Part IV
The Belle Époque à la Turk Mostly Fond Memories of 1990s Turkey
A Minefield of Speech Laws
Part Four has undergone a sudden change. Originally, around half of it was about the Erdoğan government and how Turkey has been transformed during its rein. I wrote that whereas the changes brought on by the personal car and the explosion of TV and radio were profound, they were not “deal breakers” for me, meaning that I was willing to adapt to them and continue a more or less content residency in the country. On the other hand, the last 20 years governance by Erdoğan's AK party have transformed Turkey into a country in which I no longer feel so at home, and have prompted me to at least consider moving elsewhere.
Because I focused on the doings of Mr Erdoğan and his party in the first half of this post, a lawyer friend advised me that I could be at risk of some type of censure. “When you mention the name Erdoğan so often, some sort of scrutiny becomes possible.” he said, adding the well-worn phrase, "Everything's possible in Turkey." There was nothing that could be interpreted as an insult against the president, he assured me- anyway, that’s not my style -but one of the variety of laws in Turkey against saying this or that could very possibly snag me and so demanded some prudence. Being prudent in my case, he insisted, meant jetting most of the stuff in the trash. At a minimum, he said, some of my bolder paragraphs focusing on domestic policies might be "reconsidered."
I was talking to my lawyer friend just after the second week in May 2023 when Erdoğan had just been re-elected. Before then, I had been thinking he might be replaced and a lot of the laws I worried about would be suspended by the new opposition president. When Erdoğan won the election, I began to feel uneasy and called my lawyer friend.
Months before the election, in January-February, although I and many others saw the possibility of a new dawn in Turkey- me with the hope of publishing my blog without concern for government reaction -we were at the same time more than a little skeptical that Turkey’s chronically inept opposition could actually prevail. Here is what I wrote early in the year in my original draft:
"That Erdoğan gets re-elected in Turkey despite his autocratic style- he has won six elections since 1994 -is a paradox to many American and European journalists. Seeing him through western eyes, they have endlessly and gleefully predicted his downfall, only to see him come out of the next election triumphant, standing on his balcony and waving to adoring crowds. What is just as baffling is the huge support Erdoğan has enjoyed with the worldwide Turkish diaspora, including those in the land of the free, the U.S."Though Erdoğan has retained enough popularity to endure as 'chief' of Turkey for the last 20 years, severe economic difficulties in 2022, with inflation estimated by various sources as between 60 and 80%, has engendered so much dissatisfaction his reign may well come to a close. With the recent emergence of viable and likable opposition candidates, and with six opposition parties forming a coalition to face off Erdoğan's party, some polls show him as already having lost the election scheduled in May 2023. I would be optimistic that a new era in Turkey could begin except that if the last 20 years has taught me anything, it’s that the man, in the face of weak polling, always gets a last minute thrust and rolls over the opposition."
In place of my none too astute ramblings about the Erdoğan regime, I have written not so inappropriately about the “minefield” of laws in Turkey that a political commentator or journalist living in Turkey, or even just a writer on social media like me, must navigate the moment they start tapping on the keyboard.
Let’s start with the big guns:
These days charges leveled by the government against "worst enemies" usually fall under the rubric of terrorism- being a terrorist yourself, having affinities or sympathies with terrorist organizations, creating terrorist propaganda, etc. Although Turkey’s history of having to deal with an abundance of terrorist groups operating directly on its soil would suggest an arsenal of anti-terror laws was necessary- I think even the Baader-Meinhoff group left footprints here- it is the opinion of many Turkey watchers that currently they have not been applied in that sole direction.
I have found that statistics on how many Turkish citizens are investigated or prosecuted on terrorism related charges are suspiciously high on the Internet. Everyone knows it’s a lot, so there’s really no need to inflate the numbers.
One source improbably claimed that between 2015 and 2020, the AKP-regime investigated 1,977,699 people on terrorism-related accusations. That’s almost 2 million out of a Turkish population of 84 million- over two percent, or one out of fifty people!
Another source declared there were 450,00 cases for about the same time period, though with some scrutiny I determined these were cases of investigation where additionally charges had been filed.*
*There are obvious differences between"investigated," "charges filed and prosecuted" and "sentenced," and they should be stated clearly as one or the other. After having combed many sites, my impression was that these different categories were sometimes let to slide into one another when the source had an agenda and wanted to be more persuasive. In this regard, if I get irritated and skeptical, it's because I'm averse to being manipulated, even if I happen to be in the same political arena.
Although not exactly what I was looking for, I have put some faith in a graph by the Council of Europe which shows the number of inmates by member countries in prisons on terrorism related offenses. It at least brings home the idea that terrorism related charges have enjoyed a prominent place in Turkey's judicial system. Of the 30,524 inmates in COE member states who were sentenced for terrorism related offenses, 29,827 of those are in Turkish prisons.
Outside of avoiding accusations of having ties to terrorism, both a journalist and John Q Public (or “sade vatandaş” in Turkish, meaning simple citizen) have many other reasons to be cautious in publicly expressing their opinion. Existing laws in Turkey allow the government to investigate people when they have created “panic or fear,” encouraged people to “disobey the law” or incited them to “hatred and hostility.”
Added to the aforementioned are ones that make the reach of these laws so extensive that there is just about nothing, no pronouncement, written article or social media post that can be regarded as untouchable. To wit, there are in Turkey laws against “insulting” the moral, national or religious values of the country. Since it is obviously the government in power that decides what these values are, you can see that in the current climate one might have to tread very carefully so as to avoid tripping any wires.
Among the most famous cases of ostensible violation of these laws, Nobel laureate author Orhan Pamuk has been called into court at least a couple of times. Also, a criminal complaint was filed in 2022 against Sezen Aksu, a renowned Turkish singer, for "degrading religious values" because of the lyrics of a 2017 song of hers in which she allegedly insults Adam and Eve. This, believe it or not, prompted the government to launch a general investigation into Turkish song lyrics.
If you do happen to be caught in violation of any of these laws, "detention" in Turkey may be more worrisome than actual arrest. Detention is generally a period where a suspect is held by the police as they investigate whether they can bring formal charges.* In Turkey the law is that if there are no charges to be brought, then after 24 hours (or 4 days for terrorist related suspicions) the suspect must be released.
*Not all countries employ detention, though recently it has become a popular device for managing migrants and refugees.
That is how it is on paper, at least. Reality would seem to be quite different, with frequent reports of people being held for long periods without formal charges. 
Let’s put it this way: If Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe set up his PI business in Turkey, his office would probably be shuttered within a month. You just couldn’t write a Marlowe case story happening in Turkey. This iconic scene, following his inevitable arrest as he works a case, just could never take place:
Police Lieutenant: OK Marlowe, we got you this time. We’re rounding up witnesses that will put you at the scene of the murder… so don’t give me your usual sob story of a frame-up. Just get it over with and make a confession, will ya?Marlowe: Listen, lieutenant, you and me both know you got nix. Your charges don’t stick. You can’t hold me anymore than you can sing opera.
(The Lieutenant lets out a disgusted sigh, kicks the steel wastebasket across the room while a smiling Marlowe stands up and starts to walk out the door.)
Instead of his usual getaway, if Marlowe was hauled into a Turkish police station, as sarcastic and insolent as he is prone to be, they’d dispense with question time, throw him in the cooler and then contemplate (no hurry there!) which of the plethora of possible charges available- "insulting the moral values of the country" sounds like a good fit -had the potential for culminating in a six month stay.
Last but not least*, in the event terrorism related charges or accusations of inciting hatred or insulting values are not feasible, there is the option of suing you for having insulted Mr. Erdoğan. Such legal complaints are based on an actual Turkish law making it illegal to insult the president. Namely, under Articles 299 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, “Any person who insults the President of the Republic shall be sentenced to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of one to four years." According to one source, the number of people sued for insulting the Turkish president from the year 2014 to 2020 was 42,388, with 13,992 of those receiving prison sentences.
Legal complaints alleging insult very often target users of Facebook or Twitter who have posted some unflattering comment about the president or “mocked” his policies, though in one case a person was actually detained by the police when he was accused of insulting the president by having said he wouldn’t serve Mr Erdogan tea.
*I seem hardly able to keep up with Turkey in this regard. As of October 2022 there is in Turkey a new law against disseminating disinformation. We all know that this is a real thing, but in Turkey one has to wonder what counts as such. If you tweeted a statistic which unbeknownst to you was wrong, would that count as a violation of the law?
In the class of thin skinned politicians in history, perhaps there was no one more famously so in the United States than the second president, John Adams. He was so sensitive to negative commentary about himself that he brought on the the Alien and Sedition Acts that, among other things, made it illegal to “write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings” against the president.
On the contemporary side, there are more than a few politicians- most notably Trump – who take umbrage at the slightest personal criticism. The thing is, you can bet if you called any of them “thin-skinned” to their face, they’d take the words as an insult and then most assuredly seek some sort of redress or revenge, a move on their part which obviously and ironically enough goes towards proving the truth of what you called them in the first place. (Cartoon from CartoonStock, used under license)
In my case, as a man with a family, this arsenal of intimidation makes me think twice before I post any text on the Internet. When I write something on social media I always feel as if there were someone looking over my shoulder. I’m not sure how brave I’d be as a single man in Turkey in present conditions, but the prospect of me, with a wife and two boys, being sued for insult, let alone being jailed for insulting the moral values of the country, is a nightmare scenario. This is why it has become almost habitual for me to self-censor and put my American insistence of free speech on hold. I never forget that I’m writing as a Turkish citizen- I have American-Turkish dual citizenship -and am in fact subject to prosecution for my political statements just like any Turk as long as I’m in Turkey. The fact that the American Consulate could do almost nothing to help me if I am detained by the Turkish police gives me great pause before I publicly express any opinion about politics- or, well, just about anything -in Turkey.
Perhaps at this point you are beginning to see why Turkey is not as fun as it once was.
Anti-Western Westernism
In the last 20 years, the country seems to have been enveloped in a dark cloud of anger and suspicion, where a large number of Turks began to believe- if they weren’t already convinced - that all the nation’s problems, especially economic ones, come from outside Turkey. The government knows Turks are ripe to believe such narratives because virtually every Turk harbors some solidly planted anti-foreigner resentments. For one thing, every Turkish school kid learns early on that westerners showed no reserve in acting to demean the Turkish people after WWI. There is little chance Turks might one day forget the humiliation caused by the Allies occupying Turkey after the war, but even less chance of their forgiving those powers for disassembling the once mighty Ottoman Empire and for France and Britain to secretly divide up the pieces for themselves.
Moreover, the anti-foreigner lesson is one that keeps on giving. Just in the last few years, I can remember news of someone in the government denouncing (“blasting” or “slamming,” as local English language newspapers always describe it) France, Israel, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, the E.U. (apart from individual members), Russia (before Turkey decided to become an ally*), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and, as if it needs to be mentioned, the United States.
*The one area where Erdoğan and I are not in complete contretemps is in his practical approach to some of his foreign policy. His stance, in the beginning at least, was based on the principle of "’don't make enemies, make friends’ and the pursuit of zero problems with neighboring countries.”
This policy is roundly ridiculed by the opposition and some foreign policy experts, as you would guess, but I admire at least the idea of a country unlocking itself- when "feasible" -from a historically adversarial relation with another. It has always seemed to me, for example, that there would be great mutual benefits if the US would do away with its habitual treatment of Cuba as an evil enemy.
Russia is historically an on and off foe of Turkey but in 2015 after Turkey shot down a Russian plane infringing on its airspace and the two countries were on the verge of war, Erdoğan suddenly changed tack from sword rattling and made a concerted- and successful -effort to smooth relations. There were a lot of political reasons he did this, to be sure, but the rapprochement was especially helpful to the economy. It enlarged trade between the two countries and resuscitated the flow of Russian tourism Turkey has enjoyed for decades. For me, it was a case where practical concerns justly overrode pride, without, in my opinion, compromising important principle.
Note: This reconciliation occurred before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the ethics of Turkey's policy of "supporting" Ukraine but maintaining good relations with Russia has rightly been questioned.
During the focus of anger on any one country, I can attest to the fact that an expat from that particular country may very well feel the heat in some form in their encounters with Turks, most likely by being verbally addressed in some public situation about their country’s transgressions. At a minimum, foreign residents of a nation that has suddenly become an enemy of the Turkish government will receive an email from their consulate advising them to lay low. In many instances of political crises between Turkey and the US, I have received a message telling me to remain as inconspicuous on the street as possible, in particular to refrain from dressing like an American. Since the national dress of the Turkish male is heavily on the side of jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket and even ball cap, I have yet to figure out what they mean.
This graph is a little old (data from 2013) and some countries will have moved up or down (probably Russia and Brazil up, US and NATO down) but you get the general message about Turkish attitudes toward foreign "groups."
Anti-western sensibilities (read the sixth paragraph) had always been kept mostly in check by previous Republican governments because they were a direct threat to Ataturk’s vision of a western-oriented, secular republic, but no less because such sentiments unbounded would have threatened the flow of economic and military aid. (Graph from PEW Research, taken from Google Images)
Bad mouthing of one particular country (or the EU, or NATO) is continual in Turkey. To the foreign observer, it seems that if the reasons Turks are called on to slag off one group start losing their urgency, there is always another in the wings to take its place and, without missing a beat, receive the government’s inflammatory rhetoric- as happened in 2012 when Israel was temporarily edged from its number one spot in a sudden trade spat with France.
At the time this trade dispute broke the news, I noticed that an anti-Israel Facebook page, begun after the Mavi Marmara incident, abruptly changed its agenda to be anti-France. Despite the hate and hostility manifest in both Facebook groups, I found the event kind of amusing, and I tweeted about it.
The antipathy felt by a lot of Turks toward the West should not be looked upon as something created by the Erdoğan government. Rather, it’s a case where inciting rhetoric and other signals from the them have given permission to the population to let loose anti-western feelings that they have carried around since childhood. The fact that Erdoğan has great influence over most of the media only facilitates this messaging.
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This poll by the German Marshall Fund shows Turkish distrust of Europeans across the spectrum of political parties, from Islamists and nationalists (AK Party, MHP, The Good Party), to secularists (CHP) and Kurds (HDP)(Graph from Google Images)
When asked about their anti-foreigner sentiment, Turks routinely say that they separate the people from the government- that is, for example, that they may hate America but they don’t hate Americans, or, as some Turks are prone to say, that they are not anti-Semitic but only anti-Zionist. I have found, however, this to be something Turks are just taught to say, a part of the prescribed collective self-image that they learn when they are young, and that on a practical level, Turks do not always make the separation. I can attest to this from personal experience, from times with groups at restaurants or bars when I, as the sole American in the room, was the recipient of personally directed anger for Middle East war crimes- “Why you kill women and children for oil?” -or, for that matter, for any of the other sins committed by western civilization.*
*Paradoxically, if you, as a blatant foreigner, wandered into a village in rural Turkey- which should be a bastion of conservatism whose inhabitants conform to the graphs - and asked for help, you would be overwhelmed with their helping hand and welcoming attitude. This is not like the hospitality you meet in some touristic place like Bodrum or Antalya, which is really just the practice of good business. This is the genuine article, where money has no place in motivations.
One night a few years ago, I drove into a small local village looking for a house of someone I had just met. I had only a ‘sort of’ address, just giving directions without street names or numbers, and the phone number I had written down was nonexistent. I soon found myself not knowing where I was or where I was supposed to go.
It turned quickly into a pitch black night to boot, and I saw no lights of a cafe or market where I might go to ask for help. The fact was, however, that even if there had been a market, I really didn’t want to ask anybody for help. I just felt out of place and self-conscious of being a foreigner.
After a short while, I just gave up and pulled to the side of the road. As I was about to return home, a man came suddenly out of the blackness and motioned me to roll my driver’s window down. “Do you need help?” he asked across the glass.
The shock of his sudden appearance was quelled by his smile and the sincerity in his intonation- this can’t be any axe murderer, I assured myself- and I was relieved to let him take the reins and maybe solve my problem.
He led me on foot to where he thought the address was, but after it turned out to be wrong, he rousted three others to join us in the search. In what had to be an almost certainty in village life, one of them recognized my friend’s name and had a probable location for his house. When we found my friend, after just one misstep, there was a short round of backslapping- including mine – and then they all accompanied me like old friends into the house to drink tea and bask in the victory.
In my Bursa years, I met a German couple who had had car trouble and got stuck in a nearby mountain village. They were so taken by the extent of the villagers' warm reception and offers of help that they bought a house there.
The best thing to say about the graphs I inserted above is that they’re true and they’re not true at the same time.
But in the harboring and spilling of anti foreigner sentiments are Turks any worse than other Europeans? Quantitatively speaking not so much, but when it comes to their anti-American vitriol in particular they show a qualitative difference that I noticed as soon as I got here. Whereas when I lived in France in the latter 80s I routinely endured slurs (some from French people but mostly from British residents) about Americans being uncultured or ignorant, in Turkey the anti-American commentary I got was 99% political in nature. Rather than being about the supposed crudeness of the American people, I heard instead about imperialistic foreign policy and criminal wars waged in the Middle East. This change would have almost been a relief to me except for the fact that, as I said, the attacks I weathered were very much like personal accusations.
Just in the last 3 years I have been aggressively confronted five times by someone bearing a grudge against America and felt physically threatened. Most recently, I was in a pub with a British friend when a young guy stood up from the adjacent table, turned toward me and, after announcing that he understood I was American from my speech, started accusing me and “your people” of killing civilians and babies in Iraq. He then pulled his fist back as though to slug me in the face. Just as I was grimacing for impact, my British friend, who is a six-foot tall weight lifter, snatched his arm before he could fully extend it. This, thankfully, gave the pub bouncer the time to come over, subdue the fellow and march him off the premises. That did little to calm my adrenaline-charged nerves, however, and when the 10 or so people at the departed one’s table fully assessed what had happened and began loudly booing (“yuuuh” in Turkish), we took it as our cue to head for the exit as well.
A foreigner here for the short term may not meet up with this prickly side of Turkey, especially not if they’re a pretty or handsome 21-year-old English teacher living in Istanbul, which has historically been a homeland for expats. (It should always be kept in mind when thinking about Turkey that Istanbul is not at all representative of the whole country.) Neither may it be apparent in touristic places like Bodrum or Antalya, where foreign visitors are treated like special guests not just because Turkish custom dictates that the traveling foreigner must be taken care of, but because their currency is a life blood. If you fly to any touristic spot in Turkey today, I am sure you will be inundated with famous Turkish hospitality and never-ending offers of tea. However, keep in mind that the Turkey I have been describing here is like the real person hidden behind the well-cultivated persona, the “truer” version of someone that will not be seen by new and casual acquaintances but more likely by someone like myself, one who has been “the significant other” in a relationship of more than 30 years running.
I should mention that it has indeed occurred to me that my waxing nostalgic about the old Turkey could be seen as the patronizing discourse of an arrogant westerner. Perhaps you are ready to berate me, likening my longing for the old days to some pith-helmeted aristocrat reminiscing about his days in the colonies in the era when the natives were fun and not so self-assertive.
But if I am guilty of missing the Turkey of yore, I seem to be in company with large groups of Turks themselves. Scores of social media sites (for example, here and here) extoll the virtues of Turkey's past, especially in the decades of the 70s-90s, with members’ comments usually focusing on how urbanization and modernization have destroyed not only the country’s natural and architectural beauty but also the “good values” of yesteryear. One common lament involves how there has been a loss of the neighborhood spirit common to past eras, where people used to be ready to help those in their community if they happened to get into bad straits. That is one spirit I personally know well. It is the same one that roused the eight taxi drivers to rescue me on my first, unlucky day in Bursa in 1990.
(Photo, from Google Images, c 1930: Tourists embark into Constantinople, the gentleman in the forefront well-prepared to interface with the natives.)
A Visitor from the West
The reception of an American friend who visited here just two weeks after the attempted coup of July 15, 2016 serves well to illustrate the increased edginess toward foreigners I have been describing. Just a few minutes after her arrival in Turkey, my friend found herself in a terrible predicament and- something I would have never thought possible in this country – not one person she asked would lift a finger to help her.
She had arrived at the Izmir airport without a tourist visa but had not thought that would be a problem because arrivals, by her past experience and mine, usually just buy a 3-month visa from a designated window before they go through passport control. It was her misfortune that at 11.00 PM this window was closed. Worse, as she was told rather “gleefully,” someone to operate the window wouldn’t appear until 9 o’clock in the morning. Without the visa, they warned her, she would not be allowed to exit the baggage area. After she got a little testy- understandably so, since the prospect of spending the night after her long flight in a room with strip lighting and no chairs could not have seemed pleasant -their attitude apparently got even worse. They even refused her pleas, tearful in the end, to have someone let her friend, me, know that she was held up and not going to exit into the meeting area.
Nevertheless, she did manage to get another passenger to pass on information to me of her predicament. We were resigning to the prospect of an all-nighter when, after about two hours, she finally exited into the arrival area. It seemed one of the personnel finally felt she had suffered enough and opened the window to sell her a visa- showing that they could have done so all along.
To salvage some good feelings on the occasion of her arrival, I tried to focus the conversation on upcoming itineraries, but an hour after leaving the airport she was still visibly traumatized by the ordeal and mostly untalkative. All I could think of to console her was to argue that what had happened was an anomaly and that, as she well knew from her previous trips, it was not typical behavior of Turks.
The trouble was, it appeared not to be just a freak occurrence. In the weeks after, there were several incidents that similarly left her frustrated or angry. One such incident happened in Ayvalık after she had gone into town on the bus but later found herself in unfamiliar territory and knew neither which bus she could take to get home nor where to get it. This was on an evening three weeks after the coup attempt and the town was having a rally for the Republic with music and speeches designed to work up patriotic fervor. There were hundreds of people milling about but not one of the ten or so people she asked offered to help her. Language difference is not relevant because the Turkish word for bus, "otobüs," should make the English intelligible, while the destination “Cunda” was one she knew how to pronounce. At one point she was in tears and even a pizza shop owner who knew me well, spoke English and surely recognized her from our having dined at his restaurant ignored her pleas for help.
The first and lasting impression I got of Turkey after my arrival in 1990, one I think shared by most of its visitors, was that the people are extraordinarily friendly and helpful. Even when you factor in that over the 5 or so years prior to the coup attempt the Turks' spirit was becoming increasingly ill tempered, the behavior of the people we encountered post July 15 is shocking to me. Never in the worst scenario would I imagine Turks flatly refusing to help a tourist in distress, one in tears no less.
What I found inspiring about July 15, in spite of it being one of the blackest days in Turkish history, was that it was ordinary citizens who in large part defeated the coup plotters. As they learned the news of the ongoing coup attempt- broadcast even from the loudspeakers of minarets -Turks, young and old, ran out of their homes into the streets to confront the soldiers' guns and astoundingly to face off and immobilize the tanks. It was a day I was actually proud to be a Turkish citizen. (Photo from Google Images)
When I recount my friend’s experiences to a Turk, producing an observable dismay, I am usually reminded by them- and you really can’t argue against this -that July 15 heavily traumatized the population. It’s only natural, they say, that there should be some change in the behavior of Turks, especially towards foreigners. After all, as the official narrative goes, they were the main culprit in the trauma.*
*The US was considered complicit in the coup attempt in so far as it was "harboring" in Pennsylvania the cleric Fetullah Gülen, who the Turkish government considered the mastermind of the coup plot. Another reason was that they suspected a US Army general was in cahoots with Gülen.
These things may have contributed to how Turks treated my friend, who was obviously American by her speech and demeanor.
Although you might say my friend was just unlucky having booked a trip to Turkey for summer of 2016, even now, after years have passed and other things have become the focus of the nation’s attention, the level of prickliness in Turkey is in my view still above pre-coup times. Perhaps my friend would not have the same ordeal at the airport, but I can’t be sure she wouldn’t have some other unpleasant encounters. At any rate, I am sure that she would not experience anything as wonderful as I did in the Turkey of the nineties.
As I’ve been saying, many things that attracted me in the 90s and kept me on Turkish soil are no longer to be found. One of the most missed, for which you have heard me pine before, is the small but charming component of that era, the self-deprecation shown by so many Turks in talking about their people and country. In this, be sure there never was a lack of national pride displayed. Rather, there was just an honest acknowledgement of the country’s foibles, plenty at the time, often offered up in casual conversation, always with a tad of humor. It really was a lovable trait of the Turks.
It's important for me to state that this attraction of mine to the Turks' penchant for self-criticism and modesty was not born of amusement coming from a sense of superiority. If, for example, the Greeks or Germans showed the same tendency, I would be equally taken with them. But, alas, they don't.
Unfortunately, this trait is long gone. The nationalistic defensiveness and general bitterness coming from the last 20 years seems to have snuffed it out for good.
But all is not lost
Continue reading with Part V
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 V here
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