In 2009, Jack Scott and his civil partner, Liam, sold off the family silver and jumped the good ship Blighty for Muslim Turkey. They parachuted into paradise with eyes firmly shut and hoped for the best. When the blindfolds were removed what they saw wasn’t pretty. They found themselves peering over the rim of a Byzantine bear pit. Bitching and pretension ruled the emigrey roost. The white-washed ghettoes were populated by neo-colonial bar-room bores who hated the country they’d come from and hated the country they’d come to and were obsessed with property prices, pork products and street dogs. Expat life was village life where your business was everyone’s business. For Liam, it was the barren badlands of the lost and lonely. For Jack it was the last stand of the charmless Raj - 'Tenko' without the guards, the guns and the barbed wire. It took them a while to find their feet and separate the wheat from the chavs but, determined to stay the course, eventually they found diamonds in the rough and roses among the weeds. Regular replenishing trips back home to the bosom of friends and family was a vital tool in their expat survival kit. Jack wrote it all down in a blog for the world to ignore. He called it Perking the Pansies. Against the odds and quite by surprise, Perking the Pansies grew into the most successful blog of its kind in Turkey, attracting an international audience, the attention of the Turkish national press and hatching an award-winning autobiography. Jack’s witterings struck a global chord because expats are expats wherever they pitch up. Jack raised a satirical mirror. Sometimes the reflection was funny, sometimes it was sad, and sometimes it was plain ugly.
Jack has published the best of the blog from the Turkey years as a two volume e-book – Turkey, the Raw Guide and Turkey, Surviving the Expats. Welcome to Part Two of the mini-series. The uncensored director's cut includes previously unpublished material together with Jack’s personal recommendations of the must-sees that Turkey has to offer to visitors and residents alike. Jack likes to be functional as well as decorative.
Jack has published the best of the blog from the Turkey years as a two volume e-book – Turkey, the Raw Guide and Turkey, Surviving the Expats. Welcome to Part Two of the mini-series. The uncensored director's cut includes previously unpublished material together with Jack’s personal recommendations of the must-sees that Turkey has to offer to visitors and residents alike. Jack likes to be functional as well as decorative.
