Neşe:
“..., I believe that transcription is another stage in the long process of oral history research. First of all, one has the chance to go over the whole interview and remember the moments in which particular spoken words are uttered. Therefore, the transcription process, I believe, constitutes the basis of the analysis of the interview.”
“My weakness was to go to the interview with a secure reasoning that my informant accepted to meet me. As soon as he said that he would not talk about many things with the recorder, I got paralyzed and during the whole interview thought about whether I should find ways to make him speak out about these things or not. I decided not to do that and assessed myself as failed.”
“I believe that for the interpretation of such cases, a second meeting is highly necessary though I could not do so. Apart from such moments of silences, where I felt really discouraged during the interview, I believe that we could also manage to construct conversations where my questions prompted new topics and where our dialogue proceeded in a more casual way…”
From the interview:
“Yes, the first time I left my hometown, I went to Antalya. I worked in a hotel there as an assistant chef. From there I went to the center of Antalya and worked in a two-storey restaurant. While I was working there, the financial situation of my family was pretty bad, I mean there were no job opportunities in Diyarbakır. I mean, there was but we could only work for a month or a week and couldn’t even get paid. I mean, even for a week we were paid three days’ worth of money. There were no jobs."
“Honestly, I saw the iron for the first time. She showed me everything and then I tried to an iron a little, and two days later I was practically a master in ironing. She said ‘“Well done, you did a very good job, you have become an ironer in just two days.” There, I worked day and night for a month and a half. Day and night, I mean I slept only two hours a day. She said, ‘“Look you are exhausting yourself too much, you will burn yourself out’”. But I said: ‘“No, elder sister, my family’s financial situation is very bad’”. When I said that she would tear up, literally tears would come from her eyes. Afterwards she, (Rıza closed the door) after that the assistant fired me, he was from Trabzon (somebody is calling for Rıza), as a person from Diyarbakır, it would have been difficult to work for someone from Trabzon. Yes, that was it.”
In this interview, the interviewee preferred to remain anonymous.