Taksim Square
Each morning I’ve been waking up around 8 o’clock to my alarm, and the noise of the city has succeeded in preventing me from falling back to sleep. With the heat of the approaching summer, I’ve been having to sleep with my window cracked, letting echoes of traffic from a nearby boulevard filter in along with the sounds of Istanbul’s mischievous cat population mating behind my apartment. But the noise most guaranteed to keep me awake comes from the construction sites littered throughout my neighborhood. Men with drills and saws start working as soon as the sun rises and continue until after it sets.
The contact I had mentioned in my previous blog post, Nick, had said he would be going to a United Nations High Committee on Refugees meeting the next day near Taksim Square, one of the largest public spaces in the city and the setting of countless protests throughout Turkey’s history. Hoping to be able to sit down and chat with him after the meeting, I left home late in the morning and settled on the rooftop terrace of a café right at the edge of the square. Enjoying a pleasant view of both the bustling street below and the crowd of tourists and commuters moseying around the square, I worked on editing the blog post I had started earlier in the week, and finishing up the journal from the day before. The heat was really setting in by the time I sat down, and knowing that if we sat indoors or in the shade I might get cool, I had decided to wear a sweater. The combination of hot coffee, humidity and the gaggle of smokers sitting out on the terrace made for a sweaty couple of hours.
I heard from Nick right before he went into the meeting, saying he would have time afterwards to grab something to eat, and just before 4 o’clock, he walked up to the front of the coffee shop with Merve, who had attended the UNHCR meeting with him. After an American handshake with Nick and a traditional Turkish-double-cheek kiss with Merve, we headed away from the square to a small falafel shop on a less crowded side of the square. We sat down at a small table at the edge of the street and began talking about what they heard at the UNHCR meeting and what it means for the future of their organization.
“One of the biggest problems in the NGO community is the dissemination of information,” Nick said.
He was talking about an order from the Ministry of National Education that was circulated back in January regarding the authorization organizations that provide educational or vocational training to refugees and migrants. He said he got the memo from a contact at an organization that specializes in psychological support services to refugees but noted that a representative from another prominent NGO in the city hadn’t even heard of the order from the Ministry until that day.
“I request … the end to any educational activities … being pursued or planned to be pursued under the name of NGO or international foundation, without the Ministry’s permission, information and audit and their gradual termination by the end of the 2016/2017 academic year,” reads the memo in Turkish from Minister of National Education Ismet Yilmaz. In the meeting, UN representatives said all NGOs that provide educational services to refugees and migrants will have their authorization revoked at the end of June, and any organization that continues without authorization to train or educate refugees will be closed by the Turkish government. Documents published by other international news organizations have suggested that sometime soon, the Ministry of Interior intends to follow the example of the Ministry of National Education and revoke all organizations’ authorization to operate in Turkey.
It means the end of the line for some centers and a complete restructuring and reprioritization for others. Our organization, said Nick, hasn’t figured out yet where it’s going from here. He speculated that the government was trying to increase pressure on organizations that were operating outside of current regulations on civil society. It is true that some organizations were providing services or operating against the law, but the order seems to hurt others in the process.
Mercy Corps, an organization based in Turkey that directly provides humanitarian assistance to groups in Syria, released a statement on March 7, 2017, stating that the Turkish government had revoked its registration that authorized it to work in the country. On April 20, 2017, volunteers working for another organization that provides medical and psychological support to refugees, the International Medical Corps, were detained in Gaziantep. The organization has since scaled back its programs and services in Istanbul under pressure from the government. The Turkish government has issued statements via media outlets and politicians havae been featured in conferences, saying the pressure on organizations is due to recent revelations about corruption, illegal activity and “collusion” between organizations and militant Kurds in the ongoing conflict in the southeast.
It’s not a good time to be an NGO in Turkey.
We paid and got up from the table after about an hour and made our way back towards the metro station next to the statue. “If you ever just stop and look around, no matter where you are in Istanbul, you will always see those cranes,” Nick said, pointing to one massive piece of machinery hauling metal beams over a row of buildings on one side of the square. “Just look, you can see three right now.” I know he was referring to their ugly effect on the city’s historic aesthetic, but I saw something a little bit metaphoric in his words.
It’s true that Istanbul was a fast-growing city because of urbanization within Turkey and increasing regional investment and refugees fleeing to Istanbul; it’s a major stop on of the common routes migrants use to travel up into Europe from Iraq and Syria. The city’s population has skyrocketed in recent years, bringing with it an amplified need for infrastructure development and a burgeoning demand for housing. Constant renovation and reconstruction has demolished historic buildings and in some areas completely changed the city’s landscape. One friend pointed out recently that rows of trees lined Istiklal Avenue, the historic street running southwest away from the square. In recent years the trees have all been removed.
I can’t help but wonder how much Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue are going to change in the next 10 or 20 years. Will the last remaining bushes be removed and the last patches of grass be paved over? Will the neighborhood’s last window down into the earth be swallowed up into the concrete behemoth just like the trees that used to decorate the street? In a couple decades, what problems will the Turkish civil society be facing and how many organizations will have been unrooted or paved over?
Story originally published 06/08/2017, on my personal blog: https://danielsmetz.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/taksim-square/
