It struck me that these black women were a unique group. The modern women’s movement hadn’t taken place yet, and they achieved these things at a time when the country was in turmoil. The country was not extending a hand, not saying, “Gee, we want you to come and show us your gifts and what you have to offer to us,” either because they were black or because they were women.
—Photographer Gerald Fraser, 1989, on his portraits in a Vanguard exhibit, I Dream a World
After Greece, I came back to be a USIA country affairs officer for Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. Also referred to as the desk officer, this officer analyzes incoming reporting on the countries noted. The desk officer also supports administrative and program requests from the field, briefs outgoing delegations to those countries, and provides an oral report during the weekly geographic area director meetings. Once again, I was the only person who looked like me in the weekly State Department meetings in the Bureau of South Eastern European Affairs.
Even though I had been a career FSO for several years, most people in Washington assumed that a woman was a staff aide, a secretary, or an administrative officer. In those days, most male career FSOs appeared to have minimal respect for the support staff who laid the groundwork for the high-minded negotiations they would conduct. After all, they were the so-called substantive officers. Anyone else was administrative support staff and of less consequence than they were. Sadly, some of these officers would appear not to recognize me when walking in the corridor or on the street outside of the State Department Building. I could sense their surprise when I offered my in-depth brief on Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. USIA desk officers often carried the portfolio of two or three countries. State desk officers handled only one. From my perspective, their jobs were much easier.
As if Greek politics were not complex enough, the Greek prime minister, Andreas Papandreou, was having an affair with Dimitri Liana, who became his third wife after his 1981 divorce from American-born Margaret Chant Papandreou. As I reported on the protracted conflicts with Cyprus and Turkey, I had to include less political but often more curious reactions to the prime minister’s affair with a former talk-show hostess and flight attendant half his age.
Unlike some of my State colleagues, I visited all my Turkish posts: Istanbul, Ankara, Smyrna, and Ephesus. I met with the ministers of education and culture in Cyprus. USIA European Bureau (EU) desk officers could not travel to their countries, for the majority of the area’s budget had been depleted because Director Charles Z. Wick had used the new and expensive Concorde jet to fly to his meetings in Europe. As a result, minimal funds were left for EU desk officers to travel. I used my frequent flyer miles to visit my countries. USIA covered my per diem, and off I went. The visits were invaluable. This face-to-face exposure confirmed to me that, despite their strained relationships, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus had much in common. The public affairs officer in Turkey and I developed a respectful working relationship during that visit. I listened to his concerns about his staff. In his evaluation, he indicated the post felt they had an advocate in Washington.
Whenever I got a PAO request for increased budget funding or when a time-sensitive response was needed, I personally went and met with the appropriate officer in the governing bureau. Unlike my other colleagues, I did not send a memo (today it would probably be an email request). Instead, I hand carried the request and engaged my colleagues in conversation. I worked the corridors to get my posts what they needed. Written memos tend to sit in an inbox until the crisis erupts. I knew it was harder to deny a request if the person making the request was sitting in front of you. I became known as the desk officer who was never in her office.
I have noted that some new and old diplomats tend to dismiss the support staff in embassies. I remind new Pickering Fellows, outstanding individuals from all ethnic, racial, and social backgrounds, that it is very important to respect the support staffers, logistic staffers, dispatchers, and drivers. They will not be able to make a policy démarche if they do not have a car that works to get them to the appropriate host-country ministry. This brings to mind my relationship with the executive director of USIA’s European Bureau, Jim Gavigan. He became one of my closest colleagues. After my return from being ambassador to Senegal, Jim sent me an email and suggested that I return to active service because my management style was needed. As flattered as was, I had no desire to return to the department. Serving as an ambassador was the highlight of my career.
My next assignment, to Turkey, was a direct result of my work as the desk officer for Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. My first visit to Istanbul as the desk officer broadened my knowledge of a fascinating country and culture. During that trip I met with Consul General William “Bill” Rau and had lengthy conversations with him about his career. He noted he had served in Greece before coming to Turkey. I said to myself, if Bill could learn Greek and Turkish, perhaps I could. After all, I had tackled Greek and its alphabet. Turkish is written in the Roman alphabet. That gave me the false impression that Turkish would be easier. I was absolutely wrong. Turkish was the most challenging language I have learned. The syntax and sentence structure were, in my view, totally convoluted. I found it more complex than German or Latin. The verb is at the end of a sentence; instead of saying, “I’m going to the store to buy a loaf of bread,” in Turkish your sentence is somewhat like, “Store loaf of bread to buy going I am.” And if you put an adjective in there, it gets really dicey. Turkish is an agglutinative language, which means you add a suffix to the word to complete that word’s meaning. In essence, you could have one word with fifteen different suffixes and that would constitute a sentence. Wrapping my mind around that at age forty-seven was a task. I completed half of a nearly yearlong FSI language-training program. Some classmates did not appear as though they took the course seriously. I requested that USIA enroll me in one of the other language schools we used when FSI classes were full. Fortunately, I had a wonderful teacher for the next six months of study. It was not easy, but I was motivated by the teacher’s patience with me. I learned Turkish.
My motivation to pass the Turkish exam came in June 1990 when I sat in the gallery as Nelson Mandela spoke to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. That event was two weeks before my final Turkish exam. I used every contact I had so that I could attend that speech. Mandela was awe inspiring. I told myself if he could spend twenty-seven and a half years in prison and not be bitter, I could pass my Turkish exam. For the next two weeks I closeted myself and studied. Mandela spoke on June 26. I passed my Turkish exam on July 5.
Mandela continues to inspire me. Earlier in my career, I declined a South African posting during the apartheid era. During the trip I made in 1998 as USIA’s counselor and acting deputy director, I met a wide spectrum of South African educators, leaders, and entrepreneurs. While serving as U.S. ambassador in Dakar, I opened an art exhibit in 2001 entitled Places in Our Lives. The exhibit illustrated the role of artists in diplomacy. The artists represented a full range of the ethnic groups that compose the United States and shape the human mosaic from which our nation derives its greatest strength. The exhibit included Howardena Pindell’s Mandela’s Parade 2, which captures the spirit of those I met in South Africa. People expressed unbridled enthusiasm, anticipation, and joy whenever the recently freed Mandela visited a city, town, or village.
I have written that Athens was my shining moment. Well, that was before I spent four marvelous years in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is the cultural and business center of the country, much as New York is for the United States. I was the U.S. branch public affairs officer in Istanbul, a city larger than the capital, Ankara, the site of the U.S. embassy. If a review of our embassy staffers’ daily calendars of meetings and events were not enough to confirm the vibrancy of Istanbul, the monthly visits of our ambassador, first Robert Strausz-Hupé and later Morton Abramowitz, ended any speculation as to which city was more dynamic. As I said, Istanbul reminded all of our visitors of New York City.
Ankara had historical museums and was the seat of government, but Istanbul offered multiple venues for performing artists, exhibits, and conferences. But I also knew I dared not alienate my Ankara colleagues, especially since they controlled the size of my budget. Whenever I proposed a program, I made sure to include a stop in Ankara. My speakers and my performing artists might not have wanted to go to Ankara, but I made sure that they were part of that mix.
Work in Istanbul brought a few stimulating challenges. Hours prior to Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s arrival in Istanbul for one of the NATO ministerial meetings, I received a call from the press officer on his aircraft. Christopher wanted to host a lunch for the traveling press once he arrived in Istanbul. He knew his relationship with them was strained. The secretary’s venue of choice was a luncheon at the Topkapi Palace Museum. And he wanted to serve Bloody Marys. As often is the case, in vino veritas, one speaks truth with a bit of wine. Without a second thought, I said we could work that out. I immediately called the senior cultural assistant, Meral Selcuk, to see if it might be possible. Working entirely from home, she gained permission to use a dining room in the palace. She confirmed the Topkapi waitstaff would be dressed in period costumes. When I mentioned that the secretary wished to serve Bloody Marys during the lunch, Meral paused, then admitted that might be a problem. The palace is located across the street from a mosque. Alcohol is not served in buildings or restaurants with close proximity to a mosque. Since I was occupied with other details for the press corps visit, I left this event in Meral’s capable hands. Lo and behold, when I looked out of the window of the Topkapi Palace, I noted Meral walking with a spritely gait to the palace with two red picnic jugs in her hands. I guessed what was in them, and I was right. She had mixed the Bloody Marys herself. Readers of this work who have served in Turkey and know Meral Selcuk will not be surprised. Meral is considered one of Turkey’s national treasures by all American diplomats who have been fortunate enough to work under her tutelage in Istanbul.
Mike McCurry was the State Department spokesman during Secretary Christopher’s tenure. He noticed that even in the pouring rain, Turkish staff at the hotel waited for the American secretary of state to arrive and depart. He made a point of holding up the press bus to take time to thank the kitchen staff and waitstaff. He also thanked all of my press staff for their work during the visit. I have not seen another press spokesman do that. I was truly impressed.
Istanbul had some rocky moments, too. After attending a performance of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, I was walking with Melvin Wittler, an American protestant missionary in Turkey from 1956 to 1993. Our cars were parked next to each other. My driver spotted something hanging from Wittler’s car. That was the first time I came that close to death. The bomb would have seriously, if not fatally, injured all who were close to it. Mel Wittler and I were already good friends, but we became even closer friends after that.
Mel’s papers were given to the Yale Divinity School Library upon his death in 2003. He was in Turkey under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the United Church Board for World Ministries. They published what is considered the most reliable English-Turkish dictionary. The dictionary is still sold on Amazon and is entitled Redhouse English-Turkish Dictionary. The Dev Sol Turkish Terrorist group bombed the offices of Redhouse Publishing Company on January 21, 1991.
Americans were not loved around the world. Events in Istanbul, like events in Athens, reminded me to remain conscious of my security. The night we found the bomb on Mel’s car, I spent about two hours on my knees. Over and over again I said, “God, I promise I will do the right thing from now on. Mama and Daddy, I love you, but I’m not ready to see you quite yet.”
When George H. W. Bush came to Turkey in 1991, the consulate went into the usual advance preparation mode. For six weeks, we had daily countdown meetings with the advance team. One member of the advance team was one of the people who worked closely with political consultant Roger Ailes, the creator of the infamous “revolving door” negative television ad used against Michael Dukakis. Along with the Willie Horton “Weekend Passes” advertisement, it is considered to be a prime factor in Bush’s defeat of Dukakis. The ad was produced by Ailes with help from Lee Atwater and first aired on October 5, 1988. “Revolving door syndrome” is a term used in criminology to refer to recidivism; however, in the ad the implication was that prison sentences are much too short. You can imagine my reaction when I learned that one of the advance team members had worked closely with Ailes on this ad. I knew, however, that our task was to ensure a successful presidential visit. I put aside all of my angst about the negative ad, which sadly today might seem mild in terms of presidential campaign ads that have followed, and went to work. Public servants serve the people we elect as well and faithfully as we possibly can, no matter the party.
We drafted, edited, cataloged, and filed scores of briefing papers for the traveling press and coordinated the complex arrangements for the pressroom at the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul. There were no cell phones or digital communications. The now old-fashioned modems had to be installed. Istanbul might have reminded us of New York, but the infrastructure and lack of availability of state-of-the-art technology (e.g., fast copying machines) made it plain we were not in New York City.
Appealing photo ops are always essential to presidential and secretary of state visits. Global audiences are more likely to focus on the photo than the news coverage of the visit. President George H. W. Bush is six feet, two inches tall, and the late Turkish president, Turgot Özal, was significantly shorter. We arranged for a riser for the Turkish president to stand on when photographed with President Bush at the Hagia Sophia and at the Blue Mosque so both presidents conveyed the stately look all heads of state try to project.
On the same presidential visit, embassy staffers were tasked to shuttle videocassettes from each site visit to the pressroom at the Conrad Hotel for swift transmittal to American media (network and cable) outlets. We had what we thought was a foolproof schedule. Somehow, after one stop I discovered the videocassette was left behind. I quickly grabbed it and dashed at my best speed to catch up with the lead cars, handing it to the next designated person in what resembled a relay race. Like most women, I love pretty shoes, but I knew pretty was not a consideration for that day. I knew to wear flat, rubber-soled, comfortable shoes. Thinking back on that experience, I am sure my colleagues would get a charge out of seeing “the branch PAO in Istanbul” dashing along the motorcade to do the handoff.
At the end of a state visit, embassy and consulate staff are not allowed to leave until the president’s plane takes off safely and is out of sight. Traditionally, one of the pool reporters joins the staff on this “Death Watch.” Once the plane is safely in the air, the “wheels up” party begins. In this case we kicked off our shoes and proceeded to unwind in the elegant Cirigan Hotel, which overlooks the Bosporus, where the presidential party stayed. This former palace built for an Ottoman sultan in the 1860s was restored, enlarged, and converted into a five-star Kempinski hotel. After further renovations in 2007, it resembles an authentic palace. We had a grand time in that stunning setting. On my subsequent visits to Istanbul, I often reminisce about that “wheels up” party. It tops many similar parties I have experienced in other overseas posts, primarily because of the hotel’s elegance and ornate style.
In Turkey, I found that even a small dinner took just the right timing and diplomacy to work. It took me two years, but Ambassador Richard Clark Barkley was pleased when I arranged his dinner meeting with the eminent Turkish scholar Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, director of the Islamic Research Center, the foremost research center on Islamic history, and Sami Kohen, the revered journalist at the Milliyet newspaper and the most influential Jewish journalist born in Turkey.
I invested a lot of time to secure this dinner engagement for the American ambassador. I had to develop a rapport with each of his potential guests before I could suggest it. After all, why would one Jew and one Muslim want to sit down with an American just because I wanted it to happen? I had to approach it in a way that almost made them think they suggested it. I also had to sit at the dinner and be ready to write a memorandum for the State Department about it. All three of the dinner participants left with far more positive, less skeptical views of one another. I cannot remember the reporting cable we sent back to Washington, but this initial meeting led to easier contact and dialogue with key opinion leaders in Turkey. One of them, İhsanoğlu, ran for president of Turkey in the 2014 elections.
In my diplomacy course at the University of Central Florida, I emphasize the importance of building genuine relationships in order to be an effective diplomat. While I was in Turkey, I became close friends with Orhan and Candan Fetvaci. He managed a commodities trading firm, and she ran a philanthropic foundation. They had two girls in private school. Zeynep Fetvaci was fifteen years old when she insisted on interviewing me at my Istanbul apartment. Her topic for a school paper was women in the diplomatic service. Recently, she shared her memories of that day: “I was extremely nervous as I was very much in awe of you, and I wanted to make a good impression. I’m not sure if you remember, but I was thinking of studying international relations early on, and you were the main reason behind that. I wanted to be like you one day! I guess I have steered away a little (well a lot probably), but I still hope that one day I can be viewed as an amazing, interesting, compassionate, and elegant lady as you are!” Now, some twenty years later, she works in the London office of a New York–based real estate firm that raises capital for private equity real estate firms around the world.
Zeynep’s sister, Emine, then sixteen, has graduated from two well-known U.S. universities, Williams College and Harvard, earning her PhD in history of art and architecture, focusing on Islamic art. During one of my visits to Istanbul, her mother handed me a huge book, Emine’s doctoral dissertation, and said, “This book is my grandchild.” I smiled and said, “Be patient.” A few years later I attended Emine’s wedding in Istanbul. Now a professor at Boston University, she has published a color-illustrated book, Picturing History at the Ottoman Court. Her husband, Dan, originally from Australia, is in the Philosophy Department, teaching courses on ethics. They have an eighteen-month-old daughter and the predictable doting grandparents in Turkey and Australia. Emine Fetvaci attended my brother Harry’s funeral in Boston in August 2012, as did Ambassador and Mrs. Monteagle Stearns. Oh how thoughtful! Her presence touched the very core of my being. Emine did not know my brother. This little girl from Istanbul and her sister have grown into fine women. I feel particularly fortunate to have maintained contact with them over the past twenty years.
A description of my assignment to Turkey would not be complete without mention of a photography exhibit we mounted in Istanbul and in Izmir. I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America presented a very positive perspective about America that the world needed to see. Brian Lanker, a white photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for newspaper feature photography in 1974, had taken 225 pictures of women of color who had made significant impacts on the lives of others, from the well-known, including Barbara Jordan and Rosa Parks, to the unknown, including Priscilla Williams, his children’s nanny.
The actual exhibit included some seventy-five photographs. Each photograph highlighted a positive interaction between black and white Americans at a time when such relationships were not common. I first viewed the exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. Immediately, I knew our international audiences should be exposed to it. I knew a number of senior officers who respected my judgment. I told them they should see the exhibit. Once they saw it, they agreed it was worth sending the exhibit abroad.
The Turks came to the exhibit opening, which for a host of reasons beyond my control, was held the very night of the beginning of Ramadan. To ensure a decent turnout, I knew I had to do something special. To demonstrate my genuine respect for their presence that evening and their culture, I gave all of my remarks in Turkish. Ambassador Richard Barkley traveled from Ankara for the event, and he gave his remarks in English. I thanked our Turkish guests for spending the first hours of the first night of Ramadan with us at the exhibit opening. We secured a prime location in the center of “downtown” Istanbul. The gallery was filled. The following day, even the seasoned Istanbul cultural staffers were impressed with the positive press coverage of the opening. The seldom-highlighted story of African American women who played pivotal roles in civil rights, the arts, and education opened the minds and hearts of Istanbul’s intelligentsia. The Turks were genuinely fascinated by this history. For three weeks, middle school teachers brought their students, and university and technical schools also sent students. During the exhibit, we hosted two U.S.-based speakers who gave further insight into the historical relevance of these women in American culture.
My ultimate accomplishment in Istanbul involved international politics. An article appeared in one of Turkey’s fundamentalist newspapers implying that the United States had been supplying food and weapons to Kurdish terrorists known as the PKK. Ambassador Morton Abramowitz instructed me to meet with the newspaper’s editor to clarify this misinformation. Rather than blindside the editor, I told him the subject of my meeting, so that he could be prepared. I went with all the Washington-provided facts on disinformation campaigns in the region. I outlined how this disinformation was used in press articles, including the one that brought me to the meeting. With my senior Turkish press assistant, Bertan Saracoglu, we conducted the entire meeting in Turkish. The next day, the paper ran an apology. Bertan said it was the first time in the thirty years he had worked at the American consulate that an apology was published.
We also presented an American studies conference on works by African American writers. The Turkish English professors knew far more about Toni Morrison than I did. As part of this conference, USIA sent U.S. lecturers to discuss and analyze the images of Americans of color as portrayed in literature or in the media. I took the opportunity to tell the gathering about the professional careers of my family, including five lawyers, a judge, teachers, published authors, and now a vice president at Stanford University. I added that the majority of my nieces and nephews had attended college: Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Lincoln University, Tufts, Johnson C. Smith, Duke, Radcliffe, and Vassar. Many African American families are just like mine, I explained. Some have far more impressive accomplishments and positions.
These two overseas assignments, in Greece and Turkey, geographically close but very different and both demanding, required me to master new languages, to immerse myself in their fascinating cultures and navigate around old conflicts in a most subtle and effective manner. The religions are different, but Greece and Turkey have a long history of a constant attachment. Forward-thinking leaders from both countries, including Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey and Eleftherios Venizelos of Greece, were strong proponents of mutual understanding and agreement. At the time of this writing, there was an attempt to move the two nations closer to one another and to put aside the conflicts that have existed throughout the past twenty-five years. I saw the change when I went back to Greece and Turkey in October and November 2006. The earthquakes that took place in the late 1990s in Turkey and in Greece brought those two countries together, because they had to help one another to survive those natural disasters. In these tragedies the people took to heart God’s message of love and reconciliation to jointly overcome adversity and build better relations between their two nations. Yet, with the Greek economic crisis and Turkey drifting toward dictatorship, I am not able to paint such a rosy picture of Greek-Turkish relations now.
The experience of being the cultural attaché would have been heady for anybody, but for someone who grew up going to museums in Boston kicking and screaming, I find it ironic that I ended up thriving in a position as U.S. cultural attaché. I went to cultural events as a child and teenager on the orders of my brothers. It truly was not free will. After I came home from postings in Athens and Istanbul, I went to a Kennedy Center performance of Les Miserables. I did not have to go backstage and make sure the sound system was right. I did not have to write a telegram saying how the audience reacted to these American performing artists and whether any U.S. objectives were met. I could just sit and enjoy, which I did. I know my brothers are smiling in heaven.