One of my first trips over seas was to Istanbul. I was eating in a restaurant with a couple of the Turks I was working with and some how the subject turned to politics. One of the guys was going off on his own government railing about human rights and personal freedoms, while the guy next him became more and more scared until finally, he grabbed the guys arm and whispered, "you can't say those kinds of things, in public, out in the open like this". It was later explained to me that he was scared because sometimes critics of the Turkish government would just disappear without a trace. That's when I noted, to myself, what I truly had at home.