APRIL IN INTERNATIONS

Could the famed expat (mostly locals) site be caving in in Istanbul?  Rumor has it it is hanging on by a thread.  Cause?  A division.  In case you didn't know InterNations is a world wide site, not limited to Istanbul.  A great concept that began in Munich and is now all over the world.  A place for expats to get together and mingle with a few locals thrown in.  However, the membership in Istanbul has grown out of all proportions.  The ratio of expats to locals is about 20 to 1 (on a good night).  Events that only 2 years ago saw 40 expats join are now crammed with 300, with about 20 being expats.  The spoken language at these (now club events, as opposed to drinks on a terrace) is no longer English but Turkish.  Turkish girls have come to find themselves a good catch (preferably foreign).  Turkish men have come to find themselves a night of sex.  No longer is it a social event where everyone chats (with no hidden agendas) to each other but either a place where friends come and meet each other or where vigorous hunting is abound.  Expats have for sometime been boycotting the events because they don't wish to be hunted neither are they there to hunt.  Things have become so bad that the Ambassadors have had to come up with an event known as EXPAT ONLY.  The fact that something like 150 expats signed up for it is testament to the desperate need for expats to get together with their own kind and not have to be with the locals.  Discriminatory?  Maybe.  The InterNations forum has been rife with views from both sides.  Expats beg to be allowed to mix with their own kind for reasons above and also because they can mix with locals at any bar and club in the city when at last there was an organization just for them to go to only to find that the Locals have infiltrated on mass. 

Further news is that there is also a divide between the two Ambassadors.  A local and an expat.  It's hardly surprising but what is is that the local Ambassador continues to shun what the expats are desperate for which is some respite from the locals and mainly the unsocial locals who appear only interested in 'your job' or 'your nationality'.  The local Ambassador invites locals indiscriminately for whatever ultera motive there is, ignoring the cries of 'we've got too many locals already'.  InterNations, some time ago set up a request that locals be limited and that it would be more appropriate if only expats were invited to the group until some balance was achieved.  But when one of the Ambassadors is shunning this rule there is little that can be done.  The expat Ambassador is near to tears and ready to abandon the crown and then what?  InterNations becomes no longer InterNations in Istanbul but Locals in Istanbul as I'm sure someone with some brains and knowhow will set up a site to take the desperate expats looking to jump ship with a requirement of 'foreign passport holders only'.