EROSPOLIS|Turkish dilemma: Should I stay or should I go?

Three of my mail groups, all of which consist of men and women between the ages 40 and 60, sent the same message in the last few days: An email allegedly sent by businessman and once-upon-a-time politician Cem Boyner to his employees that urged them to stay in Turkey, rather than seek a life elsewhere.

Boyner has denied ever writing the email, and I believe him; the wording, with heavy emphasis on the Mediterranean need for the sun, inability to shovel snow in Canada and rummaging through your Turkish friends' Facebook pages while lamenting the absence of Turkish tea in foreign cafes carries the obvious stamp of an Aegean vagabond, rather than an international businessman like Boyner. Nonetheless, the message, shared and re-shared on social media, poured gasoline on one of the most contentious debates: "Should we stay or should we leave Turkey…" - deep breath - "while there is time to leave?" From the people in my French conversation class to our colleagues, people talk about settling in Canada or on a Greek island. Some have already done so. Others are busy sending their children abroad to study "just in case."

As in any Turkish debate, there is much passion in the debate that ranges from anger at politicians to outrage at bombs on the streets and a feeling of foreboding. Sentences that creep in the debate dribble in drama: "We have to think of the future of our children, their education, their employment, even their life," says the trembling voice of a mother or the booming one of a father. Then the anger creeps in: "They have made the country unfit for us to live in, with bombs and arrests" or, naked fear, as in "Each time I see a Syrian refugee, I wonder what will become of us. What will we be able to carry when Turkey is torn by civil war?"