![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There's a first time for everything
Oct. 23rd, 2007 06:21 pmI've had a credit card for more than 20 years and have never, ever, lost/misplaced it.
Today, while booking a flight to Vienna at the end of November, I opened my wallet to take out the credit card, and... SHOCK! It was gone.
So I called the company to ask where I'd last used it, and then the shop where I'd used it, and, lo and behold, I'd really forgotten it there, and they'd kept it, assuming that I'd come back for it sooner or later.
What a relief.
Fortunately I hadn't yet asked the company to block it...
People are demonstrating here against the Kurds, roaming the streets in raucous, aggressive-looking groups brandishing Turkish flags. Yesterday, a group of nationalists forced people to leave street cafés in Izmir, because they were having fun and thus not adequately mourning the Turkish soldiers who'd been killed in skirmishes with the PKK (forbidden Kurdish party, whose members dwell in the south-east near the Iraqi border and engage in fights with the Turkish army with increasing frequency)
I'm *very* curious to see how the Americans will juggle that hot potato - it's either further alienating Turkey by forcing them to renounce their fight against PKK and Peshmerga, or alienating an important ally in Iraq, because the northern part of Iraq is relatively calm only due to the US's support of the Kurds (who were anti-Saddam from the beginning).
Whichever way it goes, the Austrian Embassy isn't the ideal location. Either America forces Turkey to renounce, then nationalist groups might get it into their heads to try something foolish against the US Embassy - right on the other side of Atatürk Boulevard. Or the US decide to do Turkey's job, then PKK can be relied upon to stage bomb attacks.
Whichever way you look at it, the outcome doesn't look too promising.
Today, while booking a flight to Vienna at the end of November, I opened my wallet to take out the credit card, and... SHOCK! It was gone.
So I called the company to ask where I'd last used it, and then the shop where I'd used it, and, lo and behold, I'd really forgotten it there, and they'd kept it, assuming that I'd come back for it sooner or later.
What a relief.
Fortunately I hadn't yet asked the company to block it...
People are demonstrating here against the Kurds, roaming the streets in raucous, aggressive-looking groups brandishing Turkish flags. Yesterday, a group of nationalists forced people to leave street cafés in Izmir, because they were having fun and thus not adequately mourning the Turkish soldiers who'd been killed in skirmishes with the PKK (forbidden Kurdish party, whose members dwell in the south-east near the Iraqi border and engage in fights with the Turkish army with increasing frequency)
I'm *very* curious to see how the Americans will juggle that hot potato - it's either further alienating Turkey by forcing them to renounce their fight against PKK and Peshmerga, or alienating an important ally in Iraq, because the northern part of Iraq is relatively calm only due to the US's support of the Kurds (who were anti-Saddam from the beginning).
Whichever way it goes, the Austrian Embassy isn't the ideal location. Either America forces Turkey to renounce, then nationalist groups might get it into their heads to try something foolish against the US Embassy - right on the other side of Atatürk Boulevard. Or the US decide to do Turkey's job, then PKK can be relied upon to stage bomb attacks.
Whichever way you look at it, the outcome doesn't look too promising.
