American Embassy

It was a good long run while it lasted: Southeast Asia, Mexico, India, Canada, Africa, and now Turkey… but now I was out of pages in my 2006 passport, and this was a problem because I still had countries to visit: Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. Fortunately, we had heard that it was possible to add pages at the American Embassy. Mark and I made our way by subway and bus to the American Embassy where I hoped to add blank visa pages to my full passport. Despite the flashing of our American passports, the security guard turned us away at the entrance. The guard wouldn’t even let us in the front door. She informed us that appointments are needed to obtain any services at the embassy. This offended me. It felt ironic that I could get invited into a stranger’s house, unannounced in the middle of the night, but I couldn’t enter the front door of my home country’s embassy at 2:30 pm on a weekday afternoon without an appointment. I was given tea by strangers, but couldn’t get shelter from the elements in even an American visitor’s center without an appointment. I mean, the building was huge. What was I paying all the employees to do all day if they couldn’t perform a simple task like getting me a few extra passport pages? “Tsk, tsk, tsk” (that’s the sound of Turkish disapproval).

I was especially peeved because it had taken us ½ the day to get to the Embassy (it’s not near the tourist areas) and it cost us $16 in transportation costs to get there and back. The 1st visit was a bust, so now I had to go 2 more times to get the passport pages (1 time to drop it off and another to pick it up). It was a Thursday and the Embassy was closed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so I was out of luck until Monday. Mark went online and booked our appointments for Monday at 10am. When we got there, it was a similar routine (think American DMV exported to Turkey). The guard out front stopped us before we could get to the entrance. “Do you have an appointment?” “Yes.” He checked the list. We weren’t on it. He told us to wait outside in the cold while he and his walkie talkie went inside. When he came back, he vaguely pointed to his left and motioned that we could enter. We approached the door and another guard shooed us further down the massive building (a building that didn’t blend into the community, I might add; it’s sprawling square marble on a massive hillside- very American, but not necessarily attractive or inviting). The signage was unclear and we couldn’t figure out how to find the entrance without assistance (major design flaw in a very recent building). A security guard had to show us how to get to the door, then came the x-ray and pat-down, much like at an airport. I was impressed by the “good cop” who offered to fill our empty water bottle with purified water. We continued through a glass and iron hallway where contrary to Thomas Friedman’s super-secure description, cats milled about the grounds (In “The World Is Flat” Friedman says “even birds don’t fly there”). Up an escalator and down a winding hall we found the passport and visa room. We looked around at maybe 10 barred service windows, unsure about exactly who our appointment would be with. A guy emerged and handed us a number, instructed us to go into another room for paperwork. We had been told that the fee for adding passport pages was $20 USD, but when I turned in the form, the woman told us she would need $164 plus shipping to process it. I was flabbergasted. How could the country I paid taxes to demand $82 to simply add visa pages to my passport. The labor is Turkish and it takes all of 2 minutes! I was outraged, but without pages, I was stuck. Mark had 5 pages left, so we withdrew his paperwork and processed only mine. I had to pay an additional 14 Turkish Lira to ship my passport through UPS (and wait in a 20 minute separate line to give them my address). I was boiling. In addition to my money, the bureaucracy was now wasting my time. As I waited in line, I overheard a man behind the counter berating a young Turkish girl who wanted a visa to visit America. I wanted to go up to the window and scold him, “this is not how we treat people!” I needed to get out of that building, away from the bureaucracy, back into outdoor freedom. It angered me to feel resentment toward my own Embassy. I hadn’t expected that. I’m the kind of proud American who cries when I hear the National Anthem being sung before games. I’m the kind of proud American who loves America as my home. And as a proud American, I gotta say, I think we can do better than we’re doing at the American Embassy in Turkey. Tsk, tsk, tsk…