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From Our Own Correspondent
Is Mr Erdogan Listening?
00:28:22
Is the Turkish prime minister Mr Erdogan listening to the demonstrators? James has the...
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- [00:00]
Chris Morris
Hello from the.
- [00:01]
Paul Moss
From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:12]
Kate Adie
Demonstrators on the streets of Istanbul for another night. Is it time for Prime Minister Erdogan to start listening? There are fears in the Golan Heights that the war in Syria will now spill over into Israel. The first woman in space. Was she really Russia's perfect proletarian heroine? Or was her life hijacked by the Kremlin? And why is everyone so horrible about us? We're eavesdropping on the expat chat. In Dubai, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due back home today after a four day trip to Africa. He returns to a crisis and to demands for his resignation. There's now been a week of angry protests in Istanbul, Ankara and other major cities. The demonstrators say Mr. Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian, that he is trying to force conservative Islamic values on Turkey. A constitution secular nation. James Reynolds has been monitoring developments in Istanbul.
- [01:09]
James Reynolds
In 15 years as a foreign correspondent, I've covered occasional revolts and uprisings. They often take days to get to. So it's been rather surprising to find that I'm able to cover Turkey's popular protests almost entirely from my own apartment in Istanbul. In the evenings, police tear gas fired near the Bosphorus Strait has drifted into the sitting room. At about nine o' clock every night, my neighbors stand at their windows and clang their pots and pans in support of the protesters. During the day, from my balcony, I can watch protesters heading along the street, past my local butchers to Taksim Square and Gezi Park. There, the protesters have set up their own mini republic. It has its own borders, made up of makeshift barricades which the police do not cross. The mini republic doesn't have a leader or a constitution, but it does have a way of life. Many students now sleep overnight in the park. They've even brought their own mattresses. The park has a collection of kiosks and even a makeshift chemist's. Many volunteers spend the day picking up rubbish. The protesters who've made the square and the park their home want different things. One man told me that he wanted a socialist revolution. A geography teacher said that he just wanted a better contract at work. Environmentalists want to stop the government from redeveloping Gezi Park. That was the issue that sparked the protests in the first place. All of them have one thing in common. They oppose the Prime Minister recep Tayyip Erdogan, a 16 year old student who'd taken the day off school, called him a dictator. A young engineer told me that she hated the prime Minister because he was always telling people what to do and how many children to have, what they should eat and drink. Many of the demonstrators fear that Mr. Erdogan wants to impose a more conservative Islamic way of life on them. Their evidence includes a new law restricting the sale of alcohol, voluntary Koran studies in primary school, and even a Turkish Airlines ruling, later overturned, which banned its air stewardesses from wearing red lipstick. Our deepest fear is that Turkey will become a new Iran, a friend of mine told me. To outsiders, this fear is hard to understand. There are neighborhoods in Istanbul in which you can happily sit outside with a glass of wine, and women are not made to wear headscarves. But still, the protesters believe that their freedoms are under attack. Recep Tayyip Erdogan denies that he wants Turkey to become an Islamic republic. But he also appears to see no reason to abandon any of his ambitions. He wants to change the country's constitution to create a powerful presidency. Many here believe that Mr. Erdogan has only one person in mind for this new job, himself. A decade ago, Tayyip Erdogan identified and built a new coalition in Turkey made up of the religious, the socially conservative, and and a working class which always felt ignored and patronized by the country's liberal elite. That coalition has won him three elections. He must surely feel that he has a better understanding of his country than the divided factions he's defeated several times at the polls. For a long time, the prime minister has followed and shaped the public mood in Turkey. He understood that many here were fed up with indecisive political leaders. He won particular acclaim a few years ago for walking out of a debate in Davos with Israel's President, Shimon Peres. I like the fact that he stands up for the country, a member of Mr. Erdogan's party told me at a conference held last September. But in politics, a decade in power can turn a strength into a weakness. A general rule seems to hold. The longer a leader stays in office, the worse his or her popular instincts become. This week, in one of Istanbul's conservative neighborhoods, I found solid support for the prime minister. But one man, a gun maker, did have a suggestion. I like him, he said, but I think that he should listen more. Listening, though, is not one of Mr. Erdogan's immediate strengths. The prime minister is a man more at ease giving instructions than hearing criticisms. He's called the protesters pillagers and looters. By contrast, some of his colleagues have offered apologies for police actions and understanding for the demonstrators. I've not met anyone who believes that Tayyip Erdogan's position as prime minister is under threat, but the protests have made him look more out of touch than he did before. For an elected politician, that is always a dangerous moment from my balcony. I'll tell you what happens next.
- [06:04]
Kate Adie
James Reynolds in Istanbul the people of the Golan Heights, that territory squeezed against Syria and Lebanon, are worried, and not for the first time, about the danger of getting caught up in their neighbours wars. The Syrian conflict has already spilled over into Lebanon and is showing signs of coming their way too. Bellicose rhetoric from Iran and the involvement now of fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement are doing nothing to ease their fears. The Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, has warned Israel not to carry out further air strikes on his country, and he specifically mentioned the Golan Heights annexed and administered by Israel when he threatened reprisals. Wira Davis says the people who live there are becoming increasingly apprehensive.
- [06:50]
Wira Davis
After more years than I'd care to remember. Reporting from across the Middle East, I've got many favourite places, but without hesitation, to near the top of my list would come the Golan Heights. This wild, sparsely populated area is mostly a volcanic plateau bordered by the Sea of Galilee to the west, by the Yarmoukh river to the south, and by Mount Hermon to the north. What has always drawn me to the region is the wonderfully rich and diverse wildlife. Birds of prey, reptiles, jackals and a host of rarely seen nocturnal creatures thrive in the canyons and natural springs that lie hidden across the plateau. The Golan, like much of the land in this volatile region, is disputed territory. It's internationally recognized as Syrian land, but it was captured by Israel in the Arab Israeli War of 1967, and most of the area remained under Israeli occupation after the subsequent war in 1973. Although the Golan doesn't hold the same historical and religious significance for Israelis as the occupied Palestinian West Bank, Israel has nonetheless steadily increased its military and civilian presence in the Golan Heights. Settlers here are mainly, but not exclusively, drawn by the richness of the volcanic soil rather than historical Jewish attachment to the land. Bitter winter snows and sub zero temperatures have now given way to warm blue skies full of birdsong. This was always one of Israel's quietest and most peaceful de facto frontiers. Until now. Despite the ideological chasm, the bellicose language and military maneuvers on both sides of the Israel Syria border in recent decades, there was always some sort of unwritten understanding between the two countries. After 1973, war never looked remotely likely here. There was certainly nothing compared to the constant tension just a few miles to the northwest on Israel's volatile border with Lebanon. Talk there of a new war with Hezbollah is never far from the lips of military commentators or the pages of Israel's tenacious if speculative, newspapers. Syria's brutal civil war may be having more of a direct impact in some of its other neighbors, but Israelis, too, are feeling more than a little uncomfortable as shells and rockets land on this side of the frontier. Some of these incidents are accidental. The fighting in Syrian villages like Jamla is so close that Israeli farmers and kibbutz residents can take time out to stare across the plain, watching as pro government artillery units pummel opposition forces in the village. Occasionally, these shells fly wide of their mark and land on the Israeli side. Yael Sferia has lived in the Golan for 25 years. He in the lush if slightly aging kibbutz of Aloni Habashan, the mother of seven, talks phlegmatically about the dramatic events in Syria. Sure, a few shells have landed one actually quite close to a house, Mrs. Sferiyeh tells me, but we're not really concerned that Israel is going to get involved. She is, though, clearly apprehensive about who or what might eventually replace the Assad regime in Damascus a regime, remember, that has kept a relatively stable peace with Israel for 40 years, even though, conversely, both countries are still officially at war. She echoes the concerns of many in Israel and in the wider region that ultra conservative Salafi Muslims are becoming increasingly prominent in the fight for Syria. Firebrand rhetoric and threats to turn a new Syria into an Islamic caliphate sends shudders down the spines of liberals, women, and secularists across the region. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, adds Gael Sveria ruefully. The level of brutality and the number of civilian deaths in Syria has brought calls from across the region for Bashar al Assad to resign. So when an unnamed senior Israeli intelligence official was recently quoted as saying it might be preferable that he remained in power, there were accusations that Israel was more concerned about its own political self interest than supporting calls for wider democratic reform across the Middle East. But whatever the outcome of the struggle for Syria's future, Israel is clearly planning for the worst. Across the vast Sinai Desert to the south, on the frontier with Egypt, and now along the length of the Golan Heights, huge border fences have been built in almost no time at all. Three meters high, this apparently impregnable galvanized steel barrier is like a cold silver coloured vein stretching across the landscape. It may be cutting a precious wilderness in two, but Israel is certainly hoping that whatever the cost of this pristine environment, the undeniably ugly fence will offer added protection from events unfolding in neighbouring Syria.
- [11:53]
Kate Adie
And that's Wira Davis. European Union leaders are warning that Bosnia risks falling further behind other countries in the Balkans as political divisions between the country's ethnic groups intensify. A recent high level meeting between EU officials and the Bosnian government was cancelled due to lack of progress. The country has been at peace for nearly 20 years, since the end of the civil war when Serbs, Krauts and Muslims all fought against each other. But as Chris Morris has been learning in Mostar, it is still finding it hard to come to terms with the past.
- [12:27]
Chris Morris
We walked into the school principal's office and he was already on his feet. 25 years, he said. He got 25 years. I was nonplussed for a moment. We'd just gone in to say hello. Then I remembered a verdict was due at the UN tribunal in the Hague against six Bosnian Croat officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1990s. It turned out that their leader, Yudranko Prilic, had just been given a prison sentence of 25 years. Is it enough? The principal asked rhetorically. We sat down. I was in one of his detention camps, he said. One of my former students arrested me and took me there, and later it was another one of my students who set me free. There was no malice in his voice whatsoever, but some memories are never quite forgotten. A little later we were standing outside in Spanish Square, right on what used to be the front line in Mostar between Bosnian Croat forces and the mainly Muslim or Bosniak government army. A group of tourists pass by, heading towards the restaurants in the old town. That was then, but this is now. Two decades have passed. Then an elderly lady approached us, smartly dressed and carrying a shopping bag. It's not enough, she said, as if in answer to the principal's question. Again there was no preamble, but this time it was clear what she was talking about. She gestured at some bullet holes in the scarred wall of a building across the road, yet to be rebuilt. Cars sped by and a bus hooted an impatient horn. Her son, she said, had been burnt to death when he was trapped in a building which had been attacked. I had three children, but he was the best of them. A tear rolled down her cheek from beneath her sunglasses. Now they've sentenced the leaders, she said. But the real executioners are still out there walking the streets, and I just want them to know that I'm still here, too, every day. On the surface, to an untrained eye, Mostar is a pretty normal sort of place. But this is Bosnia, and there is a web of complexity at every turn. Earlier this year, just down the road outside the mayor's office, a small Fleur de Lis shaped memorial to government soldiers who died defending the city during the war was destroyed by a bomb blast. No one knows exactly who blew the monument up. No one saw anything. But everyone can guess. So is Mostar doomed to a future of suspicion and division? Not necessarily. It's certainly divided at the moment, but there are plenty of people who want to move on, plenty of people planning for a different future. And that optimistic vision was captured in a photograph taken in the city a couple of months ago and circulated widely on the Internet. It showed a young girl draped in a Croatian flag kissing a boy draped in the flag of Bosnia's third main community, the Serbs. The story goes that the two of them were walking through Mostar hand in hand as part of an international parade. When an older woman asked the girl how she could hold hands with a Serb, she responded by kissing him. Evidence, said a comment posted alongside the picture when it first appeared that new generations are not willing to continue with war in their minds, and to outsiders, that all sounds terribly sensible. Bosnia is falling further behind, warns the eu, and it is incumbent on local politicians to do something about it. But there's always an excuse not to act. Nepotism and corruption are certainly factors, but there are also those triggers which bring bad memories flooding back. European officials often talk about reconciliation, as they must do. Even small gestures can make a difference. The trouble is that it's so much easier to urge compromise if you weren't there. But for those who were, some things inevitably can only be healed by the passage of time. Nearby, beneath Mostar's iconic old bridge, rebuilt as a symbol of reconciliation, the Naretva river runs deep and blue. The surface is calm and free flowing, but you can sense the powerful undercurrents
- [16:58]
Kate Adie
and that's Chris Morris is the Russian president Vladimir Putin, dragging his country back to the sort of authoritarian rule it suffered in the Soviet era. It's an accusation constantly levelled against him. Civil society and political dissent face increasingly ruthless suppression. School textbooks are being told what sort of Russian history to promote, May Day parades and military Shows of force are once again being used to distract attention from economic problems. And it seems even the Heroes of the 19th century 1960 space race are not immune. The world's first woman in space, Valenty Tereshkova, is a member of Mr. Putin's party, United Russia. And on the 50th anniversary of her historic flight, Lucy Ash has been to her hometown of Yaroslavl.
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Lucy Ash
I follow the factory boss up endless staircases and down long corridors. As the light filters through grimy windows and bounces off green paint, I feel trapped in a vast aquarium, or rather, a tank of aspic. Here is an impeccably preserved piece of the Soviet Union, right down to the browbeaten babushkas listlessly sweeping the floors and the hammers and sickles decorating the walls. We stop by a metal loom gathering dust. Piotrt Tsiolkuschwein, director of the Krasnyy Perikop textile plant, strokes the machine reverentially. This, he says, is where Tereshkova worked. Schalkeschwein joined the factory at the same time as Valentyna Tereshkova, the world's first woman to be sent into space. He remembers her organizing picnics for members of the Communist Youth League and spending her free time jumping out of aeroplanes. Nothing unusual about that. By the 1960s, almost every Soviet town had its own parachute club. But one lunch break, he heard the news about his workmate. With dark eyes and plump cheeks, the textile worker spent three days orbiting the Earth, then returned to her factory in an open top car laden with flowers. Treated like royalty, she was the perfect proletarian heroine in the Cold War space race. She was an icon for gender equality. Four other women trained alongside her, and some were graduates with technical expertise. But the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made the final choice. He liked Tereshkova's fresh faced looks and propaganda potential. Tereshkova was celebrated in songs, and her face was put on postage stamps. Soon after her flight, she was married off to a fellow cosmonaut, Andrian Nikolaev Khrushchev gave the bride away at a wedding filled with the Soviet equivalent of hello magazine photographers. When the couple eventually split, their divorce needed official approval from the Kremlin. In short, Tereshkova's life was hijacked by the Party. Over the years, her image has been carefully preserved. In the entrance of the new planetarium built in her hometown of Yaroslavl, there's a huge stained glass portrait in which she wears her helmet like a sci fi halo. Behind the propaganda Though there were always lingering questions, rumors circulated. There were serious doubts about her abilities. Tereshkova has done little to quash speculation over the years. She has an aversion to interviews, despite being a prominent member of the Duma, Russia's parliament. So I ask her daughter Yelena, was it true your mother felt unwell and vomited in the space capsule? No, no, no, no, no, says Yelena, widening her heavily made up eyes. What about assertions by the head of training in his memoirs that your mother's performance in space was unsatisfactory and that she failed to communicate properly with ground control? I've read that stuff, says Yelena. Mum says some people were very jealous and it was a complicated time. To find out more about her early life, I'd planned a trip to a little museum near the village where Tereshkova was born. Yelena said it was closed for repairs, but I decided to go anyway. As the guide was showing me around the replica home and pointing out Tereshkova's father's accordion, the only genuine item on display, Yelena turned up with a bunch of local dignitaries. Her panda eyes widened in shock. This place isn't ready for visits, she hissed. On the other side of the river Volga, I may have strayed off limits again. I'd heard all about Tereshkova's heroic father, Vladimir, who was burned inside his tank near the Finnish border. But what about his surviving sister, the cosmonaut's 89 year old aunt? I find Lidia Aksionova in a run down house under a cracked ceiling. Bottles of pills are scattered on the floor around her bed. Valentina never cried when she scraped her knees. She told me she was tough, just like me. The old woman's voice quavers as she talks about being sent to the front. As a teenager I defended Leningrad, held a machine gun. But now everyone's forgotten about that. My roof leaks and I can't afford to fix it. All my pension goes on medicines. Surely her famous niece could do something to help? I ask. She's one of the most influential women in Russia, isn't she? Oh, I don't want to bother her. She's busy and she has her own family, says the aunt. We're proud, cut in Lydia's son Alexei, a Chechen war veteran. We don't ask favors.
- [22:42]
Kate Adie
Lucy Ash In Russia Remember all those stories a few years ago of the property crash in Dubai? Of buildings half finished cranes standing idle, the economy at a standstill? Well, all that misery is well and truly over. Apparently There are forecasts of up to 5% growth and investor confidence is said to be well and truly back. And with it returning Westerners keen to give up a year or two of their lives to make their fortunes in the United Arab Emirates. Paul Moss was in Dubai the other day, getting a taste of that expat lifestyle.
- [23:15]
Paul Moss
It was lucky, really, that I was too late for dinner. The bill at the restaurant came to $210 per head, service not included, and the guests seemed to pay it without so much as blinking. But this was my first full evening in Dubai. I had things to sort out, and so it wasn't until 11pm That I found myself being shown to the table. Dessert already finished, post prandial drinking now in full swing. More vodka. My host was yelling. It was hard to see whether this was an order, a suggestion, or maybe just a statement of achievement. More vodka. A bottle of Russia's finest was quickly consumed, and then we moved on to gratuitously complex cocktails, mine made of tequila, grapefruit juice, freshly ground ginger, coffee and whipped cream. I shouldn't have been surprised, really. Even the directions to the restaurant smacked of excess. Take a cab to the boulevard, walk past Bulgari, pass the ivy, take a right at Cartier, and you can't miss it. They were right. You couldn't. The restaurant's decor was straight out of an interior design magazine, as if the owners had started with a touched up photograph and then magically rendered it into three dimensions. Isn't this so perfect? Purred my host, who came from Iran. The question was clearly rhetorical, but the woman sitting opposite begged to differ. We were at Teatro last night, she said. I just love that place. It was the opening salvo in a contest of connoisseurship, but a contest that was won surprisingly fast. Oh, said my host, suddenly crestfallen. Maybe we should have gone to Teatro to night. She hurried away to the toilet. One heel had broken off her very high heeled shoes, making her drunken gait even more unsteady, as if Charlie Chaplin had a lesser known and even more comical sister. I found myself with a new neighbor, her opening conversational line almost designed to offend. I can't stand dirty people, she told me, apropos of nothing. I can't stand poor people either. I went to India once. How those people smell. What was I supposed to say? It's not the sort of comment that invites discussion. But I felt incriminated if I said nothing. In fact, I began to feel incriminated just by being there. What was I doing there anyway? The simple answer was simple enough, a weekend stopover in Dubai. A friend had asked some of her friends who lived there to take me out. So here I was, being taken. These people were kind enough to host a stranger in, yet seem to have emerged from some strange combination of sitcom and horror film characters so improbable no satirist would dare invent them. In fact, they seemed to crave a writer's attention. You're a journalist, said another woman. Why don't you write something about Dubai? Everyone's always so horrible about us. She'd come here from Australia, she explained, to work as an air hostess, but then she met her businessman husband and had now settled down. People always bang on about there being so much wealth and luxury here alongside poverty. But that's not true. I mean, I don't see any poverty, her friend agreed. It's true, she said, that construction workers in Dubai used to have to sleep in shipping containers. But that doesn't happen now. Well, perhaps, but laborers here do still work long hours in temperatures up to 50 degrees, and then go back to crammed hostels, often with no windows or air conditioning. I was considering how best to explain this, but then another bottle of vodka arrived amidst much cheering, and it somehow didn't feel like the right moment to discuss migrant worker housing conditions. Instead, I found myself being questioned about my life back home in England. Do you go to the Harkasen? I was asked by a Dutch woman sat at the end of the table. It's in Mayfair. And then she named several other places I haven't heard of, let alone frequented. I might have been tempted to bluff my way through this, to pretend that I was in fact a regular at Fluffs and Yo Yo's or whatever they were called, but I didn't even know what kind of establishments they were. Other restaurants, perhaps a night club, or maybe just a particularly upmarket chiropodist? No, I said. I've never been to any of them. The Dutch woman looked at me as though I just confessed that I never went to school or had never actually owned a pair of underpants, and it struck me then that she had no sense her questions might be considered intimidating. On the contrary, she was feeling intimidated, because if she couldn't talk about Huckissons or other restaurants or how much she adored carpaccio of guava, well, what could she talk about? There was an awkward silence, a gaping black hole of conversational failure, but then the former air hostess piped up to remind me of her request. You won't forget, will you? She said. You will write something about Dubai, about all of us. I promised her that I would certainly consider it.
- [28:12]
Kate Adie
Paul Moss, as good as his word and bringing to a close this edition. There'll be more from correspondence near and far in our programme on Saturday morning. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.