flexibility – Sue's Turkish Adventures

Some Thoughts on India and Turkey

Susan — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 13:35:58 +0000

My Indian sister- and brother-in-law were so impressed they were dumbstruck. It was 2012 and they had just returned to our Istanbul apartment from a ten-day tour of Turkey. Before their visit, they had viewed Turkey as a poor country. Poor and agricultural. But what they found was far from that. The country was squeaky clean, with prosperous homes and swept, orderly streets. People dressed well, they spoke well, they had good teeth. Full of smart-looking manufacturing facilities, Turkey had clearly moved beyond its agricultural roots.

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.

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Driven Crazy

Susan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:55:00 +0000

It became apparent to me the first time I lived overseas that things would go smoother if I took myself less seriously. Thinking of my daily objectives as immutable, acting as a focused, determined American, was simply not working. In the Yemen Arab Republic, and to a lesser extent in Costa Rica, it did not matter if I mailed a letter today or tomorrow, finished a report this week or next, set up a meeting in July or in August. By being insistent, I was only making myself unhappy. The best plan was to approach each day with a tentative agenda and be pleased if a third to a half of what I wanted to do actually got accomplished.

I carried that wisdom to Turkey, but every new country provides unexpected challenges.

Sankar has a full-time driver assigned to him. This young man picks him up in a leased, black Mercedes Benz each morning, navigates European Istanbul’s narrow streets, crosses the traffic-choked Bosphorus bridge to Asia, and delivers him to his 3M office. Sometimes Sankar has appointments during the work day, but often Umit is free from 9 am until 5:30 pm, when they reverse this journey.

“Do you need Umit today?” Sankar will ask me. “He isn’t doing anything.” Indeed before I arrived, Umit often told Sankar he was bored, eager for more to do. I knew when I got here that, in addition to getting settled and building a new life here, I would have to help Umit fill his work day. And that is how I acquired a driver.

At first, it wasn’t such a big deal. I was shopping for sheets, towels, storage containers, clothes hangars, and quickly discovered that the best place to buy them was at IKEA, located some distance from our apartment. I didn’t know how to get to the grocery store. Umit navigated the highways, walked the byways of IKEA with me and taught me the Turkish words for important food items (basil = feslegen; the “g” is silent)

But now my major shopping expeditions are finished and my daily routine has become quite mundane. Each day I get up, write and answer correspondence for awhile, and then I like to go for a run and perhaps get a few groceries. There isn’t much else to do; like many other European countries, Turkey is now in vacation mode. Language classes, a professional women’s group, even job hunting, will not start up until September, and the high humidity discourages me from doing much exploring.

I need a car to get to the health club and the grocery store, and that involves a driver. Umit drops me at the door of the health club and waits outside for me, surely sweating more than I. At the grocery store, he is happy to push the cart for me, and he bags the items while I pay and carries them out to the car.

Although Umit always tries to open the car door for me, I usually beat him to it. And I generally refuse to let him carry my groceries up to our third floor apartment. Two impulses are at work here, my ancient feminism and my newfound concern about seeming old and frail.

I tell Sankar that I feel silly making Umit come all the way from Asia each day so I can run a mile at the club. Sankar doesn’t understand; he was raised with servants. For him, Umit represents transportion to Work, but when I use a driver, I hear my mother’s voice, “Who do you think you are?”

We could purchase a car for me, and I wouldn’t have to be driven around. But parking spaces are almost nonexistent; everyone tells me the same thing, “You can drive here, but you can’t park.” The one time I drove to a shopping area not far from our apartment, I found a tiny parking slot in front of a high-end beauty/makeup salon and was obliged to go in and purchase something (a tube of lipstick: 58 Turkish lira, about $40) before leaving my car there.

I could take a taxi, although that would also be hiring a driver. Or I could use public transport and walk from bus stops to my destinations, but that is considered highly variable and inconvenient, and we’d still have the problem of keeping Umit busy.

Today it hit me that I have invited a person into my life to a far greater degree than I invite most people back home. I will be with Umit nearly every time I go out in Istanbul for the entire time I live here. For a moment I felt a kind of trapped despair.

But flexibility is the name of the game for me here. For now, I’ll try not to take myself too seriously, but I’ll do my best to view my daily errands as worthy of the full-time salaried attention of another human being.

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