I felt a vast, almost unfathomable chasm separating my privilege with their desperation. I recalled my yearlong confusion after moving to Turkey—and these Arabic speakers would have the added disadvantage of a new script.

3M had installed fingerprint readers on the upright posts of the metal turnstiles. These identified each person entering or leaving the camp. Why this identification? It turned out that many refugees wished to take jobs outside the camp during the day because of an agricultural labor shortage in the area. Turkey, concerned that the camps didn’t become conduits for terrorists, needed to verify that the same people returned each evening. The country had a simmering conflict with its Kurdish minority, and several weeks before, a bomb had gone off in Gaziantep, killing nine people.

Some refugees needed only temporary shelter, and an id system could also accommodate that. A recent Zaman newspaper article had stated that at camps in Jordan, which lacked identification systems, residents complained of not being allowed to leave, even though some had relatives in that country willing to care for them.

Although the camps housed the refugees for free and gave them basic foodstuffs, inhabitants also needed personal and household incidentals. So Turkey provided each refugee—man, woman, and child—with a smart card loaded weekly with twenty Turkish Lira, about $13.00. The fingerprint scanner and the smart card system were linked to the same database. This cash, multiplied by a growing number of refugees, was surely a boon to the sleepy local economy.

The team’s main goal for this visit was to assess the fingerprint system. We watched as people used it. A woman entered the administration building and stood waiting to have her fingerprints recorded. I noticed tears rolling down her cheeks. A young couple, both with startling green eyes, walked in to register their baby. I was pleased I could come up with the Arabic question, “Is it a boy or a girl? “Walad, a boy,” the husband replied, with a wan smile. I tried to imagine their panicked, cumbersome journey and the anguished family likely left behind.

The fingerprint readers sat in the hot sun all day and tended to overheat, resulting in malfunction. Bahar and an on-site technical person set examined the devices to see if some kind of case could be fitted over then, or whether they could be moved to a shadier place. Sean and Fatih went into an air-conditioned back room to look at the server while Sankar and I waited.

East of the admin building were dozens of neat rows of pale gray, oblong fiberglass dwellings. These were the refugees’ homes: new-looking shipping containers retro-fitted into houses with electricity, running water, toilets, and kitchens. We walked out onto the grid of streets formed by rows of containers. The temperature wasn’t particularly hot, but the fierce sun and lack of shade were harsh. I was struck by the complete absence of any litter or garbage. Order in public spaces is a major priority in Turkey (sometimes we foreigners poked fun at this official Kontrol) so it was not unlike what we normally experienced. But it was impressive given that the camp had been hastily constructed and held increasing numbers of traumatized people, and I began to view the orderliness as a balm. Crossing into Turkey was indeed crossing to safety and I loved Turkey for its sturdy substantiality.

Each container was about twenty-five feet long by ten feet wide, with two narrow windows on each long side, but none on the ends. They looked hot, but we were told that they had strong ventilation systems, and that some families had installed air conditioning units. Not all refugees were penniless.

On chain link fencing behind some rows of homes, clean, colorful clothing of all sizes was spread out to dry. To create shady patios, many families had stretched patterned quilts and coverlets between their roofs and back fences—or in some cases, just fence poles—that separated each block of homes. This homey touch helped individualize the dwellings and somehow the printed fabric reminded me of Eastern Europe, not the sands of Arabia.

The refugee camp had an appointed mayor, a middle-aged Turk from the town of Kilis. We gathered in his office, in another small cinderblock building, for formalities. Feeling out of place, I sat in the background, thinking about the overheated readers, and trying desultorily to understand the man’s words before Fatih translated them. We also met the camp superintendent, a woman from central Turkey who was introduced as a refugee expert.

The Turks we were meeting spoke both Turkish and Arabic. Since the 1923 birth of the Republic, the country had been strict about teaching Turkish only as a first language in an attempt to solidify national identity. The Turks I knew in Istanbul responded with grimaces to my early, well-intentioned comments that a particular Turkish word was the same in Arabic. So why the dual languages here? It turns out Turkey’s border with French-controlled Syria hadn’t firmed up until the late 1930s, so many Turks in this region had parents and grandparents who spoke Arabic.

We peeked into the clean, empty hospital and dental clinic, both made of fiberglass shells covered with stretched canvas. We walked into a three-story cinderblock school building (elementary, middle and lycee,) and talked with two male teachers, themselves refugees. The minaret of a brand new mosque, featuring a decorative blue balcony, emerged from behind a block of homes.

We stopped at the bustling market, the size of a large American convenience store. It had a sign in Turkish and then, in Arabic script, the word, subermarket. A small pickup truck full of bags of potatoes and peppers was being unloaded. Inside were several Coke and Pepsi cases, a frozen foods case, piles of watermelon, green beans, grapes, and apples, and shelves with sandals, children’s clothing, shampoo, and household cleaning products.

The people walking the aisles, mostly slender women dressed in long robes with headscarfs, looked grim, their movements slow and hesitant. We watched as they used their smart cards at several cash registers.

Near the school building , groups of camp inhabitants, mostly women and children, were out walking. Adults appeared impassive, kids energetic and curious and in excellent health, although surely any sick or wounded kids wouldn’t have been walking around for us to see. Even in the midst of crisis, Islamic dignity ruled: clothing was neat and clean. No rags, no inappropriate skin. The weeping woman at the admin building was the only openly emotional person I observed, people’s anguish was nearly as hidden as women’s hair.

As we walked, Sean told us that the Cogent manager for the project, an American, had been slated for the visit to Kilis. But that gentleman had refused to consider a trip to Turkey, declaring it far too dangerous, so Sean, his boss, had made the trip. Back home on visits, we were often asked the “aren’t you scared” question, and had tried, often with little success, to explain that living in Istanbul was no cause for fear. We had to admit, however, that the phrase “Syrian refugee camp” could legitimately strike a nerve. But as we looked around at the flat, empty terrain and the guards posted at nearly every corner, we rolled our eyes.

It was pure joy to see young boys, eight, ten, twelve years old having a good time. As classes had not started yet, groups of Huck Finns ran around the camp at will, hopping up on ledges, improvising games of tag, spying on groups of girls, and kicking battered soccer balls down the straight avenues Despite the tragedies that had uprooted their families, these pre-teens, too young to work in the pistachio groves, but old enough to run unsupervised, were in a safe environment that had just enough nooks and crannies to be interesting. Their energy and exhilaration were a great reminder of the resilience of youth.

We were seeing the Kilis camp at a point in which Turkish planning was ahead of Syrian tragedy. Would the camp turn into an overcrowded, raucous mess as the number of refugees in Turkey ballooned from 25,000 to (as I write this in 2016) over two million in twenty plus camps, and as long years of war more thoroughly decimated families? I looked online and was pleasantly surprised to see that much cleanliness and organization remain. Refugees live in the same containers, but the units appear to have been moved closer together so that back patios no longer exist. Residents instead sit on front stoops made of single cinderblocks and, at the edges of the camp, scores of informal vendors sell bags of nuts and sweets, and household incidentals displayed on wooden pallets.

The trip to the Kilis camp would be my last visit to southeastern Turkey, with its mash-up of cultures and civilizations. It was a fitting end to the journey Sankar and I had been on these past few years. I was trying to better appreciate the work he did and resent less the effect his travels had on me. We had been able to see important work: while the camps were a political representation of Turkish hospitality, his company’s automated system allowed Turkey to manage this hospitality.

In the end, I wasn’t sure which had been most interesting, the camp itself or the chance to observe a problem-solving team. I like puzzling over the big picture, in this case, moving key Syrian and foreign players around in my mind to try and resolve the crisis. But that thinking can easily spiral toward futility. On this visit, I saw how satisfying it was to cross over to the more mundane, to focus on a small, controllable part of a larger situation. It was a reminder that a seemingly faceless organization—workaday and patient—can apply its expertise to make a difference. When I thought of the problems Sankar was helping solve in Turkey, I felt proud.

The post From Syria to Safety appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

In the final months of our Turkish posting, I welcomed the arrival of a new attribute: competence. Competence, which I’d been so lacking only two short years before, which I had longed for and studied for and pressed people to try and achieve. Now it seemed within my grasp. A great deal of pride could be attached to figuring out a foreign city. And that pride was heightened in vast, complex Istanbul.

My newfound know-how brought back memories. In my last months in Yemen, I’d known Sana’a’s dusty, unpaved roads so well that my boss asked me to drive a new colleague around to look at rental units. In Costa Rica, shortly before we left, I had driven Angela all over San José, on roads that had previously confused me, to make sure she didn’t miss any end-of-the-school-year parties.

In Istanbul, my savvy didn’t manifest itself in expert driving; I had only used our car for Saturday and Sunday morning grocery runs. But I had successfully used buses, trams, boats, and the metro. I particularly loved riding Turkish buses. Unlike in the U.S., where buses are often ridden by those at the margins of society, in Turkey, it was a solid middle class that rode, quiet and contemplative.

Just like in Yemen and Costa Rica, as our tour in Turkey began to end, I was increasingly out and about, visiting people and places, trying to squeeze everything I could out of our remaining time.

One Saturday morning, Sankar away on a trip, I got up and bid farewell to two houseguests. I then changed the sheets and drove to the grocery store to stock up for two new guests who were arriving the next day.

In the afternoon, I set off to meet Joan, the adult daughter of a friend from home. She and her husband had just arrived in Istanbul for a visit, and my friend had asked me to give them some travel tips. I walked down to the Bosphorus, took a twenty-minute bus ride to Kabataş, and then caught the tram to Sultanahmet. On the tram I met a British woman who was traveling in Turkey by herself. We chatted, got off together, and walked through Sultanahmet. I then picked Joan and her husband up at their hotel, and we walked to a nearby restaurant with an enchanting view of the Hagia Sophia.

We talked about the sites they planned to visit and made a date to tour the Grand Bazaar later in the week, when my incoming guests would be out of town.

After this, I headed, via tram and funicular, to Istiklal Avenue. Istanbul’s historic “Tunel” funicular lets ascending passengers off on a sloped surface, and as I got off, I felt dizzy, as if I was stepping off a boat. I walked a few blocks north on Istiklal to a meyhane, a traditional Turkish tavern, where the American Women of Istanbul group had reserved a table. Sitting down among friends, I nibbled some traditional mezzes—slices of white cheese and smoked eggplant dip.

The head of the consulate, Scott, and his wife, Jan, neighbors and fellow ARIT travelers, sat down across from me. At that point I realized I was too tired to make conversation. It was out of character, and even a social faux pas to sit without contributing, but all I could do was try and silently process the hectic day. Thankfully, Scott and Jan were also leaving early, and I got an official (driver plus security detail) ride home with them. The next morning, refreshed, I got up and welcomed new visitors.

My progress with Turkish had seemed to stall during the year I taught, because of a dearth of study time. But I had heard quite a bit of Turkish around me in the office, and that had apparently been positive. Now, when I went out with Linda, I was often able to follow her fluent words. A complete sentence or two of Turkish would come through to me as clear as a bell, and at the same time, I would have the brain space to say to myself, “hmm, she is using the first person plural here.”  I was finally decoding the language, and it was every bit as thrilling as it had been back when I was 22 years old in Puerto Rico and hearing my first authentic words of Spanish.

Waverley and I and the remnants of the Monday Ladies (a couple of the Ladies had moved away) still met regularly. In the fall of 2012, thanks to an obscure couple of sentences in the Bazaar Quarter guidebook, we began visiting one of Istanbul’s major hans (ancient inns dedicated to particular craftsmen),The Büyük Valide Han. This, the largest han in Istanbul, dated back to the late 17^th century, and had been used for textile weaving.

Over the next six months we would make many trips to this han. We would locate it in the dense tangle of buildings outside the Grand Bazaar. Then we’d enter its huge, iron-plated doors and climb darkened stairs to the second floor, which formed a balcony around a large courtyard. Lining the balcony were workshops and deserted storefronts. We would pass a place where glass lights sold in Grand Bazaar were “antiqued,” and glance into a small takeout restaurant that delivered kebab lunches to han workers. We’d pass rooms where we could hear men pounding on sheets of metal. Finally, we would locate a retired weaver mentioned in the book, named Mehdi.

Mehdi had a key to the roof, and we’d greet him and point our fingers upward inquisitively. He would nod and walk with us to unlock a dust-covered door at the end of the corridor. Then, after tipping him and climbing up uneven stone steps with the dirt of the ages ground into them, we’d find ourselves on a rooftop, sticky with pitch and scattered with small, protruding domes. An attic room off to one side was full of debris and a haunted-looking old loom with ghostly gray scraps of fabric still hanging off of it.

From the roof we could gaze out at the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus stretching off to the north, and the distant shores of Asia. Nearby were the Nurosmaniye Mosque, the New Mosque (completed in 1665) alongside the water, and the Beyazit Mosque. If we had timed our visit just right—and we knew to do this by checking the Internet for the day’s prayer schedule—we could be up on the roof in time for the prayer call. It was mesmerizing to hear the melodic words coming from all the mosques of Istanbul, echoing off the old buildings and the water. We felt like privileged, intrepid insiders (and also oddly proprietary, casting doubtful glances at the few other tourists doing exactly the same thing), and dubbed our experience “surround sound prayer call.”

Even during these days of pride and accomplishment, embarrassment still remained a possibility. Something as simple as laundry could reveal my shortcomings. It had started when my conscientious cleaning lady, Ayşe, decided to take down my lacy living room curtains and wash them. I hadn’t noticed that their white was gradually turning to gray.

When Ayşe left for the day, the drapes washed, dried, and back up on the windows, I noticed that my washing machine was now set to “B.” I had never messed with the settings after making the decision nearly two years earlier to set the knob on the picture of a tub full of wavy water. But now I stood staring at the knob as if I hadn’t seen it before. Hmmm, “B.”

Of course! Beyaz means white in Turkish. Ayşe had set the machine on whites!

I looked at the other letters and realized I might want to finally figure out what they meant. I didn’t have time to ponder them because I was heading off to meet Turkish teacher Ferda for class, so I wrote them down to ask her.

Ferda patiently explained. “R” was for renkli, colored. I knew that word. And “N?” That stood for narın yikama, delicate wash.

So what about the wavy water icon? I drew a picture of it for Ferda. “Ne demek?” What does that mean?

Ferda tried to explain using the word, durulamak. I didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t know the English for it. But then she said sadece su, only water, and I finally got it. “Only water,” meaning Rinse Only.

For heaven’s sake.

For two years I had been washing all of our towels, sheets, and clothing on the rinse cycle. No wonder nothing ever seemed to get completely clean; I had thought well, ‘Turkish washing machine . . . maybe the quality isn’t so good. . .”

Turks place a great deal of emphasis on cleanliness—language books devote chapters to dialogues and vocabulary describing weekly housecleaning that includes removing draperies and rugs from the home; shopkeepers regularly scrub the sidewalks in front of their stores, making huge soap bubbles; and bus drivers wash their vehicles each morning. Although Ferda was too polite to say anything or even raise her eyebrows, I imagined she was inwardly shuddering, wondering why it had taken her student two years to get her laundry operations straight. And where, I wondered, had all the soap gone?!

Humbled again! Well, there was nothing for me to do but look down at the page of case endings we were supposed to be reviewing and change the subject.

Ferda was a great go-to person  for language and for information about Turkish culture, but now Sankar and I had a new and unusually insightful friend. The company had recently hired Emre, a marketing manager who had lived in both Western Europe and, for over a decade, in the U.S. Emre was one of the only Turks we met who was able to step back from his own cultural perspective, giving credit where it was due and criticizing his own country when merited. Sankar and I hit it off immediately with Emre, and began to rely on him for insights into social and political trends in Turkey.

Non-religious, Emre nevertheless felt that Turks who had been marginalized by Atatürk’s secularization needed to be integrated politically and economically. We had found the religious-secular divide so absolute in Turkey that his sentiments astonished us.

With Emre, like other Turks, we initially felt compelled to launch into a paean to Turkey’s greatness. We complimented Turkish roads, praised the overall quality of public services, and raved about the delicious food and the warm, hospitable people. Emre listened and nodded, but then volunteered, “You won’t notice this unless you stay in Turkey for ten years, but actually, Turks are not all that nice to each other.”

Really? That was a surprise! I did realize, however, that Sankar and I tended to evaluate Turkey only in terms of our own treatment. Could these pleasant and welcoming folks actually be employing a kind of selective niceness? When I managed to turn the lens away from myself, I began to see that what Emre said was correct. Fellow teacher, Yasmin, a non-drinker, was considered secularly suspect by the teachers in power, her bids for promotion ignored. When Waverley had a first communion brunch for son Isaiah, a Turkish manager and his spouse stood stiffly, refusing to converse with the only other couple in the room, Taner, the family’s driver and his wife. And I recalled Ümit regularly dismissing my praise for Sankar’s secretary, Beyza, insisting she really was neither talented nor creative.      

 I hadn’t seen Beyza for quite awhile. The two of us had gone out for lunch a couple times—I found it both flattering and unusual that a secretary would show an interest in getting to know me—and she had come over for pizza once. When Istanbul had a slight earthquake tremor one evening and Sankar was out of the country, Beyza had immediately phoned to see if I was okay. In early 2012, she got married and we attended her wedding reception. She looked stunning in her white strapless gown—slim and elegant, her almond eyes sparkling. Her husband, Marco, was from Italy, and his fellow countrymen entertained us with stylish, jazzy dancing.

On Angela and Greg’s first visit to Turkey, Beyza and Marco had invited the two of them for drinks at a fashionable spot on the Asia side. I was floored by this thoughtfulness; I would have shied away from extending an invitation like this out of fear of awkwardness. But we rarely observed reticence in Turks. And of course Beyza had taken care of all of our newcomer needs as well as helping me get my job.

After my first six months I hadn’t needed Beyza’s help much any more. I was busy with work and sightseeing. And Sankar was often away, traveling in other countries. When he was home, we were increasingly busy with other activities and friends. In fact, Burcu had recently commented to us that we were “living fast.” Normally a homebody, I was traveling outside Istanbul at least twice a month, for ARIT trips or sightseeing tours of our own in addition to spending four to six weeks each year in Minnesota. And it wasn’t just the travel; it was planning, packing, organizing, and then nurturing the new friendships these trips sparked.

Beyza was now expecting a baby, and seemed to be experiencing a lot of illness. For the last few months, whenever Sankar mentioned her name, it was in the context of “Beyza is out sick today, so she can’t help me with [whatever].” Sankar would generally follow that with a sympathetic comment like, “She has been having back pain, and doesn’t know what to do about it.” Or “she’s having some sort of pregnancy problem.” When I asked if it was serious, he said he didn’t think so.

Sankar wouldn’t think of questioning female health problems or asking for a doctor’s note, standard procedure in Turkey. Instead, over and over, with Beyza’s absences, he shook his head in incomprehension and threw up his hands. Typically, I didn’t pay much attention, but after awhile it seemed like her absences were starting to make his job difficult. Although he didn’t seem overly concerned, I was annoyed, and started to wonder whether, at least some of the time, he was being duped.

In the space of a week in the summer of 2012, with Angela and Greg again visiting Istanbul, the situation blew up. Sankar once again told me Beyza was out sick, but my Facebook newsfeed showed her at the Madonna concert in Istanbul.

Immediately after that, Beyza again “wasn’t feeling well,” but photos of her sunning on the Aegean in Çesme appeared.

I abhor lying; to me it makes fools of the people being lied to. It challenges my judgment about a person and makes me angry at both them and myself. I called Sankar over to my desk and showed him the screens picturing Beyza. He looked for a long moment, and then nodded, his jaw tight. The next day, he went to the head secretary with the news, and she phoned me to ask for a screen shot. The posts had already been taken down, but it didn’t matter: Beyza was questioned and the following day she was asked to leave the company.

Sankar and I were surprised by how quickly things had been resolved, but it seemed that Beyza had precipitated her own demise. We had done the right thing.

Beyza quickly un-friended me. We would no longer be privy to her family happenings.

Within a few days, I began to have regrets. I recalled Sankar telling me months earlier that all was not well with Beyza at 3M. She had not been the head secretary’s choice for the job, and though she’d been hired more than two years before, it seemed the office women had never accepted her. There was some of that behavior Emre had told us about.

Now I thought back on the initiative and creativity that Beyza had showed when we were new. That first summer, when our apartment pool wasn’t working, she had actually called the neighboring building to ask if I could swim in their pool. When, not knowing that this item wasn’t available in Turkey, I had asked her for notecards to make flashcards, she had taken the initiative to locate card stock and have them custom cut just for me. And she had written job letters for me, locating all the right recipients and using just the correct tone.

I recalled my own feelings of uselessness when I arrived in Turkey, and how they had eaten at my self-esteem. Now I thought about Beyza. When Sankar was out of the office, he placed few demands on her, and as I became settled, I had fewer and fewer questions for her. In an unfriendly environment, called upon less and less frequently, had Beyza also felt useless? Had it become easier and easier simply to stay at home?

Beyza had probably thought that all of her personal kindnesses toward us would have counted for something. Looking back, I now felt that they should have. Wouldn’t the right thing have been for Sankar, or for both Sankar and me, to meet with her, listen to her side of the story, and explain how things looked from ours? If we’d stopped and thought, if we’d pushed our anger aside, we probably would have done this. But we were busy. We hadn’t even considered doing that.

Our failure was partly cultural: we hadn’t fully recognized the importance of the personal here in Turkey. It was partly typical: we were busy, overly booked Americans. And it was partly idiosyncratic: instead of waiting to cool down—there was, after all, no real hurry to confront Beyza—our emotions had gotten the better of us.

You really can’t help but be who you are. You can try to function differently in a foreign country—and that kind of effort is generally commendable—but inevitably incidents will occur and you will revert to type. And that is when your true self will emerge.

Time is an excellent judge of what is right and wrong, and three years after we moved home, I still regret how we treated Beyza. I had been feeling so competent in Turkey, but it turned out I was poorly equipped to handle a complex, personal situation.

Clearly there are levels of expatriate expertise, kind of like levels in a video game. I had only passed Level One here in Turkey. And I wouldn’t have the chance to try and go any higher. It was time to think about leaving.

The post Living Fast appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

I thought I’d tackle the relatively light-hearted topic of culture clashes in this post. Actually, I witnessed a lot fewer cultural problems between Turks and Americans than I expected. I think our two cultures are pretty compatible. As I’ve written before, Turks are confident and assertive. The influx of Americans and others into their country in recent years (I read awhile back that over 20,000 Americans currently make Turkey their home; could this be true?) doesn’t seem to have fazed Turks one bit. They are flattered we chose their country and go out of their way to welcome us.

But is everything perfect? Of course not. Cultural differences arise. Note: please keep in mind that comparing any two cultures involves making generalizations, and that the vignettes here might not accurately represent the entire Turkish culture.

When Turks offer you tea in a restaurant, you are expected to accept it. It is a signal that the meal has pleased you. We found this out during a short visit to Edirne, formerly Adrianople, next to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. We had just walked through what many consider Turkey’s loveliest place of worship, the Selimiye Mosque, and were lunching at one of the town’s famous ciger restaurants (cow’s liver sliced paper thin and deep fried: scrumptious). Our meal had been more than ample, and we were getting ready to leave when our waiter suggested tea. “No, thank you,” we replied, and he nodded and walked away. A minute later, however, the owner emerged from the back of the restaurant. “Would you like some tea?” We immediately knew what our answer should be. After that, all was well, and our hosts beamed at us as we left.

Turks never ever pick up and eat food that has fallen on the floor. Even if it has only been on the floor for seconds, and even though Turkish houses are scrupulously clean. When I explained the American five-second rule to Turkish friends, I was met with looks of absolute disgust.

Turks feel it’s impolite to blow their nose in front of others. The first time I noticed this was when I was being interviewed for my teaching job. The director had a cold, and so she dabbed at and wiped her nose while asking me questions. At one point she even placed a tissue over her entire mouth and nose. I thought this was a bit odd, but I was far more preoccupied with answering her questions.

Later, when I shared an office with eight Turkish teachers, I became aware of this taboo. When my students had colds, they would ask to be excused from the classroom to blow their noses. Alas, sometimes they’d be gone a quarter of an hour, taking the opportunity to phone a friend or two on their way back to class!

Turks talk softly or not at all on public transportation. I learned that from a young American colleague who was reprimanded for speaking too loud.

Turks, like everyone, love gifts, but expect them to be wrapped attractively. When we invited a Turkish couple over for dinner, they presented me several items enveloped in shiny synthetic wrapping with elaborate bows. When they returned the invitation, I brought them a loaf of banana bread wrapped only in tin foil.Only later, chatting at work, I heard a Turkish colleague recall that her sister had once sat down and wept over a gift that wasn’t specially wrapped. Oops.

Management styles in Turkey, whether in business, the nonprofit sector, or government, seemed a bit more top-down than those in the U.S. Huge generalization here, but my impression. Dislike of over-authoritarianism is part of the current unhappiness with Turkey’s prime minister.

Readers, can you add your own impressions and experiences to this list?

Back home in Minnesota, there is not a day that I don’t think of Turkey. I was recently given Leanne Kitchen’s excellent “Turkey: More than 100 Recipes with Tales from the Road” and I am finding her descriptions of Turkey as evocative as her recipes. Kitchen writes,”There is simply nowhere else on Earth quite like Turkey. . . In common with other Islamic cultures, there’s a particular kindness shown to strangers…”

We were often staggered by Turkish acts of kindness. They went beyond any I’ve experienced in other parts of the world. That is why the country will always hold a place in my heart.

The post Those Inevitable Culture Clashes appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Like many other members, I generally ignore this machine, a mechanical extension of the Turkish custom of taking off shoes when entering someone’s house. After crossing my apartment sidewalk, which is usually in the process of being hosed down, parking in a spotless underground garage, and ascending four flights in new shopping mall elevator, my shoes carry little residual dirt.

Today, however, the locker room attendant approached me with a pair of booties and “asked” if I’d like to wear them.

What could I say? I pulled the papery things over my shoes, then turned around and took my shoes off to don my running shoes. (Exercise shoes are exempt from the bootie requirement because it is assumed they are not worn outside.)

I have noticed that Turks leave their bootied street shoes outside of their lockers. I usually throw everything in, but today, chastened, I lined my shoes up neatly under a bench near other people’s footwear, and headed to the treadmill.

When I finished my workout, I returned to the locker room, put my bootied shoes on, and then walked the five meters or so to the locker room entrance. “Where should I put these?” I asked the attendant, pointing at my booties. She pointed to two bins.

I didn’t really think my booties were dirty, but I behaved myself and put them in the “dirty” bin.

Don’t get me wrong. I like living in a country where people wash their windows and shake out their rugs on a weekly basis, wipe down their cars and buses daily and scrub sidewalks with soapy water. Granted, I was a bit surprised when I attended a cooking class and the teacher washed the eggs before cracking them (“When you think of where they come from. . .” she remarked). Turkish cleanliness is a way of showing not just love of possessions, but love of country.

But ever so often things go just a bit too far and I have to roll my eyes—or write a blog post.

The post Obsessively Clean appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

I often think of you and wish you were beside me as I experience different parts of Istanbul. The next best thing, I guess, is bringing you along photographically. Here are some photo highlights of the past week.

Sunday, September 16, near Istiklal Avenue

How many cats can you find in this picture?

Monday, September 17, Istinye

Would someone please explain this?

Tuesday, September 18, Arnavutkoy

Tuesday market splendor

Thursday, September 20, Beyoglu

8:45 am  Spic ‘n span street waits for the morning rush

5:00 pm  Turkish buddies share an electronic moment

5:15 pm  Woman feeds fluffy cat, takes picture, then watches to make sure cat eats food

Friday, September 21, Eminonu

1:15 pm  Looking north from roof of Buyuk Valide Han. Prayer call reverberates in all directions.

3:15 pm  A Levent billboard with the message, “We love you!”

The post A Week in Istanbul appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

. . . that Turkey is a member of NATO.

. . . that the ancient ruins of Ephesus are located there.

. . . that friends who visited Turkey seemed to like it, and one even said the country was quite clean.

. . . that Turkey had a leader named Ataturk (I was confused about how his name related to the country’s name).

. . . that Turkey and Greece are not good friends.

On December 13, my husband found out that his employer, 3M Company, was transferring him (us) to Istanbul for 2-3 years. An adventure was beginning, and despite mixed feelings, I started reading up on “my” new country. What I read, I liked. Since then, I have made two brief and enjoyable visits to Turkey, and will formally relocate there on June 19. I hope you’ll join me via my blog.

The post We’re Moving to Turkey! appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.