Abdul Turay

Features Presenting a selection of published feature articles about Estonia and its neighbours on a wide range of topics . Some stories were written with a pen-name. The view from London City under Siege The end of Newspapers Risk Capitalist Allan Martinson on Estonia's position in the World Musician Jaan Tätte on Estonia's position in the World Neo-Nazi thrown out of Estonia A hard landing indeed The great language myth Swedish Empire strikes back Bigotry and denial It's a global election Fighting to preserve a nation's heritage Revisiting school days Quiet genius who brought East to the West Dartford: Tallinn's improbable twin

Bigotry and denial By Anton Dwyer, Marge Tubalkain-Trell and Adam Mullet First published May 22, 2008 A man, let’s call him Joe Bloggs, told The Baltic Times about a horrible experience he had while traveling to the Baltics in the days before the Schengen zone. He was crossing the border by bus between Estonia and Latvia when immigration officials came to look over the passengers. They frog-marched Bloggs off the bus and took him to a room to interrogate him. He was striped naked and inspected. His belongings were searched. The officials took away his mobile phone and did not allow him to call his embassy. He was locked in a windowless room where he spent the night. Eventually, in the morning, they let him call his embassy and they came and got him out. This was not the first time that Bloggs had been detained. If it had happened once it could be just bad luck, if two or three times then exceptionally bad luck, but after the fourth incident he realized that it was more than just bad l

The language myth By Vincent Freeman with additional reporting by Adam Mullett First published July 16, 2008 Tallinners can be strange. Not only do they dislike Russian-speakers speaking Russian, they don’t like Finnish tourists speaking Finnish. “We are not in Finland. If you can’t speak Estonian, speak English” would be a typical response. It’s understandable that Estonians prefer English — it is, after all, an international language. Also, in this part of the world, it is politically neutral. Russian, German and even Swedish can be associated with occupation and colonization. Estonia and the other Baltic states are small nations, and they can’t expect everybody to learn their language. There are also practical reasons. The fact is, a lot of people living in Estonia don’t speak Estonian. It is possible for two people born in Tallinn in the same year to be forced to converse in English because it is the only language that they have in common. It’s part of the great Russian-Estonian di

The Swedish Empire strikes back By Abdul Turay First published June 18, 2008 The following list may be familiar to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of the region. Danes, Teutonic Knights, Swedes, Germans, Russians, Nazis, Soviets. These are the powers that have occupied and exploited the region, especially Estonia and Latvia, over the past millennium or so. Conventional wisdom says that there are two gaps on this litany of foreign occupation – 1919 to 1939 and 1991 to present. This is an illusion. The reality is, as recent events show, one of the old occupying powers is back and they mean business. The Baltics are controlled by Swedish capitalists. It could be called the new Swedish Empire. Let us look at the evidence. In Estonia at the end of 2007, the share of SEB and Hansabank was 71 percent of the loan market and almost 100 percent of banking assets belonged to foreign-based credit institutions or investors. Investors were attracted by the region’s flexible att

Quiet genius who brought the East to the West By Marge Tubalkain-Trell with additional reporting by Vincent Freeman First published April 9, 2008 TALLINN - The Koran is undoubtedly one of the most important texts in world culture, so it’s maybe not so surprising that the book is selling well in Estonia. No one thought, however, it would sell as well as it did. The truly astonishing thing is that it took until December 2007 for the book to be published in Estonian. There is no doubt the Koran would not have been translated at all if weren’t for the work of one remarkable man, Haljand Udam – geologist, scientist, linguist, translator, writer, and genius. The Baltic Times spoke to the friends and family of the man who single-handedly made the most important cultural event of the year in Estonia possible, including his widow who has never spoken to the press before. “It was his life’s work and his last work,” said Aivar Lestsinski, editor in chief of the Avita publishing company. Udam died

Fighting to preserve a nation’s heritage By Abdul Turay First Published July 09, 2008 When Tobias Jasetas was a small child, his family emigrated to England. One summer his mother decided to go back to Lithuania for an extended holiday to visit relatives. She took Jasetas, who was then nine years old, with her. It turned to be one of the saddest decisions made by anyone, anywhere, ever. The year was 1939 and within a few months of arriving war had broken out. The mother and son were stranded in a country under Soviet occupation. The Soviets deported Jasetas’ relatives to Siberia. Then the Nazis came and things got even worse. Jasetas is now 87 and still lives in Vilnius in a run down apartment with basic utilities. He doesn’t like to reflect on what might have been. He is the ultimate survivor. He lived through the first Soviet occupation, the Ghetto, the murder of his mother and other relatives. He escaped from the Ghetto just before the “Child Achtung” in 1944 when Ghetto children w

Tallinn's unlikely twin By Abdul Turay First published November 2008 The idea behind twinning is that two vaguely similar cities exchange cultural links for their mutual benefit. Warsaw is twinned with Coventry – both cities were flattened by the Luftwaffe, after all. Tartu, the famous Estonian university town, is twined with Uppsala which is the home to the oldest university in Scandinavia. And Tallinn… Tallinn is twinned with Dartford. Come again, Dartford! For those of you who don’t know Britain well, Dartford is a dull dormitory suburb on the back end of London. Dartford is in the county of Kent, the so-called “garden of England”. Technically it is both a town and a borough , but it is not a city since it doesn’t have a Royal charter to call itself that. Say the word “Dartford” to most Britons, and they will answer back “tunnel”. The Dartford crossing is both a tunnel and a bridge. It links up Kent with London both above and below the river Thames. When City Paper called up the