How to adjust to life outside Turkey
One expat’s painful journey in a world without simit…
It was only a year ago now that I moved to London to join a young, lively and thoughtful team of consultants. A week into the move was when I first began noticing the absence of the daily call to prayer. A month in was when my simit cravings began. Christmas cued in the obsessive replaying of melancholic hits by Sezen Aksu on YouTube. The red meat snob that I was back in Istanbul had morphed into a pathetic wanderer in London, sniffing in search of a single whiff of meat grilling over charcoal, only to be reminded of home.
Turkey was not taking my absence well either. Though its withdrawal symptoms were a tad more pronounced than mine. Its politics had already surrendered to madness. Its peoples were deeply divided. Its budding civil society, withering away. Its youth, uninspired or unemployed or both. Its borders crossed daily by hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violent conflict. Its cities spitting out concrete. Its habitat and natural ecosystems failing the good fight against aggressive growth.
And there I was, in London feeling absolutely thrilled to be learning and growing alongside a group of likeminded colleagues and yet there it was, my home, a mirage of alluring smells and sights and sounds, failing.
Leaving Istanbul was never going to be easy. Shifting mid career from one linguistic and cultural norm to another is very tough. Here’s where I landed emotionally: I accept that I will always love and miss where I am from and the fond memories Istanbul will invoke. Here’s where I landed intellectually: Every day is a school day. When you move so far out of your comfort zone, remaining observant and intellectually curious helps you stay sane.
Looking to build a life outside Turkey? Consider the following:
- Are you confident about your language skills? This the one area where I struggle the most, every day. You may consider yourself a comfortable English speaker in Turkey. But you will surely experience linguistic barriers and find yourself often lost in translation when conversing with native English speakers or non natives with a stronger grasp of the nomenclature.
- How can you leverage your experience and core competencies at a third-country or global level? Which country do you have the most immediate connections to? It could be where you went to school or did a year abroad during college. It could also be a job market where your skills are currently most sought after. I wouldn’t recommend reaching for the stars. Be realistic about your relocation goals.
- How can your network best support you from the moment you begin looking for ways to relocate until the point when you are relatively self-sufficient in a new country and job market? As generic this may sound, your network is your lifeline. Cultivate it, love it, nourish it. People who care about you, trust you, feel you genuinely care for them too and find you interesting will give your needs priority.
- Will you promise yourself to always keep an open mind and heart? A great leap forward (or outward in this case) might feel like you’ve done a lot already but the moment you land is when a harder journey begins. You will face countless barriers: (a) physical, mostly in the form of red tape and your blank credit history in a new country will make all your interactions with the service industry painful (b) cultural, and the ever rising xenophobia in most host countries will not make things prettier, and (c ) professional, because you will most likely struggle to apply your years of experience to your new role because of the differences in context, corporate culture, etc. Before you decide to relocate, you need to have an honest conversation with yourself about your own limits. Avoid relocating if you suspect you’d hate being challenged and testing out new approaches and pathways to creativity/innovation.
