ezraman

Feb 23 2014

Turkey faces severe drought; “It’s all good!” says government

A drought intensity map over the last three months shows Istanbul and other regions shaded black to be in the most severely affected.Click to enlarge. Source

Last Valentine’s Day, it began to rain at sunset and didn’t stop till around noon the next day. While the deluge disappointed lovers hoping to take a stroll along the Bosphorus in the unseasonably warm weather, it was great news for just about everyone else, because a serious drought is in the making all over Turkey.

If you’re from the States or follow US news casually, you probably have heard about the drought in California. You probably haven’t heard about the drought unfolding in Anatolia, another major global exporter of a variety of nuts, fruits, rice and other foodstuffs.

Maybe instead of praying for rain, more public awareness about water conservation can be provided — drought or no.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence. Local elections are in March. The ruling AK Party — which controls information coming out of ministries such as the Forest and Water Ministry and water utilities — doesn’t want to bear bad news at this sensitive time. Not a word about the drought on the “latest news” sections of the homepage of either the ministry or ISKI (Istanbul’s water authority).

An unusually strong Azores High in the North Atlantic — fueled by higher sea temperatures — has been pushing the storm track north of the Med (just ask the Brits). So, little rain for Turkey.

Meanwhile, there has been coverage on TV and on the web about it. This article (in Turkish) claims there is just 120 days of water left in Istanbul’s ten reservoirs. The ITU professor interviewed in it stresses the need for public awareness and education about conserving water, while this article (in Turkish) which quotes the Forest and Water guys, says that, hey, everything is fine! Quit blowing your horns! They say the media has the figures wrong. They say nationwide, Turkey consumes 7.5 billion cubic meters per year, while there is currently 10.5 billion m3 of potable water on hand.

The media, like they do with everything from Gezi Park to shoeboxes filled with cash, is exaggerating, it seems. Or is it? The article doesn’t take into account the growing population and the varying drought intensity by region (it speaks in very general terms about the whole country’s water supply).

Also of note, on its website, ISKI claims that that city consumes 1.25 million cubic meters of water per day, while the ITU professor claims about twice that. Given the poor state of plumbing, the water stealing and the lack of awareness about water conservation, I am more inclined to believe the higher figure.

(Watch “Istanbul’da Suyun Hikayesi” (the Story of Istanbul’s Water) which shows how shitty everything was (pun intended) before a smiling, younger Erdogan became mayor in the 1990’s and opened some of the newer water purification centers and water carrying infrastructure. It’s in Turkish but the montage tells the story.)

So while California’s authorities sound the alarm and will no doubt spread the word about water conservation, as they did in the early 1990’s, Istanbul — which adds thousands of commercial, industrial and residential water using accounts every year — Istanbul’s lesser educated will stay in the dark about how they ought to save water.

Meanwhile, the government says it will “evaluate” the situation in April.

After the local elections, of course.

Tagged drought, ISKI, turkey, turkish climate, turkish drought, water conservation in Turkey, weather in turkey

Feb 13 2014

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The Turkish Lira debacle: Are your Ataturks going to be worthless?

This person has obviously never been paid in lira

This person has obviously never been paid in Turkish liras!

There are sexier topics to cover — such as the recent restrictions of internet usage passed by the Turkish Parliament and the resultant protests — but I will focus this post on a topic that hits close to home for most of us living in and connected to Turkey: our dearly beloved lira and exchange rates!

Turkey has got into the news lately for its currency problems. At the time of writing, the Turkish Lira has traded at about 2.20 to 1 to the dollar and about 3 to 1 to the euro. The most recent devaluation started around the middle of December when corruption charges surfaced against members of Erdogan’s inner circle and those infamous images of shoeboxes full of stolen money were broadcasted into people’s homes.

My salary and that of thousands of English teachers are paid in lira. Some of my lira-earning friends and colleagues have had a “run for the hills” attitude, asking their bosses to pay in dollars, switching accounts to dollars, and even using this as a reason to leave the country altogether. Investor confidence in separation of central bank and political interests, as well as political stability overall, as gone down.

But that isn’t the whole story. Other macroeconomic factors are at play that explain why the lira has shriveled against the dollar. The Federal Reserve last year began a policy of tightening their money supply, buying fewer bonds in developing economies. This “tapering”, as it is known, means a stronger dollar and less foreign dollar cash reserves for developing economies like Turkey.

So, how bad is it? When I came to this country the lira was trading at around 1.6 to the dollar. In nearly 5 years time, that represents a devaluation of nearly 38 percent. While no one would see this as a good, strong performance over the past 5 years, it isn’t a bottomless pit drop that has citizens shopping with wheelbarrows of nearly worthless money. Compared to the old days, when in less than a lifetime a loaf of bread went from 1 to 1,000,000 lira, things seem comparatively stable.

Children stacking money during the 1920’s hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. Well, its not going to get this bad anytime soon.

To stabilize the lira, the Turkish central bank raising interest rates a whopping four percent overnight in late January. Central banks raise interest rates to stop money from getting too cheap and causing inflation. However, as one column pointed out, this drastic rate rise can have the effect of causing inflation and slowing the economy — stagflation, if you remember that one from your Econ 101 class in college.

What will happen remains to be seen, but the Turkish government recently successfully issued a 30-year bond, managed by major brokerage firms such as Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, a preliminary indicator that things are settling down and investors worldwide are still taking Turkey seriously. The exchange rate has responded, heading from a high of about 2.33 to about 2.18 as of Valentine’s Day.

I heart you, lira.

The ramifications for the us expats are that salaries drop, but for those with foreign currency hoping to buy property, it could be a boon. For regular folks like me considering buying a home in Istanbul, I suspect home prices could go down while interest rates could go up. There is already whispers of a mild housing bubble in Istanbul, and higher interest rates could incite this.

Shazam! Let the world know where you think things are headed.

Tagged current events, turkey

Feb 02 2014

Cyprus: Back to the Great Divide

Lunch at a fenced border of the Greek side.

Lunch at a fenced border with the Greek side of Nicosia.

Partly to mock nationalism, partly because of hunger but mainly just coincidence, we munched on Doritos ala Turca chips in a park by a fenced border between Turkish Lefkosa and Greek Nicosia. We peered over to another side, a side that my fiancée Zeynep has to travel 1000 kilometers in a completely other direction just to enter. Signs for parking in Greek and English, tidier streets with palms, people in an EU country walking around speaking a totally different language. It seems like looking through a portal into another world where you helplessly wonder how it could have been different. It’s a division between two ethnic groups that’s coming up on a sad 40-year anniversary.

A foreboding shell of a hotel in Varosha

Nearly four years ago I blogged about a visit to Turkey’s “banana republic”. Not a lot has changed since then in Lefkosa, so I won’t comment on the sites except to say I still find it to be one of the most underrated small cities I’ve ever been to.

Fast forward, then, to two days later visiting Maras, a militarized ghost town. Varosha, as it’s still known, once a chic Mediterranean playground, now the domain of rats, weeds, a blistering Cyprus sun and the occasional bored Turkish soldier telling tourists not to take photos. The Greeks claim Turkey dangles the town over the Greek Cypriots as a bargaining chip for a future reconciliation between the two sides that doesn’t seem like it will materialize.

Meanwhile, back at my fiancée’s cousin’s house in a new suburban district of Lefkosa.

No one wins with walls, except people taking artsy zoom shots of barbed wire.

“Can you travel to the other side?”

“Yes, of course,” says my fiancée’s cousin’s husband, a native of northern Cyprus. “Oh, but there must be a limit, you know, do you have to come back before nightfall or something?”

“No, I can stay for a week…a month…whatever I want,” said the bank IT professional. I was surprised. I thought it was a no go for Turkish Cypriots as well.

But he doesn’t, of course he won’t, he’s been able to travel freely to the other side, a birthright given to every native born Turk Cypriot. I used to just assume that the northern Cypriots were barred from the south because of what I thought was obvious: a back door escape to greener EU pastures. And although I’ve overheard that an average of one person per week illegally tries to escape through the UN demilitarized zone to the south side, Turks certainly going there in droves, not like they did to London or Australia decades ago.

A friend of my fiancee’s, Koray, works in a multi-cultural environment on the Greek side, commuting to and from his home in Lefkosa, claims the only hassle is crossing the border. “Many Many turkish cypriots (apparently not preferring to cross to south) I met, once I told them that I work in the south, happened to ask me if it is safe to park and leave my car at work, or whether the Greek Cypriot police creates trouble at check points, etc.” Other than the border, he has found his work experience pleasant.

Koray believes the best solution is reunification. After all, he points out, the south calls the shots when it comes to the island. And, even with the discovery of natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, the island’s future doesn’t look good, as whether some of the gas will be refined on the island is a long-shot challenged by opposition from Turkey.

“Turkey should revise its political approach on the (Cyprus) problem,” he notes.

Not Seen as the Saviors

Fanning the flames of ethnic nationalism are places like the not so subtly named “Museum of Barbarism” in downtown Lefkosa, a not so subtle memorial of inter-ethnic violence. The one sided portrayal of Greek irregulars shooting up innocent Turks is a narrative put on a pedestal by Turkey. It’s good to have monuments to atrocities, but not when they are blatantly one sided. One friend of Zeynep’s I spoke to even claimed that it was likely have Turks themselves who committed atrocities that took place against the family that once lived in the house turned museum.

Living in mainland Turkey, it’s easy to believe that Turkey is the benevolent big brother, the hero saving the Cypriot damsel in distress from fascist Greeks in 1974 to save their brothers, but the karasakallar (literally the “black beards”, a slightly pejorative nickname for mainland Turks) are not really seen that way, even if the same Turkish products — from furniture to soap operas — are consumed there.

There is some resentment toward Turks, and the “oh those Turks always messing things up” sentiment can be felt. Turkish Cypriots feel they are puppets of Ankara, which callously casts its will over a region that, paradoxically, Turkey and only Turkey recognizes as an independent country. While Turkish Cypriots understandably resent the fact that the Greek side is an EU country and was accepted easily with little international inquisition, there is roughly an equal amount of resentment toward Turkey for meddling and gumming up hope of reconciliation in the near future.

Tagged northern Cyprus

Mar 25 2013

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I Met Dad!

From now on I can steal these kisses anywhere! (Without the red wine in hand, perhaps.)

Once I had a girlfriend in the States whom I had met one October. The December of that same year, we went to her parent’s house out of town and met her parents and her little brother. That night I stayed in her room, in the same bed with her. We had no intention of marrying.

I repeat: I stayed in the same house…while her parents were down the hall!…., slept in the same bed and woke up the next morning with no bullet holes in me, no angry cousins waiting around the corner to beat me to a pulp – not a scratch on my carriage. In fact, her mother even made breakfast.

That seems unusual, almost unthinkable to me now – at my ripe 31 years of age no less.

I’ve lived in Turkey for a long time.

I share this tidbit because my beautiful girlfriend and I recently took a first formal step to marriage and had dinner, together with her family, in her family’s home on the Asian side of Istanbul. It was not only my first time meeting her father, it was the first time I had set foot inside the house where the love of my life has been living for a good chunk of her life.

Zeynep and I have been together for 14 months.

It was a relatively modern and low-key affair on that recent late winter evening at the Senturk residence. A delicious dinner of kereviz (celery with walnut and yogurt) salad and chicken with soft jasmine rice was served, a Turkish national soccer match was watched (Turkey beat the tiny principality of Andorra 2-0), delicious out of season fruit was consumed, cay was drunk.

Her father’s name is Ahmet, a name so mainstream its practically ironic (Americans have John and Mary, Turks have Ayse and Ahmet). A smallish man, but tough without an ounce of fat on his frame, Ahmet picks his words carefully. Like me, he is a bit tough to read. He is a warm Anatolian, but never too far from dumping a young man’s body in the Bosphorus if he lays a hand on one of his daughters.

However, the interrogation from father wasn’t as tense as I thought. Sure there were questions about my family, what my father does, where exactly I am from, what I do, where I do my banking, what I think was the real reason behind Sept. 11, etc. But the hardened dad actually cracked a couple smiles before the night was through. The evening ended amicably.

The proverbial application form is in and chances of being a member of the Senturk club were looking good as I headed for the door. I experienced for the 985^th time the Turkish tradition of the whole family/friend group coming to the door to stand not three feet away while I put on my shoes, watching with love as if I were a Panda giving birth at the zoo. I had a couple of homemade gul boregi to take home with me for breakfast the next morning

I also carried with me a sense of accomplishment on the jerky minibus ride home that rainy night. A sense that you have to earn the trust of your woman not only as an individual, but also as a member of a family with all her sacred bonds that entails.

It’s a link to another time, but with a modern twist. In fact, the family is modern and secular by any Turkish yardstick, yet Turkish is Turkish, and being embraced by all family members is never something to take for granted.

By comparison, our family units are like loose affiliations, chambers of commerce of individuals bounded by love, gloriously free to choose their own lives, but sometimes limited in terms of the support and the “reach out and touch someone” factor the members give and receive. I speak not of my own family, for I have been blessed, but I make a sweeping cultural generalization.

The day will come when I can get overnight privileges at their home. Until then the acceptance process has gotten started – and the fun is just getting started.

Gentlemen with a Turkish wife, feel free to add your stories.

Tagged marriage, turkey, Turkish culture, Turkish family life

Apr 02 2012

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East Just as Stunning, Hospitable in Winter

Spring finally is arriving in Anatolia – and the travel season begins. But let’s not forget that traveling in Turkey in the winter can be enjoyable, too. Below is an overdue post on traveling in East-Southeast Anatolia in late January. Keep it in mind for next winter — or any time of course. (Also, Palandökken is still open for skiing.)

Hasankeyf (Warning: check it out before it disappears!Read more...)

I sat on a rock. Winter birds were chirping in the vicinity. It had been a chilly and cloudy winter day in the high desert of southeast Anatolia. I jotted some thoughts down while checking out the moutnainscape. Using a point and shoot camera, I tried feebly to capture the essence of the cave dwellings and rock churches in this starkly beautiful landscape – a sort of mini Cappadocia. Suddenly, the sunlight streamed through the clouds, and kissed me and everything around it, a harbinger of spring to come. I quickly attempted to capture the play of shadows and sun with the Nikon. Then the clouds again shrouded the sun and again the desert air turned cold and challenging.

Hasankeyf…Winter can’t spoil you.

The weather, so changeable yet beautiful, mimicked my experience in the region. Southeastern Turkey is alternatively beautiful and frustrating. Its people warm-hearted and willing to bend over backwards, yet innocently nosey, asking how much money I make and what religion I am a mere 5 minutes after making acquaintances.

But if that’s the worse thing I can complain about, we should all be so lucky.

Where ever I went I felt that people were expecting me, just waiting for me to show up. Hospitality is rich all over Turkey, but in the Southeast it’s a regional pastime, a passion. At a certain point you just give up with the demurring and the false modesty and just offer a humble thanks. It’s a bit spoiling, actually. And for Turkey newbies the urge to reciprocate — or to not accept this level of hospitality – is strong, but that slowly melts away the longer you live here. You stop ‘feeling guilty’ and just resign to the locals’ warmth.

View from Palandökken -- white caps, but not enough snow.

Why the East in winter? My winter holiday from my university teaching job provided the ideal time to take this short and inexpensive trip. I flew into Erzurum (about 130 TL one way with Anadolu Jet), a place that I invite any wusses who complain about Istanbul cold to go to, just to walk around for 20 minutes at night in January. Skiing at Palandokken, a mere 7 km from the city center, was refreshing. The quality of the snow was fine. The problem lied in its amount. Despite bountiful snows in the western Anatolian mountains, pebbles and rocks appeared on many meagerly covered runs at Palandokken. About 10 runs were serviceable and 3 were pretty darn good. Still, for one of Turkey’s flagship resorts, it was lacking. After I left, huge storms dropped a meter of snow.

Then it was on to Diyarbakir over snowy mountain passes. A muddy snow was melting when I arrived and the following day in the Turkish capital – this under a pouring rain. This weather accentuated the grittiness of this city of about 1 million people.

Men walking through the alleyways of Diyarbakir old city after dark.

It’s not the usual mosques and kervansarays and hans that make Diyar standout – although the Ulu Camii and Meryam Ana Kilesi (a Syrian Orthodox Church still in use) are must sees. It’s the rambling alleyways where locals slaughter chickens and donkeys are used for transport that make it the sort of city jumps right out of a Middle Eastern stereotype. Walking along the iconic (and railing-less) city walls made of basalt gives one a bird’s eye view of all the lively squalor.

Mardin also offers its own interesting views, though of a more traditionally beautiful than Diyarbakir. Known as Mardin’s ‘sea’ because of its black appearance at night, the Mesopotamian plain stretches out for miles to the south. I made a connection with a Couchsurfer who put me in touch with a friend who was renovating a guesthouse for the summer season. It was located in the center of town in a traditional Mardin sandstone house and it was totally free. I watched movies and we cooked dinner with his 13-year old son (he also runs a quaint café).

The following day, the Sabancı-funded city museum there provides a great starting point for exploring the multi-cultural splendor (including another Syrian orthodox church) of Mardin: the medresses, the tombs and the bazaar, the latter is where famous local scented soaps are sold.

Mardin under rare snow

Dinner of traditional stew at Erzurum Evleri

After Midyat (a kind of flat Mardın with less stunning beauty) that night (I swear the hotel I stayed at was run by the PKK) and the following day – and Hasankeyf the day after – it was back to Diyarbakır and a dinner of ciğer (liver) in the modern section of town with a co-worker who is from there. She and her sisters then took me to the small airport for my Pegasus flight back to Istanbul – Sabiha Gökçen airport, a mere 80 minutes away. It was a perfectly hospitable ending to as perfect a sub-zero trip to the Southeast as one could enjoy.

Ezra Mannix

Writer | Communications Leader

Author Archives: ezraman

Turkey faces severe drought; “It’s all good!” says government

The Turkish Lira debacle: Are your Ataturks going to be worthless?

Cyprus: Back to the Great Divide

I Met Dad!

East Just as Stunning, Hospitable in Winter