Chris Banyas
Life Editor
Volcanoes explode. It is what they are known for. But they also remain active and alive through extensive periods of hibernation, able to transition from a seemingly dead thing into the very opposite.
Volkan Aktas, whose first name roughly translates to “volcano,” reflects the persistent nature of his namesake rather than the explosive.
In the marathon race that is life, Aktas has cleared many hurdles one way or another. He has stumbled at several, fallen briefly, but continues to run.
This persistence, along with other factors, eventually brought Aktas, now a senior in the Idaho State University Marketing Program, back to Pocatello.
One of the driving factors that have kept him going is a common passion that he shares with his family.
“I oriented myself toward business because that’s what my family did. I felt like I wanted business in my life because my dad was like that, my brother and my mom,” said Aktas.
Aktas first came to ISU from France in 2011 as part of a foreign exchange program. After completing two years at a business college, he was given the opportunity to continue to pursue his passion abroad.
Due to the select few positions available, Aktas did not have a choice as to which foreign university he would attend. He was informed at a meeting with an adviser of his destination: Idaho.
“I was like Idaho? What is Idaho? I was thinking about California, New York, Miami, you know, big cities and I was like ‘Idaho, interesting,’” said Aktas. “I asked my professor, ‘what is it?’ and he was like ‘that’s real American country.”
While places like New York, Miami and California could offer bigger spectacles and tourist attractions, Idaho could offer a chance to see what real American culture was like.
“I loved this school. I loved the fact that professors were patient with me and they were so happy that I was in class. I also loved being outdoors,” said Aktas. “Before I didn’t care about that, but now if I am in a city where I can’t go outdoors I will be sad because I love snowboarding, I love hiking, I love biking, things like that.”
Aktas’s initial experience at ISU was not without its difficulties.
While English is taught in France beginning in middle school, the level of language mastery that Aktas came with caused issues.
“Honestly, when I came here for the first time as an exchange student, I couldn’t communicate with anybody and I was like ‘why did I come here?’” said Aktas. “It took me like four or five months. My ears adapted a little bit and I was able to understand.”
Two other French students, helpful American classmates, the ISU French Club and specific professors and staff members helped ease the strain of the transition.
“Dr. Park, Ms. Tatarova, and Ms. Brown helped a lot and Omar [Raudez] and all of the International Office was great,” said Aktas.
Overcoming communication issues are something that the elder Aktas family members know a thing or two about.
While Aktas was born in France, his father and mother both originally came from Turkey. His father left first, traveling to Germany before being joined by Volkan’s mother later. The family then moved to France.
“He just didn’t like the politics [in Turkey]. He didn’t like the system over there. A lot of people think about the American Dream, this was kind of like the European Dream,” said Aktas. “This is why he went to France. He just loved how France was socially oriented and how they were acceptant of other people and cultures.”
According to Aktas, names in Turkey often represent features of the natural world.
The family eventually settled in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, located in the northeast.
Volkan’s father, now 40 years old, started over by opening a restaurant with his wife in the city of Troyes, a city famous for its sixteenth-century architecture.
Much of the preserved architecture is located in an area called Old Town, where the Aktas restaurant and home was located.
Old Town falls under the protection of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, which means that the exterior of the Aktas household had to remain as it had for centuries under threat of legal action.
“There’s a lot of rules. You cannot change the windows. They want to keep the old style,” said Aktas. “It’s an attractive city. It was ranked number 10 out of the most beautiful cites in France.”
While growing up in such a historic place was normal for Aktas, he realizes how it may seem strange to someone looking in from the outside.
Around this time Volkan began experiencing one of the biggest differences, in his opinion, between France and the United States.
“The United States is really a young oriented country. France is part of the old continent. Here is geared toward technology, toward new ideas. Here they trust young people, the new generation,” said Aktas. “In France people are pessimistic. ‘We know that. We’ve seen that. We’ve done that.’ They trust older people more. And you see that all the time. What’s the most creative country in the world? It’s the United States.”
Aktas has worked many different jobs in his life, including pizza-delivery, working at a call center, in a meat packing plant, trying to open his own frozen yogurt business, but the one that changed his life was a job delivering packages for a German company, GLS, after his return from ISU in 2012.
“That was the worst job of my life. It got me sick. I was waking up at 4 a.m. I had to be at this distribution center at 5 a.m. I was doing that from 5 to 6:30 and then I had to hit the road,” said Aktas. “I lost 20 pounds while I worked there. I was depressed. I remember smoking a pack of cigarettes every two days because I was so stressed.”
After four months, Aktas took a fateful step toward a pharmacy where he was scheduled to make a delivery.
“I piled up the packages because I wanted to go fast and be efficient. There was a lot of pressure to be here at 11, here at 11:30,” said Aktas. “There was a stone in the middle and of course I didn’t’ see it. I hurt my leg. It’s bleeding, it’s open, but I couldn’t stop. I had to deliver 80 packages.”
Aktas continued working for the company, processing the endless stream of packages and dealing with his injured leg for another month before he became sick.
“They took me to the emergency room and I stayed for a week. I had a blood infection and I was almost going to die,” said Aktas. “When I was in the hospital bed I was like ‘is this really what I want?’ No. That’s not what I want. It sucks to work like that, so I applied for ISU at that time. February 2013.”
Now back at ISU, Aktas is scheduled to graduate in December of 2015, and is considering graduate school.
On the morning of Jan. 7, 2015, two gunmen entered the office of the French weekly newspaper Charlie Hedbo in Paris and Aktas was reminded of the distance between him and his home country, as he had to watch events unfold from afar.
“I was very sad and the one thing I wanted to do was go back and walk with all these people to protest against violence, against terrorism. To be with people who have the same background as I have,” said Aktas. “I don’t understand why they did that. It was so sad because these people, the ones who drew the prophet, are good people. For me, it’s stupid to kill this kind of people. They are so open to different cultures. They don’t hate Islam, they want to understand and accept it.”
