Current Events

Unfortunately, my conversations with Turkish locals so far largely consist of me smilingly but firmly declining their attempts to lure me into their restaurants or t-shirt shops.  “Please, come, come, I want to make service for you,” says the sweet owner of the over-priced restaurant EVERY day we pass him on our way to, and from, the beach.  So, to date, I have no insight to offer on what the locals think or talk about.  Until I can make headway on that front (soon, hopefully), I’ll get my news from nytimes and other online sources.  According to those sources, it’s not really very friendly out there at the moment. 

The US-led air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began today.  So far Turkey’s President Erdogan has refused to join or provide any support for the campaign.  I had read that the hostage situation one reason Ankara was refusing to lend military support.  In June, Islamic State militants raided the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq and seized 49 Turkish people, including the Consul General, his family, children along with other diplomats.  It’s amazing to me that Turkey had a consulate in Mosul that recently.  Things have gone south fast in Iraq.

On Saturday, though, the Islamic State released all 49 Turkish hostages following months of Turkish diplomatic efforts.  President Erdogan said there was no ransom paid by Turkey for their release.  Why did the Islamic State give up their ultimate trump card that could keep Turkey in line??  One possibility is that that the Islamic State militants could no longer protect the hostages with the current US attacks, and feared severe retaliation from Turkey if any were to die.  Another possibility is that Turkey did make promises that it wouldn’t support the coalition’s military action in exchange for the hostage release.

Turkey has in the past (no longer) allowed Islamic State militants to convene in Turkish towns near the Syrian border in the effort to destabilize the Assad government (whereas the US tried to support the more moderate rebel groups).  I remember an NPR piece about a year ago, just after we learned we were coming to Turkey, where a reporter visited a border town and found that “jihadi tea” had been added to some of the menus of her favorite tea-houses there.   

Meanwhile, the refugees of the conflict continue to flow into those border towns every day.  I just read that 130,000 Syrian Kurds crossed the Syrian border into Turkey over the past 4 days!  They join the 1.4 million refugees that have already sought safety in Turkey since 2011.  Erdogan is in New York this week trying to win international support at the UN General Assembly meeting to establish a “buffer zone” inside the Syrian border (rather than in Turkey) to house the refugees fleeing the ISIS conflict.  If not, then the flow of refugees will continue into Turkey, which is not such a good thing for stability in its already shaky eastern region.

Of course, in my day-to-day, I never sense that there is anything is amiss out on the streets of Alanya.  The tourists party all day and night, and the local shop-owners clearly work hard to keep it that way.    

No pictures of my own today, for obvious reasons.  But here’s a map provided by the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) which, by the way, was a stop for Georgetown students while we were in Ankara.  As my dear family takes a close look at this map, I'd like you to notice all those very high and very impassable mountains that separate Antalya (basically where we are) from the dangers over there on the Syrian border.  I had really hoped to make it to Lake Van at some point, but looks like that is not in the cards for us this trip.