Turkish Hospitality Stretched to the Limit
Millions of refugees challenge innate generosity
“The single country with the largest number of refugees in the world? That would be Turkey,” Marco Werman reported on PRI’s The World, a daily radio show and podcast I listen to routinely. Beginning in 2012, Turkey has been overwhelmed with refugees from Syria — 3.7 million — as well as hundreds of thousands from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other countries. With the 2023 earthquakes, Turks are finally feeling over-burdened. Refugees, especially Syrians, are facing hostility, The World reports. Turkey has spent some $40 billion on refugee relief since 2012.
This makes me so sad, because I remember the incredible generosity and hospitality my family received from the Turks back in 2009 and 2010. I also remembered the sweet Syrian children who befriended my dogs and me at a park in Abu Dhabi in 2014.
And yet, despite the flood of refugees, as far as I know, Turks have not engaged in the kind of mass reactionary nativism that Americans did toward immigrants between 2015 and 2020. There have been no chants among Turks demanding that a huge WALL be built between Turkey and its neighbors nor viable proposals for law enforcement to round up all the undocumented immigrants, crowd them into trains or busses like cattle, ship them to the border and tell them to fend for themselves. (Google search: Turkey immigration policies.)
Turks have far less wealth than Americans. Why would or should they be so much more generous and forgiving of immigrants?
“Turks must be the most hospitable people on earth,” I exclaimed to my wife after so many experiences of welcome, the frequent feeling of being taken care of by total strangers. On my first day in the country, I attempted to pay for a bus ticket from Istanbul to Kayseri and discovered my U.S. bank card had been locked due to “unusual activity” (a transaction from a foreign country, Turkey). “Pay later,” the bus driver said as he allowed my son and me to board without paying. (I returned the next day to pay and he was very gracious.)
My wife mixed up the phone numbers for a taxi driver and a pizza deliverer. She mistakenly called the taxi driver and ordered a pizza. Eager to please, he went to the grocery store, bought all the ingredients for pizza and delivered them to us.
His generosity, we discovered, was not unusual for the Turks. My wife’s university colleagues were eager to help
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