Turkish People We Met Along the Way
We have met some very warm and kind people along the way. They asked us about America. Many had been to America and some have even lived there. The guy that ran our breakfast stop in Istanbul lived in Grapevine for two years and spoke excellent English. In fact, English is the "common denominator" language used here. Many tours are in English although many are in Turkish as well as in dialects of Chinese or in Japanese. Only once were we at a loss for communicating in a rural area but we were able to overcome it. Travel is fairly easy when you are fortunate enough to speak the common denominator. Only a few times did we resort to using Google Translate to help us communicate and that solved any other problems.
People here are well educated. Most of the people we met talked about attending the universities or schools of higher education. Many were trained in hospitality.
People move from country to country here like we move from state to state. A couple from Ethiopia we met on a boat ride were now living in Ireland. He is a programmer who has traveled the US extensively including a stint living in Boston.
Everyone had a cousin or brother living in London, Dallas, San Francisco, New York or somewhere in the states or somewhere else in the world. So everyone was very familiar with the world and life outside of their country, more than most Americans are familiar with countries outside of the USA. We stopped by the Intercontinental Hotel in Istanbul for a roof-top view of the town and our waiter's girlfriend was living in Peru and he was planning to go meet her. The couple running the small hotel where we stayed in Bergama were also perfect examples of this. They had both worked and lived in Istanbul and a few years back had bought a run-down building and spent a year and a half reconstructing it into the beautiful Hera Hotel. As we conversed with them we found out that their son had trained as an engineer at Boston College and worked in the US for a while, but he had returned home to another town in the area and now owned a restaurant. Stories like this were all over and we definitely had more in common that seen at first glance.
On a comment on an earlier post someone asked how people felt about Americans. The feedback we got was that people love Americans. They were happy to see us and wanted to get to know us. They almost always thanked us for coming to visit their country. They were proud of their country and most were happy to live there (except when their loved one was living somewhere else.) A man we met running a pub we visited in Kadikoy tolerated an hour and a half commute to work each way. He loved working in Istanbul and living outside of the city. Just like people have to do in LA, Chicago or New York!
A number of the rug salesmen we met were Kurds. One of them had fought in Basra with the Americans in the fight against ISIS and had wonderful memories of the Americans he stood beside. They were very kind although there is no experience quite like sitting down for a cup of tea and listening to an Istanbul rug salesman's pitch! I wish we could have videoed these presentations to share with you.
Although they loved their country, almost everyone we met did not like their government or their President or our President for that matter. In spite of that most were in favor of Erdogan's actions in Syria. It is different when you live in a country that borders a war zone and the zone is controlled by a terrorist group. The YPG has been classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, USA and Turkey. So the people we met did not believe that it was an unfair war action against all Kurds but rather an action against a terrorist organization that had been going on way too long. For many of the young people we met, it has been going on all their lives. Unfortunately, wars have to take place in a physical location, and those locations typically have civilians living in them too and I believe that the people we met understood that but it was still their war on terror.
Interestingly all of this was setup after WWI. Understanding how we got here is an important step in understanding where we are. The following paragraph is from an online article about the Kurdish situation. I recommend you read the attached link to help understand the situation.
"The Kurds ended up where they are — without a homeland — because of the Western powers who drew the region’s map after World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied powers (the UK, France, Italy, Japan, and others) who won the war signed the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres with what was left of the Ottoman Empire. That pact set aside territory for the Kurds as it carved up the Ottoman Empire. But that got amended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which established the modern Turkish state and the other borders in the Middle East. That treaty omitted a Kurdish nation-state and left the population divided across several different countries."
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/16/20908262/turkey-syria-kurds-trump-invasion-questions
To the Turkish people we met, they see Erdogan's move as a defensive move against a terrorist organization. To someone looking at it from the west, it looks like an offensive move. But like so many of the false borders western countries created in the middle east at the end of WWI and WWII, it is a result of short range treaties that separate indigenous people from each other. In many cases, there are more than two sides to a story and as the world shrinks, a lot of stories are never heard. We're hoping this one will take a better turn than where it looks like it is headed.
As I said above, we met some of the warmest people. Most of them were working in hospitality since that's where we were. A common thread seems to run through them and us, a love of life and a desire for peace and understanding.
People here are well educated. Most of the people we met talked about attending the universities or schools of higher education. Many were trained in hospitality.
People move from country to country here like we move from state to state. A couple from Ethiopia we met on a boat ride were now living in Ireland. He is a programmer who has traveled the US extensively including a stint living in Boston.
Everyone had a cousin or brother living in London, Dallas, San Francisco, New York or somewhere in the states or somewhere else in the world. So everyone was very familiar with the world and life outside of their country, more than most Americans are familiar with countries outside of the USA. We stopped by the Intercontinental Hotel in Istanbul for a roof-top view of the town and our waiter's girlfriend was living in Peru and he was planning to go meet her. The couple running the small hotel where we stayed in Bergama were also perfect examples of this. They had both worked and lived in Istanbul and a few years back had bought a run-down building and spent a year and a half reconstructing it into the beautiful Hera Hotel. As we conversed with them we found out that their son had trained as an engineer at Boston College and worked in the US for a while, but he had returned home to another town in the area and now owned a restaurant. Stories like this were all over and we definitely had more in common that seen at first glance.
On a comment on an earlier post someone asked how people felt about Americans. The feedback we got was that people love Americans. They were happy to see us and wanted to get to know us. They almost always thanked us for coming to visit their country. They were proud of their country and most were happy to live there (except when their loved one was living somewhere else.) A man we met running a pub we visited in Kadikoy tolerated an hour and a half commute to work each way. He loved working in Istanbul and living outside of the city. Just like people have to do in LA, Chicago or New York!
A number of the rug salesmen we met were Kurds. One of them had fought in Basra with the Americans in the fight against ISIS and had wonderful memories of the Americans he stood beside. They were very kind although there is no experience quite like sitting down for a cup of tea and listening to an Istanbul rug salesman's pitch! I wish we could have videoed these presentations to share with you.
Although they loved their country, almost everyone we met did not like their government or their President or our President for that matter. In spite of that most were in favor of Erdogan's actions in Syria. It is different when you live in a country that borders a war zone and the zone is controlled by a terrorist group. The YPG has been classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, USA and Turkey. So the people we met did not believe that it was an unfair war action against all Kurds but rather an action against a terrorist organization that had been going on way too long. For many of the young people we met, it has been going on all their lives. Unfortunately, wars have to take place in a physical location, and those locations typically have civilians living in them too and I believe that the people we met understood that but it was still their war on terror.
Interestingly all of this was setup after WWI. Understanding how we got here is an important step in understanding where we are. The following paragraph is from an online article about the Kurdish situation. I recommend you read the attached link to help understand the situation.
"The Kurds ended up where they are — without a homeland — because of the Western powers who drew the region’s map after World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied powers (the UK, France, Italy, Japan, and others) who won the war signed the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres with what was left of the Ottoman Empire. That pact set aside territory for the Kurds as it carved up the Ottoman Empire. But that got amended with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which established the modern Turkish state and the other borders in the Middle East. That treaty omitted a Kurdish nation-state and left the population divided across several different countries."
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/16/20908262/turkey-syria-kurds-trump-invasion-questions
To the Turkish people we met, they see Erdogan's move as a defensive move against a terrorist organization. To someone looking at it from the west, it looks like an offensive move. But like so many of the false borders western countries created in the middle east at the end of WWI and WWII, it is a result of short range treaties that separate indigenous people from each other. In many cases, there are more than two sides to a story and as the world shrinks, a lot of stories are never heard. We're hoping this one will take a better turn than where it looks like it is headed.
As I said above, we met some of the warmest people. Most of them were working in hospitality since that's where we were. A common thread seems to run through them and us, a love of life and a desire for peace and understanding.
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