Istanbul, March 20th, 2008. Trying to warm up by drinking hot tea with Inside the Middle East producer Schams Elwazer. (Photo Ayse Adanali)

--By CNN's Octavia Nasr

Arab news networks carried President Bush's fifth anniversary speech live, touting the success of the so.

Immediately afterwards, Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera gave a grim perspective on Iraq today, with guests giving the U.S. a failing report card. One Al-Jazeera reporter describes the conflict as open-ended with no solution in sight.

Al Jazeera gave little time to US casulaties - instead comparing the Iraq of five years ago with the Iraq of today; highlighting the rise of the insurgency and the terror inflicted on innocent Iraqis.

"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Millions fled their homes. No weapons of mass destruction were found and no connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda," the network's analysts said.

A similar message in a special anniversary report on Al-Arabiya:

"What did Iraqis gain from the five years since the invasion? Did the U.S. rid them of an unfair dictatorship or drop them in a bottomless quagmire?"

Al-Arabiya also focused on the journalists it had lost - killed as they covered the conflict.

Middle East cartoonists also had a view of the fifth anniversary, like the cartoon below, in which a U.S. soldier's boot burns like a candle.

Or in this next drawing, in which an ordinary Iraqi citizen is weighed down by his country's woes and its western-backed government.

As for newspapers, an op-ed in al-Hayat concluded that "The Bush administration has performed a miracle in Iraq by making things a lot worse for Iraqis than they ever were under the Saddam Hussein regime."

While Al-Jazeera put together a highly produced, dramatically delivered promotion for its special coverage.

"Five years since the occupation of Iraq," says the narrator "What does the future hold? Unity or sectarian conflict and division?"

The network's title reads: "The Bleeding continues in Iraq."

Arab media have certainly marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion - in a tone heavily critical of the Bush Administration.

Istanbul University, March 18th, 2008. Talking to students about the recent law lifting a ban on female students wearing headscarves in public universities. (Photo Ayse Adanali)

We land at Agri's tiny Airport and drive an hour to the Kurdish village of Somkaya.

Over miles and miles of rugged desert and through a dying winter's still harsh climate, there is nothing to see but lonely telephone poles stuck in the frozen ground like toothpicks, lining an empty highway that seems to lead to the end of the earth.





The ground in Agri is all one color of unsympathetic brown. I'm told nothing much grows here, and the only way locals make money is either by raising the odd herd of cattle or smuggling cigarettes and diesel fuel from Iran.

We arrive at Somkaya village, where homes are huts peppered here and there in the mud, some with blue tarp sheets designed to protect from the rain and cold. A heat wave melted the snow and has made the roads into the village soggy and difficult to navigate.

Then, like an apparition, a dash of color: a brand spanking new building. A school, built six months ago, for the area kids. Nothing fancy; it's square and rudimentary; but against the brown of Somkaya, it stands out, especially considering there was nothing here last year.



In this inhospitable place on the edge of Turkey, it is one of thirty-six schools built with the money of one of the so-called "Bosphorous billionaires."

Sixty-three year old Husnu Ozyegin, who made billions selling his bank a couple of years ago, walks up to a welcoming committee in the windy school courtyard. He visits the school with his sister Dilek Belger, who as one of the heads of his philanthropic efforts, immediately notices a leaking ceiling outside of the teachers' lounge.

"I am asking them why this is happening and why we were not notified," she tells me with a tinge of urgency in her voice.

Ozyegin is offered coffee by one of the school's employees

As for Ozyegin, for whom this is the first visit to this particular school, which bears his name, doing good with his money is something he wants to be remembered for.

"It's important to do see the results of your philanthropy while you are alive," he tells me.

The children line up to go to their next class. Their skin is thick as leather and many of them are shivering in the cold, damp air.

"We gave them all overcoats when the school opened and I'm shocked so few of them are wearing them," he says. There is slight irritation in his voice as his says this. For Ozyegin, philanthropy should be managed with the efficiency of a business.

In another school, 16-year old Kubra says she wants to be a doctor, but that her parents want her to drop out. "As long as you believe, it can happen," Ozyegin tells her. He then moves in to kiss her on both cheeks.

He turns to me and says: "I've asked the local man on the ground to keep me updated on her situation. I told her if she makes it to university, I will pay for her education."

16-year old Kubra

After a tour of a couple of other "Husnu Ozyegin" schools, we head back to Argi airport for our flight back to Istanbul.

A teacher runs to the car and hands us a pile of thank you notes written by the kids. Producer Schams Elwazer tells me she saw Ozyegin's sister wipe a tear as she read the notes.

Istanbul seems like a world away from Agri. There, in a hotel penthouse Ozyegin is living in while his Bosphorous villa is being renovated, he says with a smile:

"I want to be remembered as the biggest philanthropist in Turkey."

(All photos Ayse Adanali)

We are in Turkey this week filming the April edition of Inside the Middle East.

As most journalists do, I got my first taste of what was on people's minds here on my drive from the Airport to our hotel in central Istanbul.

"They're suing the government to ban the AK Party," our local production assistant told me.
She was referring to the March 14th case brought by Turkey's chief prosecutor against the country's ruling "Justice and Democracy" party.

The lawsuit argues that the part of Prime Minister Erdogan is pushing "anti-secular ideas" on the population of Turkey. This, the case argues, goes against the republic of Turkey's secular ideals and its strict separation between religion and government.

You could argue that this is the most pressing issue in this country today: can Islam and democracy live side by side? A question facing Turkey and so many other Muslim nations around the world.

Issues such as the lifting of the ban on headscarves in publicly funded universities are giving some observers reason to think that Turkey's increasingly devout Muslim population is moving against a trend of modernism. Is the going against the founding ideal of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk?


Others say that the Turkish experiment is actually working: GDP per capita is up sharply here in the years since the AK party has been in power and the economy is producing more billionaires than ever before.

But is the economy the only measure of progress here?

Speaking of billionaires, one of the stories we will be bringing to viewers in April is a profile of Husnu Ozyegin, on the Turkey's richest men (a man who just may have stopped counting his billions years ago). But he is not only a hard-headed businessman; he has already spent $50 million of his own money to fund schools in poor rural areas of Turkey.

A billionaire with a penchant for the humanitarian?

He has said in the past that he is passionate about bringing education to poorer Turks and empowering young girls through education. We will be following him to remote areas of the country where his millions have funded 36 elementary schools.

Watch this space for more stories and reports from Turkey this week including a closer look at the headscarf controversy, the Kurdish question and the West's worries about Turkish military activity in Northern Iraq.