Eh… my partner is Turkish and I gotta say, there’s some truth to the meme. From a psychological perspective it’s tough to critique your tribe with an outsider, so not exclusively Turkish, but outside of Americans, Brazilians and Turks I’ve never met someone so willing to wave their own flag. Considering many expat Turks continue to vote for the parties that are causing the inflation, corruption, etc. the post is somewhat accurate (especially given the explicit callout to German Turks).
Not every critique of a demographic’s behavior comes from ignorant western superiority.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought it’d be limited to some nationalities, although maybe there’s some truth to it.
I worked with two Turks (both living in the US, but under what circumstances I don’t know; I believe one was nationalized, and the other on a work visa) at the same time in 2016; one was radically supportive of Erdoğan, and believed the coup was real; the other thought he was a dictator and that the coup was a false flag meant to allow him emergency powers and a crack-down.
I say “radically” in the first case because she’d get agitated and angry about any criticism of Erdoğan; the second would discuss it as if he were in a debate. I have no doubt his beliefs were just as passionate, but he’d argue his points, not just declare things.
ANYWAY, that’s the extent of my experience. I lived in Munich for two years and, as an American, was vaguely aware of the immigration tension, but this just after reunification and the West Germans were still coming to terms with the impacts of that. And my friend circle was urban college students, so I swam in the most liberal of waters.
Eh, its like how love of the US/“patriotism” is kinda culturally baked into the US… Turks are very similar. My partner and I only ever had one fight, caused by a friend of mine who brought up Armenia early in our relationship. My partner is more liberal than I am, like almost Fox News strawman liberal, but having left Turkey a couple years prior was still deeply entrenched in “Turkey has never done anything wrong”. Complete genocide denial, which caused a bit of a blowout hearing a very liberal, freedom-to-the-people person say “what were we supposed to do?”. North occupied Cyprus, occupied Syria, Kurdistan are all deeply sensitive topics, even for the most western/liberal Turks. Luckily she chose to educate herself on Armenia, etc. and it’s not a problem anymore, but it was a journey.
The whole history of democracy essentially being gifted to Turks by Ataturk, the creation and assignment of last names, etc. really results in some interesting cultural quirks. Amazing people, great food, but man do they hold onto grudges and history!
Turkiye indoctrinates kids into thinking the Armenian genocide is not real at all. Most of our teachers said that it was made-up by other countries to make us seem evil, and our history books explained it as a forced-immigration that the Ottoman Empire did because Armenians were trying to gain independence by doing insurrections en masse. So I’m not surprised with them not believing that it’s an actual event.
This happens not only with Turks. I can’t wrap my mind around the reasons people living out of the country for a long time support the government causing problems to others, support it so much, and sometimes even tell their fellow emigrants to go back because they are making everything worse.
I’ve seen examples of people who can’t quite explain why they support the government in their homeland that they left when they were around 5 y.o. and never returned.
I just came to think that it’s simpler to love any country from afar, and especially so if you listen to what said country chooses to broadcast outside
Eh… my partner is Turkish and I gotta say, there’s some truth to the meme. From a psychological perspective it’s tough to critique your tribe with an outsider, so not exclusively Turkish, but outside of Americans, Brazilians and Turks I’ve never met someone so willing to wave their own flag. Considering many expat Turks continue to vote for the parties that are causing the inflation, corruption, etc. the post is somewhat accurate (especially given the explicit callout to German Turks).
Not every critique of a demographic’s behavior comes from ignorant western superiority.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought it’d be limited to some nationalities, although maybe there’s some truth to it.
I worked with two Turks (both living in the US, but under what circumstances I don’t know; I believe one was nationalized, and the other on a work visa) at the same time in 2016; one was radically supportive of Erdoğan, and believed the coup was real; the other thought he was a dictator and that the coup was a false flag meant to allow him emergency powers and a crack-down.
I say “radically” in the first case because she’d get agitated and angry about any criticism of Erdoğan; the second would discuss it as if he were in a debate. I have no doubt his beliefs were just as passionate, but he’d argue his points, not just declare things.
ANYWAY, that’s the extent of my experience. I lived in Munich for two years and, as an American, was vaguely aware of the immigration tension, but this just after reunification and the West Germans were still coming to terms with the impacts of that. And my friend circle was urban college students, so I swam in the most liberal of waters.
Eh, its like how love of the US/“patriotism” is kinda culturally baked into the US… Turks are very similar. My partner and I only ever had one fight, caused by a friend of mine who brought up Armenia early in our relationship. My partner is more liberal than I am, like almost Fox News strawman liberal, but having left Turkey a couple years prior was still deeply entrenched in “Turkey has never done anything wrong”. Complete genocide denial, which caused a bit of a blowout hearing a very liberal, freedom-to-the-people person say “what were we supposed to do?”. North occupied Cyprus, occupied Syria, Kurdistan are all deeply sensitive topics, even for the most western/liberal Turks. Luckily she chose to educate herself on Armenia, etc. and it’s not a problem anymore, but it was a journey.
The whole history of democracy essentially being gifted to Turks by Ataturk, the creation and assignment of last names, etc. really results in some interesting cultural quirks. Amazing people, great food, but man do they hold onto grudges and history!
Turkiye indoctrinates kids into thinking the Armenian genocide is not real at all. Most of our teachers said that it was made-up by other countries to make us seem evil, and our history books explained it as a forced-immigration that the Ottoman Empire did because Armenians were trying to gain independence by doing insurrections en masse. So I’m not surprised with them not believing that it’s an actual event.
This happens not only with Turks. I can’t wrap my mind around the reasons people living out of the country for a long time support the government causing problems to others, support it so much, and sometimes even tell their fellow emigrants to go back because they are making everything worse.
I’ve seen examples of people who can’t quite explain why they support the government in their homeland that they left when they were around 5 y.o. and never returned.
I just came to think that it’s simpler to love any country from afar, and especially so if you listen to what said country chooses to broadcast outside