A Trip to America, A Trip to Turkey, A Deportation, and A Trip Back to Turkey.

Dear Family, Friends, and Interested Observers,

Where to begin? Let’s start a couple of weeks ago, when I finished a two-week-long stint in the States (March 21 to April 4). I had passed up an opportunity to visit Scott and Hannah in Israel so that I could renew my travel visa, bring home more documents, and do my taxes in the States. It was a very good break with frequent meetings with friends and family. I was also pleased to announce to Jim that I would be able to return on the same flight with him to Turkey for his ten-day visit.

Then, disaster struck. When we arrived in the Istanbul airport, Jim and I rushed ahead of the crowd to get through passport control quickly. The only problem was that I could not find my passport when we got in line for our visas. It was a sinking feeling for both of us; Jim said my face turned beet red as I checked and rechecked my backpack and pockets for it. Next, we went to the transfer station and asked to check the plane. I searched everywhere on that plane and found nothing. Turkish Airlines searched a second time with its cleaning crew. No luck.

What followed was a pitiful scene. The border police said that there would be nothing to do except to deport me the following morning. I was taken to a holding area and told that Jim would have to enter Turkey immediately on his own. I only managed to tell Jim to get a hotel room near the airport and to plan on changing his ticket to return with me to the States the following morning before we were separated.

I sat in silent disbelief in the holding cell for about half an hour. In the cell, there were about three or four other guys from different countries who were being deported for visa infractions. I remember Vasily, the Romanian tiler, in particular. Without his knowledge, Vasily had been banned from reentering Turkey for five years for overstaying a prior visa. He was boisterous fellow and vowed to reenter Turkey illegally if necessary so that he could return to his high paying job in Istanbul. In fact, everyone in that holding area seemed to look on the bright side of things. It was at once irritating and infectious. I was living my own little Midnight Express -- minus the drug trafficking and everything else, of course.

The holding cell, a big square room, was not comfortable. The lounge chairs / fold-out cots were covered in a dingy blue fabric that looked as if it had not been washed since the late nineties. The lights never went out, and it was sweltering. Security cameras were fitted to every corner of the room. Fortunately, there was a payphone through which I could spread my distress to friends and family. Jim and I were not very well prepared with emergency numbers. He only got the payphone telephone number to the cell by triangulating information through my parents.

Jim ended up staying at a smoky hotel room in Aksaray. Budget travelers to Istanbul would know the kind. He says he was treated well by the staff. Although he did get disoriented on his only venture out, he managed to find a good beer and chicken kebab place. He slept for about an hour and a half that night. I managed eight hours. I guess that’s just me.

You would think that the authorities would make deportation a more pleasant experience. We had held out hope to the last minute that the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul could do something for me. Two of our good friends in Madison, Tony and Mark, had been working furiously on my behalf with the Consular authorities. However, in the end, the Consulate did not want to deal with my trifling problem. They said that they would have been able to issue me a new passport if I had made it across passport control, but because I had not, I was in limbo and had no choice but to be deported. Needless to say, I advise not losing your passport between your U.S. point of departure and the passport control of your foreign destination.

I was also annoyed with the tactics of the Turkish authorities and Turkish Airlines. First, the security officers would not remove you from the holding area until about half an hour before the scheduled departure. Second, when the ticketing agent from Turkish Airlines arrived, I was forced to pay an outrageous emergency one-way fare, which in my case was more than the price of a normal roundtrip ticket. And, what’s more, initially I was refused boarding my flight because the ticketing agent had neglected to follow the correct protocols for my U.S. reentry without a passport. The only reason that I made that flight was that there were about 80 white-robed Sanskrit scholars in transit from New Delhi who had arrived at the last minute for an Istanbul-Chicago connection.

Meanwhile, of course, Jim was getting antsy on the plane. He thought I would never make it on. When I did, we couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of a vacation gone completely awry. Moreover, after sixteen hours of anxiety, we faced a second twelve-hour trans-Atlantic flight. We vowed to return to Turkey together. I am lucky to have such an understanding partner. We made good use of the complementary cocktails.

When we landed in Chicago, the authorities were fully apprised of the situation, and we got through passport control in ten minutes. My checked bag did not arrive in Madison until a couple of days later. My passport never turned up. I have since learned that passports go for thousands of dollars on the black market. It has since been invalidated.

The next morning we began to look into expedited passport services. These days a passport is not an easy thing to get. New regulations require all U.S. travelers going by plane to Canada or Mexico to carry valid passports – so the U.S. Passport Service is struggling to keep up with demand. You can get a new passport quickly by demonstrating an imminent need to travel, such as an itinerary or a ticket to fly in the next two weeks, but with the heavy demand the problem is getting an appointment with Passport Agency in Chicago. Even Travisa, the expedited service we used, could not get us an appointment until a week after I returned to the States. However, they repeatedly promised that I would receive my passport by Tuesday of the following week.

Risk takers that we are, Jim and I booked an Alitalia flight to Istanbul on Wednesday afternoon. The flight was so cheap that we thought it was worth taking a chance. The new passport arrived on time, and we left Chicago for Istanbul via Milan on Wednesday, April 18. Good work, Travisa.

The Alitalia flight from Istanbul to Milan was excruciating. The flight attendants were unfriendly, and the food and drink service was bare bones. There were no headphones for the in-flight entertainment. What a contrast from Turkish Airlines. We have since learned that the Alitalia flight attendants are planning to strike next week. They are not happy campers, although we did notice that they had a special room in their airplane equipped with a cot so they could lie down for naps in shifts during the flight. Such is the state of the Italian flagship carrier.

Jim’s culture shock began in Milan, where he confronted his first squat toilet. In many a Mediterranean bathroom, a porcelain hole often replaces a porcelain chair. Jim grew accustomed to such facilities by the end of the trip. He learned to always carry some extra tissues and napkins with him. Sorry, Jim, I had to mention it.

Before reaching passport control in Istanbul, I had my own apprehensions. Before I was deported, I had been told by several people in Istanbul that I would face no repercussions for my lost passport as I had never officially entered the country. Thankfully, when we landed in Istanbul, this turned out to be the case.

Jim and I stayed around my downtown neighborhood the first day (Thursday, April 19). Although we had gotten very little sleep on the plane, we forced ourselves to stay up so as to adjust better to the time change. I got into a minor skirmish with my roommate Ercüment that afternoon about the security deposit on my lease. Unfortunately, Jim was in the next room and was uncomfortable with the heated discussion. Things blew over by the next day. I caved.

That night we got something to eat and had a few drinks of İstiklal Caddesi in Taksim. For those Wisconsin folks who have never been to Turkey, İstiklal Caddesi is like State Street in Madison times twenty. It is a pedestrian promenade in the center of the European city and leads from Taksim Square to the tight knit streets, bars, and clubs of Beyoğlu. Istanbul is a city of crumbling 19th century apartment blocks interspersed by human motion. Jim felt overwhelmed – every sense is touched here. The rich smells of the local restaurant fare waft alongside the flowering shrubs and the stench of indiscreet corner trash piles. The horns of ships resound among the steady blasts among the car horns and alarms; the cacophony of thousands of conversations intersperse with the low roiling pitches of venders. The constant jostling of passers by complicates the negotiation of the uneven pavements below. All the signs, the neon, the people, the narrow streets … it is difficult to know where to look out next.

I should have let Jim sleep longer the next morning (Friday, April 20). However, I wanted him to see the city, and I knew that I had some practical matters to attend, so I prodded him up from a dead sleep at 8 am. First, we walked down the steep hills of my Gümüşsuyu neighborhood to the modern tram station at Kabataş on the Bosphorus. Now, the tram is a great piece of transport infrastructure for the city, and I plan to use it twice daily to go to and from the archives in Sultanahmet. However, it can become absolutely clogged with passengers and ridiculously sweaty. Such was the case on our first trip to Eminönü.

At Eminönü, we took the ferry over to Haydarpaşa Train Station on the Asian side, so that I could by us train tickets to Denizli on Sunday night. The ferry ride was pleasant and the views were spectacular, but jetlagged Jim was having none of it for the moment. His mood soured as we ran the obligatory Aya Sofya-Blue Mosque-Topkapı circuit. I came to share his mood as the day wore on. The crush of tourists – so many of them so rude and pushy – became tedious. Outside the exit of the Aya Sofya, Jim wanted to buy a role of film at a kiosk. I watched as a five or six tourists darted in front of him; he soon gave up. Poor guy.

We finished off the night by going to see a “performance” of the Mevlevi dervishes in a salon in Sirkeci Station. It was worthwhile, but the touristic atmosphere and high-priced tickets seemed a bit too worldly for the Sufis …. I admitted to Jim that I tried to pack in too much on the first day of the trip, but I would have felt I had failed in my guiding capacity if he didn’t see some of the major sites. I did scratch from the itinerary some other treasures, such as the Süleymaniye and the Archaeological Museum.

The next day (Saturday, April 21) was much more to Jim’s speed. We slept in the morning and took the abbreviated Bosphorus cruise in the afternoon. We then did some bartering in the Spice Market and finished off with a sunset meal under the Galata Bridge. Later, we also got a taste of the Taksim night life.

On Sunday (April 22) we set off for our afternoon departure from Haydarpaşa Station. Jim and I got a sleeper car. It was amazingly affordable (at about fifty liras a piece) and the compartments were well appointed and comfortable. Although I the rocking of the car did not allow for a thoroughly restful night, I got more sleep than I would have on an overnight bus. I would definitely go by train again in Turkey if I were in no hurry particular hurry to get somewhere.

That night on the train we had a nice conversation with two fellow travelers, Yıldız and Burak, in the dining car. Yıldız was an English teacher in Istanbul, and Burak an engineering student from İzmit. They were making use of the Monday National Children’s Day holiday to escape the big city for the weekend.

As I mentioned, train travel may be more relaxed and comfortable than the bus, but you shouldn’t expect to get anywhere on time. The following morning (Monday, April 23) we came to a full stop about 50 kilometers outside of Denizli. Apparently, a freight train ahead of us was having engine problems, so our train’s engine detached from the rest of the cars and motored ahead to push the freight train into its station. We spent half an hour or forty-five minutes on the outskirts of a small village taking in the sunshine.

When we finally reached Denizli at about ten in the morning (two hours late), Burak tagged along with us to Pamukkale. The ruins of Hieropolis, the Roman spa resort / necropolis above the travertines were gorgeous with spring flowers. Pamukkale, which in Turkish means “Cotton Castle,” is a unique geological formation. Since prehistorical times, a spring on the hillside above the site has been spewing calcified water. The water streams in rills down the hillface and ossifies into terraced, bright white pools.

Pamukkale has been valued since ancient times for the supposed medicinal qualities of its fizzy water. Although unfortunate development marred the sight for many years, the Tourism Ministry has taken some good steps to improve conditions and assure the flow of the water that replenishes the travertine pools. As Jim lounged in the sun, I took a dip in the famous hotel pool above the site that contains various ancient architectural fragments.

The minibus (dolmuş) ride that followed that evening was the scariest I have had while in Turkey. That afternoon Jim and I got on a minibus bound for the Mediterranean port of Fethiye. There are no good highway connections between Denizli and Fethiye, and unbenounced to us, we had just elected to take a four-hour-long spine tingling short cut through the Toros Mountains.

The spindling road, no more than twelve feet wide at the most, snaked up and down impossibly steep mountainsides along nauseous hairpin turns. Jim and I were both petrified and speculated that were our driver to have a heart attack or a lapse in judgment, we would not make it out of there. We stopped midway for a break in Çameli, the alpine village that ran the line in order to connect it to the outside world. Although the sun shone bright, we were freezing in our shorts as we waited.

When we arrived in Fethiye, Jim was in no mood to bargain, so we took the first hotel room that we found. It was located conveniently along the seafront, but its accoutrements were spartan. The stress of the day’s journeys made the decision to go to the beach the next day very easy.

After breakfast the next morning (Tuesday, April 24), we headed for the downtown Fethiye dolmus stop that would take us to Ölüdeniz ("Dead Sea"), a long sand and pebble beach about ten miles outside of the city. On the way to the minibus, I purchased some sun block and after-sun lotion, which later proved to be a wise investment. Ölüdeniz is a bit of a tourist trap, geared for British holiday makers, but the shops were just getting ready for the season and there were no crowds of which to speak. In the morning, we lounged on the beach. In the afternoon we each had a margarita and proceeded to some very casual shopping. We returned to the beach in the late afternoon and searched for agates along the shore. We finished up with what I considered to be the best Chinese meal I have had in Turkey.

The next morning we headed to Kaş ("eyebrow" -- named after the shape of the port) along the coastal road. The stretch of coast between Fethiye and Antalya is nicknamed to the Turquoise Coast, a well deserved moniker. As we road along the shore from Kalkan to Kaş, the sheer cliffs skirted turquoise blue waters of the Mediterranean. The vistas were spectacular. Jim loved it, and after the journey from Denizli, the hairpin turns along this wider road no longer bothered him.
Kaş is the little jewel of the turquoise coast. Lacking a significant beach, it has escaped the rampant overdevelopment of other parts of the coast, although locals were not pleased with new subdivisions on the hill above the city center.

A few miles across from Kaş lies the Greek Island of Meis (in Greek -- Kastellorizo). Although populated with ethnic Greeks for centuries, Meis was granted to the modern state of Greece only in 1948. Italy had been the colonial ruler of the Dodecanese Islands for a time in the early twentieth century. Although the island lies only a kilometer away from the Turkish mainland, it is over a hundred kilometers from the nearest big Greek island, Rhodes. This uncomfortable circumstance of distance and proximity explains why the Greek government subsidizes the inhabitants of the island to keep living there.

We had a fun afternoon of lunching, shopping for trinkets, and basking in the sun. We ascended the hilltop above the Hellenistic theater to watch a spectacular sunset over the bay. We went in for a margarita in a portside bar that night, and had a great conversation with a California ex-pat named Tess, who had been in Kaş for 23 years. She had married a Turk and raised three children there. It was interesting to hear her experiences and to learn how much the town had changed since she first arrived.

With regrets, we left Kaş the next morning for Antalya. The minibus was sultry, and the journey was uninspiring until we reached the pine forest just west of the city. Once we arrived and settled in the castle wall-lined old city of Antalya, we had a great time. We bartered ourselves into a cheap pension, and lunched in a café built into the turrets of the castle walls above the small wooden boat (tekke) port. That night we wandered the cobbled, narrow streets blissfully unaware of the bustling modern city center above. Antalya is a city of music, and that evening we entered another café that to listen to some live saz music.

We returned to Istanbul by plane the next morning and made it back to my apartment by early afternoon. Exhausted by our whirlwind tour, we spent the last two days together relaxing. The first afternoon we discovered an Irish bar in Beyoğlu and played some darts. We then moved on to the taverns (meyhanes) to enjoy the late afternoon sun and people watching. I hate to say it, but I left my wallet at home and thought it was lost for about ten minutes. What is wrong with me? Well, I called Ercüment at home and he quickly located it for me. The final day we read a Herald Tribune in a café and wandered the "Covered Bazaar" (Kapalı Çarsı).

I took Jim by taxi to the airport the next morning at 4:00 am so he could make his return flight. Jim always hates goodbyes, but at least this time it is only for seven weeks or so. What a good companion he is for me.

For those of you who are interested, my Istanbul address is:

Yarasa Sokağı, Nigâr Apartments 7/6
Gümüşsuyu / İstanbul TÜRKİYE

Even though this has been a ridiculously long entry, I think I should mention one more thing. You may have heard in the news that Turkey is undergoing a political crisis of sorts. Here’s the situation:

For about five years, the Islamist, center-right AK Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi -- "Justice and Development Party") and its leader Tayyıp Erdoğan have controlled the Turkish parliament. As prime minister, Erdoğan has presided over sustained economic growth and major infrastructure improvements. The success of the AK Party stands in sharp contrast to the incompetent and corrupt "secular” governments that preceded it. Its popularity is bolstered in some circles by its advocacy of pious social reforms. The combination has made the AK Party almost unbeatable in recent parliamentary elections.

The controversy is that the AK Party is poised to augment its parliamentary majority by electing the next presidential candidate from its ranks. In Turkey, a prime minister and his or her party coalition manage the day-to-day government. However, the constitution also designates important responsibilities to an overarching “head of state” president. These powers include the ability to veto legislation, the appointment of university rectors, and the selection of the military's Chief of General Staff. The parliament chooses a new president every seven years.

The last president elected was on Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch advocate of Kemalist secularism. Sezer used his presidential veto often to stop AK Party bills that he considered contrary to the spirit of Ataturk and the modern, secular Turkish republic. The AK Party typically legislated in a centrist fashion, but it had also passed bills to criminalize adultery, limit the sale of alcohol, and permit women to wear headscarves in official public settings.

Now Sezer’s term is up, and the AK Party is just ten votes shy of the two-thirds it needs to ratify its candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, to the presidency. Gül was put forward as a compromise candidate, as Prime Minister Erdoğan himself was too polarizing a figure.

The ten votes that the AK Party lacks are important. The opposition is trying to thwart the presidential nomination on a technicality by refusing to seat its parliamentarians. They claim that since the requisite two-thirds of parliamentarians needed to nominate a president are absent, the whole process is invalid. In this case, the opposition argues, a fresh parliamentary election should be triggered. The Constitutional Court has taken up the matter. However, if the Constitutional Court rules in the AK Party’s favor, then they will be able to nominate their candidate in a third round of voting by a simple majority.

The real underlying issue here is that the secular forces in Turkish politics are trying to obstruct the AK Party’s consolidation of legislative and executive power. The military, the omnipresent fifth wheel of Turkish politics, has already said cryptically that it will “intervene” to maintain a secular order. Hundreds of thousands of secularists have protested in Ankara and Istanbul. They fear that the AK Party will use its growing powers to cement its authority and to alter Turkish society. Not only will the AK Party control the legislative and the executive branches of government, they also will be able to change the character of other traditional institutions, such as the military and the university system, through the presidential power to appoint. On the basis of its election victories, the AK Party has earned this right by all democratic measures.

So, what does this mean for day-to-day life for me in Istanbul? Almost certainly it will come to nothing, apart from a better exchange rate for the dollar against the lira for a while. The weak dollar has been hurting my bottom line all year!

However, I will keep my eye on the situation. Turkey tends to go through this type of political crisis in ten-year cycles. What concerns me this time are the high stakes …

Görüşmek Üzere,

jkbinturkey

P.S. I want to give a shout out to Katerina Strathi, a classmate from Cunda, who I saw only too briefly in March before returning to the States (the first time). Hey, hey, Katerina, we'll always have Ortaköy!