The semester at Bilgi University in Istanbul is in full swing. All over Turkey, people are protesting about the undemocratic direction of the country and the actions of the current president, and the weather is April everywhere. We students are facing our first exams, the so-called midterms, which I am not used to from my journalism studies in Brno.
I've been at Erasmus for two months now, but it feels like two weeks. The city is big, the whole of Turkey is big, and I still have something on my agenda. I practically don't find time for myself here because I want to spend time with my roommates. So in the meantime, I'm still trying to catch up on homework and find cheap food in expensive Istanbul.
I am now also devoting my time to monitoring the situation in the country. Less than a month ago, on 19 March, Turkish President Erdoğan had his opponent for the presidential elections, Ekrem Imamoğlu, arrested. People began to protest against the politically motivated arrest, even though the President had banned protests. Just as he restricts access to social networks or closes key metro stops and squares from time to time. For me, this situation in practice meant that I had to download a VPN to use social networks and try to avoid all protest sites. I don´t want to risk being arrested by the police or recorded by cameras at protests and having my residency permit process cancelled.
Before midterms, however, the students had an extended holiday - instead of the original two days off to celebrate the end of Ramadan, we extended it to nine days. Some “Erasmus” students took advantage of this to explore Istanbul, while others travelled around rainy Turkey or went abroad. I, for example, went to Egypt with my friends. We replenished our cultural and historical knowledge and escaped the summer temperatures. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip ended up being an intense journey of discovery. In addition to Luxor and Aswan, we saw the streets of Cairo, where people live in such poverty that we can´t imagine it in the Czech Republic. In retrospect, I found that 30% of the people there live below the poverty line, having to make do with a dirty mud hut and begging on the streets. I will use what I saw in Egypt both in my life and in my studies to understand some of the issues in my “Current Events in the Middle East” course.
What´s a bit more complicated in Istanbul is the local student life. It´s a big city, everyone has different plans and interests, and it´s hard to maintain relationships with “Erasmus” or local students. Our Erasmus student network (ESN), which is like a club for Erasmus students to organise programmes and bring Erasmus students together, doesn´t organise as many events as I expected. Therefore, I spend most of my time with my roommates, mainly four Czechs. The advantage is that I am developing a friendship with someone I will be able to see in the Czech Republic after Erasmus. The disadvantage is that I am not having a “typical Erasmus experience” with students of other nationalities.
A potential for new friendships could have been a joint trip to beautiful Cappadocia, a region in the middle of Turkey known for its rocky scenery and hot air balloons. But alas, groups formed, and it turned out that the French are having fun together, the Germans are having fun together, the same for the Italians... And none of the Spanish students have shown up at ESN events so far. So, we are left with the Czechs and sometimes the Slovaks join us. I have high expectations for the trip to Izmir that ESN is going to organize in May - hopefully I will be able to join the groups of international students there.
The author of the article is a student of the Faculty of Social Sciences and a member of the student editorial team of M Magazine.