Following on from the previous post regarding the
anthropologist who spent several months in Gümüşlük between 1966 & 67 I
found a retrospective account of her stay published in 2003, it has all the ingredients
of a suspense novel, a marital breakup, battles with the state bureaucracy, accusations
of smuggling, association with a suspected spy and explosives being planted in
her vehicle.
Most of the chapter is available on Google Books; see the link
below (starting at page 77)
Ch 3 “The Anthropologist Accused” from Crime’s Power: Anthropologists and the Ethnography of Crime, edited by Philip C Parnell and Stephanie C Kane published by Palgrave McMillan in 2003
I spent about six months living in Bodrum when June, who I knew well, was living in Gumusluk and then in Bodrum, having been thrown out of Gumusluk for lacking a village residence permit. I also remember the episode of the fish dynamite planted in her car. For some context, almost all foreigners that I knew living in Bodrum at that time did get into some legal troubles. I myself was accused briefly of being a currency smuggler (even though there was no law against bringing dollars into Turkey and I had very few dollars anyway). They seized my passport and my travelers checks and I was hauled around for several days visiting the public prosecutor and other authorities. Finally they decided I had not ccmmmitted a crime and returned my documents to me. Other foreigners also got in trouble, including France, a Belgian woman living outside the border of Bodrum, Sally, a South African woman accused of slandering the police, and numerous travelers who had fragments of amphorae and were accused of being antiquities smugglers. So in this context, June's experience was not all that unusual
ReplyDeleteKatherine,
DeleteI’ve recently managed to get hold of a copy the book, and June mentions that she had been out with you and Adnan the night the explosives were planted in her Landrover.
Was the harassment of non Turkish residents a local phenomenon or was the general distrust of foreigners more widespread?
Would you know the name of the journalist who was living in Gümüşlük and was accused of spying, I’m assuming Luke Barnstorm was an ethnographer’s alias; it would interesting to see if he wrote about his experiences.