Love It or Leave It?

As some of you know, I’ve taken up the “Murphy’s Law” approach to life in Istanbul. Feel free to fire your spiritual gurus: when things go wrong, instead of fighting reality, I just say, “Of course.” Repaving Istiklal with different tiles next year? Of course, they are. A metro system that takes you from Almost Somewhere to Basically Nowhere? Of course, it does. Toxins in our drinking water? Of course, there are. Intermittent electricity?… Well, you get it.

So this was the refrain I quietly repeated to myself (with no shortage of irony) when, on what was supposed to be a quick border run, the Turkish officials let me walk into Greece, then refused to let me walk back into Turkey. My friend Ladin and I stood wide-eyed and baffled on either side of a traffic barrier; inches apart, in two different countries.

It all started simply enough… People, like me, who live in Turkey without a resident’s permit, have to leave the country every three months when their tourist visa expires, in order to get a new one. It’s definitely illegal and word-on-the-street is that they are starting to crack down on our little system.

Nonetheless, when Ladin suggested that she just drive me to the Greek border (a three hour trip from Istanbul), I couldn’t refuse. How American of me… why fly somewhere when we could drive? My only thought was, “ROAD TRIP!!!” Two girls in a little car, good tunes, the open road.

As it turns out, even the road to Greece is paved with good intentions. The further we traveled from Istanbul, the higher my blood pressure rose. I said to Ladin, “I have this irrational fear that the car’s going to break down and I’m going to end up in one of these dead end industrial towns for the rest of my life.” I imagined trying to convince some Turkish farmer to drive me back to Istanbul on his homemade tractor—my hair blowing in the wind, cars passing us, when we finally reached the city it would be like when Dorothy stumbled upon Oz. A more intuitive person than myself would have seen these fantasies for what they were, a grand foreshadowing.

When we reached the border, we spoke with a border control person who had seen dozens like me come and go. Accordingly, he called up a taxi driver from Greece, whose only job is to drive people from Turkey to Greece and then back to Turkey. Ladin and I laughed hysterically when the Turkish guy started yelling into his phone, “Merhaba abi. Alo? Pavlos? Pavlos! Buraya gel! Pavlos?” Five minutes pass.

Enter, Pavlos Papadopoulos. He walked me to his taxi:

I looked at the car and then I looked at him, “So this must be one of those EU taxis, huh?” He smiled. Without any trouble, I left Turkey, I entered Greece, I went to Duty Free, I left Greece.

Then the dumbass at the Turkish border refused to let me back into Turkey. He said it was obvious I live here; I’m abusing the system, blah blah. And then suddenly, he flips the pages of my passport, spins it around to face me and plants his finger on page 8: Iraq. “You went to Kurdistan. What is Kurdistan?”

Ahhaaa. The plot thickens. The political climate is tense right now and, I wonder, if this is the price one pays for a “Kurdistan” stamp, what must it be like to actually be Kurdish? I flipped the pages of the passport. I said, “I’ve been to Turkey three times since I went to Iraq, why now? What’s the problem?” His response? He tilts his head back, closes his eyes briefly and gives me a “tssk.” I don’t speak much Turkish, but this I understood. Case closed.

I arranged for the taxi to take me to the airport in Alexandroupolis, where I could catch a flight to Athens, then fly back to Istanbul the next day. Pavlos scanned me briefly for the tell-tale marks of an infidel, and then started laughing when I smoothly told Murat, by cell phone, “So, I’m taking a holiday in Athens.” Things went wrong at the border? Of course, they did.

Screw Turkey. Five miles from the Turkish border and we’re flying along on smooth, EU-funded highways. Instead of mosques and gecekondus (shanties); the Greeks have roadside altars, clean sidewalks, well-dressed children.

A week from my run-in at the border and I’ve finally realized what happened. My relationship with Turkey is not unlike a love affair. When the border officials refused to let me back in, Turkey and I had our first fight; and now, I’m sorry to say, the honeymoon is definitely over.

There’s always a month, in the beginning of a relationship, when nothing bothers you about the guy. You know, he’s chewing with his mouth open, and you’re thinking, “Wow, his eyes are soooo blue.” Two weeks later and you’re criticizing his relationship with his mother, rearranging his furniture, thinking to yourself, “If he chews with his mouth open one more time, I might smack him.”

I’ve found a whole range of flaws to pick apart in men. There’s a sliding scale: quirks, foibles, imperfections, defects and, of course, deal-breakers. Some of them are clear: no car, no job, speaks different language, etc. But the most difficult to deal with are the characteristics that you simultaneously love and hate.

He has lots of friends.

Reality: he has lots of female friends.

He’s successful.

Reality: he's married to his job.

He’s so different from other guys.

Reality: he's kinda weird.

It goes without saying that the things I love about Turkey are, in a sense, only possible because of the things I also hate about Turkey. I like the feeling of being fundamentally disassociated from the culture. The old songs mean nothing to me, the symbols mean nothing to me, the rules don’t apply. It’s the same way I feel in church, like, “Isn’t all this lovely?” The Priest starts talking and I think, “Morality. Neat idea. Where are we having lunch?”

Being “foreign” affords you the unique freedom to watch, to listen, to walk closer, or to walk away. It also means that this country, like a live-in boyfriend, can walk away from me.

A brief trip to the Museum of Modern Art reveals an entire generation of Communist artists who, when not in jail, were painting ethereal and stirring images of mosques on the horizon. There are so many things that should change in this country, but then I start worrying. If it changes, will I fall out of love with Istanbul? The first week I moved here, I took a trip to the local grocery store, Gima. As I browsed the aisles, I realized the place was full of foreigners. And, as Staton shrewdly noted, a bunch of foreigners who act like they speak Turkish and are all pretending not to notice each other.

I flashed forward: I saw us all snubbing each other at a Dean & DeLuca’s, complaining that the brioche is too flat and the organic apples are improperly labeled. Before we know it, will the gypsy flower sellers be gone? Will the corner stores turn into Costcos? Will my pharmacist refuse to deliver?

The worst part, naturally, is that I have absolutely no right to grumble about imminent globalization and the death of local culture when I am a foreigner. They have salsa in the grocery store for me, afterall. My friend Volkan recently mentioned that he and his friends once rented a flat in this neighborhood for half of what I pay. “Sure,” I said. “But if you wanted to have a glass of wine, you had to drink it with that old guy and his family of wild dogs.” His reply, “Well, yeah.”

My friends who haven’t visited Cihangir in the past five years are likely to mention that they used to score drugs in this neighborhood. My landlord’s wife, on the other hand, talks about the glory days in Taksim. “What are all those young people doing on Istiklal? They’re just walking from one end to the other! Just looking at each other! And drinking! Aren’t there bars anywhere else in this city?” She adds, “In the old days, if you wanted to go to Istiklal, you had to wear a suit. Women wore hats.”

While revealing, Istanbul is definitely a skewed lens through which to view Turkey, as a whole. After a few years of relative silence, the situation with Kurds in the Southeast is once again front page news. Everyday, the Turkish government is committing a huge, humiliating affront to human rights. Forget the EU rhetoric. This is about Turkey’s relationship with its own people and the cultural legacy of rampant racism via Nationalism in the name of modernization. As for the Kurds, well, they clearly learned a thing or two from the Palestinians.

In the end, I made it back to Istanbul without any problems. As I approached the Customs desk at Ataturk International Airport, I tensed up a little. But it was all for naught:

“İyi akşamlar (Good evening),” I say to the Customs official. He is adorable, looks no older than 16. He immediately blushes madly. “İyi akşamlar,” he whispers. Stamp.

I guess it’s an imperfect love affair. Turkey and I were seeing each other, then, you know, it got serious. We moved in together. I’m still waiting to meet his family (he’s a bit secretive). And yeah, the neighborhood is weird: Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Syria. I’m a realist about these things. I can accept that there is no foible-free man on Earth, just as I can accept that every country has its own struggles to balance human rights in the face of complex political realities.

The trick, with countries, as with relationships, I guess, is to find the flaws you can live with. And to avoid unrealistic expectations.

Turkey promises it can change. Of course.

xo em

me and ladin

me and my housemate, staton