Istanbul, Trip Two

August 19, 2006

I arrived in Istanbul yesterday afternoon, flying from Philadelphia with Susan Burke for another round of interviews with former detainees from Abu Ghraib.  Things are very different this time.  For one thing, Istanbul in Turkey really feels European, and so the feeling of being very close to a war zone is not present here.  Also Turkey is a secular democracy, not a kingdom, and though it’s a Muslim majority country, it is neither an Islamic state nor an Arab country.  Istanbul, from what I have read and my brief time here has a mixed population of people from many different backgrounds – a real cosmopolitan crossroads with a long long history.  I don’t feel displaced, and in fact, after an initial meeting 5 of the former detainees, a large group of us went to visit the Blue Mosque and have dinner at a sidewalk café just as we might have visited a site in Madrid or Rome. 

Another major difference is that there are only 6 former detainees here, who traveled by plane with two Iraqi guides, both wonderful guys who I know already having met them on the last trip.  (They want to know if I would prefer to marry a fat woman or a skinny woman. How do I bridge that gulf without hurting the greater purpose of my being here?)  There is also a local facilitator who is an Iraqi refugee having arrived here one year ago.  He was an office manager for the New York Times Baghdad bureau and after several death threats, decided to leave Iraq on a U.N. refugee program.  Lastly, the US participants include only Susan and Sharif -- two lawyers – as well as Jennifer, an assistant for Susan, and Rory Kennedy a documentary film maker and her film crew.  It’s a very small group.  I hope that I will have enough former detainee volunteers to do some good work, but at this point I am not sure.

The other major change, as the men from Iraq have started to tell us, is what is happening in Baghdad.  Last time I thought they were scared, this time it seems that things in Iraq are much worse. They report so much violence that they are never safe, not even in their locked homes at night.  There could be a knock on the door, men dressed as police force their way inside, and then kill an entire family.  They are scared to go through check points, because no one is sure if the men in uniform are really police, or just an armed militia that looks like the police.  From all reports, there is no real government in Iraq the way Americans think of it; the Iraqis are living in a state of lawlessness, and they fear for their lives every minute of every day.  They want to get out; they want safety.  At our first meeting last night we discussed how we can help the approximately 150 clients of this lawsuit and their families leave Iraq and come to the US or Canada.  We all have the feeling that time is running out for them.  Last month alone well over 3,00 civilians were murdered in Baghdad.  According to M., things are not getting worse by the day, but by the hour.