this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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I have a bunch of follow up questions if anyone is interested in offering their advice.
I have spent a few days in Istanbul and today is my last day. I had walked past several homeless people and beggers, and began to think to myself, damn, I'm a real piece of shit if I ignore these people, and if anyone has the institutional power to make this go away and doesn't use that power immediately, those people should be
.
By the end of the night though my feelings had changed a little. I had a few people I had given money to follow me down the street for a bit trying to get my attention and this bothered me a bit, I had given what is for me a shit load of money already today and kind of had to run away. For the rest of my walk home, I was slightly regretting my life choices, not enough that I wouldn't do it all again, but still no longer felt good about any of this, instead felt bad. Not great for me, but still worse to be the person stuck begging on the streets. Anyway. I went home and googled all about it, and came across varying takes, so here is everything that happened to me, and here are my questions:
I was on the tram in the town centre after rush hour and this skinny dude (looked like he had some kind of autoimmune disorder, arthritis maybe) was in the cabin in sandals and a t-shirt (it is winter) with a big plastic bag full of bottles. I thought damn this is unfortunate, let me help a brother out, so I gave him a bunch of money and ran away. When I googled about this later, Turkish people are saying basically nobody in the city is that desperate, they can always find some way of getting what they need, and they make more collecting recyclables from trash than waiters do from working in posh restaurants (seriously doubt), so what the fuck, did I actually just harass a normal working guy by giving him money for no reason?
I saw two teen girls eating trash they had scattered from a trash bag torn open like a picnic blanket just chilling and talking to eachother at 9 o'clock at night on one of the steep hills leading to Galata Tower. They made no attempt to catch my attention, and after I caught my breath, I went back and gave them some cash then ran away. Apparently this is a common "scam" in Istanbul, and as I said above, there are so many ways to make money (selling flowers, collecting bottles), and failing that, there are so many charities and churches and masjids giving food and other provisions to people that there is no way anyone would ever need to eat from the trash. They say they do this to get pity, and they aren't hungry at all, and if you do by them food they will refund it (how the fuck do you refund food, especially as a street urchin speaking broken Turkish at best?)
I passed a mum and her little baby sitting on the side of the road looking pathetic and not trying to get my attention in any way, so I also gave her money and have the same question as for the scenario above
I passed a whole other family on the streets including a pregnant woman, a bunch of kids, and a teen girl (these are the one's who followed me for like 5 mins)
I also tried to speak to some of these people in Arabic because everything they were saying did not sound like any other language. When I tried to use google translate with them, I finally got them to say arabic bilmiyorum (Turkish for I don't know Arabic). So do some Turkish people just have harsh as fuck accents that are impossible to understand? Way too many hard KHs and aaa3s to be Turkish, Farsi or Pashto, but idk, just wondering. It is kind of fucked up to assume they are arab because they are begging...
Sorry if the formatting is fucked, I tried my best.
I've heard variations on most of these in the USA
Afaik it's just flatly not true, and something people say to imply homeless and poor people are faking. In the usa i've heard news stories claiming people make a good living panhandling, and it's always just rubbish, or it turns out the "nice house" the person owns had the mortage paid off long ago and they're panhandling because they can't work and have no income.
in the us, at least, half of all homeless people have a mental illness, and it's often a severe mental illness that prevents them from getting work.
i'm sure there are lots of masjids and gurdwaras and churches and whatever handing out food. The people begging might have some other issue, who knows. Even so, cash is cash, and you need cash for many things - paying for a cellphone, maybe, or tampons/pads, or just something to making being desperately poor less miserable.
I've had folks follow me. I think, if you're in that situation, trying to hustle people for more money probably makes a lot of sense. You're not getting much help to begin with, and I imagine people who do help might be able to be pressured to do more. It sucks, it feels really bad, but I think people do it bc their situation is desperate. Idk, I think the vast majority of people would rather be doing anything else than hustle people for a few more lira.
idk what the demographics are in Istanbul, but if you couldn't figure out what language they were speaking i suspect they'd have a very, very hard time finding work, dealing with the police, dealing with government services. In the usa people speaking anything other than English have great trouble. Minneapolis has a large Somali people and finding English to Somali translators was always a problem. The little kids who translate for their parents are heroes.
also from the usa - any minority population here, no matter how good their english is, they face a lot of discrimination in housing, jobs, education, and government services. Cops will do sweeps targetting black people or american indigenous people, things like that. If the folks you were talking to were Roma or another marginal minority there's a good chance they're on the street because society and the state shut them out. I know a little about the Roma struggle in Europe and it is dire - brutal official discrimination at every level of government, frequent violence or even pogroms from Europeans, great discrimination in jobs and work. European racism against Roma, or people they think are Roma, seems insane and vicious even by the standards of America, a nation built on race terror. There are maginalized groups like that all over the world who are subjected to brutal violence by society and the state. Often indigenous people like America indigenous people, or Maya in central america. Or people of "low caste" like Dalits in India or Burakumin in Japan. Society hates them, society creates the conditions that keep them in a miserable situation, and then society use's their situation to justify the hate.
My take is always - i'd rather give money to someone who doesn't need it than refuse money to someone who does. Much worse to withhold help from someone in need than refuse someone who genuinely needs a hand.
It's funny, there are endless stories about beggars being important people in disguise. Jewish people are always expecting Elijah to show up. Vikings could never be sure if the stranger at the door asking for a meal and a place to sleep by the fire was Odin. Many European fairy tales feature a beggar who is revealed later to be a fairy or a prince or a saint who later rewards or punishes the main character. In the Hebrew Bible god sends two angels to Sodom, Lot takes them in and protects them, and the rest of the city is destroyed for violating the laws of hospitality.
Thanks, yeah it looked like a lot of bullshit online. In the UK, people always tell you don't interact, keep walking, etc., it's fucked. After hearing this repeatedly and not exactly being well off myself I eventually internalised the message. Wild.
Yeah, it's insidious. I'm constantly upset by the idea that my parents or friends will judge me for "giving people handouts" and i always have to push it down. Culture is real, and powerful, and strongly effects how we think and behave. Pushing back against violence in our culture is like swimming up river - a constant effort, and wouldn't it be so much easier to just float with the current?
I hope things will get better, soon, for everyone.
Recently saw new signs in a grocery store parking lot telling you not to give panhandlers money and to donate to charities instead that gives me an immense urge to cover them in spray paint.
"Don't give 20$ to a hungry person. Give 20$ to an NGO that, after all it's overhead costs, might give 2-3$ to someone, somewhere.
And look at that, how convenient, the store is collecting on behalf of the charity from customers. How nice of them to get someone else to fund their tax write offs. Fucking hate that that is a thing
Even that benign scenario is extremely unlikely to happen. Anyone with too much money has better ways of making money.
"You fool! That's Warren Buffet you just gave $20 to! He has this side hustle where he puts on dirty clothes and tricks people on the street out of their money. He learned it at Davos."
You're in Istanbul, Turkey. Do ask hexbear/this website for advice on this issue. Don't trust Google either, it will be full of anti homeless nonsense. Most of the people on here live in the USA, Canada, or the richer European and Scandinavian countries, they have no idea about the cultural context or what it's like in a poorer country. If you're from a "first world" country and are just visiting Turkey, you're experiencing this culture shock I just described. The only way to get accurate advice here would be to ask a Turkish person you trust for advice, and definitely a person who is not an arsehole towards homeless people or beggars.
and here is the issue, people everywhere are assholes
IDK about Istanbul specifically, but if someone isn't actually asking for money it's rude to just give it to them. That shit about how nobody ever really needs money and collecting bottles pays well is obviously false. You see the same in the US where many genuinely believe that it's easier to be homeless than to have a home and a job because you "don't have to work for a living."
Man dude out here in flip flops in winter though.