Identity crisis

I looked at her in irritation. Although barely 2, Eren’s Turkish-ness has been obsessed over since before he was born. I was bone tired of the questions. An American expat living in İstanbul for nine years, I was used to the bouts of xenophobia and exclusionism that sometimes reared their ugly heads among Turks. That my American-ness was diluting the Turkish pool. This wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last.

Nationalism is not unique to Turkey. In America, we too are in the midst of an identity crisis. What is a true American? If you base it on a person’s ancestry, most Americans come from someplace else. We even say that we are African-American, Italian-American, Irish-American, etc. While we do remember our ethnic roots, everything else gets lost when the language is forgotten or not passed down. My grandfather emigrated from Germany in the early 1930s, before the outbreak of World War II. He was ashamed to speak German, and never spoke to his children or grandchildren in his native tongue. We grew up observing a few German cultural traditions, but never learned a word of Deutsch. It saddens me, as it feels like a puzzle piece missing from my past. I feel like I lost a piece of myself before I was even born, a part of my identity denied to me and not by my choice. My Irish roots have been well researched and passed down by my mom’s family, who often travel back to Ireland. We feel more in touch with those roots, while our German side is like an uncomfortable garment we know belongs to us but we don’t know how to wear it.

Many immigrants then and now are encouraged to put aside their past and become “American.” Speak English at home, acclimate your home and family to American customs, etc. In college I volunteered at an Arab-American center, and one of my duties was to collect stories from immigrants and refugees. Through that process we observed that by the second and third generation, most did not know their parents’ or grandparents’ native tongue. Like me, their language had been lost before they were born. Stories were passed down in a new language, one that was more “American.” Hostility towards immigrants is very high right now in the United States, a country built by immigrants. It stuns me. All of the debate and hostility towards Mexican and Latin American immigrants in particular is troubling. After living outside of the US for almost a decade, I no longer feel in touch with current events and sentiment there.

Here in Turkey, the debate on Turkish-ness is a similar conundrum. Turkey is still a young country in my opinion, only a spry 88 years old. What makes one a Turk? To me, most Turks seem a similar mix of ethnicities like Americans. Take my Turkish husband, Can, for example. His paternal relations were pushed out of Bulgaria at the turn of the 20th century. They were then moved and resettled from Thessaloniki to the Ayvalık region during the population exchange in the 1920s. Some of his family has managed to keep remnants of their dialect of Bulgarian alive through multiple relocations over the century, but it has basically been lost.

Can’s mother’s side is a bit more complex. While his maternal grandmother came from a village on the outskirts of Ankara, his maternal grandfather’s past is a mystery. He was abandoned in the village at the age of 2, around the time of the population exchanges of the 1920s. Could my husband be part Pontic Greek or Armenian? We are not sure. What we do know is that maybe three quarters of his descendants originated outside of the boundaries of modern day Turkey. Yet he considers himself Turkish. Just as I, with my Irish and German roots, consider myself American.

Our son Eren is a dual citizen, Turkish and American. Even if I speak to him only in Turkish, I cannot deny my American-ness, nor should I. It is very interesting that in a country where people spend thousands of liras to teach their children English, I am told to stop speaking English with my son on a regular basis. We live in Turkey. Can speaks Turkish to him. He most likely will attend a Turkish school. He has many Turkish friends. To teach him his “identity” do I need to deny him my heritage? It doesn’t make any sense.

So I posed a question to my doctor. I asked her if she were to live in the United States and were married to an American, how would she feel if her pediatrician told her to stop speaking Turkish to her child? How would she respond to that doctor? As expected, my doctor got a little flustered. I then asked her what I needed to do to prove to her that my son would be aware of his Turkish-ness. A lesson on Atatürk perhaps? I have read and written a lot on Atatürk in university, when I was a student of Middle Eastern studies. I can teach Eren about Atatürk. Turkish history? Check. She shouldn’t feel threatened that Eren won’t know about his Turkish side. My speaking English to him won’t take away from that, as Eren will be bilingual. We can’t hide the fact that I am American, no matter how long I have lived or will live in Turkey. Eren has roots in America, too, and should not be made to feel ashamed about that.

Interestingly enough, although I am with Eren almost constantly and I speak English to him, his first words have been in Turkish. He does have some English words, and can easily comprehend both languages, but is producing more words in Turkish. I have observed several children with multiple languages so nothing surprises me on this front anymore. We are patient with Eren and confident that his language abilities will develop well. If the doctor had asked me about his comprehension, or how many words he speaks, I wouldn’t have been offended. Telling me to speak Turkish to expose him to only one of his identities sounds wrong to me. It would also sound wrong to me if I were told in the US to not let my husband speak Turkish to Eren.

At the Arab-American center in the US we were told that the definition of an Arab is someone who speaks Arabic. Language is a major defining factor for this identity. Turkish and the Turkish identity rings similar. Most Turks in present day Turkey are a myriad of ethnicities united by language, just as English unites Americans. It’s OK to carry those pieces around, as they are essential for the whole picture that is you. Eren will know his background, and understand where he comes from. Embracing diversity is an essential part of living in the world today. For centuries Turkey has been a crossroads for many civilizations, and that diversity is what makes up present day Turkey. It should be embraced, rather than hidden.

*Elle Loftis is an American expat, writer and mother living in İstanbul. Reach her at e.loftis@todayszaman.com for comments or questions.