I started work at the end of September at a private school on the Asian side of Istanbul. I work 2 days a week at a kindergarten/nursery school, and 3 days in a primary school down the road as a 1st grade English teacher. At both schools, there is a Turkish English teacher, and I am a "speaking" teacher which just means that I'm there so the parents feel like they're getting something real for the tons of money they're paying for their children to be in an expensive school. More on the school in a later blog- there's a lot to say about my new job! My daily commute from home involves a 15 minute walk, a 25 minute bus ride, and a further 5 minute walk, and then of course the same in reverse on the way home.
Tuesday was Istanbul's Independence Day, so all schoolchildren had the day off. I still had to go into work at the kindergarten, but only for a few hours and just to make some worksheets and a big colorful poster with animal photos. I left work before noon, so was glad to have all afternoon off to faff about and watch lots of CSI:Miami on surfthechannel.com.
My bus ends in Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul, but on Tuesday for some reason it stopped a few minutes away and let us all off in front of the Hyatt Hotel. The Hyatt was completely surrounded by police barricades, and on every street corner on the way into Taksim Square there were hundreds of policemen in full riot gear and gas masks. I had no idea what was going on, and the only thing I could imagine was that it was some sort of parade in honor of Istanbul's Independence Day. The park near Taksim Square looked like a policemen picnic, with cops loitering around in groups. They all looked like they were waiting for something, but there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. When I got into Taksim Square, it was EMPTY. This isn't strange if you've never been there, but just imagine Times Square empty mid-afternoon. All the roads had been closed and there were no buses and taxis, and the metro entrance had no people going in or coming out. Usually I walk home down Tarlabasi Bulvari, the main transportation street in the area and the most direct way home, but I wanted to stop at a language center, and walking down Istiklal, the main pedestrian and shopping street was a faster way to the language center. It looked like Istiklal, was closed, so I walked down Tarlabasi with the intent to turn off for the center further on down. There were more policemen and barricades up at all the intersections, and there was a police tank with armed guards all around it.
I realized that Istiklal was open, so I turned off Tarlabasi and Istiklal was almost empty, which only happens on a Sunday morning. There were lots of people with professional looking cameras running down the road, so of course I kept walking to see what they were going to take pictures of. All the shops that are usually full of shoppers all had their metal shutters almost fully closed. The windows at McDonald's and the Turkish bank were smashed, and at that point I REALLY started to wonder what was going on. As I got further down the road, I saw a police tank turning down an alley, and then thought I had gone far enough because I was getting closer to the "action," whatever that was. In a parallel alley, I saw lots of people running and then some smoke bombs being thrown, and started to feel a little scared. I kept walking home down Tarlabasi, but then smoke bombs flew out from an alley and a ton of people in makeshift scarf masks came running out into the street, and all the pedestrians in the area turned and ran towards me. I followed them, because what else do you do when a crowd is running away from something? People were ducking into all the open shops, and I followed in a trio of young-looking Turks hoping they spoke enough English to explain to me what was going on. They ran into a chai restaurant, and I followed them. We got inside just before the protestors turned onto our street and policemen followed in gasmasks. We hid under the bar, and I quickly found out that none of the 3 of them spoke any English. I got that it was an IMF protest, but it wasn't until much later that I learned that they were protesting the 2009 IMF/World Bank summit meetings, which were October 6th and 7th here in Istanbul.
The Turks I was with seemed really scared and also very worried about me. They kept saying "no fear" and "no panic" but I wasn't worried at all. In fact, I found it pretty silly that we were actually hiding in the first place, it's not as though the protesters were going to come in and look for us. Being off the street meant being out of danger, so I just enjoyed watching the "show." We saw some men who had been caught by the cops, and they had 2 cops restraining each protester, with one policeman following with a billy sticks. The protesters I saw were mostly middle-aged, overweight men. A few times smoke bombs went off right outside the cafe, and the staff had to quickly close all the windows. As soon as the danger passed, they opened up all the windows again and continued sitting on the sill, watching outside and commentating on the action. If only I spoke Turkish!
Up until yesterday, Mike and I were sharing one cell phone, and he had taken it for the day. I wanted to call him and warn him about the trouble, so I asked the gut in the trio if I could borrow his phone. I thought he'd understood me since we mimed back and forth and it looked like he understood I wanted him to lend his phone to me. But he got up and found a piece of paper and wrote down his email address for me. His girlfriend must have thought it strange that I was hitting on her boyfriend in front of her in the middle of a riot of sorts. And I never got to call Mike and warn him, but he made it home safely. The protests had finished by the time he was on his way home that he missed all the fun.
The staff at the restaurant finally thought it was safe enough to let us out (after about 40 minutes) and I was glad to be getting on my way home. The boy tried to get me to go walking with him and the two girls, but since we had a language barrier I really didn't want to waste my time. He finally got it that I wanted us to go our separate ways, but he still walked me to the intersection and cheek-kissed me goodbye. I didn't see any more protestors on my way home, but there were more and more policemen arriving, and I saw a police van with all the windows smashed. I was looking forward to reading about the protest online and blogging about it when I got home, but our internet was down and stayed down for 2 days. It's finally back up and running, which is why you're hearing about my adventure a few days after the fact.
I didn't take any pictures myself, although I wish I had. I was so confused about what was going on that I wasn't thinking right, and it probably is frowned upon to photograph anything that could be seen as police brutality. You can read more about the protests here and see pictures and a video here.
Stay tuned for blog posts about our visa run to Bulgaria and more information about my new teaching job!
PS. The new picture on my blog is the view from the teacher's room at my primary school job. Cool, huh?
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