I spoke with Chris Morris, BBC correspondent and author of The New Turkey: The Quiet Revolution on the Edge of Europe
In the interview I asked the following questions:
1. Tell us about yourself
2. You have lived in many places as a journalist. Have you written about all of them?
3. Have you considered an updated version of The New Turkey
4. You left Turkey in 2001 but the book was not published until 2005. Why the wait and what was the process?
5. How did you handle the other books in the same genre written about Turkey (Kinzer, Mango, Pope…)?
6. Living in Turkey you learn quickly there are taboo subjects. How did you handle those as a journalist?
7. How are you as a journalist dealing with day-to-day crises able to keep sight of the big picture trends and themes effecting the world and convey those to your audience?
[Note: This was supposed to be a video interview but due to technical difficulties, i.e. poor internet connection making the video unwatchable, I transcribed the conversation so you can read it here.]
Duke: “Chris, tell us about your yourself.”
Chris: “Thanks Duke. I’m currently the Europe correspondent for BBC news which means I cover pretty much the European Union countries… I have a lot of work at the moment on the crisis in the Euro zone. I’ve been working for BBC news for nearly 20 years and of that time I was in Turkey for just over four and then traveling to Turkey from odd points in Europe for another 3 or 4. I first arrived in Turkey in 1996 and left in 2001 and have been going back there ever since really. I hope anyone who does read my book will recognize – despite the criticism- that I really love the place. Of all the places I’ve lived in the world, still its the one place I go back to.”
Duke: “I get that impression reading the book. Let me ask a question based on what you said- being a correspondent you spend time in different places for a few years and then you move to another place- it’s almost like being in the military but you get a little bit longer. Have you tried to write a book about everywhere you go?”
Chris: “No. I think it’s an example of the fact that Turkey really kind of grabbed me. I really wanted to write about it. I’m just about to write a book at the moment about the EU economic crisis. I spent 4 years in India but the market there is pretty saturated. You got a lot of people writing books and even though there is so much to say about those places, so much color, I did not feel like there was anything I really wanted to contribute, whereas for Turkey I thought there wasn’t a huge amount of literature in English on the way Turkey was changing, and I think at the time I was there it moved a lot. Its moved a lot in the last decade since I left and I’ve been going back there a lot and this felt like a good time to introduce the place and the changes that were happening, to an English speaking audience. Turkey is a place for Europeans that has become more and more important.”
Duke: “Yes, I would agree. I think that it is a very significant time. It’s interesting. In fact it is changing so fast that by the time new books come out you feel like they need an update. Have you thought about updating your book?”
Chris: “A few people have asked about that. It’s partially up to the publisher. It came out in 2005 and a lot has happened since then. I think most of the analysis in it still stands. A little bit of background: I arrived in Turkey in 1996. There are two ways of doing the job of a foreign correspondent. One, you can go somewhere as an expert- you’ve got a degree in Mandarin, and you’ve studied it academically for years and years. The other really is what I did with Turkey. I’d never been to Turkey when I got posted there and sometimes that’s a deliberate strategy. It’s a blank sheet of paper. And the idea is that as you discover it you form opinions and you can share those ideas with the audience whether its on TV, radio, online, or in the written press.
And I think I arrived in the country that needed changing. It felt like it was kind of stuck in a bit of a time-warp and political stalemate and everything was very stratified. And as I was there that change really developed and its kind of accelerated over the last few years. A lot of the changes are for the better. Some of it, the jury’s still out. I mean Turkey has developed incredibly since I first arrived in 1996. It’s pretty much unrecognizable, I think. It’s a much richer country, a more diverse country. But clearly still a country not least lived in a very difficult neighborhood at the moment as we have seen over the last few years. At first Iraq and now Syria and other problems on its borders and those are not going to go away quickly.”
Duke: ”You left in 2001 but the book did not come out until 2005, did you feel like you needed to do more research? What was the process?”
Chris: “I was traveling back quite a bit during that period. I was basically covering the enlargement of the EU. If you remember back in 2004-05 was what they called the Big Bang Enlargement of the EU. It happened when the former communist countries- Poland, Czech Republic joined- Cyprus, of course, joined, a big thing for Turkey. And it was also the period in which movements toward Turkish membership negotiations were taking place. And I was traveling back a lot and I had been there for a few years and I was going back and that actually helped in writing the book. I had 5 years of notes, and I could go back 3 or 4 times a year and fill in specific areas that I wanted to re-explore, things I wanted to sort of rediscover a bit. It was a good way to write a book. I had slightly stepped away, but I was still very much involved in covering it. It was a good distance to have to write a book, I think, to have that perspective and to have what felt like a wealth of knowledge to talk about as well.”
Duke: ”With the anecdotes in the book it is clear that you had spoken to many different people in many different places, that comes out very strong. There had been a number of books written on Turkey- Kinzer, Mango and so forth- how did you deal with that? Had you read those books, did you ignore them? How does that process work for an author?”
Chris: “I had read them all. There was also Hugh Pope’s book which had been re-released with an updated version. It was from an American perspective whereas I wanted one from a European perspective. It felt like a bigger issue then than it does now. Where did the borders of Europe really lie? Where does Europe geographically begin and end? There is no easy answer to that but clearly Turkey is a fundamental part of that. And what role does Turkey play in that broader European landscape? And it is something that I think will still come up. As we all know the EU membership negotiations have stalled somewhat, but as the Euro-zone becomes a much tighter core there will be this outer rim of countries, Great Britain is probably going to be one of them, which will have a semi-attached relationship with the EU, and I think there are opportunities in the long term for Turkey if it does jump through all the hoops which the EU places in its path, and I think Turkey will have to make its own decision about what kind of a relationship it wants with Europe while at the same time it is working on its very complicated relationships with the Middle East which is in massive transition.”
Duke: ”One of the things you learn when you live in Turkey is that certain subjects are taboo. As a reporter you have to cover those topics regardless. How did you deal with that? How did you get people to talk to you about those subjects?”
Chris: “Let’s be honest one subject above all that was the sensitive one was the Armenian issue. And what that meant and how it fit into Turkey’s history and what it meant for the politics of Turkey and Turkey’s modern relations with other countries. Pretty much I felt like I could say what I liked about the Kurdish question. Abdullah Ocalan was captured and put on trial while I was in Turkey. I went to the first day of his trial on Imralı Island in the Sea of Marmara- a big deal for Turkey! I could pretty much say what I wanted about the Kurdish issue although it was a difficult issue to cover. I imagine although I have not been down to the southeast for a couple of years now, it seems like things have taken a turn for the worse again but certainly when I was there in 2003, southeast Turkey was a really hard place for journalists to operate because there was such a massive security apparatus. And I think it had improved. I suspect it has gotten worse again which is a shame and especially also with the uncertainty on the Syrian border. The subject which really was taboo even though that began to change a little was the Armenian question and I think its a great change the progress which Turkey and Armenia seem to be making. They are not necessarily agreeing on all points of history, but they are at least finding a way in which they can talk about them sensibly. That seems to have got stuck again. And that seems to be the problem with this current government. They promised so much when they first came to power, I mean Prime Minister Erdoğan has been in power, this is his 10th anniversary this year- it’s quite hard to sustain things- some of those quite promising initiatives have tailed off a little bit which is a real shame because that was the one issue – it was not torture, it wasn’t what was happening in the prisons, it wasn’t the Kurdish issue, it was the Armenian issue.”
Duke: ”I found that when I first arrived in Turkey. I was going to Bilkent University, and I had read Kinzer’s book. He covers the topic in detail. I broached the subject with some of my classmates, and they became very angry. I was not expecting that, but it was very tense.”
Chris: “Even though there have been changes the educational system steers people in a very clear direction. I think it is one of the things that Turkey still needs to work on is encouraging individualism within its education system. It is very much, I think, a learning by rote system, you are told what you think, you are not allowed to think for yourself… You go to small villages in eastern Turkey and so forth where people know what happened with their grandparents and what was going on in 1915. It’s still an incredibly sensitive subject. And it’s very easy for nationalist politicians, not just in Turkey but certainly on the Armenian side, for the emotions to whip up very quickly and it’s something that still needs working on. It seems to me that its a very, very tragic period, but it needs to be put in the past and people need to move on from it. To accept it and move on and deal with it in the appropriate way.”
Duke: ”It seems that even from a personal standpoint if I cannot deal with things I’ve done in the past, its very hard to move forward in a healthy way, and so from a national standpoint I think there is some truth in that.”
Chris: “I think people have varied opinions about the AKP government, but I think one of the things they did well, initially, certainly, was when I first arrived to Turkey it was a country that was basically run by a cabal of people who were trying to protect Atatürk’s legacy. And here was Atatürk, a man who changed everything, and they were trying to protect his legacy by changing nothing but keeping everything the same. You know I remember wondering around a couple of times and saying, “This is not the 1930’s, we have to move on.” And I think that’s one thing other reformers have done in the past- look at Menderes in the 1950’s and then Özal in the 1980’s. Certainly Erdoğan did, he just shook up the system a bit. The Turkey I arrived in the mid 1990’s needed that shake up. A lot of what the AKP did to begin with – development, building roads, hospitals and things, was a massive benefit for Turkey. Obviously some of the more cultural questions, the questions about dissent and freedom of opinion- the way they are, like a lot of governments, trying to deny their opponents- that isn’t healthy. But any country, I think, when somebody’s been in power for 10 years- look at Tony Blair in England- it’s hard to sustain. And it’s one of the things I like about the American system- after 2 terms or 4 years, you are out, and I think there is a lot to be said for that. I think one of the difficulties for the AKP is who comes after Erdoğan. He is such a dominant figure and has been now in Turkey for a decade. One has to wonder where the next generation of political energy is going to come from.”
Duke: ”Yes, that’s a good point. One thing that’s clear is that he has vision, he has big ideas, and nobody else seems to. His competition seems weak in the sense of being true leaders. And I think it would be healthy for him even for somebody else to have vision and ideas to push him further.”
Chris: “Yes, I agree. It’s a bit of an issue for the party obviously because he’s not going to go on forever. And it’s an issue for the country. You can’t create an alternative political movement just by being anti what he believes. I think there needs to be some sense of what’s the big push in Turkey? Does it involve renewing the drive towards EU membership, does it involve accelerating the process of trying to become more involved in the Middle East, or a bit of both? What do we do domestically? How do we still sort of bridge this divide on all sorts of issues between the liberal and secular, the secular and religious? And all of these issues are complex issues, aren’t they? You can’t solve them with a click of the fingers.”
Duke: ”Definitely”
Chris: “Somebody with some new ideas about these things needs to appear with political legitimacy. And I think that’s Erdoğan’s great achievement that after a decade he seems to have the ability to win elections with such extraordinary majorities. And it’s an indictment against the opposition that they have not been able to be a compelling enough alternative.”
Duke: “Right, it will be interesting to see. The future is very…this is a significant time in Turkey, for sure. I could talk about this all day but we have time boundaries, so let me move on. This is more my personal interest. Doing the job you do as a BBC correspondent, let me ask you because it fascinates me – how have you been able to be enmeshed in the day-to-day workings of covering the news- you mentioned that last week (we did this interview in the summer of 2012) you were off to Bulgaria to cover the bombing. Each week you begin with a plan that inevitably changes when the next crisis happens. How do you keep up with that each week and keep a handle on the big picture things that are happening in our world- the themes or trends that show what is happening on a bigger scale?”
Chris: “I think that’s really important. I find that I need to step back and try and put some perspective on things. I think that whenever you’re in a situation in which everyone is running in one direction, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to turn around and run the other way because there may be something interesting happening over there as well. I remember, for example, a few years ago I was covering a state of emergency in Pakistan, and I suddenly became aware that there were about 100 television cameras filming this small demonstration of lawyers and the pictures made it look like the whole country was up in flames and arms and everything. And you turn around and there’s people buying bread at a shop and it looked like nothing had changed for 50 years.
“The way the modern media works with the 24/7 deadlines and the internet and the fact that anyone can be a journalist now. All you need is a pretty basic 3G phone and you can be filming pictures which anyone, anywhere around the world can see. That’s a massive challenge for, if you like, conventional media. What do we do to make ourselves different? And I think it has to be the quality- not just telling people what happened today but why it matters- putting it in context and giving the analysis. I think people still want to know at the end of the day whether they read the newspaper or watch a news bulletin on the TV or listen to the radio- they want somebody to tell them why they should be interested in what happened today; what are the key things that’ve happened around the world? I think it’s one thing you learn the longer you are a journalist is how best to try and explain things to people to make it interesting, to make it relevant to their lives.
“For the last year I’ve essentially become a financial journalist half the time talking about things that two or three years ago frankly I would not have had a clue about, but I have had to learn them. But I think the key thing is to talk about a language that is technical and full of jargon but to try and talk about it in a way – these massive economic shifts that are happening in Europe, which effect Turkey as much as anywhere else, effect everybody and effect everyone’s wallet whether it’s their salaries, their pension, their savings for their kids. And it’s trying to put that in perspective which I think is absolutely important.”
Duke: ”Yes, when I spoke with Stephen Kinzer he pointed out that the talent shows itself in being able to pinpoint the story. Anyone can film a riot with their phone but the talented journalists are the ones who find the story that needs to be told.”
Chris: “To be a good journalist you have to be a storyteller. If we went back to Medieval times I guess we would be the guys going from village to village with the little instruments telling people stories because that’s kind of what it is and there is so much information out there that it is almost too much information, isn’t it? You could never sleep and you could learn new things so to try and find dots together. I think that is what we try and do, and we obviously don’t always get it right, that’s for sure. And I hope that is one of the things that comes through in my book is that the best way to tell stories is to find people that have good stories that they want to tell you. Because there are amazing people in every town, in every village, in every country in the world, and they’ve all got stories to tell. I think you can really enrich lives by getting the best stories done and presenting them in the best way you can.”
Duke: “Well, you did a good job in the book which is why I wanted to talk to you because I really liked the book and appreciated it. It’s been good for me- I read Turks Today by Mango, and Kinzer’s book and then your book- they’re the same genre but they really cover different things from different perspectives, different people you’re talking to. So it was really helpful, each book. I would not read them one after the other but to have a couple of years in between has been helpful. I thank you for it and when I wrote about it I said there are perspectives in here you are not going to find elsewhere.”
Chris: “Thank you very much, Duke.”
Duke: ”Very good. Thank you for your time, Chris.”
[* Chris Morris photo taken from BBC.co.uk website]
If you would like to see my interviews with other authors, click here.
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Duke Dillard moved to Turkey with his wife and 6 children in 2007. He got an MBA at Bilkent University in Ankara, where they had their 7th child. After 4 years in Ankara the whole family moved to Cappadocia, and this blog was born. We love Cappadocia and Cappadocians and want to help visitors make the most of their time here. You can connect with Duke on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and/or link circles on Google+. Click here to read more about Duke and his family.
