thought this was a form of propaganda, had not thought to question where was this concept coming from and what was the job it was doing for individual americans? and i think that one thing i was realizing that this took a long time to realize in fact is that the very language that we used when we talked about foreign countries have been kind of determined for us a very long time ago because we tended to look at muslim countries and countries in eeast as were they catching up with us or behind us? and what that does is that prevents you from being able to see the country on its own terms. >> "after words" airs on booktv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous afterwards programs on the web site, booktv.org. >> next, sunday su hand -- suzie

reflects on their travels abroad and reflected odd machine american's power and influence, she irinterviewed by el mirery -- elmira bayrasil. >> hi. my name is elmira bay wasle and we're lucky enough do be here today with suzy hansen, the author othe book "notes on a foreign country: an american in post american world," and suzy is a contributing writer at the "new york times" magazine and she currently is living in istanbul. suzy, in trying to describe this book to a number of different people, i always kind of find myself stumbling over it because i think it's many books in one. i think it's a book about you going abroad as an american into 2007, live is stan ball, living about the muslim world and turkey and the surrounding region.

it's a book about that region, but it's also very much a book that is very relevant today as we see things over the summer that we have seen with charlottesville, things in our own country with the election of donald trump. it is very much a book about what is america and what does it mean to be an american? can you talk about what is -- how would you describe what this book is? >> guest: well, think that the fact it seems a little bit like they're there a number of book inside one comes from the genesis of the book. had moved to turkey with the idea i would become a real forecorrespondent and going to write about foreign countries, and in the -- but i had never been anywhere really and never been to turkey and had never really left america itch lived in london for three months so it was this very dramatic experience and using maybe five new things a day and during that first year, maybe the first two

years, i was often talking to friends of mine, particularly to friends of mine who left field in london, one was british and one is indian, and i was telling them about everything i was learn to go turkey, and i -- after about a year or so, when i said i think i'm going write a book about turkey, they said to me, we think that your book is about america because what they had been hearing more powerfully maybe than my observations about turkey were my observations about how america seem from abroad, what i was learning about more than history and he region, hour turks viewed americans, all of this was coming as a kind of revelation to me, and at first i was herod, they thought my book about a foreign country was about myself. seemed exactly what you were not supposed to do as a journalist, but over time in fact as turkey becamemer complicated and as i became more aware of my

weaknesses and my blind spots, i didn't really feel comfortable writing a book about turkey as much and i thought that actually what i could write about was this experience of seeing your country from afar, and that might be the more powerful story i could tell. >> host: i have to say, though, think you do in tackling -- a lot of the book is very much about your time as a foreign correspondent in turkey. you start out the book with a scene of the going to ismir to the mine and the miners asking you why did you wait until this horrible tragedy for you to come and find us? and i think that you then paint a broader picture about what is happening in turkey? can you talk about that? >> guest: well issue think that

was an interesting case because what i actually was thinking when the one miner asked me that -- this was a miner who survived the fire -- was that it reminded me that a lot of foreign journalists in early years of akp, of erdogan -- i arrived in 2007 so it was kind of the early years. we had been very much focused on the debate between islam and secularism, and i think that some people, myself included, hadn't been paying as close attention to this economic policies policies and how he was actually changing the country, and as we know with this mind mine now, a lot of what went wrong were the drastic -- the drastic neoliberalism he as implementing at the time and that had very little regard for safety rules and for the miners themselves, and what i wanted to say to the miner was, well, was -- why did

it take me so long? i was very caught up in other things and not able to see these weaknesses and erdogan perhaps because at the time he was portrayed as pro business and that seemed something familiar to me and i was not aware that my sort of maybe affection or familiarity or comfortability with capitalism went that deep, it would actually lead me to have such blind spots about a foreign leader. >> host: i have to say i think what you're saying bettered want being very pro business bus certainly that's how hi was portrayed in particularly in the western media, when he first came to power in 2003. it was about these economic policies and really catapulting turkey out of this third world back water it had been for such a long time, despite the fact his very much pious conservative

muslim. in the book you start out -- there is amen an ambivalence particularly from your family about you going a muslim majority country because of what we experienced here in 9/11 and a lot of this pushback you got from people, why would you go and live in that part of the world? and you even talk about this assumption that you have about muslims. >> guest: yeah. i think it's really surprising to me in retrospect that it felt this way, but i think a lot of the book is really stopping and just noticing your reflexes refd earlier prejudices which i trade to break down over the arc of the book, and i think that when my father, for example, expressed this concern about me moving to a muslim country, my response was actually, well, you know they restrain islam there, and i thought of myself as a liberal, as leftist, even as

someone open-minded and -- but there was some part of me -- if i would have spoken that way, that meant i was also afraid of it. i thought it was something that needed to be restrained which to me in retrospect ridiculous. i did at the time, and i think that september 11th deeply shook a lot of people in ways we have not full request -- fully grappled with. >> host: i think seeing a pro business kind of pro progressive leader in a muslim majority country was something that we all found comforting. >> host: nite was reassuring and he was use the rhetoric we were familiar with, the rhetoric of free markets, human rights, democracy, freedom. he was using the word we -- that made us feel good about him in the beginning especially and a lot of people, turks as well. so i think that what bothers me is that i -- we fell for it on some level.

i think a lot of people were not looking very carefully so excited about the moderate islamist, exactly what we need solve the world's problems. >> host: i want to just read a little excerpt and i want to be able to talk to you about this because i think this is again -- guess to the heart of how this is a many books in one. it's not just a book about your experience in turkey. it's very much a book about america today. you write about how america's policies and you believe that america was inherently good, and i thought america was at the end of some if evolutionary spectrum and everyone else was trying to kept um my learning process was threefold i was learn about foreign countries, about america's role in the world and also slowly understanding my own psychology and temper. and prejudice, the very things made so it impossible to acquire worldly knowledge in the first place.

american exceptionalism did not only define the united states as special nation among lesser nations i demand that all americans believed they'd are, too were born superior to others. >> guest: yes. >> host: we talk about this epiphany you have in turkey? grew to turkey and you good with this sense of, i'm going report, and i certainly have -- in the sense that we have hear in the west we have all of the once answers and what i extrapolate from this and correct me if i'm wrong -- is you started to question are we actually right? is america this exceptional nation and who are we as a country. >> guest: many things at once, definitely that question of are we exception al and the very question why had i never thought this was form of prop began dark not thought to question where was this concept coming from and

what was the job it was doing for individual americans? and i think that one thing was realizing that this took a long time to realize in fact, is that the very language that we used when we talked about foreign countries had been kind of determined for us a very long time ago because we tended to look at -- muslim countries and countries in the east as, were they catching up with us or were they behind us? and what that does is that prevents you from being able to see the countrien its own terms, prevent you from being able to just see someone like erdogan for oh who he is wind the turkish concept. this is going back to the passage you read before. you're understanding the hit for the first time, you're own prejudices and why you're not able to think in this complex way before. and it was very difficult to tease out. >> host: one reason -- in just in terms of understanding the

complexity, not only in turkey but i think in our own -- in the united states, you reference -- a lot of references to james baldwin in this book, and you talk about how one of the reasons you chose to actually go to turkey on a grant that you had won in 2007, was because james baldwin was this black man in the 1960s and he had written that he felt more comfortable in istanbul than he did in new york or paris. >> guest: he said that he had expressed that he had lived in paris, in new york, and of course these were very racist times, and i watched this documentary, believe it was a pbs documentary in which he was walking through -- my first image outfields istanbul-probably and it was this great footage of him walking through this whole -- and he expressed he felt more comfortable there. this made no sense to me. he was my favorite writer.

everybody i think has that writer that just changes your brain a little bit. you feel it move when you read their books, and he was that person for me because he explained to me what it meant to be a white american which is not something i had really thought about so carefully or ever maybe i was 23 years old. so he meant a lot to me. so when i saw he had been in istanbul and third, just -- the city was stuck in the brain. i wanted to see what he had seen there and why this place had made him feel good and what that had -- the fact i was surprised that istanbul would make him feel that way, what did that mean about me and my own knowledge? what i found was that baldwin was so helpful because he had explained in such extraordinary detail the relationship between black and white americans, and he had -- begun to suggest -- this is actually in interviews with him by turkish

journalist -- suggesting that he was seeing how the americans were -- from turkey -- were take that vie violented relationship and casting it on the rest of the world and a relationship in which white people had paw irthey were not aware of did not want to fully grapple with or did not take responsibility for, and he was watching turkey, which was one of america's early satellites after world war ii, and he was feeling nervous. he was actually scared to watch and see all these americans or their soil and using them, i think he called turkey a ping-pong ball between the soviets and the americans. so i realize that i could actually use -- even though baldwin had nothing to do with turkey, at first i could kind of use him as a guide to help me understand what was learning from living abroads. >> host: i want to continue on that thread of using other

countries as satellites, because there are -- you do focus in on greece, iran, afghanistan, and pakistan in this book and you do it front the lobes of how -- what is america's relationship to these country, what has been happening, and from that perspective, and in a way, i think one not only gets a sense of what americas foreign policy has been with these respective countries but you also down gain a lot more insight of you as an american abroad in these countries. >> guest: i felt strongly about this -- i was somewhat uncomfortable the book wheres going to be so personal. the reason the book is so personal is because the only person who is psychology i can analyze and possibly rip apart is my own, so i felt i had to use myself as a guide but at the same time i wanted to give the reader something -- i wanted them to learn the way i had

because i had this kind of extraordinary luxurious experience. i got move abroad, i won this fellowship, had all this time read and travel. not many people get to do that. in the process of writing the book i read more and more and more about the history of the countries, and so i wanted to share that with the reader. and i felt that i did remember these kind of powerful moments and they're just moments. it doesn't even have to be like a long scene or many hours, maybe just a moment where something hits you, like in cairo where you realize, this place has been broken by something, and what is that thing? and i actually am related to that in some way because america's relationship with egypt was really a damaging one. that sudden feeling of responsibility is one that -- or connection even, just connection, doesn't have to be

guilt, just connection -- is something you can only experience when you're actually there and you're seeing it yourself and learning about it for the first time. so, i -- as you're realizing how -- you're having these powerful emotional experiences and realizing, my god i have gone my whole life without being aware that i'm having a relationship with millions of people essentially. it's a relationship that we have been having, and been completely unconscious of it. but they know. they know the relationship very, very well. egyptians know americans well, greenings know americans well. turks know americaned well. americans don't know anything about them, and this is suddenly striking as a very serious and grave situation. >> host: right. one of the things you start to see is you start to kind of reassess not only america but who you are as an american, and i think it's very important that

dish want to spend a little time on that because you make that distinction about kind of like american foreign policy andow quote hamad at one point and say there's this american ideal bat this idea of freedom and a place america can come to. then there's the actual american policies and what we have actually done in the world. think you do kind of start to say, there's not -- america is not one dimensional and americans are not one dimensional there are many sides to and it you start abroad. you start to see what those many side are. yes. i think hamad talked about there are two americas basically, and i think they -- the foreigners are aware of both of them. for most of us we're kind of enamored with our domestic narrative and we are kind of detaverned from the foreign narrative.

but i think that what i found was that i began to wonder, okay, well, if the domestic narrative is one in we're free and individuals, what does the foreign narrative have to do with who we center i began to wonder if in fact the way we have didn't detach ode from foreign poll and i from violence has made it lack a certain kind opened empathy in a unique way. when you think about these things you can't just say, the country or point fingers at those people over there and -- but think about yourself, do you as an individual because you have been shaped by this national experience, do you lack that yourself? some level? are you comfortable with death, with violence? i think america's history is unique in this would in terms of being salter of the overlord of an empire that they're -- they don't feel they individually have anything to do with.

so, i think that it becomes very, very complicated but it's not just about things like empathy. it's things like do you get you self-esteem on some level from the fact that your country was the most powerful country in the planet and do you feel that you on some level are -- you have good intentions, and if -- i think this is a very common thing that americans believe about american foreign policy. they might make mistakes buzz the intentions governor because we're america i don't see how this could not trickle down into people's feelings about themselves as individual and this is the stuff i started thinking about when i was abroad. >> host: one thing that you also -- just in terms of the empathy and then then self-questions what it means to be an mesh and also our polls and i there's one scene in the book where you actually -- you come back to the united states and you get really sick. you get pneumonia.

and everybody says to you, oh, thank god this happened while you were in america. can you talk about that? >> guest: that was incredible. i had pneumonia and i was so sick. i did not mow what was wrong with me. eventually very kind friend took me to a hospital that was the closest one to where we are because i was basically passing out. was very, very ill, and afterwards when i told people this happened, yes, many -- oh, thank god you weren't in turkey, thank god you were in america, and of course the hospital i went to was so awful, it -- i mean, they couldn't diagnosis diagnose me. wait was not very clean i have tremendous respect for the doctors who figured out what was wrong with me but it was really quite a terrible experience, the turkish hospital i would have gone to would have been much, much nicer and is a joke, my

friend're mothers would have brought me food and you would have this turkish experience the idea that americans really think the rest of the world is not in some way modern or if not better than them. that will come as a shock to them when they go to a place like istanbul or somewhere else. >> host: or even that they -- it's not even that it's modern but even that maybe our system isn't the best and that we should try to improve it. >> guest: this is so interesting because we're talking about the healthcare system. but this is what i mean about reflexes, and so much of the book is about examining those tiny moments because obviously most of the people probably my friends who said these things are people who are very critical of the healthcare system in america and obamacare -- all of these debates and yet the still -- their instinct was, this must be better health care than in turkey. thank god you're in america and i men -- mean that is kind of extraordinary. and many of them have read that

chapter now and they think, well, i'm the one that said that but it's a very common thing to think. >> host: there's a lot in this book that looks at what has been happening with growing populism in polices like turkey and we larry about the rise of how erdogan who is the president of turkey, has become an authoritarian, jailing journalists and we see what is happening in russia, pollism rising in hungary and poland in the philippines and happening around the world, and certainly here in this country there's a sense of growing populism and a growing anger to the establishment by the people that have been left behind. how do you feel those things are all connected?

>> guest: well, one of the interesting things about this -- about writing this bookings that i am also using dismiss my buying a graph. >> want -- biography i wanted to show i came from both side 0 of the american spectrum in the sense i grew up in a conservative player, kind of typical small american town, where a lot of people would have voted for trump and indeed neimi family did, but then i went to a kind of your classic elite liberal college and then spent my 20s in the new york media. so i kind of knew both of these. but from abroad, i really felt that actually the two groups had -- were suffering from the same crisis, and i think that has a lot to do with this -- these kind of assumptions about our place in the world, our exceptionalism and our power, and my feeling from afar dish have not been here so i could be wrong -- watching the rise of trump and watching his voters

and listening to people who i know voted for him is that lot of this does have to do with an international issue. it's not just domestic. but in america's case it is also this feeling that we're losing ground, that we're losing power and that therefore threatens individual identities and that is primarily the white american identity. and i think in some waits it's worse for men as well, white men, because so much of -- going going back to the thing wes talked about -- so much of that identity is based on the fact that we are powerful, the best, most important, you know, the good essentially. and i think after september 11th and after the financial crisis and i think for these people who are a lot of these who are in fact racist, the election of barack obama where these kind of crieses and someone like donald trump can just come in and easily exploit

what think is a kind of nationalism that was just wait to be exploited and this is one of the things that i talk about as well in the book, that i hadn't realized that american patriotism was nationalism until i went to turkey and was learning about turkish nationality. had never occurred to me that it was nationalism. i mean, this, again, is one of those things i'm very surprised about in retrospect. i was fascinated by turkish nationalism i thought it was just -- it was one of the most interesting things bet the history and about the country but i was on some level looking down on it and then i had this really -- again, one of those powerful days where i realized that american patriotism and turnishing patriotism, both nationalism were so similar and i had been quite blind to where i was coming from. >> host: did that then change your view on turkish nationalism? >> guest: i think that it has

just made me -- first of all reminded me to -- that it am someone even though i didn't think i was, someone who can look down on foreign country. this where is i really think this is where national identity is very important elm we wouldn't think of it as looking down on them as americans. but we do because it's in the was of, well, these poor people who haven't quite gotten to where we are, they're on their way, they coming but just haven't gotten there yet, but because we believe they can do it, in this kind of american cheerleader way and we help them along we don't think it as big as pernicious and ugly as british empirallism but it's basically exactly the same thing, and so, yes, it reminds me to just be very, very sympathetic al all times to everything i was seeing in turkey and to be careful, and i think that we discussed at one

point issue think that i have realize that so much has changed since i moved to turkey ten years ago, and now i'm realizing that there's something about that strong identity that turks have that i think is somewhat special. that might make them, help them weather a lot to the storms we're seeing right know world, technology, globalization, it's a sense of self and know who you are and what your place is -- excuse me -- [coughing] >> host: one of the things -- i like this thread of being more confident about yourself because i think that what dish mean i've certainly seen in my studies request my time going to turkey that turks have changed. was a child going to turkey in the 1970s and 1980s and i remember the only thing turks wanted to do was leave. everybody would all say you're

so lucky you live in america. and now turks -- i mean, turks i know who live here are going back and -- they have been going back. ... we'd love to hear what your thoughts are. is what we are seeing with what

is happening in the american foreign policy, the reaction to that growing confidence that we see? are people seeing america on a decline in their own self perception? >> i am not sure that a lot of people in this country even know where turkey is, let alone understand that it's become more confident that i think there is a sense that they don't need america anymore and that >> host: i think those were the big catastrophes that kind of proved there are certain things we cannot do and that we make a tremendous mess out of that and so i think a lot of innocence was lost but then it

can always rewritten ahead so we become kind of complacent about it. you can hear in his rhetoric that belief that he won't let anything happen to us and we will just take care of this place or bomb the place etc.. this is kind of an old assumption that we have the right to do that and they will be better off than what they have and i think that is a very deep one but i think that one of the more embarrassing admissions in my book i first arrived in a stumble and was seeing the neighborhood for the first time and as a whole i saw how wealthy and beautiful and prosperous it was and i was surprised and

again this is a gut reaction that a country like turkey was behind us and there were different reflexes. i never would have admitted at the time were i can see old it with my education but it's to go through the process of admitting these things so we can get rid of them once and for all. >> host: it's interesting that you bring up the seaside because there is one point in the book you also have an epiphany about their reactions which is what you talked about like it's so beautiful look at all these restaurants and then egyptians or people from the middle east who come to istanbul" a talk

about is look at how great their subway system is. this is what makes it an interesting case study because other countries i think suffered much more at the hands of this relationship in terms of britain, the u.s., france and they have this feeling that a certain kind of autonomy was stolen from them. ithey were the only ones to negotiate and to say they had equal control but that is what makes us not very aware of the

fact that a place like turkey had been affected, it's not vietnam, it's not eject, it's not iraq but it is a complicated and nuanced one. it didn't rob them of their autonomy that it affected them but it scared people into this relationship could become stronger and stronger and that's why they've rebuilt in the 60s and 70s so strongly against it. >> host: what we are seeing in the united states with a lot of these protests there is a huge polarization politically but i also think there is very much in washington irrespective there is

still this ambivalence and that was true under president obama about what is america's role in the world because now you have a strong china and india, you have strong nations like turkey that we previously relied on and who were economically backward and we could tell what to do but we can't do that anymore and they don't need us anymore. large places in latin america and i think that is very true and i think that you start to see this unraveling on american foreign policy and very much satisfied what's happening in this country on a foreign-policy level i think the united states is very lost. what do you think about that for

>> who are we if we are not that country and if china is more powerful than us i think it is earthshaking to people whether they want to admit it or not think about what we are saying that we are unhappy unless we are running everything and if we have power over other people or people defer to us, i think even though we take that for granted i don't think people are conscious of the fact that's part of their philosophy and worldview and i think that the have to talk about what that means for the future for the confusion going on right now.

>> host: i want to read part of this book we can't go abroad and not realize the main thing that has been trigger racing is the last 14 years as our own ignorancis our ownignorance andt discovery of all the people on whom the entire bible is not an empire had been constructed. this touches on what you've just said and you reflect on where do we go from here. >> guest: it is an illusion to september 11 understandably but a lot of it was also this fear

of what else happened. it is painful to realize that none of us know what happened in the 20th century essentially. i don't think that we know very well and so keep things and that's great. so now it is kind of shattering to us.

sometimes i hope you see it as a good thing because you have to go through these kinds of internal conflicts to come out the other side. if we kept going even after filigree clinton had become president, i think we would have ended up in the same place because we just are not examining who we are, what happens in where our history is and we haven't renegotiated in the way that might be actually positive. >> host: there is this rhetoric that we have all consumed and you write that it's very much about white america. so he can feel much more

comfortable and here we are seeing concern about what direction is america going to. i guess it would be interesting to hear your point of view. how do we move forward and embrace this concept of plaque lives matter and incorporate the different at least what i have is the daughter of muslim immigrants in this country because i definitely feel like i have a different narrative. >> guest: a friend of mine said it's different.

it's been entrenched in the hands of white americans. even with this narrative in the melting pot and everything else, they still see themselves as the true leaders of the country. it's something they don't want to admit again their parents might have come from italy or ireland but they are still benefiting from the power of the country and they haven't felt with the relationship of the population of course that's beyond that.

we simply have a different responsibility. >> host: the other thing that's interesting about your book is it's not just about white america it is about the ruling class because i think that they have been the ruling class and one of the things you certainly found in turkey and most people are familiar we also called the white turks and they have been for a long time the ruling class and in the book you talk about how this occurred and you learn about the oppression that this minority group had in the hands of the ruling elite for a long time and it is akin to the struggle of african-americans in the united

states. >> guest: and this is at the same time that they were telling me they will be more like you, etc. but yes, first i was reconsidering this preconceived notion and then you remember i become very critical of that i looked at them and they were uniquely blind and vicious and again it's that thing of being careful as an observer and you have to be conscious of what is going on in your mind you are not objective and we are bringing a lot to the table. kind of an interesting thing i was trying to explore because i think that we flatter ourselves probably more than most journalists in the world about our objectivity but that

automatically takes away from the power of objectivity and this is something that took me a while to sort out. this is a good time to talk about the american mind because it is particularly with the rise of isis and extremism and we are seeing terrorism has dominated our headlines here about muslims and islam and they blame the religion to a certain extent and one of things you write about in the book is how in turkey, you would watch women who are pious muslims and they cover their hair, but if they were going to

university they would hava univo take their headscarves off and your comment was if i would willingly to posit a piece of my clothing to the police officer where is the freedom of thought and you reflect on what does it mean to be a muslim in the world and what is it that we are getting right or wrong? >> it shows something that westerners don't do very often and you can hear it from general politicians. just seeing that the girls who were going to school as someone just like you.

i think we tend to have a hard time putting ourselves and others place. i think because the world is so foreign and confusing to us and we can contribute a lot of the misconception to television. we are a christian nation i don't think that we tend to think of ourselves that way but it's deep in the history in the rhetoric. the have always been critical of the way they talk to the turks and the ottoman empire.

so it has always existed and i have a passage in the book how they are going to try to convert everybody to christianity. we also have deep-seated prejudice and we are incapable of understanding muslims and i think that it would require quite a lot of work but this doesn't seem immediate obvious because they see them at the stores but for some reason it will always be very representative of this exotic thing and i think that also there is an interesting way of looking at the switch i talk about this at one point very briefly and how terrified of of course the older and muslims were of course also of the videos and beheadings but it never really occurred to us that

our contractors in afghanistan or iraq who were wearing black with huge guns and wraparound sunglasses and all that. we tend to look at it as something completely from another planet and we are not talking about the collective violence but the entire world has been witnessing for the last 60 years into a group like isis might have come out of that for some degree not to disregard for local causes of course. >> that is a good point because the contractors that come in are

often white men and they are completely different from the people on the ground in afghanistan and there's not only a cultural divide is a religious divide and linguistic divide. you write they believe they can make anyone into an american. >> guest: that's not my opinion. it was coming from a book about cold war modernizers and intellectuals who laid down the blueprint for the way that america was going to deal with the rest of the world after world war ii and i think there's a distinction that the writer was making.

it was out of style and the british empire was going down, it happened or was underway in the and pakistan. this is an interesting thing they actually take americans at their word and wholeheartedly believed being an america in ben was the best thing you could possibly be and we are just going to help you along. the problem is if you are constantly defining the people beneath you if they ever catch up, how did you ever stay on top

so they want to kind of keep everybody in this position of maybe you armay be you are goint your benchmark and be a little bit more like america but not quite. >> host: i think you've gotten a lot of pushback from people who believe that you are being anti-american and too cruel about american history. certainly there is that there's a lot of good. my reading of the book is there is a lot of truth to what you are trying to do is to set up a narrative to create new ones. this is going to be a book that criticizes and i'm not going to

remind you of things that america has done in every term. my editor didn't want me to do that and i think he was right because the overall feeling and spirit of the book is that we have a lot to examine. it's the darker side of everything that we resist and assess what about all that goodd things that makes us not really and truly take the crimes of the last 60 years very seriously.

they are a part of the same place and he should feel that way. the fact of the matter is they never really had to deal with the violence but the res that tf the world has had to. it's just such an incredible imbalance because of this. i can remember turkish people saying to me when i first moved there you could invade iraq was within turkey being asked. they are not thinking about what it's like to be the neighbor in a country that conveyed this for

no reason, the psychological impact and the way that must feel. so i didn't want to remind them of all of the good things because i think that the history is so surprising and interesti interesting. i think they are fairly comple complete. >> a lot of things have certainly changed over the past year there was a referendum in april which changed the constitution and put more power in the hands of the president that we've mentioned several times now.

we are seeing the kurdish minority and people are saying the worst is yet to come. would you still continue to be based in this ensemble? >> guest: i will always have a relationship with a country. i love living there and i've always been happy living there. it's hard to watch what's happening but i think that there will always be a place that will feel like a place of peace and a

place of call ms. oddly enough, so even if at some point i have to leave i hope to always have a home. >> host: as we are wrapping up, and american abroad, is this something that has been raised talking about the rise of china and india and he says in this book what does it nee mean to bn american abroad in the world? >> guest: it is just a constant education. i do not see the country in the same way anymore but in many ways i feel like it is still

trying to understand it and trying to figure out what it really is because i don't know. but living abroad i just feel actually kind of part of that world than the american one and it's strange for me to imagine being cut off from the rest of the world where i learned so much and gained so much. >> host: thank you so much. >> guest: thank you for having me.

conversation turns to drug and alcohol when he talks about getting arrested for smoking. everyone accepts the wallflower patient has something to say about drugs. may i say something minor, sure. i don't mean to take up everyone's valuable time i know i do not deserve it, thank you for letting me speak.

i struggled with alcohol for so long and i've been sober since getting locked up and i hope i can stay clean when i get out. he seems to be more comfortable now so he continues talking. one morning she drank one of the glastheglasses of leftover orane not realizing it was mixed with vodka and when his father found out he whipped him but he said it didn't hurt that much because he was tipsy from the alcohol so from then he drank as much as he could get his hands on. thank you for letting me share i know i am not worth your time

just keep going on one day at a time that is old and have to do. he looks what she's about to cry but he's never offered him kind words. they look uncomfortable in this expression that keen on an agreement. think of all the days that you have survived already. i look to see if she is appreciating what is going on in front of us. we are witnessing a pivotal moment for the group itself, a collective responsibility to care for someone else and no one wants it to end.