Identity, History, and the Burden of Non-Belonging

Long conversations abroad with people from different cultures, educational backgrounds, and income groups reveal a difficult truth about human relationships. Before people get to know one another as individuals, they tend to see each other as representatives of the worlds to which they belong.

When you meet someone for the first time, they do not initially see you as “you.” They first see your country. They see the image your society carries in the world. Before you even begin speaking, they have already formed a mental outline of who you are. The histories of countries, their cultural structures, political images, and global representations hang over individuals like a dark shadow.

People from certain societies are automatically associated with qualities such as being “modern,” “disciplined,” “sophisticated,” “artistic,” “technologically oriented,” or “free.” Human beings do not begin their dialogues from an equal starting line.

I feel this very clearly, especially in the West. I speak with people there. I often feel that I can analyze their histories, intellectual roots, and cultural reflexes more deeply than they can themselves. Yet despite all this, they still tend to see me as someone from “another civilization.” I am perceived as an outsider who studies the West carefully because I admire it. This creates a disturbing feeling within me, because I do not feel that I belong to any particular “side.”

My relationship with the West is not one of admiration. It is, rather, a relationship of historical and intellectual analysis. Yet the mental template in people’s minds works faster than the time they spend trying to understand me. At that point, another reflex emerges within me: “My country is not limited to what you are accustomed to seeing.”

This reflex is not nationalism. Nor is it a form of defense. It is an objection to reductionism. From the outside, Turkey is often read in a one-dimensional way. Yet internally, it contains many different historical layers piled upon one another. This is precisely where the issue deepens. My own relationship with Turkey is not, in the classical sense, a relationship of belonging. For a long time now, the subject has gone far beyond the limits of the concept of homeland in my mind. In fact, I no longer even see it as a matter of belonging. There are different cultural layers that blur everything when they are confused with one another. The past of this country belongs to me. Yet that belonging does not automatically imply direct cultural continuity.

The geography we call Anatolia cannot be understood through a single historical line. These lands have seen the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Seljuks, and the Ottomans. Each of them forms part of this geography. Therefore, each is also part of the historical field within which I exist.

That past is the past of my geography, but it is not the direct continuation of the culture from which I come. The fact that ancient Greek thought was produced on these lands does not make me its natural extension. The fact that Byzantium built a great world here does not make me the living carrier of that world. My relationship with them is historical and analytical. It is not organic. That past is my inheritance, but I am not its living continuation.

The Ottoman-Muslim tradition, however, occupies a different place. There I find not only a historical layer but also a continuity that still exists today and exists within me. It is present in the language. It is present in social reflexes. It is present in mental habits. It is present in everyday life. Religion itself does not occupy a personal place in my own life, but I come from within that tradition. I cannot deny that. Yet another distinction emerges here: coming from something and belonging to it are not the same thing.

I come from that cultural root, but I cannot identify with its contemporary forms, modes of thought, or social reflexes. Therefore, what I experience is not a break from the outside. It is a feeling of distance experienced from within.

If I were completely outside of it, I would not struggle with this issue so intensely. I would not question it or think about it constantly. But I am inside it, and yet I am not fully aligned with it. For that reason, what I feel is not simply alienation. It is something more complex: alienation from within.

I am not entirely outside. Yet I cannot move comfortably inside either. Over time, this creates a constant feeling of partial contact. It is like being in a crowd without being able to merge with it. Like something familiar becoming strange. I cannot experience the world I inhabit as a natural flow. There is no automatic sense of belonging arising merely from birth. As a result, I am constantly forced to make sense of, position, and define everything I experience. I observe. I conceptualize. I place things into historical context, and I try to do so at the most universal level possible. Things that most people experience intuitively become intellectual problems that I must continually solve. It is extraordinarily exhausting.

One does not merely live. One watches oneself while living. Life is processed through analysis. From the outside, I may appear more controlled and distant. But this is not emotional detachment. On the contrary, there is intense emotion within. It has simply changed form. The hardest part is this: the feeling of never being able to settle completely anywhere. I suspect that this is the true source of the exhaustion.

I cannot fully align myself with traditional culture. I cannot fully integrate into the dominant social reflexes of Turkey’s contemporary secular-modern world. Yet neither can I entirely step outside. There is no stable foundation of identity. I am constantly forced to reposition myself. My relationship with Turkey is not a resolved one. Yet it is not a broken one either. I create distance, but I cannot let go. It is an unresolved matter. I cannot feel fully at home in the world I inhabit, yet I cannot completely detach myself from it.

When I travel eastward, another situation emerges. People tend to see me as more “one of us.” They approach me more warmly. A friendlier space opens up. Yet after a while, another discomfort appears. Relationships that become intimate too quickly, the weakening of intellectual boundaries, and overly collective social reflexes push me away once again. There too, I am read through the lens of the “Turkey” they already know.

In both the West and the East, the same pattern emerges: people see not my complexity but the collective image I carry.

What I have described above is not unique to me or to Turkey. One can observe similar dynamics in Germany, for example. A German who criticizes Israel’s actions in Palestine or Lebanon may find himself confronted with serious accusations such as antisemitism or carrying the “spirit of Nazism.” Yet criticizing the policies of the Israeli government can never be the same thing as ethnic or religious hatred toward Jews. Nevertheless, Germany’s historical memory operates under the weight of an exceptionally heavy historical burden.

The trauma created by the Holocaust occupies such a central place that, for some people, criticism of Israel automatically triggers a historical alarm mechanism. The individual is interpreted through historical categories before being understood through his own ideas.

Could the same not be true of Americans carrying the global image projected by Donald Trump? At first glance, the display window may not be attractive. Yet I find it difficult to imagine that many Americans enjoy having to begin personal conversations abroad under the shadow of a “Trump label.” In fact, because of certain information available to me, I know this to be the case.

All these examples lead to the same conclusion: people cannot carry themselves solely through their individuality. The history of their country and the collective memory attached to it often move ahead of the individual. The image of one’s homeland casts a dark shadow over the person. For some, this becomes something deeper than a problem of belonging. It becomes a tension between roots and consciousness.

The tension between roots and consciousness sharpens a person’s capacity for observation. Those who exist outside automatic belonging do not experience the culture around them as a natural reality. They see it as a historically constructed structure. The natural consequence is a permanent state of awareness, a constant need for positioning, and a continuous obligation to translate between worlds.

Eventually, a person begins to experience the geography in which he lives not as an identity, but as a reality from which he cannot escape.