We kids could go wandering and if we got too far from where taxi drivers and soldiers(in their roles as police then) knew the American family lived we would get a ride home in a taxi or a jeep, sometimes with a bakery en passant and we would get a pastry.
I met a woman where I worked 19 years ago who was Turkish on a long visa and working as night clerk at a very large condo complex on the beach where I was a security guard. When I talked to her she asked me how much Turkish I remembered and I had a couple of phrases and a few names of things and she began too pull at my memory until after three months or so I was actually speaking with her in Turkish. She knew my old neighborhood in Nis(h)antas(h) and told me Yeni Yol street was now a part of the grounds of the American Hospital which was on the other side of the back wall two meters from our house.
When the riots hit, an Armenian woman my mother knew took refuge in our house until the army decided their end had been accomplished and the riots got turned off. The riots were specifically anti Greek but memories are long.
P.S. I used to write stuff on Xanga before it got its lunch eaten by the vastly inferior Facebook and once someone put up an old picture of a street car on a street with tall old buildings lining it and labeled as an old San Francisco scene. I looked at it and recognized it as an Istanbul scene from the 50s and had, in fact seen that scene from the same angle more than once. I could even visualize my father driving the jeep assigned to him at the consulate on that street just as it is in the that picture.
Sorry to make a travelogue of this but good memories return.
Not a problem with the travelogue...I very much appreciate it!
Growing up as a kid in a foreign country is a unique and life changing experience.
I grew up as a military dependent, and while it was painful to me as a kid to lose my friends every few years, I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China!
I enjoyed hearing the reminiscences of someone who had similar experiences as I did.
Good story and info; tx.
Recently met some college age kids from Turkey. They mentioned the U.S.A. and “did not want to go home to Turkey.”
Re Incirlik, the place is a trap, an outpost: “North Khartoum” if Erdogan and Obama get their way. IMHO