All eyes are on Turkey, a Westernized, secular-but-Muslim, half European-half Asian country, as it tries to determine its modern identity. Around the globe, our daily lives are increasingly affected by other cultures. Could this uniquely positioned country be a model for integration – or is it a cautionary tale?

On June 26, 2008, thirty social scientists, businesspeople and cultural thought leaders will gather in Istanbul for the Turkish city’s first Global Nomad Salon to try to answer these questions. The upcoming evening, hosted by JANERA.com, The Voice of Global Nomads, and Istanbul-based cultural writer Anastasia M. Ashman, coeditor of Tales from the Expat Harem, is the Turkish city’s first Global Nomad Salon. The topic will be "Turkey's East/West Identity."

The dinner conversation will be anchored by Turkey-based experts. Ersin Akarlılar (CEO of Mavi Jeans) will bring his experience in exporting a Turkish brand abroad while Neşe Gündoğan (secretary general of the National Turkish Olympic Committee) will contribute her view of managing a national identity in the goodwill sporting event. Pinpointing cultural characteristics relevant to cross-border business success will be Şerif Kaynar (country managing director of executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry) and Ferhan Alesi (global intercultural trainer and the only Turk to sit on the board of Europe’s Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, SIETAR). American Tara Hopkins (Open Society/Soros Foundation grantee and creator of the ground-breaking civic involvement program at Istanbul’s Sabancı University) will share her leftist view of the national character.

Guests will include international thought leaders and culture creatives. From New York attendees include Anya Stiglitz, who leads the media concentration of the School of International Affairs at Columbia University, as well as Michael Short, creative director of New York’s Sperone Westwater, the gallery which represents world-class artists like Bruce Nauman and Guillermo Kuitca.

“Jetsetters with a conscience” is how The Economist characterizes the attendees at these intellectual dinner parties, launched in October 2007 by founder Janera Soerel. Soerel, originally from Curaçao, is a former investment banker who has worked and studied in Washington D. C., London, Rotterdam, Santiago, Amsterdam, Milan and New York, where she’s currently based. She’s also an economist who aims to bring complex academic issues to a larger audience through events and an online publication that is accessible, insightful, and engaging.

The Global Nomad Salons, along with an online magazine and members-only social network, explore issues of global citizenship, hybrid-identities and globalization seen from a human perspective. Soerel has conducted dinner salons in Washington D.C., Rome, Curaçao, and New York City. With local co-hosts, her next events are scheduled to be in Amsterdam, Paris, London, Miami and Buenos Aires. She is also hosting the first Global Nomad Retreat in Tuscany in September (7 – 13th).

Soerel’s Istanbul co-host Anastasia M. Ashman is an award-winning writer and producer of intellectually-stimulating multimedia entertainment projects that further the worldwide cultural conversation. A Californian, she co-edited the #1 internationally bestselling anthology Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey. The expatriate literature collection has been globally endorsed by major media like NBC TV’s Today Show, National Geographic Traveler and the International Herald Tribune, while the book’s literary ambassadorship has been widely supported in Turkey. She combines a decade in media and entertainment circles in New York and Los Angeles with 10 years of expatriatism in Rome, Kuala Lumpur, and Istanbul.

The dinner will take place on the rooftop of the Four Seasons in Sultanahmet, overlooking the Haghia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Sea of Marmara. 

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