Now, it seems young people have to travel further a field to have their hopes dashed. That, at least, is the premise of a new film doing the rounds in Istanbul ironically labeled Umut Adası or “Island of Hope.” The island in question is Britain and the plot concerns the sorry fate of a group of young illegal migrants (drugs, prostitution, the works) who set out without having bothered to watch “The Wizard of Oz” to learn “there’s no place like home.” You might correctly infer that I am not advocating anyone queue up to see it, other than students of the evolution of kitsch. However, it turns out that there is no one queuing up either to see the bigger picture of the Turks who migrated to Britain, or so concludes a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Indeed, the study, published a year or two ago, concludes no one is watching at all. It is called “Young Turks and Kurds: A set of ‘invisible’ disadvantaged groups.”
It concerns an estimated 200,000 Turks who live in North London -- although half that number are Cypriot and another 50,000 ethnic Kurds. Based on a survey of young people combined with 30 in-depth interviews, the report has the surprising finding that they are economically worse off than many ethnic groups in London. Many found it hard to find jobs and opportunities outside the informal networks of their own community. Up to half the boys had obtained no decent exam result.
Perhaps the more worrying thing is that the authorities just didn’t see the problem. While teachers, career officers and local government were at least aware of the special needs of black and other ethnic minorities, they were simply unaware that Turkish and Kurdish children faced the same sort of difficulties. Overall a third of the respondents -- aged between 16 and 23 -- said they had suffered harassment and discrimination. This was reported to have come mainly from white people but sometimes from members of ethnic minority groups.
“I call it the iceberg community,” said Mehmet Ali Dikerdem of Middlesex University and an advisor to the project. “People only take notice of it when something goes wrong.”
Alarmingly, school rather than being an engine of social mobility seems to be the place where children become frustrated and lose their way. “I heard one teacher talk to another about me. She said this Turkish girl is surprisingly intelligent, isn’t she. Obviously she doesn’t expect me to be intelligent,” said Ebru, one of those interviewed. More often it was not this sort of institutional discrimination but ethnic tensions between the children themselves which affected their life chances. “Any of the young Turkish speakers thus end their schooling, demotivated, uninterested and without qualifications,” the report writes.
One curious and in a bizarre way positive thing is that the young people did not see the fact that they were Muslim to be at the root of their exclusion. This was not so much a clash of civilizations as that of ethnic gangs. “I suffered more after the killings [of the two Leeds football supporters in İstanbul] than after September 11. I was uneasy on the streets for a couple of months,” said Murat, one of the boys.
The Rowntree Report is addressed to an English audience. Its obvious message is that the authorities have to wake up to a problem which they have hitherto ignored. On the other hand this is not a problem which Turkey, as it negotiates its way into the European Union, can ignore either. It is not enough to convince European public opinion that Turkey deserves its place in Brussels because İstanbul qualifies as the European City of Culture in 2010. The French, after all, are not planning a referendum on the merits of Mimar Sinan. Rather they are concerned, justifiably or not, that Turkey will use its membership to the EU to export its social problems and to ferment ethnic tensions.
One interesting finding is that young people were, despite negative experiences at school, optimistic about the future. This is in part because of their reliance on their own families and neighbors. The authors are aware that this dependence can be a trap preventing them from taking a fuller part in their host nation. However, if these young ambassadors of Turkey in Europe are upbeat, then others both in Europe and in Turkey itself share the obligation to ensure their optimism is justified.
It is a European problem but if Turkey is remotely sincere in its European vocation, it is an issue it has to address as well. It, too, has to be seen to be tackling the deficits in its own education system and proving that its own schools are promoting upward social mobility. And it has to be seen to be sharing that vision with Turkish communities abroad. It’s not just that “there’s no place like home,” but that Europe is home for many Turks as well.
