An American Life in Istanbul

Yesterday was international labor day, a day that celebrates the rights and achievements of workers around the world. In most places peaceful demonstrations are held during labor day. Yesterday here in Istanbul, it was a full out battle, with the police finishing way a head. There was teargas, fire houses, and beatings a plenty throughout the day. The labor parties head quarters was stormed by police and tear gassed, a hospital was tear gassed, numerous groups of demonstrators scattered through the city were gassed and beaten. Demonstrators wanted to hold demonstrations in the city’s historic Taksim square. However 20,000 police barricaded the square and refused to let demonstrators near the square. Entire areas of Istanbul ended up getting tear gassed to clear out protesters. Although I personally did not get there in time to witness any of the fighting (the governor ordered most of the strategic teargassing early in the morning, including the hospital), I did witness the huge police force. I would have my own shots and videos from Taksim square, but while I was on my way there (walking was the only way to get anywhere nearby), something very urgent came up and I had to run. So here are some of my pictures, and some other people’s pictures/videos that I pulled off of YouTube.

A random video I found on YouTube

Another random video I found on YouTube

Here are some pictures I took myself. I noticed the reporters, police and protesters all had gas masks.

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Over the weekend I stayed at a friend’s house (I will avoid using names because the issue may be sensitive) that I do not normally stay at. Realizing I had not asked my friend what his parents do, I asked. They are both professors at two of Turkey’s most prestigious universities. I was excited.

The town I grew up in was near a very large and reasonably well known university (Stony Brook University in New York). There were many foreign professors and foreign students from all over the world there. Because of this, many of my friends growing up were the children of professors. From my experiences growing up and my experiences at university, I found that the academic community always held a good, well informed opinion of current events, and was a good way to measure what changes were coming.

So at breakfast, I casually slipped in questions to his father, constituting what I consider my first interview. The issue was the pending court case to remove the current government for being anti secular. I briefly commented on this issue in: Economic Hiccups. I was curious to find out what the academic community though of the whole situation.

Two petitions were passed around amongst Turkey’s 40,000 person academia. 3,000 professors signed a petition in support of the current government and claimed that there was nothing wrong with what the government has been doing. 8,000 signed the petition against the government (this 8000 included assistants where as the 3000 did not). My friend’s father signed the petition against the government, his wife did not.

The interesting bit of this story is what happened to my friends father who we will call Ahmet for now. Ahmet is a tenured professor here in Istanbul. On top of his normal job he is a senior part-time researcher at separate government institute where he has been working for approximately 20 years. He was recently promoted to chairmen of the executive committee there. He is also a member of Turkey’s equivalent to the National Academy of Science in the US.

After his name appeared on a similar petition against the government, the person who had appointed him to chairman - a person serving in an office appointed by a council which is made up of the prime ministers appointees - called him and asked why he signed the petition. She followed up with the question “do you think I appointed you for your academic achievements?”

At the end of each year, each person at this government institute must submit a report for what they have done. This time, when Ahmet went to turn in his report, his 20th or so, they told him it wasn’t necessary. Nor would he need to submit a report for his position as chairman. He of course, was not rehired.

I’d like to thank Ahmet for sharing this story and commend him for having the courage to stand up for what he believes in.

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The Turkish economy is actually quite good. The size of the unreported or black market economy makes Turkey reasonable stable. Despite the very volatile political situation that has been developing over the past year, the Turkish Lyra spent most of the fall being one of four currencies rising against the year. However, there are hiccups form time to time.

When I moved to Turkey the Lyra was trading for 1.41 against the dollar. One month ago it was at 1.16. Today it’s at 1.24. Despite the bumpy ride, things seem to calm down. Since the financial crisis of 2000 where the Lyra lost half its value over night, things have been pretty good. A lot of people lost a lot of money during this crisis, however many with close ties to the government coincidently sold everything they had and invested in foreign currency weeks or days before the crash (according to my friends). Some people think another crisis is coming (SeekingAlpha.com) which may contribute to the recent volatility. People remember what happened and are afraid it will happen again. Despite a GDP growth rate of 5.1% and single digit unemployment (according to the CIA world fact book), people still don’t have much faith in the economy. All  the major banks here in Turkey allow you to easily open your own foreign currency account online for no charge. I currently have four accounts and am considering opening a fifth, adding a fourth currency to my list. A lot of business is done in Euros in Turkey as well, including my own company’s. We buy and sell everything in Euros as a way of making our pricing structure more stable.

Just after the markets closed on Friday March 14th,  a case was brought against the ruling AKP (justice and development party) party here in Turkey. They were brought up on charges of anti-secularism (that’s illegal here in Turkey) and will be investigated by a special court on whether or not they have violated the secular laws of Turkey’s constitution. This is not the first time that a government has been brought up on charges of being anti-secular, and if the party is dissolved, it will not be the first time that a government has been removed from power for such a violation. Naturally Monday morning, when the markets opened, things got crazy.

Two months ago I moved most of money to Euros at around 1.7-1.75 Lyra to the euro. On the 14th when the markets closed,  things were around 1.85. On Monday, by noon, the Euro broke 2 Lyra (I sold everything). When things closed one week later on the 21st, the Euro was at 1.917. My speculation clearly paid off. Despite the ongoing case against the government (which again, is widely unpopular among the educated upper and middle class), the economy seems to be doing alright (Turkish Daily News Article).

So now that things have calmed down for the time being, what will I do with the windfall I received from this speculation.  It’s not too much so probably I am just going to buy a round for my friends. More likely though, I will do my best to speculate against the outcome of this court case. If the government is removed - which by the way has control of the executive branch as well as most of the parliament - I am sure things will get crazy again.

Cheers.

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Check it out:

Turkish Government Bans YouTube!

No more YouTube!

In Turkey there is a law called article 301 which has made it illegal to insult ‘Turkishness’ since coming into effect in June of 2005. The article states:

<<<

Article 301 states the following.^[6]

1. A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

>>> (excerpt from wikipedia.org)

The law has been used to persecute journalists, writers, bloggers, poets even people for public speeches they have given. The most notable cases were against Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for an interview he gave for a swiss magazine (charges were dropped against him), Wordpress.com - an online blogging community, and most recently YouTube (it has been banned several times over the past year), for a video of Kemal Mustafa Attaturk singing about how he is a homosexual (at least these are the major incidents that i know of)

I am sure you can all see what an obvious violation of freedom of speech this law represents. The current government has been ruthless about persecuting journalists, shutting down newspapers, blocking websites. They must think they have a mandate from Attaturk himself to protect the Turkish identity. In the international community, the European Union has insisted Turkey remove this law. Although allowing international law and international treaties to override Turkish national law, Article 301 is nonetheless a clear violation of fundamental freedoms and political rights. There has been talk of removing the law, but it has been more than one year since president Abdullah Gul suggested removing the law. Instead the government recently lifted a long standing law from the early days of the republic banning head scarves in public areas, but that’s a whole other story.

Regardless of whether or not this law stays active or is repealed, Turks will feel very strongly about their Turkishness. In my experience it seems that the Turkish identity and Attaturk (the prophet of this religion like nationalism) are more sacred than Islam in Turkey. There are many mosques in Turkey, and many people fast during the month of Ramadan, but there is at least one picture of Attaturk in nearly every business in the whole country. While religion is important here and it is observed, Attaturk and Turkishness are indoctrinated by the state. In school, teachers teach how great Attaturk was, they teach how about how important everything he did was. His drive to secularize Turkey is what saved Turkey from the mess that many of the other Islamic nations are in right now (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya). In some ways Attaturk has god-like status here, in other ways he’s far beyond that. Recently we met a man who had Attaturk’s face tattooed on his arm.

This intensity sometimes manifests itself in violence against those who do not share this view point. With the state prosecuting “anti-Turkish” antagonists, vigilantes within the community do so as well. Hrant Dink, former editor in chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, is the most notable case in recent history. He was a very vocal critic of both the Armenian and Turkish stances on the ‘Armenian genocide’ (Related Blog Post: Turmoil in Turkey: Part II). He had been prosecuted three times for his opinions about the incident before a young ultra nationalist Turk, Ogun Samast, assassinated him in January 2007. Pictures later surfaced of the arresting officers smiling and congratulating the killer while holding a Turkish flag. What kind of message does that send? Another notable case was Michael Dickinson, a British artist who made a collage showing the Turkish prime minister as a dog. He was held for 10 days. You can see the picture in question below:

He later showed this collage, again of the prime minister, getting himself into trouble again:

I find both picture entertaining especially considering what my friends, and many of the other educated people in Turkey have to say about the current government. To any of my Turkish readers, I pose this question: Is Turkey getting better in terms of human rights and freedom of speech? I would like to hear some opinions other than my own on this one.

With YouTube banned, what am I going to do at work on the slow days. At least I know that I can always retreat back to my home country, where I can say what ever I damn well please.

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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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