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From Our Own Correspondent
A Turkish Mosaic
00:27:43
Windows on the world. Today: diverse and contradictory views about the Turkish and the...
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Presenter
You have downloaded from our own correspondent. This edition is the latest one broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and here to
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Kate Ady
introduce it is Kate Ady.
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Narrator/Host
Hello. Today, bombs go off in Turkey as the country prepares for its most important vote in a generation. Going home will mean imprisonment, even execution. The African migrants in Calais who say surely Britain will offer them safe refuge. Their Swiss nostalgia for the days their country was famed for cheese and cuckoo clocks rather than financial scandal. And in South Korea, a picture of pride, prosperity and family companionship at the biggest shipyard in the world. There were two explosions at a Kurdish party election rally in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey yesterday. Two people were killed and more than 130 taken to hospital. The country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said they were a provocation designed to undermine peace. Ahead of tomorrow's parliamentary election, the poll is being seen as a referendum on the president, what he's achieved and what he still plans to do. Mark Lohan's been touring the country as its people prepare to cast their votes.
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Kate Ady
Three women in three cities, representing three utterly different identities of a country. They all hold a Turkish passport. They all pay taxes to the same government. And yet, meeting them on my travels from one side of the country to the other and as I have done in the past fortnight, has revealed to me a nation that is more diverse and more divided than any other I know. First is Pinapin Zuti from Izmir, on Turkey's western coast, its secular heartland a stronghold of the centre left, this relaxed European city is awash with beachfront bars pumping out Turkish rock and local beer. We talk on two wheels, Pienaar leading Izmir's all women cycling group. In brightly colored skirts and T shirts, some with flowers in their hair, they pedal along the seafront celebrating their female identity. The government insists we should stay at home and have three children, she tells me as I struggle to keep up. But we say we don't need to live in shame to cover our legs and bodies. Come on. She laughs. We can do it. We're empowered. An hour's flight east and a fast train south, I meet Kubla Bulbul, a final year medical student in Konya, one of Turkey's most conservative religious cities. Konya is where this government polls highest. Minarets pepper the skyline. Competing calls to prayer echo louder than any I've heard in Turkey. Kubra, like most women here, dons a headscarf and a long coat as we talk over tea in the old town. It's very simple, she says before I wasn't allowed to study because headscarves were banned. I was forced to apply for university out of Turkey. But then this government came in, encouraged our religious identity and I feel free. This is empowerment. Just 20 years ago, you couldn't have traveled safely to Diyarbakir in Turkey's southeast. Consumed by the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state, it was constantly under emergency rule and curfew. But now it's a largely peaceful place, which looks likely to vote en masse in this election for the pro Kurdish political party, the hdp. It's on the verge of crossing the threshold to enter Parliament for the first time. Taking refuge from the midday sun, I chat to 76 year old Dilsha Ozgen. Her three children were killed in the 30 year insurgency. Once a week she comes together with other women who lost husbands, brothers and sons. The Turkish state bombed my home four times, she tells me. Years of struggle etched on her face. They're barbaric. But now we have our party, the hdp, and we feel represented, empowered. Her kindly face lights up. We will drown the President in our flood of votes. SHE CHUCKLES United by one word, empowerment. It is what everyone in this country looks for and finds in different political leaders. The secularists, the conservatives, the Kurds. How multifaceted modern Turkey is, and what a challenge for any government to appeal to all sides. It is hard to think of a leader in Turkish history able to unite his people. On the contrary, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now seeking a strong majority for the governing AK Party, is often labelled the great polarizer, saturating politics with religion. He's adored by his conservative Islamic power base for giving them a voice and transforming Turkey's economy. But reviled by the left, who accuse him of eroding democracy, muzzling free speech and burning bridges with the West. Even though he's now supposed to stand above politics as President of the Republic, he's turned countless speeches into election rallies, hardening his rhetoric each time. Journalists, Armenians and gays are representatives of sedition is his latest swipe, designed to please his core supporters. He doesn't much like the media. The BBC, CNN and the New York Times are seeking to weaken and divide Turkey, he bellowed in a recent interview. And then there is the Kurdish leader Salahatin Demirta, sometimes called Turkey's Obama for his charisma and oratory. Though viewed with suspicion by many Turks, doubtful that the Kurds can ever really renounce violence. If his party, the hdp, enters Parliament, it could deprive the government of a majority. And so it's built up a headwind of support not just from Kurds, but also from leftists keen on its human rights focus and staunch Erdogan opponents voting tactically. If it gets in, Diarbaka will erupt in celebration. If it fails, the eruption could be far darker. Turkey is as undefinable as it is important. The West's great ally in a volatile Middle east, its influence spreads far. This election is the most unpredictable in a generation, perhaps unsurprising for the complex mosaic that is modern Turkey.
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Narrator/Host
Mark Loewen Back now in Istanbul, the air of gloom surrounding FIFA isn't just confined to the world football body's luxury offices on a wooded hill above Zurich. The allegations of bribery, corruption and money laundering have plunged the organization into deep crisis. And despite the resignation announcement from its controversial president, Sepp Blatter, the turmoil continues. Imogen Folks in Bern says the Swiss see the scandal as a further blow to the image the country once enjoyed as a place of reliability, competence and quality.
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Imogen Folks
Once again, the Swiss are opening their morning papers and choking over their muesli at a financial scandal once again about an institution based in Switzerland and and its leader, who is Swiss. This week, it's FIFA and bribery. Rewind. A year or so and it was Swiss bankers helping American clients dodge taxes. Their creative ways to transfer wealth into secret accounts even included smuggling diamonds in a tube of toothpaste. Before that, there were the dictators. Mobutu, Marcos, Milosevic. Where did they put money for safe and discreet keeping? Switzerland, of course. Switzerland has so much more to offer than that is a phrase I've heard again and again. When I told friends I had spent much of last week camped outside FIFA's Zurich headquarters, the reaction was a chorus of oh, that Blatter. Why? Why doesn't he go? When he did resign, you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief. Many Swiss are heartily sick of seeing their country famous, not for cheese or chocolate and but for looking after corrupt money or for turning a blind eye while it changes hands. The Swiss worry about their image, but all images arise from some basic truths. If you want to understand their attitude to money, you have to go back centuries, one young student reminded me. The Swiss were Europe's mercenaries. They fought for whoever paid, never mind the cause. And and if they discovered the other side paid more, they switched camps overnight. And then there is that often misunderstood concept, banking secrecy. It arose originally not out of a desire to attract corrupt money, but out of a very Swiss conviction that the state should not interfere in an individual's financial affairs and that citizens can be trusted. So it's not considered polite to ask someone what they earn here. That's a private matter. Everyone pays their own taxes. Nothing is deducted at source every year. We all groan at the bureaucracy, but everyone I know does do it. Add the long Swiss tradition of hundreds of little sporting associations, from ski clubs to hiking groups. Every village has them. Newcomers are expected to join, but the laws governing them are astonishingly lax. And until very recently, the same laws applied to institutions like FIFA, whose current bank balance, by the way, stands at almost a billion pounds. No meaningful oversight, no requirement for transparent bookkeeping and a good few tax breaks. Put all that tradition in a pot. The mercenaries, the banking secrecy and the village club laws mix for a couple of centuries and what do you get? An opportunistic financial sector which has made billions for Switzerland, partly through attracting the cash of despots, drug barons and tax dodgers. And a cosy home for bloated multi million pound businesses masquerading as not for profit sporting associations. And in the figure of Sepp Blatter, a man brought up in a small Swiss village where it wasn't considered polite to discuss money. Bit by bit, though, the Swiss are making changes almost unnoticed. They have introduced some of the world's strictest money laundering laws. Financial crime is being prosecuted, not ignored. When Swiss police raided FIFA headquarters last week, there were, I'm told, white faces and shaking hands among the football officials. They know it's serious this time, said one source. The discretion, which once allowed suitcases full of cash to be handed over at Swiss banks, no questions asked, now amounts to a white sheet held in front of the cameras as top FIFA officials are led from their five star Zurich hotel to a Swiss prison. No cosy house arrest for them. They are, I hear, in the most basic of detention centres, required to clean their own small cells and participate in a bit of cardboard box, making old habits die hard. It's still a Swiss habit not to talk about money. It's still the rest of the world's habit to put Switzerland, corruption and money in the same sentence. So that image most Swiss say they care about so much still needs a good deal of polishing.
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Narrator/Host
And that's Imogen, folks. The French police this week say they've detained more than 18,000 migrants in the Calais region this year, more than double the number for the whole of 2014. Most of them come from Africa. They're living in tents or makeshift shelters and are worried not only about the bureaucratic hurdles they face in establishing new identities in Europe, but also about the hostility they meet and ignorance about their countries. Chris Simpson, who's worked in Africa for most of the past 20 years, has been to Calais to hear some of their stories.
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Presenter
Arab had a letter for me. He wanted me to read it out loud for myself, just so I really understood. It came from a highly reputable international organization and endorsed Arab's right to asylum, giving details of his arrest and harassment by security services in Ethiopia. Surely with this in his hand, Arab argued, doors would have to open, a safe refuge would have to be provided. A forced return would mean, at best incarceration, at worst execution. He asked me to advise him on what to do with the text in front of me. Arab's friends looked on approvingly. They were mainly young men in their twenties from the Oromo, part of the migrant community. Ethiopians had carved out their territory in Calais, camped out in shabby tents and shelters in what has become known as the jungle. The Oromo paid little heed to the red nosed clowns putting on a show down the hill from where we sat, a valiant attempt by volunteer organisations to inject a little levity and brightness into into the lives of increasingly frustrated migrants living thousands of miles from home. My new friend said they might wander down later for a food distribution. They'd already been handed some shoes, biscuits and old clothes. Perhaps they'd have preferred political magazines and a pack of legal documents that they wanted to talk politics and human rights. I said I knew Africa, this was true. But did I know Ethiopia, a country that often sets itself apart from the rest of the continent? More to the point, did I know oromia, home to 27 million people and including the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa? Up to a point I gave a quick layman synthesis of what I had picked up in libraries and on my travels. It appeared to pass muster. A now less guarded Arab was willing to chat and at length, polite but fiercely partisan. He talked me through his family history, a father who had taken on the state and and died for his trouble. Arab said he too had faced persecution. He had been arrested at home, moved to neighboring Kenya, only to find himself a target there as well. I had listened to a similar monologue six months earlier. This time the house was a venue in Eastleigh, a sprawling district of Nairobi dominated for years by Somalis and Ethiopians. My host was Ahmed, a refugee and campaigner from Ogaden, the vast and still contested southeastern region of Ethiopia, where over 90% of the population are ethnic Somalis. With Ahmed, a brief Discussion on refugee rights had segued into a history lesson, taking in pointed reminders that Ethiopia was an artificial creation, simply the old Abyssinia, plus a series of illegally acquired territories. Ahmed referred heatedly to imperialist conspiracies of the 19th century. I wondered if he wanted me to apologise for Britain. The voice recorder died on me after two hours, but Ahmed kept on going, lucid and passionate, he knew the odds were stacked against him. His home region would not gain the kind of freedom he talked about. The movement fighting for independence was fizzling out. The Ethiopian government had the military prowess and diplomatic clout to keep the situation under control. The cause Ahmed espoused was deemed too obscure, too marginal to get any real attention paid to it. Ogaden's spiky realities would be raised by human rights groups and debated on social media amongst the Ethiopia and Somali diaspora. But it was no one's idea of a big news story. At least Ahmed had Eastleigh and a high profile role in a community where he felt at home. Arab had only Calais, or rather its grubby hinterland. He had been there a few days but was not warming to the place. I quizzed him cheerfully about meeting fellow refugees in the spirit of solidarity he could find, but the Oromo seemed wary of their neighbors. Arab talked of spies and informants he wanted to keep to his own people. Away from the political discussions, Arab was much more hesitant. Although well qualified as an engineer, he did not know his next move. Where were the UN agencies to back his asylum request? Should he go to Paris or Geneva to get the paperwork in order? But how would he get the train fare? He had friends in Germany, but it would be the same problem. Did I know any lawyers? I did not. I offered suggestions instead, about checking on immigration websites, getting his papers together. Looking on the bright side, I drifted off, looking to get more testimonies, perhaps somebody from Eritrea or Darfur, before making the long walk back to the relative comfort of my hotel.
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Narrator/Host
Chris Simpson in Calais Britain may not make much these days, but it's a different story in South Korea, where manufacturing has helped the country to the better than expected growth figures published this week. South Korea makes all kinds of things, and amongst the most sizable are ships. The world's biggest shipyard is at Ulsan, on the southern tip of the peninsula. It employs 60,000 people and turns out a ship as long as three football pitches every four or five days. Steve Evans has been there. It got him thinking.
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Steve Evans
There was something unsettling about Ulsan, but I couldn't quite work out what it was. The city felt like somewhere I knew, yet I'd never been there. And then it clicked. It reminded me of those long lost British shipbuilding cities on those rivers redolent with memory, like the Tyne, the Weir, the Clyde, the Mersey, where houses used to be dwarfed by cranes and ships and thousands of workers streamed out when the shifts ended. Of course, I never knew those shipyards. I only remember them, if that's the right word, through the old sepia photographs, sheened now with nostalgia, Ulsan is like that. At the Hyundai Heavy Industries yard. There, giant cranes, aptly called Goliaths, dominate the skyline. The city pulsates with work and wages and the activities of un idle hands. In the dark, the lights on the gantry cranes shine across the streets and homes. By day, the clang of construction rings out in the old British pictures and newsreel workers would head home on foot or maybe push bikes. At Ulsan, they swarm out on motor scooters and when they're out, they drive the company car, eat in the company restaurants, laugh and cry in the company theatre, shop in the company department store, have their children in the company hospital, learn in the company schools, look at pictures in the company art gallery, cheer for the company football team. One of the workers who's been there longest, from virtually the start in 1974, told me that people thought of Ulsan as the Hyundai Kingdom. Everything here is Hyundai, Lee Sang Bok said as he drove his Hyundai car down the highway, named after the company founder. That founder, Chung Ju Jung, is honoured in the company museum on the shipyard. He'd earned his money the hard way. Born a peasant who who left home to labor on building sites and then to form his own construction company. With the Korean War and the aftermath, his business thrived. Initially he made cars in Ulsan, but then turned to shipbuilding. He was supremely ambitious and supremely confident. Legend has it that he toured London seeking finance, and when it was pointed out that South Korea had no shipbuilding industry, he took out a banknote on which was depicted a famous ship built in Korea in the 16th century. He was also supremely careful with money. In the company museum, there are two pairs of shoes which Mr. Chung is said to have worn for 30 years, getting them constantly repaired. Despite being a multi billionaire, his thrift has clearly paid off. What there is about Old Santou is that air of prosperity you detect when you go to a place full of busy hands earning wages. It was, by the way, one of the ways of telling whether the local colliery had closed in a town in South Wales where I lived in the late 80s. No PIT, no fresh paint. And before living in Korea, I lived in Germany, another country that has, like South Korea, rebuilt itself from the rubble of war. And I used to notice prosperity there, too. Virtually every small town I went to would have on the outskirts a small industrial estate, and on that would often be a company which was in the top two or three in its particular field in the world. Obscure stuff like making propellers for ships or the glue for credit cards or pencils. And I used to contrast these prosperous places with my own hometown in South Wales. It's not that people in towns with plenty of employment in Korea or Germany flaunt their prosperity. It's not bling, but something much harder to define. The cars aren't run down, paint isn't peeling. Lads don't hang around on corners. And so it is in Ulsan. Lee Sang Bok, the long serving employee who showed me round, started at the heavy end as a teenager, but now he's an inspector, he glows with pride. The yard, he says, is his identity. Each evening he and his family, including his aged mother in law, eat together. A picture of prosperity and family companionship. Very traditional, very enviable.
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Narrator/Host
Echoes of the Welsh valleys in South Korea. Steve Evans there now. We started this program in the far north of France. We ended 700 miles away in the southwest, where, if you're driving this weekend, you may well find yourself dawdling along behind large flocks of cattle or sheep. Because the start of summer means a change of scene for livestock, not just there, but in other parts of Europe and further afield as well. The Trans du Manse, as it's known, sees the animals being moved from their winter quarters, often in the valleys, to the high summer pastures. Graham Fife is in the Pyrenees, where the practice has been going on every year since at least the Middle Ages.
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Graham Fife
Massat is a bustling little village in the verdant foothills of the eastern Pyrenees in the Arieige des Partements, which, although one of the poorest regions in France, is famous for its intensive but small scale stock rearing. So the transhumance at the end of May or beginning of June, when cows, sheep and goats leave their lowland byres and pens to be driven up to the high summer pastures, is a day to herald the beginning of the warm season. The year casting off its padded jacket after the nip and pinch of winter, I cycled up one of the several mountain passes that overlook the valley in bright sunshine at 4 o' clock on Friday afternoon to meet the first herd of cattle heading for their overnight corral in town. The road winds up the steepish climb through woodland, famous hereabouts for the profusion of mushrooms which sprout from the rich mulch of the ground beneath the trees in autumn. I met the herd some way below the summit, a dense mass of docile cows lumbering round one of the hairpins, led by a diminutive man wearing an oversize black berry, flat as a cowpat. He was holding a tall staff which he planted in front of him, swung to the side as he came abreast and planted again. The motion of the staff mimicked the swaying gait of the animals, and he and they ambled as if in a trance. Other herdsmen kept the cows moving, prodded them to stop them straying off the road after the vegetation in the verges. I walked along with the chief herdsman, his face weathered and lined by sun and long days working in the open. When did you set out? I asked. Seven o', clock, he said. They'd come 16 kilometres from the valley, on the other side of the ridge, where the blueberries grow. A long day, I said. You must be tired. He smiled and said, toujours fatigue. Jamais fatigue. Always tired, never tired. By 10 o' clock on Saturday morning, Massat's temporary corrals are full with some 500 head of cattle, the cramped and restive beasts weaving and shoving. A tiny calf gets slammed into the rails. The herdsman taps a boisterous muzzle or two in reproof. At 10:30, the great drove of animals moves off to the gamalang gonging of cow bells. The cattle, free of the barriers on the road again, sniff the verdure, the scent of their summer holidays. Further back trots a flock of Tarascone sheep. Their wool is of poor quality, but they produce distinctive, tasty meat and cheese. I talk to a local shepherd, Gerard, who unleashes a hogo of garlic that would pole axe Dracula. He'll be tending upwards of 1500 animals this summer, most of the time outdoors, taking naps as and when he can. He wasn't sure if there was enough grazing yet. Cows need about 22 centimetres, he says, and the sheep nibble off what they leave. He has five Welsh border collies and absolutely the best sheep dogs. He assures me they are indefatigable workers, known to push themselves to exhaustion, even to collapse. He also has a mountain dog against wolves. Oh, yes, he says, there are still wolves. Mountain dogs, Mountain men. Nick Flanagan, an expat Liverpudlian, who's lived here for over 20 years, told me that the men of Masat were always known for their belligerence. When rumours spread of war between Germany and France in 1940, one of the men from a nearby village asked a neighbor which side the massatoire were on. Oh, France. Thank goodness for that, he said. If they're fighting for us, we'll be ok. The transhumans got mechanised. At one point, the beasts were ferried up to the pastures in lorries. However, the old way was revived some while ago, and though lack of money means that the event isn't quite the day long, Beano it was when I first saw it. And Matthew from Shepherd's Breakfast in a marquise charcuterie. Cheese, coffee, red wine and a celebratory banquet that evening, it's still a great spectacle, a fine example of what the French call animation. There's no fixed date for the return of the beasts. That depends on the mood of the weather, so it's something of an anti climax. By contrast, one October in these mountains, I chanced on a young shepherdess squatting on the ground, looking up the hillside through binoculars, checking on her flock. We chatted for a while and suddenly she paused, sniffed at the air and said, sa son la fin. It smells like the end.
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Narrator/Host
Sounds like it too. Graham Fife there in Massat, in the Pyrenees, bringing this edition to an end. More Windows on the World in our two editions next week, on Thursday morning as well as on Saturday. Do join us. Goodbye.