New York Times,
If America ever runs out of room to store its gold in Fort Knox, I know just the place to put it: the new US consulate in Istanbul. It looks just like Fort Knox, without the charm.
The US consulate used to be in the heart of the city, where it was easy for Turks to pop in for a visa or to use the library. For security reasons, though, it was recently moved 45 minutes away to the outskirts of Istanbul, on a bluff overlooking the Bosporus – surrounded by a tall wall. The new consulate looks like a maximum-security prison. All that's missing is a moat with alligators and a sign that says: “Attention! You are now approaching a US consulate. Any sudden movement and you will be shot. All visitors welcome.”
But here's the stone-cold truth: a lot of US diplomats are probably alive today because they moved into this fortress. One of the captured terrorists involved in the November 20 attack on the British consulate in Istanbul, which was just a short walk from the old US consulate, reportedly told Turkish police that his group was interested in blowing up the new US consulate, but when they cased the place they found it was so secure “they don't let birds fly” there.
This is where we've come to after two decades of anti-US terrorism and September 11: the cops are now in charge, not the diplomats. As one US diplomat in Europe put it to me, “The upside is that we are more secure, the downside is you lose the human contact and it makes it way harder to have interactions with people who are not part of the elite. It makes my job less fun. (Some days) you might as well be in Cleveland, looking at the world through a bulletproof plate-glass window.”
Some of our embassies have such a Crusader castle look, they're actually becoming tourist sites. Fuat Ozbekli, a Turkish industrialist, told me: “I was just on a tour to Amman and we stopped our tourist van in front of the US embassy there. We asked the guide why they need all these tanks around it, and the guy told us that within this American embassy they have everything they need so they can survive without going outside . . . I felt really sorry for the Americans there.”
It's not just the brick walls our embassies are now putting up that are increasing American isolation. Beginning next year, in order to get a visa to the US you will have to go to the nearest US embassy or consulate and be fingerprinted first. Some European diplomats have already started warning their American counterparts not to expect them in the US any time soon if they have to submit to fingerprinting.
US diplomats understand the security reasons for this. But, they note, it is awkward to call up a Turkish writer or a Chinese dissident, invite them to come to America on a State Department exchange program, and then say: “But first you have to come into the embassy and get fingerprinted.”
Give us your tired, your poor and your properly fingerprinted.
Serhat Guvenc, a lecturer at Bilgi University in Istanbul, was flying to the US on September 11, 2001 and was diverted to Canada. He's been avoiding the US since because of all the already intrusive visa requirements. “All the new measures the US introduced intimidated me,” he said. “In Turkey, unless you are a criminal or a potential criminal, you would never be asked to leave your fingerprints. It is kind of humiliating. It's uncomfortable.”
Many people would still line up for America if it charged $US1000 ($A1340) a visa and demanded their dental X-rays. But others, especially young Europeans, are thinking twice because they don't want the hassle. Better to go to France or Germany.
Add the shrinking capacity of US diplomats to reach out and, in 20 years, we could wake up and find that America the accessible has become America the isolated. The only Americans foreigners will meet will be those wearing US army uniforms and body armour.
The country needs to figure out a better system, because where birds don't fly, ideas don't fly, friendships don't fly and mutual understanding never takes off.
Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times, where this article first appeared.
