Fréderike Geerdink - independent journalist

Anne, Anneeee!

17/09/2007/1 Comment/in Other /by fgeerdink

It looks like the Turkish mother has to be available constantly. ‘Anne’ she is called, like our ‘Mummy’. Or, more often heard, ‘Anneeeee!’ The word comes through my open window all day long in the small apartment that I rent in a somewhat shabby neighbourhood. From early in the morning till rather late at night. Anneeee, anneeee, anneeeee! Three times. Or ten times, or twenty. Anne seldom answers the call of her offspring immediately. Anne lets them shout endlessly as she is working in the house.
I wonder if Dutch children scream ‘Mama mama mamaaaa’ all the time, but I don’t think so. Are small Turks such wimps that they can’t handle even a minute without mummy? Is Anne giving them so little of her attention that they have to scream to be heard? Is the Dutch mama so afraid of neglecting her children that she always immediately reacts to the first ‘Mama’? Or is this just showing the difference between Dutch home life and Turkish outdoor life and does this outdoor life just make nagging more visible?
I imagine the life of the average mummy in this neighbourhood. She’s not rich – in general she lives in a beautiful but very old and dilapidated wooden house. Through the barred windows I see her beating her carpets, I smell the food she’s preparing in her kitchen, I hear her sweep the staircase and see her hang the laundry on a line in front of the house. And when she has a break, she talks with other Annes on the small front staircase., In short, unlike the average Dutch mama, Anne is practically always there. Maybe, I conclude, that’s why she usually doesn’t immediately react to the first ‘Anneeee’. Being physically there is one thing, always willing to be available is no doubt something totally different.

Ramadan is politics

12/09/2007/1 Comment/in Other /by fgeerdink

With Ramadan about to start, I was talking with a Turkish friend about whether or not to eat in public during Ramadan. I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I want to show respect to people who fast, on the other hand, I don’t fast so why should I not eat something when I’m on the street and hungry?

My friend was very clear in his opinion. He would not hesitate to eat something in public during the up-coming fasting month. Turkey is a secular state, he argued, and a democracy. There is no law against eating on the street during Ramadan, there is no law that says you have to fast during Ramadan, so he is free to eat when and where he wants. And if people who do fast have a problem with it, well, so be it. He doesn’t want to be intimidated by that, and, more importantly, he says he is defending the secular state by eating on the street during Ramadan.

I can see his point, but it’s also weird to make eating a simple simit in the street into a political statement. Maybe I will sometimes eat in public too in the month to come. It will be because I’m hungry. And if by doing that I support the secular state, well, so be it.

A life lost

11/09/2007/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdink

Three weeks ago, Festos Okey died. A man from Nigeria, asylum seeker in Turkey and shot at Beyoglu police station in Istanbul. How he died is being investigated now. The police say he was taken into custody after they found drugs on him as they checked his identity, and that Festos tried to snatch a gun from a policeman when more drugs were found in his underpants at the police station. In the fight that followed, the gun accidently fired and Festos died.

I don’t know if this version of what happened is true. But the incident made me think of a report that I made a few weeks ago, in which I described the African community living in another part of Istanbul called Katip Kasim. Mostly men, women and children from Somalia, they are packed together in old and delapidated houses. There were four guys sharing a bed, each one having the use of it for 6 hours. Most of the people were in Istanbul only short-term. They use Istanbul as a transit city, on their way to Greece and further into Europe or on their way to family in Canada or the United States. Some of them tried to get refugee status by going to UNHCR office in Ankara, but not too many succeeded. During their time in Istanbul, they said, they tried to stay out of trouble as much as possible. As an illegal immigrant, they explained, you don’t want to end up in the police station for a few weeks.

Festos Okey officially applied for refugee status, so he was not illegal. But he ended up in the police station anyway. What exactly happened there will hopefully become clear in the next weeks. But truth doesn’t change the outcome. Festos died, and is on his way back to Nigeria…

POSTSCRIPT: At the end of June 2010 the Turkish autorities closed the investigation into the death of Festos Okey. They didn’t get the proper identity information from authorities in Nigeria, so the case couldn’t be continued.