Europe, an unfinished love story

15 May

This week, a not-so-classic 'girl meets boy' story. Başak Layic, storyteller extraordinaire, reflects on what the European Dream looks like from the outside.

This story was recorded live at SPUI25 in Amsterdam as part of 'Europe Up For Grabs?', an event organised for Europe Day 2025 by DutchCulture and the European Cultural Foundation. You can watch a livestream of the whole event here.

You can find out more about Başak's work on her website and follow her on Instagram here.

Katy Lee: This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news.

Dominic Kraemer: But this podcast would not be possible without the incredibly generous support of our amazing listeners who donate a little bit each month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast.

INTRODUCTION

Katy Lee: Hello, this is the Europeans, and we're actually away this week, listeners, but never fear—that doesn't mean that there is no podcast. Because we're bringing you a story this week, a rather brilliant and sharp and funny and moving story that says a lot about this continent that we call home. This story was performed live at an event that we hosted in Amsterdam last Friday night, and I co-hosted this particular event with our wonderful producer Katz Laszlo. Hi, Katz.

Katz Laszlo: Hi!

Katy Lee: Can you tell everyone a little bit about this event that we were at?

Katz Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. So it was an event to mark Europe Day, which is on May the 9th, and I suspect that most Europeans have no idea it's happening. But it's supposedly a day to celebrate all things European. And at this event, our friends at Dutch Culture and the European Cultural Foundation organized this brilliant lineup of speakers who took a more critical perspective of Europe Day than, you know, “let's wave all these blue flags with yellow stars on them and celebrate this sunshiny, idealized version of what Europe and the European Union should be.”

And I think it was really trying to point out, you know, the places where we could do better and how we might fix that. You can find the whole live stream of the event with all the speakers via the link in the show notes. But no one could have set the tone better than the storyteller who started the night, Başak Layic.

I have to admit that I actually had to look away from the audience because I almost started crying at some point. And then I looked back at the screen, and then I saw that you were also having a small moment.

Katy Lee: That would have been great, wouldn't it? Two crying moderators, who were also both quite sick.

Katz Laszlo: Exactly. Get it together, people.

Katy Lee: What is happening here?

Katz Laszlo: Yeah, but it was just such an amazing story. I think it really set the tone well of a love for Europe, a disillusion, and then a real sort of loving challenge to do better.

And that really moved me because that's maybe one of my biggest takeaways from making this podcast all these years.

Katy Lee: That Europe is a work in progress?

Katz Laszlo: Yeah, I have to say that it's taught me a lot of the ugly sides of Europe too. And then sometimes it's strange to know all of those now, or at least some of them. And then like most people, I think, don't think about that that much. And then to have this story where someone really put that so beautifully was really nice.

Katy Lee: Başak was born and raised in Istanbul, but she's been based in Amsterdam for several years now. And she's one of the driving forces between a pretty remarkable project called Rederij Lampedusa. They're a group who run canal tours in Amsterdam on repurposed refugee boats that were once used to cross the Mediterranean.

You're going to hear a bit more about that project and the stories that people tell on those boats. But this story starts with Başak's own arrival in Amsterdam from Turkey.

If you're based near or in Amsterdam, you can often find Başak performing in the storytelling house, Mezrab. And if you're not, I thoroughly recommend that you check out her Instagram. But before you do either of those things, you're going to want to hear this story. It was recorded live at SPUI25 last Friday. And this podcast is brought to you in collaboration with Euranet Plus. Enjoy.

EVENT RECORDING

Başak Layic: Hi. Oh boy. Well, tonight I'll share a few stories with you.

But I would like to start with a love story that I grew up with. It's between a boy named Turkey and a girl named Europe.

You see, this boy loved the girl, absolutely loved, adored her. And he just wanted to be with her. But the girl, she had some notes, right? She was like, well, maybe first get a haircut, right? Find a better job.

And the boy tries, you know, he does his best. But, you know, sometimes he goes back to his old ways. It's not easy to change, you know.

But after each of his small victories, the girl brings up a new challenge, a new rule. Like, why are you wearing those stupid pants anyway? And you should stop hanging out with those troublemakers. Go find yourself better friends.

So this goes on like this. A dangling carrot of love. And one day, the boy can't take it anymore. All those broken promises, heartbreak, and the weight. So he goes and dates the girl's rival, her evil competition. In our case, Russia.

But even though my country gave the finger to Europe, you know, after trying to get her ideological panties for many years, I never lost hope. No, sir. I always wanted to live in a European city. You know, I would imagine myself living in a small apartment with a French balcony. And I would plant some flowers on it. And I would have a small bike with a little basket up front. And I'm carrying a baguette wherever I go for some reason. And in this story, I'm way thinner, with dimples on my cheeks. And I wear pastel colored skirts. And I never, ever have morning breath.

And also, there's free press.

So when I moved to Amsterdam seven years ago, I had this European dream, this story in my head. And a lot of people along those years, they asked me, why? Why did you move here? Was it for love?

Well, yes, there was a man involved. But it was mostly for hate. I moved to Amsterdam because of the Voldemort of Turkey. But to be honest, like, maybe call it childish naivety or stupidity. But I thought my life would be easier the moment that I moved here.

But that wasn't the case. First, there were the visa problems, then the work permit. I just found myself in this ouroboros of bureaucracy. And after waiting for two years, when I finally got my work permit, I said, let's go. Now it's time.

I had studied media in Turkey with a full scholarship. I'm not saying it to brag, maybe a little. But to be honest, I thought this would make a difference. And even though a friend of mine actually told me that—she was from Turkey—and she said she applied for all those jobs, never heard of anything, until she got married and changed her surname to a Dutch. Then she got all those offers. I was like, that's your story. It will be different with me.

So I knocked on all the doors that I was supposed to. You know, advertisement agencies, film sets, creative offices with exposed brick walls and ping pong tables. And I didn't hear anything. And it was not only nothing, but the worst was sometimes this rejection behind this fake smile. This smile, I could swear, maybe it was my paranoia, but I could swear that I could hear murmuring, with this breath steeped in matcha latte and passive aggression, saying, “Oh, you think you belong here?”

And behind my own fake smile, my breath steeped in ayran and swallowed rage, I would say, “Good luck playing ping pong without balls, bitch.” I was jobless, aimless, just wandering, walking around with ping pong balls in my pockets.

And to be honest, behind my rage, my rage was very thin, because I thought the problem must be me. Because this European dream, this story that I was told, like passed around like a bedtime tale, told me that Europe was the land of equality, dignity, opportunities. Questionable cuisine, but democracy. Europe, where the stories had happy endings. So if I wasn't thriving, that must be my fault.

So I started working at Horeca, knowing that my day would come. And I carried koffieverkeer back and forth for two years. Alsjeblieft, mevrouw. And they would say, where are you from? And I would say, Turkey. And they would say, oh, but you don't look Turkish. And I would say, thank you.

I thanked many mevrouws like that in those two years. And I never understood why, why I was so ashamed of my ethnicity, why I was so trying hard to blend in. The answers didn't come to me back then.

But my Horeca days came to an end when I started, when I found myself on a boat at Rederij Lampedusa. Now I'm going to tell you their story. So Rederij Lampedusa is a social organization based in Amsterdam. And the story goes like this.

An artist, Dutch artist, Tern Kastelein, goes to this Italian island Lampedusa. And in that island, there's a part that's known as “graveyard of boats.” Because all those boats that carried people across the Mediterranean, fleeing from wars and violence, he saw those boats like stacked on top of each other. And he decided to bring two of them here to make a statement.

So he did that. And since then, these boats are actually carrying people, like organizing canal tours. And this crew just consists of refugees. And those refugees tell Amsterdam's history, but through the migration lens. And how Amsterdam was actually built shoulder-by-shoulder with Dutch natives and refugees for hundreds of years.

So they approached me, they asked me to be a recruiter. And to be very honest, I didn't imagine myself working with refugees when I moved to Amsterdam. You know, I wanted to leave that brown world behind and wash myself in whiteness. But here I was talking to people, you know, fled Sudan, Eritrea, Uganda, Iraq and Syria. And the more I listened to them, the more I realized something. The story isn't just what we tell. It's what writes the rules. It's what sleeps in your psyche, determining how you see yourself and how the world is built and who gets to build it.

A team member that I talked to, she shared a story with me. Now I'm going to share her story with you. I asked her permission, she said yes. This person, she was Palestinian and she grew up in a Syrian refugee camp. She was stateless, as Palestinian people are. But she was very bright. So she started working for UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And it was kind of ironic because she was a stateless person and she was working for the resettlement cases of refugees. She said it was tough, but she said she felt like she was helping people, right? Even though the war in Syria got more harder and harder and even though whoever could leave left, she wanted to stay there. And it was also good pay, she said.

But everything changed for her. One day, an Iraqi family came to her. This was a family of eight people. And so this family, their religious sect was different. They were Sunnis. That's why they saw a lot of violence, harassment, rape. One of the sons got shot on his leg by a sniper. So it was horror after horror. And that horror didn't come to an end when they came to Syria. So this team member said she was sure she could find them a country to resettle. So she conducted their interviews and she sent the papers. But then they get a rejection. And when they asked the reason why, the reason was this.

Authorities looking at the family's ages, they saw that the mother gave birth to the eldest son when she was still a minor. So they said they were afraid once the mother resettled in this country, she would push the same ideals into her daughter.

Let's unpack this. Here is a family who faced many horrors. Faced many horrors and now they're seeking for a resettlement. This should be the story. This is the story. But instead, authorities, instead of focusing on the horrors, they zoomed in on one detail: Mother gave birth when she was a minor. And from that moment on, they wrote a new narrative. And in that narrative, she's not a survivor anymore. She's a potential danger, a cultural threat.

They questioned the possibility of future behavior, wrapped in moral superiority, and focuses on cultural assumptions. And this was a turning point for my teammate. Because she saw that she wasn't really helping people, but she was just watering a toxic soil based on discrimination.

So she quit the job, and the war got worse and worse. She decided to ask for refuge in the Netherlands. And now she was sitting at the other side of the table. Now she was giving answers. She was trying to convince the person why she needed a refuge.

She stayed in the asylum seeking center for one year. And she said in that year, actually, she helped many men and women to reshape their narrative. Not because they were liars, but because she knew in her previous job, one of the biggest reasons that those rejections come because of credibility. And credibility means that you should have a proper outline of your story. And that story should be told in certain ways. But that's almost impossible. Because human brain doesn't work that way. If you have a traumatic experience, human brain does everything. It loops and dodges and just walk around the wound in order to survive.

So she said, actually, she helped more people in that one year, helping to reshape their stories than she did in UNHCR 46.

And I heard many stories like that. I can tell you many, many stories like that. And these stories really, they show how this system is built in discrimination and violence awaiting at borders. And officials and refugees alike, drowning in this sea of regels and regels. And more stories I heard, the more I questioned the myths of Europe that we were told.

Because guess what, Europe? You won. You told the story so well, we believed in it. We jumped fences for it. We crossed oceans for it. We left everything behind for it. And now we are here. And from the inside, it's not an ideal place. Europe is a velvet rope.

The story doesn't hold anymore. It's time for a rewrite. And not from above, but from the below. From the kitchens, from the borders, from the boats, from the sea. And not out of revenge, but because truth needs new authors.

EU slogan is “united in diversity.” Cute. I have a better one: “Yo, we are working on it. We are far from being perfect. We have our prejudgments, our blind spots. And we are sorry for putting false ideals into your head and playing with your sense of self. We are sorry for flaming wars in your regions and turning our heads away when the consequences come at our door. But we want to do better. Not all of us, but some do. And we cannot do it without you.”

A bit long, right? Maybe those ad agencies were right not to hire me. Turns out I suck at slogans. But I'm a storyteller. And I know a story that needs a rewrite when I hear one.

Thank you.