INSIDE TURKEY:Turks are unsure whether they will ever be accepted into the EU, reports Lara Marlowefrom Istanbul, in the first of a series of reports
Fermude Tuarhan sits on a cushion on the pavement outside her home in the poor suburb of Bagcilar, a few hundred metres from the motorway to Istanbul airport. It's a hot day, but the 63-year-old woman wears heavy wool socks and black plastic sandals, a long skirt, jumper and flowered headscarf.
When I ask if I can talk to her, she squints at the sun: "But I have no education." The widow Tuarhan's grandsons look smart as they set off in their school uniforms. "It's a 40-minute walk," she explains. "There's a bus, but it costs 80 lire (€47) a month. I don't have enough to pay. I have heart problems and I live with my son Ersin, who works in a plastics factory. He has respiratory problems. The doctor gave him an inhaler. I wish he could find another job."
Mrs Tuarhan's son earns 500 Turkish lire (€294) per month. Her daughter-in-law Asiye is a seamstress in one of Bagcilar's sweatshops, for 640 lire (€376) per month. Asiye worked from 9am until 11pm the previous day to fill a big foreign order. At least her present boss pays overtime, Mrs Tuarhan sighs. The previous one went backrupt, and didn't pay his employees.
The Tuarhan family are typical of the Anatolian peasants who have tripled the size of this city in recent decades, to 12 million. Officially, unemployment runs close to 10 per cent, though experts suggest the real rate is much higher.
Mrs Tuarhan was in her early 20s when she moved here from the Black Sea town of Samsun, with Hamit. "It was his blue eyes I fell for," she recalls, smiling, but with tears in her eyes.
"My parents were against it; so was his stepmother. So we ran away and came here. That was my happiest time, when I was a young bride." Hamit worked in a factory, and died seven months ago. "He had diabetes," Mrs Tuarhan explains. "I asked the municipality to help us take his body to Samsun for burial, but they said no. We barely have enough to eat, let alone buy a car. We had to take him in a goods lorry. His brothers paid for the funeral." Mrs Tuarhan's sister Fatima has retired in Munich.
"Her husband worked in an eyeglass factory, and Fatima was a cleaning lady. It would have been better for us in Germany, but my sister knows how to read and write; I don't.
"On television, they say Turkey is going to enter the European Union, or it's not; I'm not sure which," Mrs Tuarhan continues, summing up uncertainty about the long accession negotiations.
"If Turkey joins Europe, it could be good for us. When Europeans go to the market, they buy what they want to. They live better than us. The only time I eat meat is during the Eid. It's been years since I could buy a sheep to share with the neighbours for [ the upcoming Muslim feast of] Bayram."
A half-hour taxi ride and a world away, Istiklal Caddesi is Istanbul's Grafton Street, always packed with shoppers.
A balcony festooned with European and Turkish flags and a banner saying "Istanbul 2010" catches my eye. (In 2000, the EU decided to include cities outside the Union in its European Capital of Culture programme.) On the second floor of the magnificent 19th-century building, I find Ahmet Cakaloz, a banker with an American accent and the project manager for Istanbul 2010. "This palace was built in the mid-19th century by a banker," he tells me. "Imagine! The Sultan Abdul Mecit had 40 wives in his harem, but he still came here to meet his mistress. Look at the French and Italian frescoes."
Like many educated Istanbulites, Mr Cakaloz believes the process of Turkey's EU application may have become more important than the end result. "It's a matter of democratisation, of more rights for women and children, of fairer distribution of income. Things like that bring you closer to the EU. Personally, I don't think Turkey will become a member. It's too big a country; I don't think it will be acceptable for the EU in the foreseeable future. They can always find more excuses. Becoming more European is something we have to do for ourselves."
Every day, thousands of Istanbulites cross the narrow body of water that divides the European, Thracian part of their country from infinitely more vast Anatolia, in Asia. Although the geographic symbolism of the journey rarely occurs to passengers on the ferry across the Bosphorus, most have clear ideas about Europe. Turkey can live without Europe, Hasan Iscan, a retired security guard, boasts proudly. "But they can't live without us. My mother was veiled, but my daughter dresses like you."
Arif Iseri, a building foreman sitting near Mr Iscan, begins to argue. "You have to admit that human rights and freedoms are better in Europe!" he tells the retired security guard.
Another man, a Bosnian Muslim and naturalised Turk, rises from the seats behind us to interrupt angrily, because he mistakes me and my French-speaking interpreter for French journalists. "How dare you come here and ask us questions, after what Nicolas Sarkozy has said!" The French president opposes Turkish membership of the EU.
On the return journey, from Asia back to Europe, Sevtap Atasever, a middle-aged advertising production assistant, tells me she feels "very, very" European. "I feel modern, attentive, sensitive, and I am filled with good will," she adds.
"These are European values. For example, I never throw rubbish in the street. "Turkey may not join Europe in my lifetime, but it's important to be on that path, for our country to change, for better building standards, the treatment of animals, the environment."
Ms Atasever says her country can offer Europe "spectacular countryside, a huge labour pool, a strategic location, and intelligent, flexible people." She feels hurt that many Europeans are reluctant to accept Turkey. "I ask myself whether they really know us."
• Lara Marlowewill be writing from Turkey throughout this month.