The Russians and Turks eating kebab and drinking ayran side by side in a Moscow restaurant exemplify how relations between the two countries have developed not only politically and economically, but personally and culturally as well.
“Three years ago, 80 percent of our customers were Turks. Now 60 percent are Russian and 40 percent are Turkish,” said Müslüm Alt覺n, the Turkish-born cook at 覺k覺d覺m, one of two restaurants in Moscow offering genuine Turkish food rather than a mix of fare from Turkey, Russia and the Caucasus. The restaurant takes its name from a song by Turkish singer Tarkan, who is extremely popular in Russia.
Anna Manukova, a 22-year-old Russian woman drinking ayran (a salty Turkish yogurt drink) at 覺k覺d覺m, said the restaurant evokes nostalgia for her. “It reminds me of the holidays I had in Turkey. I was a kid the first time I went to Turkey,” said Manukova, who has traveled to the country at least six times.
“What has really improved relations so quickly has been the increase in human contact between the two countries,” said Volkan Vural, Turkey’s former ambassador to Moscow. “Turks realized that not all Russian are KGB agents, and Russians understood Turks are not servants of imperialists.”
Increased tourism is also expected to have a positive impact on political relations, though less so when visitors spend all their time at an all-inclusive five-star resort, interacting little if at all with locals. “A person’s best memories are their holiday memories as a child. A lot of Russian children spent holidays in Turkey. In the future, they will be the ones running the Russian government,” said journalist Suat Tap覺nar, who lives in Moscow.
Many Russian tourists in the Mediterranean province of Antalya are repeat visitors, such as 19-year-old Max Pronin, who was making his eighth trip to Turkey. “Everything you want is here. Bars, good food, good weather, the sea,” he said, drinking a beverage at the Kremlin Palace Hotel.
With the flowering of tourism and other connections has come an increase in mixed marriages between Russians and Turks. These pairings were initially a source of controversy as Russian women facing poverty and a severe male-female population imbalance in their own country came to Turkey to work as prostitutes or find husbands. Turks began referring to Russian women as “Natasha,” a nickname associated with a belief that they were sexually “easy.” But over time this view has changed.
“First of all, as the income level increased in Russia, the number of [women] coming for prostitution decreased. Second, as the number of mixed marriages increased, Russian women started to be more easily accepted in Turkish society,” said Daria Üge, a Russian woman who is married to Serhat Üge, a Turkish construction engineer. “At the beginning, I did not feel that comfortable. Now I don’t get any disturbing looks.”
Üge said she misses Moscow, but the presence of a Russian community in Antalya makes her life easier. There are Russian restaurants, beauty salons, day-care centers and even a Russian school, which the couple’s daughter, Yasmin, who is fluent in both Turkish and Russian, attends.
The school was founded by Russian immigrant Victor Bikkenev, an electronic engineer who fled the economic chaos in Russia after the fall of communism and moved to Turkey. Initially, he played piano in hotels and later started his own tourism business. When their daughter was born in 1998, however, his wife asked to go back to Russia. “My wife told me: ‘I don’t want to send her to a Turkish school. I want her to get the education I got in Russia.’ But I did not want to go back,” said Bikkenev, who then decided to open a child-care center. Founded in 2000, the center got the green light from the Turkish Education Ministry in 2004 to turn into a full school.
“We have around 60 to 70 children attending the school. Eighty percent of the families of mixed couples in Antalya send their kids to Turkish schools,” Bikkenev said. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Russians live in Antalya, though the exact number is unknown. The number of mixed marriages in Turkey is equally hard to pin down. According to some estimates, there are 70,000 Turkish-Russian pairs in the country, though officials at the Turkish Consulate in Moscow said they believe this figure to be too high. The consulate in Moscow said it receives 300 to 400 mixed-marriage applications each year.
“A new generation is being born. This creates a big bond,” said businessman Muharrem Kaçmaz, who has been living in Russia since 1994. “We need to focus on these mixed families. Soon we will start facing problems with education and military service.”
Fully Russian families are also increasingly settling in Antalya, where life is easier and cheaper than in Moscow. In some cases, a Russian businessman will buy a house in Antalya, settle his family there and visit on weekends. “Instead of going to a summer house near Moscow, which will take hours in city traffic, they prefer to take the 3-hour flight to Antalya. This is more convenient,” Bikkenev said. The existence of the Russian school has helped encourage Russians to buy property in the area as well.
Serhat Üge is marketing houses in a compound called the Kremlin Residence. “Out of 48 houses, we have 12 Russian families living at the residence,” he said.
“The locals are very happy with the Russians who live here. My neighbor is a Russian. They are very warm people,” said taxi driver Ali Çetin.
Still, there are cultural differences and misunderstandings to overcome.
Pavel Shternshteyn, from Yekaterinburg, who has been coming to Turkey since he was 6 years old, spoke well of the personnel at his hotel, but did not have the same opinion of the Turkish tourists sharing the same facilities. “I think Turkish men are tricky,” he said.
And Turks who have lived in Russia admit that the country is not always an amicable or hospitable place. “[Russians] are very difficult. There is always some kind of mistrust. But once they trust you, everything changes,” said businessman Ali Galip Sava覺r, who has started a family in Moscow with a Russian woman.
“They are like pineapples: They are hard outside, but as you peel them, they are sweet inside,” said businessman Kaçmaz.
“[Russians] are very distant at first. The first time I came here, I wanted to go back. But they become warmer once they get to know you,” said 覺k覺d覺m chef Alt覺n. “It is very difficult to work in Russia as a foreigner. There is heavy bureaucracy. They make foreigners’ lives even harder through frequent controls.”
But even these difficulties are easing for Turks as the two countries come closer together, said Kaçmaz, who is also the Moscow representative of the Russia-Turkey Association of Business and Friendship. “Our passports had all become worn out because we were subjected to controls so many times. Now such controls are taking place less often. The attitude at the airports has changed as well,” he said. “Once I was caught making a traffic violation. The police officer looked at my passport, and immediately asked me which football team I support. I said Galatasaray. He let me go. Normally, he would not have done so.”
There is still room for improvement, of course. Turkey does not even have a cultural center in Moscow and the establishing of Turkish-Russian universities is probably a long way in the future. But a recent change in visa requirements will likely accelerate the increasing closeness between the two countries.
Former Ambassador Vural said the first thing he did when he went to Moscow in 1988 was to advise the Turkish government to abolish visa requirements for Russians, a suggestion that was immediately accepted. It has taken 20 years for Russia to reciprocate. Until recently, Russians could enter Turkey after paying $20 for a visa issued at the border, but for Turks to get a Russian visa required surmounting a lot of bureaucratic hurdles. Many were caught by surprise when the two countries decided in June to lift the requirements, especially since Russia maintains strict visa regulations for visitors from most of the world.
Although it was already relatively easy for Russians to come to Turkey, the Turkish government believes the lifting of the visa requirements will increase the number of Russian tourists – and bring the two countries even closer together. “You can travel without any bureaucratic formalities,” said Halil Ak覺nc覺, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow who finished his mission last week. “It will have a big psychological effect.”
Though the two countries are very different as far as their traditions are concerned, Daria Üge said Russian women like her who married Turks and settled in Antalya are very happy. Her husband said one commonality between the two cultures is the ability to live anywhere in the world. “Both Russians and Turks are quick to find solutions. They have the ability to solve problems through their own means,” Serhat Üge said.
Asked if the couple has experienced any cultural clashes while raising their daughter, Yasmin, he replied: “There is not just one truth when raising a child. Cultural tolerance is important and we want, first and foremost, to raise Yasmin as a good person.”
