A Hopeful Look At Turkey's Future

Nick Ashdown is a Canadian journalist focusing on Turkey, and up until recently, he was residing in the country. Then his residence permit got cancelled, just as it happens with foreign correspondents based in Turkey. Now he returned to Turkey to cover the elections. 

Ashdown's origin as a Canadian makes his observations all the more interesting, as he hails from a country with a political landscape that is diametrically opposed to that of Turkey. In Turkey, politics is such an intense affair that it completely occupies and affects the people's lives.

In Ashdown's words:

In Turkey, politics isn’t just something you watch on TV. They affect everyone’s daily life – from your newspaper being shut down for criticizing the government, to your professor being arrested on trumped-up charges, to your cousin being killed in one of the dozen major terror attacks or military operations in recent years, to your colleague who never gets promoted because she doesn’t support the right political party, to your friends moving abroad because they can’t bear the oppressive atmosphere and lack of job opportunities.

Turkey became even more engulfed by politics during the heated election campaign, and for many of those supporting the opposition the results led to a complete psychological meltdown—if not a total nervous breakdown.

Ashdown's article is one of the rare ones offering a hopeful perspective on Turkey's future:

Turkey is a young, dynamic country with a large, sophisticated middle class and a highly globalized economy. It’s survived countless horrors unimaginable to most Canadians – military coups, an insurgency, devastating terror attacks and politically motivated massacres. The youth have shed many of the prejudices of their parents...Turkish people are fiercely attached to their country, and stubborn in expecting more from it. They’ll never give up on Turkey, and neither should the rest of the world.

Let's cross our fingers for Ashdown's perspective becoming reality soon.