When I studied my bachelor journalism, I went to Turkey to do my internship in a radiostation of Mersin and I followed courses photography and photojournalism at the university of Mersin.
The reason why I've chosen for Turkey was to try to understand a different culture. My ambition is to become a foreign correspondent of the Middle East. My first steps towards that were, as I see it, to go to Turkey and try to understand a culture which is so different from ours. Not only because they have such a different religion but also because their traditions and customs are beyond we can imagine.
When I arrived their the cultural shock was a fact. But after a couple of weeks I got used to it. Althought it wasn't easy. The main difficulty I had to cope with was the language. Because I stayed in Mersin, which wasn't a touristic place. The people couldn't speak English that well at all. Other languages such as French or German weren't known either. So for me as a talkative person it was sometimes difficult.
Fortunately Turkish people are incredibly friendly and hospitable. I've never met such friendly, talkative, loving people before.
But there's a dualtiy in the Turkish culture. I might even say that there's a form of censorship. For example in Turkey you do not have acces to youtube due to a trailor of Ataturk which is claimed to be offending.
Another difficulty of Turkey is that they have a lot of different nationalities all together. I had a lot of Kurdish friends. And I will not suprise anybody if I say that they still feel as if they're still being supressed by the Turkish government. And aren't they?
Another twistpoint in my eyes is that gayminded people can't or won't be tolerated in the Turkish society.
The loneliness of a Turkish woman
Amnesty Internationel reports that the freedom of speech is not tolerated in Turkey at all. Journalists, sollicitors, writers are being prosecuted under an unlawful court. They are the victims of law pronunciation of random judges and accusers.
I'm wondering how the future of Turkey will look like. Insallah it will get better.
Whatever may, I will meet my friends again.
If you're interested in the report of Amensty International take a look on this site:
http://www.aivl.be/landeninfo/turkije#Rechten%20van%20lesbiennes,%20homoseksuelen,%20biseksuelen%20en%20transgenders
Île capitano
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