Part II
The Belle Époque à la Turk
Mostly Fond Memories of 1990s Turkey
Spitting Me Out in Ayvalık
In Part I, I had a rough first few days in my new homeland but was charmed by several experiences in my first few weeks in Bursa to offset my initial reservations.
Still, as time went on, I was torn between wanting to stay for the good times I was having with the people and the gnawing realization that for a teacher, pay and working terms would be much better somewhere else. This is not to mention the noise and seeming chaos that I was finding hard to live with. Nevertheless, I wound up living in Bursa for several years, both loving it and hating it at the same time.
There was a period later in my Turkish life, from 1995-98, when it seemed as though the country suddenly had a change of heart about me and tried to spit me out like some bad tasting foreign food.
It all started after I left the protective eaves of the school in Bursa. It is important to note at this point that Bursa is a large city, the fourth biggest in Turkey, and as such it offers foreigners, such as those coming to teach English, shelter from the problems that would most certainly befall them if they were to live in smaller towns in Turkey. In less urban Turkey, people are generally distrustful and suspicious of any outsiders, especially of non-Turks, and, as we shall see from my own experiences, that can create all sorts of discomfort in work and daily life. The better conditions offered in larger cities stem mainly from there being a more sophisticated, educated population, and one more used to foreigners’ presence. When I ventured outside Bursa’s city walls, so to speak, I stepped outside this security zone, and a whole new chapter in my Turkish life opened up.
This part of the story begins in 1994, when I had been offered and accepted a partnership in the Balıkesir branch of the Bursa school. I had taught in Balikesir the previous year at the weekends, as it is only 100 miles from Bursa, and it seemed to me, being a smaller and less noisy city, that it was a preferable place to live. I was ready to start a quieter and calmer life.
But almost as soon as I had settled in, I saw that things were not going to be as peaceful as I had hoped. Maybe the city was quieter, but my daily life felt not at all relaxed. Almost as soon as I set up my office in the new school, I started seeing that I was being elbowed out by my Turkish colleague. I was hardly ever asked for my opinion about the school or business matters, and in the end, when I announced that I had had enough of being marginalized, when we almost came to the point of physical confrontation, I saw that I had made a huge mistake and would have to extricate myself. Things looked even worse when my partner refused to recompense me for the thousands of dollars that I had invested, prompting me to go to a lawyer and prepare a court case. I soon had the wind taken out of my sails, however, when the lawyer informed me of a Turkish law- surprising me as well as all the other partners in Bursa* -that said it was illegal for a foreigner to own a school in Turkey. Since I would have no legal rights to pursue a case in court, it didn’t take much convincing before I decided to just accept my loss and start a new slate somewhere else.
*In later years, I understood it was not quite credible that the Bursa partners were unaware of this law.
The "classic" American model car from the 50s or 60s- like the black sedan in the left of the photo -was still in use during the early years of the 90s as a shared taxi. They were dwindling in number, but because one of my 'go-to' taxi drivers in those days drove a '56 Chevy, the older cars are now an integral part of my memory of that decade. (Beginning 1993, American cars got eventually supplanted as the preferred taxi by domestically produced Fiats and Fords.)
In the 1950s and 60s, American cars became a vehicle of choice of taxi drivers because, for one, there was a special loan program through the government to help them buy American cars and, secondly, because most models had that "American roominess" which allowed them to be modified and take an extra row of seats, which over time meant a lot more fares collected.
In no time I found an English teaching job in a college of tourism in Ayvalık on the Aegean coast, 2 hours away by bus, for the forthcoming fall semester. I finished out my teaching responsibilities in Balıkesir, and then, just days after my arrival in Ayvalık, I was able to rent a large, recently restored old Greek-style house on the island of Cunda just off the mainland. I also found a job teaching in a local high school to fill out the working day. It seemed to me that, coming from an awful year-long experience of being screwed in Balıkesir, my luck was finally changing for the better.
But it was not to be. Beginning only a few months into my teaching, I saw the first manifestations of the displeasure that my foreign being’s intrusion into this small town had provoked, troubles that would, moreover, continue in waves for a good 3 years.
The first suggestion that my presence was not being appreciated as much as I thought was when I got off the bus near my house one afternoon at the end of the workday. As soon as I stepped off, I was surrounded by three men dressed in- yes, believe it or not –trench coats. They led me to their car, where with practiced, telegraphic English they drilled me with questions like “Are you CIA agent? and “How long you smuggling Turkish an-tee-kahs (antiques) to Greece?” Since the answers they wanted were not forthcoming, they announced that they were going to search my house. Seeing I had nothing to hide and naturally assuming that questions about warrants would be ridiculously irrelevant in Turkey, I quite willingly led the three of them up to my front door and, with as respectful a voice as I could muster, even welcomed them through it.
They immediately began sorting through my drawers, closets and cabinets, all performed in the slow, careful and methodical manner so typical of Turks, and done so thoroughly that it took nearly four hours! All the while I stood by supplying information about items that they thought could possibly be part of my smuggling trade. For example, I pointed out, much to their disappointment, that some masks which they thought were Turkish antiques were actually made by an artist friend of mine in 1994, as was indicated on the back next to her signature.
Though they were well-behaved and polite, the incompetence of this group of policemen was truly awe-inspiring.* In the room they had found the masks and which they had searched for almost two hours, they failed to notice an access panel to the attic right above their heads, where I could have easily hidden the Sultan’s throne crated and ready to send off to Athens. I said nothing only because I was sort playing a little game, where at different phases of their search I would say to myself “If I were actually smuggling stuff, so far, so good.” At the end of the evening, I actually felt guilty.
*The incompetence I speak of is really just a part of the naiveté, even innocence, of Turkey in the 90s. None of the cops had any “world knowledge” to speak of, but that is typical of many Turks in the years this happened. At this same time, I was teaching English to a fifth year architecture student who was stumped by a role play in my lesson because he didn't know who Picasso was.
The next morning I went to talk to the regional governor, who I knew casually and who liked me, and learned that the police had acted on suspicions gathered from several letters written by my island neighbors accusing me of either being a spy or a smuggler. I also learned that the director of the college I worked at who I would have assumed liked me enough to be protective of me had told the police I might have had some “problems” when I lived in the U.S. and so had escaped to Turkey. In sum, the governor explained that there had been ample reasons from the point of view of the police to consider me suspicious, but that I should just forget the whole incident as nothing was going to come of it. He said that somebody with a little sophistication at the police station had identified the bicycle horn as ‘not Turkish’ and that I effectively got cleared on that account. However, he said, the police officer who took the horn wanted to keep it. It might be better, he added, if I didn’t object.
I would have tried to forget the whole thing but for the fact that there were repercussions extending for months afterward. Several weeks after the raid, my employers at the high school and I began to get anxious about when the national police would send my overdue teaching visa, which the education ministry had suddenly demanded to see within the next two weeks. Although the police told us to keep waiting, a journalist-friend’s investigation revealed that the reason my papers hadn’t been delivered was that I had been “blackballed,” put on the ‘no visa’ list, because of the accusations in the letters. According to the police chief, the police report hadn’t exonerated me but rather was inconclusive. The letters written against me were still considered evidence of possible wrongdoing and for that reason my application for a visa would never go beyond ‘pending.’*
*I did eventually get my visa a year later but only after the intervention of a lawyer friend who, being sort of a friend of the police chief, persuaded him to expunge the file. I continued teaching for the year without a visa thanks to an “arrangement” between the principal and the local police.
'Namık Kemal' is the name of the neighborhood on Cunda where I lived in the 1990s and also today. It takes about 20 minutes to get from there to the town of Ayvalık by bus. (Photo Google Images)
It is at this juncture that school and police problems in my Ayvalik life began to get layered. A little before the time of the police raid on my house, I had had to start badgering the administration at the college I worked at because the regular staff position promised to me before I agreed to start was not materializing. I was working initially as a sort of substitute teacher who was paid a low hourly wage with none of the benefits of an appointed teacher, willingly so because the previous June the rector of the university associated with our school had agreed to give me a position with full benefits if I taught by hourly wage for a couple of months. However, even though I had fulfilled my end of the bargain by teaching as many as four months, the appointment was nowhere near happening.
One problem was that unexpectedly a new rector had been elected, resulting in my promised position sort of vanishing from the agenda. Getting no real help from the
director at my school, who was politically at odds with the new rector, I took a 200 kilometer bus ride and, uninvited, went to the new rector’s office myself to make a plea. I got yet another promise, guaranteed this time to be the real thing, that if I agreed to teach some special English classes (to teachers wanting to qualify for a professorship) for my usual low pay I would get a staff position within the year.
The island of Cunda, a poor man's Majorca (Photo Google Images)
But going back now in the timeline to where I found that I was being blackballed for a visa, it was becoming evident at this point also that this second promise to me by a rector was not going to be fulfilled either. As it was explained to me by my director, there were a couple of professors on the board which decides about hiring that had stated flatly that they did not want any foreigners on the staff. It was unlikely they could be convinced otherwise, was his opinion, and in fact this was borne out several weeks later when we received a fax from the rector consisting of one sentence: “Peter Nybak will not be given a regular position.”*
*No explanation for breaking two promises, no nuance, nothing to try and make me feel better- that, explained a friend of mine, was typical Ottoman register.
As if all this weren’t enough, the third hit- "jamais deux sans trois,"as my French friends would say -was just around the corner, this time coming from the high school where I worked. At the beginning of the second semester, when I came to a meeting to get my class schedule, I was effectively frozen out of any discussion by the meeting chairperson and, unlike all the other teachers present, never given any assignment of classes to teach.
It was, however, no mystery to me why this shutout was happening. The parent association of the school had always been divided in regard to the worthiness of my presence at the school. Half of them thought a foreign teacher of English was an advantage for their kids, while the other camp regarded me as an evil foreign influence that could corrupt their children’s values.* It had always been the principal of the school who championed me when doubts about my value were raised in meetings and swung the votes of the association to keep me on. But much to my misfortune, he had recently been removed from the scene by the ministry of education due to some money scandal. The vice principal who took his place happened to be a member of the anti-foreigner camp, and getting rid of me appeared to be her first order of business.
*Once I proved myself to be just this evil influence when I told my students that it would show they felt responsibility for the environment if they joined a peaceful demonstration slated for the weekend that was going to protest the pollution of the local harbor. Apparently, some parents did not like my encouraging students in this direction, and I was warned to stay away from politics.
However, before she could close the book on me for good, some of my supporters started to rally for my reinstatement. They eventually worked out an arrangement with the new principal whereby if I was issued a teacher’s visa for Turkey outside the country (as per new government rules) and if I obtained a Turkish equivalency for my U.S. university diploma, I could get my old position back.
Although at this point I was only working at the college of tourism for the meager pay they gave me and was using up my savings fast, I flew to Athens and performed the desired formalities. I also went through a very lengthy and expensive process to get my bachelors degree assessed as equal to the minimum standards of a Turkish 4 year degree. This was not easy to do because as revenge against Europe and North America for denying equivalency to many Turkish students, the Turks generally played rough against us.
In the end, after all the conditions were met, the principal reneged on her end of the deal, as most of my camp suspected would happen, citing long-forgotten reasons. I had halfway expected it to happen but still couldn’t help but feel worn out and defeated. My one consolation was that a national magazine wrote up a story about the unfairness of my ouster granting me a kind of revenge and closure. It also redeemed Turkey for me in the sense that I saw it as a sort of national voice declaring that I had been treated wrongly.
"Actuel" magazine, now defunct, was near the genre of "People" in the US, but a little more news-oriented. The title of the article could be translated "Broken-Hearted Man with a Heart." “Broken-Hearted” obviously refers to the disappointment I suffered when, despite my tail wagging enthusiasm to teach, I was beaten back by the locals. “Man with a Heart” (Gönül Adamı) is a well known character in Turkish stories, but here also refers to my altruistic deed of having volunteered after my expulsion from the high school to teach kids English at an orphanage on the island where I live.
The article mostly recounts my troubles at the high school and university and names and confronts most of those who acted against me, for which I took no small pleasure. It also extolled me as “cultured and educated” and the failure to keep me on me a “big loss” for the community of Ayvalık, which, despite being a journalistic exaggeration and patently ridiculous, rubbed a little salve into my wounds. (Photo of Aktuel Dergesi)
This consolation was needed all the more when I got hit with the news that my job at the college, the part time, non-staff position one that I had accepted to do for a pittance, was also to be terminated. As if all the disrespect I had gotten from the college administration hadn’t been enough, now it came down from the rector’s office, in a letter with a nationalistic undertone, that a Turkish teacher of English should be preferred for my position. However, with the support of many students and of the director, we resisted, using various bureaucratic subterfuges, and put off this plan for my replacement until the end of the academic year. When I left, we made it be known that I was leaving for a better job.
You may be joining many others who also asked while all this was going on what could possibly drive a person to bear all that I did, especially when I could have ended it all by going to the airport. But you could have asked a similar question about my life in Paris, where one month after I arrived I was slipped a mickey by a “fellow student” in my apartment and robbed of everything, including my clothes and kitchenware. That had been perhaps more immediately traumatic than anything I experienced in Turkey but my reaction there was similar. I became resolved not to let the event throw me off the track of my plan. In the case of Turkey, what you may see as a masochistic persistence in a hailstorm of rejection, I see as the worthy exercise of determination.
Finally, in explaining my stubbornness to stay the course I have to include as a key element the fact that, in spite of all the drama, I was still having a ball in Turkey. I was paying little rent to live in a handsomely restored Greek house on an island in an incredibly scenic archipelago-studded area of the northern Aegean Sea. I was working in a college of tourism in a restored Greek waterfront mansion that was small enough so that we knew all the students by first name. I was living what I considered an ideal life.
Ayvalık being a small town and Cunda island where I lived being more of a village, I didn’t have nearly the same social life as in Bursa. But I was fine with that. The giddiness that I as a newly arrived expat felt as I was yanked by my students into a new and strange social scene had by now subsided to the point where I was quite content to spend the evening alone in my house, just reading or listening to the BBC. Often feeling weighted down by all the flak emanating from my two places of employment, the solace of being alone in my house on the island, perhaps huddled next to the old wood stove, had actually become preferable to nights out with the group. My aloneness was especially soothing when the electricity went off, which in winter was 3 or 4 evenings a week, and even more so if, at the same time, the phone didn’t work, which was on average during one week out of four. If I wanted to feel isolated from the world, my gratification was that at times I was actually pretty much cut off.
In this way my house became my refuge, not only from the bad dealings going on with my schools and the police, but from the noise and chaos of Turkish city life that still haunted me. My new-found serenity also abated the push-pull syndrome that had plagued me in Bursa, where every other day I was wondering if I should pack up and leave Turkey. Now I was resolved to let nothing push me out of the country.
It was a new and strange situation for me to be in: on the one hand, I felt it imminent that the townspeople would show up on my doorstep with torches and pitchforks, and on the other, I had thoughts of settling down. It was an ideal place to do that. At least aesthetically speaking, the architecture of the old Greek-style houses* on the island and the scenery in this area of the Aegean could not be beat. If the French and Italian Rivieras were classier and more polished, they were certainly not realistic for me in price. A house on the island was in my financial reach, and that gave me all the more determination to fight and stay put.
*The town was inhabited by mostly ethnically Greek Turks in Ottoman times, who built houses very similar to the northern Aegean style that you also find on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Teaching jobs other than those I had had were non existent in Ayvalik, but a compromise solution to my unemployment came about after I relented and took a job in the city of Izmir, Turkey’s third largest, 200 kilometers away. I commuted from Ayvalık, spending the workweek there in campus lodging, but at weekends and holidays in my house on Cunda. I did this for ten years straight. It was a relatively peaceful and happy time- one of the best periods of my life –during which I got married and had two sons.
Continued with Part III
Links in the Blogger sidebar to some parts of this blog are not always readable- this is an html problem beyond me -so for easier navigation, go to Part III here
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