Country of contradiction

On the day the Pope begins his visit to Turkey, Aengus Collinsmeets the Irish who call it home, and finds they have mixed views about fitting in

The Pope's visit to Turkey brings a largely unfamiliar country into the headlines and onto our television screens. It's a place that most Irish people see only through the prism of international politics, and primarily for the various crises that seem to engulf the country with such regularity.

But for a small number of Irish people, Turkey is home. About 60 have moved and made their lives here, all but a handful settling in the country's largest city, Istanbul. The same number again would be living here short-term, many of whom are teaching English, and another 1,500 Irish people are registered as having bought holiday homes, mostly in the south.

It's a slightly strange time to be in Turkey. After the remarkable wave of optimism that accompanied the first few years of the current moderate Islamist government and its initial progress on political and economic reform, an air of possible crisis is returning to Turkish politics. Accession negotiations with the EU are in turmoil, violence has erupted again in Turkey's Kurdish southeastern region, and the country's staunchly secularist elite is becoming increasingly alarmed at what it sees as the government's gradual slide into fundamentalism.

It sounds chaotic, and it is a bit, although things remain stable when compared with the much more dangerous situation a few decades ago. What brings an Irish person to settle in the midst of here, on the other side of the European continent?

Any number of things, seems to be the answer. Few arrived with any notion of staying. It's just one of those things that fell into place for people. Many came initially on holiday of one sort or another.

ANDREW DURNEY (37) went to Istanbul for a two-week holiday five years ago, and decided more or less immediately that he would make it his home. When Fiona Gallagher was 21 she read an article in an Irish newspaper about the fun to be had in Istanbul, so she packed her bags and went with the intention of staying for a year.

That was 14 years ago and she's been there since.

For others, Turkish personal connections developed before the move to the country. Eamonn Lehane, who runs Istanbul's main Irish bar, the Irish Centre, in the city centre, met his Turkish wife in London. They made a go of living in Ireland before, because of the business opportunities it offered, they opted for Istanbul 12 years ago.

All three of these, Andrew, Fiona and Eamonn, have young children who will grow up in Turkey with a family tree that stretches from one side of Europe to the other. But at least one Istanbul adult already has such a family tree.

Cemil Tokel, who is 35, was born in London and is half-Irish on his mother's side, half-Turkish on his father's. He spent his early childhood in Turkey, but when his parents separated, he moved with his mother to Youghal in Cork at the age of 14. He spent five formative teenage years in the town, attending the Christian Brothers school, before going to university in the UK and then moving back to Turkey, where he has worked since.

"My time in Ireland was a very important part of my youth," he says. "It's where I grew up. I was 14, just a kid, when I arrived. And when I left, I was ready for university. It was probably the most crucial five years of my life, and I see myself very much as having a half-and-half identity, half-Irish and half-Turkish."

Tokel has known Turkey all his life, and is obviously tied in to the country in ways that wouldn't be accessible to most Irish people moving there. For many, a move to Turkey is a jump in to the unknown.

"I knew nothing about Turkey," says Fiona Gallagher. "I had never met a Turkish person. I had no idea what to expect. And I remember when my mother first came over, she just laughed with relief when she saw the place because I think she had been imagining I was moving to turn-of-the-century Morocco or something."

Almost all of those I speak to describe Istanbul as a vibrant, cosmopolitan and well-developed place to live. When I ask Gallagher whether after a decade and a half in Turkey there's anything she still misses about Ireland, family is the only thing she mentions. But she's starting to look at things a little differently now that she has a baby son, Inan.

"I think I'll miss it more now for him than for myself. I want him to have, for example, Christmas and Santy, things like that," she says.

Unsurprisingly, having children has changed some Irish perspectives on Turkish society. Some of those I speak to are conscious that their sons and daughters won't grow up with the same Irish influences on all sides around them, and that they as parents will be responsible for providing that whole side of their upbringing.

When it comes to schooling, one of the main questions for most ex-pats in Istanbul is whether or not to opt for a private school.

There are a few good state schools, but in general the gulf between state and private is very wide. The latter are expensive when compared to the high-quality education available free of charge back in Ireland, but most suggest they'd have to think very carefully before deciding not to give their kids the head-start a private education offers here.

THERE'S AN ELEMENT of discomfort at the reality that most ex-pats have the resources to provide for their families in ways that wouldn't be possible for most Turkish families. But at the same time, the lower cost of living is a definite attraction.

For example, Andrew Durney is an English teacher at a well-known private school in the Levent district. His salary is by no means stratospheric, but it's significantly higher than the average a local teacher would enjoy, and it provides him with a quality of life he says he just wouldn't have if he moved back to Ireland.

"Look at property prices as an example. Whether you're buying or renting, housing is very cheap here," he says. He lives in a suburb on the outskirts of the city. "The apartment I live in is nearly 2,000 square feet in size, in a complex with a swimming pool. It's a beautiful place. Rent-wise, I suppose you're looking at the equivalent of about €600 a month. You can't go wrong with that."

The home and social lives of Istanbul's Irish residents seem very well integrated into Turkish life. These are people with Turkish families and Turkish friends, and socialising within the city's small Irish population appears to be infrequent.

"Unlike in many other cities, happily the Irish in Istanbul don't form a clique," says Dublin-born clergyman Ian Sherwood, who has been chaplain to the English Church in Istanbul for the past 18 years.

By all accounts the Irish honorary consul, James Geary, a veteran of 23 years living in the city, has worked hard to foster a community spirit among the Irish in Istanbul, but one gets the sense that it might be a bit like herding cats.

At Eamonn Lehane's Irish bar, none of the clientele is Irish. Two-thirds are Turkish locals, and the other third is made up of non-Irish ex-pats. It's a huge premises, a six-storey building with a restaurant upstairs and a separate live music venue in the basement.

But the basics remain a challenge - Turkey's economy may have opened rapidly since the 1980s, but Lehane still can't get draught Guinness on tap. He had to count the arrival of draught cans a few years ago as progress, but it's not what he or his customers want.

With the Pope's visit drawing protests, and with mounting concerns about the Islamist tendencies of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), religious questions are high on the agenda in Istanbul. Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, but a moderate and secular one, and for most of the Irish, religious differences don't impinge on day-to-day life. (For one, Andrew Durney, there are no religious differences as he converted to Islam shortly after moving to the country, finding in it a spirituality he missed in Catholicism.)

A STRIKING EXCEPTION to the general tone of optimism and enthusiasm, however, is Canon Sherwood, who seems profoundly pessimistic about the country he has made his home for almost two decades. While it may be easy for most ex-pats to live a life untouched by religion in Turkey, he says, the day-to-day life of priests, nuns and monks is one that frequently involves persecution.

"Much as I love Turkey, and love many Turks, I cannot try to beautify the country, or pretend it's better than it is. The rise of religious fanaticism is a real threat. A Roman Catholic priest was murdered earlier this year, and large numbers of our congregation were murdered, as you know, by al-Qaeda," he says, referring to the 2003 bombings of HSBC and the British consulate in Istanbul which killed 30 people.

"Those who represent Christianity are threatened, harassed and physically abused," he continues. "We live under threat all the time of being murdered because we are Christians and have to be cautious about everything we do. And that is Turkey. It's a very depressing place once you leave the cafe society of central Istanbul, and it's a very long way off from the sort of society that some European nations think it is or would like it to be."

It's hard to reconcile the society that Canon Sherwood describes here with the welcoming, hospitable and religiously moderate one that other Irish inhabitants enthuse about.

"Religion here is completely a la carte," says Fiona Gallagher. "For anyone that I know here, it just doesn't affect their daily life. It's only an issue if you make it an issue, whereas in Ireland - not now, but when I was growing up - we had religion coming out of our ears."

She's not the only one to make this comparison with religious life in Ireland a few decades ago.

Many of Turkey's secularists worry with Canon Sherwood that the country is on a slippery slope to increasing fundamentalism. But most ex-pats seem to disagree. According to American film-maker Paxton Winters, another long-term Istanbul resident, the role of extremism in Turkish religion is easily overstated.

"In my time here," he says, "I have never been made to feel uncomfortable for not being Muslim. And most seriously religious people I've met here, those who pray five times a day, are quick to say: 'Insan. Önce insan,' which in Turkish means you're a human first, a person, and religion is secondary to that."