Obama Wuz Here

This is hopelessly late but still important enough to post about. Obama mentioned that he aimed to visit a Muslim country in his first 100 days, and he delivered on that promise with a planned visit to Turkey, followed by a surprise visit to Iraq. Before the big trip, which was at the beginning of April, all of Turkey was abuzz with gossip during the weeks leading up to Obama's arrival. For security reasons, many details of the President's trip were unknown, even when he was here, so there was a lot of speculation from expats and Turks as to where and when Obama would be doing things. We all knew Obama would visit Ankara, because it is the nation's capital, but all of the Istanbullus knew that there was no way Obama could come to Turkey and give the country's cultural capital a miss, but this stopover was announced with only about two weeks to go. 

Luckily, a lot of the Fulbrighters here in Istanbul had a chance to help out the consulate with Obama's visit. We had the opportunity to be escorts to the White House Press Corps during their stay in Istanbul. I unfortunately opted out because the planning meeting and the actual times for which they needed me coincided with Jon's arrival. So I basically love my boyfriend more than Obama, surprise! Some other Fulbrighters did participate. Ceylan went to the meeting Obama had with Turkish students; she got in with the Secret Service and apparently was caught on some of the television coverage!

The Istanbullus themselves were absolutely thrilled that Obama came to Turkey. The two days Obama was in Istanbul, which, by the way, resulted in the shutting down of a long stretch of the European shore for his motorcade :-(, I could hear Turks on the bus and in the street all talking about Obama. From what I could tell, he made a really good impression here, which in turn makes it not so bad a time to be an American right now abroad. Some of Obama's remarks that went over well were his pointing out that America does not consider itself a Christian country, and neither does Turkey consider itself a Muslim country, and he hoped that therefore both countries would work to keep that constitutional promise of separation of church and state, as well as some conciliatory remarks about the controversial Armenian genocide issue.