Turkish students discover individualism in the United States

BY EMRE PEKER, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to the companion interview with Gunay Evinch, "The changing role of Young Turks in the U.S."]

Serdar Özenalp arrived in Charlottesville, Va., around midnight after a 20-hour journey from Istanbul, Turkey. He hailed a cab with two friends who were also about to begin their undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia and drove south on Route 29 to University Circle, where he stayed at the cozy International House. It was August 1998 and it was hot.

Eser Turan took a 24-hour trip from Istanbul to San Francisco. An African-American couple she met on the plane gave her a ride to a high school friend's house. It was her first time in California, where she would soon begin her master's in architecture at UC Berkeley. It was a pleasant day in August 1996, with cool breezes welcoming Turan to the city.

Young Turks today are going abroad in ever-increasing numbers for their higher education, just like their predecessors in the 19th century. They seek to explore new horizons and exit Turkey's rigid educational system. For most, the United States is what France and Germany were to their forefathers: a land of opportunities and fresh ideas. And so they come each year, in thousands, looking for knowledge, fresh experience and a taste of the American lifestyle they followed from afar.

Their adventures in the United States are translating to new ideas back home, making their Western-influenced insights on Turkey unique and valuable as the country's democracy moves from its infancy to adolescence. Or, they are shocked upon their return to Turkey, experience difficulties in readjusting to an old way of life and start planning an escape.  (More)

A Chechen family finds refuge in the Netherlands yet yearns to return

BY NATASHA ROTSTEIN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[A version of this story also appeared in The Moscow Times on Sept. 20, 2006]

[to the lead story, The Sound of Chechen music and related stories, A Chechen copes through Sambo fighting and Chechnya's war legacy]

Every night during the first war in Chechnya this family slept in the same bed. Mother and father separated by their daughter and son.

If a bomb hits the building, we'll die together, they reasoned.

Nine years have passed since those dark days when they witnessed dogs eating people and snow black from debris. They buried 23 family members.

The family - 56-year-old Kuri, his wife Nina, and their children, 26-year-old Kerim and 23-year-old Heda - moved to the Netherlands in November 1997.

For their safety, they asked that their last name and town of residence not be included in the story.
  (More)

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