Welcome to Turkey, Claudia Roth!
This story about German Green MP Claudia Roth's attempt to visit journalist Ahmet Şık in prison in Turkey made me laugh. Not that it's funny, mind you, this situation isn't funny at all, but it is such a typical first reaction to Turkey:
"We applied to the Turkish Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry in order to get permission to visit Ahmet Şık on behalf of 70 arrested journalists, however, they made us wait for one and a half hours at Silivri Prison where he shared the prison with another arrested journalist, Nedim Şener,” Claudia Roth told a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday.
During the conference, however, the 2nd Silivri Prison sent a fax to the co-president saying the request for a visit had been approved by the prison. Recalling the end of visiting hours at 5 p.m., Roth noted that she did not understand whether the administration was making fun of them, as it was not possible to arrive at Silivri prison before that time.
Righty-ho, Claudia, let me explain. No, they're not making fun of you. That is actually an entirely typical encounter with any aspect of the Turkish bureaucracy. That weary look you see on the faces of Turkish citizens? That's from dealing with something like that every time they interact with any organ of the State.
I explained the process of applying for a residency permit to some friends of mine here:
Jennifer, you should have asked me about the e-rendevu system at the Yabanci Şubesi.The Yabanci Şubesi, foreign readers, is the place you go here every year to renew your residency permit. As Christy explains, "You look forward to it the same way you look forward to a visit to the gynecologist, only it's more invasive and there are a lot more Central Asians in the waiting room."
As I explained to Christy a while back, Jennifer, and as you noticed, they now have a fancy-schmantzy Internet appointment system to replace the old system of endless lines. Except the only way you'd know about this new system is by reading expatriate blogs. Last time, the news not yet having made the rounds, I showed up sans appointment. They turned me away, of course. Fair enough. I came back the next day having made an appointment for 3:15. All went well until we got to the part where I paid. That's when I found out that appointment or no, the cashier closes at 3:00, sharp. Why do they book people for 3:15 if the cashier closes at 3:00, I asked? Big shrug.
Oh, and I brought a pink manilla folder, like they told me to, but it was the wrong kind of pink manilla folder. You need a very specific pink manilla folder, you see.
Claudia recently recounted to me a residency-permit experience so strange I dare not even reproduce it here, for fear the illogic will prompt a catastrophic perturbation in the very fabric of the universe.
You know what's amazing about Turkey? Do you know why I admire the Turkish people so much? Because they deal with so much of this crazy nonsense. They put up with so much absurd, pointless hassle. This kind of hassle would make Americans homicidal--we don't have the phrase "going postal" for nothing now, do we--and yet by and large, they don't kill each other, in fact that's very rare.
By and large they take a deep breath, they sigh, and they wait, patiently, longer than you'd ever think anyone could wait patiently, and they trust that sooner or later they'll figure out what paperwork you need to do and how many lines you need to wait on to get the thing you need and they hope that one of these days they'll get it sorted out. And they stay polite to each other---or they scream at each other, but afterwards they have tea and make up--and they just keep going, figuring out ways around it, figuring out ways to live with it. Twenty-million people (or so) in Istanbul, living together so closely, dealing with so much stress, and yet they are by and large so warm and civilized. What distinguishes them from the long-suffering citizens of, say, the former Soviet Republic is that they smile and laugh while they're suffering these absurd indignities, and they're not bitter and they're not sullen and mean. They just work harder, because you have to work ten times harder to get anything done with all that bureaucracy to deal with, and they're really stressed all the time. But some things do get better--Türk Telecom, for example, that got so much better when it was privatized--and little things like that give everyone hope.
Keep trying to visit these guys in prison, German MPs. You'll begin to grasp the situation. And you can't understand it unless you do that. No one is going to tell you about it, in fact no one can tell you about it, it's one of those things you have to experience to understand. And not experience just once--you have to experience it day in, day out. It isn't just something special for famous arrested journalists, it's what every ordinary Turkish person lives with. It's not personal.
That's what happens when a country's in the grip of a massive, inefficient, complex bureaucracy--and it's one of the best arguments I've ever seen for reducing the size and power of the state. Imagine what Turks could achieve if the government would just get off their backs.
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Dec '10
Re: Welcome to Turkey, Claudia Roth!
Yeah, nothing like being brow beaten by generations of incompetence and corruption to help your capacity for patience.
I'm sure the people are great, but I must admit that I am entirely puzzled by your love for this basket case of a country. Apparently, I do not find endemic brokenness to be as quaint and charming as you do.
As I said once before though, we want what we want, logic and reason be damned.