posted November 7, 2008
On a recent visit to Turkey, we were touring the city of Istanbul and I asked our tour guide where the homeless people were. His response was “we have no homeless people.”
He went on to state that should someone loose their job or their home their family or relatives would help them. It would be a dishonor and bring shame to the family name to have one of their family members turned out on the street.
It’s too bad that many of the families in America write their family members off when they fall on hard times.
Chuck Wethington
Ringgold
While family is very important in Turkey and family ties are strong, there are still homeless people in Turkey. Mr. Wethington needs to understand two things - homeless people are often hard to see in any city, especially in one that is unfamiliar and it is quite likely that his tour guide was licensed by the state. In other words, he's not going to give an unfavorable view of his country. In fact, Turks are often very proud of their country, as well they should be, and do not want to paint an unflattering picture of it for outsiders.
There are homeless people in Turkey. In Istanbul they sleep in parks, on benches, in doorways to buildings, in little out-of-the-way alleys and in the rubble of ruined buildings. Currently, the mayor of Istanbul is creating possibly hundreds of homeless families in an attempt to, as he says, modernize the city in preparation for Istanbul being a European Capital of Culture in 2010. The Sulukule neighborhood in central Istanbul is slowly being demolished to make way for high-end Ottoman-style villas as the government expropriates the homes of a whole community of poor Roma (the more derogative word being Gypsy) families. Some are being moved to social housing outside of the city center to apartments they likely won't be able to afford, while others are literally left to fend for themselves in the rubble of their former homes. Family can't help because in this case, they are all being pushed out of the community they have lived in for generations.
There are most assuredly homeless people in Turkey, even in a city as beautiful and amazing as Istanbul. Families are important, but so are humane government policies.
Chole Current
Cukurcuma, Istanbul, Turkey
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