Whistling Past the Maelstrom
We’ve been planning this trip to Turkey for a year. We have a group of motorcycle buddies (couples and stags) that like doing an international bike trip each fall. In the recent past we’ve done Croatia, Greece and Sicily. While sitting on a terrace in Palermo last October, we agreed on a Turkey trip for this year. It started to take shape in February, came together as a committed plan in April, was fully paid for in August and began for us on October 1st with a flight into Istanbul. I had avoided doing a bike trip to Turkey for many years on the theory that it might be too sketchy from a risk standpoint. Before our Greece ride two years ago, Kim and I made a stop in Istanbul for a few days to check it out. At that time Erdoğan was back in control after the attempted coup and he flexed his muscles in several ways including banning visas for U.S. visitors. Kim had gotten ours early, but I was unclear whether that was an issue. I didn’t want to find us stranded at Istanbul Airport with no ability to enter the country. A supervisor at Turkish Airlines assured me it would be fine, and, strangely enough, it was. We were about the only American tourists in Istanbul, but everything worked more to our advantage than not. That ban has long since expired and this year there was no issue at all. Even the Turkish Michael Flynn issues have faded and the U.S./Turkish relations seemed stable. We joked that our trip had us going within 300 miles of Aleppo, Syria, but that was all just to add perceived adventure to our travels.
We arrived in Istanbul and flew into the new airport north of the city. It is MASSIVE. It has an 18,000 car garage structure (biggest in Europe) plus 22,000 surface parking spots. We drove the hour into the hotel on the Bosphorus and began our journey with no particular regard to the geopolitical situation since it seemed distant and disconnected from our tour of this wonderful, historic country.
We hit the road with the bikes on Thursday, October 3rd, crossing the Marmara Sea and driving over to the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula. We visited Troy briefly and were on the Aegean coast at Assos by nightfall. By Saturday we had worked our way down to Bodrum, the “Riviera” of Turkey, having visited Ephesus and other ancient sites along the way. We were immersed in the history and culture, not to mention the pleasures of the lovely seaside. Then came Sunday.
On Sunday October 6th, our hip-shooting president, Donald Trump, took a call from Turkey’s supreme ruler, Erdogan. He was calling to get permission from his fellow autocrat to begin an incursion into Syria to create a buffer against the refugees that continue to pour into Turkey, and especially the Kurds to the East that have always been a thorn in the side of the Turks. The Kurds have been strongly allied with the U.S. in fighting ISIS rebels and pushing back against the Assad autocracy. The Russians have been in the mix supporting Assad, but the U.S. has been less than thrilled with the evidence that Assad uses chemical weapons and such for ethnic cleansing on the Syrian population, including on the Kurds, a similar thorn in Assad’s side (the Kurds seem to be thorny to everyone). Trump was well aware that his advisors were strongly against precipitous troop withdrawal from Syria. Defense Secretary Mattis had resigned over the issue. National Security Advisor Bolton had bolted from the Trump circle over this and other disagreements. That’s when Trump decided unilaterally that he would give Erdoğan a free pass to do what he pleased in Syria. He ordered U.S. troops numbering 50 to remove themselves from harms way to let the Turks have at it.
By Monday The Turks had begun their bombing and assault. By Monday, just about everyone including Congressional Republicans, including his biggest enablers like Mitch McConnell and Lyndsey Graham, were railing at Trump for the idiocy and wrong-mindedness of this move and the fact that he had done it literally on his own without consultation. This reaction caused the Turks’ heads to spin since they read this correctly as a strong mixed signal from the U.S. They know enough about the differences in U.S. versus Turkish modus operandi to know that what Congress thinks matters in the current brand of U.S. autocracy. They had launched their attack with U.S. presidential permission and were watching Trump start to transmit warnings that they had better not do anything too dramatic or bad towards Syria or the Kurds or the U.S. would get mad (clearly Trump was in appeasement mode domestically). In for a penny, in for a pound, the Turks carried on the attack through the week. There were reports of Kurdish extermination by the Turks and tensions with the U.S. kept getting hotter as the week progressed, so the U.S. pulled back the other 1,000 troops in Syria over the protestations of current and former military and national security experts and leaders. How’s that for being a global leader?
Meanwhile, our little motorcycle band of a dozen Americans (not that many fewer than the initial U.S. troop withdrawal) started heading East towards Antalya, Konya and Cappadocia. We had moved from 600 miles away from the conflict to about 275 miles. We were acutely aware of the headlines and whatever bad outcomes we did not think of, our friends on Facebook and emails made sure to remind us. From the outside it looked to those in the U.S. that we were crazy not to be immediately evacuating. To us and our Turkish guide (who we had known and ridden with for twenty years), it was business as usual. Everything on the ground where we were could not have been more unfazed.
Nevertheless, with each passing day’s news on the international wires (mostly CNN, NewYork Times, Financial Times, Washington Post and WSJ), things seemed to be getting more and more tense due to Trumps political flip-flopping. The Turks seemed steady and determined in their mission. The Kurds sidled up to their mortal enemies in the Assad camp and the Russians were quick to fill in the vacuum left by the rapidly exiting Americans. None of this makes an American nearby feel particularly comfortable or proud.
By the time we made it back to Istanbul on Monday, it had been a week of conflict and a week of confusing news reports about what Trump was doing other than blustering and making waves. Let me say this, seeing Trumps nonsensical foreign non-policy in action from the local/global perspective gives you added appreciation about how damaging he is to the U.S. image and respect. The New Zealand PM said it best, “I just don’t understand American foreign policy.”
We are taking off a day later than the rest of our crew. We are back at Istanbul Airport in all its massive glory. We read that Trump is personalizing sanctions against Turkish ministers and their agencies (naturally not including Erdoğan…honor among dictators, I suppose). That sounds ominous and we are happy to be leaving soon. As we board we hear that Turkey has chosen to completely ignore the silly and meager sanction efforts by Trump and are just soldiering on. That may be bad news as Americans, but good news for us as exiting travelers. There was a moment at passport control when I felt like Ben Affleck at Tehran Airport in Argos. Well, now that the plane is taxing to the runway, I can stop writing and say to President Trump what John Goodman and Alan Arkin said in that same movie, “Argo fuck yourself.”