Ezra Mannix

In what looks like something from a graphic novel, this ad in Istanbul says “The July 15 Saga: With respect to our martyrs and veterans.”

It has been exactly one year since that fateful night — and exactly a year since my last entry. After seven-plus years of somewhat inconsistent updates about my life in Turkey, having not blogged in a year is a long time.

But the fields have been fallow for a reason. A lot has changed in a year, and now that my first year of graduate school at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston is finished, I am a different person than I was when I left Turkey last August.

But I am back for the summer, and it’s a different country. Tens of thousands of civil servants and academics have lost their jobs, hundreds of journalists are being jailed, and freedom of expression is being curtailed. I understand that a coup attempt is no trivial matter, and I sympathize with the government’s claim of lack of empathy from the West on just how serious this was (probably a lot of eye-rolling orientalism from closed-minded Europeans believing the savages will never get civilized, etc.). This was a brutal and tragic affair. But as with any problem, how one reacts is key.

So what was July 15 like in 2017? Yesterday my wife and I visited a friend far on the European side. It is now a national holiday, and a day that is being heavily politicized. By comparison, September 11, which was 16 years ago and a tragedy in which far more lives were lost, is not a national holiday, nor is the day commemorating the attack at Pearl Harbor. Public transportation this weekend is free, so is cell phone data — in short, anything to facilitate getting the citizens to the streets to remember a year ago, share their pics, get home safely to their often poorly constructed homes to eat increasingly tainted food bought with money that is quickly losing its value. The Bosphorus Bridge (since renamed July 15 Martyrs Bridge) was closed yesterday for the rally that would take place later that evening. The monitors on the bus broadcasted short videos that took the form of investigative pieces that cobbled together video footage of coup plotters in TRT studios and army bases with speech bubbles of incriminating telephone conversations. 

In the secular, upscale neighborhood of Göktürk, where our friend lives, there was not a lot of flag waving. This reaction there was what it should be, a time for silent reflection of the events that happen, thoughtful mourning of those who gave up their lives, discussion of the issues facing the country with friends, and remembering those innocent academicians, journalists and civil servants are giving up their livelihoods as a result.

So why did I come back? Firstly, Zeynep and I have been apart. She is still here so I am living with her for the summer. Secondly, this is “internship season” at my school. I am working on a research project about refugees here. Unfortunately, data gathering directly from those under temporary protection (Turkish law does not follow international asylum seeker protocol and therefore “refugees” are actually “guests”), has been made all the harder due to a general fear of being outspoken, so stakeholders in the crisis are more fractured than ever, and NGOs are watching their backs. Academic institutions that actually work in the migration space have been hesitant to give me the time of day. I do not blame them.

Instead of bridging the divide through cultural events, mapping out integration policies, offering free Turkish language classes, and so on, the national government has lacked any kind of unifying protocol, leaving it up to social service departments of municipalities to pick up the slack. This could be another tragedy unfolding in slow motion that could dwarf July 15.

Notice Erdoğan on FaceTime

Proud and willing, Turkey does a lot to help in humanitarian capacity, but suspicion and poor planning make Turkey challenged in the integration capacity. This is the part of the blog where I provide a short update on my whereabouts, but in the back of my mind, I fear I could be deemed suspicious: it could leave me and those doing independent research here vulnerable.

After all, it is July 16th in Turkey.

I will end here with some hope. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, opposition leader, and a diverse cadre of opposition groups, recently led a march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest the jailing of a parliamentarian who shared information to a newspaper (in an act known as journalism in the west). The government could have banned the march or arrested Kılıçdaroğlu, but they decided to provide police protection and closed lanes on the highways to allow the march. Despite attacks from the government controlled media, (writing adjectives like “FETÖ’ye yaklaşan Kılıçdaroğlu”, [Kılıçdaroğlu, the one who is aligning with Gülen, the apparent mastermind of the coup attempt]), the government is not stupid: they know that barring the march or allowing violence would lead to chaos. The rally last weekend at the end of the march in Maltepe, Istanbul, went off without a hitch, andKılıçdaroğlu expressed his demands that marked the essential purpose of the whole thing: freeing the MP who was jailed for sharing pictures of arms illegally crossing the border into Syria.  In this area, Erdoğan got outplayed politically and he knew it. Whether it has any effect on civil society and freedom of expression remains to be seen.

But it’s a start. I love this country.