Who Are Turks?

The feeling of being unfairly downgraded has deep and historical roots in Turkish society with different kinds of understandings from ultra realistic to utopian, apologetic to childish pride ones. Not so much, only 20-30 years ago in most of the Turkish families, you could easily find refugee stories, songs and recipes from other countries, grandmothers upset about her relatives and friends left behind and proud of being very rich once upon a time on those left lands. It is still possible to find many people can talk about his / her roots from current Caucasus, Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Albania, Bosnia, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon. If you go to martyrdom in Sarikamis (1915) or in Baku (1918) you can read the tags of the Ottoman soldiers lying there came from these and other countries. You can find these traces in the names of districts, surnames, mosques, rivers, and mountains. Regardless to the ethnic origins, Turkey was and still is our mother country. On the other hand, you can also find many evidences in these countries from Turks as endless lists from surnames to fruits, squares to fountains, deserts to customs, even some Turkish villages. You can catch the familiar mimics, body language, even swearing and curse, and the same feeling of being unfairly downgraded with emphasizes on common values and history not necessarily in a colonist tone. Here in Middle East as I experienced Turkey is not accepted as a role model, but a kind of pioneer among them with its positively perceived secular bases, westernized but not apologetic approach, and sharing the common values. A last note may be interesting: according to Turkish Statistical Institute the most given 10 names to newborns between 1950 – 2010 are Fatma, Zeynep, Elif, Merve, Ayse, Hatice, Emine, Busra, Esra, and Irem for girls, Mehmet, Mustafa, Ahmet, Ali, Ibrahim, Huseyin, Yusuf, Omer, Hasan and Murat for boys. It may be helpful to rethink about who are Turks and not on real bases without any reference to fictive, heroic, and romantic legend of Those Crazy Turks.