Orhan and his wife Suvi met while both were Erasmus students in London. After the marriage they visited her family in Helsinki, spent their honeymoon in Rome, then settled in Istanbul.

Orhan took a job as a software developer for an auto company, while Suvi enrolled in a masters’ program at Istanbul University.

Two years passed. Orhan, like most Turkish men, wanted to have children, but Suvi, with her Finnish woman’s authority (“I’m a smiling dictator!” she liked to remind him), had rejected this proposal, at least for the time being. They were both still young she said — he was 26, she 24. It was better they wait a few years.

Orhan found some sympathy with his parents, particularly his mother, who still dressed with the traditional headscarf (the family tended to support the governing conservative party). “It’s such a shame,” the mother said, clicking her tongue. “So many women nowadays think only of themselves, their ‘careers.’ Being a mother, and bearing children — the ultimate joy — is something they refuse to understand. Until it is too late — “

Suvi withstood such pressures with tact, and most people she knew at the university, and even among the couple’s small circle of friends, were inclined to respect her. The idea that Scandanavian people are highly educated, “advanced” people was as generally accepted here in Turkey as it is elsewhere.

“This is the 21st Century,” commiserated Merve, a friend who was heavily into feminist issues. “The older generation can’t understand the idea that young people today have different values, different priorities. It’s not our goal in life to just have three children, sit at home and cook like our mothers did!”

“I don’t think personally that’s such a bad thing,” Suvi would say,with a certain diplomacy, in such discussions. “I mean, staying home, being a homemaker. I respect that. But I just couldn’t see myself in the position of having to give up all my independence, to rely on someone else for my support. To live someone else’s dream.”

“I’m not saying, ‘live someone else’s dream,’” her husband Orhan would fire back (he was often present at such discussions, when they were having dinner or drinks with friends). “I’m saying that it’s a wife’s duty (and the husband’s too! Yes, I agree!) to support the other’s dream. We should make each other’s dreams come true, don’t you see?”

“That’s a good point, hadn’t thought of that,” the friend Merve conceded. “It takes two, I suppose.”

Naturally, they didn’t argue about these points constantly. It just came up from time to time. You could say it was like a barometer, rising and falling, an issue that came and went, just as certain moods of a marriage come and go.

Most of the time they worked. Orhan’s parents lived about two hours outside the city, so they only saw them a couple times of month for Sunday dinners. In the evenings, like most Istanbullus, they came home tired from the traffic, the long hours. Suvi generally made dinner (she’d learned to cook Turkish food fairly quickly, which pleased Orhan immensely), and afterward she’d retreat to her laptop to study while Orhan made calls, wrote emails, and other work-related stuff, or else watched re-runs of “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad” in the living room. If his favorite football club, Beşiktaş, was playing, he’d go to one of the bars in Kadıköy and watch the game with friends.

###

By day, they went their separate ways, he to the office in Levent and she to the university.

Suvi really loved Turkey, as most foreign women her age — and many older ones — do. The bustling market places, the vibrant air along the Bosphorus, the romantic ferry boats, the endless choices of night life spots in Taksim, in Kadıköy. And the food. Ah, the food! Especially the kahvaltı, her favorite.

Coming from Helsinki, Istanbul was really a breath of fresh air. Back home in Finland, people rarely went out. Everything was so expensive. Even a night at the cinema was a once-a-month treat. Life was boring by comparison. She didn’t even mind the hordes of men who eyed, even sly approached her constantly on the buses and metros — lonely, single men for whom her amber-colored hair, pearl-white complexion and European cache lured them as if in pursuit of a grail. For them, a white European girlfriend was the ultimate conquest. Secretly, Suvi was flattered — she thought herself a bit plain, with typical Finnish self-deprecating humor . While the not-too-subtle advances of these men could get old, especially if she was tired or in a hurry, Suvi had learned that an iPod and book, combined with an absorbed expression, usually worked as sufficient armor.

At the university, she attended lectures twice a week; the rest of the time she spent at the library researching her thesis (on what? Don’t ask! She was still unsure herself. It changed three times already, something to do with communication styles across cultures as related to the media and personal identity). It was a constant bane and groan.

On the way home from the library, she usually walked through Beyöğlu, browsing the shops, or else had coffee with another Finnish girl who she’d met at the university, or else with Merve. On Wednesday afternoons, she had Turkish lessons (an hour or drinking tea in one of the cafes in Cihangir with a young Turkish woman who preferred to quiz Suvi endlessly about Europe rather than focus on Turkish grammar). The Turkish teacher always seemed to regard Suvi with a mixture of admiration and reproach. “If I were you, I wouldn’t live in Turkey,” she often said. “Why would you want to live here? In Europe you have everything. You are free.”

“Well, my husband lives here,” Suvi responded, with a lop-sided smile. “I’m married to Turkey, you could say.”

“Of course,” the teacher said. “Still, when I am in Europe I feel I can breathe. Understand?”

Suvi could see, as she often did in such conversations, the teacher’s eyes looking past her, vicariously enjoying the northern lights of Scandanavian freedoms. Oh well.

“I love Istanbul,” Suvi would simply say.

“You must,” the teacher muttered reproachfully. The unspoken implication was that Suvi was young and naïve. Time would fix that.

At any rate, they would order another tea, and move on to other topics, such as when Suvi and Orhan planned to have babies.

Why did Suvi pay for Turkish lessons, you ask, when she could have just practiced with her husband for free? It’s complicated. When they had met in London, their relationship was cemented around the idea that they were both foreigners. English was their mutual language, something they shared. In London, they were two strangers in a strange land, and being this had brought them closer together, established an intimacy and sense of a powerfully romantic identity.

In Istanbul, and even around Orhan’s family, Orhan preferred to keep their communications in English. Some would call this attitude selfish — that he wouldn’t share his Turkish with her — but it really wasn’t that (he was paying for the Turkish lessons, after all). You could say that it made him sad on some level when he heard Suvi speak Turkish. Or spoke it too well. He enjoyed it when she made those “cute little” mistakes — it sounded like a child speaking — but beyond that, Orhan felt that she was losing her “Finnish-ness,” that separateness that he liked about her. He didn’t want her to become “too Turkish.” Like a lot of men his age, Orhan took a certain pride in the fact that he worked for an international company, and his interests and tastes reflected this fact. As a rule, even before meeting his wife, he’d dated foreign women almost exclusively. (Turkish women were too — too what? Too conservative? Too traditional? Too “Turkish? If you asked him, even Orhan couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer.)

At any rate, Turkish men — like most men — have a strong possessive streak; you could say in the end that Orhan’s desire to preserve his wife’s uniqueness stemmed from this self-same possessiveness. He wished to preserve her, protect her from the sweating, teeming masses of ordinary life. Maybe that’s why, although he wished to start a family — as his parents did — he didn’t really push it. Secretly, he shared his wife’s belief that it was better to wait a while, and admired her for it. Most men admire their wives; at the end of the day, even the psycho who ends up taking an ax and chopping his wife into pieces will solemnly swear to a jury that his deceased wife was, “a most excellent woman.”

On that note, we should move on to the present day.

###

The city, and country, had been on pins and needles for months, years even. War and its tragic fallout had crept ever closer. Millions of refugees had flooded into the city and the country.

The Turkish referendum was looming. The question was a simple “Yes or No” affair, EVET or HAYIR in Turkish. Should the president be granted sweeping new powers?

The EVET camp said it was necessary, given all the crises facing the country. A strong leader would help steer the country through the troubled waters of war — both within and without — as well as economic uncertainties. A leader who could stand up to the big powers who were always meddling in the country’s affairs. The current president, in their view, was just such a man. For many, especially among the poor and those living in rural areas, the president was a prophet, a savior. He could be the next Fatih Sultan Mehmet, the next Suleyman the Magnificent. He could be greater than Ataturk even.

The HAYIR camp believed that such approval would be disastrous, the death knell for Turkey’s nearly century-old democracy. These people, generally those in the big cities, the higher educated, argued that the president already had all the power a sovereign could possibly ever want or need. Following a failed military coup attempt the previous summer, a state of emergency had been declared, and was still in effect nearly a year later. Many army leaders had been imprisoned, along with anyone else who allegedly had ties to the coup. Journalists, judges, academics, police, civil servants, political opposition — tens of thousands had either been jailed or sacked from their posts.

In effect, the president and his ruling party held the country in its grip, unchallenged, had done so for more than a decade already. For the HAYIR people, the referendum would only give a signed-and-sealed, stamped approval from the people, solidifying, consolidating, and even justifying the president’s ascendancy to virtual collossus.

Everywhere in Istanbul, as in most other parts of the country, it seemed the EVET would prevail, long before the election. On every skyscraper, on every bridge and overpass, over every tunnel, it seemed, hung huge red-and-white banners shouting EVET. The president’s face, with his broad forehead commanding over cunning eyes, looked out from the banners. EVET, the president said. EVET is the decision of the nation. EVET is the decision of the youth. The decision of the future. If you support the nation, if you support the youth, if you support the future — if you support the president — then you will vote, “EVET.”

And what about “HAYIR” then?

First of all, you hardly noticed any banners anywhere. Just small little ones, here and there, in out of the way places. They seemed hung only for decorum, to be polite.

Why?

Well, if you said HAYIR, then you were clearly a heretic. You were against all of the great things listed above (Nation, Youth, Future, the President). You were clearly with the “terrorists,” those within and without. The ones who sought to undermine Turkey’s greatness. Those, like the coup plotters, or ISIS, or the Kurdish militants, the Gulenists, “Crusaders” in the West, aliens from outer space — anyone who conspired to keep Turkey from achieving its dreams, who sought to control, subvert and contain Turkey. Critics said it was about Islam, but really it wasn’t, despite the president’s not infrequent public remarks about “Crusaders in the West.” Even the most ardent of the EVET people would profess that supporting the referendum was really about Turkey seizing control of its own destiny, of charting an independent course. These people would say they admired the president because he had the courage and vision, not to mention the political savvy, to withstand external pressures, and that he stood up for the rights of his people.

The HAYIR people, on the other hand, said that the president was merely interested in promoting himself, that he was using the Great Turkish Cause — and even using Islam — for his own purposes. At the worst, these critics claimed, the president sought to transform Turkey — breaking finally with Ataturk’s democratic tradition and going in the direction of an authoritarian, Islamic state.

So there was much — you could say everything — at stake in the election.

###

Naturally, the referendum was part of Orhan and Suvi’s lives as much as everyone else’s that spring. Everywhere you saw the signs hanging in the city. Every day on the TV, on the radio, on Facebook and Twitter, in the cafes and bars, at work and at the schools, the issue was brought up. People argued the various key points over dinner, over coffee, over beer and rakı, even during football matches. It was like a mass national mania, taking stronger hold every day. It hung, just as the big banners did, high over the city, across the country, waving and hovering in the bright sun and even in the rain. Talk of the referendum was as inescapable as the traffic, or the noise, or the ever-changing spring weather.

For Suvi, as a foreigner, the issue of the referendum was interesting, especially at first. She had always been somewhat fascinated and repelled by the fervor of Turkish nationalism. The massive televised rallies, with thousands waving red-and-white flags, the president’s stern, fatherly voice commanding the airwaves, were at turns compelling and unnerving. Such energy, such emotion! In contrast, Finns were far more laid-back, a tired people, she would joke. “So you’re not serious about your country?” someone asked her one time. She replied, “Serious? Come on, we’re Finnish. We’re serious about everything. That’s our problem!”

“So what do you think?” people asked. To which, she always demurred. “I’m a yabancı,” she said. “What do I know?”

“Yes, but you are from Finland,” they pressed. “You are from a truly democratic country. Finnish people are highly educated. You must have some opinion.”

“Maybe,” she replied, demurring again. “But I think it’s better if I keep it to myself.”

“Ah, you are right. That’s smart!” Suvi would see the others scrutinizing her, sensing a certain approval of her tact.

“Still, if I were you,” they would say, “I would move back to Finland. That’s what I would do!”

As the referendum neared, her husband began paying much closer attention. In the evenings, instead of watching TV series, he would monitor CNN Turk or TRT, or else listen to the news on his iPod, laying quietly on the sofa with the earplugs, his face constrained and worried. His parents were in favor of the referendum. “My father has always voted for the ruling party,” Orhan told his wife. “He is one of those people that will never waver in his support. The president himself would have to personally punch him in the face. That’s about the only thing that would make him change his mind.”

Orhan was against the referendum, yet confided this only to his wife and a few friends. With the state of emergency still in effect, and the pressures so many were facing, it could be very risky to be known as a “HAYIR” person. Not that he feared of losing his job — he worked for an international company, not a Turkish company — still, there was a lingering fear that it could somehow come back on him, or come back on his family.

###

The day of the referendum was Sunday.

Suvi slept in, while Orhan got up and went down to the local school to vote. He came back an hour or so later, with his “HAYIR” slip. With a sort of proud defiant grin, he pinned it to the refrigerator, next to a postcard of the Collesseum they had bought in Rome.

When Suvi got up, they went out for Turkish breakfast at a café in Moda, and had coffee afterwards in the park overlooking the sea. It was a brilliant sunny day. Everywhere in the city it was unusually busy for a Sunday, as millions went to the polling stations. Since by national decree no alcohol could be sold on election day, the bars sat morosely silent and empty.

But knowing they would very well need a drink, Orhan had stocked up the day before, purchasing beer and wine at the local Migros. That evening, as the polls closed, he and Suvi sat in front of the TV, drinking and awaiting the results.

The initial results were very gloomy indeed. The Yes vote was leading by a wide margin, 56 percent to 45 percent. As more of the results came, however, the gap began to close, but not nearly fast enough.

As it grew dark outside, nearly all the precincts had reported. The Yes vote led 51 percent to 49 percent. Suvi knew that the EVET people had won. A “narrow victory,” as the BBC later reported, but a victory nonetheless.

Orhan was despondent.

“At least it was rejected in Istanbul,” Suvi said, trying to find something cheerful to say.

Orhan looked at her blankly. “So what are you saying?” he asked.

She shrugged, sipping her glass of red wine. “I mean, you always say that Istanbul is 30 percent of Turkey’s population. And that most of the educated people live here. So it’s at least some comfort that the educated people voted against it, that Istanbul voted ‘No.’”

Orhan didn’t respond. He kept watching the news. The referendum had also failed — surprisingly — in the capital of Ankara, and — not surprisingly — in the coastal city of Izmir. The Kurdish city of Diyarbakir had rejected it as well. Most of the support, judging from the colored maps on the TV, seemed to have come from the rural areas, from the middle of the country.

After a while, Orhan switched off the TV. Outside, they could hear the sound of cars passing, tooting their horns in giddy triumph. Suvi went out to the balcony to look. Another car passed, accompanied by a similarly long, cheeky horn blast. Some girls were hanging out the windows, waving red and white flags and shouting something. The car passed on down the road, disappearing over the next hill.

But they were not so many cars at least. It had rained a little, and the black streets looked oily, gleaming and silent. Suvi wondered if it was going to rain overnight — actually the air smelled really clean and fresh, she thought. She liked spring rains. But she felt confused, and went back inside.

Her husband was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen, the iPod to his ears.

“Shall we move then?” he asked, lifting one of the headphones.

“What? Where?” Suvi asked.

Her husband didn’t answer.

She went to empty the dishwasher, just to have something to do. She did the cups and glasses first, putting them on the shelf. Then she did the bowls and plates, which went on a separate shelf. Finally, she did the silverware, putting away all the knives, spoons and forks.

Finished, she turned and noticed the seat where Orhan had been sitting was empty. She went into the living room. Orhan was on the lap top. He was looking at tickets on Sky Scanner. Suvi sat down, and together they looked at various tickets. There were some cheap flights to Helsinki in July.

“Do you think we could find a house there?” Orhan asked. His eyes had a certain wild, dead look to them. “Do you think we could just check?”

“What would we do in Helsinki?” Suvi asked.

“It doesn’t hurt to just check,” her husband said curtly. He seemed hurt, lost inside, and Suvi was unsure whether to just leave him alone for awhile. She got up and returned to the kitchen. Orhan had to work in the morning, and he liked to have a toasted cheese sandwich before he left. So she made the sandwich, cutting up the yellow cheese and folding it into a cut-up piece of fresh bread, and put it in the refrigerator.

There were a few beers left, and half a bottle of wine. She opened a beer for Orhan and took it to him in the living room, then poured herself a glass of wine and retired to the spare room. Maybe she could try to work on that damn thesis or something. She opened her laptop and began scanning through an article she had found the other day. Groan. Fuck it!

Turning off the computer, she went back to the living room.

Orhan had switched the news back on. The TV commentators were going on and on. Then it went live to the president, who thanked everyone who had voted. The president said it was a great day for Turkey. The president called for unity among Turks everywhere no matter how they had voted. The Yes and No people should all come together and move forward together. The usual things all leaders say after all elections.

They each checked their Facebook pages, the posts from friends, colleagues. Merve, the feminist friend, was heartbroken; others were angry — most of their friends, “international people,” were indignant, defiant, saying the election was unfair. Some demanded recounts.

Around midnight, they finally went to bed, their heads reeling from the alcohol, from confusion, from exhaustion — the exhaustion of months of hype, anticipation, hope, strain and despair. They would have to just go to sleep. They lay together in the dark, each of them restless and trying to find the folds of each other’s arms, of legs, of dreams. They could not sleep — not until it was much later, when finally something mercifully released them and they were able to find the warmth and darkness. They were again strangers in a strange land. Hadn’t they always been?

What — and where — they would be when they woke up in the morning was unclear, but they would find that out, and find their way, together.

###

James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.