Category: Children & Young People

Birds Without Wings

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Award winning novelist Louise De Bernières is coming to town – well to Kayaköy a tumble down deserted former Greek village actually. Expect a civilised, sunny afternoon of recital, chat and nibbles to chew over his superb novel Birds Without Wings. If only I could write like him. Profits from the event will go to local children in need so it’s not yet another jamboree for street dogs.

Birds without Wings is a beautifully crafted, intensely human tale set in an imaginary Aegean village called Eskibahçe. Although fictional, the village is based on the hamlet of Kayaköy (Greek: Levissi) near Fethiye. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of the Turkish Republic and the innocent sounding ‘population exchange’ that occurred in 1923. This cruel trade was a curious and unique episode in modern history as it was mutually agreed by both governments and sanctioned by the League of Nations. 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia and 500,000 Turks from Greece were forcibly expelled from their centuries-old communities and ‘repatriated’ to their so-called homelands. It was religious rather than ethnic cleansing since ethnic Turks who were Christian were out and ethnic Greeks who were Moslem were in, and vice versa.

The expulsions were a harsh and deliberate plan by both adversaries to create states of religious and cultural homogeneity. This might be forgiven as the inevitable consequence of two paranoid, insecure nations attempting to foster a loyal citizenry but the fall out still resounds to this day both in the Aegean region and in the wider world.

Louise de Bernières is perhaps best known for his earlier book Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which is set on the lush and verdant Greek Island of Kefalonia during World War Two. My very first holiday with Liam was to Kefalonia. Our debut jolly was marred by a manic Franco-Algerian woman, a bird with bingo wings. She took far too much of a frisky shine to Liam. She chased him around the pool like a bitch on heat and I had to tell her to keep her wandering lusty hands to herself.

Fire and Brimstone

Now Children, Behave

Forums provide an invaluable service to people living in a foreign land. Why re-invent the wheel when the ‘been there, done that’ brigade can help? The TLF is the largest and most active of all the forums in Turkey and long may it thrive. I usually read in passive amusement at the cut and thrust debate on the latest hot topic. Combatants engage in a war of attrition from the trenches lobbing their opinions, dressed up as fact, into no man’s land in the hope of scoring the last point. It can get quite heated at times but that’s the joy of free speech. I confess that I rarely contribute as I like to keep my blood pressure under control and I prefer to converse around a dinner table with people I actually know.

Sometimes, though, forum debates can get out of hand as it did recently. What started as a reasonable argument about the fairness of the court judgement preventing a couple from fostering because of their biblical views of homosexuality degenerated into an unseemly slanging match. It’s just the excuse some people need to emerge from their closets to vent their reactionary prejudices. Where were the moderators?

The Age of Enlightenment

I don’t have a fixed view about the topic. I don’t know the full facts and, unless those who commented were in court that day, I suspect they don’t either. What depressed me was that some people would prefer to place an already damaged child with fundamentalist Christians rather than a middle class, liberal lesbian couple from Islington. Homosexuality isn’t catching, religion is. Gay people don’t kill for their cause, religious zealots do. Gay people campaign for equal rights, religions demand to be above the Law. Enough said.

Gone to the Dogs

I love dogs. We always had dogs at home. Petra, Pepe, Rocky and the rest were all emotionally interwoven into the rich tapestry of my family life. When they died, I cried. I even wept when my hamster, Goliath, performed a fatal somersault off the top of the freezer though I confess my pain was short lived and Goliath was quickly replaced by Samson.

After we migrated we were taken by surprise by the volume of stray and feral dogs sniffing aimlessly around the streets. Liam’s often waylaid by a wet snout playfully jammed into his groin and we are often tempted to take Rover home, hose him down and feed him up. I’m not at all surprised that animal welfare is an emigrey preoccupation. The story of an animal-lover leading her pack to a Bulgarian Promised Land like a modern day Moses is but an extreme example of the canine devotion that seems to dominate the humdrum lives of many.

Animal welfare is a noble cause but so too is the care and protection of children. It distresses me to hear and read so little about the plight of the thousands of children in our foster land who lead brutal and miserable lives, trapped within abusive families, rented out by the hour or thrown onto the streets to fend for themselves. Take a look at the following articles if you can bear to know more.

Istanbul home to 30,000 street children

Rise in sexual abuse of minors

Child Labour

Contribute

It’s easy to think that the problem is overwhelming and nothing can be done, an all too comfortable mind-set that is underpinned by the apparent dearth of children’s charities and non-governmental organisations working within Turkey. However, it is possible make a difference no matter how small. Why not sponsor a child in Turkey or make a contribution to Unicef?

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Care for the animals by all means but care for the children too.

Let the Children Play

I’m touched and heart-warmed to see that children are still children in Turkey, retaining innocence and a simple wonder long since lost in Blighty. I rarely witness a temper tantrum or any kind of brattish behaviour in public.  They have less but enjoy more. Turks of both sexes adore their young, lavishing affection and gentle correction in equal measure. Turkish society has yet to become tormented by rampant paranoia about child snatching paedophiles or obsessed with risk, both of which have turned some western children into selfish, cotton-wool covered social misfits, old, but not wise before their time.

Sleeping Beauty

Yalıkavak life is in hibernation mode, and the hatches are well and truly battened down. As a working town, daytime activities go on as they must, but by night the village falls eerily silent except for roving packs of abandoned hounds and the few venues scraping a scanty living from the rare hardy emigrey annuals who venture out after dark.

Sleeping Beauty

Dogs in Turkey are employed primarily to guard houses not to live in them and are discarded when no longer required, usually at the end of the season. The local council does its best to control the numbers but resources are limited and the supply overwhelming. For the most part, the animals seem healthy and happy, more of a nuisance than a danger. I suppose life on the streets is preferable (and certainly more natural) to being tethered to a post in solitary confinement and fed on kitchen slops. We’ve been sorely tempted to salvage a winsome mutt with a sad, down at heel expression but this would be unfair given our frequent sojourns to Blighty to placate our abandoned families.

Animal-loving emigreys are appalled by the callous treatment of man’s best friend. After all, it’s well known that Brits love their pets more than their children. So, fund-raising and re-homing of street dogs is a regular aspect of emigrey life. A concern for street children seems less prevalent.