Most of my classmates were children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of German or Dutch immigrants who then settled in Michigan. One of our teachers gave us the exciting project of interviewing those relatives. My mom and I lugged our tape recorder (it was the mid-1980s) to my great-grandfather’s house, where he told me of his boat ride over from Germany. He arrived in the midst of the Great Depression and there was little work for American citizens, much less for German immigrants like himself. Still he managed, and tears of pride still shone in his eyes when he spoke of the day that he acquired his US citizenship. He loved America with all of his heart, living through two devastating wars that had embroiled his homeland. Although he spoke with a thick German accent until the day he died, he never taught my grandmother, my father or me a word of German. He wanted us to be “American.”
Even after living in Turkey for over eight years, it is still easy to mark me as a foreigner or “yabancı.” My fair skin, blue eyes and reddish hair give me away before I speak, even though I know several Turkish women who share my features. When I moved to Turkey and married my husband, Can, I tried to conform to Turkish culture as much as possible. Sometimes trying so hard it was exhausting. When friends or family complimented me for my efforts, I was happy but still worried that I wasn’t doing enough. When my son was born we gave him a Turkish name, but one that also existed in English. I didn’t want Eren to have problems later in school if he had a name that sounded too foreign. Despite all of this, I know that I will always carry the yabancı label as long as I live in Turkey.
To improve my Turkish I frequently watch Turkish shows, although I stopped watching Turkish news and other sensationalist programs long ago. I prefer the soaps, which show an interesting cross-section of Turkish culture and family life. My current favorite is “Muhteşem Yüzyıl,” which chronicles the life of Sultan Süleyman and his wife, the infamous Hürrem. As a foreign women married to a Turkish man, this old story holds great interest. For those who don’t know Turkish, this program is great to watch for the costumes alone. Back in the 16th century, the harem was mostly full of foreign women. Despite this, only the lead character, Hürrem, is played by a foreign woman. The other harem girls are played by Turkish actresses, most notably Hürrem’s nemesis, Mahidevran. While the harem conflicts between the two are legendary, it still seems to me license is being taken to exaggerate Hürrem’s evil. While she did indeed do some terrible deeds, a lot of the program seems to feed into the yabancı stereotype. Loose foreign woman (as she shamelessly threw herself at Süleyman), husband-stealer and destroyer of families. Many of my fellow expat women have been accused of similarly unjust crimes. My own mother-in-law, after introducing me to someone new, even gets sympathy for accepting a foreign bride into the family -- and she makes sure that I know it. I lost count of how many times she has told me that she is the only one of her friends who would ever accept a foreigner into her family. It used to make me want to try harder to make her proud. It now makes me want to limit our contact. I didn’t want to break apart her family or any family, for that matter. I ended a relationship while in college because the family just couldn’t reconcile themselves to the thought of their son marrying an American. I, and many foreign women, respect how important the nuclear family is for Turkish culture. However, this should not be used as an excuse for the xenophobia that can be rampant in Turkey. I know many Turkish men and women who have destroyed their own families without the help of foreign influence.
In the case of Hürrem, she was an Eastern European woman kidnapped and placed in the Topkapı harem. After catching the sultan’s eye, she bore him six children. She also became one of the most influential women during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, often advising her husband on matters of state. Most of the sultans were born from women like her, expat women, in a sense. A case could then be made that the Ottoman dynasty was not Turkish, but a product of foreign women. It will be interesting to see how the show continues to portray Hürrem and her legend, or whether or not it will just be another outlet to propagate xenophobia. Despite this, I am hooked and look forward to watching it every Wednesday evening.
I find the current trend against foreigners and immigration, both in Turkey and America, disturbing. America, once the country my grandfather so proudly immigrated to in the 1930s, is now trying to keep out immigrants and redefine the citizenship of those born to non-citizens in the US. Some of these conflicts have become violent, and I cringe as I read the headlines coming out of my home country about how foreigners are being treated. A taxi driver murdered in NYC for his accent. Death threats issued to lawmakers fighting the bills on immigration. If my grandfather were alive today, he might start to teach me German. On the flip side, Turkey is full of conspiracy theories, creating a xenophobia that is palpable on the streets. On a smaller but no less important scale, the stigma of the foreign woman in Turkey is still very real. From the minute we set foot on Turkish soil we are presumed to be husband-stealers, home-wreckers of the first order. Even when I was visibly pregnant with a wedding ring on my finger I was approached by married men who assumed that since I was foreign, I was “available.” Thankfully my knowledge of Turkish is enough to repel these unwanted, close-minded advances, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Upon closer inspection of my Turkish friends, the definition of a true Turkish woman is also blurred. One of my friends is the child of Turkish-Bulgarian refugees from Bulgaria. She, although technically Turkish, is still treated as a yabancı gelin by her in-laws who hail from Adana. Another friend has parents who grew up near the Syrian border and speak Arabic better than Turkish. She also is viewed differently by her Black Sea in-laws. These fissures might seem cosmetic but can run deep, with severe consequences socially, culturally and politically. For Can, Eren and I, we currently live in a Catch-22 world. If we live in America, Can will always be the Middle Eastern Muslim man. In Turkey I will always be the Amerikalı gelin. Both of us have to learn to coexist with the stereotypes of each. Something, I suspect, my immigrant great-grandfather had to do many years ago.
