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Learning Dutch in Turkey
/0 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdinkGet eight cups of tea and make a dance
Education institute ROC in Eindhoven as a first education centre gives Dutch lessons in Turkey. For business people, for students and for immigrants. The first course just started. It mainly attracts people in love, engaged and married.
“My name is Okan. My last name is Can. I am married to Desiree but I live alone.” It’s the second week of the Dutch course and one after another the students introduce themselves, standing in front of the group. It’s a daily ritual, and every day they are supposed to add some information. “I have three brothers and I have no sister”, Okan adds the next day.
The volume the students talk at is remarkable. It’s as if they have to make themselves heard in a ballroom in stead of in ‘Washington’, the small classroom in the school for adult education that teacher Gerda Lavrijsen uses. “Learning a language”, says Gerda, “is also daring to speak. So I taught them to speak loud. In the beginning, they were shy, but now they scream out loud.”
The first Dutch course organised by ROC Eindhoven has started. Location: a ‘dershanesi’ (school for adult education) on a busy square in the heart of Adana, a modern city of one million in the south of Turkey. Target pupils: Turks that want to live or study in the Netherlands or who have business relations with the Netherlands. For now it’s mainly love that motivates Turks to enrol in the crash course of 144 hours over three months. In the classroom on the fourth and highest level of this block of concrete with gate and porter, seven men and one woman attend class. The youngest is 17, the oldest 33. All but one are in love – Sedat is 17 years old and about to live with his dad in The Hague – and can hardly wait to join their loved ones in the Netherlands. “I am Hayrulla, I am 33 years old an I am engaged to my Dutch girlfriend.” Gerda writes on the whiteboard: ‘verliefd, verloofd, getrouwd’, meaning ‘in love, engaged, married’. And she prepares the group for some official Dutch paperwork: “Repeat after me: What is your marital status?” “What is your marital status?”, shouts the class.
Sedat Satilmis, who is going to live with his father in Holland, is one of the most serious students. During the interview in the teachers’ room of the school, it turns out he is indeed very motivated to learn Dutch, but hardly to leave for Holland. Sedats dream, he tells me, is to finish secondary school and then become a teacher or a doctor. You could say Holland has spoiled his dream. “Since last year, my father has had a resident’s permit in Holland and he wants me to come live with him. He thinks it will give me more opportunities.” If Sedat could decide for himself, he would stay put, in Tarsus, south of Turkey. With his mother, his brothers, his little sister and his grandmother. With his friends. Sedat: “I quit secondary school to prepare for my emigration to Holland. I had a year to go till the final exams and my diploma.”
His father had a white goods store in Turkey which earned the family a good living, but suddenly things changed and nine years ago the business went bankrupt. “Then he left for Holland. I’m not sure how everything happened, but only last year he got his resident’s permit. In the meantime he couldn’t come and visit us in Turkey, because he wouldn’t be able to get into Holland again. Now my father has a job. What sort of job? I don’t know.”
What he does know, is that his father worked very hard for his family. And thus Sedat works hard in class. “My father says he is giving me a good opportunity, so I have to take this chance. I would like to study in the Netherlands, but I don’t think that’s possible. Studying would have been possible here, in Turkey. In Holland I will work. What sort of work, I have no idea. I trust my father. He says I needn’t worry. That everything will be all right once I’m with him.”
Yes, sometimes he gets nervous when he is alone in bed at night and thinks of the future. “Sometimes I’m afraid I will feel alone there. My father lives in The Hague, I don’t know anybody there. Maybe I can get to know other Turks. But I’m not even sure if many Turkish people live in The Hague.”
Great marketing
The idea to organise Dutch language courses in Turkeyfirst surfaced last year, when ROCteachers were on a study trip to Turkey. ROC has a department dealing with problem youths, some of them of Turkish origin, and the teachers wanted to see a bit more of the background of these boys. Lots of Turkish young people go to a ‘dershanesi’ as well as or after their secondary school, mainly to get ready for the annual nationally organised entrance exams for the many universities in the country. After visiting such a dershanesi, one of the ROC-teachers said: maybe there is a need for Dutch lessons here, and maybe we can organise it.
Jos Roothans, director of (among others) the adult education section of ROC Eindhoven, also came on that trip. After making some calculations the decision was made rather quickly: with around 120 students a year, they would cover the costs. That had to be possible, even more so now that immigrants from outside the EU have to do a language and culture test over the phone before they can get a visa. Price per course: € 864,-. Pricy, certainly by Turkish standards. “But”, Jos Roothans says, “people go to Holland much better prepared. And most of the students want to go to Holland to start or reunite a family, that also helps.” Which means: with a Dutch income, such a fee is affordable.
Jos Roothans is straightforward. The project was approved because it’s great marketing. “We have to compete with other education centres”, he says. “This project generates publicity and we get closer ties to the Turkish community. It is good for our name and attracts students, in Turkey and in the Netherlands.”
Semiray Savma (20) is the only woman of the group. During the breaks she talks and makes jokes along with the guys, in class she is serious and quiet. Semiray is married to Ismet, a Turkish Dutch man from the town of Breda. Semiray and Ismet didn’t know that a Turkish bride can only come to Holland when she is 21 years old. So when they got engaged in 2004, they thought they would soon be together in Breda. In the meantime, the law changed and now she has to pass a test as well. And Ismet has to reach a minimum income, which he doesn’t earn yet. He works as a garbage truck driver and hopes to get a permanent contract soon. Semiray sighs: they will be married for four years by the time they will be together!
During her engagement celebration, Semiray realised more than before that her choice to marry Ismet would mean she would have to miss her family. Since she is married, she tries not to think of that too much. She only wants one thing: to be with her husband. The rest is less important. The rest, like: what is she going to do in Holland, how will she feel, so far away from home? Semiray: “At first, Ismet and I will live with his parents. I get along fine with my mother in law, so I’m not alone when Ismet is at work.” She would like to work too. In sales, preferably. She has experience as a cashier, she hopes that will help to find a job. But if she’s honest: “Sometimes I get confused when I think of the future. There’s no plan really, I’m not sure what my life will be like. So I focus on my first goal: being with Ismet.”
Learning Dutch isn’t easy. Semiray only attended primary school for five years and therefore doesn’t have much experience in studying. “Ismet says that for now only the language and culture test is important and that I can work more on my Dutch once I live in Holland. Maybe I can get a diploma, he said. But to me, working is more important. I want to make our future, hand in hand with him. We are young, we have to save some money.” And in about five years, what will her life be like then? Her eyes start to shine: “Bebek!” A baby.
She herself is the youngest of seven children. She has four sisters and two brothers. Semiray is the ‘little sister’, always protected. Recently Ismet visited her for three weeks. When they said goodbye at the airport, he said: now you say goodbye to me, next year you will say goodbye to your family. That made her very silent for a moment.
Eleven boxes
There are eleven paying students. Even though in class there are only seven – one student can come only once a week, the other three just never showed up for vague reasons. What’s also not there for vague reasons: study materials. It’s driving teacher Gerda nearly crazy: at Adana airport there are eleven boxes of books and computer materials, but the Turkish company that ROC works with, can’t get permission to take the boxes through customs. The forms are not in order. Or they are, but Turkish bureaucracy wants more without explaining exactly what. What the problem is, nobody knows. The fact is, Gerda has been working without materials for three weeks already.
What is available: eight laptops. Gerda would like to get maximum use out of them. Every student is supposed to have a personal memory stick, with exercises on it that match the chapters in the book, and which contains a test after every chapter. That way, every student can make progress at his or her own speed, and the progress is saved on the stick. The problem isthat thereare not enough memory sticks. Gerda packed five of them in her own luggage, but the rest are in one of the boxes at the airport. Now two students work with one stick, and now it doesn’t work as well anymore. Also at the airport: the chargers for the computers. Gerda has two, and with those she recharges the laptops after class. She tells her students, in Dutch, again and again to keep an eye on the little orange light on the computer. “When the orange light is blinking, the computer is about to stop. Then please warn me!”
Learning Dutch in twelve weeks, is that realistic? The ROC brochure is glowingly informative about the level that can be reached, but anyone who attends a few lessonscan hardly have much faith. Two students are certainly doing well: Hayri has already spent nine months in Holland, Okan practices a fair bit of Dutch with his loved one. But Hayrullah and Semiray are in trouble. They work together on the computer, on chapter one again: “Waar kom je vandaan?” (meaning: “Where are you from?”) “It’s of course a misunderstanding”, says Jos Roothans, “to think that everybody can reach his goals in twelve weeks. It all depends on the effort you make, your feeling for language, the hours you spend learning outside of class. But with the method we offer, you can reach a basic level of Dutch in twelve weeks, that’s for sure. That’s what we communicate, but we don’t guarantee it.”
Okan Can (25) is making good progress in Dutch. He is married to Dutch woman Desiree (24) and hopes to move to the small town of Sassenheim before Christmas. There, he wants to get a job as soon as possible and after a few years, he and Desiree want a family. How they will do all this, is not sure yet. “It’s not easy to make plans for a country I don’t know”, Okan says.
Love started four years ago. She was enjoying her holiday in Marmaris on the Turkish coast, he worked in a nightclub, as he did every season. They fell in love. She was studying at the time, so soon afterwards she could make some time to go back to Okan for three months. About a year later, they were married. Ever since, they have not been together more then a few weeks in a row. Desiree works as a nurse now and can’t get a lot of time off so easily. To be honest, Okan is a bit pissed off that he has to learn some Dutch before he can get permission to stay in Holland. “Desiree says it’s also good because when I come to Holland I know some Dutch already. Okay, that’s positive and practical, but we miss each other very much and I just want to be with her. That’s our dream: not to say bye-bye anymore.”
He knows a few other Turks that went to Europe, to Sweden or Germany. “They say your life radically changes when you move to another country. My parents are worried about me too because they don’t know what’s waiting for me in Holland.” But Okan doesn’texpect trouble. He has Desiree. “She will help me. Will our relationship change when we live together in Holland? No. We’ve been married for three years now, we know each other well. We love each other and will be okay.”
Also, integrating in Holland won’t be too difficult, he thinks. To find a job quickly and to make friends, that’s what he wants. “What sort of work is not too important. Maybe in a restaurant. There I will hopefully get to know new people too. And I expect to make some friends outside on the street. Turkish people are curious about foreigners and start to chat easily, I hope Dutch people do the same.”
Desiree and he dream a lot about the future, he says. On the phone, or when she comes to Turkey for a few weeks. First they want to work and travel for some years, then they want a child. “We already know the names. Ali for a boy, Esmeralda for a girl.”
Thank you
The learning method provides different levels, says teacher Gerda Lavrijsen: “With the memory stick, you can learn as much as you want. For example, you can choose to click on verbs in sentences, and then the participles for those verbs for the first, second and third person singular appear. If you want more, you click again and you get the participles for us, you plural and formal, and they. You can also stick to basic level, and then at that point you only pick up the grammatical form that is used in the sentence. For example: ‘Ik kom uit Turkije.’ (meaning: ‘I am from Turkey’)”
In the group sessions the difference in levels sometimes gives some trouble. The lessons are almost totally given in Dutch; Gerda speaks no Turkish and only for the most important things does she ask two students who speak English to translate the information she is giving. For the rest, the class is supposed to understand what Gerda says. Gerda is making gestures all the time and articulates carefully. Pointing at the wall and the lamp, she says in Dutch: “Semiray, turn the light on! Thank you!” Semiray jumps out of her chair, happy to understand what she is asked. Gerda points at the door and says in Dutch: “Hayri, get up and close the door! Thank you!” Hayri’s body language makes very clear that he has long passed this level. To keep him awake and motivated, Gerda sometimes confronts him with what he doesn’t know yet. In very fast Dutch she says for example: “Hayri, go to the kitchen and get eight glasses of tea, put three sugar lumps in every glass, stir the tea, put them on a serving plate, put some napkins on it too, come back quickly and then please perform a small dance.”
National anthem
At the end of the third week of the course, the new classroom is ready. ‘Washington’ was really too small. Now the former kitchen is painted light blue, there is an area for group lessons and an area with computer tables. The class room, Gerda insists, has to be opened officially. She and three Dutch-speaking guests (Gerda got to know a few in and around Adana and every Friday she invites two or three of them over so she can work in small groups) sing the Dutch national anthem Wilhelmus with very serious faces – as far as they know the words. The door to the classroom is open, but the entrance is covered with a big Dutch flag. Semiray is chosen to take the flag away, and she does it with a big smile. The sign that Gerda improvised is now visible: welcome to ‘Amsterdam’.
published in Volkskrant Magazine, April 2007
Hrant Dink continues to inspire
/1 Comment/in Other /by fgeerdinkToday in Istanbul Hrant Dink’s funeral will be held. The Turkish-Armenian journalist was killed last friday. Dink was, together with his weekly newspaper Agos, the voice of the Armenian community in Turkey. How will this comunity go on without Dink?
It’s too early, many Armenians say. To early to ask them what it means to them that Hrant Dink is no longer alive. These day’s between murder and funeral they grieve, express their anger, comfort eachother. But still: does this murder make them silent and scared, or, on the opposite, strong? That question is answered loud and clear. It will not be silent again, and there is no fear. Dink gave Armenians a voice en made their self confidence grow, is the general opinion. And nothing can take away that strength.
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Lawyer and writer Fethiye Çetin: ‘My identity has never been purely Turkish’
/15 Comments/in Other /by fgeerdinkTurkish lawyer Fethiye Çetin wrote a book about the experiences of her grandmother, who witnessed the mass killings of Armenians during a death march of women and children in 1915 as a little girl. ‘My grandmother’ is now in its 7th re-print in Turkey.
On the 24th of April, Fethiye Çetin will again visit the grave of her grandmother. It is the day on which Armenians commemorate the fact that in 1915, during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed or died during a forced march to what is now Syria. Fethiye’s grandmother Heranush survived the death march and afterwards lived her life as Turkish Seher. She never talked about her past until she felt the end of her life was near and she confided in her granddaughter. This granddaughter, lawyer Fethiye Çetin, wrote a book about what her grandmother told her: “My Grandmother”. Fethiye: “It is not a condemnatory, not a political book. I want to take the whole discussion about what happened then away from politics and back to human proportions.”
She succeeded. The book is a success: the seventh print is about to be distributed, and Fethiye knows that a lot of copies are being read by more people. Not only by Turks of Armenian descent, but also by ethnic Turks, even the most chauvinist among them. Fethiye: “For my grandmother it was a great relief to talk about the past, and so it is for Turks. Silence must be broken because it damages everybody.”
Break the silence
Fethiye’s book ‘My Grandmother’ – ‘Anneannem’ in Turkish – starts with grandmother’s funeral. It is at the time of the goodbye ritual, in which grandmother’s names must be mentioned. After the leader of the ritual asks the names of grandmother’s parents, there is silence among the women of the family. Then an aunt says: “Her father’s name was Hüseyin, her mother’s name was Esma.” Fethiye then feels compelled to break the silence that follows, and shouts out that these names are wrong. “Her mother’s name was not Esma, but Isquhi, and her father was not Hüseyin but Hovannes!” Now Fethiye says: “My grandmother gave me a strong sence of justice and fairness. How could I maintain the lies about her family, especially at that moment?”
Back to 1915. The First World War continues, the Ottoman Empire is about to collapse and loses more and more ground to Russia. The government feels threatened by the Christian Armenian minority in the country, which is protected by Russia. Armenian men are killed, women and children are sent on foot to Syria. A journey of hundreds of kilometres in the summer that gets hotter very day.
Death march
Fethiye Çetin writes about the events through the eyes of the women of the village where her grandmother, born in 1905, spent her youth among other Armenians. One day, the military police occupies the village, kills the chief of the village and takes all the men away. Nobody ever hears from them again. Heranush’s father is not there: he left to work in the United States five years before. After the deportation of the men, some of the women take their children and find refuge in a nearby village, among them Heranush’s mother with her son and two daughters. But that village is also attacked by the military police. Everybody is taken to a place nearby, where the throats of the men are slit. The women and children are banished and forced into a real death march towards Syria.
Heranush survives. She is forced out of the caravan and her mother’s arms by Hüseyin, a corporal of the military police. He takes Heranush into his house, gives her a new name, Seher, and gives her an Islamic upbringing. He treats Heranush well, considers her his daughter, but his wife Esma treats her as a house slave, even more after Hüseyin dies young. Heranush is not the only child that is taken away from the caravan: the same happens to thousands of boys and girls. Horen, Heranush’s little brother, also survives in that way.
Heranush’s mother Isquhi survives the death march and arrives in Aleppo, Syria. After the war, her husband returns from the United States to see if his family is still alive. He finds his wife, and together they try to find their kidnapped children. They work through intermediaries, find both Heranush and Horen and want to reunite the family. They succeed in getting Horen back, but not Heranush. She has got married in the meantime, and even though at first her husband agrees to visit the family in Syria, he changes his mind after he fears losing his wife and children. Heranush remains as Seher.
What was it like to write down the story of your grandmother?
“I didn’t sleep well in those days and cried a lot. I felt so sorry for my grandmother, a nine year old girl. Especially one memory kept haunting me: two of my grandmother’s nieces, whose father was killed and whose pregnant mother died during the journey, were thrown into a fast-flowing river by her grandmother because she saw no future for the girls. One of the girls sank immediately, the other one cameto the surface thrashing about and gasping for breath. Her grandmother pushed the girl underwater and after that jumped into the wild water herself. Heranush saw them drift off. Not much later, she was snatched from her mothers arms by a mounted policeman. I got desperate when I thought of these things.”
Your grandmother only confided in you about her past when she was over ninety years old. Why only then?
“I asked her the same question, just like I asked her why she never tried to get in touch with her parents and brother in the US. She always replied: ‘Ne bileyim?’, which means ‘How am I supposed to know?’ Her family even sent her money once to come and visit them, but then she had eye problems and her son went in her place. He got into a fight there and when he returned, he said he had lost the family’s address. She let it be that way.
Maybe it has to do with the big taboo that still surrounds this whole matter. Just after the war, about 1920, everybody knew what had happened and who the girls and boys were with Turkish names and Armenian roots, but after that, the silence began. And that silence had to do with the creation of modern Turkey. The Ottoman Emire was not a nation state with one people, whereas Atatürk wanted to transform Turkey into a nation state. But there was no such thing as a Turkish identity. It needed to be shaped, and therefore being Turkish was proclaimed to be the highest honour . As a result, not being Turkish became a taboo. Being Armenian turned into something to be ashamed of.”
You grew up in this nation state Turkey, with a Turkish identity. What does it do to your identity when you discover there is Armenian blood in the family?
“Not that much. Orrather, since I have known what my family history is really like, many things from my youth finally make sense and the gaps in my identity have been filled in. For example, my grandmother used to say that my musicality came from her side of the family. I never really understood what she meant, but I did know that Turks are not really known for their great musicality. Now I know this feeling for music is in my Armenian blood. I also remember that my grandmother on a certain day of the year would bake a special kind of cake, and that some women she knew did the same, and that they visited each other on that day. Now I know these were all women like my grandmother; they secretly celebrated Easter as they had done in their youth. So, my identity has never been purely Turkish. In Turkey, I feel connected to the faith of the Armenians and other minorities. My Turkish identity I feel strongly when I visit Germany, for example, and see the living conditions of many German Turks.”
Long talks
Seher kept her real identity hidden, but couldn’t keep that up to the end of her life. With one question she started many long talks with her granddaughter: about a year before she died, she asked Fethiye to go find her family in the United States. It was a short talk, after which Fethiye’s head was spinning with questions. Again and again she looked for opportunities to talk to her grandmother about her past, and again and again her grandmother seized the opportunity.
You didn’t manage to get her in touch with her family.
“No, I didn’t. I found them through a classified ad in an Armenian newspaper, and Horen turned out to be still alive. But he recently had a heart attack and died. I could tell my grandmother that he called his daughter Heranush. Of course, that made her feel good, she was now sure that she was never forgotten. Grandmother was too weak to travel to the United States and she died without ever seeing her Armenian family again.
I did meet them. I went there to celebrate the eightieth birthday of my grandmother’s sister, who was born in the United States. With a few family members we visited the grave of my grandmother’s parents. I put roses on it. And I apologized. For all the pain they suffered because of the way society, my society, handled the things that happened. The pain caused by the silence, and by the history books in schools that depict Armenians as enemies. The ‘enemy’ can be in your family and can therefore never be the enemy; we are all human beings, that is the message of my book.
I hope my apologies are accepted.”