So You Want To Be An Expat

Stuck in a rut, craving a little excitement, something different and more glamorous than school runs in a small town, a chance perhaps to move up the corporate ladder, expand your horizons, intrigued by how others live on this increasingly crowded planet? Those pictures of the sophisticated café life in Paris or picturesque villages nestled in the sun-baked hills of Tuscany beginning to look better and better? Starting to ask yourself what you’re missing? Have you started, secretly at first, collecting a pile of information about life overseas?

If so, then you’re a good candidate to join the more than 7.5 million Americans whose home address doesn’t include a U.S. zip code. This, however, is the moment to sit down and think again, very carefully. While an expat life can undoubtedly be very fulfilling and fascinating, it is not for everyone. No matter how attractive the brochures, no matter how often you’re told ‘You don’t really need to speak the language. Everyone speaks English’ it will certainly be very, very different. For many people that is the very essence, the satisfaction, of an expat life. For others, it can be a nightmare.

            Like many things it is a much easier decision when you’re young, just out of college. You have time to live for a while in many different countries, learn languages, you don’t need that much money, you’re generally more flexible. Beware, though. Once you gain that experience at an early age it is very hard to get it completely out of your system. It will always be there as a temptation, an alternative. On a rainy, miserable day back home you will stare pensively out the window and think longingly about those days in Malaysia, India, or Chile. Add a family, a decent job, a dog or two and it becomes a much more difficult choice. Still possible, but it can be difficult to convince everyone around you that disrupting their lives and moving abroad is the best choice.

            My older daughter, then on a research trip for several weeks in the Republic of the Congo, recalled what may be the extreme example of commitment to an expat life. She met an American missionary family with two children living deep in the bush far from any town that could remotely be called large. After a while she politely brought up the question of exactly how they came to find themselves deep in the African bush. They had been living quite happily somewhere in the Midwestern United States when the husband came down to breakfast one day and said he had been called to do missionary work in Africa. Fair enough. But if I had been his wife I just might have had him sit down, have a cup of coffee, maybe a couple of aspirin and double check that the call wasn’t a wrong number.

            Before you grab your boarding passes and head to the airport there are couple of things to think about.

1.      Be careful about people who tell you how easy it is to transplant your lifestyle to another continent. Closer examination may reveal they have a few advantages you don’t. Such as, a) already having dual citizenship and fluency in the language, b) having family members with invaluable connections in the host country, c) being married to a native of the country in question, or d) already having job open only to citizens of that particular country.

2.      Be careful also of rushing into foreign assignments for your company. They can be the springboard to more responsibility and promotion or they can equally be the slide into oblivion. Out of sight, out of mind. Make sure the country of your assignment is critical to the company’s overall success. Otherwise you are in a sideshow that doesn’t even have the benefit of useful gossip around the water-cooler. You can get into a position where a number of previously junior colleagues are promoted ahead of you at home simply because you are not there. When it comes time to go home, you may well find your bosses hemming and hawing about ‘difficult times’ or ‘it might be hard to slot you back into your old position’, etc. etc. Without iron-clad guarantees you might well be stuck overseas for a much longer period than you anticipated. Few things are sadder than an aging expat who hangs on by the skin of his teeth with marginal jobs in a foreign country simply because there are even fewer opportunities at home.

3.      Be especially careful of taking a job for a foreign company regardless of how much they offer you up front. You may be coming in over a number of local executives who could resent your presence and undermine everything you try to do. When trouble comes it is a lot easier for your new employer to get rid of you than them.

4.      Check the procedure for obtaining tricky things like resident permits and work permits. You never had to give either of those a second thought at home. Overseas they are crucial. Without them you will be floundering around. Countries are very careful about giving jobs to foreigners ahead of their own citizens unless you have some special skill. Don’t assume you can pitch up anywhere you like, find a place to live and start looking for a job without jumping through a lot of hoops.

5.      In cross-cultural situations the words ‘why’ and ‘should’ are the worst words in the English language. You can go nuts constantly asking ‘why’ things are done in a certain way that seems totally weird. Your life will be a lot less frustrating if you can restrain that impulse and take the time to appreciate that maybe, just maybe, there is a good reason that is not obvious at first. Also, no one wants to hear your opinion about what ‘should’ be done. Most people are well aware of their national problems and don’t appreciate constantly being reminded of them. Wait until you are asked. Things may take a little longer than you would like, but you will earn a great deal of good will by not constantly informing everyone within earshot that ‘We do it differently at home.’

            But most of all work hard to get the most out of your total experience. Don’t be afraid to jump in the deep end and immerse yourself totally. Moving overseas, even for a few years, can be one of the most memorable things you have ever done. Enjoy the difference. 

Welcome To America! Brace Yourself For Contrasts.

Visitors to the United States use many adjectives to describe the country. Subtle is not one of them. To many, the U.S. seems much more the lethal, cumbersome 70-ton Abrams tank thundering down the road than the nimble, fleet-footed forest creature relying on cunning and camouflage to escape capture.

My native country can often seem an incredibly jarring mixture of loud noise, blaring commercial assaults to buy something – anything, constant change coupled with in-your-face innovation, and a near-total disdain for anything that happened the day before. Europeans steeped in centuries-old traditions -- along with their assorted vicious religious and political feuds -- are often shocked that history in America is what you had for breakfast. Ancient history is last night’s TV schedule. Culture buffs are horrified that classical opera is reduced to elevator music and works by giants like Michelangelo can be reduced to hastily-created digital images on hand-held tablets.

On a recent visit home I was struck once again by the stark differences between the United States and Europe. Even in New England, considered by many to have close cultural and social ties to Europe, it was clear that the U.S. really is an ‘all bets are off, anything goes’ country.

American TV ads are one of my favourite examples of this. Other than the ban on cigarettes and alcohol there don’t appear to be any standards at all. The airways are filled with ads for prescription medicines that are supposed to cure all sorts of horrible diseases. A deep, authoritative voice assures you that this particular pill will reverse your downward slide and return you to sparkling shape in no time at all. Then the last half of the ad mentions, very rapidly, all the equally horrible side effects of this drug that could send you to an early grave.

Best of all, though, are the ads aimed at older men suffering from what is politely called erectile dysfunction. These ads all feature an attractive woman saying how much she likes older men, but, unfortunately, so many of them seem to have difficulty between the sheets. This little pill, however, can cure all of that and have them prancing around like randy teenagers in no time at all. Then the sonorous voice comes on listing all the adverse side effects, and says that if you have an erection lasting more than four hours you should call your doctor. Doctor, hell! It’s time to notify the Guinness Book of World Records.

These are just part of the stark contrasts that seem to define America. Awe-inspiring natural beauty and some man-made horrors; world leading universities stuffed with Nobel prizes coexist with some stupefying, almost wilful (I-don’t-know-nuthin’-and-I’m-proud-of- it)ignorance; cutting edge medical industry that leaves many with no care at all; dynamic economy that offers great opportunities but no guarantees.

Then, of course, there is the American love affair with ice. It can -15 degrees with a howling blizzard outside and the waiter will invariably serve you water in a glass filled with ice cubes. As you glance at the snow outside and politely ask if it would be possible to have the water without ice cubes the waiter gives you a look that says you are seconds away from being reported to Homeland Security. That threat level goes to orange when you mention to the same waiter that the portion size of the meal is perhaps better suited to a small town than just one individual.

Maybe it was the impact of the holiday season, but no effort is spared to part the consumer and his money. You are constantly bludgeoned with your patriotic duty to shop – on the internet or in real stores. One famous retailer specialising in outdoor gear is open 24/7 all year with no exceptions. I was jet lagged the day after arriving and decided to experiment with a bit of browsing at 4 am. Interesting people go shopping in a rural town at 4 o’clock in the morning. You want to watch out for the genetically-challenged guy with the glassy-eyed stare going over to the gun rack at that time of day. “Boy, that sure is a real nice looking shot gun you got there,” he gushes as he lovingly strokes the barrel. Others were just taking advantage of a warm place to sit and get some free coffee.

Personal freedom is cherished above all else. There are no thought police, no taste police in the form of not-so-subtle community pressure that dictates what you do. You want to wear orange bib overalls with a loud green shirt, go right ahead. You want to put enough reindeer and Christmas lights on your house and lawn so it can be seen from the planet Mars, go right ahead. People will congratulate you. Same for cars. You want what Europeans would consider an environmental disaster of car, go right ahead. Again, no one is going to stop you.

Perhaps most of all it is the sheer energy level, the drive to innovate, to change, to renew that make America an exciting place. Sometimes exhausting, frustrating and hypocritical, but seldom dull. All that went before -- your lineage, your achievements, your sense of proper social order -- means absolutely nothing. You are what you did today. Perhaps this is why the people who appreciate America the most are those who arrived with the least.

We're Right And Everyone Else Is Wrong!!

I’ll bet you didn’t know that it was Mustafa Columbus who discovered America more than 300 years before that other Columbus made the trip. I’ll also bet you didn’t know that Columbus, either one, clearly saw a mosque on top of a hill in Cuba.

His claim that it was a Moslem sea-farer who really discovered America long before Columbus and that a mosque could clearly be seen in 15^th century Cuba are just two of the latest bizarre claims by Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan. For some reason he feels compelled to rely on highly dubious scholarship to prove that it was Moslems and not the perfidious West who discovered the New World. Perhaps this research came from the same library containing works by another Turkish ‘scholar’ claiming that Johann Wolfgang Goethe was really a Turk and not German at all.

The sad thing in this farce is not Erdoğan’s latest howler. He and his acolytes make them all the time. It’s that this desperate need to ‘prove’ the achievements of Moslems, especially Turkish Moslems, only distracts people from the very real achievements of Arab scholars, navigators, physicians, philosophers and mathematicians in the Middle Ages. Most serious Western scholars recognize the intellectual and artistic debt that is owed to the Arabs. They don’t need the Turkish president to remind them of those achievements.

But again, no one should be surprised by comments like this from a man who seems to live by conspiracy theories where everything bad that has happened to Turkey is caused by devious outsiders like the infamous ‘interest rate lobby’, the ‘Jewish diaspora’, or – as always – the Americans. Even the German airline Lufthansa has joined the list of all those seeking to derail Turkey’s march toward global dominance.

      

While Turkey is no stranger to weird conspiracy theories (see the Levantine Musings post of 28/07/13 Only In Turkey about the mysterious kestrel accused ofWe're  spying for Israel), the crescendo of conspiracy claims seems to be building just as the country is sliding ever deeper into the self-dug hole of isolation. The ruling party acolytes like to claim it is their ‘principles’ – whatever they may be – that separates Turkey from others, and that the ensuing isolation is therefore a ‘precious’ isolation. Most rational people call it plain old isolation where you can use a telephone booth to hold a Friends of Turkey meeting.

Just a few years ago Turkey was the coming nation of the Middle East, the beacon of modern Islam and democracy in a very confused region. That promise, alas, was never fulfilled, and now Turkey has few if any friends in the region. The country’s isolation was hammered home in a recent vote in the United Nations for rotating members of the Security Council. Turkey had high hopes of winning one of those seats, but those hopes were shattered when it received only 60 votes, just about half the votes it received a few years previously.

Rather than using this humiliation as a reason to review its policies, the ruling party seems only to have increased the “We are right and everyone else is wrong” rhetoric. A few days ago a senior ruling party official claimed that Turkey’s one-time friends in the Gulf have joined unnamed outsiders to undermine Turkey and even were behind the protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013.  And these are the very same countries that Turkey is hoping will invest vast sums in its rapidly slowing economy?

Most readers can be excused for never hearing of the Sykes-Picot agreement between Great Britain and France in 1916 when British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart George Francois Picot drew up a map assigning spheres of control in Arab territories following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. But for people like Erdoğan this ill-fated agreement remains fresh news and is yet another indication of Western attempts to control the Middle East. In a speech last month he not only dredged up the Sykes-Picot agreement again but warned of new forces posing as Lawrence of Arabia. “Lawrence was an English spy disguised as an Arab. There are new voluntary Lawrences, disguised as journalists, religious men, writers and terrorists.”

A courageous, or knowledgeable, adviser might have saved his president some embarrassment by reminding him of just a few inconvenient facts. The Ottoman Empire had willingly joined World War I on the German side in hopes of regaining some long-lost imperial grandeur. Its rulers failed to realize that Turkey had few, if any, friends in the Middle East in those days despite, or perhaps because of, centuries of colonial rule. Erdoğan forgets that even the ultimate religious trump card in World War I, the Ottoman Empire’s call for a jihad – or holy war, fell on deaf ears as thousands of their fellow Moslems joined the British struggle against the Turks. Many Arabs today have the same jaundiced view of Turkey as they do of all the other outsiders meddling in their business.

I doubt he realizes that these flights of fancy are having the opposite effect of what he is trying to prove. Turkey is a large and serious nation that could play a constructive role in regional and even global affairs. But as long as Erdoğan continues to rewrite history recklessly while ignoring inconvenient facts he is making it very hard for people to take him, or his country seriously.

"We Have History"

Taking a taxi in Istanbul can be an interesting experience in the best of times. Sometimes the driver knows how to drive. Often the cab is his first experience with a motorized vehicle. Sometimes the driver knows where he is going. Other times you find that he only arrived in the city shortly before you did and knows very little.

            In theory the taxis are regulated. The reality is somewhat different. Take smoking. Removing a cigarette from many Turks is almost an act of war. Most cabs have stickers warning that smoking is not allowed. Most drivers, however, are busy working their way through at least two packs a day. If you’re brave or foolish enough to point out the no-smoking sticker they merely point to traffic mess around them and mutter the word ‘stress’ to explain their action. Given the total vehicular and pedestrian anarchy dominating the city’s streets they have a point.

The safest taxi in Istanbul?

             Then comes the tricky point of conversation. Most drivers are astute enough to recognize that you’re probably not Turkish. And they’re naturally curious. Who is this person in the back of my car? So while manoeuvring with the dexterity of a Formula 1 driver through speeding traffic as they constantly change lanes and run red lights they half-turn to you and utter the word ‘memleket’ – country—with head and hand gestures signifying a question. It’s a loaded question with uncertain consequences for the wrong answer. You, however terrified you may be with visions of instant death rapidly passing in front of your eyes, would be well advised to consider the answer carefully. Looking for tell-tale clues of the driver’s own political, sporting, or religious tendencies is a good start. These can usually be found hanging from the rear-view mirror or stuck to the windshield obliterating the view of oncoming death.

            One time I got this question from a driver who had a long beard and was wearing a white skull cap. Another clue was the fact that he was bobbing his head and muttering verses from the Koran propped up on the steering wheel. Given the state of his driving I thought this was an entirely logical thing to do. When he turned around with his fierce, challenging eyes and fired the question memleket? I had to do some fast thinking. The wrong answer might just land me bound and gagged in his trunk.

            My first reaction was to scroll quickly through my family tree to see if I could come up with a long-lost relative who was a companion of the Prophet Mohammed.  Failing that I concluded that admitting I was an American was probably not a great idea. British probably wouldn’t work either. Dutch? Risky. He might have a relative there and could speak a few words in Dutch, which was more than I could. Irish? Too obviously Catholic. Finally it dawned on me. Canadian. God bless the Canadians! No one in his right mind hates Canadians. Doubtful he’s ever seen one. And who has ever heard of Canadians getting stuck in trunks with gags and blind folds? Once I ventured that miraculous word Canadian he muttered something incomprehensible and focused on his driving.

            Another time I got this question and quickly searched for clues. Surprisingly there were none – no prayer beads hanging from the mirror and no stickers proclaiming his allegiance to one football team or another. The driver seemed like a decent person and I admitted to being American. Instantly his face lit up into a huge gap-toothed smile. The only nervous moment was when he turned around to give me a high-five.

            “My friend, this trip is on me. Where can I take you,” he proclaimed.

            Stunned, I asked him where he was from. This being the Middle East, friends of America are a little thin on the ground. He thumped his chest proudly. “I am from Kurdistan,” he announced. It turned out his family was from northern Iraq and had been saved by the American no-fly zone after Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of Kurds with his chemical warfare. For him the Americans could do no wrong. He was far less charitable toward the Turks whom he accused of suppressing their own large Kurdish population. “We have history,” he said darkly as he spat viciously out the window. Indeed they do. And much of it is not pretty.

            And therein lies the problem we see played out today as the brutal  jihadi forces of ISIS threaten to take over the city of Kobani, just a few meters from the Turkish border. The world wonders why Turkey, with its huge army, does nothing to stop this assault. The Kurdish forces in Kobani may not even want the Turkish army. But Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan won't even let the Kurds get resupplied from Turkey. And he refuses to let anti-ISIS forces use air bases inside Turkey for more effective air cover. The simple fact is that Erdoğan and many of his acolytes see the Kurds in Kobani as a greater threat than ISIS. They see the Kobani Kurds merely as an extension of the militant PKK Kurds in Turkey that have caused so much trouble over the years. Any effort to help the Kurds in Kobani, they believe, could backfire on Turkey.

            No one knows for sure how many Kurds are inside Turkey, but various estimates put the number at 12 – 15 million – a sizable minority out of population of about 75 million. After years of brutal conflict with the PKK that has cost about 40,000 lives over the last two decades, Erdoğan had launched a highly publicized effort to end that conflict and give the Kurdish citizens more cultural rights.

 

A preview of coming attractions inside Turkey?

            Such cynical realpolitik of letting ISIS do his dirty work in Kobani carries two large risks. One is that it could risk alienating even the moderate Kurds in Turkey. Any future outbreaks of violence won't be limited to the traditional Kurdish homelands of south-eastern Turkey. The large cities are also extremely vulnerable. Whatever progress has been made to ease age-old tensions could be undone very quickly. The fragile alliance between Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurds could quickly unravel. Among other things this could easily cost the AKP a lot of votes in the next election, ending whatever fading hopes Erdoğan has of changing the constitution to give himself even more power.

            The second major risk is that despite AKP's kind gestures ISIS will not stop at the border. The group has enough followers within Turkey to cause serious problems. 

            If he is going to stop to the looming Kobani massacre from igniting even greater problems inside Turkey he is going to have to act with greater sensitivity and skill than we have witnessed so far. His usual bluster and bellowing will only intensify the problem.

Damned If You Do. Damned If You Don't.

Turkey is beginning to learn the very high cost of fighting wars by proxy. Unfortunately they never learned the lessons of the Americans or the Pakistanis who armed the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the Russians 30 years ago. Both the United States and Pakistan soon learned at a very great cost that those heavily armed and well trained fighters had their own agenda – one that was viciously opposed to their former benefactors.

            After funnelling arms and money to radical Sunni groups in Syria opposed to the regime of Bashar al Assad Turkey now finds that those one-time allies are threatening to bite the hand that fed them. Welcome to the Middle East where alliances and loyalty are fluid at the best of times. What is interesting is that many of the same people in the United States who fervently supported arming the mujahedeen against the Russians in the 1980s now want President Obama to fall into the same trap in Syria. Good thinking, guys.

Exactly why Turkey is so vehemently opposed to its former best friend Assad is a matter of some speculation. President Tayyip Erdoğan would have us believe he is shocked, shocked at the violence and brutality that Assad has used against his own people. Others, less charitable, say he only wants to establish a strong Sunni belt on Turkey’s southern border to counter what he sees as the Shiite threat from Iraq and possibly Iran.

Whatever his reasons, this policy has left Turkey with extremely difficult choices, each of which has unpredictable and dangerous outcomes. Right now a heavily armed (thanks in part to Turkey) group of medieval jihadis (ISIS) has swept through large parts of Syria and Iraq. They have besieged a fairly large town right next to the Turkish border. If they take that town they will be right up against Turkey itself. What to do? From Turkey’s point of view it would appear to be the lesser of two evils.

The town in question, Kobani, is largely populated by Kurds who have pretty much established an autonomous region within Syria. Turkey doesn’t like that. It might give Turkey’s own large Kurdish population similar ideas.

On the other hand, Turkey has suddenly woken up to the dangers posed by ISIS. “Hey, these guys may be out of control and may not be our friends.” The Turkish parliament passed a motion allowing Turkish participation in the hastily formed anti-ISIS coalition. So far that participation has been limited to loud denunciations of terror and strident calls for more action -- by someone else -- against ISIS. But what action, and by whom are not clear. What is clear is Turkey’s ambivalence about the entire anti-ISIS project.

So far the Turkish army has provided great photo opportunities of its tanks lined up aggressively on the border across from Kobani. And there they sit. Turkey does not even allow coalition airplanes to use nearby bases in Turkey in order to provide more effective air power against ISIS.

Turkish tanks on Syrian border

Coalition commanders are frustrated and the Kurds are furious. Turkish leaders piously justify their do-nothing response by claiming that taking out ISIS without first taking out Assad would be pointless. The Turks also say they want a no-fly zone. Why, precisely? ISIS has no air force. But, for the Turks, the target is Assad, not ISIS. Therefore they will do nothing unless the coalition, i.e. the Americans, commit to regime change in Damascus. The Turks are silent on who or what might fill the power vacuum in Syria once Assad goes. Having, hopefully, learned the folly of regime change the Americans are in no mood to topple Assad, no matter how brutally he might treat his own people.

The Kurds are adamant that the Turkish lack of action is merely a pretext for eliminating the Kurdish population. If ISIS wipes out the Kurds, according to this logic, then that particular threat to Turkey is gone.

To be fair to the Turks, however, any action, or lack thereof, carries grave risks. Don’t attack ISIS and you risk inflaming your own large Kurdish population and ending whatever chance there was for reconciliation. Kurds in several of the country’s larger cities have already hit the streets in violent protests against Turkey’s lack of support. The cease-fire with the Kurdish militant group could end any day and plunge the country back into a brutal conflict that has cost about 40,000 lives over the past two decades. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets of major cities in an effort to stop the protests.

Kurdish protest in Turkey. A return to the bad old days?

Moving aggressively against ISIS, however, risks alienating a large part of the Turkish population that wants nothing to do with a war among Arabs that they believe was created by the Americans in the first place. “Let them stew in their own juice” seems to be the most popular attitude in Turkey. The government would also risk alienating that portion of the Turkish population that thinks ISIS is not such a bad thing.

The other serious risk of attacking ISIS is creating blow-back inside Turkey. I doubt that ISIS would challenge the might of the Turkish army directly. But it doesn’t have to. It could easily create problems using the 1.5 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey. ISIS could also ignite serious violence using its supporters already in Turkey’s sprawling major cities. A recent story in The New York Times about Pakistan’slessons for Turkey highlighted the problems the country could face with people it once thought were its allies.

"He (Erdoğan) is a fool," a Turkish friend fumed. "He wanted to be a big deal in the Middle East, the champion of the Sunnis, the new Caliph. All he did was to bring the problems of the Middle East inside Turkey."

The Turkish government is in a very uncomfortable place at the moment, condemned both for doing too little and possibly too much against ISIS. Sooner or later it will have to make a choice. And then the question is whether the Turkish leadership is wise enough to handle the consequences of whatever choice it makes.