Bilgehan Uçak wrote: Being from Turkey and “educated ignorance”

Whenever the issue of Turkishness and being Turkish comes to the fore, the famous slogan of Fruko sodas, “ten hundred thousand million bubbles”, always comes to my mind, and in a very short time, I find myself saying the same words all over again, bewildered by this “educated ignorance”.

I will try to explain it in the simplest way.

I am a Turk, my native language is Turkish.

Moreover, I was born in Türkiye, not in another country, and I live here.

So, I am from Türkiye.

In short, I am a Turk from Turkey.

As can be seen, being from Turkey does not prevent being Turkish.

Being Turkish is my objective identity, being from Turkey is my subjective identity.

If Turkishness is imposed as a subjective identity, I have no problem with it, but it is very difficult for those who are not Turkish from an ethno-religious perspective to adapt and not fall into conflict with the society they live in.

The sole condition for this, that is, voluntary integration, is that the common market must be established before the awakening of national consciousness.

The common market in Türkiye was only established in the eighties, but even then it was too late.

As a result, "voluntary integration" gave way to a policy of "forced assimilation" and the worst that could happen happened; a section of society felt like a "forced citizen" instead of a "voluntary citizen".

Look, if these two identities match, there is no problem; the whole problem occurs in those whose objective and subjective identities do not match.

Now, those who oppose this concept of being from Turkey from different segments of society have a sincere concern, and that is the harm it will cause to Turkishness.

They think that being from Turkey will eliminate Turkishness and replace it.

For example, İlber Ortaylı said : “You haven't even decided on the type of yogurt you're making yet, yet you decide on ours and say 'Turkish'. There's no such word as 'Turkish'. Is such a ridiculous word even possible?”

Short answer: It tastes like honey.

But we still prefer to answer longer.

As you know, İlber Hoca is a Crimean Turk.

Well, if someone can be from Crimea - or Sweden, Siirt, Thrace, Mesopotamia, or the Black Sea region - why can't someone be from Turkey?

Turkishness is the name of an ethno-religious group.

Türkiye is a geographical name.

We can easily ensure it.

When you think of Turks living abroad or the cities where they are the majority, Urumqi, Kirkuk, Skopje and Komotini will first come to mind, but those living in Syria, Mosul, or even Yerevan or Athens will not come to mind.

The reason is very clear: Turkishness is an ethno-religious term and one of its characteristics is that it is used only for Muslims.

A non-Muslim cannot be called a Turk.

We see what is being said in the slogan of the 1930s: “Citizen, speak Turkish!”

The “citizen” there is actually a “non-Muslim citizen.”

One of the most meaningless comments on this subject, unfortunately, is written by a history professor.

These words belong to Erhan Afyoncu: “Let me be clear and direct: there is no such thing as ‘Turkish.’ There is no such thing in our book. There is no such thing as ‘German,’ there is no such thing as ‘French.’ There is no need to invent new things. When the empire was disintegrating, we said, ‘You are all Ottomans,’ but that didn’t work. There is no such thing as ‘I am a Turkish nationalist.’ Do French people say, ‘I am French,’ or Japanese people say, ‘I am Japanese?’”

Let's not cut corners again, let's take the long way around.

First, let's correct the professor's mistake.

Saying I am French means the same thing as saying I am from France because at one stage in history, the Franks who gave their name to that region melted away over time, so when you say you are French, you are saying you are from France - just like Thrace, which took its name from the Thracians.

Japaneseness is different, it is an objective identity, that is, it is acquired at birth and cannot be changed.

If a person is Japanese, he is Japanese.

Consider Fukuyama, Fukuyama's objective identity is Japanese, but Fukuyama is American, so his subjective identity is Americanness.

Thus, we see that being American and French are inclusive, just like being Turkish, while being German, Kurdish, Japanese, Hungarian, etc. characterize an ethno-religious group.

If everyone living in Germany is German, then, according to the professor's logic, everyone living in Bulgaria is Bulgarian and everyone living in Greece is Greek.

So, if the people in Bulgaria were Bulgarians, what was Zhivkov's struggle for Bulgarization and the forced changing of names for?

Why was this necessary?

If everyone in Greece is Greek, that is, if no one is Greek, this means that there are no Turks in Western Thrace.

Because there is no such thing as a Greek Turk, a person cannot have two objective identities - ones he did not choose, acquired from birth - but he can have an unlimited number of subjective identities - ones he acquired voluntarily after reaching puberty.

So there are Greeks.

There are also Bulgarians, Iranians, Germans and Turkish people.

One more issue: When the Empire was disintegrating, why was it said, "You are all Ottomans" and not "You are all Turks"?

Because the empire, by definition, contains more than one ethno-religious group.

Unless you find a name that encompasses everyone, like Britain or Yugoslavia, you can't keep it together.

It seems we will have to explain this subject in its simplest form ten hundred thousand million times more.