Copenhagen has now become the
city that I resided in the longest after my hometown. To celebrate this, I initially
planned to write a love letter to Copenhagen; a sincere one, not a sarcastic
one. Then, my cousin, who was the “baby cousin” in May’s blog post
and is now 30 with a stable full-time job, was rejected a
Schengen visa to come to Denmark to visit me. His visa rejection letter in
short said “Currently, we don’t grant visas to people from Turkey unless it is
a matter of close family and business-related visits.” This outcome is neither
unique to him nor Denmark these days. I hear more frequent Schengen visa
rejections for Turkish people including musicians wanting to travel for their
concerts. In my anger and frustration, I realized that my love toward
Copenhagen is doomed to be one-sided. As a result, instead of a love letter, I
decided to write about the impact of my under-privileged passport on me as I
dreamed of exploring the world as a kid and lived abroad as an adult. There will
be some love still in the mix.
First, let me acknowledge my own
privileged position here. I am an expat. I moved abroad because I wanted to not
because I had to. While no foreign country welcomed me with open arms, this
isn’t the same as seeking refuge abroad. In addition, while I am aware of the
unique challenges some other passports have in the Western world, the
challenges I describe here focus on the ones that come with my Turkish
passport. I know people who can’t see their families for several years due to the
harsh residence permit requirements of the country they live in or the
unwelcoming conditions in their home country. I have never been in such a
situation, and I wish no one had to be. The longest I had to be away from my
parents was slightly over a year, it was very difficult, and it was due to a
residence permit requirement. This being said, given my country of origin, I
also have to acknowledge that this relative privilege may change at any time.
Despite living (and full-time
working and paying taxes) in the Western world for over a decade, I am still in
a disadvantaged position when it comes to my rights compared to the majority European
people who are around me on a day-to-day basis. This is “thanks to” my Turkish
passport. This world is not as open to me as it is to them. I am subjected to
more visa and residence permit requirements, and therefore endure more
challenges when I travel for work. When my family and friends in Turkey want to
visit me, even at the place I now call home and was about to write a love
letter to, we are at the mercy of a stranger granting visas. Except for a brief
period in the USA and up until this year in Europe, my residence permit
depended on my job and losing my job meant deportation. The welfare rules don’t
apply to me with the same benefits. As a result, I also by default feel distant
from most of the people who surround me.
But I want to start from the
beginning. So, let’s rewind and dig. Since I lived in 5 countries (meaning I had
to open a bank account in 5 countries), this story will have 5 parts, so I will
post it over multiple months. This month comes Part 0 & 1.
Part 0: Turkey
Growing up in Turkey, one of my
favorite TV events was the Eurovision. I didn’t care for the songs. I rarely
watched that part. But I stayed up late to watch the voting part. I don’t know
if it was an early interest in world politics or a very creative self-harm
method. During that voting segment, while many of the competing countries voted
well for their neighbors, we usually got the lowest scores from ours except for
Azerbaijan.
Then, there was the Copenhagen criteria
and Anders Fogh
Rasmussen saga frequently on the news. The Copenhagen criteria are the
criteria to enter the EU, the criteria that we have never been able to satisfy,
and very likely we never will. Rasmussen welcomed 10 new countries into the EU as
a conclusion to that saga. We of course weren’t one of them, and we never will
be even if we could satisfy the Copenhagen criteria. If I describe the
reactions my family members had toward Rasmussen’s news appearances in those
years, this blog post might get an R-rating, so let’s just say that he was
quite unpopular.
I was 15 the first time we
planned to travel abroad as a family. It was to visit my aunt, who lived in
Chicago, USA. We needed a visa to enter the USA. The closest US embassy to us
was in Ankara, which is ~4 hours by bus from my hometown. It was early summer. The day of our visa
appointment was very hot. We left the house of the family friends who hosted us
during that trip with very light clothing. My mom, however, got a couple of jackets
with her just in case, and my dad and I made fun of her for that. Then, we
arrived at the US embassy shortly before our appointment time and were let in.
We ended up waiting there for ~4 hours for our turn to come, and the AC was on
at full blast. One of the people, also waiting, politely asked the security
guard if they could turn down the AC. The guard yelled at her in return, and
the AC was kept as is. At the 3rd hour, my fingernails started to turn
purple. My mom put a jacket on me. They granted us a 10-year visa.
The second time I traveled abroad
was again to Chicago after graduating high school, as I also mentioned in
previous month’s post.
This time I had a visa. But when I was in Chicago, my cousins and I decided to
do a road trip to Toronto for a concert. I needed a visa to enter Canada,
unlike my cousins who are US citizens. One of my cousins and I went to the
Canadian embassy in New York. It was a short visit. They rejected my
application because I was 17 and needed a permission letter from my parents.
The interviewer even asked, “How did you enter the US?”, to which I replied, “by
plane.” He didn’t ask more. Our NYC trip was beautiful, though. After that
rejection, I told my cousin that we didn’t have to go to Toronto, or they could
go, and I could stay with my aunt. She said we should still give it a try. Then,
my parents sent me a letter. One of my aunt’s friends was an official translator
for these types of documents, so she helped us to make it official. This time
with my other cousin, we drove to Detroit to retry our chances at the Canadian
embassy there. With the permission given by my parents, Canada welcomed me. When I look at my old passport, I see a one-month Canadian visa. I
vaguely remember that I actually received a visa for a week, but then the
border control officer at Canada extended it to one-month saying, “I have a
really good friend from Izmir.”, but I can’t see any evidence to back this
memory up on my passport. Regardless of the visa outcome, the trip to Detroit
was one of the best trips of my life. If you want to really bond with someone,
do a road trip with them, especially driving at night. In Detroit, I was let
into a bar for the first time in US despite being 17 because the owner was my
cousin’s friend’s cousin’s friend (in Chicago, they didn’t let me in bars; in
Turkey, they did), and I was introduced to an Irish car bomb, which became more
Irish car bombs by the end of that night. Next morning, we went to Six Flags,
which was a great way to spend hangover.
In contrast, when it came to traveling in
Europe, I had one advantage compared to many other Turkish people back then. By
extension of being my parents’ child, I had what is called a Green Passport in
Turkey. It is a passport that gives you the right to visit Schengen countries
without obtaining a visa for up to 3 months. It is typically given to people
who serve in public office for a certain number of years. My parents have it
because they were professors in a public university.
There used to be two criteria to
keep the Green Passport through nepotism for a daughter: (1) being unmarried
and (2) being unemployed. For a long time, I only knew about the first one and
not the second. One day, I think in my early teenage years, I told my dad “I
won’t get married.” I didn’t elaborate on the fact that this was to keep my
passport rights. He didn’t ask for a reason. He said “That is OK. You can still
live together with the person you love. You don’t have to get married.” I
became aware of the second rule around the time I was preparing to move to
Switzerland. Being a PhD student was going to be my first grown-up full-time job.
And while I gave up my prospective spouse without thinking twice for a passport,
I was never going to give up my economic independence.
In the end, the only time the
Green Passport was supposed to be beneficial for me, it ended up being a
disadvantage, and we will delve into that in Part 1.
Part 1: The Netherlands
Third year of my BSc at Koç
University, thanks to my supervisor Serdar Taşıran,
I and two other students in the department was accepted for a two-month summer
internship at University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Since this was a
visit of less than three months, I was supposed to be covered with my Green
Passport. However, the Twente-side told me that since this was a paid internship,
I should still apply for a visa.
I did and got rejected. The Dutch
embassy in İstanbul told me that “We cannot give you a visa for this because
you do not need one.” There was so much back-and-forth between me and Twente. I
had to visit the embassy several times and the staff started to greet me with
a “You again! Hi.” At least the Dutch embassy is at İstiklal Avenue, which is
one of my favorite places on Earth. All the other embassies I have been to are
at locations that I wouldn’t go to otherwise. My parents also went to that Dutch embassy
once on my behalf because I had classes. During that visit, my mom developed a
crush on one of the cute embassy staff who identified my case as a “nightmare”.
To this day, whenever we reminisce about my Netherlands days, she gives a shout
out to that guy.
The other two students got their
visas quickly and they were set for the internship. My situation was unclear up
until last week. Eventually, the Twente-side gave in.
In Enschede, the university found
us a place to live, which I really appreciated. I lived in a house with five
boys and a mouse named Elizabeth. I was also the only girl at the department I
interned at. All the boys/men were nice, but I really missed my college roommate, a.k.a.
Illegitimate Daughter, who has a love letter dedicated to her somewhere in
this blog. It was with those emotions I started watching Gilmore Girls, which she always
insisted that I should watch. This action was the start of a very important
tradition for me, which is to watch Gilmore Girls whenever I move to a new
country.
Besides Gilmore Girls, I was often unsure about what to eat, so I ended up eating too much stroopwafel. The trash in the house was somehow always overflowing. People often told me that I don't look Turkish. Someone threw up in front of me on the street in Amsterdam. I did all the rides in Efteling. I was able to go to the Dutch edition of Sister Blue’s wedding, which required two trains and a bus ride (pre-smart-phones) that brought me to a place in the Netherlands where some people couldn’t speak English. We were only 3 representing the bride’s side heavily outnumbered by the groom’s family and friends. I guess the Turkish edition of this wedding had the opposite outlook, but I wasn’t in that edition. They assigned the task of recording the wedding to me; a tip: don’t comment on things while recording a wedding even in Turkish, since some foreign spouses end up learning Turkish.
Overall, the internship at Twente was both productive and fun, and an encouraging experience just before
deciding whether I should go abroad for my PhD, which we will delve into in Part
2 next month.
