Vienna to Ankara by rail is a long way

When I landed in Vienna three weeks ago, I was not surprised to find that my bag had been left behind in London. What would a trip be without a few uncomfortable days wearing the same stinky socks? My bag arrived the next day, minus all the worries and stress I remembered from my arrival in Lima last fall.I spent three nice days in Vienna, during which I toured museums, sat in parks, walked a lot, and spent euros like mad. After all, that's what one does in European capitals. More notably, I went to Europe's largest outdoor music festival: how do I say, ''I rocked out'' in German? Vienna marked my entry into an unknown linguistic world: I had never been to a country where I don't speak the language. It was frustrating and a little embarrassing to ask people to speak English, but at least they could--that would change later.After a few days in Vienna, I took the train to Budapest, where I met up with my couchsurfing contact Balazs. I spent three nights in his Soviet-era apartment building, which had changed little since 1989. It was strangely similar to the dorms at the University of Oregon, but with even thinner walls and much bigger locks.

On my first night in Budapest, an older man approached me as I was walking back to Balazs' apartment. He began rambling in Hungarian--of course, I understood nothing. (I know only one word in Hungarian: ''Borat'' means friend.) So I pointed at myself, said ''American,'' pointed at him, said ''Borat,'' and then he did the strangest thing. As soon as I said ''American,'' he stopped talking, got down on one knee, crossed himself, and gave me a coin. Balazs told me he thought the old man was crazy. I kind of agree, but it was nice anyway.

The next day, Balazs gave me a tour of Budapest--we went to all the standard tourist haunts, but also visited a few lesser known sights. We attended an orthodox wedding in a synagogue in the old Jewish ghetto; as we left, Balazs told me that Jews had been rounded up in that very synagogue and sent to Auschwitz. It was difficult to reconcile the joy of the wedding with the sorrowful history of the place.

I didn't really want to leave Budapest, but I had to get moving again, so I took the train south to Belgrade. People all over Budapest had looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was going to Turkey via the Balkans, saying things like, ''The Balkans? You may want to rethink that.'' I didn't really understand their hesitance until I got on the train.

The first train--to Belgrade--was very enjoyable. I talked about about the war and life in the Balkans with a group of Serbs, and met a Spanish guy headed to Greece. (The two of us would travel together from the next day or so.) Unfortunately, our goodbyes were rushed, because Horacio (the Spaniard) and I had to rush to catch our connection to Sofia.

''Rush'' isn't really the right word. We sprinted to the ticket booth, bought our tickets, and then ran to the platform, where we saw our train pulling away. But being young, seemingly immortal young men, we did not through up our hands and wait for the next one--we chased it, smacking door handles, searching for an unlocked cabin as we ran. Just before the platform ended, we hopped aboard the accelerating train, leaving behind the shouts (of encouragement?) of the crowded station.

We were then confronted by a very angry Serbian stewardess yelling at us in yet another unfamiliar language: all we understood was ''First Class!'' and that no-goods like us were certainly not welcome in ''First Class!'' So we made our way to smoky second class, where we spent a night befriending a multi-national band of smugglers. Their contraband that night was a load of cigarettes, which they concealed in the light fixtures of our Soviet-made wagon. Those thousands of illicit cigarettes, the choking smoke, the clickity-clack of the rails, and stifling heat made for a long night.

Horacio and I spent a few hours in Sofia, trying to find its sights. We were unsuccessful. A friendly girl in the train station suggested that we visit the national palace of culture--in its place we found what looked like a giant shopping mall with no entrances. All we really did in Sofia was get lost and offend a group of female university students. Let's not get into how. Horacio and I parted ways that afternoon, as he went off to Greece and I caught a train to Istanbul.

I spent a week in Istanbul. The daily journal I keep includes the phrase ''got lost'' on almost every page. Streets in Turkey weren't named until the late 19th or early 20th century, and most are still unsigned. That, coupled with my mediocre Turkish, kept me wandering in ever-larger circles for much of my visit. But that was okay--I ended up in some neat places while lost.

My days in Istanbul quickly became routine and enjoyable--I would go to a sight or two in the morning, and then read and work on my Turkish in the afternoon. I'm getting better, but there's one problem: I say simple things (like ''where is...'' and ''what is this'') with almost no accent. This convinces people that I speak good Turkish, so they respond with rapid, complicated Turkish. My evident confusion quickly convinces them otherwise, and they repeat with simple words and gestures. Then I understand.

Through couchsurfing, I met a good number of wonderful people in Istanbul--both Turks and foreigners. I split my time between the flats of two remarkably welcoming hosts. Alix, an Iranian living in the UK temporarily in Istanbul (a little complicated, yes), hosted me for a while; and Hakan, a Turkish lawyer, hosted me for three more days. I also met lots of people for coffee or a drink to talk about politics and Turkish life--yes, that is the project I am doing here. It's a lot of fun.

Now I am in Ankara, the rather boring capital, where I am staying with Isra and Hakan (siblings), and their Belgian exchange student. I made them pancakes this morning--neither of the Turks had ever had them before. Can you imagine living your whole life without eating pancakes? It sounds terrible.

I will be back in Istanbul in three weeks, but first I will travel south to Antalya (on the Mediterranean coast) and west from there along the sea. I am eager to move again.

P.S. Below you'll find an essay about Turkey's relationship with Europe--anyone interested in politics or the history of this region might like to read it. I'll be posting these essays in between my personal stories.

Turkey and Europe

Hello all. I am in Turkey doing an independent project of sorts for the University of Oregon's political science department--basically, I'm here to talk with people (in both English and my broken Turkish) about politics, society, culture, and history in Turkey. Every couple of weeks, I'll write a new entry here detailing my most recent experiences and exploring a new topic. I'll alternate entries--one will be about Turkish politics, history, or culture, and the next will be about my travels. This week I’m writing about Turkey's relationship with Europe. In a couple of days, I'll update about my travels thus far.

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I did not expect to start speaking Turkish immediately when I arrive in Vienna two weeks ago. I was searching for cheese in an Austrian market and having no luck, so I tried to ask a clerk. ''Cheese?'' No English.

His name tag said ''Memed''--Turkish. So I asked him if he spoke Turkish--yes. ''Nerede peynir?'' (''Where is the cheese?'') He looked at me, confused. What was a Turkish-speaking American doing in Vienna? But it didn't matter. He showed me the cheese, and my sandwich was complete.

That experience could have happened in many cities in Western Europe; over 2.5 million Turks live in Germany alone. Turks have been living and working in Europe for decades, contributing to both the economies of their host countries and that of Turkey. But like immigration anywhere, it is also a complicated and rather touchy subject.

Immigration, however, is not my topic. It is just the clearest example of a relationship that dates back centuries. The Ottoman Empire had relations with European powers from the 14th century, and was involved in most major European conflicts in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The Ottoman Empire was a multi-national empire composed of many peoples who we consider European today--Greeks being the best example.

The Ottomans fought on the loosing side of World War One; that devastating loss led to the dissolution of the empire and the emergence of the modern Turkish state. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (born in Macedonia--firmly European) imagined and created (with a lot of help) a modernizing, westernizing country that would become ''the Japan of the Near East.''

Of course, I'm skipping a lot of history here. But there's no way I can detail the lengthy relationship between Turkey and Europe, so we'll start in the 1970's.

During the early part of that decade, Turkey exported labor to Western Europe on a massive scale. This benefited European economies, which were expanding faster than their domestic labor pools, and also helped prop up Turkey's unstable financial system.

Turkey's birth rate was very high, and although its economy was growing, it could not have provided jobs for the hundreds of thousands of workers who entered the labor market every year. Those who could not find jobs at home went to Europe to work (primarily) as unskilled laborers. Turkey benefited from remittances sent home by workers--at one point money sent back made up the second-largest contribution to the Turkish economy. Those funds allowed Turkey's import-substitution economic model to succeed (kind of) because those funds bought domestically-produced Turkish goods.

However, the global economic turmoil of the late 70's caused several European states, particularly West Germany, to repatriate many Turkish workers in an effort to drive down domestic unemployment. Hundreds of thousands (I don't have the precise numbers here) of Turks were reintroduced back into a nation ill-prepared to welcome them--inflation and unemployment were already sky-high. Their arrival worsened the state of the already unstable economy and weakened Turkish civil society. (Lots of unemployed young men are not good for crime rates anywhere.) Political violence increased as the unemployed latched on to militant rightist, leftist, and Islamist parties. Thousands of people where killed in the late 70's, mostly by a right wing, neo-fascist group known as the Grey Wolves.

This economic and social turmoil helped to prompt the Generals' coup in 1980, a profoundly anti-democratic move that has an impact even today. (Many of the authoritarian institutions created then still exist.)

Yet even in what have been the nadir of modern Turkish history, it pulled even closer to Europe and the west. The Islamic revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made Turkey the southeast front against both a violently anti-western regime in Tehran and a newly aggressive Soviet empire. This coincided with the election of Ronald Reagan in the United States--a president who had few qualms supporting dictators, including the Turks.

This sudden ''raising of the stakes'' in the region made European and American leaders willing to overlook the horrific human rights abuses of the military regime in Ankara. Military and financial aid flew to ''strategically irreplaceable'' Turkey, proving to the generals that there was no penalty for misbehavior.

The fall of the Soviet Union did not deprive Turkey of its front-line (and thus favored) status. The west's erstwhile friend, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, lay just to the south, and the first Gulf War proved Turkey's strategic importance in the post-Soviet era. Meanwhile, more Turkish workers were finding jobs in Europe's expanding economies.

These trends have continued to this day: Turkey--or at least its power elite--is economically and militarily integrated with Europe, thanks to NATO and a customs union with Europe. But some of its political and social institutions leave it far outside the European mainstream: its poor record on human rights and democracy, its aggressive war against the Kurds in the southeast, its belligerent stance towards its smaller neighbors Greece, Armenia, and Cyprus, its continued denial of the Armenian Genocide, its unequal distribution of wealth, its suppression of freedom of thought and expression, and--the importance of this last one cannot be understated--Islam.

I'll get to all those in good time. For now, though, the question is Turkey and Europe.

It’s difficult for me to judge just how ''European'' Turkey is for two reasons. First, I haven't been to much of Europe. But more importantly, the only part of Turkey I’ve seen so far is Istanbul, where I am now. My impressions of Turkey's ''European-ness'' may change as I see more of the country in the next months, but Istanbul certainly feels European. I'll write on this topic again in a few months to see how my impressions have changed.

Ultimately, this question--is Turkey European?--will not be answered by Turks, but by Europe. If Turkey is able to remedy the long list of injustices I listed above, the only issues standing between Turkey and the European Union are geography and Islam. Of course, the geographic definition of Europe is preposterously arbitrary--and geography should make little difference in a political union. Further, the Turks and the Ottomans before have figured into European political considerations for centuries--even if most of Turkey falls outside geographic Europe, it is certainly well within the bounds of realpolitik Europe.

But geography has another side as well. Turkey borders Syria, Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. None of those are borders Europe wants. Turkey now serves as a buffer between (relatively) stable Eastern Europe and the intensely unstable middle east--surely plenty of diplomats like it that way. (And if I were in charge of building the new European Defense Force, I would too!)

Religion is not so simple. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said a year of so ago (when he held the rotating presidency of the EU) that Turkey would not be allowed to join because it is not ''geographically European.'' I hear undertones of xenophobia and anti-Islamism in that statement. (As many did during his campaign in France two years ago.) Surely there are better arguments.

The bottom line is simple--Europe must believe it will gain something by granting EU membership to Turkey. Right now, it's unclear what good Turkish membership would do for the rest of the continent. As soon as the benefits--both to Europe and Turkey--outweigh the many downsides, and assuming Europe can get over its fear of a more diverse EU, Turkey will be in. Well, that's mostly true. A lot depends on the extreme right wing nationalists--if they gain more power in Turkey, all bets are off.

But that's another topic.

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In a few days: weddings, cigarette smugglers, communist apartments, and commuting from Asia to Europe. My trip thus far.