My Three States of Being Turkish

These may seem like respectable, even innocent positions. But every story conceals another layer.

We lived in a society structured by hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, and culture — an apartheid-like order whose apex was occupied by the Sunni Muslim Turk. The foundations of this hierarchy had been laid through large-scale massacres, deportations, and systematic repression against those who did not belong. Turks were its primary beneficiaries. Whether you were aware of it or not, if you belonged to the category “Turk,” you were privileged. You automatically benefited from a system that subordinated others.

But from the moment you did not clearly name this advantage — when you concealed your Turkishness behind universalist categories — you also laid the groundwork for distrust. The other had reason to be suspicious. That is why, for example, Kurds rarely believed our universalist rhetoric. They could easily see the Turkishness behind it.

Nor was this pattern new. Historically, it was no different. Until 1913, the Young Turks — more precisely, the Committee of Union and Progress — could not openly say “we are Turks.” They took refuge in the concept of Ottomanism, presenting themselves as cosmopolitan and supra-ethnic. Yet what they practiced was, in essence, a form of Turkish nationalism. Neither Armenians nor Greeks believed in this cosmopolitanism; they could easily see what lay behind it.

Second State: Being a Minority in Germany

Here, I am speaking of a particular “state of Turkishness” experienced by every progressive who arrived in Germany as a refugee. We were forcefully reminded that we were “Turks” — not only by the German legal system, but by German society itself. Whether we considered ourselves as such or not, we were treated as Turks — and for that reason, we were excluded and looked down upon.

It must have been around 1978–79 in Munich. I realized I was Turkish the moment I noticed that when I boarded a bus, no one would sit next to me because of my dark hair.

In 1981, I took my late father to a pub [Kneipe] in Hamburg to introduce him to German culture. But no sooner had we sat down than we were thrown out — for being Turks. At the next table sat German friends from our association’s “Anti-Fascism Committee.” As we were being pushed out — almost kicked out — right in front of their eyes, they simply went on drinking their beer.

Around the same time, I was looking for an apartment. I would call listings in the newspapers, but each time, the moment my accent was recognized, I was told the place had already been rented and the phone was hung up in my face. A German friend with whom I was staying began lecturing me again about “class struggle,” about how “we are all oppressed,” about “universalism” and “internationalism.” I remember losing my temper. I slammed the phone down in front of him and told him to call the same number. He did. Together we learned that the apartment — supposedly “already taken” — was in fact still available.

I remember lecturing him in return: “There is no such thing as that kind of universalism. Whether you accept it or not, as a German you benefit from the advantages of this country. That is what you need to understand first.” It is in moments like these that you begin to understand, much more clearly, the Kurdish or Alevi experience in Turkey. As I said, this is a transformation every Turkish refugee passes through.

I would describe this phase of my Turkishness as an angry Turkishness, or perhaps a reactive Turkishness. Even if you have no particular desire to define yourself as Turkish, you are subjected to racist hostility and forcibly labeled as such. And with the defiance — “If I am a Turk, then I am a Turk — so what?” — you begin to reflect on the deeper meaning of being Turkish, of being a foreigner.

Third State: The Turkishness I Learned from Armenians

In my early years in the United States, I was struck by how openly people expressed their ethnic and national identities. No one concealed their cultural or national background; on the contrary, they spoke about it with ease and confidence. I remember sharing with my colleagues at the Institute in Hamburg my theoretical reflections on how “ethnicized” language was in the United States.

Then came the process of being introduced by Armenians as a “Turkish academic.” I did not fit the usual “type” of Turk they were accustomed to, but this did not prevent them from seeing me as one. Because I was not an ordinary denialist Turk, the channels of dialogue were wide open. This ease gave me the opportunity to encounter my Turkishness on an entirely different level.

A friend of mine, Ohannes, would say that everything I did ultimately served the good of Turks. By speaking openly with Armenians about what had happened to them, I may have offered not only a certain psychological relief but also a form of recognition — but what I wrote and did was, in essence, also for Turks: to help them confront themselves, to help them learn what it means to be human. Referring to Turks, he would say: “One day, they will understand that these efforts are not only for Armenians, but for their own good as well.”

Another striking example was Anna. “Whenever I heard Turkish,” she told me, “I used to think: the language of my enemy, the language of those who brought disaster upon my people. After meeting you, when I hear Turkish, I began to think: the language of my friend.”

These experiences taught me that being Turkish is neither something to be hidden nor something that must be lived in hostility toward the other. And when one speaks it openly, the sky does not fall. The question, then, is: what made this ease possible?

I do not wish to engage here in deep sociological analyses about how identities are not static but fluid; how they do not merely express an ontological essence of individuals or groups, but are relationally constructed, shaped within narratives, and acquire meaning through them.

My answer is much simpler: a shared narrative.

What allowed my Turkishness to normalize was that, together with my Armenian friends, we began to tell a shared story about ourselves and our past. Let me be clear: by “shared,” I do not mean a single, uniform narrative. It was a narrative that recognized differences — one that acknowledged pain and responsibility. My Turkishness, within this narrative, became something constructed, shared, and normalized through mutual recognition. In a sense, my Turkishness was being reconstituted through a process of dialogue with Armenians — within a reciprocal narrative.

My advice to Turkish progressives, then, is this: they must recognize that the story they tell about themselves does not include the other. As long as they fail to construct a narrative in which Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians are recognized as subjects in their own right, they will not be able to normalize their Turkishness. The reason they feel compelled to conceal it is that they lack a story they can share with the other.

What does this mean politically? In fact, it is quite simple: instead of narrating the formation of their identity and state as a “national liberation struggle created out of nothing against imperialism — despite its flaws,” they must begin to say: what a tragedy. They must be able to say: it was a tragedy for the Kurds, for the Armenians, for the Assyrians, for the Jews of this country. They must learn to make the suffering of others part of their own story.

One answer to the question What were we, and what have we become? lies here (In a previous essay, I offered a number of observations on why Turkish progressives have largely disappeared from the cultural and political landscape in Turkey). Because the story that Turkish progressives tell about themselves and their society neither offers an answer to the most urgent question of today — how to live together, that is, how different national, religious, and cultural groups can coexist side by side on the basis of mutual recognition and respect — nor does it avoid producing a form of Turkishness so burdened and problematic that it must constantly be concealed.