Originally published by Areo Magazine in May
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I found myself in Istanbul late March on a 17-hour layover. My ultimate destination was Curaçao—a small island located beside Aruba just 35 miles off the coast of Venezuela—for a much needed vacation with my girlfriend after doing some long and intense work in Afghanistan. With time to kill then, in what was metonymically called the “Gate of Felicity”, I figured I had some obligation to my steadily-growing audience not only to explore the city of Istanbul, but to give a brief snapshot of how it is now in 2017.
I’m not Anthony Bourdain and I don’t work for the Travel Channel, so I do not need to tell you that “Istanbul is an old city”, you know it is an old city. Nor do I need to tell you that Istanbul used to be Constantinople, as I’m sure you have gathered that from any number of documentaries devoted to the place. I do not need to tell you of my feelings of awe as I gazed at the Hagia Sophia during my first few hours, nor do I need to wax poetic about my feelings of warmth—physical and emotional—as I sat in the oldest bathhouse in Turkey (Çemberlitaş Hamamı, 1584 C.E.). I also do not need to subject you to my dumbstruck wonder as I stood looking at the giant dome of the Blue Mosque, which—despite it being a mosque—is really quite lovely. No dear reader, you can hear about all of these places and experiences by watching Rick Steves or typing “Istanbul” into YouTube’s search bar.
What I need to tell you is that Istanbul is in trouble. All of Turkey is.
To be clear, Istanbul continues to do an excellent job projecting the facade of modernity. Western visitors like me frequent night clubs, hotel bars, and raves at our leisure. We freely enjoy the historical sites. We walk on the cobblestone streets undisturbed, where, it seems, every other business is a coffeeshop that plays smooth jazz and has wacky furniture. But behind this facade of modernity—away from the hip hangouts facing front toward the tourists—one will spot signs on streets that are off the typical visitors’ beaten path of the Erdogan regime’s emerging authoritarian grip.* Large posters and banners in every shop window, hospital, crumbling ancient wall, apartment complex, and multi-story office display the face of President Erdogan, often in a triumphant pose looking off into the distance. I think of Castro in Cuba and the Kim family in North Korea. Self-appointed gods always demand tribute and public worship. In addition to the pictures of Erdogan, foot patrols of three-to-four men take place around every corner - are they police? Soldiers? One or the other, they look nearly identical. They’re supposed to.
It’s a “soft tyranny” so far, to be sure. Yes, the president has purged the military of dissidents. Yes, the 2014 election was very likely rigged, as well as the referendum held last month to expand the president’s powers. Yes, he’s imprisoned opposing judges, governors, police chiefs, and journalists. But is Erdogan a Saddam type? A Mao? A Stalin? No. Not exactly. Not yet anyway. And again, if you’re an outsider coming to Turkey for vacation or if you’re here on a long layover, Istanbul raises charm not alarm. Wacky furniture… hotel bars… raves. Justin Bieber played a concert here last year, as did Shakira. I watched John Wick 2 at a theater that was better than any I’d been to in the U.S.
But all of this on purpose. This is the Turkey we Westerners are supposed to experience. Make no mistake, for the citizens of Turkey (and especially those citizens who oppose the current regime), it’s a very different kind of place.
Take for example what is happening to Istanbul’s red light district in Karaköy. Like Amsterdam, Istanbul used to be known in part for its legalized prostitution. As far back as the Ottoman empire, prostitutes in the region enjoyed relative freedom, and it’s been no secret that the beautiful “window women” of the Beyoğlu section are major drivers of male visitors to the city. But under the Erdogan regime’s political blend of nationalism and theocracy, state-run brothels are finding that their licenses to operate are not being renewed, and escorts fear that once they are put out on the street they will face violence and harassment. This, of course, isn’t to say that the criteria by which we distinguish dictatorships from democracies is how many hookers a John can skip down the sidewalk with hand-in-hand before commencing his two minutes of paradise; but the new prohibition on prostitution still speaks to a creeping Islamist influence in the Turkish government.
A second example is when I ask my cab driver Ahmet what Turkish news is available in English, and he points me to the state-owned newspaper Yeni Safak. This is one of only a few news sources he can point me to, seeing as how the regime forcefully shuttered all other dissenting publications. As I begin to scroll through the English version of Yeni Safak’s website, it doesn’t take long for me to find anti-Western sentiment. One opinion piece floats the accusation that Germany is supporting terrorist attacks on Turkey. Another tells its readers that Erdogan “thinks only of Turkey’s present and future, not of himself.” And still another suggests that if it weren’t for Erdogan, the Qur’an and hijab would have been banned nationwide by pro-Western collaborators.
“How old you are?” Ahmet asks.
“26 next month.”
“Ahhh okay okay… I was 26 thirty-two years ago,” he grins, “Do I want to go back to then? Of course, but with all that I know now.”
“That’s too much power,” I joke.
“What you mean?”
“All the youth plus all the wisdom? You’d be unstoppable. The universe can’t allow that.”
“I think you are right, yes.”
“Would you change anything if you could go back?”
“Mm… I would have my same kids, my son and daughter, but with a different wife.”
“Not sure that’s possible,” I chuckle.
“Or-” he holds up his hand, catching his logical error, “I have kids with the same woman but marry another.”
“Are you still married?”
“Of course, why would I not still be married?”
“You’re right I’m sorry,” I say, and then allow a moment to pass, “I think a big thing young people think about a lot is we want to live a life without regrets. But the more I talk to older people, the more it seems regrets are unavoidable.”
“You cannot avoid regrets, it is impossible. You can only choose your regrets. Which is difficult because you always wonder if you chose the right ones.”
I think on this for a few seconds and then answer, “So if you can’t escape that juxtaposition of sweetness and bitterness, maybe the way you know you’ve chosen the right regrets is if you look back and the sweetness is much larger in percentage than the bitterness. Though even that is a matter of having a positive outlook I guess. It’s all so subjective.”
Ahmet doesn’t reply. English is not his first language and I think I—not being considerate—lost him at “juxtaposition.”
The time eventually comes for me to return to the airport. As I look out the window at the blurring July Martyrs Bridge and the Bosphorus beyond it, Ahmet turns up the radio and points: “My daughter says this singer will be as big as Beyoncé someday.” I ask who she is (the singer, not Beyoncé) and he says it’s a young girl not much older than his daughter. 20 or 21. But he’s forgotten her name. I Shazam the song and the app tells me it’s “Blow Your Mind” by an artist named Dua Lipa. I look at the driver and shrug. “Not a lotta singers get bigger than Beyoncé. Guess time’ll tell.”
“What do you think of Istanbul?”
“It’s beautiful. I hope it stays beautiful.”
An innocuous answer. Because before when I mentioned that Erdogan’s face was on hospitals, apartments, shops, and offices, there was one other place I left out: a laminated picture of the president dangling from Ahmet’s rearview.
“It will become even more beautiful,” he answered with a gentle smile.
“Why is that?”
“This man,” he replied, gesturing toward the picture and tapping it like a shrine, “Maybe he is the opposite of Ataturk but he is powerful like Ataturk and he is bringing Turkey back.”
“Back to?”
“Respect. Respect, respect, respect… a country is nothing without it. Erdogan is giving a sense of purpose to the people.”
When I arrive back at the airport, I buy a coffee and walk to a convenient store to browse and kill time, since my flight doesn’t leave for another five hours. As my eyes scan across the usual items—trail mix, chocolate bars, tiny toothpaste, fruit water, magazines, paperbacks, salads, and sandwiches—my attention stops at an item that stands out above the rest: a Turkish translation of Mein Kampf. Odd. Certainly not something one would spot at other airports like SFO or LHR, and definitely not BER. It’s weird. Seeing Turkish Mein Kampf nestled between new Clive Cussler and Lisa Gardner novels. And since, welp, I’m a Jew, and perhaps whoever owns the store wouldn’t appreciate that little biographical tidbit, I decide to go ahead and visit the next store.
The next store was an actual bookstore rather than an everything store, so the mere presence of Mein Kampf would not have been irregular. But what was irregular was its presence atop one of the front tables, intended for visitors to easily locate and purchase, and not just three or four copies of one edition, but three high stacks of three different editions with different covers; one cover designed for the Turks who think Hitler looked better from the side, the other cover designed with the front of Hitler’s face for the Turks who can’t resist the smoldering fierceness of his eyes, and the third cover designed with just the Reichstag eagle for the Turks who balance their love of Hitler with their love of animals.
This time I decide to inquire. It’s just something that in 2017 ya gotta inquire about.
Flagging down the manager, I ask about why there are so many copies of the book at the front of her store, and if she has any clue as to why there were any copies in the store next door. Her face flashes a look of embarrassment, and to ease her discomfort I tell her I’m curious not angry. She then responds that the infamous work has been a consistent bestseller in the country since its publication in the Turkish language in 2005. Twelve years. Twelve years of the funny mustache man being all the rage in a corner of the world that, until the rise of Erdogan, the rest of the world paid little attention to after the fall of the Ottomans. From a strict business perspective, it makes sense—she reasons, albeit nervously—that the book can be found in so many places. Turks buy them.
But while this antisemitism in Turkey precedes President Erdogan and his regime (according to a 2015 poll conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, 71% of Turks admit to harboring antisemitic feelings), it would be difficult for any analyst to argue that the regime hasn’t emboldened antisemites in Turkish society. The current government regularly treats its Jewish population with suspicion, turning a blind eye to the vandalization of synagogues, as well as accusing Turkish Jews of having more loyalty to Israel than to the country in which they reside. The government further has removed the right of Jews to conscientiously object to serving in the Turkish military, and Jewish weddings have been subject to attacks by pro-Erdogan mobs. When a pop singer famous in Turkey—Yildiz Tilbe—made headlines three years ago when she tweeted “God bless Hitler” and “Mashallah it will be Muslims who will bring the end of the Jews”, her career didn’t end and she was never condemned by anyone in the Turkish press. On the contrary, the mayor of Turkey’s capital Ankara (and member of Erdogan’s party) replied to her tweets with “I applaud you.”
As my plane left the runway and I caught a tilted glimpse of Istanbul’s skyline at sunset, my thoughts turn not to Turkey’s near future—which is certain to be grim—but Europe’s. It’s no secret to anyone who’s watched global news for the past six months that Erdogan’s government has been lobbying to join the European Union. One doesn’t have to like the EU (or believe its existence as a bureaucratic, anti-free speech, anti-national sovereignty, Orwellian organization is justified), in order to understand that an Islamist regime joining it has terrible implications for Western civilization.
Allowing a nation to join the EU whose president’s ambition is to change his country from a pluralistic state to an Islamic one—no less in the aftermath of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, last year’s public sexual assault of 1200 German women by Muslim migrant men in Cologne, and the bombshell revelation of Muslim migrant gangs pimping underage English girls in Rotherham—is to commit a kind of civilizational suicide. It’s to take a posture or tone (all too frequent on the left) that nothing we as Americans or Europeans have ever done, nothing about who we are, and nothing of what we treasure is worth saving, worth defending, worth loving. And as such, when military-aged men from Islamic theocracies are invited to come into our borders and begin undoing and destroying everything we’ve built and strived for and admired over the past 300, 500, 1000 years, we’re expected to just fall on our knees and bow to them.
Well I won’t bow. Will you?