Klaus Jurgens

LAST Wednesday I participated in a consultation meeting with almost 100 international residents, while by a panel of leading representatives from our newly elected local administration addressed several issues.

The impressive turnout on the day and the fact that it had been the first such official gathering in a long time clearly underlines that expats not only wish to be treated as equals but have a keen interest in helping to improve the resort’s general quality of life, too.

Likewise, it appears that Didim Council is now ready to embark onto a new era of involving the thousands of foreign residents much more closely into their work and future plans.

Why am I so positive about the get-together? There is a simple reason. I am aware of the fact that there had been various efforts in the past to better integrate our international community into the day-to-day work of the Belediyesi.

Many of us expatriates had shown great support for such proposals. I recall there was once a group of Mahallesi Representatives. Then a Help Desk was established. Not only this, but local charity work became a key feature on many expats weekly routines: doing good for our shared town and community is what motivated and until this very day continues to motivate them.

What’s more, there are other expat run initiatives small and big which significantly contribute to the social welfare of Didim.

But what, according to me, had always been missing was that besides being padded on the shoulder and officially thanked was a real chance to actually be consulted about existing and future local policies.

Of course we are not (as of yet) allowed to vote in local elections hence we’re perhaps quite understandably sidelined. However, as the thousands of foreign residents invest and spend large amounts of money in our town and, regardless of whether national government envisages giving foreign residents a say in local affairs, I never understood why in the past Didim did not set examples in this regard.

If I interpret the intentions behind Wednesday’s meeting correctly that is exactly what our municipality is now trying to accomplish. Didim Council cannot modify national laws hence we will not be able to cast a vote in local elections until the day the Republic of Turkey would join the European Union.

But what the municipality can do is to take this first event as a point of departure for regular consultative meetings, perhaps even with a reduced number of issues being debated during each such future public gathering.

As we do not have a formal expatriate representative body the invitations would need to be issued by the town hall and publicized in the English language media, aka VOICES.

In that case those international residents who wish to attend would be duly informed in advance and those who chose not to participate – which is of course their right – would have no reason for objecting that meetings like these become a platform for us expats to voice our legitimate concerns vis-à-vis the Belediyesi.

Once this practice has become more widely established a second step could be to regularly ask our international community about topics of relevance (from municipal construction work to street animals to habitation certificates and so on and so forth) by means of postal circulars (or in this age, by means of electronic mail perhaps).

This should not be misinterpreted as ‘asking for a vote without a vote’ but as long as everyone knows that quasi-ballots like these are not legally binding they could greatly facilitate our elected office holders to so much better understand our concerns.

Didim would then have become a trendsetter with regards to involving thousands of expats into their activities and we as foreign residents would finally receive the info as well as feedback we often lacked previously.

And let me make a final comment in case this subject matter turns into a hot pick: yes, correct, the mayor himself did not attend as he was literally called away to Aydın, the hour our very own public meeting had been scheduled for.

But he then managed to present a five member strong panel instead including besides other decision makers: a deputy mayor and the head of Zabita. In politics, this is often common – think a prime minister changes plans and a portfolio minister who was due to speak at a certain conference has to be replaced at the very minute. Besides, Mayor Atabay at once arranged for a second expat meeting which shall be held in a few weeks time from today!

Certainly this is not a one-sided venture. Our expat resident’s task is to continue to show interest but dare I say after Wednesday’s high turnout this is the least of my commentator’s worries. A new era – why not be positive and simply say ‘yes?’