Presidential Chaos

 Tuesday 28 May 2025, Double Tree Hilton Hotel, bar on 7^th floor

I feel like I’ve been here in Turkey forever buts its actually just a couple of days. Writing this from the roof top bar in my next hotel (Hilton). Having a beer (it might seem like I’m always doing this but I promise I am not!)

So Monday – the day of my talk – finally came around. I was up bright and early as I had to catch the bus at 830am and I felt it advisable to be early since things seem unpredictable. Well good thing too as it turned out there was no bus and I was advised the conference was proceeding in the hotel instead of the conference. But when I went to try to find where I would be talking, I couldn’t find anything that made sense. Fortunately Begum came to the rescue again. It turned out for some unknown reason the schedule had been completely changed and I was now speaking in the afternoon….

The special room where ministers from all countries sit around, with delegates behind, and have discussions

Me at lunch with Begum, the one who rescued me a few times!

Lunch

Anyway, Take 2, in the afternoon, I resurfaced and went in search of lunch and then was driven to the congress centre. It turned out that everything had been shuffled around because the president of Turkey (Erdogan, a dictator according to many) had decided to "pop in” to the conference. When we got to the congress centre  – and by we I mean the other keynote Prof Sandra McNally from Univ. of Surrey plus our escorts – we had to go through three security checks to get into the building. By this point it was already past the time we should have started our talks. Sandra and I realised there was no way 600+ people, all queuing outside the gates, were going to get into the venue and get seated in anything less than hours….

This is the Turkish President, Erdogan, a very confident and impressive speaker. 

This is all the Ministers at the event - over 30 from many different countries

To cut a long story short, indeed it took hours, the schedule was rearranged again, with our talks bumped until after the president and other dignitaries. By this point the whole thing was at least three hours late and Sandra and I were wondering if they were just going to bypass our talks all together. But finally, they went ahead!

It was a very large room and amazingly given all the chaos, most people stayed to watch the keynotes

I am not a fan of the large screens! My hair never quite does what its meant to...

I think I did an ok job on my talk – not the best I’ve given, but acceptable I think, and certainly more interesting than most of the other non-academic talks (which seemed to me just to be stating the obvious in a fairly boring way). A UK minister of employment (Diana Johnson – writing her name so I remember to look her up) came up and said she enjoyed my talk a lot. We were whisked away by our escorts straight after the talks so it was hard to get a sense of how it had been received, although at the Gala Dinner, people told me they found it useful.

Anyway I was just glad the keynote was over after a very long build up, stemming right back to having to argue for months for Curtin to agree I could fly business class (bearing in mind the conference people were covering premium economy plus all other expenses so it isnt as big an ask as it sounds). 

Because we hadn’t really connected with anyone, Sandra and I decided to go to the dinner – which didn’t start till 8pm due to the delayed schedule. I sat next to a diplomat  and talked to a private secretary for a minister, various people who work for the OECD, and some others in similar roles. It’s a  different world to that of an academic!

The diplomat, for example, is Swiss but has been living in Turkey three years. Every 4 years they move to a different international assignment – she was in the process of applying for Kosovo (for some strange reason I cant quite remember now). She was very open about being ambitious and seeing each 4 yr posting as an opportunity to move up the ladder, but also noting how competitive it was (she is an international lawyer with a PhD). She had a child and a husband who looked after the child a lot because he had more flexibility in his job. I got the sense the life of a diplomat is gruelling at times – but she also clearly loved it. She went through the SMART model with me, with only T being the issue. It was interesting hanging out with people doing different things! They all talked about bi-laterals and multilaterals and delegations and the like!

Gala dinner - Art that a person was doing by pushing liquid paint around, with the result projected onto the screen, quite mesmerising

Of course, some Turkish dancing for entertainment

Very fancy dinner set up - quite different to academic conferences. But no wine! That is also very different to academic conferences :-)

This morning I had my last amazing breakfast at the fancy hotel and have transferred to the Hilton (much cheaper). I did some work this afternoon and then decided to catch an uber to the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art – which was good but didn’t blow me away.  Below are some of my favouries. 

This was a special exhibition by this famouns Turkish female artists (Semillo Berksos, or some such)

I quite like this sculpture - the guy on the bonnet is reading a map. Remember those days?

This was an intriguing depiction of a factory that I quite like - especially when you zoom in close (see next)

Example zoom in - the guys head is a coin


Another zoom in - love these zombie-like factory workers

This was a really large mosaic landscape - see below for the close up

This is a close up of the photo above- entirely composed of small skulls

The gallery was next to a lively part of town, so had a walk around, a coffee and treat in the sun with a fab view, followed by a spontaneous decision to walk to the Gatala Tower and go up the top. En route I walked through a very touristy area. I even found a place selling fused glass! I went in and had a nice chat to the man. It was his wife who makes it, and he was very proud of her, but also said it was very hard to make money from glass due to its price (a world wide problem it seems).

A coffee and cake in the sunshine

At last I found the tourists!

 More fused glass

Fused glass by the lady

 

Then I went up the tower for spectacular views! Istanbul is huge– there are 20 million people in this city – which is I believe close to the population of Australia. From up high it is glorious with a large river running right through the middle of the city and beautiful mosques and other buildings all around. At street level, it reminds me a bit of China – all sorts of strange crazy shops (eg a whole street of shops selling mannikins; another whole street selling kitchen equipment), usually with old men standing outside the shop smoking and talking to each other. Lots of people and chaos and colour.

The river is the Bosporos. Istanbul is in two continents - half is in the Asian continent and half is in Europe (I was on the Europe side)

You can see I am looking a bit scared, dont like heights

As much as the views, I was loving looking down at the rooftops. Look at this lady in a very large pink flowy dress!

And look at these crazy people sitting on the wall

Now I am enjoying a lovely view from the hotel's roof top bar. Less lovely is the smoke – 55% of people here smoke cigarettes, some Turkish taxi driver told me. Unlike Australia, people can smoke everywhere, including in restaurants.

Anyway I’ve had a great day today, and tomorrow is my big tourist day – I have booked a 7 hour private walking tour! And then home on Thursday.