Artist Date: Who has lost me?

November 16, 2024

For this month’s artist date, I revisited a poet and the essay I wrote about meeting him in Erzurum, Turkey in 2016. I have changed his name to protect his privacy.

2016 was a significant year in both Turkey and the US, and with Trump’s re-election, I can’t stop revisiting my experience that summer.

I was in Erzurum teaching summer school at a sister school to an international school where I taught five years earlier. I took the position to spend time in a country that feels like a second home, and to work alongside one of my closest Turkish friends.

On July 15^th, 2016 an unsuccessful military coup attempted to take over the Turkish government, inciting protests and conspiracy theories across the country.

I witnessed my Turkish friends’ distrust of their government at every level, their helplessness at the hands of censorship, their fear of being fired and arrested — civil servants including teachers were arrested overnight and detained without due process for expressing opinions against their government, opinions discovered through social media pages and unencrypted text messages. My students were afraid to write in their journals about the failed coup. One boy said he wrote “bad political ideas,” and asked to tear up his page and throw it away, because there could be spies outside our window. I thought of Orwell’s “Thought Police.”

I feared my own safety — US-Turkey relations were tense — and wondered whether I should return home. In the end, I decided it was safer to stay put in the insulated school campus than make my way through Turkish airports and security.

I am so glad I stayed. Because what I experienced has given me inspiration these past two weeks.

Despite my Turkish friends’ undercurrent of deep worry, we gathered for Sunday morning picnics and tea at each other’s apartments, took walks and practiced yoga together. We had deep, serious conversations about the future of their country, and we also shared laughter. My friends were still able to enjoy life. And that was remarkable for me to witness.

Near the end of my stay, a teacher of Turkish literature invited me over to his home for tea, and I had a lovely evening meeting his wife, discussing literature – we discovered we were both poets – and watching a televised meeting between then Vice President Biden and Turkish President Erdogan. The whole encounter, including the news, was in Turkish, of which I am only an intermediate speaker. Half the beauty of the night was how our connection, laughter, and conversation rose above our language limitations.

That night, Ahmet spoke to me of not being part of any political party, that he was a socialist, a “humanist,” he said. Despite the tension between our political leaders on TV, Ahmet assured me we were friends.

“We like Americans,” he explained. “Life there is relaxed and problem-free compared to Turkey.”

How much has changed in so little time.

When I returned home at the end of that summer, Donald Trump was in the first year of his presidency. Even with him in office, I felt relieved to return home:

“At the end of the summer, I was able to return to my country whose government is relatively trustworthy and transparent. Even plagued by the misogyny, racism, and autocratic leanings of our new president, in comparison, the US feels safe, predictable. I have freedom of speech and protest, and the possibility to effect change through grassroots activism. My Turkish friends could not return to such a place.”

I reflected on how Turkish President Erdoğan took advantage of his country’s fewer checks and balances, and how I felt relieved by my country’s democracy:

“Five days after the coup, Erdoğan declared a three-month state of emergency, and has since extended it two times. A state of emergency allows him to bypass the Constitutional Court’s long process of overseeing the passage of laws. In the US, as much as President Trump would like to rule by decree, we have many more checks and balances. A state government can sue the federal government if an executive order is deemed unconstitutional, and no executive order can reverse a law passed by Congress. However, in Turkey, the president’s cabinet can simply draft a decree, and with his approval, it will go to Parliament for a quick vote, to be passed within 30 days. Under this loosened judicial process, Erdoğan’s government has continued to arrest and detain any individual suspected of being a Gülenist, and to pass laws towards a presidential system based on Islamic values.”

Loosened judicial process. Like how US presidents now have absolute criminal immunity for official acts under core constitutional powers.

It is very hard for me to re-read my 2016 essay. This past week, I have the same feeling as when my father died: The sky has grown more expansive. There’s less to protect me. I am incredibly vulnerable.

And yet, when dark thoughts take over, I wonder, What is life anyway? And I think back to those Sunday morning picnics with my friends in Turkey. With that evening I spent with Ahmet and his wife.

What is life anyway? I keep asking. Two things which come in many forms: beauty and relationships.

After that wonderful evening at Ahmet’s house, he gave me an inscribed collection of his poetry. We promised to translate a poem of each other’s. I chose a poem called “Where Are You, My God?”

Where are you, my god,
for I have lost my tracks?
Who has lost me?

I’ve never been one to write political poetry. But I am one to turn to it for answers.

Let women cry, let men cry.
I too will cry. I will cry.
Let everything burn.
Let everything catch fire.

And when I put down Ahmet’s poetry – the fear and despair — I take walks with friends, gather with writers to discuss poetry, drink wine on the porch with neighbors, meet families in playgrounds for playdates…

Beauty and relationships, I tell myself. Beauty and relationships.

You can read my full essay about my Turkish summer of 2016 here. It was published in Riot Material in 2017 — LA’s  literary-cultural magazine with an eye on art, word and forward-aiming thought.