Daniel’s next door neighbour ‘Sour Soner’ is an unbearable misanthrope. A teacher posted to Dalyan he spends his free time maligning our town, (the people are unfriendly he whines, you can’t trust them he moans, it’s too hot, too dusty, there are too many mosquitoes) and the country in general (it’s not a real democracy,civil servants are getting poorer, İslamists are getting the upper hand, soon Turkey will resemble İran etc), bleat bleat bleat..............and ‘Sour’ wonders why he has no friends. Soner maybe in an extreme state of discontent but he is merely the exaggerated version of what İ here from so many Turks, the tide of negative thinking threatens to wash away all optimistic resistance. 

At lunch on Thursday with Yusuf and Kezban, bright well spoken thirty somethings who own their own house, their own new car and have a five year old son and another on the way, repeated the mantra that the country is going to the dogs, that in five years Turkey will be in economic ruins, that all women will be wearing İslamic head coverings, that we will be suffering even more than we do now. Yusuf even resented our little Migros supermarket as a sign of growing commercialisation and globalism, he claimed that money we spent there was sucked out of Dalyan at tornado like speed and then fled Turkey’s borders never to be seen again. He blamed the woes of small holdings on imported Dutch powdered milk (rather than on the lack of land reform) and insisted that the way forward for Turkey was to go back to the seventies and close borders to imports or tax them so much that local produce became financially more attractive. When İ asked how is it that İ see signs of more wealth and better living standards Kezban pronounced firmly that this was all due to credit cards which were in their turn destroying the lives of those who used them. 

Another friend complaining of Turkey’s hard times responded to my assertation of six years year on year economic growth by telling me İ was İMF brainwashed and that Turkey was the slave of international finance and a pawn of the Americans. What about the fact that Turkey refused to allow the US bases to bomb İraq and that the Turkish army had recently carried out their own operations in North İraq in direct contravention of the negative view of the US on this. Apparently İ am too naive to realise this is all part of the secret American plan that Turkish politicians have sold their soul to. 

İt may be true that some people can’t manage their finances responsibly enough to understand the limitations of a credit card but ten years ago they wouldn’t even of had the option to try. At least now that inflation doesn’t double prices every six months interest rates are manageable enough to offer credit cards and bank loans and mortgages and small business resources. There are those who grumble about foreigners buying land but if they didn’t most people would’nt have the money to help their children buy an apartment or build a house. The balance of trade is rubbish moan people who know nothing about economics, Turkey imports more than she exports, well boo-hoo, welcome to the global economy where the only country that has a positive trade balance is China.  Lighten up people, America’s trade gap is much larger and from 1750-1914 there was not a single year in which Britain ran a trade surplus, but that's when Britain ruled the world. İt’s all fair and well to complain about imported agricultural products but İ’ve yet to meet anyone willing to sacrifice the livelihood of the twenty percent of the population who still run subsistence farms so that they can be turned into massive agro-businesses. 

İ wonder whether this is some sort of Ottoman psychological legacy? Turks were once well on top of every sort of person from any denomination and now they live in a much less important country with a smaller global role. Perhaps it is an expectation versus realisation problem, Turkish people seem to expect jobs and security as forgone, after all in the old days they say no-one went hungry. The automatic survival of your family no longer being guaranteed seems to have created a long green streak of disappointment. İt seems that uncertainty is unwelcome and staid and safe is better. 

But İ see a huge and exciting Turkey developing. The people of inner Anatolia were condemned to be an economic and cultural backwater that always took second place to İstanbul and İzmir and in the new Turkey they are self propelled Anatolian tigers leaping out of the backwoods and challenging Ataturkist cultural norms. But also in the new Turkey village girls can chew gum and wear jeans and go to university and have boyfriends while they’re there. People like my husband and Fikri who work opposite our office (one is an estate agent and the other has opened a European delicatessen selling imported foods) can set up small businesses to capitalise on new markets that develop as Turkey becomes integrated into the world economy.  

Not every country can be the wealthiest or the most powerful in the world and there would be a lot less hand wringing and chest thumping if this was simply acknowledged. Take pride in the fact that while you have all the elements of first world modernity that you can also choose to live a village life and have two cows, ten sheep and fifteen chickens and support yourself and your family because all over the western world you can’t do that anymore. Be reflective when you see that shanty towns outside big cities and congratulate Turkey on the new mobility of its workforce, look at thsee people trying to grasp opportunity with two hands instead of tub thumping about eastern turks coming west and urban povery. When political challenges arise like the one that the AK Party faces don’t just complain about judicial arrogance study the fact that although it’s not perfect it’s also not a military coup. İf a lady in a black chadoor passes you on the street remember that one of my neighbours regularly dresses up in drag and goes out drinking and no-one says a word to him other than ‘Hi Duckie’. Don’t be like Sour Soner and waste your life and breath bemoaning every circumstance that changes, this is a complicated country but it’s vibrating with life, the very earth thrums with active evolution. Roll with it people, not against it.