Tough times in Turkey

it’s been a rough week in Istanbul. Last Saturday, we got a security notice, seemingly random, but they’re never random. On Monday, we had a meeting – the first of three during the week – to discuss the situation. Also on Monday, the department upped its travel warning for Turkey.

From the advisory: “Foreign and U.S. tourists have been explicitly targeted by international and indigenous terrorist organizations in Turkey.  …  Additional attacks in Turkey at major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centers, places of worship, and transportation hubs, including aviation services, metros, buses, bridges, bus terminals and sea transport, could occur.  Extremists have also threatened to kidnap and assassinate Westerners and U.S. citizens.  U.S. citizens are reminded to review personal security plans, monitor local news for breaking events, and remain vigilant at all times.”

Not very comforting. We’ve been advised to vary our routes to work and leave at different times, plus avoid places frequented by Westerners. Luckily, the three other colleagues who live in my apartment complex all drive, two of them armored vehicles. So I’ve been going in with them and bumming rides with others home.

This is unrelated to the coup attempt but is apparently a very real threat, real enough to send all family members home. I spent eight hours in the office on Saturday, working to get people out. Lots of tears. We have a lot of young couples with little kids, some of whom came in in their Halloween costumes. We'd been told on Friday that this would likely happen. It was a half day -- it's a Turkish holiday this weekend -- and, even though the meeting ran late, everyone hung around, pretty much in shock. It's really hard to believe it's at this level right now.

The stuff that's coming down to us is that it's against "Westerners and Americans and their families." It seems ISIS-ish, and from what the Gen.  Townsend said earlier in the week to the press, it sounds like ISIS might be planning some bad stuff outside of Rakka to divert attention and forces from its bad guys there.

And this is aimed at non-Turks. One of my good friends from Guangzhou is from here, and I asked about her family. She was shocked when I mentioned the updated travel warning. It's aimed at foreigners, not locals. There are, according to the security guy, 50k Americans living in our consular district. We're the biggest group. God knows I've talked to a bunch of them on the duty phone.

The upside is, the Turkish police have been awesome, both in getting bad guys off the street and keeping our security informed. We're reporting weird stuff that happens to us at or near our homes to our security guys, who are reporting it to the TP and they are acting on it. (By this I mean seeing strange cars in housing complexes, people taking pictures of school bus stops and receiving crank calls to homes on internal apartment phones.)

I am not in security, but the feeling I get is it'll pass sooner than later. Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I feel like the 100 people we ticketed today will be back by Thanksgiving. I really hope so. But right now, it is very hard. Today was emotionally draining.

It's the new normal, at least for now. Following the coup attempt, we went on a voluntary family member departure, which only one person took up but the status still created a lot of paperwork on other travel in and out of the country. This time around, that paperwork will likely increase, and it was already about 10 more hours a week.

But in addition, many of those family members who went home had jobs, leaving big gaps in the workforce. I worked directly with three of them, with two working on a huge project that has a time-sensitive deadline. I’m a little concerned how we’re going to get everything done.

The next couple of weeks are going to be really rough.