An American Life in Istanbul

I hear it everyday; “Conrad, you are so lucky.” Friends, people I meet, coworkers; They all share this opinion. I have been called “[my company’s] spoiled child,” “the luckiest employee in Turkey,” and many other things. On more than just my life in Turkey, people say that I am so lucky, that they can’t believe how lucky I am, or that they are jealous how lucky I am. I like to tell stories, and I have quite a lot of stories to tell. This is normally what they are responding to. As usual there are two sides to everything. I of course do my best portray my life as positive - positive thinking leads to an overall positive and happy life. Although I tend to agree that I have been blessed, I find it interesting that these are the comments I receive the most.

First, let’s see what makes me lucky.

• I have a job that supports my life style, provides a car for me, provides a good place to live for me and provides a lot of my food.
• I get to travel a lot for my job. I more or less get to make my own travel schedule too. I have been trying to plan trips such that I can pass the weekend in the area. This is a great way of doing business!
• My job is very relaxed. Because of the lack of professionalism of everyone else in the company, I have a lot of freedom. I can come to work late, leave early, take a day off.
• I have had the opportunity to study in Switzerland and live in the Marshal Islands with lots of other traveling in between.
• I am able to pursue a life of few attachments and lots of freedom. I own hardly anything, and my costs are low. I don’t have a demanding family, or a girl friend holding me back (I don’t consider this a benefit, although some do). Should my job here not work out, it will be no problem for me to find a job elsewhere, or to coast on my savings.

In summation I have good opportunities and I am living the way I want to live. Something as simple as living the way you want to live, seems to be beyond the reach of many people here. Young people are living with their families through university and beyond that sometimes because it is expensive to move out on your own. Also, parents say to their children that they cannot move out until they marry. In this situation, people here in Turkey are never given a chance to live a free life. They are either living a life of compromise with their parents or a life of compromise with their spouse.

I suppose I was lucky to meet Murat as well. When I look back on my education at CMU I realize what a waste of money it was. Except for the people you meet and the connections you make, there is little advantage to CMU over other schools. People will get out of an education what they put into it. Study hard and you will learn a lot. Meeting Murat may or may not end up making my time at CMU all worth it.

Lastly, I am also always doing interesting things with my free time. Something most of my friends cannot claim.

Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. First of all, most of what I have done, most of what has taken me around the world is one simple fact: I am not lazy. I sought out the study abroad program in Switzerland and did everything I could to ensure I got there. When I learned about the Marshal Islands, I went to the professor running the program and literally said, “I will do anything to get into this program” (professor Mertz, want to back me up on that one?), and I did. Making the decision to come to Turkey was a scary one that I think most people wouldn’t have taken. I was moving to a strange place, with a strange language to live and work in a very isolated part of Istanbul (not really Istanbul in fact). I didn’t know more than two people, and I knew it would be a long time before I would see my family and friends again. This was not an easy decision.

Once I arrived here it took determination to stay here, and to move my life ahead in a positive way. For the first few weeks, my stomach was uneasy as I was adapting to a completely new diet. I spent a lot of time stuck in traffic, or worse stuck in Mimarsinan where I live, without a way to get into the city. Except for Izzy and Tahsin, I didn’t really have any friends. I was always lost. There were the other various bits of culture shock I mentioned here in my blog. There was frustration at work, which has only gotten worse as I have had more to do.

The not so lucky parts of my life has little to do with what’s here in Istanbul. It’s about what’s not here in Istanbul. Most of these people who make these comments on my life go home everyday and see their families or can call their families easily and have dinner with them. They see their siblings, have dogs and cats, get advice from their aunt, go to family birthdays together and all sorts of other things. They have their culture here, they have their language here. Turkey is their home, and all that they know is here. I on the other hand, am an outsider. I do not speak the language and therefore am often unable to communicate. I am not comfortable with some parts of the culture here. I do not have many of my friends here. Should I run into rocky times, I do not have the support network of people that they have. I am alone.

To me, I am living ‘my’ dream, but it’s not lucky, and it’s not easy. All the big decisions I have made about my life -Switzerland, Marshal Islands, Turkey - I made understanding for the most part the consequences and implications of my decision. I knew the ups and I had at least somewhat of a grasp downs. I made the decisions I wanted to make, but I had a realistic view of how it would go. These decisions were not easy, and they did not fall out of the sky. I found them, or in some cases, the opportunities brushed briskly against me, giving me little more than the blink of an eye to catch them. My critics could have done as I have done. To those of you reading this, I am very serious. If you really want to get somewhere or do something you can. Don’t be intimidated or afraid or worried about the details and implications of your decision. You only live once, so if you want to do something, just quit whining and go out and do it. Go out and live your life! Maybe you have to be a little selfish in your decisions (I know I have), but if you aren’t, how will you see yourself at the end of the road?

Maybe I am a little lucky, maybe I am a little bit of a lot of things, but luck didn’t get me here; I did. My question to you is where will you take yourself?

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Saturday morning I woke up on the extra mattress on the floor of Izzy’s room as I usually do. It was too hot in the room when I had been trying to go to sleep the night before so I had opened the door. As I was slowly waking up I felt a cold crisp draft blowing over me. Instinctively I rolled over and pulled the covers a little tighter. A few moments later I awoke with a powerful longing to be at home in New York.

I have spent a lot of time away from home. I have lived in the Marshal Islands, Pittsburgh, and Switzerland before coming to Turkey, so I have gotten used to being away from home. In fact, I cannot remember such a strong desire to be at home as I felt on Saturday morning. Why I was suddenly hit with this, I am not sure, but I have an idea.

The cold air reminded me of being home. Our house obviously had heating, but when ever the door was opened to let the dogs in or out, the same cold air would crawl across the floor attacking any unprotected feet. In my sleepy state, I thought I was at home, again. I awoke expecting to see Sitka (one of my dogs) sneaking into my room. I expected to hear my father cooking delicious holiday foods (for the past few years I have only been home during holidays) and to have their aromas already well entrenched in my room. Perhaps those aromas would be mixed a bit with the smell of a fire in the living room or the dining room. Outside it would be windy and cold. The ground would be a little frozen with a light dusting of snow (we never really got much snow). The big windows facing the sea would of course have a bit of ice formed around the edges, but my father would have taken the time already to defrost the majority of the window. For some reason this cold draft, which could have easily given me a cold, made me think of all the things I like about being home during the Christmas holidays, thus making me sick in a different way. Living in this wonderful half dream, I realized something: this Christmas will be the first Christmas I have not spent with my family.

This was a bit strange to think about. I had a sinking feeling thinking of how much fun everyone would be having. The whole family could be together at my grand parents. Beth would be going crazy with Miranda and Olivia, my brother would be hung over, my mom would be reading in the living room, or working on a quilt. My grand mother would of course be working tirelessly over the stove as my grand father went back and forth to the store all day. Dennis would be running around working on some mission/project the details of which no one seemed to know. My cousins would stop by, and we would listen to our grandmothers stories of when the four of us were young. Blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Chicken soup and pirogies for dinner. Distant cousins would drop in here and there to say hello and catch up on the past few years (they always brought a subtle but charming mix of accents from around the US to the table). Evenings we would play pinochle and watch TV together.

I am missing all of that this year. Christmas isn’t going to happen like that this year anyway. I think each piece of the family has independent plans so I am not missing that much. It was just very disappointing to come out of my sleepy haze to realize I was at Izzy’s. I am glad that at least my brother is coming here for New Year’s.

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I went to a wine and cheese house party on Saturday night. It was composed almost entirely of female expatriate teachers in their 20s. So it was a pretty good party, and a nice change from hanging out with the guys all the time.

But that is not the interesting thing I would like to share with you. In the morning when I was driving back to Izzy’s, I saw this a few blocks from where the party had been. Keep in mind this is a bus stop really in the city.

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A friend of mine contacted me a few weeks ago to ask for my help. Her mother, Kathie, is the assistant dean of Duke’s business school (I think that is her position), and she is interested expanding Duke’s executive MBA program to Istanbul. Kathie asked her daughter if she knew anyone in Turkey and my name came up, and Kathie contacted me a couple of months ago.

Since Kathie was looking for both business leaders to partner with, and prospective students, I put her in touch with Murat. Murat went to Robert College, and American high school her in Turkey. This high school is hands down the best high school in Turkey. It is very expensive and very hard to get into. Each year they take between 100 and 150 students, and pretty much everyone in Istanbul wants to go there (at least from what I have seen). Murat’s high school friends are among Turkey’s brightest, and are generally from very wealthy, very powerful families. My thought was that if Murat wanted to help, which he did, he would be able to put Kathie in touch with some very well connected people.

The dinner was wonderful. Including Kathie and her husband we were eight. We had dinner in an old palace on the Asian side of the city, with beautiful views of the Bosporus. The architecture of the restaurant was more or less unchanged from the original style of the palace, and they had a great wine menu. Need less to say, I ate and drank a lot.

The eight of us chatted about Turkish culture and what obstacles Kathie and Duke would face in trying to create something here in Istanbul. The other young people Murat had invited were all very well spoken, and very intelligent. They went on and on about all of the various problems they could foresee Duke having, as well as possible strategies for overcoming it. The exchange between Murat’s guests (whom were all my age), Kathie and my guest (Erman) was very intellectual and very professional. I was very impressed and almost a bit intimidated by them. My contribution to the conversation was of course my impressions and interpretations of Turkish culture from an American view point.

I think the dinner wasn’t quite what Murat had intended. In typical Murat fashion, he waited a bit too long to start planning this evening. It still went well, but there was one point shortly before the dinner where Murat was quite nervous that things would not come together and that everything would fall apart. This captured two very big cultural aspects of being Turks: being hospitable and not planning ahead. When Turks have guests, they seem to bend over backwards to ensure their guests enjoy themselves. Murat’s worry this past week was his instinctive ‘Turkish hospitality’ taking over and pushing him to do some planning. I of course found his distress wildly entertaining as I am always the one preaching planning ahead, and proactive approaches.

This brings me to the point of this entry. Living in the Marshal Islands, Switzerland and now Turkey, I have looked at  cultures in terms of where they fall on the proactive-reactive continuum. Coming from New York, I learned a proactive approach to problem solving. Planning ahead and taking preventative measures is the way I like to do things. I have a really hard time functioning in a system that does not adopt this same mentality. The Marshals and Turkey definitely do not share this mentality.

I am constantly frustrated by what I see as Turkish people’s inability to plan. When I make a business trip, I print out every train schedule, all the hotel information, meeting times, and any other information that could potentially be important. I always take an extra tooth brush, paper and pen with me wherever I go (even in Turkey). I always plan for the worst, and try to always have a backup plan. I can be flexible if I need to, but I like to know what’s coming so I don’t have to be. Most of the Turks I have met do not do this. They leave work to the last minute, the do one thing at a time and plan for the next only when necessary. I have always seen this as a reactive approach which is bound to be more costly and therefore inferior in my mind. I simply cannot understand why someone would approach a problem in this way.

During this dinner Murat captured this aspect of Turkish culture in a very poetic way. He said that while American’s plan ahead and work hard towards something, “Turks save the day.” They wait until the last minute and then throw all their energy at the problem. If they are capable, they solve the problem. Murat used as an example his time spent in the US at Carnegie Mellon Unversity. He said many of his class mates would study for days before a test, and Murat would only study for a few hours right before the exam, and would do just as well as the rest of his classmates. Having been his classmate for some time, I can attest to the validity of this statement. Murat always left work until the last minute, and he usually did well.

The trouble, according to Murat, came when it was time for him to do group work. The save-the-day approach does not work well when you have a group with several other people in it. Not being able to plan ahead, divide up work, stick to meeting times, and in general function productively with in a group is a huge detriment when you have a long term project. I can also attest to the fact that Murat was indeed not very good at group work. At this point, please note that I am not making any claims about my own abilities. I am simply using Murat as blanket example for the majority of Turkey, compared against what I saw in my peers at Carnegie Mellon.

Putting it that way, and hearing Murat describe what I have seen as a flaw in Turkish culture, casts things in a different light. It is simply a different approach to things. But which way is better? Of course a mix. A healthy mix, or taking things in moderation is the best approach most things. You want to be able to plan ahead and go over everything in great detail so you are always prepared, but if you cannot ’save the day,’ you will find yourself struggling with unexpected bumps in the road that perhaps a Turkish person would have no problem handling. Vice versa, if you cannot plan ahead, you will always be under pressure, and always stressed trying to ’save the day.’

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Current Mood: Alarmed

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is visiting Turkey today. She will be attending a conference on Iraq between Iraq’s neighbors, to talk about security in Iraq and many other issues. Her appearance visit here is to hopefully keep Turkey from invading Northern Iraq, where a large Kurdish population is believed to be protecting members of the international denounced terrorist organization called the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party). For those of you that do not know you can catch up by scanning of the few articles I have linked to here:

• Iraqi President off Summit List
• Kurdish Troops Move Towards Turkey
• Turkish Helicopters Pound Kurdish Rebels
• Rice Heads to Turkey
• Turkey Out of Patience
• Turkey Raises Heat on Iraq

I talked a bit about the PKK in an earlier blog post, Turmoil in Turkey.  Things have been getting worse day by day and people  feel confident that Turkey will move into Northern Iraq. After Rice’s visit here, the Prime Minister Erdogan will visit the US. It has gotten to the point though that the government here can not ignore the overwhelming pressure from the people to do something about the PKK. There have been massive demonstrations. The other night all the taxi drivers in Istanbul gathered in Taksim to demonstrate. Many young people using Facebook made their profile pictures a Turkish flag (including myself). Turkish flags have been hung in windows, on cars, outside of buildings. The country is bursting with nationalism.

What does this mean for me. It’s actually not too bad. There was some growing anti-American sentiment when the US was on the eve of voting to acknowledge the killing of Armenians in 1915 as a genocide (Delay requested in house ‘genocide’ vote). This however has been overshadowed by the growing problems with the PKK and now the people have turned their anger to the Turkish government for its inaction.

Several of my friends have not done their military service and their time is about to come. Here in Turkey, there is a mandatory 1 year military service (six months if you have a college education) for all male citizens. Many people put it off to study first. Now, several of my friends are about to run out of time and are going to have to go to the military service. A friend I play games with will be going in January. With Turkey on the brink of war, this is a terrifying prospect for young Turks like him.

A more direct impact on my life is that my meeting today at work was canceled. We have visitors here who were planning to meet with us this afternoon. With Secretary Rice in town, the traffic in Istanbul has apparently gone from really bad, to really really bad. They called us this morning and said the whole city is deadlocked and that they would have to come on Monday; I love Turkey. I cannot wait to drive to the city this evening.

My opinion on this whole situation is… well I don’t have one. The Turks feel so strongly about what’s going on, and I don’t really know very much of the history of this conflict. I have therefore decided just to keep my mouth shut when the topic comes up and to not have an opinion. It’s safer that way.

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On Wednesday night, Izzy and I went to a Halloween party in Bebek (I haven’t mentioned this before, but Bebek is the worst place in the world traffic wise. I hate Bebek and usually avoid it at all costs). Despite the party being in Bebek it was a lot of fun. Izzy and I arrived on time (10pm) to find not many other people had arrived, and that we were the only ones in Halloween costumes. Since the host of the party - the one whom had invited us - had not yet arrived, we didn’t know anyone there. This compounded the awkwardness. Gradually the party picked up and we ended up staying there until 2am. We had fun, and met some cool people. Here’s a picture of our costumes. There is another Halloween party tonight. I imagine we will wear the same thing. Izzy bought his costume when he was working in Scotland over the summer, and my costume is a shirt from Bangladesh (click here to read the post), and a hat from Tunis (click here to read the post), both of which were gifts from the people I was meeting with while I was there.

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