LAURA GAVINSKI '06 SPENDS SUMMER ABSORBING LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF TURKEY

Laura Gavinski '06 on a Bosporus cruise in Istanbul

It was two o’clock in the morning when my flight from Washington arrived in Ankara. I distinctly remember squinting through the tiny airplane window, trying to catch a glimpse of the city in which I would spend the summer. I had not slept in more than 48 hours, yet I was wide awake, excited, apprehensive and terrified. Although I had spent a semester traveling around Europe, my trip to Turkey was the first time I had been to Asia, and I was not quite sure what to expect. It was only five months before that day that I had decided to apply for the State Department Critical Language Scholarship. After spending a semester during my junior year studying the European Union in Freiburg, Germany, I had decided to write my senior thesis in political science on Muslim immigrants in the European Union. Turks make up a significant portion of this group, and I found myself interested not only in the Turks who were already living in the European Union, but also Turkey’s accession process to the EU.

For the purposes of graduate school and the career in diplomacy that I hope to develop, it seemed like a natural extension of my studies to learn Turkish. The Critical Language Scholarship Program provided me with the opportunity to begin making this goal a reality. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and its goal is to expand the language capacity of Americans in critical languages such as Arabic, Bangla and Turkish by providing scholarships for in-country study to students at all levels of university education.

Armed with Merhaba (hello in Turkish), the only word I had managed to pronounce and memorize from my phrase book, I stepped off the plane and into the unknown and was surprised at how familiar it felt. Ankara, home to more than four million people, was transformed from a small village into a capital city virtually overnight. Turks and Americans alike frequently asked me why I was studying in Ankara rather than Istanbul. I have often heard the analogy, Ankara is to Istanbul as Washington, D.C. is to New York City, and, having seen all four cities, I think it is accurate. Home to the national government and a large diplomatic community, downtown Ankara is full of high-rise apartment and office buildings, wide streets full of traffic at all times of the day and countless cinemas, museums, shops, restaurants and bars. Yet, aside from a few neglected Roman remains, a citadel that has been worked on by almost every Anatolian civilization since the Galatians and the truly magnificent Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara lacks the historic majesty of Istanbul. It also lacks the hordes of tourists that flock to Istanbul. As one of the relatively few Americans in Ankara, this proved to be a huge asset to me in making friends and learning the language.

If there is one thing that defines Turkish people in my mind, it is their immense generosity and hospitality, and I was privileged to meet many wonderful people over the summer. I can’t count the number of times that I explained to an awed face that I was indeed American, and I could speak some Turkish. On the street, in a store or on the bus, these conversations began with politeness and pleasantries but quickly turned into serious discussions, invitations to visit and promises to keep in touch.

Even though the scholarship had provided me with a place to live in Ankara, a spot at a great language school and an impressive group of students with whom to study, actually learning the language was not such an easy task. Turkish is most closely related to Hungarian and Korean and, as I quickly discovered, is completely different in vocabulary and syntax from English and both of the foreign languages I had studied at Haverford, Spanish and German. Since I had never studied Turkish before, it was about a full week before I could muster up basic sentences, and so the meantime it was difficult and frustrating at worst and triumphant at best.

Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara

I lived in a dorm with about 15 other women. From the outside, it was a large, rather menacing-looking building, but on the inside there were colorful bedrooms, several study rooms and two older women who made sure we kept our rooms clean and never hesitated to ask where we had been or tell us that we looked like we were gaining weight. Neither of the two women spoke any English, and that did make things difficult at the beginning when basic communication was done by pointing and flailing, and also later when we were trying to negotiate a curfew or kitchen privileges. Over the years I have learned that traveling is mostly about adjusting, and adjust I did. I started coming home at midnight every night, turned up the powerful beat of my techno music and began putting yogurt on almost everything I ate, which I still do sometimes.

I spent my days in four to six hours of language class followed by lazy warm afternoons wandering around the city, perusing through the range of cheap knicknacks to valuable antiques at the bazaars or sipping tea in one of the multitudes of cafés. It was tough being a foreigner at times. With my light hair and eyes, I had a hard time blending in, and there was not much English spoken outside of diplomatic circles and universities. Yet, the more Turkish I learned, the easier it got, and there was always someone willing to help. Of course the summer was not all work. My group also spent a few long weekends traveling to Istanbul, Cappadocia, Antalya, Amasra and Gordion.

In my view, the cultural exchange was the most important and successful part of the program. For many of the Turks that I met, I was the first American that they had ever met, and so long conversations greased with Raki, a popular anise-flavored liquor, were filled with talk about American culture and policy. I was pleasantly surprised to find little hostility towards the American government and Americans in general, given the disagreements between Turkey and the U.S. over the Iraq war and the crisis in Lebanon, which reached its pinnacle while I was in Ankara. Instead there was a mutual curiosity and commitment to discussion peppered with some instances where we just decided to agree to disagree.

I never quite got clear answers to my questions about the EU. At least among university-age Turks, I encountered pronounced skepticism and even apprehension. As my roommate, a teacher from Istanbul, told me: EU membership has many benefits for Turkey, but there are also costs. It is fashionable right now to discuss how Turkey is currently in a unique position between East and West, but this internal conflict has always been there. One needs only look to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations to see the rich history that has shaped this privilege and dilemma, one that is not likely to be resolved anytime soon, whether or not Turkey joins the European Union. Still, it is Turkey’s young people that will shape its path into the future, and few doubt that this path leads vaguely westward.

— Laura Gavinski '06