TURKEY

Istanbul

“They arrived one morning at dawn. We were all asleep. They threw us out. In every house, one person stayed: children, old people. After they chased us away, they also kicked them out. The bulldozer arrived.” Birgül

Abstracts

“'There aren’t many Roms around here,' I was told in Istanbul. 'A few villages around Edirne at the Bulgarian border, at the most; otherwise they’re perfectly integrated…' In reality, two million Roms are dispersed throughout Turkey. (…) I had the greatest trouble in the world to find an 'integrated Rom.' My assistants were the ones who first met Elmas. They announced in a whisper: 'She’s a genuine Rom with a university record as long as this. She has a radiant smile. She’s been making documentaries on Roms in Turkey for four years!'

(…) Pretty Birgül was a far better representative of the normal treatment that Roms receive in Turkey. We were welcomed most warmly by her whole family whose unfortunate lot it was to camp on the rubble of their site, surrounded by buildings being raised by real-estate developers who had the connections, and above all, enough cash in hand, to cancel out a Rom’s petty ownership title."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard