Among all the things my children lack while growing up, what I regret most is that they do not have tenderness and affection from their elders. Not from elders in the family or the neighborhood elders an age apart, but from elders outside the family who are a little bit older than the others. When I was growing up, I always felt the watchful eyes of my elder “brothers” in the neighborhood and this gave me and my family a sense of confidence, a kind of camaraderie that I regretfully cannot see in today''s social environment.

There is no such thing as neighborly brotherhood or sisterhood in big cities anymore in Turkey; I feel sorry for my children and their friends for the lack of it.

When I went to London to further my studies, I found the same neighborly affection from the dwellers where I took my abode. The neighborhood revolved around the small post office. The person who minded the shop knew all the necessary information to get around and watched over any unnecessary inconvenience they sensed in the area.

The local general practitioner had the medical data of all the neighbors. I was taken to the hospital once when he felt it was only way to ease my kidney pain, refusing to give me a painkiller on the grounds of my own health interest.

Even the grocery shop around the corner was a meeting place for the neighbors, who frequented the spot around the same time each day to share a quick chat about their family affairs.

During their stays in the United States, many Turks enjoy the same camaraderie in their neighborhoods by keeping their eyes open while they voluntarily assume the duties as part of a neighborhood watch team. They serve on PTAs and participate in local activities where their children feel the same sense of belonging my peers and I enjoyed during our childhoods.

I remember very vividly an incident from my days as a “big guy” in the neighborhood. A school friend of mine went up to a teenager and rebuked him with severe words. We found out later on that our friend was giving his neighborly warning to a youngster who obviously started smoking while he was too young to handle it.

Not any longer. Not in the big cities of Turkey. Our children are growing up in apartments and never experiencing the luxury of being under the tender and watchful eyes of their neighborhood elders.

This is the reason I did not at first understand the debate over “neighborhood pressure” raised by some “pop-sociologists” who claim with conviction that Turkey under a conservative government is straying from its correct course and fear that we will end up being a country with little rights and freedoms. The process, according to them, has already started. The examples given to prove their case are all in the papers: the closure of restaurants during the day in Anatolia; the covering with colored paper of alcoholic beverage sections at supermarkets in big cities; and the ladies with headscarves pressuring those without to cover their heads.

Of course it is Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims, and the majority of the people in this country either fast during the day or show their respect to those who do so by refraining from eating out or drinking openly. This is the simplest act of consideration a civilized person can adopt.

A friend of mine, a restaurateur, was furious when the debate over the closure of restaurants got out of hand, saying that he suffers from “neighborhood pressure,” but in reverse. Since many of his patrons fast and only a couple are eager to have lunch out, he wanted to serve only dinner and close the restaurant during the day, but could not do so because of the debate. He was losing money by not closing his restaurant during the day and this made him furious. Even in an almost empty restaurant, he has to keep the standard intact by providing full service.

The headscarf issue is the most delicate one, of course. Whenever somebody with his right mind suggests that the ban on headscarves at universities is against women''s right to education and must be lifted, many pundits use the same rhetoric of “neighborhood pressure.” If the ban was lifted, they feel those at universities without headscarves would start to don them immediately.

It is nonsense, but nevertheless the claim has been in circulation since it was uttered by prominent personalities, the last of whom was none other than Gen. Hilmi Özkök, our former chief of General Staff.

A recent poll, conducted coincidently by a firm whose owner was among those who started the “neighborhood pressure” debate, suggests the otherwise. In the last five years, when Turkey has been under the conservative government of Tayyip Erdoğan, headscarf use among women has not gone up, rather İT has come down considerably -- by almost 3 percent (May 2003: 64.2 percent; September 2007: 61.4 percent). Contrary to widespread belief, the tendency among young ladies to wear headscarves is declining sharply.

When we reach a certain age, we become more fragile and miss what we had while growing up. I miss very little from my own childhood, but I feel deep regret for my children and their peers, who lack what we had when we were coming off age -- a neighborhood where people watched over each other.