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2003 Shifting American Identity Formations in the Ilhan Kaya

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THE STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

SHIFTING TURKISH AMERICAN IDENTITY FORMATIONS IN THE

UNITED STATES

By ILHAN KAYA

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Geography in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Ilhan Kaya defended October

24, 2003.

______Jonathan Leib Professor Directing Dissertation

______Peter Garretson Outside Committee Member

______Janet E. Kodras Committee Member

______Barney Warf Committee Member

Approved:

______Barney L. Warf, Chair, Department of Geography

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above committee members.

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This dissertation is dedicated to my wife Yeliz for her love, patience, and support, my daughter Dilara for the joy she brought to us, and my parents for all they have done for me.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would have not been possible without the assistance and support of several people. First of all, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Jonathan Leib, for his inspiring and encouraging way to guide me to a deeper understanding of knowledge work, and his invaluable comments during the whole work with this dissertation. Also, special thanks to Dr.

Barney Warf, Dr. Janet Kodras, and Dr. Peter Garretson for their reviews and help. Finally, my gratitude goes to the Turkish Ministry of Education for its financial support during the course of the study at Florida State University.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES...... VII ABSTRACT ...... VIII INTRODUCTION ...... 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 7

THE NATURE OF IDENTITY...... 8 GLOBALIZATION, THE WORLD SYSTEM, AND IDENTITIES ...... 12 THEORIES OF ETHNIC AND GROUP IDENTITIES ...... 18 The Assimilationist Perspective ...... 19 Primordial Perspectives vs. Instrumentalist/Circumstantialist Perspectives...... 20 The Constructionist Approach ...... 22 AMERICA AS CONTEXT ...... 26 LOCATING TURKISHNESS IN TIME AND SPACE...... 29 CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 31 METHODOLOGY ...... 33

METHODS OF DATA GATHERING ...... 33 In-Depth Interviews ...... 34 Fieldwork...... 39 Other Methods...... 40 ANALYSIS...... 41 REFLECTIONS...... 42 TURKISH HISTORY...... 45

THE FIRST IMMIGRATION WAVE: THE OTTOMAN ...... 47 THE GREAT RETURN...... 51 THE SECOND WAVE OF IMMIGRATION: PROFESSIONALS ...... 54 THE THIRD WAVE OF IMMIGRATION (1980-2000): DIVERSE GROUPS ...... 57 THE NUMBER AND LOCATION OF TURKS IN AMERICA AND TURKS ...... 59 TURKISH POLITICAL HISTORY ...... 67

BREAKING AWAY FROM THE PAST ...... 68 THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND CLASH OF IDENTITIES ...... 70 CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 75 IDENTIFYING TURKISHNESS...... 77

WHO IS A ?...... 78 WESTERNESS AND MIDDLE EASTERNESS...... 82 DISASSOCIATION WITH ...... 86 a) Historical Reasons ...... 87 v b) Ideological Reasons ...... 90 c) Sociological Reasons...... 91 SOME NOTES ON ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY AMONG TURKISH ...... 95 CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 96 TURKISH AMERICANNESS ...... 98

COMPETING IDENTITIES ...... 99 THE FIRST GENERATION AND QUESTIONS OF BELONGING...... 106 THE SECOND GENERATION AND PAINFUL INTEGRATION ...... 110 Trapped between Two Worlds...... 111 GENDER STRUGGLES ...... 113 GENERATIONAL STRUGGLES...... 114 SOME NOTES ON GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES ...... 115 CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 118 IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION SITES...... 119

LABOR MARKET SPACES ...... 119 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS...... 129 Schools...... 129 Mosques...... 132 ORGANIZATIONS AND POLITICS ...... 135 CULTURAL SPACES ...... 138 THE TURKISH DAY PARADE AND TURKISH CULTURAL FESTIVAL ...... 142 CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 146 CONCLUSIONS...... 148

CLOSING THOUGHTS ...... 157 APPENDIX A...... 159 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 159 APPENDIX B: BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE INTERVIEWEES...... 165 APPENDIX C: PICTURES FROM THE TURKISH AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN THE NEW YORK ...... 170 APPENDIX D: TURKISH AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS...... 184 APPENDIX E: APPROVAL MEMORANDUM FROM THE HUMAN SUBJECTS COMMITTEE...... 195 REFERENCES ...... 196 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...... 203

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: TURKISH IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S. (1820-2000)...... 46 FIGURE 2: TURKISH IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S. BEFORE WWII ...... 48 FIGURE 3: TURKISH IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S. BETWEEN 1930 AND 1980 ...... 55 FIGURE 4: TURKISH IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S. AFTER 1989...... 58 FIGURE 5: TURKISH-AMERICANS BY STATE (2000) ...... 64 FIGURE 6: IN NEW YORK...... 65 FIGURE 7: TURKISH AMERICANS IN ...... 65 FIGURE 8: TURKISH AMERICANS IN NEW ...... 66 FIGURE 9: TURKISH AMERICANS IN FLORIDA ...... 66

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines Turkish-American identity formations in the United States.

Through a case study based in the New York metropolitan area, this study explores how the contestation and negotiation of Turkish ethnicity and Turkish-American identity is grounded in place and across space. It examines Turkish-Americaness in relation to Westerness, Muslimness,

Arabness, Americaness, and Turkishness. The study problematizes ethnic and racial labels such as Muslim Americans in the United States by examining the multiplicity, contextuality, complexity, fluidity, and temporarility of Turkish (and Muslim) identities and the role of different locales (the United States and ) in the construction of Turkishness. The dissertation investigates the role of Turkish and American politics and culture in the construction of Turkish-American identities, and focuses on generational, class and gender differences among

Turkish Americans. It suggests that Turkish-American identities are spatially constituted as they represent a ground on which temporary and ever-changing boundaries are marked between inside and outside, the same and the other. These boundaries stress not only distinction or difference but also interconnection. In addition, this dissertation examines the history of Turkish immigration to the United States and provides empirical data about Turkish-American institutions and the distribution of Turkish-American populations throughout the United States.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In this study I explore Turkish identity formation and preservation the United States. I examine this issue in relation to the state (both the United States and Turkey), (both

Turkish and American), globalization (media, migration, and market), and international and local communities. I situate Turkish identity politics in an identity theory of difference and show how such an identity has changed over time depending on time and space-specific circumstances and contexts.

Until now, Turkish-Americans have been either ignored by academia or analyzed as a

Muslim minority without reference to their ethnic, cultural, racial and religious differences. From my teaching experience at Florida State University, I realize that many of my students think of

Turks as Arabs because the majority of Turks are Muslim, which reflects a common perception in the United States. Such misunderstandings and misconceptions come not only from ignorance, but also from the lack of studies on differences of people of Middle Eastern origin. Since understanding differences in ethnic and racial categorizations makes a difference in everyday relations, it is crucial to do an in depth study of Turkish Americans, their cultural , and map out their differences with others such as Muslim and European groups, as well as differences among members of the Turkish American community.

One particular case that makes simplistic categorizations problematic was the harassments and anger of some Americans toward people of Middle Eastern origin after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Regardless of racial and 1 cultural differences of people of origin, many became subject to violent actions. In one instance an Indian man who was not Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim was killed because of his Middle Eastern appearance, which makes simplistic visual racial and ethnic categorizations not only arbitrary but also tragic (Said, 2001).

According to the U.S. Immigration and Service (INS), more than 450,539

Turkish immigrants have come to the United States since 1820. Early immigrants were mostly non-Muslim Ottoman citizens carrying Ottoman passports. Therefore, they were not all ethnic

Turks but also included , , and Arabs. From to 1965 the number of Turkish immigrants to the United States was quite low as a result of US immigration laws.

The rate for Turkish immigration between 1930 and 1950 was around 100 per year; however, the number of immigrants who came to the United States increased to the rate of 2,000-3,000 per year after 1965 due to changes in U.S. immigration laws (Ahmed, 1986). Today, about 4,000

Turkish immigrants come to the United States each year.

Socially made ethnic and racial categorizations are not only stereotypic and simplistic but also misleading and discriminatory because identities are characterized by multiplicity and are much more complex than our theories about them (Said, 1997). By studying Turkish Americans,

I do not mean to suggest there is a single unifying Turkish identity. There are not only multiple forms of “Turkishness”, but also complex meanings of it. Turkishness is not felt and experienced in the same way by all Turkish-Americans, and it may not have the same meaning for all Turks living in the United States. For some, Turkishness is a very important part of their identities and they hold such an identity proudly, while for others it does not mean much because they do not care about their ethnic origins. There are Turks who would make a distinction between themselves and other Muslim groups such as Arabs and by arguing that Turkey is a

European/Western country, and therefore they do not have much in common with Arabs,

Persians or other Muslim because for them their Turkishness comes before their

2 Muslimness. For other Turks, it is impossible to escape from the past so they are first Muslim, and then Turkish. In addition, the meaning of being Turkish is not static for all Turks at all times and places, hence it can differ from generation to generation, from class to class, and from place to place.

The interaction between American culture and the Turkish minority in the United States, along with Turkish-American ties to Turkey and Turkish culture, shapes Turkish identities. From an assimilationist and “” perspective, one can assume that after years of influence all ethnic groups become Americanized in the “melting pot” of American culture as they are all equal under the same secular law, and are exposed to the same culture so they would eventually be no different from one another. Nevertheless, this modernist idea about a melting pot has not been able to make ethnicity disappear from American social space (Jackson, 1994). If I must use a metaphor for American culture (and politics), the “mosaic” metaphor would be more suitable to my understanding of American cultural context than a “melting pot” metaphor. The “mosaic” metaphor emphasizes boundaries and encourages boundary-maintaining activities such as ethnic parades and bloc voting. In a melting pot, one would assume that ethnic origin would not make much difference and there would not be group boundaries. However, ethnic origins do make a big difference and there are group boundaries. Differences play an important role in people’s daily life and relations of power. Although Turkish identities are shaped in the context of seductive American cultural space and global trends, many Turks in the U.S. still manage to live, socialize and communicate in the ways they were used to back home in Turkey. They create what Appadurai (1996) calls “ethnoscapes” which often may not fit within the dominant culture.

Accordingly, it is instructive to look at the American cultural context and Turkish identities together.

One of the main aspects of modernity is an increasing interconnection between globalizing influences and personal dispositions (Giddens, 2000). Identity formations of the

3 Turks have not been free from global changes. Turkish identities are not only reworked and shaped by American media through television shows, but also by Turkish and global media, as many Turks in the U.S. watch Turkish television via satellite or read Turkish newspapers over the Internet everyday. Global media, migration, and market have affected Turkish identity politics, as they actualize differences and connect imagined communities in different parts of the world. Particularly, the Internet and television have significantly affected the Turkish sense of

Turkishness/Americanness, their connectedness to the Turkish Republic, and their sense of belonging to American society.

One of the main purposes of this study is to reexamine our use of ethnic, religious, and racial labels. I do this by problematizing Turkish American identities as well as Muslim identities in the United States through an examination of the multiplicity, complexity, fluidity, and temporality of these identities. The message is clear: any categorization is limited and often misleading as it reduces the complexity and multiplicity of any given identity. The importance of this study lies in its emphasis on differences among Muslim groups in the United States and differences in the Turkish American community as the majority of studies on in the

United States have overlooked differences within and among Muslim communities. Each

Muslim community has roots in a different cultural setting, and there is diversity within each community.

Regardless of the long history of Turkish immigration to the United States, Turkish immigration and integration in the United States have not been documented thoroughly. The difficulty of finding any study on Turkish Americans was a great challenge throughout my research. Therefore, a second purpose of this study is to provide a glimpse of Turkish American life in the United States.

Although this study is only an attempt to show the complexity and multiplicity of Turkish

Americanness and Muslimness in the United States, further studies are needed on other ethnic

4 and racial Muslim groups to document the complex nature of being Muslim as well as being

Turkish in the context of the United States. Muslim integration and Muslim identity formations in America are not adequately studied and analyzed by academia, and I hope this study triggers further work on the subject.

This study consists of nine chapters. This first chapter provides an introduction to the dissertation. The second chapter presents a literature review on identity, globalization, and nationalism. The spatiality of identity is discussed and different theories are explored. I look at the American cultural context and investigate the place of Turkish American in the United

States. In the final part of chapter two, I locate Turkishness with all its multiplicity and complexity.

The third chapter describes my methodology, including data collection processes, the techniques used, and analysis of the strategies applied during the course of the study. My data collection is highlighted by the in-depth interviews that I have done with immigrants, community leaders, and business owners within the Turkish American community, and fieldwork conducted in the New York metropolitan area in the summers of 2001 and 2002. In the final part of the methodology chapter, I provide my analysis of the techniques I used and the pitfalls I faced while conducting this research.

The fourth chapter examines the history of three immigration waves of the Turkish immigration history to the United States, and provides statistical facts about the number and distribution of Turkish Americans in the United States. The first period of immigration started in the late 1800s and ends in the early 1920s. The groups coming to the United States during this time period did not have a strong Turkish identity as Ottomanness and Muslimness were the dominant forms of identity for these first immigrants. The second immigration wave begins with a large number of professionals such as doctors and engineers who came to the United States for educational and training purposes in the late 1950s. The final wave, which started in the 1980s, is

5 represented by a mixture of different social classes, educational levels, and ideological positions.

The final section of this chapter looks at the geographical distribution of Turkish Americans in the United States.

The fifth chapter provides a portrait of Turkey and examines identity crises (and struggles for power) within the county. This chapter presents a deeper understanding of competing Turkish identities that are exported from Turkey as struggles among different Turkish identities are also a fact of Turkish Americans. The chapter aims to provide a better understanding of the politics of

Turkish American identities and the role of the Turkish state in forming Turkish Americanness.

The sixth chapter looks at the multiplicity and complexity of Turkishness and the meanings individual Turkish immigrants make of that multiplicity and complexity. Sources of such complexity and multiplicity such as Westerness, Muslimness, Easterness, and Europeanness are discussed. This chapter provides multiple views of Turkishness using voices from my interviewees.

The seventh chapter examines Turkish Americanness and identity negotiations that individual Turkish Americans face in their everyday lives and spaces in the context of America.

The issues of gender, religion, ethnic background, and generation are also analyzed in this chapter. Differences among different genders and generations are particularly highlighted.

The eighth chapter explores Turkish spaces and identity construction sites in the United

States, such as labor markets, residential space, Turkish American organizations, Turkish parade, schools, and mosques. Each of these spaces is analyzed in terms of their role in shaping Turkish

Americanness. The importance of place in construction of identities is highlighted and place making tactics are examined.

The final chapter summarizes and identifies the key findings of this study.

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CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

The issue of identity has long been an area of interest for many scholars. They have offered different perspectives and explanations on identity, its politics, complexity and multiplicity. One of the common agreements is that in to construct identities, it is necessary to establish opposites such as us vs. them (Gregory, 1994; Pile and Thrift, 1995; Said, 1978). We identify ourselves by knowing who we are not. But “others” rarely easily accept our identifications, as they may also identify us differently, which may not match with our own self- identity. Therefore, differences are key in identity formations and preservations. We have multiple identities as our differences come in various forms such as ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, class, place of origin, etc. However, differences make differences in terms of access to power and resources. Similarly, Turkish identities are based on differences of ethnicity, religion, culture, region, and so forth. They are characterized by multiplicity and complexity. Turkish identities not only differentiate them from “white America” but also from Muslim groups from the Middle East and from Europeans. In addition, Turks themselves come from different backgrounds as the term “Turk” or “Turkish” may represent their country of origin rather than racial and ethnic affiliations. People from Turkey, who are identified as Turkish, may be

Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, or ethnically or racially.

This chapter provides a literature review on identity, globalization, and nationalism. I discuss the spatiality of identity and explore different theories on ethnicity and identity such as

7 assimilationist, primordial, and the constructionist approaches in relation to Turkish American identity formations. Moreover, I look at the American cultural context and investigate the place of Turkish Americans in the United States, and I try to locate Turkishness with all its multiplicity and complexity in time and place. The Nature of Identity The classical modern and Cartesian view of identity characterized by rationality, simplicity, and stability has dominated much of the Western notion of identity for a long period of time (Keith and Pile, 1993). However this mechanistic notion of identity and the subject was soon found to be problematic as the importance of experience, place, and subjectivity was recognized by the phenomenological movement in geography (Buttimer and Seamon, 1980;

Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1977). This movement later provided an important turning point for geographers’ study of place and human experience. Geographers such as Relph (1976), Tuan

(1977), and Buttimer (1980) argued that people are not independent of their worlds but instead are absorbed through an invisible net of bodily, emotional, and environmental bonds. Both the works of Tuan and Relph seek to reflect on the ties between individuals and the material environment expressed in the definition of place. In all phenomenological traditions the question of meaning is a central concern, for meaning and perception speak of existence, of a subject in encounter with an object.

Influenced by the humanistic and phenomenological tradition, the postmodernist geography rejects the modernist idea of stable and unified identity; rather it perceives identity with multiplicity of difference, contradiction, fluidity, contextuality, and dynamism (Pile and

Thrift, 1995). As Soja and Hooper (1996, 187) suggest, “disordering of difference from its persistent binary structuring and the reconstitution of difference as the basis for new cultural politics of multiplicity and strategic alliance among all who are peripheralized, marginalized and subordinated by social construction of difference are key processes in the development of radical

8 postmodernism.” At the heart of identity politics is difference, power, and change. Differences provide the basis for identity claims as marginalized and subordinated groups struggle to change the existing power structure to their advantage while those in power resist such change (Soja and

Hooper, 1993). Through this process of competition and struggle identities are reformed and reconstituted.

Similarly, Turkish identities are never complete, fixed or passive, as they are negotiated, contested and reconstructed and reflect relations of power in American and global cultural and political contexts. Power relations shaping Turkish identities inevitably contest relations of normality and marginality, exclusion and inclusion. As immigrants when Turks cross boundaries into the United States, they enter into a culture in which America is powerful and they have to deal with boundaries of differences. Turks may not be easily accepted or qualify as “American” as a result of their ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. Turkish immigrants’ differences may make more difference than white European immigrants’ differences in the context of American culture. While some white Europeans such as Irish, , and went through a similar experience a century ago (Bonnett, 2000; Ignatiev, 1996), today Muslim immigrants in the

United States face the same dilemma if not a more difficult one. Being Turkish and Muslim can often result in difficulties for adopting and/or adapting American culture and disadvantages for access to power and resources.

Modernity actualizes differences and produces exclusion and marginalization (Giddens,

1991). Margins constitute battlegrounds for searching identities and changing relations of power.

Identity is mapped in a dual sense as we set boundaries between who we are and who we are not.

Living in the United States makes Turks realize their differences as they see such differences being viewed as “alien” or as “other.” Therefore Turks’ identifications of themselves rarely match to the identities given to them. They may not be considered as “American” or “normal” as

Americanness often means “whiteness” (Ignatiev, 1996; Wray and Newitz, 1997). It is a matter

9 of meanings and power that constitute who we are and who we are not or who we want to be and who we do not want to be. As we make decisions about who we want to be and act on those decisions, our power and meanings are constrained and negotiated. Moreover, the identity of the subject could provide him with privileges as well as disadvantages in the sharing, negotiation, and production of meanings and power (Pile and Thrift, 1995).

Identity is based on differences and otherness, and differences are characterized by multiplicity in the form of gender, sexual preference, disability, ethnicity, class, and region. We make sense of ourselves only through understanding our relations (position, location, distance, space, boundary, line, margin, center, and so forth) to the objects and subjects around us

(Massey, 1993). We locate and differences in order to position ourselves and make sure that our differences are absolute so we are not confused. For example, I am black because I am not white; I am an adult, you are a child; I am a man, you are a woman; I am poor, he/they are rich. We always think we have markers inside and outside ourselves that distinguish us from everyone else and give a sense of uniqueness (Keith and Pile, 1993). Turks may feel that they have different qualities that make them different from “regular” Americans. It is necessary to acknowledge that all differences are not different to the same degree as all others are not equally othered. Some are more than just others, while some are “good” others. For example, an Italian might be an “other” to an American but s/he is never an “other” in the same sense an Arab is.

Therefore, the degree of difference and otherness should not be dismissed in the traditional dualism of “us” and “them”, or “we” and “others.” We ‘other’ each other but not equally.

Moreover, given that Turkishness has no single unified meaning; Turks differ from one another according to their racial, ethnic, class, gender, and religious backgrounds.

In the postmodern theory of identity, the subject has a discursive image that cannot be addressed by the traditional discourse of individualism. It should be located in an historical analysis of what self and experience can consist of at particular junctures (Crow, 1996).

10 “Learning qualities of others is connected in an immediate way with the earliest explorations of the object-world and with the first stirrings of what later become established feelings of self- identity” (Giddens, 1991, 51). Turkishness is not simply a given, rather it is routinely created and sustained in everyday reflexive practices of individual Turks. There is a constant relationship between opposing Turkish identities and the identities promoted by mainstream American cultural identity as they shape each other’s identities. However, this is not an equal relationship between the two as power is never equally distributed and experienced between them. As Soja and Hooper (1996, 184) argue “hegemonic power does not simply manipulate naively given differences between individuals and social groups, it actively produces and reproduces difference as a key strategy to maintain modes of social and spatial division that are advantageous to its continued empowerment.” Turkish differences are maintained due to difficulties they face to become part of America. On the other hand, they resist, reject, and rebel against the hegemonic power and create their own boundaries and strategies to deal with situations and the surrounding world. This power relationship is both literal and symbolic. While opposing powers can take the form of violence or confrontation, their symbolic relation is also always at work (Keith and Pile,

1993).

Community is important to personal security because it plays a significant role defining and ordering the relationship between the self and other subjects. Social and physical boundaries and practices that define community shape not only the characteristics of that particular community but also the relations between members of it and the relations with members of other communities (Rodaway, 1995). As Rodaway (1995, 29) puts it,

“Dialogical action is a fundamental determinant of the intelligibility of social life; understanding comes from ‘we’, not ‘I’. My embodied understanding doesn’t exist only in me as an individual agent; it also exists in me as the co-agent of common actions. Often language’s function is simply to set up the intersubjective spaces for common actions, rather than to represent them. Further, dialogical action presupposes moral judgments.” 11 Members of the American Turkish community have similar cultural and historical backgrounds and common interests, which make them somewhat similar as they may put their differences aside for a greater share of power in American society. They may come together so they can have comfort and more weight in relations of power although they all may not feel the same thing about being Turkish or Turkish-American. It is common interests and primordial ties that bring such Turks together, regardless of their differences.

Memory and history form our geographical imaginations. The communities with which we identify ourselves are not places that can be mapped on a piece of paper; they are also places in our minds and memories (Anderson, 1991). We imagine ourselves with other people. We connect with them through our geographical imaginations. Imaginative geographies in part construct the places we belong. We move physically from place to place but the memories of place are always with us and shape our imagination. They become a part of who we are. Global media and communication (especially the Internet and telephone) help to maintain and create

Turkishness and a sense of belonging to the Turkish regardless of the distance between

Turks in the US and their home country, Turkey. They often talk to their family and friends every week by calling them and read Turkish newspapers on line on a daily basis. This helps to maintain connectedness with the original culture, which in some ways makes it difficult to adopt/adapt “Americanness.” Globalization, The World System, and Identities Capitalist modes of information, communication, and transportation such as the Internet, jet planes, satellite dishes, and global mass media have discounted distance as a factor in the flow of global influence and have connected the world now more than ever (Barber, 1996). Appadurai

(1998) believes that the market, media and migration are the most important factors defining today’s global world and subjectivity. He explores their joint effects on the “work of the imagination,” as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity. Both media and migration create

12 specific irregularities. For example, he analyzes both print and electronic media, while claiming that electronic media, especially television, has been much more influential in terms of modifying identities, cultural spaces and cultural worlds: “Electronic media give a new twist to the environment within which the modern and the global often appear as flip sides of the same coin” (Appadurai, 1998, 44). He believes that the electronic media’s ability to transform the sense of distance between viewer and event transforms everyday discourse. It also shapes and reshapes society and the self in all different types of societies and people. Turkish identities are very much shaped by globalizing forces such as media and migration. New immigrants can easily communicate with friends and relatives in the “old” country with the help of fast communications, such as telephone and the Internet, and travel long distances in a short period of time to visit friends and families, which maintains their relationship with the home country’s cultural, economic, and political affairs (Appadurai, 1998). As well, Turkish immigrants create their own cultural spheres in which they engage in cultural and social activities that are both

Turkish and American. Their identities are shaped by American, Turkish, and global media.

People are never simply passive recipients of outside effects. They resist and challenge change. In the hyper-mobile postmodern world, identities are enabled or constrained by the same social world (Giddens, 1991). As time and space contexts change, identities change because they are both historically and geographically specific. Identities both form the space and are formed by the space, as they are inextricably intertwined with geographies in complex ways in the lifelong process of construction and interaction of societies and subjects (Massey, 1993). Identity and space are inseparable because knowing the self is an exercise in mapping where it stands.

Space is an active constitutive component of identities because it is both medium and message of domination and subordination. Spaces are bounded with locales filled with personal, social, and cultural meanings, and provide a skeleton in which identity is constituted, transformed, and maintained (Carter, Donald and Squires, 1993). But this space is never purely local as every

13 place is a part of a system of places created by capitalism. It tells us where we are and puts us there. It tells many things about positions, location, space, and distance to objects and other subjects in social world. We only mean something in relation to the world outside ourselves, which is constitutive in many ways (Massey, 1993).

Spatial differentiation produces different Turkish identities in the United States and

Turkey. Turkish identities are re-worked and re-formed in time and American cultural context.

Although changes in first generation Turkish identities are partial and the first generation may maintain strong ties with the home country, second and third generation Turkish-Americans are much more integrated to American society. Their identities carry artifacts of Turkishness, but not necessarily as much as their parents’ identities. Americanness starts to play an important role in their identities because their sense of home, culture and future are much different. In most cases, second and third generation Turks are exposed to Turkishness by their parents at home but their interaction with their new culture and home are far greater.

As the culture of this type of capitalism, Giddens (1991, 1) argues, “modernity must be understood on an institutional level; yet the transmutations introduced by modern institutions enlace in a direct way with individual life and therefore the self.” One of the main aspects of modernity is an increasing interconnection between globalizing influences and personal dispositions. While the subject is never a passive entity and determined by such institutions and external forces, modern institutions shape the new mechanisms of the subject and its identity. In our case, the policies and decisions made by the United States and Turkish governments contribute to constituting Turkish-Americanness. However, individuals respond to such events intentionally or unintentionally and produce new identities to cope with new changes and contexts. In this sense, the subject produces social change and promotes global influences no matter how local its actions are. We all contribute to such changes and influences (Giddens,

1991).

14 Globalization actualizes differences, exclusion, and marginalization, and it generates conflict as formerly discrete groups come into contact with one another. Modernization theory’s identification of societies as modern vs. traditional, urban vs. rural are no longer viable as we see irregularities within so-called modern and traditional societies. Modern and tradition are all mixed in today’s global world (Appadurai, 2000). On the other hand, “the more tradition loses its hold, and the more daily life is reconstituted in terms of dialectical interplay of local and global, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options”

(Giddens, 1991, 5). Life choices constitute the subjectivity, identity, and daily activity (Pile and Thrift, 1995).

Trust is a very important phenomenon of personal development. Although modernity reduced risks in certain areas, it introduces new risk parameters (Giddens, 1991). Places have become so interdependent that identities have become vulnerable to global effects. Global processes affect locales and create new opportunities and new forms of vulnerability. Global communities share the risks of terrorist attacks such as those on September 11, 2001, nuclear bombs and ecological disasters. The September 11 events not only impacted lives of Americans and Afghanis, but many others in the world as the war against terrorism has included all places in all parts of the world, from India and to the United States, Philippines and . New

York’s stock market is affected by events happening in the Middle East, whereas Coca Cola or

MTV influence local cultures (Barber, 1996). The flow of commodities trans-nationally creates a set of common cultural denominators that threaten local distinctions. The time and space compression of hyper-mobile capitalism, in which hyper-reality becomes the norm, rapidly transform identities at the beginning of the twenty-first century under post-modern, post-Fordist capitalism. This process of transformation at and global levels has accelerated the rise of identity politics that emphasizes differences and marginalized sources of subjectivity such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and post-colonial perspectives (Pile and Thrift, 1995).

15 The aim of traditional identity politics is to promote commitments to self and group identities, and restore rooted tradition (Barber, 1995). Traditional identity politics comes in different forms. Some are in the form of separatist national movements; some are oppressed minorities demanding equal rights; some are dominant groups that try to prevent minorities from accessing resources; some are marginalized groups because of their sexual orientation, gender, race, or ethnicity. Some are religious; some are regional.

One of the influential works that looks at globally contradicting identities and forces of identities is Barber’s (1996) Jihad vs. McWorld. Jihad and McWorld are two sets of forces deviding the world. These two ideals are what eventually lead to what Barber presents as a world identity. The first tendency is "retribalization" or "Lebanonization" of people, places, and nation- states in which culture wars take place, tribal and ethnic conflicts arise. This is “Jihad” with its effort to dehomogenize and split apart the world. The second tendency is economic and ecological integration and uniformity of the world with aggressive and seductive futures, from fast food to fast computers with its McDonald's and Macintosh. This is McWorld with the effort of creating a commercially and culturally homogenous globe by technology, trade, ecology, and communication. McWorld stands for consumerism, technology, modernization, and homogenization, while Jihad symbolizes the local, traditional, cultural, religious, ethnicity, race, and heterogeneity.

Grounded in exclusion, Jihad not only offers energetic local identities a sense of community and harmony among kinsmen, but also parochialism. It is intolerant, reactionist, and unpredictable. It targets marginal groups and intensifies differences. For instance, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 were an example of an anti- modern counteraction to McWorld or defense by the powerless to intensify differences and alter power relations. The events of September 11 were dramatic scenes of conflicting identities as the

16 homogenizing forces of globalization represented by World Trade Center were hit by rebellious forces of locales.

Moreover, these events problematized the “melting pot” by showing that differences have not yet melted, if they ever would. Arabs and Arab-Americans became more aware of their differences as their differences started to be viewed as a problem in the eyes of angry Americans, who were shocked by the events. The events made differences of Arab-Americans more visible to Americans no matter how Americanized Arab-Americans were (Mubarak, 2002).

Jihad, the weaker of the two opposing factors presented by Barber, is the idea of people isolating themselves into "tribes" based on culture. Within sovereign nations, people form fragmented identities, which do not necessarily correspond to the national identity. McWorld seems to deliver peace and unity, but it puts pressure on independence, community, and identity.

Although it speaks of free trade and free press, it does business with local oligarchic despots who slaughter their own people, as long as markets are not disrupted (Barber, 1996).

Cultural critic Appadurai (1998) simultaneously examines the boundaries between our imagination of the world and how that imagination shapes our self-understanding. In doing this he looks at the relationship between institutions and the people who participate in them, between nations and peoples that seem to be ever more homogeneous and yet ever more filled with differences. Nationalism has not won all its victories as the same ideology functions in a different way as it disintegrates nation-states, redraws boundaries, and restructures parochial identities.

According to Pile and Thrift (1996), identity politics are often nostalgic attempts to retain dignity and a sense of rootedness in era of rapid change, an anti-modern counteraction to globalizing forces or the defense of the powerless. Turkish identity formations are part of this global trend in identity politics. Holding an identity that may not correspond to “white America” and being apart from Turkey where Turkishness originates puts Turkish Americans in a rather

17 interesting and problematic position as their sense of belongingness is neither absolute nor complete. It is often an in-between position. While Turks may not feel that they are entirely

“American” (whatever that might mean), they may not feel that they could live in the way they and their parents lived in Turkey. Most might not even ever want to go back to live in Turkey, not just because of economic reasons, but also because they feel that they would not fit in there culturally. Such a situation puts them in a place in which they feel the need and urge to search their roots and appropriate new identities. This is an attempt to understand the self and position it in a place where global, American, and Turkish cultural, social and political meanings are negotiated, contested and constituted. This is not just a simple attempt to construct the self but also to search and create new communities. It is also an attempt to alter power relations and access to resources. The Turkish American self and the group which it is associated face the danger of marginalization. Theories of Ethnic and Group Identities In this section, I provide four different perspectives on ethnic and group identities. First is the assimilationist perspective, which focuses on the role of modern culture and national identity promoted by the state in forming (nationalist) identities or in eliminating (local) identities. The second, the primordial perspective, views primordial ties such as blood, kin, and cultural connections rooted in circumstances of birth as the basis for group identity. The third perspective discussed in this section is instrumentalist or circumstantialist, for which the rationale for the group formation is either utility or organizational experience. It is common interests and goals that bring people together. Finally, I discuss the constructionist perspective. The main premise of the constructionist perspective is that group identities are formed in the interaction between asserted identities (identities that we claim for ourselves) and assigned identities (identities that others assign to us). This is an ongoing interaction and there is nothing absolute about the process or the end product (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998).

18 The Assimilationist Perspective Influenced by Social Darwinism, early twentieth century social science in the West tended to explain the existence of differences among social and racial groups in biological terms.

This perspective gave biology a larger responsibility for differences in the cultural, the political, and economic conditions of various ethnic and racial groups, as these groups were considered to be biologically distinctive entities (Brander Rasmussen, 2001). Accordingly, some groups were considered to be superior to others as a result of their genes. Culturally, economically and politically dominant groups were successful because God gave dominant groups a biological superiority. These beliefs also provided an instrument for justification of ethnocentric, racist, colonialist, and imperialist ideas (Fine, 1997). However, knowledge is socially constructed, and so are social categories. Race and ethnicity are not just the matter of having black skin color or curly hair, it is also the meanings we put on those physical features (Altschuler, 1982).

The assimilationist perspective was used against the biological perspective on ethnicity during the mid twentieth century. The common assumption was that ethnicity would disappear overtime, as multiethnic societies became less multi and less ethnic (Gossett, 1997). “The melting pot --both local and global-- would work its magic, and the peoples of the world would be more integrated into a broad stream of shared culture and social relations” (Cornell and

Hartmann, 1998, p. 7). By going through phases of contact, competition, conflict, and accommodation, different ethnicities would finally be assimilated, and one homogenous nation would be achieved. In terms of people of different ethnicities, Cornell and Hartmann (1998, 7) note that the assimilationist perspective argues that “the political processes of nation-building would blind their loyalties to rising new states, institutionalizing a comprehensive new identity and undermining older ties to kinship, local community, and traditional cultures.” This melting pot process would take longer as some groups would resist the change, but it would finally succeed. In the case of the United States, Turks, Italians, Arabs and others eventually became

19 American through a comprehensive political and cultural consciousness in common American culture, knowledge of self and community (Gossett, 1997).

This notion of commonality was apparent in all modernist views of identity, no matter whether humanist, positivist or Marxist (Jackson and Penrose, 1994). The Marxist belief was that class interests would emerge as the bedrock of collective identity and political consciousness.

Another modernist social thinker, Max Weber, did not think so differently about the future of ethnicity. He believed that progressive rationalization, science, and modernity would prevail, and communal relationship, and ethnicity would be displaced (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). The expectation was that universal values and utilitarian interests would replace local tradition, folkways, kinship, and blood ties as the glue holding modern society together. Democracy and industrialization would produce a rational society with an individualistic focus, and ethnic and racial groups would no longer serve any useful purpose.

History have proven this line of thinking wrong as places have experienced social and political change differently, and modernity has not worked in the same way spatially over time.

In Cornell and Hartman’s words (1998, 68), “by the 1970s, even nations in the world’s most developed regions appeared to be re-fragmenting and ‘retribalizing’ as ethnic and racial identities reasserted themselves.” Although people moving from place to place often did adopt the culture of the societies they entered, at the same time, they carried with them their own practices, ideas, and daily experiences to places they moved to, and created new cultural spheres in the dominant culture of a particular state or a city to express their differences (Appadurai, 1998). Modernity did not or could not make ethnicity disappear, and ethnicity has been resurgent globally in recent decades. Primordial Perspectives vs. Instrumentalist/Circumstantialist Perspectives The widening gap between assimilationist theory and ethnic reality resulted in two radically different perspectives: primordialist and circumstantialist (instrumentalist) theories of

20 ethnicity and identity construction. Primordialists suggest the intractable power of ethnicity while instrumentalists claim that the malleability and flexible nature of ethnicity is responsible for ethnic or racial movements, as it is easily affected by circumstances which can be used for any purpose (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998, 48). The former sees the sense of nationhood as a natural given, the latter views it as something that can be manipulated, fabricated or invented.

The primordial perspective bases its arguments on cultural connections that are rooted in circumstances of birth (blood, family, and kin etc.). Group identity is a given, not a matter of choice. It is a result of circumstantial inheritance (Isaacs, 1989). For this perspective, identity is stable, permanent, fixed, and rooted in the unchangeable circumstances of birth (Crow, 1996).

Circumstances of time and place do not have much impact on the identity construction since primordial ethnic identity is very much given by birth. People cannot do much to change it because elements of identity happen to them before they make meaningful choices to decide who they want to be (Taylor, 1993). Primordialists claim that historically, ethnicity is prior to and preemptive of class interests. Even though primordialist theory confronts the power of ethnic ties, it is very weak in understanding ethnic change and variation.

On the other hand, the circumstantialist perspective argues that ethnicity is first and foremost about power relations. Different groups struggle over different areas of power such as employment, education, political representation, and economy (Isaacs, 1989). Ethnicity is a tool or medium that people use to pursue communal interests against other groups within a particular place. For circumstantialist theory, ethnicity is a product of historical circumstances, changing variables, and structured inequalities. Groups find themselves in certain circumstances in which they struggle over interests that are products of circumstances of time and space (Glazer and

Moynihan, 1970). This perspective views ethnic groups as interest groups and see changes in identities as a result of changing circumstances. Therefore, any identity is potentially a handicap or resource in terms of providing benefits or costs to a particular group. Ethnic ties are used for

21 different benefits from collective political mobilization to claims for certain resources and thus often serve class interests (Olzak and Nagel, 1986).

In sum, according to the circumtantialist perspective people tend to emphasize their group identities if they think that their identities are advantageous to them. Opposition, conflict, and competition are the focus of the circumstantialist perspective because they promote ethnic and racial boundaries. The fundamental premise of this approach is in its focus on collective competition and action between various groups over social status, political power, social justice, and so forth. In such cases, group identities are often artificial because they rest upon the interests of groups, and ethnic boundaries are easily established. The weakness of this perspective is that it takes ethnic affiliations as merely strategic and assumes that ethnic affiliations may be called forth whenever it is politically convenient to do so. Also, its notion of ethnic differences is simplistic because it limits them to struggle over power and does not have a comprehensive approach to primordial identifications. Finally, ethnic identities are not always the choice of the group that is being defined. Identities are both asserted and assigned.

Circumstantialist or instrumentalist theories have no account of assignment of identities, which is not something that the identified group can do much about (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). The Constructionist Approach Neither primordial nor circumstantialist theories offer a comprehensive explanation of identity politics. One alternative is a constructionist approach, which tries to combine these two perspectives. In the constructionist approach, “ethnic groups and identities form in an interaction between assignment--what others say we are-- and assertion--who or what we claim to be”

(Cornell and Hartmann, 1998, 72). This dual interaction is the key for identity construction.

There is nothing absolute about the process and product of this construction because identities are diverse, changeable, and contingent under different time and space contexts (Jackson and

22 Penrose, 1996). Identity changes because people change, members of particular ethnic groups change, and social circumstances of time and place change (Gregory, 1994).

Our preconceptions, ideologies, dispositions, and agendas are crucial to the formation of identities. Identities are not just products of circumstances because people make claims of identities based on the raw materials of history, cultural practice, and preexisting identities to fashion distinctive greatness. For example, in order to deepen Turkish national consciousness at the expense of wider Islamic identification, Ataturk imposed compulsory Romanization upon the

Turks of (Anderson, 1991).

The constructionist perspective suggests that identities are not natural but socially made, but this social construction occurs through the interaction of different groups. While individuals and groups are active agents in identity formations, circumstances out of their control also shape who they are. Circumstances are not one-time events but a continuous process (Cornell and

Hartmann, 1998). Therefore, no identity is ever complete or finished. The interaction between external (others) and internal (us) is not the same in everyplace and all times (Said, 1978). People employ boundaries to differentiate themselves from others. They come to know themselves by learning who they are not. They set criteria to draw lines of differences. These criteria might include ancestry, cultural practices, economic conditions, and place of origin, skin color and so forth.

Ethnicity and race rise from constructed primordialties. A sense of peoplehood or nationhood is based on common origin (ancestry), blood ties and such. People’s sense of who they are and how they fit into the surrounding social world might be very meaningful and important to them. The sense of community of their own means a lot to them so they reject any type of identity imposed on them. Anderson (1991) describes a nation as an “imagined community”, so it is the work of imaginative geographies that give a sense of community and unity among members of a nation. “The members of even the smallest nation will never know

23 their members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 1991, 15). So it is often the work of the imagination and its emotional attachments that bring people together and the sense of community may not have any material expectation. People establish ethnic and racial identities, and start to make sense of the world around themselves through the lens of ethnicity and race. It is a tool for interpretation and action. It starts to look natural to the ones who use it.

Societies are construction sites in which identities are shaped, reworked, and reconstructed (Rodaway, 1995). In such sites, power relations are very much at play. Groups with and without power try to cope with situations they encounter. The powerful often control discourses to pursue their goals and to identify others, to shape the opportunities and constraints for themselves and others, while those with little or no power try to make sense of the world around them and try to turn matters to their advantages. Subortinate groups are never passive and accepting. They react, resist, and oppose the imposition of the dominant groups. They carry their own characteristics, ideas and agendas. They engage with the ideas and strive to create opportunities for themselves (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). The fundamental objective of nationalism and national identity is a desire to influence the distribution of power. While the majority population in the US, which is , uses its identity to maintain the existing power relations, aspiring groups promote an alternative construct in an effort to change the power structure in ways they want. Minorities want their identities to be recognized as legitimate and to be awarded with the power that legitimacy bestows (Jackson and Penrose,

1994).

Identities are products of continuous discourse (Gregory, 1995; Philo, 1992). People think of themselves not only as individuals but also as collective entities. As they imagine themselves and others, they turn those imaginings into realities as part of their collective consciousness and identity. They create their own stories out of real and imagined happenings

24 such as history, migration, , struggle, opposition, defeat, and survival (Hubbard,

Kitchin, Bartley and Fuller, 2002) They tell those stories to justify demands, to change relations of dominance, and to make sense of whom they are and how they became the way they are. They not only tell stories about themselves as well as others (Rodaway, 1995). Others try to resist the stories told about them and make their voice heard. Those stories are put to use in order to reconstruct and reconstitute already made identities.

Ethnic identities can be “thick” or “thin” depending on time and space circumstances and the behaviors of human agents who strive to make a difference in their own and their people’s life (Olzak and Nagel, 1986). The constructionist view looks at the mechanisms that make changes in identities so it accounts both for circumstances and dynamics of race and ethnicity.

Changes in identity take place at the intersection of claims made by others. Identities are not just the labels forced on us, because we are also agents of who we are. People choose, resist, invent, redefine, reject, and actively defend who they are and who they want to be (Pile and Thrift,

1995). For example, for some Turks in the United States, Turkish identity is thin and not strongly claimed. As such identifications have very little or no impact in everyday relations, while for others this identity is both thick and strongly claimed. While for the former group Turkishness may not mean much, the latter proudly holds such an identity and strives to maintain it.

In conclusion, the constructionist view of ethnicity applies better to Turkish identities in

American and global contexts since it widens its scope to both primordial and circumstantial realms. Turkish identities are variable, changeable, and contingent depending on their time and space contexts. Ethnic change is very much a part of social change as a result of human force as a social agent. People are always actively engaged in identity formation and social reproduction

(Jackson and Penrose, 1994). In the context of American culture, and political system, Turks negotiate meanings with the dominant culture, struggle over power, and interpret and reinterpret the past in order to make their present and future. Identity is so powerful that it has great impacts

25 on social relations and engagements as such relations and engagements in our decisions of choosing the people we want to be friends, live with, and marry. Because group identity construction is very much about making boundaries between others and ourselves, it is exclusionary as much as it is unifying (Pile and Thrift, 1995). America as Context In order to understand the processes and settings that help to shape American

Turkishness, it is crucial to examine the American political and cultural context in which Turkish identities are re-constructed, re-worked and re-formed. America has been made by the comings and goings of various immigrant groups under various circumstances. Like any other society,

American society is a complex of different groups with different interests and .

Consequently, dealing with the “other” is a continually renewed problem and boundary construction is an everlasting process (Healey, 2003). After the period of the first immigrants’ decimation of local peoples of America, the entry of groups to the United States were handled by the British elite as they started to form the set of political, legal, symbolic and interpretive institutions that later immigrants found and, after a certain point, transformed to their advantage.

The result was an institutionalized boundary construction in a particular space where America is dominant and powerful and those who cross the boundaries of United States have to contend with those ethnic and political boundaries (Varenne, 1998). Hence, the issue of ethnicity in the

United States as elsewhere is as much about the construction of some groups as “other” as about the history of immigration.

Ethnic diversity is a symbol of America, but this is not only because it is heterogeneous and has been made by immigrants, but also it is a product of an interpretive evolution (Varenne,

1998). Argentina and experienced similar early immigration as the United States, but they have evolved differently regardless of the role of immigration in the making of those countries. Varenne (1998, 28) argues that “whenever human beings move geographically and

26 become intimately intertwined with other human beings, they inevitably enter into a dialogue that produces a particular pattern of institutionalized differences: soon people must act in terms of the identifications their interlocutors have made of them. ‘Diversity’ is never a simple end product of substances living together in some geographical space.”

As a result, one of the fundamental goals of this study is not only asserting the extent of persistent differences, but also an understanding of how differences are reconstructed and handled locally, in the context of the New York metropolitan area. In the American context, diversity is the “acceptance of all differences.” However, it is an illusion to assume that groups with different powers are equal in the resources that they bring to the issue of dealing with each other. Therefore, the diversity that is produced through migration to the United States is susceptible to variation related to historical conditions of the encounters. One cannot talk about diversity and participation without the relative power of each participant (Benmayor and

Skotnes, 1994).

Diversity in the United States is both prescribed and problematic. The template for equality in the United States is individual , but the rights of ethnic, racial, gender, and cultural groups are highly problematic. As a result, the ideas about ethnicity and groups differ.

One of the classic debates in ethnic geography is whether America can be described as an ethnic melting pot or an ethnic mosaic (e.g., Zeigler and Brunn 2000; Varenne, 1998). The melting pot idea suggests that American culture is quick, powerful, and seductive so that in a few generations immigrants are assimilated and become indistinguishable from the population as a whole

(Zeigler and Brunn, 2000). Ostensibly, ethnic groups are swiftly snuffed out in the everyday practices of American life. On the other hand, the mosaic analogy proposes that some ethnic/immigrant groups have difficulties in becoming part of the “mainstream” ofAmerican culture. There are identifiable “unmeltable” Americans, who have not become part of the mainstream American culture (Greenhouse and Kheshti, 1998). For instance, it is argued that

27 religion has proven to be an impediment to assimilation as the Catholic and Orthodox Christian,

Jewish, and Muslim populations have long been discriminated against due to divergent religious beliefs from the mainline Protestant beliefs. Therefore, the degree of assimilation as a part of melting pot has not been the same for all immigrants groups in the United States (Zeigler and

Brunn 2000). Some have been more easily “melted” into mainstream American culture than others.

In other words, the concept of the “melting pot” forces recognition, but not all differences are equally honored in the context of American culture and politics. As Sarat and Berkowitz

(1990, 99) put it, “Simply recognizing differences as orderly does not and cannot give to all differences the equal right to accommodation.” Therefore, the “mosaic” metaphor is more suitable to understanding of the American cultural context than the “melting pot” metaphor because it emphasizes boundaries and acknowleges boundary-maintaining activities such as ethnic parades and bloc voting (Sarat and Berkowitz, 1994). In a melting pot, one would assume that ethnic origin would not make much difference and there would not be group boundaries but indeed ethnic origins matter and there are boundaries. Differences play an important role in people’s daily life and relations of power. As Veranne (1998, 46) puts it, “one has to identify oneself in the multitude of administrative forms through which the American State enforces the categories of official relevance,” which shape power distribution in American social space. As a result, ethnic identity becomes “official business” to the extent that cultural difference is perceived to be the source of inequality.

Turkish cultural and ethnic differences could make them less meltable than those of white

Europeans such as the French, Dutch or British. As a result, their integration to the mainstream

American culture may take longer and be more difficult as Turks have to deal not only with ways to adjust their differences to fit into the mainstream culture but also perceptions of the American public and the US government about their suitability for qualifying as an “American.” The

28 difficulty of being qualified as “American” is not just simple categorization, because such a categorization (both official and social) shapes power distribution and access to resources.

America as a place for multiple choices limits choices for Turks because of their cultural, religious, and ethnic affiliations to societies other than white Protestant or in a larger sense,

Western societies. Since Turkish and American boundaries are actively maintained, America is a

“mosaic” that treats its differences differently. Locating Turkishness in Time and Space Greenhouse and Greenwood (1998, 3) argue that in Western thought, “cultural difference is imagined as physical difference, a broad naturalization of difference that subsumes (or potentially subsumes) a range of categories, such as race, gender, sexuality, and others.”

However, if we rely on such a difference to differentiate them from other ethnic and racial groups in the United States, we may fail to make a distinction between Turks and other ethnic and racial groups. Turks might have a Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, , and White

European appearances. Altschiller (1996) says that it is difficult to describe the appearance of an average Turk, as they may be blond with blue eyes or round-headed with dark hair and dark eyes. While some have Mongoloid features with high cheekbones, others have a Mediterranean appearance. This is very much a result of Turkish tribes’ changing geographies over time. Turks are originally from Central Asia and are related to contemporary Central Asian and Mongolian peoples. The interaction between Turks and surrounding groups continued for several centuries until a large number of Turks migrated to the West, the Anatolian peninsula after the eighth and ninth centuries C.E. (Altschiller, 1995). Turkish is a Ural-Altaic language, which is not linguistically related to Arabic or Persian. However, when Turks migrated from Central Asia to the West, mainly to the Anatolian Peninsula, they came into contact with Arabs, from whom they learned ; they were also affected by Persian culture. Coming to the Anatolian Peninsula and taking over a land that was dominated by the Byzantium Empire and was another era

29 for Turks as they not only caused the collapse of the but also were greatly influenced by their culture. For instance, some argue that “ music,” one of Turkish music traditions, is a legacy of the Byzantium Empire. The Anatolian Peninsula has never been the home for only one or two peoples. There have always been different powers and cultures ruling and dominating it. The peninsula has historically been a place for the mixture of different cultures, religions, and civilizations, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in terms of religion to Hittite, Lydian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Mediterranean and Central Asian cultures and traditions. Therefore, contemporary Turkish culture is a synthesis that reflects a variety of civilizations and cultures, which differentiates it not only from Greek or Roman cultures but also Persians and Arabs.

Altschiller (1996) makes it clear that although 98 percent of Turkey’s population is

Muslim, Turkey is a secular state where Jews and can fully practice their religious faith. Minorities include , who are mainly Muslim and constitute the largest single minority group in Turkey, as well as Jews, Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs even though they all have been Turkified in ways such as language and national identity. Altschiller (1996) argues that after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, many Christians remained under the rule of the generally tolerant and over the centuries converted to Islam. “These former

Christians, mostly Greek or Armenian speakers, began to speak Turkish, melding with the dominant Turks, whom they had originally outnumbered” (Altschiller, 1996, 1365).

After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Many new nation-states were established on the Empire’s former territories. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established modern

Turkey in 1923 after a series of wars against the allied forces of the West (Lewis, 1961). After founding the Republic of Turkey, Ataturk became president and began a series of revolutionary reforms that transformed Turkey into a modern nation. He replaced religious law with civil, criminal, and commercial laws adopted from . In order to break with the Ottoman

30 past symbolically, he moved the capital from to . It was not religion anymore that unified the country; functioned for that purpose. He passed laws to have

Turks dress like Europeans and promoted ballroom dancing at state functions. The change of the alphabet from Arabic to a modified Latin was another break from the Ottoman past (Yavuz,

2000). Closing Thoughts There has been a growing interest in identity and identity politics by geographers in the last decade or so. This of course is no accident as identities are all about drawing and maintaining boundaries and boundaries have always been an area of interest for geographers

(Jackson, 1994; Keith and Pile, 1993; Rodaway, 1995). Differences are at the heart of identity politics as forming or claiming identities starts with establishing opposites and setting up boundaries (Pile and Thrift, 1995). With the globalization of culture, politics, and economy, differences are actualized and struggles for preservation and construction of local and individual identities have intensified (Giddens, 2000). As a result, identity politics involve struggles for power as they involve relations of “normality” and “abnormality”, subordination and domination, marginalization and control (Soja and Hooper, 1993).

Identity construction is an ongoing process of interaction between different identities and the process and the end product of it is neither absolute nor fixed. Both the process and the result are complex, contextual, multiple, contingent, and fluid as identities and the groups that carry them change over time as the forces impose on them change with space and time (Cornell and

Hartmann, 1998). Therefore, identities are never clear cut, finished, fixed or stable. The recognition of the complexity and multiplicity of identity with all its dynamics and changing contexts (both time and place), in which it is formed, reformed and contested, is crucial to a healthy discussion of identity formations (Pile and Thrift, 1995). The sources and resources of

31 identity are multiple as they come in various forms such as ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, generation, class, and place of origin (Harvey, 1996).

Recognizing the multiplicity, fluidity, and complexity of identity is crucial to any study of Turkish Americans as Turkish American identities are based on differences of ethnicity, religion, culture, generation, class, and region. Moreover, Turkish American identities not only differentiate them from “white America” but also from Muslim groups from the Middle East and from “white Europeans” as Turkish American identities and experiences are not the same with any of these groups regardless of some parallels. In addition, Turks themselves come from different backgrounds, and the term “Turk” or “Turkish” may represent nationality of their country of origin rather than racial and ethnic affiliations. People from Turkey, who are identified as Turkish, may be Kurdish, Jewish, Greek, or Arabic ethnically or racially

(Altschiller, 1995). Multiple identities are a fact of the Turkish American community as

Americanness adds an additional layer to their complex identities. Multiplicity and complexity of

Turkish identities reflect their past with multiple group and individual histories while the Turkish state’s efforts and seductive American culture have not been able to melt away all differences that form such multiple identities.

Although I do not claim to uncover Turkish American identity (or identities) in all its complexity and multiplicity, I want to provide a glimpse of the meaning of being Turkish in

America by presenting voices from the Turkish American community. As Pile and Thrift (1995,

1) put it “the human subject is difficult to map” because it has no clear boundary and because it has no clear position but a mass of positions. The next chapter presents my research procedures for getting a “glimpse of being Turkish in America.”

32

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

The construction of ethnic identity is a complex and dynamic process that takes place at different levels and within evolving contexts, which creates pitfalls for the researcher in mapping

Turkish American identity formations within the full range of conditions in which they are embedded. Therefore, for this difficult task, my strategy has been to situate Turkish American identity formations in varying contexts such as the United States, Turkey, globalization, and

Turkish political history.

My analysis is based on a variety of individual experiences and institutions to understand the process of being Turkish American. These include such actors as individual immigrants, leaders of the Turkish American community, Turkish American organizations, the media, the

Internet, and national governments. Each of these elements represents a critical component, which influences the Turkish American community, and becomes a tool to think about and understand social reality. My intention is to explore how the contestation and negotiation of

Turkish ethnicity is grounded in place and across space. Methods of Data Gathering My methods of data gathering includes three different data collection activities: in-depth interviews, document analysis, and fieldwork. Each of these activities provide a different venue to an understanding of the Turkish American community.

33 In-Depth Interviews My research relies largely on in-depth interviews that I have done with immigrants, community leaders, and business owners within the Turkish American community in the New

York metropolitan area. I conducted in-depth interviews because I was interested in other people’s stories and experiences. I believe that when people tell their life stories, they bring out details of their experience from a stream of consciousness (Hoggart, Lees and Davies, 2002;

Kitchin and Tate, 2000). Although I knew that I could never fully access what they have experienced and what they had in mind, I wanted, at least, to get a sample of their voices.

People’s consciousness allows us to access the most complicated social issues because social issues are abstractions from concrete lived experiences (Limb and Dwyer, 2001; Seidman, 1998).

By conducting in-depth interviews, I wanted to understand how identities materialize in the everyday experiences and practices. As such interviews are an important way to access people’s lives and the way they make the sense of themselves and the world around them (Limb and

Dwyer, 2001; Lindsay, 1997).

This research was conducted in the New York metropolitan area for two reasons. First, the New York metropolitan area has the largest Turkish American population in the United

States (, 1998). Particularly, and in New York and Clifton and Paterson in have a significant number of Turkish Americans. The area has been historically an attractive place for Turkish immigrants. Second, New York is the headquarters of a large number of Turkish American Turkish American organizations such as the Federation of Turkish

American Associations (FTAA), the Turkish Women’s League of America (TWLA), and

American Turkish Society (ATS) as well as Turkish American media organizations.1 The area also has the largest number of Turkish American mosques (eight) and the only two Turkish

American private schools in the United States (as well as one part time school). The area also has

1 A list of Turkish American organizations is provided in Appendix D. 34 the largest number of Turkish American businesses. All these institutions function as identity construction sites where Turkishness in transmitted and formed. Therefore, I concluded that it was important to look at the formation of Turkish Americanness in a context where the processes that construct Turkish Americanness can be observed, as I was interested in not only Turkish

Americanness but also the process and context in which it is shaped (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998).

As there are over 150,000 Turkish Americans estimated living in the New York metropolitan area, one of the dilemmas that I had for conducting this research was the difficulty in the selection of the people that I wanted to interview. However, what was clear was that I was interested in individual perceptions rather than collective behavior (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998).

Therefore, the actual size of the interview group was a secondary issue (Limb and Dwyer, 2001).

I did not necessarily intend to reach comprehensive conclusions and generalizations; rather I wanted to indicate some sites of multiplicity, contextuality, and contradiction within the Turkish

American community (Creswell, 2003; Limb and Dwyer, 2001). Rather than trying to achieve a target number of interviews, I was alert for the stage when I believed I had explored the whole range of realistic responses from interviews.

I used two different sampling techniques: “snowball sampling” and “purposeful sampling” (Seidman, 1998). Since it was difficult for me to locate my study population by other means, as I knew very few people in the area to start with, “snowball sampling” was my first choice for this study. I contacted individuals through various ways, including my personal contacts, Turkish American social clubs and organizations, community facilities, religious institutions, restaurants, coffee houses, and local stores. I usually asked my first respondents to recruit their successors. In this way, I hoped to reach some key informants who could give me valuable information to complete the study (Hay, 2000). This technique was valuable in reaching people who had distinct and important perspectives on the themes of my research questions.

Moreover, I had to have great flexibility and to spend many hours arranging meetings and

35 meeting places. Such extensive contact created a relationship with the informants, and provided valuable insight into their lives and experiences.

Purposeful sampling was also crucial to my data collection because I was interested in selecting participants who would reflect the wide range in the larger population that I intended to study (Riessman, 1994; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003; Seidman, 1998). To select participants from different segments of the Turkish American community, I used my two year experience in the

New York area, having spent time there in 2001 and 2002, to contact different groups with various political views, cultural and economic backgrounds. The groups included student organizations, women groups, religious and non-religious groups. After gathering information about such organizations and their members by talking to people, looking at their websites or brochures if they had any, attending their activities, I purposefully selected people with different political, ideological, ethnic, and religious positions as well as people from different class and generations to have multiple perspectives from the Turkish American community.

I conducted my interviews between May 1 and July 30, 2002. I interviewed a total of thirty eight people from various socioeconomic circumstances, age groups and both males and females to encompass various experiences. My objective was to bring perspectives from different groups within the Turkish-American community. Twenty four of the interviewees were male and fourteen were female. Among the thirty eight, eight were second generation and thirty were first generation Turkish immigrants. Of my interviewees, ten were community leaders, such as institution leaders. I intentionally selected my sample of informants from diverse backgrounds, including Turkish Kurds, Jews, and Arabs, as well as Turks from the former Soviet

Union states who lived in Turkey for a period of time. In this way, I am able to present the voices of a small group of immigrants to articulate some of the multiple and various ways in which the ethnic identity process is contested. The average age of the respondents was 38, with the respondents ranging from 16 to 75 years of age.

36 Interviews were conducted face to face at various places such as the participant’s home, office or at a restaurant or café. They were carried out in both English and Turkish depending on the participant’s choice of language. Our conversations were tape-recorded only when I was given permission to do so. I had my respondents sign consent forms and the interviews were conducted with the understanding that privacy would be maintained and a was chosen by the interviewee during our encounter(s).

Interview questions were mainly open-ended, and focused specifically on various aspects of respondent’s life and experience in the United States.2 I intentionally utilized a semi-structured format, so that while relevant themes were covered, there was room for more inquisitive and interpretative questions to articulate further meaning and the complexity of events. The interviews considered various questions concerning:

ƒ Life in Turkey (e.g., How does your life in the US compare with your life in Turkey?),

ƒ Migration and Residential Choice (e.g., Why did you come to the United States? Do

you prefer to live in a Turkish/Turkish-American community? Why?),

ƒ Maintaining Contacts with Family and Friends (e.g., How do you maintain contact

with friends and family members in Turkey? How did your last trip to Turkey affect

your views about returning to Turkey? How frequently do you follow news from

Turkey during your stay in the US?),

ƒ Everyday Activities and Social Networks (e.g., Do you go to places where most people

are American or Turkish? Why? In what kind of Turkish activities do you participate?

Do you celebrate Turkish holidays? Do Turks help one another?),

ƒ Attitudes and Opinions about Ethnicity (e.g., what is your definition of Turkish/Turks?

Who are the Turks? Do you feel that you are more Western (European) or Eastern

2 A copy of the questions is provided in Appendix A. 37 (Middle Eastern)? Would you consider yourself to be Turkish-American? Why? Do

you feel that you are more Western (European) or Eastern (Middle Eastern)? Why?),

ƒ Assigned Identities (e.g., what do you feel about public perception of Turks and

Turkey in the United States? Do you think that Americans associate Turks with Arabs

and other Muslim groups? If yes, how do you feel about that? Do you think that

Americans treat you well?),

ƒ Language and Religion (e.g., what languages do you speak at home and work? Do you

watch or listen to Turkish on TV? What is your religion? Do you practice it? Where

and how?),

ƒ Work Related (e.g., Has this always been your line of work? What is the ethnic

background of the majority of the people with whom you work?),

ƒ Change (e.g., Do you think that Turks in the United States are losing their Turkish

identity? If yes, what are some signs of that? Do you think your children are more

Americanized than your generation? If yes, what are some signs of that?)

Interviews lasted between one and three hours as a result of the variety and in-depth nature of questions. Our conversations often extended even longer as some participants generously offered to prepare coffee and/or dinner. In some cases, there was more than one meeting with some of the participants because of time constraints and also for follow up discussions.

In addition to interviews with Turkish immigrants about their lives and experiences in the

United States, I interviewed ten community leaders (e.g., presidents of Turkish American organizations) and business owners. My questions were related to the membership (or clientele), structure, and activities of these organizations. The purpose of such interviews was to learn about Turkish American institutions and their roles in the community and the ways in which institutions participate in the socio-spatial construction of ethnic identity.

38 I selected individuals representing the largest Turkish organizations in the New York metropolitan area such as the Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA), the

American Turkish Society (ATS), and the Turkish Women's League of America (TWLA), along with leaders of smaller clubs such as Dost Kirim. I interviewed the Imam of Fatih mosque located in Brooklyn, NY, one of the oldest Turkish mosques in the United States, as well as principles of both the Ataturk School and the Brooklyn Amity School. I met with the owners of various businesses in the metropolitan New York area (Ant Stores, Zinnur Books, Turkiyem

Supermarket, Amish Markets, Toros Restaurant, Bakery, and so on). I also talked to media representatives from several publications including Hürriyet, Jön Türk, the Light

Millennium, Turk of America, Zaman America. They functioned as key informants for the community at large and provided me with valuable information about community leaders. Fieldwork Participant observation was another important data collection technique that I carried out for the duration of the study in such places as restaurants and grocery stores, festivals, mosques, weddings, graduation ceremonies, sporting and musical events. Fieldwork complemented my in- depth interviews and allowed me to engage in the web of the immigrant’s everyday lives and to capture the complexity of social relations embedded in the immigrants’ daily experiences

(Hagopian, 2003; Kitchin and Tate, 2000). This allowed me to develop a geography of everyday experiences as it gave me the opportunity to move beyond reliance on formulized interactions, such as interviews, and experience the flow of everyday life in time and space (Lindsay, 1997).

The fieldwork was a channel for exploring the role of institutions such as family, workplace, local, national and international organizations and the role of space in reproducing identity

(Kitchin and Tate, 2000).

The journal that I kept during my fieldwork became a very important source, as I was able to see my own reflections on the events and happenings on each particular day. During my

39 participation in the community, I was able to speak to immigrants about their lives, experiences, and adjustments to the United States. I learned much from casual conversations, and various ideas in this study were derived from heated discussions and silent observations (Robinson,

1998; Seidman, 1998). Therefore, my observations and conversations at weddings, religious ceremonies, parades, restaurants, and coffee houses are crucial components in my understanding the process of identity maintenance, formation and reconstruction as well as the role of place in such formations and reconstructions. Other Methods I utilized data from the 2000 Census to draw a geographic portrait of the Turkish

American population in the United States and mapped their distribution and patterning in the states where there is a significant Turkish American population using GIS. I also employed the

1990 U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), five percent files, to develop a demographic and economic profile of the in the United States.

There are other materials that I collected as the research progressed. Such materials allowed me to gather information about upcoming events as well as types of activities (Creswell,

2003). For instance, I routinely checked the Internet for Turkish American-oriented websites and compiled local and national newspaper and magazine articles related to Turkish Americans. I have subscriptions to Turkish American magazines such as Turk of America and Jon Turk,

Turkuaz and newspapers such as Zaman and various organization newsletters such as those of the ATS and FTAA. I am a member of several e-groups such as NATurk, NJTurk, NYCTurk, and TurkishForum, which provide a great deal of information for problems that Turkish

Americans face in real life. And to keep track of local events and issues, each week I also gathered organizational flyers and pamphlets from various Turkish American organizations, stores, and coffee houses.

40 Analysis While I started my research with a number of questions, I had a very vague idea of what would be the outcome. As I came into contact with individuals and institutions, my initial questions shifted and transformed. This research experience turned out to be a dynamic process as my interviews opened up a real dialogue in which I was forced to reevaluate my position and questions. My analysis became a complex intertwining of the responses of my interviewees and my perceptions of their meanings.

I believe this process of interaction and debate helped me to generate more constructive and thoughtful research as interviewing is itself part of the learning process (Lindsay, 1997). I began to become more aware of the constructed nature of “Turkish-Americanness” and the role of institutions in the formation of ethnic labels and identities (Jackson, 1994). This was crucial because it helped me to understand not only the uneven and differential ways in which Turkish

Americans maintain and assert their “Turkish” ethnic identity but also understood the limits of the individual choice and the importance of institutional contexts and circumstances (Giddens,

1991).

Consequently, I began to consider how Turkish American lives are influenced by institutions and the way the institutions perceive them, regardless of how much the Turkish immigrants may (or may not) choose to identify themselves in terms of their Turkish national origin and ethnic identity. This gave me an opportunity to recognize the necessity of dealing with the process of ethnic categorization more broadly and shifted my research focus to the role of mid-level and national institutions in the socio-spatial formation of Turkish Americanness.

My field notes were crucially important in extracting relevant details, and salient themes

(Robinson, 1998). In additional to keeping a journal throughout the fieldwork, I videotaped and photographed visual information concerning settings, as well as the social atmosphere, and my personal interactions with participants. I came to realize the spatiality of identity as I reviewed

41 my observations of the places within which Turkish immigrants as well as second generation

Turkish Americans interact. In unfolding the details of particular events and interviews, I recognized that the “site” of these interactions formed the ways in which individuals and organizations came to conceive of themselves (Skop, 2003).

My membership with various e-groups became another surprising, and telling data source. Among these e-groups, NYCTurk and NJTurk have more than 4,000 members each.

These e-groups are places where immigrant Turks exchange ideas about the problems they are facing and solutions to such problems.3 This made me aware of the everyday usage of this technology by Turkish immigrants and how the Internet has been appropriated as a hybrid space for the expression of “Turkishness.” Furthermore, my collection and analysis of organizational brochures and flyers, newspaper and magazine articles, and websites became a way to enunciate the socio-spatial process of ethnic identity construction. Reflections For the most part, I was able to pursue the methods I had planned before starting the research project. My strategy of keeping the methodology relatively open-ended was quite useful and I was able to learn and observe from my casual and structured encounters (Hagopian,

2003). Such liberal approaches helped me uncover a broad range of information that allowed me to gather a more comprehensive picture of the socio-spatial process of identity construction.

I also faced some complications. Arranging a meeting place was one, as not all of my participants wanted to conduct interviews at their homes or offices. I had to meet them at bookstores, cafes or restaurants, which sometimes introduced unwanted disruption during the interviews. Therefore, I usually preferred to conduct my interviews at my interviewees’ offices

3 One interesting discussion on New Jersey Turks e-mail list group was about the difficulty that Turkish immigrant men have in finding a Turkish female to marry. It was a heated debate as male and female members accused each other for the situation. After a week or so an e-mail was sent to the group by the SingleTurks dating website announcing its establishment. 42 or houses, if I was given the choice. When I had to interview them outside these locations, I chose places where I thought it would be quiet during the interviewing process as I became familiar with the area.

Another complication arose when I was conducting my interviews with participants who were couples in one place at one time. While I originally anticipated speaking to each family member separately so that each participant could more freely answer my questions, there were two couples with whom the interviewing did not go the way I wanted. They often interrupted and corrected one another about their feelings and experiences living in the United States.

Fortunately, other couples that I talked to were willing to meet individually, which allowed me to see differences in the experiences of male and female immigrants.

In terms of my positionality in the interviewing process, my identity as a Turkish

(Kurdish) Ph.D. student served me well as I carried out my research. My participants mostly viewed me as one of “them” and therefore were quite open about their positions and experiences in the United States, including discrimination if they faced any. Most of my interviewees had a college education, which turned out to be a source of empathy and connectedness between participants and myself. There was also a kind of pride in me that I was doing research on

Turkish Americans and I was a PhD student. Both the topic and my identity removed many obstacles in terms of my access to their lives. I was often invited to events and programs and introduced to people who my participants thought would be good resources for my research. My inquisitiveness served me well and interactions with them in turn helped me to further investigate the constructed nature of Turkish American identity.

However, my subjectivity in conducting this research also needs acknowledgement. I tried to strike a balance between being a researcher and one of “them”. I was acutely aware of the need to control my interviewing relationship so that it did not transform into a full “we” relationship. Knowing the dangers of conflating my experiences and meanings with those of my

43 participants, I was highly alert to my experience with my participants. I controlled my interviewing relationship by adding some formality and emphasizing my researcher position. For example, before starting interviews, I asked my participants if they wished to be called by their first or last name. The fact that the interviewing relationship can be friendly but a not friendship was an important issue that I reminded myself of during the study.

My interactions and exchanges with community leaders made me even more aware of relations of power and the fluidity of identity. The power to include and exclude (e.g., membership to the FTAA, the ATS, or the Turkish Business Forum) was something that I could not have ignored as individuals accused some Turkish American organizations of being elitist and exclusionary. This recognition impressed upon me the active power relations involved in the formation of Turkish American identity. With this challenge, I felt obligated to construct a particular kind of investigation that proposes identity construction as a dynamic and contingent process, in which individuals struggle in the face of spatial and institutional boundaries of

Turkishness and Americanness.

In conclusion, in this study I attempt to explore Turkish identities in the context of history, media and migration (both global and national), institutions (Turkish, American, and international), and people. Informed by theories of identity, migration and nationalism, this study uses various research strategies for data collection and analysis such in-depth interviewing and media analysis.

44

CHAPTER IV

TURKISH IMMIGRATION HISTORY

The Turkish community in the United States is one of the least studied ethnic groups in the United States, despite the fact that Turks have been immigrating to the United States for over a century and today have significant numbers of members living in metropolitan areas such as

New York, and . Turkish speaking people began emigrating from the

Ottoman lands to the United States in significant numbers in the last quarter of the 19th century and reached their highest level of immigration to the United States in the first two decades of the

20th century. Like other immigrants from elsewhere, such as , Turks were drawn to the

New World as a result of labor shortages in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Even though the initial Turkish immigrant communities congregated in the north eastern states close to their ports of entry (e.g., New York and ), they gradually filtered to areas of economic pull such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Available sources indicate that whereas the first wave overwhelmingly included unsophisticated villagers and farmers who came to the U.S. mainly for economic reasons, the immigrants who came to the U.S. after WWII were mainly college graduates who came for educational, training and economic purposes (Karpat, 1995).

Although it is almost impossible to give a very accurate number of Turkish immigrants,

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics indicate that a total of 450,539 people immigrated to the United States during the period between 1820 and 2000. However, Turkish immigration has not been steady over the past 180 years. From Turkish or Ottoman lands the

45 largest immigration to the United States took place in the 1900-1920 period, when 291,435 immigrants came to the United States (Figure 1). The slowest migration period occurred from

1920 to the 1950s. Immigration increased in the late 1950s when a large number of Turkish professionals, such as doctors and engineers, came to the U.S. for educational and training purposes.

Figure 1: Turkish Immigration to the U.S. (1820-2000)

Turkish Immigration to the US (1820-2000)

350000 291435 300000

250000

200000

150000

100000

34207 34886 23541 38312 50000 Number of Immigrants 705 4317 0

1821-1880 1881-1900 1901-1920 1921-1940 1941-1960 1961-1980 1981-2000

Years

Source: US Immigration and Naturalization Service Statistical Yearbook (2001) The 1965 liberalization of U.S. immigration laws, which liberalized immigration from

Turkey and other places, was another factor leading to increasing immigration. Finally, as a result of more liberal and encouraging laws passed by theTurkish government after the 1980s and with an increasing openness to the outside world, another wave of immigration occurred in more recent decades.

In this chapter, I examine Turkish immigration to the United States in three different periods. First, I examine early Turkish immigration during the last few decades of the Ottoman

Empire until the end of the World War I in 1918. Second, I look at Turkish immigration to the

46 United States after World War II. Finally, I explore Turkish immigration after the 1980s. Each period represent immigrants with different social, educational and economic backgrounds. The First Immigration Wave: The The first Turkish immigration wave to the United States occurred during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 291,435 immigrants came to the United States during the period between 1900 and 1920 (Figure 2).

Ottoman figures indicate that 80,000 people emigrated between 1885 and 1912. The gap shows the large number of immigrants coming to the United States without legal permission from the

Ottoman State. According to Ahmed (1986), many Turks came to the United States without permission from the Ottoman authorities via , France with the help of French shipping agents who were shipping hazelnuts from ports such as to Marseilles. The shipping agents took these immigrants from the Black Sea ports to Marseilles without charging them, but the immigrants had to pay them for their passage to the United States.

Official U.S. statistics classify all immigrants from the Ottoman lands as Turks or identified them being from Turkey. It is extremely difficult to get an accurate number of the Turks who identified themselves as Turkish and immigrated during this period. Karpat (1996) estimates that during the late 19th and the early 20th century, 1.2 million immigrants came from the Ottoman lands, with about 200,000 of them being Muslim. Both Altschiller (1995) and Ahmed (1986) estimate that only 45,000 to 65,000 of those 200,000 Muslim immigrants were Muslim Turks.

Among the 200,000 Muslim Ottomans who came to the United States were also non-Turkish

Muslim groups such as Arabs and Kurds.

47 Figure 2: Turkish Immigration to the U.S. before WWII

Turkish Immigration to the U.S before WWII

180,000 157,369 160,000 134,066 140,000

120,000

100,000

80,000

60,000 30,425 33,824 40,000

Number of Immigrants of Number 3,782 20,000 131 404 1,065 0

1861-70 1871-80 1881-90 1891-1900 1901-10 1911-20 1921-30 1931-40

Years

Source: The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Fiscal Year 2000 Statistical Yearbook The places of origin for these early Turkish immigrants included Anatolian cities such as

Harput, Elazig, Akcadag, Antep, Trabzon, Dersim, Siverek, , Izmir, and Samsun, and other Ottoman regions such as or Albany and cities such as . The American college at Harput was a major source of information for many who immigrated or wanted to immigrate. While the school’s main mission was to help the Christians in the region, many Muslim Turks also benefited from the college’s activities. There were also

French and German schools that may have also helped to spread the word about the .

The stories of those who crossed the Atlantic and came to America, a land and culture that was alien to them, are small snapshots from history. Here is a short story of a young man who came to the United States;

I was 20 years of age, strong and even powerful in the view of some of my friends. I longed for work but there was none. We were all desperate. Today in Turkey this would be difficult to understand; now most of us are wealthy by the

48 living standards in 1912. At our most desperate hour we heard there was a country called America where jobs were abundant; workers were needed since the country was under-populated. One was assured work if he was not blind, crippled or sickly. We felt that America was opening its arms to everyone and beckoning all to her shores regardless of nationality. We don’t know who first brought this word to our village, but it was all we talked about. It was always a part of our conversation and dreams. America became our hopes—it was our hope for living (Quoted in Ahmed, 1986, 86). Many such single young men left their homes with the hope of new opportunities. They had no skills and knew no English but they were brave to take the challenge as they were coming into a land of unknowns. This land was not only too far but also too different to these young men who had never left their village back in .

According to Ahmed (1986), much of the Turkish migration was mainly to urban areas such as New York, the North Shore communities of (Peabody, Salem and Lynn),

Chicago, Pittsburgh, , and . The majority of Turkish immigrants entered the

United States through . Ellis Island was the place of final judgment for many of the immigrants as they had to prove their fitness to enter “Heaven” according to Frank Ahmed

(1986). Since US immigration officials did not classify those entering the country based on their religion, we do not know much about the religion of the immigrants from the Ottoman Empire.

Most Muslims, including the Turks, were afraid of not being accepted in a Christian country because of their faith. Hence many adopted and registered under a at the port of entry (Karpat, 1995). Huseyin became Sam, Kayma became Alli, and Ahmed became Frank, and so forth (Ahmed, 1986). Another strategy was to declare themselves as Armenians or (Christian)

Syrians to avoid discrimination and have easy access to the New World at the port of entry.

There were also Turks from the who registered as , Bulgarians or Serbians at the time of entrance. All these contribute to the uncertainty of the number of the Turks entering to the United States.

49 My information on the lives of early Turkish immigrants is mainly based on the writings of Frank Ahmed (1986), a second generation Turkish American, who wrote about the first

Turkish immigrants in New and America’s Industrial North. According to Ahmed

(1986, xv), “The vast majority of these early Turkish immigrants were Anatolian farmers and shepherds, most of whom had never seen a city of even a large village.” Their educational level and economic status were much lower than the Turkish immigrants that would later come to the

United States. Many of these lower class Turks mainly came to the United States for economic reasons and their goal was not to stay but to save some money so they could go back to Turkey, and buy land and houses.

Another aspect of early Turkish immigration to the United States was that the vast majority of the Ottoman immigrants, including both Muslim and non-Muslims, were males (with the exception of a few bringing their wives or families). According to Ahmed (1986, xviii),

“their strong cultural viewpoint was to immigrate, get settled and then bring their wives and families” afterwards. Turkish women did not immigrate to the United States until the conclusion of World War II. This was a clear indication of the male immigrants’ intentions of temporary stay. Ahmed (1986) points out that the reason why Turkish men did not bringing their families was misunderstood by Americans and the issue was discussed in local newspapers with the suggestion made that this was against the immigrants’ religion. Ahmed (1986) makes it clear that this was not unique to Muslim Ottoman immigrants because there were also peoples of other faiths from the Ottoman lands who did not bring their families along with themselves when they first emigrated.

Most of the early Turkish immigrants worked in the factories of New York, Detroit,

Chicago, and the leather factories of . Both Karpat (1995) and Ahmed (1986) agree that most of these Turks lived in isolation from the larger society because of their lack of English and their cultural and religious differences. Primary meeting places were “Turkish coffee

50 houses” where they would get together to chat, play cards or gamble. This changed after a large number of the Turks returned to Turkey because of the establishment of the new state, the

Turkish Republic in 1923. Those who stayed in the United States often married Irish, Italian and

French Canadian women (the majority of Turks lived in the northeast) and started a new life in

America, while keeping many of their traditions from their original culture.

Turkish immigration from Turkey to the United States slowed tremendously after World

War I. The number of people who came to the United States from Turkey from 1931 to 1940 was only 1,065. This slow down was a result of three developments (INS, 2001). First, a new nation state, Turkey, was established in 1923, and Turkey tried to attract immigrants who identified themselves with the Turks’ Ottoman past, including Muslim Albanians, , and so on. Second, the non-Muslims staying in Turkey were deprived of the special protection of the

Western powers because of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 and therefore many of non-Muslim did not leave Turkey as a result of out migration including to the United States (Karpat, 1995).

Finally, the United States limited immigration from Turkey to 100 per year starting in 1924 when the immigration laws were tightened considerably and this quota was filled primarily by non-

Turks such as Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians. Therefore, following the largest period of

Turkish immigration to the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century,

Turkish immigration to the United States following the 1920s was extremely low. The Great Return One interesting feature of early Turkish immigration to the United States is the large number of returnees, that is those who went back to Turkey after emigrating to the United States.

According to Karpat (1995), the rate of returnees among Ottoman immigrants was about one third of Christians and possibly more than half of the Muslims, despite legal difficulties and the difficulty of readjustment to their old culture. Some estimate that about 86 percent of Turks returned to Turkey during the years before and after the Great Depression (Halman, 1980).

51 Ahmed (1986) predicts that over 25,000 Turks returned to Turkey during the years after World

War I. This had a great impact on the Turks who stayed because they became a minority in the neighborhoods where they once dominated. The establishment of the new Turkish Republic and its encouragement of Turks living outside Turkey to return, as well as difficulties in adapting to life in the United States were some of the reasons for return. Oz (Osman) Bengur, a second generation Turkish American and a banker in who ran in the Democratic Party primary for the US Congress in 2002, told me that his father wanted to return to Turkey after a

40-year stay in the United States, though he never did. This longing to return many years after emigrating is still felt among first generation Turkish-Americans because they always thought that they were coming to America temporarily. This sense of temporality caused them to not build institutions such as schools and mosques which would have strengthened their community.

Furthermore, they were having difficulties in terms of understanding how to establish institutions in a predominantly Christian country. In their early times in America, Turks did not have a strong sense of their nationality as they did during the time of the Ottomans when the center of group identity was religion, not Turkishness. As a result, Turkish immigrants mainly used mosques that were already established by other Muslim groups or used their cultural centers as places of gathering and worship.

Those who returned were both Turkish and non-Turkish previous Ottoman citizens.

Halman (1980) argues that most of those who returned were well educated while those who stayed were mainly illiterates who had little or no knowledge of English and worked as unskilled laborers. Such a great rate of return had significant impacts on those who stayed behind in the

United States (Halman, 1980).

Gordon (1931) estimated that about 70,000 naturalized Americans returned to Turkey and questions regarding the returnees’ rights caused endless controversy between Ottoman (Turkish) and American governments. The seriousness of the problem called forth an allusion to it in then

52 President ’s annual message to the Congress in 1893 (Gordon, 1931). The dispute was mainly over the rights of Armenian returnees, who were naturalized American citizens and asked for American protection, and their obligations to the Ottoman government. While the security of

Armenians was an issue, many of them owned property in Turkey but did not pay any taxes.

They wanted to be exempted from Ottoman military laws and the law of expatriation. In his message the President stated: “Turkey complains that her Armenian subjects obtain citizenship in this country not to identify themselves in good faith with our people but with the intention of returning to the land of their birth and there engaging in sedition. This complaint is not wholly without foundation” (Gordon, 1931, 661).

The President also mentioned that an Armeanian journal published in New York called its readers to arm, organize and participate in the movements for the subversion of Ottoman authority in eastern parts of Turkey. Gordon (1931, 662) states, “whenever they (Armenians) had some selfish or mercenary reason to demanding American protection, they literally wrapped themselves in the American flag and defied the Ottoman Government.” Therefore, the Ottoman

Government told the US Government that it would expel from its dominions all Armenians who had became naturalized citizens of the United States since 1869. During this dispute between the two countries, there were cases where the rights of American citizens were violated, but there were also cases where unjustifiable claims were reported. After many dialogues between the

Turkish and US Governments, both countries changed their citizenship policies. According to the new law, if a naturalized American citizen of Turkish origin later returned Turkey permanently, the intent of permanence is to be based on a two-year continuous residency. Therefore, if s/he stays in Turkey more than two years, then s/he has to fulfill the citizenship requirements of

Turkish State (Gordon, 1931).

53 The Second Wave of Immigration: Professionals A second wave of migration occurred after World War II. The total number of Turkish immigrants, according to the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, in the period between

1941 and 1980 was approximately 30,000 (Figure 3). Unlike the earlier wave of immigrants, the post-World War II generation was highly educated and included about 4,000 physicians and engineers. Other professionals also came to the U.S., in spite of strict US immigration regulations during the period from 1924 to 1965, which allowed only 100 Turkish immigrants per year (Altschiller, 1995). Karpat (1995) estimates that the number of such professionals for the period between 1948 and 1980 range from 10 to 50 thousand. While some of those professionals returned to Turkey after living in the United States for a brief period, the majority stayed. “The political rapprochement between Turkey and the United States that started with the

Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the country’s inclusion in NATO in 1952 gave a new momentum to the Turks’ search for professional specialization in the United States ” (Karpat, 1995, 238).

Many of these professionals also viewed the American education system as pragmatic and practically oriented compared the system in Europe and came to the United States for training.

The second wave immigrants identified themselves largely in nationalistic terms and established Turkish Americans organizations for bringing members of the Turkish American community together and for promoting Turkish culture in the United States. For these purposes organizations such as the Turkish American Society (1949) and the Turkish Women’s League of

America (1958) were founded. Second wave immigrants also founded umbrella organizations such as the Federation of Turkish American Associations (1956) and the Assembly of Turkish

American Associations (1979).

Since the early 1970s, the number of Turkish immigrants has increased to more than

2,000 per year. The Turkish law that forbade its citizens to take citizenship of another country likely negatively affected the number of Turkish immigrants in the United States. Turks were

54 only allowed to have dual citizenship after 1985. The issues of identity and ethnicity differed between this group of professionals and their Ottoman predecessors because they identified themselves as Turks and organized and participated in the activities that help to promote

Turkishness as a major part of their identity while the Ottomanness or Muslimness was at the center of the identities of early Turkish immigrants. Also, although the vast majority of immigrants in this group were male, there were also some families as well as a few females.

Figure 3: Turkish Immigration to the U.S. between 1930 and 1980

Turkish Immigration to the U.S (1930-1980)

16,000

14,000 13,399

12,000 10,142 10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000 3,519 1,065 2,000 798

Number of Immigrants of Number 0

1931-40 1941–50 1951–60 1961–70 1971–80

Years

Source: The US Immigration and Naturalization Service Statistical Yearbook (2001) This group positioned themselves in the middle or upper classes in the United States because of their relatively high education and high incomes. Many of these professionals, who were mostly male, married Americans but continued to promote Turkish culture and nationality through groups and personal efforts. While there might be some Turkish citizens that were

Kurdish or other ethnic groups, the vast majority was Turkish.

Increasing immigration after the 1960s was largely a result of the relative liberalization of

American immigration policies in 1965 as the "National Origins Quota Act" of 1924 was deemed discriminatory and designed to curtail immigration from new source countries such as Turkey,

Russia, , and by allocating them small quotas. The act allowed immigration from 55 older source countries, such as England, by giving them large quotas. The quotas were set at two percent of a country's foreign-born residents in the United States in 1890. With new modifications in the law in 1929, quotas were allocated consistent with the national origins or roots of the total U.S. population, increasing England's quota. While the annual number of

Turkish immigrants was only 100 per year prior to the 1950s, the number slightly increased in the post World War II era as the discriminatory provisions against most Asian countries were somewhat relaxed by the 1952 Act. Therefore, the number of Turkish immigrants exceeded 100 per year quota before the 1965 legislation. In 1965, President Johnson convinced Congress to pass a new Immigration Act. This new immigration law dismantled quotas based on national origin, race or religion (Shanks, 2002). The number of Turkish immigrants increased to over

1,000 per year following the 1965 Act (Karpat, 1995).

While the majority of Turkish immigrants during the post World War II era were highly skilled and well educated professionals, there was a group of semi-skilled workers, as well as highly skilled artisans and tailors that came to the United States during the late 1960s through the early 1980s (Halman, 1980). For example, the city of Rochester, NY has a large community of these groups, some of which have today established their own businesses. Unlike the early immigrants, this group came with their families. This group was more conservative when compared to the group of professionals who came to the U.S. around the same time.

Besides the Turks from Turkey, there was a significant number of Turks from former

Soviet Union Republics, particularly from the and , who came to the United

States as via Turkey. While the majority of these Turkic people identify themselves as

Turks, there are ones such as Characins who claim that they have lingual and cultural differences that make them different from the Turks from Turkey. Most of these Turkic groups came to the

U.S. during the late 1960s and 1970s and today, they actively participate in Turkish-American activities.

56 The Third Wave of Immigration (1980-2000): Diverse Groups As a result of globalization and the changing political attitudes by the Turkish state, interest in the world outside Turkey increased in the 1980s. Particularly during the Özal administration during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the new government’s encouragement for openness and competition along with television’s role in introducing the outside world had great impacts on the ’s involvement in the globalizing world and more aggressively pursue opportunities outside Turkey. People of all social statuses participated in this new trend.

While there has been a great increase in the number of students, particularly graduate students coming to the United States, for professional training and specialization, many unskilled and semiskilled laborers also came to the United States legally or illegally (Figure 4). The number of

Turkish students enrolled in U.S. institutions reached 15,000 in 2003 and Turkey ranked the ninth in terms of the number of international student enrolments in American educational institutions (AA, 2003). Most of these students are graduate students studying in a variety of specialty areas.

Compared to Turkey, the cost of education in the U.S. is much higher than it is in Turkey.

Therefore, these students have to find ways to support themselves while studying. The Turkish

Ministry of Education (MEB) and the Turkish Institution of Higher Education (YOK) give financial support to around 2,000 students and there is a significant number that receives financial aid from various U.S. institutions in the form of graduate or research assistantships.

Many are also supported by their families, while some work to support themselves. Those who work to support themselves may end up only working or starting their businesses because of the expense of paying high out-of-state tuitions and living expenses. In most cases, Turkish students have established student organizations that help newcomers adjust to life in the U.S. and to promote Turkish culture and nationality on their school campuses. While the majority of Turkish students leave the U.S. after completing their studies, there is also a significant number

57 Figure 4: Turkish Immigration to the U.S. after 1989

Turkish Imigration to the U.S after 1989

4,000 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 Number of Immigrants 500 0 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 Years

Source: The US Immigration and Naturalization Service Fiscal Year 2000 Statistical Yearbook Another group of Turkish immigrants in the U.S. includes unskilled or semiskilled

Turkish laborers with no college education while some have a high school education. Many of these workers have come to the United States illegally or overstayed their visas. Some of these illegal immigrants worked in cargo ships, and when the ships were at port in the U.S., they would leave and never come back to their ships.4 Today, they mostly work in grocery stores, restaurants or construction companies, mostly owned by other Turks, as wage labor. Some have succeeded and opened their own businesses and obtained green cards or U.S. citizenship. Akinci

(2002) calls this trend of immigration as the “Germanification” of Turkish Americans because of their resemblance to Turkish immigrants who went to as guest workers during the 1960 and the 1970s (Akinci, 2002). This group in most cases does not have English proficiency and is

4 The tales of their journey to the United States are always fun to hear. There were cases when the ship was about to leave port, there was no crew to go with. I heard these sorts of stories from many during my field work in New York. 58 totally dependent upon fellow immigrants who had come before them. As Karpat (1995, 243) suggests, “as the European labor markets proved unable to absorb the Turkish labor surplus, mainly after 1990, the United States became the chief target for legal and, especially, illegal emigration. Would-be Turkish immigrants are not only peasants but upper, middle and lower class urbanites seeking high rewards according to their skills.”

Turkish immigration to the United States has been different from Turkish immigration

European states such as Germany. The majority of Turkish immigrants who went to Europe were did not have much education and were mainly peasants from Anatolian villages, who went to

Europe for economic reasons (Horrocks and Kolinsky, 1996). While the early immigrants who came to the United States had similar backgrounds, the post-World War II Turkish immigrants were highly educated. Educational and training were primary reasons for these immigrants to come to the United States. Moreover, the integration of Turkish immigrants into American society is greater than the integration of Turkish immigrants in Germany. Most Turkish immigrants in Germany lived in isolation (Argun, 2003). This was not only because of low levels of education among these immigrants but also because of German government’s reluctance to grant full citizenship and other rights to Turkish immigrants. Turks in the United States are more integrated to the larger society as a result of high levels of education of the immigrants and

American policies towards citizenship and diversity (Horrocks and Kolinsky, 1996). The Number and Location of Turks in America and New York Turks As of the 1990s, the number of Turkish-Americans ranged from 100,000 to 400,000 according to Altschiller (1995). According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a total of 450,539 people immigrated to the United States from Turkey during the period 1820 to

2000. However, as previously mentioned, this number is not a clear indication of the number of

Turks who immigrated to the United States because it also includes many early non-Muslim and

Muslim citizens who were not Turkish in terms of their ethnicity. While the vast majority of

59 those who came after World War II were ethnic Turks, there were also some Kurds and members of other ethnic groups. There have also been a number of illegal immigrants, which adds to the uncertainty of the number. Since many Turkish Americans do not participate in census surveys and those who participate often identify themselves as white rather than as Turkish-Americans, it becomes difficult to give an exact number of Turkish-Americans. The Census Bureau reports

117,619 people who identified themselves as Turkish-Americans in 2002 Census . However, this is far below the estimated number of Turkish-Americans. According to the Turkish Consulate to the U.S., Mehmet Ezen, there are approximately 350,000 Turks living in the United States. When we add other Turkic language groups that have come to the United States from the Balkans,

China, the former , various Middle Eastern countries, Europe and , the number may be even larger. Groups such as Turkestanis, , and Crimean consider themselves as separate ethnic groups on occasions but affiliate with Turks at other times. For example, I witnessed participation of all these groups in NYC’s Turkish Day Parade in May 2002.

The majority of Turkish Americans live in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and . Immigration to California and the increased after the

1970s. Most who went to the West were professionals such as engineers, scientists, and university professors (Karpat, 1995). According to 2000 Census data, New York State (23,674,

Figure 6), California (15,104, Figure 7), New Jersey (12,396, Figure 8) and Florida (9,615,

Figure 9) have the largest number of Turkish-American concentration. They mainly live in large urban areas such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, , and

Rochester, NY. As well, it should be recognized that Turks have spread out to other parts of the

United States, with Turkish Americans living in all fifty states (Figure 5).

According to Ferris (1995, 1203), “Turkish-speaking Muslims from the Ottoman Empire settled in New York from the late eighteen century and numbered 1401 in 1900.” However, it did

60 not take a half-century for them to reach a figure of 17,663 by the 1960s. During these years the

Turks who migrated had low levels of education and mainly worked in low paid jobs. Between

70,000 and 100,000 of Turks live in New York (Ferris, 1995). The city’s Turks became dispersed throughout the city with large concentrations in and Coney Island in

Brooklyn, around Rivington and Forsythe Streets in , and in Sunnyside and Richmond

Hills in Queens. Paterson, Clifton, and Cliffside Park in New Jersey’s New York have significant Turkish-American communities, while also has a Turkish-American population.

Many Turks opened small businesses in parts of New York and surrounding areas and created Turkish-American organizations. According to Ferris (1995), Turks work in various different jobs from owning filling stations, supermarkets, restaurants, and import-export firms to driving taxi cabs and working in restaurants. During my field research in the summer of 2002, I was told that 60 percent of gas stations in Long Island are owned by Turks. The number of

Turkish gas stations owners in New Jersey is also very high. Many Turkish restaurants can be found in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey, and Long Island.

By the 1990s, Turkish-American citizens began to play a visible role in New York’s affairs. For example, the Federation of Turkish-American Associations (FTAA) fought to change the use of the English term “Turkey” to its counterpart Turkiye. Moreover, the city government designated a Turkish-American week as the week closest to 19 May, the Turkish Youth and

Sport Holiday, which has significant importance in modern Turkish history. More conservative

Turks have opened two private schools in the area, one in Brooklyn, NY and the other in Clifton,

NJ. They have also opened several mosques in Long Island, Brooklyn, Paterson and Queens.

Ahmet Ertegun, the founder and owner of , is one of the most prominent

Turkish-Americans in New York. He is also chairman for the Turkish American Society (ATS).

Others include , one of the major producers and arrangers in America

61 whose clients include , Bette Miller, Roberta Flack, Carly Simon and so forth. As home to the largest Turkish population in the United States, the New York metropolitan area provides an excellent location to study Turkish American identity. Closing Thoughts I categorize Turkish immigration to the United States in three different periods. First, there were the immigrants who came with other Ottoman citizens from ethnic groups other than Turks during the period between 1820 and 1920. They mostly included illiterate single male peasants who did not have a strong national identity. While the majority of this group returned after the establishment of the modern Turkish State, those who stayed lived in isolation as they preferred to live among themselves. However, the same thing cannot be said about their children, who mainly were assimilated into American culture. These Turkish descendants today vaguely have a notion that they have a Turkish ancestor. The children of earlier Turkish immigrants, situated within a pre-World War II context emphasizing assimilation, were by most accounts quite successful in their efforts at assimilating into the American cultural context. I would argue that if it were not for renewed Turkish immigration in the postwar period,

Turkish Americans might have been totally assimilated themselves out of existence. Such assimilation was a result of the lack of contact with the country of origin due to the unavailability of modern communication and transportation. The demographic characteristics of the early

Turkish American community were another reason for the large degree of assimilation as the early community included mainly single young men who married Americans and members of other ethnic groups, and melted into the larger culture. Children of these mixed marriages have been largely assimilated into the larger American culture.

The second immigration wave consisted of professionals who came to the United States in the period between the late 1950s and early 1980s. The immigrants were, in general, highly educated men, some women and families. While the majority included professionals, there were

62 also a significant number of semi-skilled workers and artisans such as tailors and other Turkic groups who formerly left the former Soviet Union after WWII and came to the United States as refugees after staying in Turkey for a brief period.

Finally, we have another wave of immigration that started in the mid 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. This group is the most diverse of all as it includes professionals, some businessmen, unskilled and semiskilled workers and a large number of students. While this group is mainly young and eager to seek new opportunities in America, they are more conservative and nationalistic in their identities.

With the introduction of the Diversity Immigration Visa Program (well known as the US

Lottery System), more and more Turkish immigrants of all walks of life began arriving in the US

(as the quota for Turkey is 2000 per year). Thousands of Turks have applied for this program every year since the mid 1990s for the purpose of acquiring permanent residency in the United

States.

Turkish immigrants who came to the United States in the post World War II era, mainly have higher educational levels and the vast majority are college graduates. In terms of their educational levels, this group of Turkish immigrants is radically different from both the early

Turkish Immigrants and the Turks who went to European countries such as France and Germany during the 1960s and 1970s as guest workers. Even many of the Turkish-Americans working in restaurants or grocery stores have college degrees or at least a high school degree. They journeyed to America because they view the U.S. as the place of opportunities, particularly economic opportunities. From my observations, this high level of education helps Turks find their niche in America as it helps them to learn the system more quickly and find jobs. Most young college graduate Turkish immigrants work during certain hours of the day and study

English at the other times after they arrive to America. Learning English makes life much easier

63 for these new immigrants and those who do not have strong educational backgrounds have less desire to learn English and therefore face more difficulties.

Figure 5: Turkish-Americans by State (2000) 5

5 The source of data for all the maps is US Census 2000 64 Figure 6: Turkish Americans In New York

Figure 7: Turkish Americans in California

65 Figure 8: Turkish Americans In New Jersey

Figure 9: Turkish Americans in Florida

66

CHAPTER V

TURKISH POLITICAL HISTORY

In order to understand Turkish-American identity, one must not only examine Turkish immigration and the life experiences of Turks in the United States but also the and the construction of Turkishness as a continuous historical process. While differences exist, there are parallels between the identities of Turkish immigrants to the U.S. and the formation of

Turkish identity in Turkey. Therefore, it is informative to examine the formation of modern

Turkey and the identities of its people. In this chapter, I provide an overview of Turkey along with its political history and contesting identities. Turkey lies at the intersection of very different civilizations, religions, histories, and geographies, and all these shape Turkish identity politics in

Turkey as well as among Turkish Americans. Because of multiple histories, divergent ideological positions, and ethnic diversity, the issue of identity is a frequent topic of debate in

Turkey as it is among Turkish Americans.

The modern Turkish nation state emerged out of the ashes of the multi-ethnic and multi- religious Ottoman Empire that ruled over three continents (, and

North Africa). The most disruptive ideology that threatened and later tore the Empire apart was nationalism. Influenced by the French Revolution and ideas of nationalism, peoples of different ethnic and religious groups struggled to carve new nation states out of the Ottoman Empire throughout the 19th century and early 20th centuries. The outcome was many new states in the

Balkans, and the Middle East (Karpat, 1974). Turkish nationalism was a product of

67 a context in which battles with insurgent nationalities within the Empire encouraged a sense of cohesion among the remaining peoples, as the Ottoman Empire was reduced to Turks and

Muslim groups such as Arabs and Kurds (Ergil, 2000). However, as more and more Muslim ethnic groups abandoned the Ottomans, the only practical alternative left for the Ottoman Turks to follow was Turkish nationalism (Guvenc, 1998).

The Ottomans organized different groups on the basis of religion rather than ethnicity, regardless of the diversity within each religious tradition. Ergil (2000) notes that with the collapse of Ottoman Empire, Turkey lost its cosmopolitan character and vast chunks of territory, which left imprints on Turkish political culture. Fear of division and rebellion continually disturbed the Turkish elite and caused increasing suspicion of outsiders, who were suspected of harboring the intention of dividing up the country. Breaking away from the Past The founding elite of the Turkish republic consisted of the young military and civilian officers of the Ottoman administration. Among this elite group were the who were actively participating in the politics of the Ottoman Empire in its later years. The Young Turks challenged the absolutism of Ottoman rule and built a rich tradition of opposition that shaped late

Ottoman life both intellectually and politically. This tradition of opposition laid the foundation for Atatürk's revolution. These elites had very strong centralist tendencies and a great desire to break totally away from the dynastic and religious past, with the intention of creating a country based on national and secular values, which then let them legitimize their position as the new ruling elite (Ergil, 2000). This intention of disassociation from the past became the elite group’s main policy, allowing them to see the Turkish people as an entity ready to be shaped consistent with their vision of what a society and nation should be (Ergil, 2000).

The years following Turkey’s independence (1923) were the times of reformation and re- creation of Turkey and Turkishness. History was re-written, language reforms were

68 implemented, and social life was engineered. The Arabic alphabet was replaced with the and Arabic and Persian words were eliminated from the daily language. The Ottoman legal and civil laws were diminished and replaced by Swiss, French and Italian ones. As

Anderson states (1983, p. 48), “to heighten Turkish-Turkey’s national identity consciousness at the expense of any wider Islamic identification, Ataturk imposed compulsory romantization.”

For the quest for a new unifying identity, long forgotten pre-Ottoman and pre-Islamic roots were re-introduced to provide an ideological glue for national unity (Ergil, 2000).

The new regime cut ties with the past and religion. This was done in a number of ways such as abolishing the Sultanate, the , and the , the spiritual pinnacle of Sunni Muslims. These kinds of reforms not only served to break from the past but also from the Islamic world as the Ottoman sultan had been recognized by Muslims as the head of the

Islamic world. The secularization of the educational system and the encouragement of modern clothing were other revolutions for the formation of new identities of Turkishness (Lewis, 1961).

As equally important, the new government took control over all religious institutions and their financial resources. This was, in a way, nationalization and appropriation of religion for the purpose of creating national unity among different ethnic Muslim groups whose commonality was Islam (Yavuz, 2000). This in and of itself was paradoxical because the Turkish establishment (the ruling elite) strictly enforced secularism. In fact, they have gradually transformed secularism (or laicism) to a religion-like political ideology called “”

(Guvenc, 1998). The majority of these policies were enforced mainly in urban Turkey, while traditional life in rural areas, which made up about 80 percent of the population during the second quarter of the 20th century, remained very much the same. As Ergil (2000, 47) puts it,

“this change created a volatile social fabric where the new and old, the modern and the traditional, East and West, the secular and the anti-secular, and the rich and the poor lived side by side with few points of contact.”

69 Like modernists elsewhere, the Turkish ruling elite believed that the new Turkish identity would make ethnic and cultural differences disappear and all groups would become alike under the same secular laws (Hennayake, 1992). Islam was appropriated for creating unity among

Turkish citizens including minorities because Turkishness was not accepted by all the ethnic groups in Turkey. For instance, the Kurds were called “Mountain Turks,” implying that the

Kurds were not actually a separate but were people of Turkish origin who lived in the mountainous areas of Turkey (Olson, 1998). As Yavuz (2001, 7) puts it nicely,

Turkish national identity was modeled on the Islamic conception of community and was disseminated through Islamic terms. The incorporation of religious vocabulary helped to nationalize Islamic identity. Examples of this include the incorporation of words, such as (referring to a religious community in the Ottoman empire, appropriated by the Republic to mean "nation"), vatan (), gazi (the of Mustafa Kemal, referring to those who fought in the name of Islam) and sehid (those who died for the protection and dissemination of Islam), into the nationalist lexicon. What all this suggests is that while the new Turkish state claimed a secular Turkish identity, it did not hesitate to appropriate Islam as the glue for forming unity among its peoples.

The ruling elite implemented reforms and policies to erase differences for the purpose of creating a homogeneous “nation state.” While most Armenians were deported during the last few years of the Ottoman rule, population exchanges of Turks (or rather Muslims) in the Balkans with the remaining Greeks during the early years of the Republic helped this homogenization process. Nevertheless, while differences could not be erased, the new Turkish identity did not fully replace the Ottoman identity, which was ethnically neutral. With the processes of urbanization, migration and globalization, people from these different segments and classes of

Turkish society came into contact, and in these contacts there were clashes of identities. The Struggle for Power and Clash of Identities While the mentality of the ruling elite, Kemalism, an authoritarian Westernization project, has not changed much, Turkey as a nation has changed greatly both socially and 70 politically since it was founded in 1923. With the impacts of globalization, rising educational levels, and the introduction of new ideas, ordinary people demand more democracy and freedoms. Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership and integration has increased such demands.

The official Turkish identity has often been challenged and questioned. Turkey has become confused and hesitant in terms of what it is and what it wants to be as the demands of the ruling elite and ordinary people differ. Turks have mainly embraced modernity and want less government involvement in their lives.

The people’s identity claims, which emphasize freedom of speech, thought, religion, and expression, do not overlap with the official identity that the ruling elite stresses (Ozdalga, 1998).

Such conflicting identity demands and negotiations threaten the privileged status of the establishment, which causes constant tensions and crises in Turkey. Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer (2001, 10), who lived in Turkey for four years, writes: “In the generations that have passed since then (since Ataturk), Turkey has become an entirely different nation. It is as vigorous and as thirsty for democracy as any on earth. But its leaders, who fancy themselves Atatürk's heirs, fiercely resist change. They believe that Turks cannot yet be trusted with the fate of their nation that an elite must continue to make all important decisions because the people are not mature enough to do so.”

Groups such as Leftists, Kurds, and Islamic activists have challenged Kemalism since the beginning of Turkey and confronted the policies and practices of the ruling elite, the ultimate power holder (Ozdalga, 1998). During the 1960s vibrant leftist movements shaped politics for the following two decades as they pushed for more freedoms. Although the state held strong control over politics, there was also a rise of populist nationalism and religious revivalism during this period. Religious organizations grew rapidly in the 1970s as they helped those of lesser means cope with the problems of modernization and became clubs for excluded groups seeking solidarity in a changing world. These were also times when the Nationalist Action Party, with an

71 emphasis on Turkish nationalism, and the Nationalist Order Party, with its Islamist emphasis, came into existence to play a role in Turkish politics. While the Nationalist Action party was closed after the 1980 military coup, four parties from the Nationalist Order Party tradition, including the Welfare Party, whose leader became prime minister after 1995 elections, have been banned from politics (Yavuz, 2000).

After the 1980 military coup, all political parties were banned. In the following years, the head of the Turkish military became president and new parties were established. However,

Turgut Ozal founded the Motherland Party in 1983. Ozal, the rising star and future president of

Turkey, was able to incorporate different political and ideological trends into the party structure, which helped to ease existing political tensions as the years of polarization created tensions of all kinds among different groups. Ozal implemented a series of economic and social reforms that led to an economic boom and opened the country to the outside world despite high inflation, low productivity, and a skewed income distribution. Regardless of Ozal’s efforts for social reforms, the issues of modernization, change management and legal and political liberalization remained unresolved. Ozal suddenly died in 1993, and his reforms did not continue.

Today, large segments of Turkish society do not accept what is being imposed on them and are unhappy with these elitist practices. Ethnic, religious and ideological identities are polarized and room for reconciliation is lacking. The official nationalism is seen as isolationist and statist as it puts the state in the center of social life as the provider and protector, as well as the source of political power (Kinzer, 2001).

This process of othering and exclusion by the ruling elite, or what some call “White

Turks,” has marginalized the Muslim Turkish masses and minorities such as the Kurds. Islam and minority politics have been the oppositional identity for the marginalized and excluded segments of the Turkish society. While over 90 percent of Kurds do not want an independent state, their desire for cultural recognition is viewed as separatist (Ergil, 2000). Broadcasting and

72 education in Kurdish was only allowed in August 2002, when the parliament passed a series of laws as part of their plans for European integration. Even then, the state has not yet allowed private parties to broadcast in Kurdish and a government television channel is preparing for this purpose. The state’s fears and desires for control are not helping the democratization process in this venue.

Expressions of Islamic identity (e.g., headscarves) are banned from public space such as government offices and universities. Regardless of all bans and restrictions, the Islamic movement has managed to be a source of power for the marginalized and excluded (Ozdalga,

1998). The religious-based Welfare Party finished first in the 1995 elections, with 21.7 percent of the vote, gaining the largest number of seats in the parliament. The leader of the party was later forced to leave office and the party was closed with claims that it did not comply with the secular rule of the country. The party’s leader, Prime Minister was banned from politics by the constitutional court influenced by the establishment. However, just before the 2002 elections, a new conservative party, AK (Justice and Development) Party emerged. The former mayor of Istanbul and charismatic leader of the AK Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was a former member of the Welfare Party. His AK Party won 363 seats in the 550-seat Turkish parliament (Time, 2002). Erogan became Prime Minister regardless of the large media campaign against him and his party.

Today, virtually all Islamic and Kurdish groups support EU membership for economic, political and social reasons. The belief is that if Turkey becomes a member of the European

Union, it will not only help economic prosperity, but also normalize Turkey politically and socially as they see Western practices of secularism and pluralism as being more democratic and inclusive (Kosebalaban, 2002). The 1997 coup had the greatest influence on political Islam as it forced its proponents to reexamine their political agendas as well as their language of discourse.

They have framed their discussions of democracy, law, and justice in more universal terms,

73 consistently emphasized the virtues of secularism and identified themselves as Muslim democrats, an Islamic form of the Christian Democratic movement in Europe.

According to Kinzer (2001), the position of the Turkish ruling elite along with its

Kemalist ideology, an authoritarian Westernization project, has been viewed by the public as the source of the contemporary crisis and the main obstacle for Turkey’s democratization, economic and social development because it refuses to accept the changes in the Turkish society. The ruling elite including bureaucrats such as military commanders and prosecutors, and “loyal” newspaper editors are trapped in the 1920s of Turkey. They resist increasing pressure from worldly Turks who want their country to break free of its chains to become more democratic

(Kinzer, 2001).

The problems of state and political authoritarianism have haunted Turkey for almost 80 years. Regardless of all the efforts of state institutions, particularly educational institutions at all levels, and the media, an ideal homogenous national identity has never been achieved. As a result, the least integrated segments of society have been ethnic groups such as the Kurds and religious groups who have not found the identity being imposed on them as being inclusive, but rather as being exclusive. The lack of clear definitions of separatism (boluculuk) and fundamentalism (irtica) makes it difficult to discriminate separatists from cultural rights defender and fundamentalists from a devout Muslims. It is all subjective and arbitrary. Today, the most sensitive issues of discussion in Turkey are the issues of secularization and as the hegemonic power of the ruling elite, White Turks, still remains unchallenged.

As Ergil (2001, 54) puts it,

All of these elements demonstrate the potency and significance of the debate around the nature of the regime in Turkey. Can we come to a consensus on the regime to reconcile and to include all groups, opinions and convictions? The lack of such a consensus has not served the interest of society and has failed to bring the prominence and prosperity for which the nation yearns so much. It remains to be seen if Turkey perpetuates its anti- democratic secularist policy; or decides to create a new democratic constitution where 74 traditional groups with religious sensitivities, as well as citizens with other ethnic backgrounds, can feel included. If the official policy of laicism has failed to secularize society because it has not been supported by commercialization, industrialization, modern education and urbanization, then religious affairs should be taken from state control and left to civil society. Only then can the sociological process of secularization proceed. Turkey’s modernization project started with revolutions and success; but Kinzer (2001, 21) argues that “something about the concept of diversity frightens Turkey's ruling elite. It triggers the deep insecurity that has gripped Turkish rulers ever since the Republic was founded in 1923.”

Closing Thoughts In this chapter, I provided a brief political history of Turkey and its role in the creation of multiple identities. The role of institutions (e.g., state, media) in the creation and reconstruction of identities has been highlighted, as Giddens (1991) argues that modernity and identity must be understood at institutional levels. Turkish political history provides a great example in terms of the fluidity, complexity, and temporality of identity (Keith and Pile, 1993).

Moreover, Turkey has not been able to create a system that includes all segments of society with all of its diversity (Kinzer, 2001). In fact, since politics have been so much polarized and social life has been disrupted, there has been a clash of identities. The clash is between the ruling elite and ordinary Turks, and it is the central fact and dilemma of this state striving to be more modern. The Kemalist coalition (White Turks) that includes businessmen, powerful media forces, the military, and the state courts and prosecutors has taken part in this process of exclusion or polarization. The lack of dialogue and negotiation, which are fundamental for democracy, has left little space for differences (Ergil, 2000). Fears and lack of understanding determine the nature of conversation (that is, if there is any to begin with). The same sorts of notions, or rather baggage, have been carried by immigrant Turks and by Turkish state officials to America and other parts of the world. Similar clashes are experienced among the members of

75 the first generation Turkish American community. What is experienced is a crisis of identities.

Multiplicity of identity is at the core of these debates over identity and power.

In the next two chapters, I examine multiple Turkish identities (whether imported from

Turkey or formed in the United States). I provide voices from Turkish Americans about their identities and negotiation of their meanings. The positions that my interviewees take reflect the diversity and multiplicity in being Turkish and in being Turkish American. Besides experiencing similar identity clashes as Turks in Turkey, Turkish Americans have to negotiate between their

Americanness/Westerness and Turkishness/Easterness at the same time.

76

CHAPTER VI

IDENTIFYING TURKISHNESS

Ethnicity and race are two of the essential organizing concepts of the modern world.

They are among the common categories that people use to organize their ideas about who they are and how they are different from others (Healey, 2003). People use ethnic and racial categories to understand their experiences and to make sense of the world around them. While such categorizations help us understand some aspects of societies by simplifying and stereotyping them, they also cause us to exclude and discriminate. Ethnic categorizations are attempts that we make to reach some generalizations about certain groups of people whom we perceive to have commonalities.

In this chapter, I examine Turkishness as a cultural category because it a fundamental part of being Turkish American. In order to understand Turkish Americanness, there needs to be a close examination of Turkishness. Today, over 3500 people come from Turkey to the United

States every year. They do not drop their “old” identities from the other side of Atlantic when they cross it. They come with their unique and distinctive identities, each with similar yet different values, traditions, beliefs and practices. They ship not only themselves but also their cultural baggage, including their religious, political, and ideological positions and their notions of gender, religion, love, hate, nation, conflict and difference. Each has a different view of what a

Turk is and ought to be, but they use their similarities along with their differences not only to

77 position and understand themselves as individuals but also as a community, which is imagined to exist. Who is a Turk? I recognize the difficulty in putting all Turks in one single category. I understand the difficulty of identifying for the sake of a general understanding. Turks have characteristics that make them different from others yet differences among them are many. They “imagine” that there is a community called “Turks” of which they are a part. However, when it comes to identifying their community, each Turk identifies it differently and gives it different meanings.

Like other identities, Turkishness is not absolute, but rather is complex, multiple, contingent, historical, contextual and personal. It means different things for different people at different places in different times. “I don’t think of Turks are as an ethnic group” says Turhan, a 31-year old first generation Turkish American6. He argues that,

Turkishness is a concept, which is very similar to the concept of Americanness. They (the founding fathers of Turkey) have created a concept like “I am Turk, hard working, and honest.” This is what the republic has done, creating a concept. Turkishness only represents citizenship; it does not really represent any ethnicity. It is a lot like what we have here in the United States. Many Turks don’t even know their own histories. That is another problem. Who is a Turk? For instance, my father is Macedonian. There are Albanians, Bosnians, Kurds, Chechnians, and a lot of others in Turkey. We cannot reduce Turkey to a single ethnicity. From blonde and blue eyed to Arab looking people, we have a lot of different backgrounds. The concept of Turkishness was totally newly created, from language to other things. If you look at it from an ethnicity perspective, we do not have much in common with Turks from . Dogan, who is a conservative Muslim Turk, agrees with Turhan’s definition of Turkishness, likening it to Americanness,

I like the idea of Americanness. It makes a lot of sense. It gives you a common identity but at the same time lets you have a specific identity if you want to, for

6 Biographical sketches of the interviewees are provided in Appendix B. 78 example Turkish-American. It means that you are American but you also have a Turkish identity. I consider Turkish citizenship in the same way. We could be ethnically Kurdish or Jewish or Turkish but we are all Turkish at the end because we are all under the roof of Turkish state. Each is trying to make sense of their own cultural category by looking at others. They draw parallels between Turkishness and Americanness to map their own positions. They try to locate their group by using Americanness as a reference point. While their identifications tell us something about who Turks are, they tell nothing at the same time because identifying

Americanness is another difficult task.

David, a Jewish Turk who immigrated to the U.S. ten years ago, has his own way of looking at Turkishness:

We are Jewish so our Turkishness is rather different. We were raised as Turkish but it was a different kind of Turkishness. Therefore, I think my definition of Turkishness would very much overlap with the concept of citizenship. Turks are the ones who live under the roof of Turkey. Otherwise, we would reduce Turkishness to the ethnic Turks who migrated from Central Asia. Turkishness in Turkey cannot be reduced to a certain ethnic group because it is very mixed and very different ethnic groups have contributed it. But Raziye would disagree with David’s identification because she believes in primordial ties and blood. Raziye, who migrated from Crimea to Turkey after WWII and then came to the

United States as a teenager after staying in Turkey for a short period, states, “To me, people who came from Central Asia are the real Turks. The ones in Turkey have been very mixed. Whoever has Turkish blood is Turkish for me.” David does not have Turkish blood? Neither does Nazim, who has Kurdish parents, nor Ensar, who has mixed ancestors including Arab, Turkish, and

Kurdish, as I will show in the next section.

Dostum is a second generation Karacay-Turkish American. Karacay is a Turkic ethnic group from the Caucasus. They are known as Karacay Turks and there are a large number of

Karacay Turks in the New York metropolitan area. They migrated to the United States during the 79 1960s. Dostum’s identity gets even more complex as a result of intersecting identities such as

Karacay, Turkish, American and Muslim. He notes that,

I was born here in the United States so I am an American. Most of my friends have been American. I was raised as Karacay, more than anything else. Well, we have different languages and cultures. For us home is the Caucasus but I also have a lot of Turkish friends. I am very mixed in that sense. Karacay, American, Turkish, all mixed. My father lived in Turkey for 10 years and my mother was born and raised in Turkey. My father came to America in 1961 and my mom came here in 1967. It is very difficult for me. We are not just Turkish but also Karacay and American. How do we label Dostum? Is he Turkish, American, or Karacian?

Fatih, who is an upper class businessman and a devout Muslim, gives a more vague definition of Turkishness, “A Turk is someone who is ethical, spiritual and moral. That is an ideal Turk for me.” Denise, who describes herself as a proud Ataturk’s Turkish lady, disagrees with an identification of Turkishness in religious terms.

I don’t think if Turkishness can be based on religion although I respect the religion of Islam. A Turk is someone who respects his flag and country and religion but at the same time can think and live as he pleases. We are children of Ataturk so Turkishness can never be reduced to Muslimness. We have Turks who are not Muslim, such as Greek, Armenian and Jewish Turks. We are all humans. We cannot discriminate anyone. It is not based on a certain ethnic or religious group. Each of the identifications represents a cultural and political position. Fatih’s religious background makes him define Turkishness in a moral or religious context, but Denise rejects that identification and proposes citizenship instead of ethnicity.

Multiplicity of identity is a result of one’s multiple layers of identity. Each layer represents a different background. This makes it hard to come up with a clean-cut group identity.

Ensar, an import-export manager in a prestigious firm in New York, is a good example of that.

80 His roots include Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish cultures. He is not sure about his ethnicity or nationality and his statements represent the difficulty of having to choose an ethnic identity:

To tell you the truth, I don’t feel any nationality. It does not matter if you are Turkish, Kurdish or Arabic, but I have never told an Arab that I am an Arab. Maybe this is because I have been in the US since I was 17. In the US, it does not matter if you are Kurdish, Arabic or Laz, we are all Turkish if we are from Turkey. If an American asks my nationality, I will say Turkish. I would not say that I am Kurdish or Arabic because I am from Turkey. What group Ensari belongs to is a difficult question to answer. The multiplicity of his identity makes categorizations arbitrary. The multiplicity of his identity makes it difficult for him to identify with a single group. Turkish citizenship becomes a handy marker because it offers an easily understandable solution to his confusion.

In conclusion, while ethnicity is one category that can be used for defining Turkish group identity, identification is often artificial. Yet it provides a sense of community and belongingness. Everyone I interviewed claims his or her Turkishness, yet each understands something different from it and tells a different story about it. They create their own stories out of real and imagined happenings such as history, migration, discrimination, assimilation, and survival. They tell those stories to justify demands, to change relations of dominance, and to make sense of who they are and how they became the way they are. As Turks imagine themselves with other fellow Turks, they turn those imaginings into realities as part of their collective consciousness and identity. Regardless of all differences of meanings, Turks in the

New York metropolitan area imagine themselves as part of a “Turkish Community.” Members of this Turkish community have similar cultural and historical backgrounds and common interests, which make them somehow similar as they may put their differences aside for a greater share of power in American society and for a sense of belonging to a community. It is common interests and sometimes primordial ties that bring Turks together regardless of their differences.

81 Westerness and Middle Easterness Identities are not only geographically expressed but also spatially constituted. Turkish-

American Turkishness takes a different form in America than Turkishness in Turkey because the forces shaping Turkishness are not the same in each locale (Massey, 1993). First generation

Turkish-Americans firmly express their European or Western identities, while they think that they have markers inside and outside themselves that distinguish them from other ethnicities such as Eurpeans or Middle Easterners and such markers give them a sense of uniqueness and community. They talk about their own uniqueness and synthesis, which includes Turkish ethnicity (and other ethnicities such as Kurdish, Arab, Jewish), Islam, Westerness, and

Americanness.

Ayten, a second generation Turkish American, considers herself not just as Turkish, but also American, and indicates the importance of Islam in her identity. She states,

I consider myself Western although I have headscarf. I think I dress more Western. When I go to Turkey, people look at my way of dressing and give me negative comments. They tell me, “you are Turkish, you are Muslim why do you dress like an American?” because I always have my slacks and sneakers on, and I have my t-shirt on. But here when people look at me head, “Oh… she has a scarf”, they say. From bottom to my head, I am just like a total American except for my scarf. Ayten’s case is an interesting example of overlapping identities and the way these overlapping identities are viewed and understood. She claims and asserts her Westerness,

Americanness, and Muslimness while she sees the difficulty of accepting her differences (which are visual) by each group from which pieces of her identity originates.

Sibel moves the discussion of difference beyond visual similarities or differences in regard to Turks being Western. She does not believe that Turkish visual qualities, such as the way they dress and live their lives, fully qualify them as western. She states, “I think in terms of their life styles and fashions, Turks are more western but in terms of their way of thinking they

82 are more Middle Eastern.” Here the difficulty of categorization such as Western or Middle

Eastern is obvious because our meanings and interpretations of them are not standard.

The power of history in shaping identities and one’s perception about where s/he stands at the intersection of meanings is at the heart of Turkish identity claims. The Turkish present is understood through the past and the past constantly shapes the present. People provide their versions of history to justify their identity claims. Vedat, a retired physician and devout Muslim, uses history to justify his claim about his Western identity. He dates the westernization and modernization processes in Turkey to before the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic.

He argues, “We are closer to Europeans. We have been trying to be European for two hundred years. If you look at late Ottoman , they were all investing in Europe and the Balkans. In

Anatolia, there is not much ; it is all from Selcuks. Ottomans constructed mosques, dams, and bridges in the Balkans not in the mainland Anatolia. They were more interested in Europe than Anatolia.”

Turhan follows a similar path: “I am Western. My education makes me feel and live that way. This is what the Turkish Republic has created, a secular people; and I am a part of that. If you look at Ottoman history, modernization started in 1830s. It just did not start with the Turkish

Republic. A lot of people try to draw a very hard and rigid line between the Ottomans and

Turkish Republic, but it is not like that. We have gone through different stages and finally decided [in the favor of] republicanism.” Here westernization is portrayed as a historical process of acquiring modernity, democracy and secularism. Turhan finds and locates his identity in history through the meanings he gives to that process. He situates his identity and his community, the community of Turks, in history and provides evidence of the process. The past is as alive as the present in shaping Turhan and Dr. Vedat’s identities.

Westernization also represents an image and an ideal once set by founders of Turkey. For example Burhan asserts, “I am totally Western. I don’t find myself Middle Eastern. If we say

83 Middle Eastern, I think we have to add mustache and beard.” The mustache and beard are here viewed as representing the Middle East. Similarly, Ediz views his Western identity as a privilege that makes him a different and unique person. “I don’t want to sound cocky but I am a unique person because of my purely (my italics) western education. I am not totally (my italics) Turkish not racially but culturally. If you ask if I listen to , yes, I do, but I started to listen to opera when I was seven.”

The Western ideal was one of the dreams of the founders of Turkey. While the way westernization is understood by the Turkish establishment is a matter of debate (as discussed in the section about Turkey’s political history), the state with most of its institutions has promoted westernization as an ideal, particularly symbolically, since its beginning. Therefore, listening to opera and having an education in English or French has symbolic meanings in terms of one’s westernness. Westernization represents power, class, prestige, progress and privilege. The dominant media in Turkey, which has close ties with the establishment, plays a large role in constructing such an image as part of one’s identity.

When individuals move from one place to another, they bring with them their cultural practices and values. Regardless of strict secular practices, religion is still an important element of Turkish culture and identity. Similarly, Islam, as part of Turkish values carried over the

Atlantic, is an important component of Turkish-American identity. It is at the heart of the debate about one’s westerness or easterness. Temel, who is Muslim but does not practice Islam regularly, asserts,

I feel Asian. I feel we are different from both Europeans and Middle Easterners culturally, historically, and politically. I think from outside like the way we dress and live, yes, we look European. But from inside like religion and family values I don’t think if we are European. Our values are different. I feel that Islam connects me to other Muslims around the world. I feel more nationalistic with Islam. I saw this more clearly in the United States. I feel closer to the foreigners who are

84 Muslim. It means that Islam connects us in a way similar to Christianity connecting Americans with the English or Italians with the French and so on. As understood in Temel’s statements, one can imagine himself not only as part of an ethnic or racial group but also as part of a religious community. This is an attempt to understand the self and position it in a place where cultural, social and political meanings are negotiated, contested and constituted. This is not just a simple endeavor to construct the self but also to search and create new communities. The multiplicity of one’s identity represents the complexity of meanings in one’s identity. The decision of where one locates him or herself is based on personal experiences and similarities and differences one sees with others. The perception of one who tries to map himself is contextual, experimental, and depends on how he makes sense of the world around him.

Emrah, whose father was once a representative in the Turkish parliament, does not believe that Turks need to choose between the East and the West. He starts, “I don’t think we are either of them. I have been in both Europe and the Middle East. We don’t look like either of them. The so-called identity crises that we hear among Turks are very arbitrary. If we want to be a great nation and country, we have to accept who we are with our religion and history. We have to be at peace with ourselves. I am Muslim but at the same time I believe in democracy and freedom. Religion is a personal matter for me. We have to get together for a more peaceful nation. We need to get to know each other and learn to live together.”

Today, debates over Turkey’s multiple identities are all over the Turkish media. Such debates form discourses in everyday life as well as political discourses. These identity debates in

Turkey are followed and felt by Turkish-Americans living in the United States on daily basis.

The Turkish media, which often highlights differences, provides many examples of these debates, such as whether women who work in government offices or go to college should be allowed to wear a headscarf or whether men who work in government offices should have breaks

85 to attend Friday prayers (Yavuz, 2000). The media often represent wearing a headscarf or performing daily Muslim prayers as Middle Eastern and backward. Drinking alcohol and expressing femininity represents westerness, modernity, and progress. These images, whether symbolic or real, are viewed by many Turkish-Americans (particularly the first generation) everyday when they log on to the Internet to read Turkish newspapers.

In conclusion, identity and space are inseparable because knowing the self is an exercise in mapping where it stands. Space is an active constitutive component of identities because it is both medium and message of domination and subordination (Massey, 1993). Both America and

Turkey are bounded with locales filled with personal, social, and cultural meanings, and provide a skeleton in which Turkish identities are constituted, transformed, and maintained. Furthermore,

Turkish-American identities, being at the intersection of Western, Eastern, Islamic, European,

Turkish, American and other socio-spatial crossroads, indicate the complexity and the multiplicity of identity, and therefore the difficulty of mapping them. Turkish Americans say that they have a synthesis of their own. They are European but not quite like ‘Europeans’ because they are Muslim. They are Muslim but they are not like Arabs or Iranians because they are more modern and have democracy. They are Turkish but not in racial or ethnic terms because their

Turkishness is like Americanness. Disassociation with Arabs Many Turkish elite and intellectuals share views with the orientalists about Arabs. Their orientalist attitudes produced by Turkish reforms during and after the collapse of the Ottoman

Empire implicitly and explicitly acknowledged the West to be the home of progress and the East to backward (Gregory, 1995; Maksidi, 2002; Said, 1978). Turkish elite today project the West at the top of civilization, and propose the western experience of modernity as the ultimate goal for

Turkey as it was set by Ataturk. They argue that if Turkey wants to develop and get out of backward conditions of the Middle East and , it has to turn its face to the West not

86 to the East. They claim that Arabs and others are backward nations that have nothing to offer the

Turkish people. Writings of , who Edward Said views as an Orientalist (Said,

1978), are greatly received by Turkish leaders as well as intellectuals.

Such views shape Turkish sense of identity as they help to form opposites. Turkish

Americans identify themselves by emphasizing what they are not. One of the distinctive features of Turkish-American identification is its emphasis on disassociation from other Muslim groups and particularly Arabs. Although most Turks believe that they have a distinctive identity that is different from other Muslims, the degree of disassociation with Arabs and other Muslim groups differs according to their political, ideological, and religious positions. Many Turks, even religious ones, assert that their version and practice of Islam is more tolerant, more open-minded, more modern, and more peaceful, which implies that they assign the opposite qualities to other

Muslim groups such as Arabs. In this section, I touch upon some historical, ideological, and sociological reasons for such differentiation. a) Historical Reasons In the modern Turkish collective memory, Arabs represent a nation that did not help

Turks in their struggle against western domination during WWI regardless of the years of privileged status Arabs were given. The modern Turkish collective memory views Arabs as a nation that allied with the British and French forces against the Ottoman Turks and betrayed them.

Historically, Arabs had been under Muslim Ottoman rule for over three centuries. With the Ottoman Ummah system, they were considered as part of the Muslim majority and enjoyed majority rights with a certain degree of cultural and political autonomy and privilege. However, things changed when the Empire got weak, could not cope with the problems it was facing, and finally could not avoid disintegration. The 1826 (Reorganization or Regulations) and

87 the 1856 Islahat Fermani (the Reform Edict) were efforts to modernize the Ottoman sociopolitical system to try to keep it from falling apart (Erdogan, 2002).

The Young Turks (or Jon Turks), one of the most influential groups consisting of a group of young students in the army medical school during the late years of the Ottoman Empire, founded a secret committee, the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) in 1889. Their role in shaping the politics of the Ottomans and modern Balkan and Middle

Eastern history was crucial and their sociopolitical ideology has greatly shaped Turkish politics and collective memory. Many argue that their influences are still visible in the Turkish polity even today (Ozdalga, 1998). The Young Turks saw constitutional and parliamentary rule as a solution to the Empire’s illness by arguing that the empire was threatened by the centrifugal forces of separatist minority nationalism, which could be easily used by Western powers with designs on Ottoman territory. Through parliamentary representation, the Young Turks desired the unity of all the ethnic and religious elements within the Empire, which could only be achieved by giving all communities a stake in the empire (Erdogan, 2002). After unsuccessful attempts of “”, which urged all the ethnic and religious groups under the Ottoman rule to unite, and “Islamism”, which emphasized the unity of all the Ottoman Muslim subjects, the Young Turks turned to Turkish nationalism as a unifying ideology for the remains of the

Ottoman lands. By 1908, the ideas of Ottomanism and Islamism had failed to create a unity among Muslim Ottomans and there were much stronger nationalistic tendencies among both the

Young Turks and Arabs. The Arab elite from Damascus, who were denied posts in particular after the Young Turk revolution of 1908, adopted Arabism as a mechanism for expressing dissatisfaction with the Ottoman system. Some of these Arab elite allied with the British and other Western powers and did not support the Ottomans during World War I, and some even fought against the Ottoman Empire (Erdogan, 2002; Yavuz, 2000).

88 The Arab lack of support has been viewed by many Turks as betrayal and has left damaging marks on the Turkish collective memory. Many Turks believe Arabs betrayed them at time of their greatest need. One of the famous sayings among the Turks today is “Turks have no friends but Turks.” This represents a choice of Turkish nationalism over other meanings and choices of asserting identity such as Islam and Muslim Ummah (nation).

This part of Turkish identity, disassociating Turks from Arabs, is indicated in my interviews. Turhan, who works as a vice president in one of New York’s financial institutions, expresses his views about Arabs rather boldly:

There might be some in Turkey saying that Arabs are Muslim as we are so we should help them in their fight against . Hello? Arabs allied with the British and fought against the Ottomans during WWI. They have betrayed us. Especially , they don’t care about anything but their interests. They don’t care about Islam; they don’t care about their people. Turhan does not believe that Arabs like Turks, either: “I think Arabs hate Turks. We have ruled them. That is it. They say you were the leaders of the Islamic world. Blah! Blah! Blah! Don’t forget what you did during WWI.” Cindy who is a second generation Turkish-American is displeased with people associating Turks with Arabs. She notes that “It bothers me because people say statements that are not correct. They say that we are Arab and we speak Arabic. Wake up, hello, you know. Study history a little bit.” Vedat, who is a retired physician, conveys similar views: “It is historical. We ruled them so they don’t like us. I think the British influence also made them feel distance from us.” Many Turks see Arabs as betrayers at their time of need, the

First World War. The Turkish-Arab past shapes present Turkish views about Arabs. It shapes collective memory, discourse and world view. Turkishness is based on stressing, maintaining and creating differences that differentiate them from other Muslim groups, such as Arabs.

89 b) Ideological Reasons Turkish official ideology, Kemalism (an authoritarian westernization project), has been at the core of Turkish political and social life since 1923. The ideology focused on creating a separate Turkish identity that was different from the Ottoman as well as the Ottoman Empire’s

Muslim entities such as Arabs. The founding fathers of Turkey were mainly from the Committee of Union and Progress and Young Turks (Erdogan, 2002). The Young Turks became the ruling elite under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (the later Ataturk). They started a strict secularization and Westernization program, which has been ongoing since Turkey’s beginning in

1923. They began a new nation with a new identity. To construct this identity, they changed

Turkey’s alphabet from Arabic to Latin, emphasized Turkishness rather than Islam, encouraged

European style clothing and discouraged Islamic clothing, and removed all Islamic schools and

Arabic teaching (Yavuz, 2000).

Whether symbolic or institutional, all of these policies and practices distanced Turks from Arabs ideologically and culturally. This has left marks on Turkish thinking and self identity, as Turks today view themselves as modern, European, more democratic and different from Arabs. They implicitly or even sometimes explicitly stress their differences with which they view superiority over the Arabs. Therefore, if Turks see themselves as more modern, more

European, more democratic, then they see Arabs are less modern, less democratic, more eastern

(or Middle Eastern), and backward. Many orientalist views about Arabs are shared by the Turks, and the Turkish media’s contribution to these views are significant. Turks, they believe, have created a unique synthesis that combines modern values such as representative and secular government with Muslim concepts of love, tolerance, and peace, that Arabs and other Muslims have not been able to accomplish. Particularly, the establishment or “White Turks” have distanced the Turkish State from Arabs and Arabic states. The Turkish state has never had close relationships with neighboring Arabic states. It is extremely difficult to see anything positive

90 about Arabs in the mainstream Turkish media which has close ties with the establishment7. Of course, all these shape the Turkish public’s world view about Arabs. Here is how Cindy looks at the issue:

Islam does not have much importance in shaping my identity. I don’t think if Turkishness can be limited to Muslimness because there are Jewish and Greek people living in Turkey. They are Turkish but they carry their Jewish or Greek identity. We accept all religions in Turkey. I think it is bad for public relations if we bring up only Muslim side of Turkishness. We are at the center of Europe and Asia. I think it is great that Turkey is a secular state. It is great that it is democratic. Sibel concludes, “I think Ataturk did great. He made us different from Arabs.” Burhan adds, “I think I would have done the same thing. He had to do what he had to do. I am glad that

Turkey is not like or . I think Turks are more open to change than Arab nations.” Such a disassociation was part of the Kemalist project, and to which it seems that many

Turks have accepted. It gives them a sense of uniqueness and gives them materials from which to construct their separate identities. c) Sociological Reasons Turks have experienced almost a century of the secularization process. They have been more open to Western influences as a result of Turkey’s close ties with Europe and the United

States. Regardless of some problems, Turkey is a relatively open society where there is a certain degree of freedom of speech, thought and life style. Although, the role of the military in Turkish life is still strong, Turks have been practicing parliamentary rule and representative government for decades. This political structure has also caused Turks to see themselves differently from

7There are many examples of such representations in the Turkish media. When the former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan visited in 1997, he was received by the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi in a tent. This image was shown frequently on Turkish televisions such as KanalD, Atv and Star with comments that Arabs were uncivilized, uncultured, and backward. Other examples of such representations also include the Saudi government’s practices of the death penalty by cutting of the head, Arabs being shown as noisy and dirty, and Arab states lacking democracy. 91 other Muslims, particularly Arabs. All these of these factors have had influences on Turkish thinking and have changed the nation’s social fabric (Ergil, 2000).

Religiously, Turkey has been moderate, and radical interpretations of Islam have not found many followers in Turkey. Some of this is a legacy of moderate Ottoman Islamic interpretations, which resulted from Sufi influences among Turks, while some is a result of the republican experience. Regardless of its problems, political Islam, which seeks a greater role for

Islam in politics and is often characterized with fundamentalism, has mainly acted within the secular political system and shared a certain power in Turkish polity. Religious groups have acted according to secular rules for the most part whether willingly or unwillingly. All these have led to a more moderate interpretation of Islam that is often called “Turkish Islam” or “Anatolian

Islam” (Aras and Caha, 2000). As Aras and Caha (2000, 1) point out, “the main premise of

‘Turkish Islam’ is moderation. Since people of Turkish origin first accepted Islam, they perceived and practiced it under the influence of Sufi ideas. Sufi-oriented Islamic movements kept a certain distance from the politics of their times in contrast to other Islamic movements.”

The assumption is that Turks have a different interpretation of Islam that is more compatible with modernity, tolerance, diversity, and democracy as it makes religion more of a personal moral issue than a political system.

One interesting example is a community that has developed under the influence of

Fethullah Gulen, a prominent religious leader in Turkey. The community has Islamic, nationalist, liberal, and modern characteristics and is based on the teaching of Said Nursi, one of the 20th century Muslim scholars in Turkey. Gulen’s teachings emphasize an understanding that is based on both science and religion. Gulen and his followers formed meetings, panels, and seminars that have focused on tolerance, diversity, dialogue and the art of living together with differences.

Gulen himself has met with Jewish, Armenian and other religious leaders in Turkey and met

Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in 1998, and the late Cardinal O’Connor in New York before

92 that. Indeed, Gulen was one of the first that used the term “Turkish Islam” or “Anatolian Islam,” which was interpreted as a way of distancing Turkish Islamic interpretation from Wahhabi

(Saudi) or Shiite radical interpretations. “Gulen and his followers have tried to produce a religious-political movement favoring , Turkish nationalism, tolerance, and democracy without sacrificing religious precepts” (Aras and Caha, 2000, p. 3).

While part of the Turkish secularist elite looks at Gulen and his movement with suspicion, others have viewed his movement as a progressive development, and therefore a chance for world peace. While the number of his followers is unknown, he has attracted people from all walks of life and his followers have opened hundreds of schools in Turkey and Central

Asia. In fact, they have opened schools outside Turkey, including two middle schools in the New

York metropolitan area, one in Brooklyn and one in Clifton, New Jersey. During my fieldwork, I visited their schools and participated in some of their activities. The group is influential among the Turkish-American community in the New York area. It not only organizes community gatherings for the Turkish-American community in the area but also interfaith dialogue meetings with area Jewish and Christian communities. Other Turkish Muslim groups besides the followers of Gulen also offer peaceful Islamic interpretations as a result of the Sufi movement’s emphasis on love and tolerance. A group called “Suleymancilar” has been active in Mosque building and summer student camps.

To summarize, Turks believe that they are different from Arabs in terms of their moderate interpretations of Islam and therefore more open to democracy and tolerance to differences. In order to prove their tolerance to other religions, they give examples of Ottoman practices of religious diversity and treatment of Jews and Christians. They argue that while Jews were persecuted in different parts of Europe, the Ottoman Turks opened their doors to them and treated them fairly for centuries. They deny Armenian claims of genocide and argue that

Armenians, enjoyed the protection and autonomy under the Ottoman Empire until they allied

93 with to fight against Turks. They claim that there were killings between Armenians and

Turks in which both lost lives but this was never in the form of genocide as Armenians suggest.

They argue that Armenians exaggerate the events of 1915. Of course, Armenians have claims of their own by arguing that what happened between the Turks and Armenians during World War I was genocide by comparing it with the holocaust.

The degree of disassociation with Arabs gets even larger in America as the American perception of Arabs is not a very positive one. It was interesting that when the president of the

Federation of Turkish American Associations, Egemen Bagis, told me about Turkish-American alliances with other ethnic and racial groups, none of the groups he mentioned were Arab. For instance, he told me how closely they were working with Jewish, Latino, Pakistani, and Black

American groups and lobbies for their own purposes, such as lobbying against the

Armenian and Greek lobbies in America. There was no mention of partnering with Arab or

Persian groups even though one might expect a closer alliance because of religious similarities.

In most cases, an association of Turks with Arabs bothers Turkish-Americans. Ayten is a second generation Turkish-American teenager. She practices her daily prayers, covers her head and attends Nursi community activities in New York. She believes that Turks are different from

Arabs and it bothers her that people associate her with Arabs because of the way she dresses. She notes, “People think that I am an Arab because of the way I dress. This bothers me. I am proud that I am Muslim but I don’t want to be known as an Arabic person because I am not Arabic, I am Turkish. I would like it when the people think and accept the fact I am Turkish and I am not

Arabic. When I say I am Turkish, people are in total shock and I don’t like that. I don’t like to think that, oh Turkish people cannot be covered or cannot be Muslim.”

Sinan, another second generation Turkish American, argues that “after the events of

September 11th, 2001, nobody said that Turks were terrorists. I also think that it is not right to blame all Muslims because of the events. You cannot blame everybody. It bothers me when

94 people generalize all Muslims as terrorists. There are different types of Muslims.” Sinan calls for justice and intellectual honesty. As Edward Said (2001, 2) puts it, “there isn't a single Islam: there are , just as there are Americas. We need to step back from the imaginary thresholds that separate people from each other and re-examine the labels.”

Although the degree of disassociation varies from the political and ideological positions that each individual takes, all of the people that I talked to stated how displeased they were with being associated with Arabs. The level of disassociation varies from hate to simple ethnic differentiation depending on their ideological, political, and religious positions. While more religious Turks may find Muslims, including Arabs, closer to themselves than non-Muslims, they express that they want to be known as Turks and not to be confused with Arabs. There are very few Turks in the U.S. who become members of Muslim associations, such as the Muslim Student

Association. Some Notes on Ethnicity and Nationality among Turkish Americans The diversity of the Turkish American community in America and particularly in the

New York metropolitan area is also a result of the places where the immigrants came from and the nationalities they hold. In other words, not all Turks in the United States have come from

Turkey and hold Turkish citizenship. They come from different places and often times have different ethnicities than the Turks in Turkey. For instance, during the Turkish Day Parade in

2002 in New York, Azerbaijanis, Turkmen, Crimean Turks, , Kurds, Cypriot Turks,

Karacay Turks, and even Albanians and Bosnians marched in the parade. While some of these groups are often called “Turkic groups,” others such as Bosnians or Albanians are not Turkish but became Islamicized under the Ottomans. The same is true of groups from the Caucasus such as Chechnians or Circassians, who are all related to Turks in one way or another.

The result is a very mixed Turkish American community with quite different ethnic and national backgrounds. Members of groups such as Circassians, Crimeans, or Karacays have

95 relatives in Turkey or stayed in Turkey after their migration from the Soviet Union during and after WWII. However, others such as Albanians, Azerbaijanis or Turkmen may have never lived in Turkey, but they have primordial ties that go back way before the establishment of the modern

Turkish state. Muslim groups in the Balkans who were under the Ottoman rule still have a great sympathy for Turkey. Turkey’s ties with former Soviet states such as , Turkmenistan, and have increased since their independence. As the former president of the

Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA), Egemen Bagis, indicated:

Most of these people had lived or have relatives in Turkey. They were member before the collapse of Former Soviet Union. This is a language unity. We all speak the same language. Most leaders of these organizations go to Turkey, lived in Turkey and like Turkey. It is a solidarity and mutual support issue for them, too. We all become stronger by uniting. There are not that many Azerbaijanis or Crimeans but when they unite, they become more effective and influential. An Azeri is related to Azerbaijan as we Turks from Turkey are related to Turkey. We come together for mutual interests. We have a lot of commonalities such as language and culture. We support each other for each others activities. (Interview with the FTAA president Egemen Bagis in 2002) Closing Thoughts This chapter explored the multiplicity of Turkish identities and their multiple resources.

The diversity of spaces and histories are at the heart of multiple Turkish identities in Turkey and therefore in the United States. As Turks moved across space (from Central Asia to Eastern

Europe) and through history, they added various layers to their identities. Each layer not only represents an era but also a resourceful place (Central Asia as the original home of the Turks, the

Middle East as the source of Islam, Europe as the source of modernization and Westernization) for constructing and claiming different Turkish identities.

Turks use their similarity and differences to claim their distinctive identities. Turks claim that they are Turkish but their Turkishness is different from that of Turks in Central Asia because their experiences are different; they claim they are Muslim but their Muslimness is different from

96 that of Arabs because they are more modern and more Western. They claim that they are

European but their Europeanness is different because they are Muslim. In the next chapter, I explore another layer of Turkishness of Turks in America: their Americanness. As Harvey (1996, p.7) put it, “Identities shift with changing context, dependent upon the point of reference so that there are no absolutes. Identities are fluid sites that can be understood differently depending on the vintage point of the formation and function.” Turkishness in America is not the same as

Turkishness in places such as Turkey or Central Asia. In each locale, the forces shaping

Turkishness differ and form different kinds of Turkish identities.

97

CHAPTER VII

TURKISH AMERICANNESS

Although the United States is a country of immigrants, it has not always been accommodating to new immigrants. Every new immigrant group had to work its way up in the

American society as each group faced difficulties in terms of acceptance by the larger society.

Italian, Jews, Irish, and Chinese had to work hard for recognition and a place in the United

States. In How the Irish Became White, Ignatiev (1996) provides an interesting picture of the

Irish immigrant experience in the United States. Italian, Jewish, and Chinese immigrants also faced difficulties after crossing the boundaries of America (Haberle, 2003; Olson, 2002; Sterba,

2003).

When it comes to the acceptance of different immigrant groups in the United States, history keeps repeating itself. Different periods witness different treatments of various immigrant groups, as if each ethnic and racial group has its turn to become “American.” Today, many people find Muslim immigrants “different” and “strange", as Chinese, Irish, or Jewish immigrants were once viewed. One of the myths that many scholars in the United States have is that Muslim immigrants have difficulty integrating into American culture because they come from a very different background (Camarota, 2002; Hayani, 1999). While this is true in some ways, it is not in others. Muslim immigrants have different cultural and religious values from

European immigrants, who share many religious and cultural similarities with people in the

United States, which may make their integration and acceptance relatively easier and their negotiation somewhat less painful (Ahmed, 1986). However, ethnic, cultural, and religious

98 differences are not the only reason for the allegedly slow Muslim integration (or assimilation) in the United States. Another equally important reason, if not more important one, is that majority of the Muslim immigrants, including Turks, are first generation immigrants (Camarota, 2002).

The vast majority of Turkish immigrants came to the United States after the 1965 liberal immigration laws. Since the majority is still the first generation, their integration is an ongoing process and may take more generations.

In this chapter, I examine Turkish American identity negotiations in the cultural and political context of the United States. I explore Turkish senses of belonging and self-positioning in regard to Americanness and Turkishness by looking at the social construction process in which people place themselves in diverse cultural context such as the United States. I explore

Turkish Americans’ Americanness and their assertion of their American identity by looking at generational, gender, and religious factors in claiming or not claiming an American identity. Competing Identities Discussions of ethnic identity are generally situated in paradigms of assimilation or cultural pluralism (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). Identity assertion is at the center of cultural negotiation and pluralism, which seeks recognition of a certain group identity by the larger public for the purpose of cultural survival. Such assertion is important to Turkish Americans, who strive to differentiate themselves from other Muslim groups and who have been historically rendered invisible in the American context by both their relatively small number and their tenuous status in America.

Turkish-American identities in the United States materialize through the confrontation of two driving forces: the immigrant Turkish culture and American culture. These two forces of identity compete and strive for domination. The result is Turkish-American identities. Regardless of the differences they had, the vast majority of Muslim Turks who came to the United States in the early 1900s have largely assimilated into the larger American culture. As most of these first

99 immigrants were single men, they married Americans and members of other ethnic groups. Very few children of these mixed marriages have asserted their Turkish identities. Ahmed (1986) provides some accounts of the experiences of the early immigrants and their immigration experience, but there is little available about the second generation of those early arrivals. They have mainly assimilated into the larger culture. Therefore, my discussion of first and second generation Turkish Americans is based on the data I collected from Turkish immigrants who came to the United States after World War II and their children as second generation Turkish

Americans.

After the first Turkish immigrants arrived in America in the early 20th century, there was a period of slow immigration from Turkey to the United States between the end of World War I and the 1950s. This was also a period of disconnect and assimilation for those who were left in

America. These first immigrants did not have a strong Turkish national identity because they considered themselves to be Ottomans or Muslims rather than Turks. The strong sense of

Turkish national identity was very much a modern Turkish phenomenon after the state was established in 1923. The new state was based on Turkish nationalism and promoted Turkishness as the unifying element for its people. Immigrants who came to the United States after the 1950s had much stronger national feelings as the nation building process in Turkey matured. It was this second wave of immigrants that actually promoted Turkishness in the United States. The combination of weak feelings of national identity and intermarriages resulted in large-scale assimilation of the children of this group. They have mostly assimilated into the larger American culture regardless of their cultural and religious differences.

The story is rather different for the Turks who came to America after World War II. This group has much stronger national feelings than the Turks who immigrated to America during the early 20th century. They were the “Republican Children”, meaning that they were born and raised with the values that the new modern Turkish Republic promoted, and proudly asserted their

100 Turkish identities. They were the generation that was raised and educated in modern Turkey and were strictly secular and quite nationalistic. This new group included more families and females; those wanting to start a family often chose to marry people of Turkish descent.

The post World War II immigrants established institutions and organizations under which

Turkish immigrants gathered and promoted Turkish culture. The establishment of organizations such the American Turkish Society (ATS), Federation of Turkish American Associations

(FTAA), Turkish American Women’s League (TAWL), and other regional organizations in other parts of the United States were a result of the nationalistic views of these new immigrants, their need and desire for cooperation and cultural preservation, and the encouragement they received from the Turkish government. They opened the Ataturk School, which received financial and institutional support from the Turkish State, such as providing classroom space in the Turkish

Consulate in New York, and teaching materials, for the teaching of , culture and history to their kids. Many second generation Turkish Americans learned Turkish during their studies at the Ataturk School for over 30 years, which now has about 100 students and is maintained by the Turkish American Women’s League. Summer visits to Turkey have also helped first generation Turkish Americans to heighten their children’s Turkish identity. All eight members of the second generation that I interviewed told me about their visits to Turkey and how it impacted their feelings about Turkey and their Turkishness. Their visits and stays in

Turkey ranged from several weeks to several months. Most of them had also gone to the Ataturk

School, which had helped them to learn Turkish and about Turkey.

The vast majority of Muslim Turks in America are first generation, as the main period of

Turkish immigration started in the years following World War II. Like other first generation immigrants, first generation Turkish-Americans have their loyalties both to their native culture and place of origin, and to the culture and place in which they live today. However, these loyalties change with the second and third generations, as their children and grandchildren have

101 little or no connection with their parents’ or grandparents’ place of origin and cultural practices.

While their parents and grandparents are often more isolated within their own immigrant communities, the following generations become more involved in American life and live their lives as Americans. They speak perfect English, many of their friends are “Americans,” and they know American culture much better than their parents. The barriers for their participation in the larger American culture for these newer generations are much less significant than for previous generations. For instance, in my interviews all my second generation Turkish-American subjects asserted their American identity without hesitation and acknowledged their Turkish background, while most first generation Turkish-Americans asserted that they were Turkish, even if they were

American citizens.

While all first generation interviewees express their appreciation for America and the opportunities that they have here, they are selective about what they adopt from American culture. They negotiate their “old” cultural values and compromise what they can accept and reject from the “new” culture. Aysel is a well educated and conservative Turkish mother, who covers her head with a scarf. She has lived in the United States for 17 years. The following is her justification for her celebration of Christmas and Thanksgiving, regardless of her conservative life style:

For the first ten years, I did not want to cook turkey during Thanksgivings because I thought that it was an American holiday. My children always asked me about it but I always rejected it. We had American friends over and it did not feel right to have guests but not cook a turkey. I have been cooking turkey for my children and guests in last couple of years. I have also been thinking about having Christmas lights as Christmas and Ramadan are around the same time in last few years. In Turkey, people have lights during the month of Ramadan. I am thinking about having those this year. Over time, you take a lot of things from a culture if you think they don’t conflict with your cultural values. The things that you take are things from civilization. Civilization is different from culture.

102 Aysel would be considered strictly religious and therefore less likely assimilate compared to the

Turks who are much more westernized and much less religious. Her statements indicate strategies to cope with differences, integration and negotiation of meanings and values, both

“old” and “new.”

Ayten, a 17 year-old second-generation high school student, has quite religious parents and two older sisters. She covers her head, although her older sisters do not. She states: “I am

Turkish-American. I feel more Turkish but I also do feel that I am American. But when people ask me ‘where are you from?’ I say Turkey. I also say that I am Turkish, but I was born and raised here. Whoever lives here is American. In America, everyone is from somewhere. Nobody is 100 percent American. I consider my parents American.” While Ayten considers her parents

American, both of her parents told me they are not. Her parents have been in the United States for over thirty years but applied for citizenship only a few years ago. This generational difference about feeling American or Turkish puts second generation Turkish Americans in a rather interesting position. They cross boundaries of difference everyday as they leave home and go to school or work. Home and outside are two different worlds for many second generation Turkish

Americans.

Except for those who came to America as children, virtually all the first-generation people that I interviewed stated their Turkishness before their Americanness, no matter how long they have been in the United States. Almost all stated that they liked America and the freedoms they have here, but very few identified themselves as American. They often emphasized that it is a matter of feeling as they all have their family and friends back in Turkey. “I don’t know if I will ever feel American even after I a become US citizen” says Burhan, a 27-year old first generation Turkish immigrant, who came to the U.S. in 1998. Atakan, another immigrant who came to the United States thirty years ago, does not feel differently, although he has been in the

United States for almost thirty years. He is married to a Polish woman and they have two

103 children who are in college. On his office wall is a saying, “I left my heart in Turkey.” I asked him what that meant and he responded, “that is what I feel.” He has most of his family and friends in Turkey, therefore he feels emotionally and culturally connected, regardless of the years of separation. As the president of Turkish American Women’s League (TAWL), Bahar Yucel, puts it, “the first generation still lives in Turkey.” Atakan wants to return to Turkey when he retires. It is mainly economic opportunities and possibly freedoms that keep Atakan and others here.

The same cannot be said about the second generation. All second generation Turkish

Americans that I talked with emphasized their Americanness and acknowledged their

Turkishness. This was true for all seven second generation interviewees regardless of their family level of religiosity, economic class, or educational level. Sinan is a second generation

Turkish-American who goes to high school in Brooklyn, NY. His family is middle class; his mother is a housewife and his father is an engineer. They own several apartments in Brooklyn and receive a good deal of money from the rent. Sinan asserts, “I am Turkish American because I am Turkish and I was born and raised here. I feel that I am both. Most of my friends are

American but my best friends are Turkish American. I don’t know. My family is Turkish, so I just feel like Turkish.”

I found the task of identifying Turkish-Americanness difficult because of its complexity and multiplicity. The second generation Turkish American individuals I interviewed acknowledged their Turkish identity regardless of their different identifications of Turkishness, but I found their sense of Turkish-Americanness vaguer and more confusing than first generation

Turkish Americans who were clearer about their Turkishness. Dostum, a 32-year old second generation Turkish American, is an interesting example. He states,

I am American. I also have Karacay and Turkish friends. My mother was born and grew up in Turkey and my dad lived there for ten years. I visited there [Turkey] few times. I have relatives over there. They are mostly in Eskisehir. I 104 was proud of Turkey. I went to a lot of Galatsaray’s [a Turkish soccer team] games in Europe. I support Turkish national team and Galatasaray. I also support the U.S. national team because I am American. I was born and grew up here. I am a Karacay-American. How are we to categorize Dostum? Is he Turkish? American? Karacay? Muslim? Each layer of his identity makes it more difficult to map it. It is a web of meanings in which he is trying to locate himself. He is assimilated enough to accept and to be proud of his Americanness.

However, his attachments and loyalties are multiple as he asserts not only his Turkishness but also Karacianness.

Nationalism is among the important factors affecting sports, as sports such as soccer are nationally organized, institutionalized, and represented (Markovitz and Hellerman, 2001).

Conducting my interviews during the 2002 Men’s Soccer World Cup gave me an opportunity to witness my interviewees’ loyalties to their national team. When sports involve international competition, nationalistic views are usually heightened as fans support their teams against other nations’ teams (Markovitz and Hellerman, 2001). Turkish Americans were no exception. They gathered to watch the Turkish national soccer team’s games. As the Turkish team won third place in the event, many Turks started to drive their cars through Main Street in Paterson, NJ, an old industrial city that is home to a sizeable Turkish community, to celebrate the success.

Dostum was one of them. He told me that he supported the U.S. national soccer team but he was more excited about Turkey. Ensar, who came to the United States at the age of 17 and works as an import-export coordinator for a large corporation, says that he is not an American and wholeheartedly supported the Turkish national team. He indicated, “after the World Cup success of Turkish national team, I got my Turkish flag and drove in the street here.” Many decided not to work during the competition and gathered at 2:00 am or 5:00 am to watch the games at

Turkish coffee houses on Main Street in Paterson, or at Turkish restaurants such as Dervis in

Manhattan.

105 The First Generation and Questions of Belonging Like other immigrants, the perception that their staying in the U.S. would be only temporary shapes first generation Turkish-Americans’ life plans in America. The question of belongingness is part of their everyday mindset and imagination. They live in America and are a part of America, but they are imaginarily connected to their community of origin and state of origin, Turkey. They feel alienated both here and back at home as they feel that they belong to neither. Burhan, who comes from a well educated family, came to the United States 8 years ago.

After receiving his MBA degree, he started to work as a store manager in one of New York’s prestigious grocery stores. In answering my question about whether his last visit to Turkey changed his views about returning to Turkey, Burhan responded:

I decided not to go back to Turkey after that visit but there is another thing. You don’t feel (you) belong to here but the worse thing is that you don’t feel you belong to Turkey either. You are somewhere in-between but you don’t know where you are at. You are confused. There is not much similarity between the U.S. and Turkey. Both are totally different. You are much lonelier here. You talk to mirrors more often. What other people do or don’t do does not interest you much here but it does in Turkey. I think in Turkey you are more social and in the U.S. you are more individual and lonely. Both have things that you like and things that you don’t like. It is a dilemma. I want to be at both places. I want to go to Turkey four or five times a year. My best dream is to do a business that would connect me to both Turkey and the United States. The uncertainty of staying in America or going back to home is puzzling for many. The attachments and loyalties are double as the country of origin and the U.S. have and offer different things that they want and are a part of. Satisfactions and dissatisfactions are from both the place of origin and the place they are a part of now. They have friends and families back in the country of origin and started their own families here. Tahir Amca expresses the uncertainty of where he belongs; “There is justice here. I like the system here. Turkey is corrupted but I am

Turkish and I like my culture, too. I have been in the U.S. for over 30 years but I still miss my family and friends back in Turkey.” Even if they want to go back to Turkey, their children do not 106 want to. The U.S. offers better economic opportunities and freedoms, but Turkey offers a greater sense of solidarity.

Temel is a mechanical engineer who is studying English and planning to start a masters’ program. His feelings represent the confusion that many first generation Turkish Americans have about whether they should stay in America or go back to Turkey:

Here, I read more, I study more, I work more, I use computer more. Socially, I don’t have as many friends as I had in Turkey. Here, I don’t have much time for social activities either. Socially, I was much more active in Turkey and that makes me miss Turkey more. There is not much hope in Turkey economically but I don’t feel I belong to here either. I miss my family and the things I used to do in Turkey. I am a ‘foreigner’ and ‘stranger’ here but I need to be here. This is a major dilemma for many Turkish Americans. Ediz, who comes from an upper class family and whose father was a high ranking Turkish governmental officer, expresses his feelings of spacelessness in similar ways. He considers himself having a “purely western” education. He teaches tango to New Yorkers in his free time and is not a Muslim. He has been in the U.S. for about 10 years. He makes the point that,

The problem is that even if you go back to Turkey, since you have been away for so long, you do not feel in the same way in the same places that you once loved to go. We change, places change and it is difficult to keep up with. If you go back to Turkey, a lot of things bother you. It starts at the customs; too much bureaucracy and too much regularity. I like freedom here in the United States and there is not much pressure here as you would have in Turkey from you family, friends and society. Freedom of being able to do whatever you want to is very important to me but the price for this freedom is ‘loneliness’. It is different in Turkey. People are lonely regardless of them being among the crowds here in America. Nazim, who works as a bookkeeper and is a conservative Kurdish Muslim from Turkey, has had different experiences.

Well, first of all I came into a different culture. This was not only because I am Kurdish or Turkish but this was because I live a conservative life and come from a conservative social setting. So there were some adjustment problems at the

107 beginning. Language was another barrier. Because of my conservative life, I was feeling weird around the all girls who dressed very provocatively. It was a cultural shock for me. People were surprised that I did not have a girlfriend. They would not understand it. I was feeling a lot of social pressure. All these circumstances put me in a position where I had to reevaluate my faith and culture. At the end, I feel that I have become more sincere in my faith and become more aware of what I believe. I feel freer in practicing my faith here. I worship to God not because I feel pressure from my family or friends but because I want to. I have no immediate intentions of returning Turkey. I may want to return after 7-8 years but not now. The feelings of spaclessness and the perceptions that they are here temporarily have significant impacts on first generation Turkish-Americans and their long term plans, such as setting up institutions in America. Their numbers have not been large enough to become an influential community, so they have not done the things that are signal of a more permanent stay.

Only in the last couple of years, and with the motivation of religious groups, have some started schools and mosques. They lack the institutions and support systems indicating they are a permanent community. The lack of institutions and their intentions of only a temporary stay result in the lack of unity. There are not enough institutions (media, schools, cultural centers, mosques) that connect and bring first generation Turkish Americans together. “We need a center where people can go and get help when they first come to the U.S. The Federation of Turkish

American Associations (FTAA) is not doing this. No one knows about FTAA. Some people think that it is place for elites. Some even don’t know the name. There needs to be a place where people could easily go and get their questions answered,” says Fatih Yilmaz, the publisher of Jon

Turk magazine in the New York area. Turkish state institutions such as the Turkish Consulate in

New York are considered to be too cold and too official to offer help. Yilmaz argues,

People see that cold face of the government offices when they go to the Consulate. Like other ethnic groups such as Chinese, we need to provide help to people who need it so they can find jobs, get driver licenses, and many other things. Much of the help is received through informal contacts and from

108 from particular towns or cities in Turkey. He goes where fellow Corumians or Yagliderians go. They go to the coffee shops and play cards all day. That is really bad. It is horrible. There is no place where he could go. He has no choice, no alternative. We need a formal institution that people could trust. Despite the problems mentioned above, the first generation of Turkish Americans bring with them the cultural baggage of conflicts and distrust that they had in Turkey. Polarization is common among first generation Turkish Americans as the elitist approaches (including the

Turkish state) and ordinary Turkish life styles do not mesh together. The leaders of the community are often upper class elites who are distant from ordinary Turkish immigrants. Ideas, ideologies, and practices that are not favored by the Turkish State are not favored by the leading organizations such as the American Turkish Society (ATS), Federation of Turkish American

Associations (FTAA), and Association of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). Religion and ideology play a big part in these practices as a result of the Turkish State’s attempts to control the

Turkish community within and outside Turkey.

Disputes over what is secular and what is religious are quite common. Therefore, a community of solidarity is a missing component of this group of first generation Turkish-

Americans. In my interview with Egemen Bagis, the former president of Federation of Turkish

American Associations (FTAA) and now a representative in the Turkish parliament from

Istanbul, said that assimilation is not a concern of the FTAA as most Turkish-Americans are first generation. I was told that the FTAA has become more inclusive than it was in the past with

Egemen Bagis’ presidency. He notes,

Since we very much target first generation Turkish Americans, we don’t think if assimilation is a big issue for us right now. After second and third generations, we might need to do something but not right now. We are a very fragmented community. I am trying to bring people together and help them put aside their differences to come together. This is the main thing for me right now. But I am sure the issue of assimilation will be very crucial for future FTAA presidents. If you look at Jewish Americans, this is their main concern. They try to encourage

109 marriage within their ethnic and racial group because they are third and fourth generations here in America. We are still first generation. Assimilation is not a problem for us so far but the lack of community unity and togetherness is. First generation Turkish Americans are striving to adjust to life here in America. They are trying to learn the language, culture and skills of survival in America where they do not find the same social support system that they would find in Turkey. They want to be a part of this society, yet at the same time they also want to preserve their Turkish identity. They want to raise their children in the way their culture tells them, yet American media and social life outside the home also shape their children’s identities. This frustrates them. Their position is a difficult one where they have to negotiate meanings, values, culture and beliefs everyday.

The Second Generation and Painful Integration The issue of acculturation and integration of first and second generations into the larger culture has attracted students of ethnic studies (Lingen, 2003; Sterba, 2003). While the first generation is often secure and is clear about its ethnicity, the second generation grows up and lives on the margins of its ethnic community and the larger culture (Guglielmo and Salerno,

2003; Hayani, 1999; Swanson, 1996). The experience is no different for Turkish Americans. In most cases, whether or not well educated, first generation Turkish Americans arrive in the United

States with few or no English skills and must adjust to life and work in their new cultural setting.

The children of these first generation Turkish Americans are fluent in English and usually better integrated into American life. On the one hand, the second generation serves as a bridge between the old culture (parents’ original culture) and the new culture (American culture). On the other hand, they find themselves caught between the conflicting expectations of their parents and those of the dominant American culture. Second generation Turkish Americans face more obstacles in evolving an integrated identity. They are trapped between two worlds, the conflicting values of their parents and those of their American peers.

110 Trapped between Two Worlds The Turkish community in the New York metropolitan area offers two worlds. One is made up of a predominantly homogeneous Turkish population, such as Turkish neighborhoods in

Paterson, NJ, Sunnyside in Queens or Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, while the areas outside of the predominant Turkish ethnic communities are more diverse, offering and encouraging autonomy in the context of the New York area. This dual existence encourages a stricter practice of the traditional Turkish culture than found in its native lands. Parents of second generation

Turkish Americans usually live and socialize among themselves and expect the same thing from their children. They often become overprotective of their children, as they view the world outside their own community as dangerous (for reasons of drug use and alcohol) and threatening to their cultural values.

Turkan is an active first generation Turkish American. She has roots in both Turkey and

Crimea. She has done a lot of voluntary work with Turkish-Crimean youth in Brooklyn. She believes that there is an “identity crisis” among the second generation and this identity crisis causes many social and family problems ranging from dropping out of school to drug use. She argues,

The kids also have identity problems. The culture at home and the culture in the street or at school are very different. They experience some difficulties because of that. I like to call that “identity crises.” The educational and generational gaps create problems between parents and children. Parents are unable to understand their children’s problems. They don’t understand American life. While parents express their values, there is peer pressure at school. Then they lose the respect for their parents. They want to live their own lives. There you see problems of drug-use and alcohol. This is New York. It is not easy to escape from those drug dealers. This issue of identity crises makes those kids who have problems at home easy targets for drug dealers. A lot of kids got wasted because of this. Most of these kids are college educated. The identity crisis and the problems with which Turkan relates are multidimensional, and parents’ cultural backgrounds, educational levels, economic status, and openness to a new 111 culture all contribute. Because of its transitional role that the second generation plays between the “old” and “new” cultures, it is often the victim of both. It is trapped between the “old” and the “new” with conflicting sets of values and practices, those of their parents and those of their peers (Swanson, 1996).

While the first generation is mainly acculturated in one cultural tradition, the second generation is brought up simultaneously in two different cultures. On the one hand, they are socialized according to the norms and expectations of their parents, on the other, they are socialized and acculturated to the norms and expectations of American culture represented by their peers, teachers and the media. Cindy is a 35 year-old college graduate who works as a public relation specialist for a New York based company. Both of her parents are well educated and her father was one of the physicians who came to the United States from Turkey in 1962.

She admits that she had to live in two different worlds during her teenage years: inside the home and outside the home. Her parents are secular, yet she has had to struggle with their expectations and her own desires and peer pressure. She says,

I felt that I had to live two different personalities in my life and that was not easy. It was the old fashioned upbringing. Living in this country, my parents did not accept a lot of things I was a part of. Until my late twenties, I was still fighting with them about, you know, I am an adult. You cannot treat me like I am a 12- year old. It was very difficult. It still is. I lived with my parents six months after I moved back to New York from DC where I lived a long time. I stayed with them because I needed to settle down to figure out where I was going to go. As an example, my parents were telling me, ‘No, we want you to be home by 11 o’clock.’ I was like, ‘wow, I am 30 years old.’ Still, you know, you don’t want to upset the family balance. I think it has something to do with where they are from and how they grew up. She does not want to disturb the family balance yet she wants to live her own life. She is at the margin where the “old” and the “new” clash. She has to balance the meanings of her parents’ culture with those of the larger American culture. And that is quite difficult.

112 Gender Struggles Gender is another dimension of this identity struggle that Cindy has to face. While it might be permissible for young adult males within the home to date and stay out late, it is not the same for females. As Cindy states:

It was a struggle for most of my life because they (her parents) excluded a lot of people from my life, too, because they were less accepting. If I had an American boyfriend, they meet him but never accept him. ‘If you marry one, we will never come to your house’, they say. You know in the end, because they love you, they will. But they give you a hard time when it is your life that you are trying to establish, it is not very fair. Sibel is also a female college graduate and works for a textile firm in New York. She believes that her father is more Americanized than her mother because she and her mother spent four years in Turkey during her teenage years. She goes to the Turkish American Business Forum’s meetings, which is a place to meet other single Turks. She told me that she wants to marry a

Turk because of cultural similarities. Sibel notes that “in recent years, both (her parents) have changed a lot. My mother used to say ‘you have to marry a Turk’ but that has changed lately. My father may also want a Turk or a Muslim son-in-law but he does not say it has to be this or that.”

Cindy also told me that she wished she found love in a person of Turkish origin because that would have made things easier for her and her family.

As victim of both the “old” and “new” cultures, Ayten faces a similar dilemma. She practices Islam and her parents encourage her to do so. She speaks perfect English but her differences are visual because she covers her head. She has to think about the values and expectations of different cultures, American, Turkish, and Muslim. She told me two incidences in which she believes she was discriminated. “I feel more disadvantageous. A few days ago, I called for a job at a local library and asked if they had a position. They said yes. But when I went up and asked for a job application, and the lady looked at me and said that ‘no, we don’t.’ I definitely thought that it was my religion because they cannot find someone for the position in

113 half an hour. My differences are very visible because of my covering.” She faced discrimination from one of her teachers at her high school after September 11, 2001, and her parents had to get involved in the issue. After the teacher apologized, the issue was resolved. As a female Muslim who chooses to dress in Islamic clothing, such as a headscarf, Ayten is subject to more discrimination than a male Muslim whose differences are not visible in the same sense.

However, her dilemma between two cultures does not end here. When she visits her relatives during family vacations, she is accused of not being “Muslim enough” because of her slacks and jeans. She states:

I consider myself Western although I have headscarf. I think I dress more Western. When I go to Turkey, people look at my way of dressing and give me negative comments. They tell me ‘you are Turkish, you are Muslim, why do you dress like an American’ because I always have my slacks and sneakers on, and I have my t-shirt on. But when they look at my head, ‘oh… she has a scarf’. From bottom to my head, I am just like a total American. Ayten is caught between and is part of two different worlds. Each has different values about who is an American or who is a Turk. Her visual differences, both headscarf and jeans (and t-shirt), put her in a position in which she must struggle to find who she really is. She is viewed differently by others. She is considered not to be Turkish or American enough. Her appearance seems to shadow who she really is as she is labeled based on her visual differences.

Generational Struggles The second generation not only has to struggle with the differences between the “old” and “new” cultures, but also generational gaps and differences. While the first generation has difficulties with adjusting their new life in a new (American) cultural setting, they are frozen in time in respect to their understanding of their original Turkish culture. They often think of the original culture in the ways in which they had left it. Sinan, a second generation Turkish

American who was born and raised in New York, states “my whole life is so different from theirs” when he talks about the differences between himself and his parents. Societies change 114 and since Cindy’s parents came to America in 1962, Turkish society has gone through dramatic changes. I myself have been away from Turkey for only six years but when I go back, I am surprised by the changes I see in Turkish society. Things are not quite the same as I left them only six years ago. This is another dilemma for Cindy:

Maybe it is much different now there and how children are raised but I am stuck with that generation (my italics) but that is all they know. They go back to Turkey every couple of years and see what is happening but it does not change who they are. I don’t expect them to change, you know. With maturity, you learn how to balance those things with your parents no matter what culture they are from and what generation they are. But it has been a struggle. While the second generation plays a transitional role between the old and the new cultures, home and outside, and public and private, it is often the victim in these processes of negotiations and competitions. They have to negotiate and compromise their meanings and desires from both cultures and spaces as they live and socialize on the margins. These margins represent battlegrounds for second generation Turkish Americans. They have to fight for the things they want and feel on two fronts: Turkish and Americans. They have to make distinctions between what is and is not appropriate both inside and outside home. As Cindy puts it, “it is a long struggle.”

Some Notes on Generational Differences When Turkish immigrants (first generation Turkish Americans) first come to the United

States, they often apply community survival strategies for economic and psychological reasons.

After arriving in the United States with limited English and knowledge of American life, first generation immigrants join an already established community. This is particularly the case with the Turkish community in Paterson, New Jersey, where the majority of immigrants have lower educational levels. First generation Turkish immigrants not only receive psychological and spiritual support but also economic benefits from the already established community of kinsmen and fellow villagers who have had similar experiences. During my field research in Summer 115 2002, I met many who found jobs in the first week of their arrival in Manhattan with the help of their relatives, friends, and fellow townspeople while living in Paterson. The publisher of Jon

Turk magazine, Fatih Yilmaz, says that since there are not formal institutions that could guide those new comers, “much of the help is received through informal contacts or from fellows from particular towns or cities in Turkey. He goes where fellow Corumeans or Yagliderelians go.

They go to the coffee shops and play cards all day.” This is not the case for second generation

Turkish Americans. They are better educated than their parents and far less dependent on the ethnic community for economic support. They find fewer economic incentives but their ties to the parents’ tradition remain strong.

All members of the first generation (20) who participated in this study follow news about

Turkey at least once a week and many follow it daily. They are more nationalistic and are much more interested in issues concerning Turkey than the second generation Turkish Americans (8) I interviewed. News sources for the first generation include Turkish Satellite TV Channels,

Turkish newspapers, and the Internet. The Internet is the most widely used source. The second generation follows news concerning Turkey with much less frequency and only through English electronic or print media such as American newspapers and TV channels. Cindy, a 35 year-old second generation Turkish-American, says she reads news about Turkey “whenever it pops up in the American newspapers and television.”

While all members of the first generation call friends and family in Turkey on a regular basis (such as weekly or biweekly), the second generation has no or little contact with relatives in Turkey. All use the telephone as their main communication tool, while many also use e-mail.

Summer visits are also another way of keeping in touch with family and friends. Much of the second generation’s memories and knowledge about Turkey are based on these summer visits their parents would take them on when they were children. As adults, they have less desire to go to Turkey.

116 Another difference between the first and second generations is their use of English. While the second generation prefers English as their main language of communication, the first generation’s first choice of language is Turkish. The first generation speaks English only when they have to. All the members of second generation Turkish Americans that I interviewed wanted to conduct their interviews with me in English. It was the opposite for the first generation, as their main preference was Turkish.

While single male immigrants are still the largest percentage of Turkish immigrants, there has been a great increase in the number of females and families immigrating to the United States.

Many Turks go to Turkey to get married.

In fact, since the number of single Turkish males in America is much larger than the number of single females, those who desire to find a Turkish mate go to Turkey during summers, and many get married there. Since this has become an issue for many Turks, a New York based dating service, SingleTurks.com, started a match-making service for single Turkish males and females to meet. Turks may date Americans or members of other ethnic and racial groups in the

United States, but when it comes to a serious relationship such as marriage, they often prefer

Turkish mates because of cultural and religious preferences. During my interviews in the

Summer of 2002, I was told by many Turks that while the Turkish American Business Forum operates as a business networking organization, it also works like a dating service. The Turkish

American Business Forum has regular meetings where the members meet. Many people participate in the Turkish American Business Forum’s activities to find a date, and, hopefully, a lifetime partner. The organization has a strict membership policy and does not allow anyone to participate in its activities without membership. I wanted to attend one of their meetings as part of my study, but was rejected and asked to pay the annual membership fee if I wanted to observe the event.

117 Finally, first generation Turks are more interested in Turkish activities than other cultural or social events in New York metropolitan area. The same cannot be said about the second generation. They only participate in Turkish activities when their families want them to go.

Susan, a 21 year old college student, states “well, when I hang with my mother and sister to go to a Turkish atmosphere but I feel like out of space. I don’t fit in there. I am sort of in between. I feel more comfortable with American settings.” These sorts of feelings were also mentioned by other second generation Turkish Americans. For example, Ayten, who is quite religious, says that she likes to hang out with American friends because they are not as judgmental as Turks are. Closing Thoughts Turkish American identity constructions show that there are not only differences among

Muslim Americans but also within each group such as Turkish Americans. Turkish Americans’ definition, recognition and acceptance of Turkishness and Americanness vary according to their gender, class, religious practice and generation. Their experience also suggests that integration is a long process which takes generations. Given that the majority of Turkish Americans are first generation; their integration will take as much time as it did with Chinese, Jewish, and Italian

Americans (Guglielmo and Salerno, 2003; Lingen, 2003; Olson, 2002). In fact, Turkish

Americans have mainly situated themselves in the middle class and are a part of America today.

While the first generation still struggles to be part of America, as it still lives in Turkey in its mind, second generation Turkish Americans serve as a bridge between their first generation parents and the larger society, regardless of their own painful in-between position.

118

CHAPTER VIII

IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION SITES

Turkish American identity construction sites are arenas in which Turkish-American identities are formed and Turkish identities are reshaped. They are places where “social actors make claims, define one another, jockey for position, eliminate or initiate competition, exercise or pursue power, and engage in a wide array of other activities that variously encourage or discourage, create or transform, and reproduce or ignore identities” (Cornell and Hartmann,

1998, 154). Turkish Americans establish boundaries to exercise differences and celebrate group solidarity. These sites involve political, social, and cultural institutions as well as residential and work places. Participants take on roles in each of these arenas with particular ways of acting, thinking, talking, dressing or eating. Each of these actions has implications for collective identities.

In this chapter, I examine Turkish American identity construction sites and how these sites emphasize and shape particular identities. These identity construction sites are analyzed in categories such as labor market space, residential space, social institutions (e.g., schools and mosques), organizations and politics, and parades. I look at the role of Turkish American places and institutions in providing the pre-established structures through which ethnic activity is manifested and identities are reconstituted. Labor Market Spaces Educational backgrounds, the ability to speak English and having technical skills are crucial factors in influencing where immigrants locate and socialize. Those who do not have

119 these particular skills are often dependent on kinship and friendship relations for finding work and housing. Such immigrants are place-bound and the situational factors they encounter include certain labor market opportunities and limitations. Once they determine a specific labor market area, they are trapped in that locality and become dependent on a specific labor market area because of their limited English and skills. Turkish immigrants in Paterson, New Jersey,

Sunnyside, Queens, and Brighton Beach, Brooklyn are mainly lower class Turks who either work as wage earners or own small businesses. They use community survival strategies such as kinship, friendship, and community relations for finding jobs, housing, and social comfort. They create spaces of ethnic concentration and ethnic enclaves where particular aspects of their identities are preserved.

However, those who have educational, language, technical or professional skills have a greater flexibility of movement and opportunities. Turkish immigrants who come to the United

States usually have much higher educational levels than those who have gone to European countries (Akinci, 2002; Karpat, 1995). According to the 1990 United States Census released in

1998 (Census, 1998), 40.9 percent of Turkish Americans have college degree or higher and 22.1 percent hold a graduate degree (Table 1). As a result, the largest number of Turkish Americans

(40.1 percent) works in managerial and professional sectors while technical, sales, and administrative positions make up about thirty percent of Turkish American employment. The proportion of Turkish Americans working in services is 11 percent, with the remainder working in areas such as production, repair or as operators and laborers (Table 2). Turkish immigrants who have technical and professional skills have greater flexibility of movement than blue collar

Turkish immigrants, and, therefore do not have to rely on community survival strategies as blue collar workers do. Therefore, Turkish ethnic community concentration, such as those in

Paterson, New Jersey or Rochester, New York, is more of an issue for blue collar Turkish immigrant workers than for white collar Turkish workers. Turkish Americans with higher

120 educational and technical skills are mainly positioned in middle class and have a greater interaction with the larger American culture. Based on my observations and interviews, the degree of integration and assimilation is higher among this middle class group.

Table 1: Turkish-American Educational Attainment (Persons 25 years and over)

High school graduate or higher 81.4 36,529

Bachelor's degree or higher 40.9 18,352

Graduate degree or higher 22.1 9,923

Total 100 44,872 Source: 1990 United States Census8

Table 2: Turkish-American Occupation (Employed persons 16 years and over)

Managerial and professional 40.1 13,508

Technical, sales, and administrative 30.5 10,279

Service 11.0 3,693

Farming, forestry, and fishing 0.5 153

Production, craft, and repair 9.1 3,051

Operators, fabricators, and laborers 8.9 3,014

Total 100 33,698 Source: 1990 United States Census9

Turkish immigrants who have limited skills often move to certain neighborhoods such as

Paterson and Clifton, New Jersey or Sunnyside in Queens upon their first week of their arrival in the U.S. where they find the lowest-wage jobs in restaurants and grocery stores. Such occupational concentrations play an important role in shaping their identities. The impact of

8 Retrieved 03/24/2003, from the World Wide Web: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/Turkish.txt 9 Retrieved 03/24/2003, from the World Wide Web: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/Turkish.txt 121 common occupational activity and interpersonal interactions in workspaces can provide a sense of difference. Many of those who work in Turkish owned restaurants and grocery stores have little or no contact with anyone outside their own ethnic community as they work and socialize with others from Turkey.

Many Turkish immigrants choose places such as Paterson not because remarkable opportunities exist there but because an already established community provides a support system for newcomers. After the economic downturn during the 1970s, many Turkish immigrants who worked in the manufacturing industry in the area were laid off and had to find work elsewhere. Many were forced to start small businesses (Tokatli, 1991). Today, Paterson, with a number of Turkish restaurants, grocery stores, coffee houses, and mosques, is an attractive destination for a great number of lower class Turkish immigrants. These places serve as identity maintenance and preservation sites where the customs and habits that are imported from traditional Turkey are kept alive. They also provide boundaries that isolate these immigrants from the larger society and provide them with a certain degree of autonomy.

While they live in isolation and since they do not have their own schools, these immigrants send their children to public schools where the majority of pupils are either

American or from other ethnic and minority groups. This particularly creates problems between the first and second generations as these children cross boundaries of difference between home and school everyday. Tulin Ozdenoglu, president of Dost Kirim, one of the Crimean organizations, called this dilemma an “identity crises,” as the majority of children of the first generation Turks are caught between the “old culture” and “new culture”, and “past” and

“present.” There are not only generational differences but also cultural differences as these children are exposed to different cultures at home and at school.

Main Street in Paterson functions as the commercial center for the Turkish community of the area. Turkish businesses on Main Street mainly target the Turkish community and employ

122 Turkish immigrants as part of their marketing strategies. These businesses include restaurants, coffee houses, barber shops, video stores, book stores, and travel agencies. Although written in

English, most of these businesses have Turkish such as Turkiyem Barber Shop, Zinnur

Books, Alp Travel, Istanbul Video, and Toros Restaurant. These are not only commercial centers, but also cultural centers, where materials, such as Turkish videos and books, are provided. These materials are resources for constructing Turkish American identities.

Of course, Turkish businesses are not limited to Paterson. I was told that there are over 20

Turkish restaurants in Manhattan. Brooklyn and Queens also have a significant number of

Turkish restaurants. These restaurants are owned, managed, and operated by Turks. While the vast majority of their customers are Americans, there is a noteworthy number of Turks eating at these restaurants. They eat doner kebab, iskender, pide, baklava and other Turkish food, which remind them of the tastes they were used to and the culture of which they are a part. These restaurants are not only eating places, but they are also places of socialization as they serve as meeting and interaction spaces. For instance, several of the Turkish restaurants were open all night during the 2002 World Cup soccer games. Many Turks gathered at these restaurants to watch the Turkish national soccer team in their games. The success of the Turkish team provided them with some measure of pride. I was also told by some regulars at coffee houses in Paterson whenever there are important Turkish soccer games shows on television, these restaurants draw

Turkish costumers. Moreover, some Turkish restaurants invite Turkish singers for special nights to give concerts (some were organized by the Turkish Women’s League of America). All these activities provide tools to form and re-form Turkishness in the context of America.

Video stores convert Turkish movies and television shows from VHS system (common in

Europe) to NTSC system (common in America) and rent them out to the Turks living in the area.

I was told that there has been a decline in video renting as a result of increasing interest in

Satellite TV, which provides more variety and up-to-date shows and programs from Turkey.

123 Several of the second generation Turkish Americans told me that their parents rented videos not only for entertainment purposes, but also for educational purposes. They told me that since they did not have much access to Turkish media and culture, these videos helped them to learn the

Turkish language and culture, as there is also a great deal of cultural exposure occurring through these movies and shows. These videos not only entertained the first generation but also provided them with materials for maintaining their identities and for constructing their children’s Turkish identities.

Many who do not have Satellite TV rent these videos for the same purposes.

Turkish book stores are spaces of community gathering and interaction. This interaction is not only with group members but also allows for engagement with . The Ant Store in Rutherford, New Jersey provides Turks with a wide range of Turkish books, music, and videos. The store is located in downtown Rutherford and has a modern design, and it tries to attract both American and Turkish readers. While the store dedicates its first floor to books in

English and gifts such as Turkish rugs and plates, the second floor provides Turkish grammar books, children literature books, religious books, novels, and CD ROMs. The Ant Store, which is forty minutes from Manhattan, has a small conference center/reading room on the second floor where they organize conferences and invite authors, both Turkish and American, to meet readers.

A second Turkish book store is Zinnur Books in Paterson, NJ which carries only Turkish books.

While Zinnur Books started in the book selling business much earlier than the Ant Store, it did not seem to me that it had a desire to expand its business to an English speaking audience.

Zinnur Books is a place of gathering for many Turks, particularly Karacay Turks. Zinnur Amca, owner of Zinnur Books, provides hot Turkish tea to those who come and stop by. I met several of my interviewees at this book store. Both the Ant Store and Zinnur books provide resources for maintaining Turkishness and function as identity construction sites.

124 Turkish coffee and tea houses are interesting identity construction sites because of their exclusively male clientele. Turkish men gather at these coffee houses to drink hot tea, Turkish coffee, play cards and to watch soccer games and Turkish television shows on Satellite TV. Most of these coffee houses are in Paterson, fourteen of which are located on Main Street. Most of those who go to these coffee houses work as wage laborers in restaurants, grocery stores, the construction business, and the trucking industry. Coffee houses are places where gender boundaries are the strongest. They are unknown places to women because of acute male dominance and autonomy. Women, including Turkish women, never cross gender boundaries established around these coffee houses. There are no signs indicating that they cannot enter these places, but coffee houses represent forbidden zones for women. These are places where Turkish masculinity is expressed and male dominance is exercised.

Grocery stores that specialize in Turkish products are located near residential areas where there is a significant number of Turks. For instance, there are two Turkish grocery stores in

Sunnyside, Queens, where there is a noteworthy Turkish population. Brooklyn and Paterson also have a few of these grocery stores. They are often located near Turkish mosques for the convenience of shoppers. After finishing prayers, people shop for Turkish goods at these grocery stores. The owner of the Turkiyem grocery store in Queens told me that over fifty percent of his costumers were Turkish. The same was true of other stores in Turkish concentrated neighborhoods. These grocery stores are places where Turkish tastes are imported and sold.

While such Turkish grocery stores are common in the neighborhoods where there is a considerable Turkish community, there are some grocery stores and delis owned by Turks in

Manhattan as well. For instance, the Amish Markets chain specializes in a wide variety of high quality specialty food products with stores in several locations in Manhattan. The owner of the store told me that they employ over 300 Turks in their stores but very few of their products are

Turkish. Garden of Eve and Zeytuna are other examples of such stores. As mentioned earlier,

125 these ethnic businesses are not just empty work places that are owned by the members of a particular ethnic group such as Turks, but rather places that bring Turks together and provide space and materials for identity preservation and construction.

There are also a number of Turkish law firms mainly dealing with immigration issues.

Most law offices are located in Manhattan, but there are also some in Brooklyn, Queens, and other parts of the New York metropolitan area. These businesses often market themselves by providing services in Turkish to attract the Turkish community. Gas stations are another business of the Turkish immigrant community. I was told by several people that over fifty percent of the gas stations in Long Island were owned by Turks (which I believe was exaggeration). However, the number of gas stations owned by Turks is quite significant both on Long Island and in New

Jersey. There are some Turks who own over 30 gas stations. Some of these gas stations offer car repair services. The gas stations owned by Turks often employ Turkish men as workers.

Pumping gasoline at gas stations in New Jersey an important job in NJ, which does not have self- service gas stations, or Long Island is almost as common as working at Turkish restaurants and grocery stores.

In summary, work as an essential and universal human activity is a vital part of Turkish identity. As individuals are distributed into different classes and categories that the division of labor presents, group identity formation is a likely outcome. Cornell and Harmann (1998, 160) state that “by the same token, collective identities offer potential bases for the distribution of persons into categories, a process that reinforces those identities by giving them an organizational dimension in the workforce.” Turkish immigrants tend to have occupational concentrations in restaurant, gas station, and grocery store businesses. The jobs that non- professionals Turkish immigrants perform reflect skills (or lack thereof) that they bring with them, as it is common to look for an occupation in which you already have experience. Early immigrants pass on information they have and the skills they know to newcomers in their search

126 for work. This cycle provides both opportunities and limitations, but it involves an important process of identity maintenance and construction. Such occupational concentrations have obvious impacts on identity formations. These are places where Turkishness is tasted, preserved, imported and sold. The effects of work-related activities and interpersonal relations in workspaces may maintain a sense of being somehow different. Residential Spaces People often do not have complete choice over where they live. From economic affordability to discrimination, different factors are at play when one makes a decision about a place of residence. Choices are made depending on the economic, social, and ethnic conditions in particular neighborhoods and the person’s own status. While the discriminatory actions of others may limit freedom of choice about where to live, having people of the same ethnic and cultural background could attract those who desire to live in their own ethnic or racial community. The case is the same for Turkish Americans. Often, they are forced to live in places such as Paterson because of the limited options they have outside of their own community as a result of a lack of language and work skills. It is often only through the already established community that one can survive.

For many unskilled Turkish immigrant workers staying in the same neighborhood with people of their own ethnic group, these residential concentrations often function to maintain their identities. Since occupational opportunities are often limited for unskilled Turkish immigrants, they choose to live in neighborhoods that are close to labor markets such as New York. Many

Turkish immigrants cannot afford housing in Manhattan but at the same time they need the jobs that are available there. Therefore, they are forced into low rent housing in nearby areas such as

Paterson and Clifton. The result is residential segregation, tied largely to limited labor market opportunities. This segregation functions to sustain a distinctive and self-conscious Turkish population in Paterson. The area already had a significant number of Turkish immigrants

127 working in factories in the Paterson area, but expensive housing costs in Manhattan were a catalyst in segregating the Turkish population in the area by limiting their choices. High housing prices and rents in Manhattan discriminated against the lower income Turks not necessarily based on their ethnicity but based on their class. Whatever the origin of constraint, the effect may reinforce an ethnic or racial boundary.

Residential concentrations also provide networking opportunities for new immigrants.

One of the reasons for the large Turkish immigration to the New York metropolitan area in recent years was the already established Turkish community. As Turkish immigrants come to a new society, country or a city, they need places to stay. Relatives and friends who are already in the area provide them with that service and help them find housing nearby. The result is again the concentration of a Turkish ethnic group in a particular area. This creates a greater possibility to interact with fellow Turks but a smaller chance of interaction with other groups, which adds a spatial dimension to the ethnic boundary. “To the extent that interactions are dense and frequent within the ethnic or racial boundary and dispersed and infrequent across it, the more likely group members are to see their ethnic and racial identity as an important feature of their lives, and to engage in practices particular to the group”(Cornell and Hartmann, 1998, 168).

While Paterson, New Jersey, offers an example of Turkish immigrant residential concentration, the majority of Turkish immigrants are not part of this sort of concentration. What this suggests is that the issue of residential concentration is not only based on ethnicity, but also class. The smaller degree of Turkish immigrant residential concentration compared to other ethnic groups such as Puerto Ricans, Russians or Jews is due to their low density in a particular area and a smaller number of Turkish immigrants in the United States (Kantrowitz, 1973; Shasha and Shron, 2002). Turkish immigrants still are a relatively small number in the New York metropolitan area. Another reason for the lack of concentration is the skills of Turkish immigrants. As mentioned earlier, the majority of Turkish immigrants are well educated and

128 have positioned themselves as middle and upper class citizens. They have greater flexibility of movement and choice of housing, and therefore, less segregation. Also, this group of immigrants has less geographic concentration in their occupations and less interaction with other members of their ethnic group. They often are more integrated into larger culture. Social Institutions Social institutions founded by a particular ethnic or racial group increase intragroup interactions as they expand the links among group members through institutional participation and collective investments of time and energy. “To create and use such institutions is to make more elaborate, to weave more thickly, the fabric of a distinct and exclusive community life, the fabric that includes only “us.” Finding such solutions within the society at large, on the other hand, increases interactions across the boundary, withdrawing some of the threads from that fabric” (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998, 169).

Turkish American social institutions include schools, mosques, social clubs, and associations. These institutions function as identity construction sites as they provide spaces for

Turkish Americans’ distinct experiences and expressions of identity. They function to find a special place for Turkish Americans in the larger American space. They get their voices heard via these institutions as Turkish American institutions represent Turks to “others.” These institutions are not empty spaces as they are full of memories of collective effort and representation. Schools Schools are sites where the production of culture takes place (Jackson, 1994) and where the dominant culture is to be transmitted. However, they are also places of resistance where meanings are resisted and contested (Dwyer, 1994). Before movements such as multiculturalism, the school was seen as the primary site where the assimilation of new ethnic groups was to be accomplished. This has been changing. As the number of Turkish immigrants

129 grows, they have started to form schools and other institutions of their own. They open schools to transmit their own meanings to their children. The school becomes a site where a struggle against the dominant culture takes place by shaping Turkish American identities.

Turkish Americans in the New York metropolitan area have created two full-time formal schools, the Brooklyn Amity School in Brooklyn, New York and the Pioneer Academy of

Science in Clifton, New Jersey, as well as one Saturday school, the Ataturk School in Manhattan.

The vast majority of students in these schools are Turkish, but there are also children of mixed marriages, where one parent is Turkish. These schools promote Turkish either directly through the classes that are offered or indirectly through community activities.

The Ataturk School was founded by the Turkish Women's League of America (TWLA) in 1971. It operates on the second floor of the Turkish House on Plaza. The school is maintained and financed by TWLA through fund raising programs and tuition. The school is also supported by the Turkish Consulate and it does not pay rent for using the

Consulate’s building. The Ataturk School had 83 students in 2002, but I was told that the number was over 100 students in previous years. The decline was a result of security concern after

September 11, 2001. The school teaches Turkish language, history, geography, and other aspects of Turkish life. It works in accordance with the Turkish state’s strict secularism. It is the oldest

Turkish school in America and many Turkish children learned Turkish at the Ataturk School.

Much of TWLA efforts are directed towards the continuation of the school. Although the Ataturk

School’s students are mainly pupils from either public or private American schools, parents want their children to attend to Ataturk School on the weekends so that they will be exposed to

Turkish values and culture. The Ataturk Shool functions as a place where Turkish culture, history, and values are transmitted.

Education is an important issue for ethnic groups such as Turkish Americans in the

United States, as a result of religious and cultural concerns. The school is seen as a place where

130 culture is transmitted and language is learned. Language is particularly, viewed as a means of retaining cultural and ethnic identity (Hernâandez Sheets and Hollins, 1999). The Brooklyn

Amity School in Brooklyn, NY and the Pioneer Academy of Science in Paterson, NJ were established with such motivations and concerns in mind. Although both schools do not have a traditional Islamic curriculum with formal Islamic teachings and they follow regular curriculums like other private school in the United States, parents put their children in these schools because they expect them to be “safer” against the values to which they do not want their children to be exposed on the street and in American public schools.

The Brooklyn Amity School was founded by the Golden Generation Foundation in 1999 and has about fifty fulltime students. It has grades one through eight, and its classrooms are quite small. The school organizes a series of events such as Turkish national and religious holidays, graduation ceremonies and special day events such as Mothers’ Day every year. For the 2002 graduation ceremony, a Turkish singer was invited from Turkey and hundreds of Turks in the area were invited to this special occasion. Most students at the Brooklyn Amity School are

Turkish, but there are also a number of students from ethnic groups such as Albanians, and

Uzbeks, as well as African-Americans. The school takes a very active role in community affairs in the area. It has organized interfaith dialogue meetings with local churches, synagogues, and mosques. In addition, a group of students from the Brooklyn Amity School, along with students from Pioneer Academy of Science in Clifton, visited former Turkish Prime Minister Bulent

Ecevit in , DC in 2002.

The Pioneer Academy of Science in Clifton was founded in 1999 and has about 50 students, mainly from Paterson and Clifton. The school has won several gold and silver in recent statewide competitions in science and technology. Most students at the Pioneer

Academy of Science are also Turkish. The school serves as a community center for many Turks living in the area, and organizes similar events as the Brooklyn Amity School.

131 Both the Brooklyn Amity School and the Pioneer Academy of Science were founded by a religious group that focuses on education. The schools are part of a large movement that opened hundreds of schools in Turkey and Central Asia. The movement is headed by Fethullah Gulen and focuses on education, modernity, and working within the legal system of each country without sacrificing Islamic precepts. As mentioned in the previous chapters, many view this movement as an alternative to radical Islamic groups for promoting democracy and the secular state in places such as Turkey because of the movements’ moderate Islamic approach. However, the establishment in Turkey has often looked at Gulen and his movement with suspicion.

In conclusion, the school is base where identity is constructed (Hernâandez Sheets and

Hollins, 1999). The Ataturk School, Brooklyn Amity School, and Pioneer Academy of Science are sites where Turkish Americans’ resistance to the dominant American culture takes place and

Turkish cultural and religious values are transmitted. Although the number of Turkish American students in Turkish American schools is still low compared to the total number of Turkish

American school age children, these schools provide shields and a boundary for the construction of a distinct identity. Values that are conveyed are both nationalistic and religious, but they also serve to create a sense of community. Schools as identity construction sites are not only places where pupils’ identities are formed but also places where community interaction and representation take place and the sense of community is promoted (Hernâandez Sheets and

Hollins, 1999). Mosques Muslim Turkish Americans did not have their own places of worship until the early

1980s. They used to pray at mosques that were founded by Muslim groups such as Arabs,

Americans, or South Asians. However, they are making themselves more visible through establishing new mosques and cultural centers. They have several mosques and mesjids, small

132 mosques, in the New York metropolitan area. Religious groups such as “Suleymancilar”10 are very active in founding mosques through fund raising programs throughout the year. The Turkish state has also provided Imams, who lead prayers, to several of the mosques that were founded by

Turkish immigrants, but the Turkish state stays distant from organized religious movements as part its secular practices.

Mosques serve as identity construction sites where meanings, ethics, and values of a particular nation are transmitted through religious discourse and interaction (Barot, 1993). As spaces of gathering, sharing and interacting, they also function to preserve identities and produce a community based on religion and nationality (Ernst, 1987). Mosques provide boundaries of difference to resist the dominant culture and celebrate cultural uniqueness. They are territories where a certain degree of autonomy is practiced and where others are not allowed (Barot, 1993).

Mosques set up by Turkish Americans not only separate them from mainstream America, but also from other Muslim groups because of religious and lingual barriers. The vast majority of

Turkish mosque attendees are immigrant Turks. Sermons are usually given in Turkish rather than

English or Arabic. Some Turkish mosques provide Friday sermons in multiple languages such as

English, Arabic, and Turkish. This is not only a result of the lack of religious staff that could preach in English, it is also a result of the large number of Turkish immigrant attendees who cannot speak English. It is not surprising that the mosques in Paterson are exclusively Turkish.

Even those mosques that give Friday sermons in English and Arabic, 60-90 percent of attendees are Turkish. Here language sets boundaries that discourage other Muslims from entering to

Turkish sacred space.

The degree of Turkish nationalism is quite high in Turkish mosques. As Turkish immigrants establish their own mosques, they have little interest in going to mosques that are not

10 Suleymancilar is a Turkish Muslim group that focuses on mosque building, the teaching of Koran, and student dormitory building. The movement is quite active in the United States as well as in Turkey. 133 Turkish. According to Kemal Karpat, a professor of history at the University of ,

“Turks believe that non-Turkish mosques do not smell Turkish enough” (Akinci, 2002). The names of mosques such as Fatih, Suleymaniye, Selimiye, or Osman Gazi are all Turkish mosque names in Turkey, which were named after Ottoman Sultans. These mosques often have Turkish flags hanging in them. When I asked the imam of Fatih mosque to comment on this, he told me:

“the Turkish nation served Islam for centuries. We wanted to honor those Turkish leaders and sultans because of their services.” When I asked if this was a sort of nationalism he said no and continued: “Well, the prophet says that ‘one cannot be criticized because he likes his nation’. We are Muslim Turks. Our ancestors served to Islam over thousand years. Also, we believe that they understood Islam correctly. We are proud of being their children. We don’t say that we are better than other Muslims, but we just like our ancestors.” This kind of nationalistic view of Islam was apparent in all Turkish mosques in the New York metropolitan area. Therefore, mosques are not only places where religious values are transmitted but are also places where the national culture is transmitted (Coleman and Tomka, 1995).

Turkish Americans send their children to the mosques to study Turkish and Islam. This is often in the form of Sunday schools where parents along with the mosque staff volunteer to teach. I was told by the Imams of the Fatih and Suleymaniye mosques that they have summer camps where about seventy children come to study the Turkish language and religion. Children are also taught sciences so that they become successful at their regular schools.

Turkish mosques in the New York metropolitan area exhibit many elements that are similar to the mosques in Turkey. For instance, the imams in Turkish mosques dress the way imams dress back home in Turkey, which is different from the way imams dress in other mosques in the United States. They use rose perfume to make their mosque smell nice, which is very common in Turkey. They often use curtains to separate women’s prayer space from the men’s space. That again is a common practice in small mosques in Turkey. Another feature is

134 having a coffee house and a grocery store next to the mosque. With these features, the mosque becomes not only a place of worship but also a place of social gathering, display, and to “hang out.” For instance, the attendees of Fatih Mosque drink hot tea, socialize and shop at the same place. Crimean Turks organize conferences and parties on the second floor of their mosque.

Turkish Americans gather at their mosques not only to worship and celebrate religious holidays in a “Turkish way,” but also to spend time with fellow Turks.

In conclusion, the Turkish American mosque is a place of resistance where others are not encouraged to enter. Here resistance takes a territorial form. It provides a relatively autonomous place in which a respite is sought from all the pervasive influence of the mainstream American culture (Coleman and Tomka, 1995). The mosque as a resistance place offers a space to celebrate and shape Turkishness. It gives a comfort zone where things are done in a Turkish way. Organizations and Politics Power is an important element of intergroup relations. Each group within society wants to change the power structure to its advantage and influence the decisions and relationships that have significance and consequences for their lives. This is often a result of opportunities they have or constraints that they face. Their ability to influence the existing social order and power is dependent on not only their opportunities and constraints but also on the resources they bring with them (Sarat and Kearns, 1999). Turkish Americans had only a few organizations until the

1950s. Early organizations had more of a cultural agenda than a political agenda. They worked as “party organizations” that would bring Turks in a particular area together during religious and national holidays. Moreover, their financial and population resources were quite limited. As

Turkish immigration increased after the 1950s, Turkish Americans gained a certain economic status and formed new organizations. Today, there are hundreds of Turkish organizations and almost every major university in the United States has a Turkish student organization.

135 While their increasing number and resources enabled Turkish Americans to form their own organizations, circumstances they faced forced them to organize more rapidly that the earlier Turkish immigrants. Turkish Americans have had bitter relationships with Armenian and

Greek Americans as a result of the enmity imported from Turkish and Ottoman history. The

Cyprus conflict and border issues between Turkey and have often caused disputes between the Turkish American and Greek American communities, as each group felt the need to lobby on the behalf of Turkey or Greece. The same has been true of who migrated to the United States during the early 20th century as result of killings between themselves and the Turks in the eastern part of Turkey. Today, Armenians are a much larger group in the United States than are the Turks, and they have often lobbied against Turkey in the

United States Congress. During the 1980s, ASALA, an Armenian terrorist organization, killed several Turkish consulate officials around the world, including one in Los Angeles. These sorts of events caused Turkish Americans to organize better, with the assistance of the Turkish government. It was only after those assassinations that the Turkish Day Parade in New York started.

Turkish Americans started to form umbrella organizations such as the Federation of

Turkish American Association (FTAA) in 1956 and Assembly of Turkish American Association

(ATAA) in 1979 as a result of the need to unite and support Turkish community in the United

States and defend Turkish interests against groups such as Armenian and Greek. While the

Turkish state’s influence in forming and financing these kinds of organizations is undeniable,

Turkish Americans have taken a great interest in supporting umbrella organizations. Since the number of Turkish Americans has been relatively small, they have established alliances with other lobbying groups, such as the Jewish lobby, for advocating Turkish interests. The close relationship between Turkish and Jewish lobbies has received a great deal of criticism from the

Armenian lobby, which pushed for a bill in the Congress that would recognize the events of the

136 early 1900s as genocide (Hagopian, 2003). While the bill was passed by the U.S. House of

Representative in 2000, the U.S. Senate rejected it with the help of Clinton administration. The former president of the FTAA told me that they received very important assistance from the

Jewish lobby to defeat that particular bill. In the end, the competition between Turkish

Americans and Armenian and pushed Turkish Americans to organize into larger organizations and to align with other ethnic groups. What resulted was a highlighting of the political differences between Turks, Greeks, and Armenians that reinforces ethnic boundaries such as “us” vs. “them.” Here being Turkish often means being against Greeks or Armenians.

Such competition has not only helped Turkish Americans become better organized, but also has heightened their sense of Turkishness with a series of cultural activities. Today, both the

FTAA and ATAA organize cultural events such as concerts, art gallery exhibits, and parades.

The FTAA organizes the Turkish Cultural Month Festival starting on 23 each year, the date when the first Turkish parliament opened in 1923, and ending on , the date when the

Turkish liberation movement led by Ataturk started in 1919. The festival includes various kinds of activities that would represent all segments of the Turkish American community in the New

York and New Jersey area. The ATAA, which is based in Washington, DC, and all sub- organizations under both the FTAA and ATAA, such as The American Turkish Society,

American Association of Crimean Turks, and the Turkish Women’s League of America, actively participate in this month of cultural events. These events create a sense of community and transmit Turkish values and practices to the next generation.

There are hundreds of Turkish American organizations in the United States, so I describe each in detail. A selected list of these organizations is provided in Appendix D. However, it is important to mention that these organizations range from business associations to student, cultural, and religious organizations. Agendas and activities of these organizations represent the diversity of the community. Since the FTAA and ATAA function as umbrella organizations, the

137 organizations that belong to these groups are diverse. This creates problems because of the different expectations of each member organization.

The FTAA has faced a challenge from MayFest, an organization dedicated to the promotion of culture. MayFest is quite elitist in terms of its members and sponsors and its choice over the events organized. MayFest is not the only organization that has a different vision about how Turkey and Turkish culture should be represented and presented to American public.

MayFest promotes Turkish high culture while the FTAA organizes folk culture events such as folk dance. MayFest sponsors activities such as art exhibitions, film festivals, and theater shows, and targets the American public as much as well educated Turkish Americans. The point is that while the Turkish American community aspires to function as a community, it is extremely difficult to meet the expectations of each organization and those different expectations and agendas often cause disputes within the community.

In conclusion, while diversity is a fact of the Turkish American community, as represented in the organizations they form, the desire to have more power, to be more visible, to have a voice in America, and the longing to transmit Turkish values and practices to the next generation and to create a community of solidarity bring Turkish American together on the bases of place of origin, cultural similarities, and community interests. These organizations function to change power to their advantage and to defend community interests. They are also places of socialization where cultural practices are transmitted, the sense of community is reinforced, and identities are marked and transformed. Cultural Spaces While group identities are firmly embedded in relationships and institutions, they began as ideas and conceptions that people have about themselves and others. Culture is a learned behavior and involves sense-making. Collective identities are products of this sense making process. Therefore, identities are shaped not only in material relationships but also in the ways

138 people imagine, think and articulate themselves in relation to others (Rodaway, 1995). Both the culture of origin, that is imported from the country of origin, Turkey, and the culture of the new home, the United States, that is part of everyday life, shape Turkish American sense making and identities. As part of globalization, migration, interacting with and knowing about other people actualizes differences and gives new sources and ways of identifying. People come to a specific cultural understanding of who they are by discovering how other people see them and by experiencing the constructions that other people make (Thompson and Carter, 1997). These understandings function to help people to put themselves in particular categories, whether part of the new or old culture, and form new communities. Each Turkish immigrant finds him or herself in a position of contesting and negotiating meanings as the dominant culture privileges particular meanings and understandings but not others.

Turkish immigrants enter the United States where there is already an established culture of ethnicity as a result of American immigration history and diverse ethnic groups within the country. While many that I interviewed told me that they were not used to such classifications

(as in the United States) back home in Turkey, they realized their differences as they learned about themselves and American culture. They are quite aware that they are perceived as different in different ways. They view themselves being seen as immigrants, outsiders and strangers in a culture where their ethnic differences create differences that are new to them (Varenne, 1998).

While they were once part of the majority back home, now they are a minority with limited power, resources, and recognition.

As discussed in the previous chapter, most first generation Turkish Americans believe that society at large sees them as the “other” or as “them.” They also see themselves as the

“other” as they assign themselves to Turkish ethnicity in the context of ethnic America. Ethnicity in the United States concerns the construction of “ethnic” persons as “others,” different from

“Americans” in particular ways. This culture of ethnicity in the United States may not compel

139 organization along ethnic lines, but certainly it facilitates it. Turkish immigrants trying to make sense of their new situations and positions in the context of ethnic America, particularly in the

New York metropolitan area where identification along ethnic lines is strong, enter an already established ethnic cultural system. These already established ethnic lines and terms shape the ways in which Turkish immigrants make sense of themselves and organize institutionally and socially. These are certainly not classifications that Turkish immigrants were accustomed to prior to their coming to the United States. This is a new classification system in which they have to figure out their own classification and position, and develop new strategies for survival. For most, this involves a shift from being the majority, the position they had in Turkey, to being a minority, the position they have in the United States. This process enforces ethnicization among

Turkish immigrants, who are often fragmented in their place of origin. While issues of class, social status or gender are still important in Turkish American identities, there is a greater emphasis on Turkish ethnicity.

The social status of a culture, religion, or an ethnic group solidifies ethnic boundaries.

The World Trade Center bombings, the Iranian hostage case of 1979 and 19080, the two Persian

Gulf wars and their representation in the media have made Muslims unpopular in the American mind (Said, 1997, 2001). This is a position that is similar to those of until

WWII or after World War II (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998).

In March 2002, Charles Franklin drove his truck into the Islamic Center of Tallahassee.

After the incident, Franklin indicated “I want Muslims to know they’re not safe here” (Mubarak,

2002). Hadia Mubarak, a Florida State University student analyzing the incident in the

Tallahassee Democrat, indicated, “Many have dismissed Franklin’s attack as an isolated case, some calling it “coincidental.” The problem is not that he was one angry man with a lot of problems and the mosque appeared to be the perfect target. The problem is in subconsciously defining Muslims as something other than American. Recent Islamophobic rhetoric reflects a

140 broader perception that goes unchallenged by mainstream conservatives” (Mubarak, 2002).

Media representations shape the public mind and the way it views the world. Such views and mind are part of everyday life and signify identities (Said, 1997). Turkish Americans that I talked with during my field research in 2002 are well aware of such negative representations of

Muslims in America. As they participate in everyday life activities, they see the significance of such representations in their relations with people they do and do not know.

A majority of Turkish Americans that I talked with expressed the idea that Turkish immigrants are different from European and other non-Muslim immigrants in particular ways because they are Muslim. They view themselves being and seen as more different and alien than other immigrants. While none of the people I talked with saw their “Turkishness” being a problem in the United States, there was certainly a concern about the portrayal of Muslims in and by the American media and the image of Muslims that is held in the minds of Americans. For instance, Ayten complains about unfair representations and ignorance when I asked her to comment on the events of September 11, 2001. She points out,

When someone who is a Christian does something bad, it is always him, not his identity, not his religion. It is only him being accused of his actions, not his community or family. Because he does something bad, other Christians do not get blamed. When a Muslim does something, it is always religion that goes on trial. My friends who knew me never changed their attitudes. They were always the same, but people in the street and a few teachers in the school, they acted weird towards me; weird attitudes. I even understood it in the way they looked at me. They had some kind of hatred towards me. It was not me but my religion. Hadia Mubarak, a Florida State University student who sometimes writes for Tallahassee

Democrat, emphasizes the same sort of feeling. She writes, “I see people’s eyes follow me as if I were the object of examination under the scrutinizing lens of a microscope” (Mubarak, 2001).

For Muslim women, visible differences such as a headscarf make them more vulnerable to discriminatory acts. Many Turkish Americans hide their Muslimness because of similar

141 concerns. Here what we see is one of the most important components of culture, religion, playing an imperative role in how one sees oneself and makes sense of how others see him. As indicated previously, Turkish Americans try hard to disassociate themselves from other Muslims, particularly with Arabs, in order to minimize the negative impacts of the unpopular image of

Muslims in America. They not only claim their differences with other Muslims, but also they claim similarities with Europeans for the same purpose of distancing from that unpopular image.

This strategy of distancing is crucial in everyday life for Turkish Americans as their identities are signified, underlined, asserted, and reinforced through formal and informal daily interactions. As they participate in everyday life, Turkish Americans may face the danger of discrimination if their differences are more visible, such as wearing a hijhab, the Muslim headscarf. It was not surprising to me when I was told by several who wear headscarves that they faced greater discrimination after September 11, 2001 because of the way they dress. Some were shouted at while shopping, walking in the street, or taking the subway. The Turkish Day Parade and Turkish Cultural Festival Ethnic parades function as identity construction sites as they serve various social, cultural and political purposes. They give an opportunity for an ethnic group that has a relatively small amount of power in the larger society to present itself in the ways it wishes. They are special occasions or periods in which members of an ethnic group are expected to be engaged in and often entertained by a demonstration of some aspect of a community (Bickford-Smith, 1995).

They function to create unity among group members, to share its values in group solidarity, to introduce certain aspects of the community to non-members, and to show that the group has power in American social space.

For Turkish Americans, the Turkish Day Parade, which takes place on Madison Avenue in New York on May 19th, is an activity in which they represent their culture to themselves and to outsiders. These representations take the form of cultural displays, distinctive folk songs,

142 dances, dramatizations, political statements and positions11. Former president of the Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA), Egemen Bagis, summarized the purpose of the

Turkish Day Parade in three different categories when I interviewed him in summer 2002 in New

York. He argued that the FTAA and the Turkish Day Parade, along with the Turkish Cultural

Festival, serve: “first, promote unity among Turks in America. Second, introduce Turkish culture, music, dance and other sorts of Turkish art in the US. Third, lobby against groups that work against Turkish interests.”

One of the interesting dimensions of the Turkish Day Parade is its significance with ethnic groups that have historical and political disputes with Turkey and the Turks. After all, the parade started in 1981 to protest ASALA, an Armenian terrorist organization, for its assassination of Turkish consulate officials and diplomats in different parts of the world, including one assassination in Los Angeles. The following year, the leaders of the Turkish community gathered the community to protest international terrorism. Seeing the results of these protests as positive and having the desire to be more visible, Turkish Americans turned this gathering into a cultural celebration and political statement. It was a political statement because it started and continued with the competition with ethnic groups such as Armenians and Greeks, who had already had their own parades. Over time, this one day event has been turned into a month long cultural festival with a great deal of participation. Each year, thousands of people participate in the parade and cultural festival. Gathering, marching, and displaying are political statements as much as cultural displays. They signify group identity and solidarity against others by taking part in a collective act and statement.

The organization of the Turkish Day Parade and Turkish Cultural Festival is labor intensive and is almost entirely dependent on large numbers of volunteers. People who help to organize the Turkish Day Parade and Turkish Cultural Festival are involved in intensive and

11 A number of pictures from the Turkish Day Parade are provided in Appendix D. 143 stressful work which often forms bonds of solidarity within the community. Working and entertaining together influence the construction and maintenance of Turkish identities. Here the parade provides a place for dialogue and discourse as the actors involved in it engage in activities that deliver certain messages (for example, Turks have a distinctive culture) and certain meanings to members of their community and to the public at large (such as “we are a community” and have a great history), heightening the sense of Turkishness and uniqueness.

Besides reinforcing the sense of Turkishness, this is also an opportunity to show the sense of power and control over who they are and how they want to be represented.

Turkish Americans as a group and as individuals thought to be or who think of themselves as different with respect to the dominant culture participate in distinct ways in which they deliver certain messages and receive particular attention. For instance, the image of Turkey that is represented in the Parade stresses the secular nature of Turkey. In response, the United

States officials such as the President or the Mayor of New York send messages for the parade emphasizing Turkey as an example to other Muslim nations in regard to Islam and democracy.

These dialogues often function as identity-conveying discourses to present and represent

Turkishness and involve attempts to contest incorrect assumptions that members of the public might have about them. For instance, one of the interesting displays at the Turkish Day Parade in

2002 was the carrying of the flags of countries that lost citizens in the World Trade Center attack. The message was that Turkish Americans cared about all the lives that were lost on

September 11, 2001. Carrying American flags along with Turkish flags was supportive of that statement. These displays also generate links between America and the Turkish homeland. The

Turkish Day Parade and Cultural Festival are thus sites of contestation in which Turkish

Americans as individuals and as a group shape or, more to the point, reshape the ways others perceive them by effectively (if temporarily) seizing control of the arena of cultural representation. The president of the FTAA told me that while they received protests from

144 Armenian and Greek Americans in their previous parades, no one protested this time because they carried flags of all the nations (including the ) that lost citizens in the World

Trade Center tragedy.

The Turkish Day Parade represents a symbolic site in which Turkish Americans articulate a particular account or story of themselves. Many participants might have never been to Turkey, but they imagine themselves with those in Turkey and Turkish history through the stories told through the use of cultural displays such as “Mehter” (Janissary military band), the Seymenler folk dance group, and other exhibits. Each of these displays uses elements of history and culture to tell a story, the Turkish story, to enhance Turkishness and represent Turkish uniqueness. What is interesting is that although the Turkish Republican project has been distancing itself from the

Ottoman legacy because it represented backwardness and tradition in the eyes of Turkey’s founders and today’s establishment, the Janissary military band, which is an Ottoman legacy, was used to boost a Turkish sense of history and victorious past. The Janissary military band, which was financed by the Turkish military, gave concerts at Bryant Park in New York and at the Turkish Day Parade. These selective statements and acts are used when the actors in power, the Turkish state, deem them as appropriate.

The FTAA is responsible for organizing the Turkish Day Parade and tries to include different segments of society as part of the parade. Nationalist, secular, religious, women and men are all included in the representation process because the parade is meant to create unity among Turkish Americans. The Turkish State supports the FTAA by providing offices on the second floor of Turkish House and providing financial support for bringing dance groups and singers from Turkey. This in a way limits the FTAA’s ability to function in the way it wants because if an activity or a group is not favored by the Turkish State, it has little or no chance to be represented in the Turkish Day Parade. Therefore, political and ideological positions make an important difference in the representation.

145 Moreover, while the selective displays are meant to represent Turkish culture and history to the community and larger culture, one should not ignore the heterogeneity of Turkishness

(class, gender, religious, generation) in these representations. For instance, regardless of the competition and resentment between the FTAA and MayFest, a Turkish organization that promotes Turkish high culture rather than folk culture, MayFest participates in the Turkish

Cultural Festival in New York (between April 23 and May 19) that is directed by the FTAA. The community faces on-going discussions and conflicts about how best to represent themselves.

What we see is a sort of strategic homogeneity in their representation for a greater voice and say in America.

In short, if identity emerges dialogically, the Turkish Day Parade and Cultural Festival may be one way to provide Turks with opportunities to challange the assumptions held by their discursive partners, and in so doing, to influence their own and their partners' identities (Carter,

Donald and Squires, 1993). The Turkish Day Parade and Cultural Festival also represent an opportunity to showcase the sports, dances, clothing, and other cultural elements that partially constitute their identity. The very act of organizing a formal cultural parade that depicts the language, religion, food, sports, dances, clothing, history, music, and politics of a group ensures that ethnic identity per se will remain a salient issue for the foreseeable future. These events allow Turkish Americans to affect the ways they will be understood, in a general sense, by outsiders. These events serve as opportunities for communities to inform non-members about their distinctive traditions, culture, and history. Closing Thoughts In this chapter, I explored the relationship between institutions and organizations and the formation of Turkish American identities. Institutional and organizational places shape social relationships, form everyday interactive performances and provide resources for identities. The

Turkish organizations and institutions provide the pre-established structure through which ethnic

146 activity is manifested. The repetitiveness of attendance at Turkish activities through Turkish ethnic organizations and institutions allows for members to reaffirm their ethnic identity through the maintenance of social relations with other Turks. Identity formation is an ongoing process, indistinguishable from participation in a variety of social relationships. As people participate in everyday activities in particular settings, they become aware of their identities only in particular types of social relationships with other actors in particular places. Turkish American organizations and institutions provide such settings in which Turkishness and Americanness are maintained, reworked, and reconstructed. Therefore, Turkish organizational and institutional spaces are the appropriate places to reaffirm one’s Turkishness as the vast majority of attendees at these places are Turkish. Therefore, various Turkish associations, organizations, activities, and gatherings serve to maintain some sense of Turkish identity.

Turkish identity construction sites are resistance places with numerous resources for the construction of individual, group and categorical identities. These are places where certain strategies are developed to struggle for power and where the sense of Turkishess is maintained and reworked. This is a struggle over who Turkish Americans are and who they want to be.

Control over place and the role of place over identity are at the heart of such struggles.

Therefore, I look at Turkish American identity construction sites not as self-operating entities with their own dynamics and mechanisms, but as one consisting of arrangements of people who are interlinked in their activities.

147

IX CHAPTER

CONCLUSIONS

My interest in the subject of Turkish Americans was a result of my long time curiosity about differences among Muslim Americans and their integration into American society. I was astonished by the way both the media and academia represented and categorized diverse Muslim groups, such as Indonesian, Turkish, Persian, Arab, white and black Americans, in a single group, “Muslim Americans,” while ethnic, racial, cultural, historical, and religious differences among Muslim Americans and within each of these groups are numerous. Moreover, there is a common myth that Muslims do not integrate in the United States (without any careful analysis to document this myth) (Camarota, 2002). In addition, many Muslim groups, such as Turkish

Americans, have received little attention from academia, particularly from geographers. By studying Turkish Americans, I hoped that I might bring some attention to the differences among

Muslims groups in the U.S., as well as to Turkish Americans. While there is an increasing interest in Muslims in the United States, much of the discussion centers on terrorism and the events of September 11, 2001.

In this dissertation, I provide a comprehensive overview of Turkish Americans with the intention of encouraging critical analyses and discouraging stereotypical understandings by offering a glimpse into the complexity of Turkish American identities. I emphasize the multiplicity, contexuality, complexity, fluidity, and temporarility of Turkish identities and the role of different locales (places) (the United States and Turkey) in the construction of

Turkishness. The difficulty of mapping Turkish Americanness was a constant challenge as there

148 is not a single Turkish identity, but rather multiple ones with multiple meanings. As Pile and

Thrift (1995, 1) put it, “the human subject is difficult to map” because one cannot map something that does not have precise boundaries. Mapping the subject and its identity (or identities) are difficult because it can be located only partially in space and time. It is a difficult task because the subject is always on the move and takes multiple conflicting positions again in space and time. As Harvey (1996, p.7) put it, “Identities shift with changing context, dependent upon the point of reference so that there are no absolutes. Identities are fluid sites that can be understood differently depending on the vantage point of the formation and function.”

Each chapter in this focused on various issues of Turkish identities. In the second chapter,

I provide a wide range of theories and discussions from the literature, both geographic and non- geographic. The contextuality, complexity, fluidity, contingency, and temporality of identity are discussed from different points of views, and the role of globalization (media, market, and migration) in the formation of identities is explored. Moreover, ethnic identity perspectives, such as assimilationist, primordial, instrumentalist, and constructions approaches were examined.

However, this study is largely informed by a constructionist approach, which I found it to be enlightening in the understanding of Turkish American identity formations in the context of the

United States.

Informed by theories and debates in the identity literature, my primary concern was to follow a research strategy that would help me explore the multiplicity, fluidity, complexity, contingency, and contextuality of Turkish American identities. For this purpose, I used various data collection techniques, such as in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. In-depth interviews gave me a chance to listen to stories of being Turkish American and the meanings Turkish Americans make of their experiences in the United States. These stories provided a powerful way to gain insight into their lives, experiences, and identities (Seidman,

1998). Participant observation helped me to mark identity construction sites, such as coffee

149 houses, weddings, conferences, club meetings, and mosques, and to observe people in their favored settings (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). I analyzed documents such as brochures, flyers, websites, and subscribed to newspapers, magazines, and e-mail lists to get a wider picture of the community and its activities. Each of these activities provided different venues for a better understanding of the community. However, I have to acknowledge the limits of my understanding of the community, because I can never understand their lives, experiences, and identities perfectly. My intention was to get a glimpse of the complex lives and experiences of

Turkish Americans.

All geographies and identities are historical, as they are historically produced. The past always shapes the present (Gregory, 1994). Therefore, in chapter four, I wanted to look at

Turkish immigration history in the United States and how that history affected the community as a whole. Each Turkish immigration wave to the United States represents different experiences as well as the context in which the immigrants came to the United States. Government policies, such as U.S. immigration laws and Turkish laws for allowing multiple , had direct impacts on immigration trends as well as the identities of the immigrants. While the first wave of immigrants from Turkey were mainly peasants, who came to the United States to work in the factories, later immigrants were better educated professionals. There are also periods (such as the one between the two world wars) when the United States greatly restricted the number of immigrants from Turkey. All these trends and immigration waves greatly reflect the United

States government’s immigration policies and politics depending on the country’s labor needs and political preferences (Karpat, 1995).

In the fifth chapter, I provide a portrait of Turkey by examining its political history and current identity debates within the country. Some readers may think that this chapter is not directly related to Turkish American identity constructions. Nevertheless, because of the Turkish state’s active involvement in the Turkish American community, and the large number of first

150 generation immigrants who are directly influenced by the Turkish state’ political and other practices, the fifth chapter is a crucial part of this study. One cannot fully understand Turkish

American identity formations without understanding the roots of identity debates (Pile and

Thrift, 1995). As a result, I paid special attention to the role of the Turkish state in the maintenance of Turkishness and the formation of Turkish Americanness.

My analysis of Turkish Americanness in the seventh chapter is not independent of my analysis of Turkishness in the sixth chapter, because Turkish Americanness is not independent of

Turkishness. As Turks move across the Atlantic, they carry with them their notions of nation, hate, conflict, ideology, religion, and culture. Divisions/differences within the Turkish American community reflect issues of conflict and struggle that are part of everyday life in the Turkish media and politics (Ergil, 2000). Although members of the community imagine they are a part of a Turkish community at large, they have divisions and conflicts that have been and are imported from Turkey. Therefore, I reviewed Turkey’s political history to give a better perspective about the struggle among different groups within the Turkish American community. Turkish

Americans are not free from the , as they are not from the politics of the United

States.

The Turkish government is also actively engaged in matters of Turkish-Americans, and deals with economic, political or cultural issues of fellow Turkish-Americans. Thus, Turkish identity politics are never just local or national in scope; rather they are very much global and international because nations intervene in each other’s internal affairs. They do so not just because of human right issues, but also because of the migration of groups among different states

(Appadurai, 1998). The Turkish state plays a significant role in the organization of the Turkish

Parade in New York every year as it provides financial and political support for the event. The

Turkish consulate, as the representative of the Turkish state, along with organizations that have

151 close ties with it, initiates community gatherings and encourages formation of Turkish associations and preservation of Turkishness.

Another example is the Turkish state’s influences in this community occured when the

United States Congress passed a bill suggesting that the Turkish treatment of Armenians during the WWI was “genocide.” Turkish state officials contacted various Turkish organizations in the

United States to protest the bill and defend Turkey. It mobilized Turkish groups in the United

States to send letters to the US president, senators and representatives to reject such a bill (which the US senate did). President Clinton’s involvement and the historical alliance between the US and Turkey helped lead the bill ultimate defeat, but such events caused the Turkish state to engage actively in the affairs of the Turkish American community and to encourage members of the community to organize better and unite to lobby for the interest of “their country.” The

Turkish government took this event as an opportunity to visit various Turkish organizations throughout the United States to help form Turkish lobbies so the Turkish voice is heard and

Turkishness is defended in America. As Cornell and Hartmann (1998) argue, nationalism as a set of ideas that exalts the nation to a central place, and mobilizes groups by appealing to certain identities and interests in pursuit of political goals. This has been clearly a new agenda for the

Turkish state.

My argument is that Turkish-American identities in the United States materialize through the confrontation of two driving forces: the immigrant Turkish culture and resident American culture. On the one hand, Turkish primordial identities are very much driven from Turkey’s cultural and historical background. Many Turks are still proud of that culture and history and have close ties with friends and families in Turkey. On the other hand, Turkish identities are reworked in the context of American culture and globalization as suggested by Pile and Thrift

(1995) and Giddens (1991). The younger generations are exposed to American cultural practices in their everyday practices and relations. The television they watch, the friends they have, and

152 the schools they go to shape their identities in one way or another (Appadurai, 2000). These two forces of identity compete and strive for domination. The product is what we call Turkish-

American identities.

The media, market and migration are three crucial factors in shaping a sense of

Turkishness, as these forces are determined by national boundaries and cross boundaries of national cultures (Appadurai, 2000). The role of the media and nationalism in the formation of identities is fundamental for understanding Turkish American identity politics. Giddens (1985,

167) argues, “Capital has never allowed its aspirations to be determined by national boundaries in a capitalist world.” Capitalism carried nationalist ideas over boundaries (Giddens, 1985).

People figure out who they are by defining who they are not, and the media greatly affects that process. While the Turkish media keeps fellow Turks connected to their home country and their imagined community as well as it helps to maintain their sense of Turkishness, the American media also exposes them to the dominant American culture. Therefore, the media not only helps them to preserve their distinct identities by keeping them in touch with their families and friends, it also makes them different from other Turks living in Turkey and other parts of the world by reframing Turkishness in the context of America. The sense of Turkishness is carried and transformed through media. While the Turkish media and state offer some sort of identity and community, Turkish Americans are at the same time exposed to other kinds of identities and communities such as American, European, Middle Eastern, and global. The Turkish media and state reach across the Atlantic to America and contribute to the shaping of Turkish-

Americanness. As the literature suggests (Nakamura, 2002; Servaes and Lie, 1997), the Internet has made it possible for the Turkish media to deliver its message across the ocean (to America) as all major Turkish newspapers and television and radio stations are available on web and target

Turks living abroad.

153 Identity is a political domain on which meanings are negotiated, contested, and constituted (Keith and Pile, 1993). Therefore, power relations and relations of dominance are crucial to understanding and studying identity politics because different powers try to shape identities to their advantages whether to be Turkish or American. Turkish-Americans are exposed to American culture through the American media, public and state, as well as everyday life work and consumption etc. The United States government has the authority to grant citizenship and the rights that come with it. It looks for criteria to decide who qualifies to be an

“American” and who does not. In order to produce desired citizens, American educational, legal, political, and cultural systems promote the “ideal” of Americanness (Philo, 1992). American media also has its own contributions to the formation of this Americanness. Turkish immigrants are exposed to the same type of values as other groups in the United States. As a result, while their identities must fit both Turkish and American criteria, they are caught in a difficult position/place/margin of negotiating their meanings of being Turkish and American at the same time. This process of adaptation and adoption vary according to economic status, gender and generation. Particularly, first and second generations have to deal with various difficulties of finding a place in this new cultural, social and political setting. Therefore, Turkish-Americans are neither just Turks nor just Americans: they are something between the two, or both, or more.

The process through which dominant meanings are imposed and registered focuses attention on the concepts of ideology and hegemony (Jackson, 1994). The dominant or hegemonic culture tells the individual what a right act is and what is not in the context of everyday life (Palanithurai and Thandavan, 1998). In this process, the individual may become alienated from him/herself. S/he contradicts with what s/he knows about life and practice, and with what happens around her/himself in the new cultural context s/he is entering, experiencing or becoming a part of. Her/his differences are negotiated and often excluded, while dominant meanings are imposed with the power of dominance (Soja and Hooper, 1993). Meanings will be

154 contested when individual and group interests or life styles are at risk of elimination or exclusion. Therefore, difference is one of the most valuable concepts of culture because it articulates the boundaries (Foucault and Gordon, 1980).

However, differences cannot be reduced to the simple dichotomy such as “us” vs. “them” or “we” and “others.” While there are parallels among immigrant groups in the United States

(such as Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Turks, and Chinese) in terms of their integration and their acceptance by Americans, there are also differences in terms of their experiences and the degree of acceptance and discrimination. While Turkish immigrants go through phases from a thick identity to a thin identity similar to the Italian and German immigrant experiences, this does not mean that Turkish American immigrant experiences are simply a replication of these two groups.

Turkish Americans bring with themselves their unique identities, such as Muslim, Turkish, and

European, as other groups came with their own unique identities and experiences. Moreover, because of their cultural similarities, such as Muslimnesss, Turkish Americans also have similarities with Muslim immigrants, such as Arabs and South Asians.

Muslim visual differences such as wearing a headscarf may put Muslim Turkish

American women in a position similar to those of Arab and South Asian immigrants. To illustrate, Ayten, a 17 year old born second generation Turkish American, wanted to apply for a job for which she had called and found out that it was available. She asserts, “but when I went up and asked for a job application, and the lady looked at me and said that ‘no, we don’t have a job open.’ I definitely thought that it was my religion because they cannot find someone for the position in half an hour.” Her visible differences put her in a difficult position where she has to negotiate her meanings and the things she wants. She faces problems that a European female immigrant may never confront because Ayten’s differences are so “obvious.” Moreover, her disparity is more obvious and dramatic than those of the people of other differences such as maleness (Turkish or any other), femaleness of other kinds (e.g., European female, Japanese

155 female or uncovered Turkish female). All these differences as well as similarities suggest the complexity, multiplicity, and temporality of identities (Pile and Thrift, 1995).

To summarize, immigrant groups, such as Italian, French, Chinese, Turkish, Jewish, and

Arab, may look different to Americans but not all these groups are different to Americans in the same sense and to the same degree. Therefore, there are multiplicities and complexities in any given differences. I argue that such multiplicities and complexities within and among different immigrant groups can not be addressed in the simple dichotomy of “us” versus “them.”

I have looked at Turkish spaces and identity construction sites where Turkishness is maintained, reformed, and reconstructed. Turkish Americans establish boundaries to exercise differences, celebrate group solidarity and the sense of belongingness as the mounting geographic literature suggests (e.g., Keith and Pile, 1993; Jackson 1994; Pile and Thrift, 1995,

Gregory, 1994). Turkish sites involve political, social, and cultural institutions as well as residential and work places. Participants take on roles in each of these arenas with particular ways of acting, thinking, talking, dressing, or eating (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998). Each of these actions has implications for Turkish American collective identities.

Moreover, the role of place in the construction of Turkish American identities has been explored as the Turkish is an invocation of collective space which is concurrently both inside and outside of the West (both Europe and America). The result of this kind of positioning is a form of cultural synthesis and it gives Turkish Americans a place and resources of resistance.

Therefore, place is not viewed as a container holding Turkish American identities but also a constitutive power forming Turkish Americanness. Turkish American identities are spatially constituted as they represent a ground on which temporary and ever-changing boundaries are marked between inside and outside, the same and the other. These boundaries stress not only distinction or difference but also interconnection. Turkish Americans claim not only their differences but also their similarities with Turks and Americans (and others) as well as

156 differences with them in this process of identity formation and expression. This is also place making and place marking activity as contingent Turkish identities are momentarily validated, registered and contested. Closing Thoughts This study is one of the first comprehensive works on Turkish American immigration and identity formations. I hope to inspire new studies on Turkish Americans, who have been part of the United States since the beginning of twentieth century, but have been ignored by academia, and particularly by geographers.

This study is not just about who Turkish Americans are, because it also problematizes ethnic and racial classifications, such as Muslim Americans, in the United States (Said, 2001). It poses the following questions: Who are Muslim Americans? Are Muslim Americans a homogenous group? How can one put Turkish, Indonesian, Arab, Black, and White Muslim

Americans in the same category, as there are major cultural, linguistic, historical, spatial, and religious differences among these groups? It further problematizes categories such as Turkish and Turkish Americans. “Who is a Turk” was a difficult question to answer for many of the participants of this study, whose ethnic backgrounds included not only Turkish, but also Kurdish,

Arabic, and Jewish. They also come from different classes, genders, and places of origin. Who is a Turkish American was even more difficult one, since it adds another layer to an already complex Turkish identity. I did not have any intention of defining Turkishness or Turkish

Americanness, as I simply wanted the people that I interviewed to voice their own identifications. The results were multiple and complex, because identities are complex and the sources of Turkish American identities are multiple (Turkish, European, Middle Eastern, Asian,

Muslim, immigrant, generation, gender, class) Therefore, rather than offering a single Turkish identity, the study urges us to re-examine our ethnic, racial, and religious identities in their multiplicity, contextuality, fluidity, contingency, and temporality.

157 Finally, this study confirms the importance of place in identity construction. I paid particular attention to the sites and locations (e.g., work places, coffee houses, worship places, social clubs, and parades), where Turkish American identities are maintained and reconstructed.

I explored the places (such as Turkey, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East) with which my participants identified themselves. Some identify themselves with one place (e.g.,

Turkey, the United States, Europe, or simply West (ern) and East (ern)), while others identify with multiple ones (e.g., Muslim/Western/Turkish American). Each place, with all its memories and experiences, adds a new layer to Turkish American identities as they provide new sources and contexts for the reconstitution of their identities. All these sources and places make it hard to map Turkish Americaness. As Pile and Thrift (1995, 1) put it “the human subject is difficult to map” because it has no clear boundary and because it has no clear position but a mass of positions. As Harvey (1996, 7) suggests, “Identities shift with changing context, dependent upon the point of reference so that there are no absolutes.”

Although this study is only an attempt to show the complexity and multiplicity of Turkish

Americanness and Muslimness in the United States, further studies are needed on other ethnic and racial Muslim groups to document the complex nature of being Muslim as well as being

Turkish in the context of the United States. Muslim integration and Muslim identity formations in America are not adequately studied and analyzed by academia, and I hope this study triggers further work on the subject.

158

APPENDIX A

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Personal Information

1. Name 2. Gender 3. Age 4. Marital Status 5. Birth Place/Country 6. Nationality? 7. Are you an American citizen? 8. Are you a Turkish citizen? 9. Job you are occupying currently? 10. Which high school did you graduate from? 11. What was the language of instruction at your high school? 12. Highest Educational Degree 13. In which country did you receive your highest degree? 14. From which university did you receive your undergraduate (bachelor's or associate's) degree? 15. What year did you graduate? 16. Indicate the number of children living with you as part of your family? 17. Your children’s age? 18. Parents’ education level? a. Mother b. Father 19. Parents’ occupation? a. Mother b. Father

How were you raised?

159 20. How were you raised in terms of your cultural and ethnic identity? Were you very much raised in a way that was Turkish or American? 21. When you were a child, were most of your friends Turkish or American? 22. Are you proud of Turkish/American heritage? a. If yes, what makes you feel that way? b. If not, what makes you feel that way?

Language

23. What language do you speak at home? 24. What language do you speak at school/work? 25. What language do you speak with friends? 26. Do you watch or listen to Turkish on TV? a. If yes, how often and what stations? 27. Do you listen to Turkish music? 28. Do you watch or listen to Turkish in film? a. If yes, how often? 29. Do you read Turkish in literature? 30. Do you fluently write in Turkish? 31. What languages do you speak?

Immigration Information

32. When did you immigrate to the US? 33. What were your main reasons for coming to the United States? 34. Did you have any study, work, travel or other experience outside Turkey prior to coming to the United States? a. If yes, what kind of previous experiences did you have abroad? 35. What is the longest period you have spent outside Turkey? 36. Before you left Turkey, what were your thoughts about returning? 37. What are your thoughts about returning to Turkey now? 38. Why?

Life in Turkey and the United States

39. In general, how does your life in the US compare with your life in Turkey? (in all social, economic, academic aspects)

160 40. What are the main difficulties that you have faced/are facing living in the United States? (Being away from family, loneliness, unemployment, discrimination against foreigners, children growing up in a different culture, lack of personal security) 41. What factors were important in helping you adjust to life abroad? 42. Do you have any relatives living in the USA? a. If yes, how helpful were they for adjusting to the life the United States? 43. Are you a member of any of Turkish/non-Turkish organizations? a. If yes, can you name those organizations and mention their activities? 44. How does your ethnic/cultural identity influence your life in the United States (positive and negative)? 45. Have the events of September 11, 2001 - the terrorist attacks in the US - and the aftermath- affected your life here in the USA? 46. Do you think that the events of September 11th have had negative impacts on Turkish- American public relations? a. If yes, how? 47. Have the events of September 11, 2001 - the terrorist attacks in the US - and the aftermath- affected your views about returning to Turkey? a. If yes, how and why?

Maintaining Contacts with Family and Friends

48. How do you maintain contact with friends and family members in Turkey? (Telephone calls , regular mail, email, visits to Turkey, visits by family or friends)

49. Has your contact with family members in Turkey increased, decreased or remained the same over time? 50. Why? 51. Indicate the number and the frequency of visits you have made to Turkey during your current stay in the United States? 52. What were the main reasons for your visits? (Vacation, family visits, business) 53. When was your last visit to Turkey? 54. How did your last trip to Turkey affect your views about returning to Turkey?

Following News

55. Do you currently subscribe to any Turkish publications? a. If yes, what are they? 56. Are there any Turkish TV and radio stations broadcasting in your area? 161 a. If yes, what are they? 57. How frequently do you follow news from Turkey during your stay in the US? (Daily, weekly, monthly etc.)

Everyday Activities

58. Do you go to places where most people are American? a. Why? 59. Do you relate to your partner or spouse in a way that is Turkish or American? 60. Do you prefer to live in a Turkish/Turkish-American community? 61. Why? 62. Do you celebrate Turkish holidays? 63. At home, do you eat Turkish food? 64. When eating at restaurants, do you primarily eat at Turkish restaurants? a. If not, what types of restaurants do you eat at? 65. In what kind of Turkish activities do you participate? 66. Now, are the majority of your friends Turkish/Turkish-American? 67. Why? 68. What do you like the most about living in the USA? 69. What do you like the least about living in the USA?

Asserted Identities

70. What is your definition of Turkish/Turks? Who are the Turks? 71. Would you consider yourself to be Turkish-American? a. If not, to which ethnic / cultural group would you assign yourself? b. If yes, do you feel that you are more Turkish or American or both? 72. Why do you feel that way? 73. Do you feel that you are more Western (European) or Eastern (Middle Eastern)? 74. Why? 75. What is your religion? 76. What is the role of religion/Islam in defining your self and group identity? 77. What is the role of religion/Islam in defining your relationship with Americans (and the West)? 78. What are your thoughts about the role of Ataturk in the creation of new Turkish identity after the collapse of the Ottomans? 79. What are your thoughts about Turkey as a country that is at the intersection of the Muslim world and the West/Europe? 162 80. Do you think that Turkey can be both Muslim and Western/Modern? 81. Why/How?

163

Assigned Identities

82. Do others assign you to a different group other than the ethnic and national identity you feel part of? a. If yes, how do you think they identify you? b. If yes, who identifies you that way? 83. Who do you think Turks are according to the United States government? 84. Do you agree with that definition of Turks? 85. What do you feel about public perception of Turks and Turkey in the United States? 86. Do you think that Americans associate Turks with Arabs and other Muslim groups? a. If yes, how do you feel about that? 87. What do you think Muslim nations think of Turks? 88. Do you feel that Western countries (including the US) treat Turkey fairly? a. If not, why? 89. Do you think the public perception of Turks has worsened after the events of September 11th? Change over Time

90. Do you think that Turks in the United States are losing their Turkish identity? a. If yes, what are some signs of that? 91. Do you believe that your children should have Turkish names only? 92. Do you think your children are more Americanized than your generation? a. If yes, what are some signs for that? 93. Do you think if it is a good thing that Turkish people in the United States are being assimilated? a. If not, what can be done to prevent that? b. If yes, why?

Interactions

94. Do you think that Americans treat you well? 95. What do you feel about Americans? What kind of people are they? 96. Do you have any American relatives? 97. Do your children usually spend time with Turkish or American children?

164

APPENDIX B

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE INTERVIEWEES

Adnan12 Adnan is a second generation Turkish American. He is finishing high school next year. His father is a car dealer and mechanic. Adnan goes with his American name at school but uses his Turkish name when he is with his Turkish friends and family. Armani Armani came to the United States after living in for a while. He is ethnically Armenian and his parents left Turkey after the events of WWI during the Ottoman Empire. Armani works with a lot of Turks in the New York area and speaks some Turkish. Atakan Atakan is a first generation Turkish American, who is married to an Eastern European woman. Regardless of his international marriage and his 30-year stay in the United States, Atakan is quite nationalistic in his views as he has a Turkish flag in his car and office as well as watches Turkish television. Ayten Ayten is a second generation Turkish American who goes to high school. She has conservative parents and is the youngest of three sisters but she is the only one that wears headscarf. She asserts her American, Turkish and Muslim identities. Aysel Aysel came to the United States 17 years ago. She has a PhD in literature and is a writer. Her husband owns several gas stations in New Jersey. She wears a headscarf and considers herself Turkish but believes that she has adopted many cultural practices in the United States. Burhan Burhan is 27 years old and very independent. He works as a manager in one of New York’s prestigious stores. He has a MBA and his parents are well educated. He came to the United States in 1998. Cindy Cindy is a 33 year-old second generation Turkish American. Her parents came to the United States during the 1960s. She complains about the cultural and generational gap between her parents and herself. She changed her name after having problems with finding jobs. David David is a 35 year-old first generation Turkish Jew. He has been in the United States for over 10 years. He does not practice Judaism. He considers himself

12 These are and not the legal names of my interviewees. 165 Jewish, Turkish, and American. Dostum Dostum is a second generation Turkish-Karacay American. His parents are originally from the Caucasus. Karcays are often considered as Turks but they have their own language and culture. Dostum considers himself American, Karacay and Turkish. Dogan Dogan is a 35 year old first generation Turkish American and is quite conservative. His wife was harassed in a supermarket after 9/11. He likes America and its way of trying to include all ethnic and racial groups. He thinks that America’s diversity could be a good example for Turkey. Ediz Ediz is a first generation Turkish American who considers himself “totally” western. He speaks German, Turkish, English, Italian and French and is now learning Spanish. He is not a Muslim but he is proud of his Turkish identity Emrah Emrah came to the United States in 1998. He is a PhD student and son of a Turkish politician who was once a representative in the Turkish parliament. He argues that discussions of identity crises in Turkey are pointless and a waste of time. He believes in the expression of all kinds of identities. Ensar Ensar came to the United States when he was 17. He works as a manager for a prestigious textile company in New York. He has Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic roots but he considers himself Turkish. He also thinks that he is quite Americanized because he has been here since he was very young. Fatih Fatih is a 43 year-old businessman. He has a large clothing company in Turkey and wants to open stores in the United States. He likes the diversity in the United States but he thinks that there is a moral corruption in the country. Gulten Gulten is married to an American and works as a paralegal. She does not practice Islam but respects it. She is very fond of Ataturk and his ideals. She considers herself Turkish and is very active in Turkish American community. Oguzhan Oguzhan is a second generation Turkish American college student. His father is a retired physician, who has been very active in the Turkish American community. Oguzhan considers himself Turkish American and is proud of his Turkish heritage. Nazim Nazim is ethnically Kurdish but he also considers himself Turkish because of his Turkish citizenship. He is 28 years old and lives a conservative life. His wife, who covers her head, was harassed and he was deeply affected by it. Raziye Raziye is originally from Crimea but after WWII her parents were deported by the Soviet regime. She is 58 years old and retired. She believes that the “real Turks” are the ones who come from Central Asia. Sibel Sibel was born in the United Staes but went to Turkey to go to high school

166 and college. She is 24 and considers herself Turkish American. She goes to the Turkish American Business Forum’s (which were mentioned to me as a place to meet other people for dating purposes) activities. Sinan Sinan is a second generation Turkish American who claims his Turkish and American identities. His father is an engineer and his mother is a housewife. They have a dozen apartments in New York. Susan Susan is a second generation Turkish American who goes to college. Most of her friends are American and she feels out of space in heavily Turkish gatherings. She thinks that her sister is more Turkish than she is. Suzi Suzi is in her late 50s and works for a clothing company in New York. She was originally from Crimea and has children who are married to Americans. She has not been in Turkey for a long period of time. Tahir Tahir came to the United States 35 years ago. He is quite conservative and active in the religious community. He wants his children to grow up as Muslims. He likes the governmental system in the United States but stresses that he loves his Turkish culture. Temel Temel is 27 years old and came to the United States three years ago to study English. He is a mechanical engineer but works in restaurants in the New York area. He wants to get a masters degree in mechanical engineering. He feels that Islam connects him with other Muslims. Turhan Turhan is the son of a former Turkish diplomat and speaks several languages. He is proud of his Turkishness and Ataturk. He is 31 years old and does not practice Islam regularly. He works as a vice president in one of New York financial institutions. Turkan Turkan came to the United States after marrying a Crimean Turk. She also has Crimean roots and is very active among Crimean women. She has two daughters who go to college. She is involved in Crimean youth programs. Vedat Vedat is a 70 year-old retired physician. He has two children who are married to Americans. He moved to the United States ten years ago after retiring in Turkey. He is proud of his Turkishness and is very active among the Turkish community in the New York area. Yasemin Yasemin is 29 years old female who came to the United States three years ago. Her mother is a medical doctor while her father is a . She helps a children fund in Turkey and is very interested in Turkish community activities. She considers herself Turkish but loves the system in the US.

167 The Following People are community or institutional leaders that I interviewed

Ata Erim Ata Erim is a retired physician, who has been very active in the Turkish American community for over 30 years. He is the president of the Turkish World Congress and was president of the Federation of Turkish American Associations for over 10 years. Erim was one of my key informants about the development of the Turkish American community. Bahar Yucel Bahar Yucel is the president of the Turkish Women's League of America (TWLA). TWLA offers computer and English classes for immigrant Turkish women. The organization is best known for its sponsorship and maintenance of the Ataturk School where many Turkish American children have learned Turkish language and culture. Bircan Unver Bircan Unver is the president and founder of the alternative media organization the Light Millennium (LM), a non profit organization. LM organizes events that help to foster expression of ideas and experiences for all people as well as Turks. Egemen Bagis Egemen Bagis was the president of Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA), one of the two Turkish American umbrella organizations. He is now a representative in the Turkish parliament and advises Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan on foreign affairs. Erdogan Dur Erdogan Dur is the principal of the Amity School in Brooklyn, New York. The Amity School is the first Turkish American private school in the United States. The school is also a gathering place for the community in the area. Fatih Yilmaz Fatih Yilmaz is the founder and editor of the Turkish magazine Jon Turk. After several issues, the magazine did not receive as much attention as it expected so Fatih Yilmaz stopped the publication. Hilmi Akdag Hilmi Akdag is the imam of Fatih Mosque in New York. Fatih Mosque was one of the first Turkish American mosques in the United States. The mosque has been a gathering and shopping place for many Turkish Americans with its shops and community space. Izzet Yildirim Izzet Yildirim is the educational attaché for the Turkish government in New York. Over the years, the Turkish government has sent thousands of students to the United States for educational and training purposes. Lara Tambay Lara Tambay is the event coordinator for the American Turkish Society. ATS is one of the elite Turkish American groups in New York. It organizes cultural and educational programs and focuses on a positive

168 image of Turkey among Americans. Tulay Taskent Tulay Taskent is the principal of the Ataturk School in New York. The Ataturk School has been a place for many Turkish American children to learn Turkish culture and language.

169

APPENDIX C PICTURES FROM THE TURKISH AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA

Picture 1: Turkish Americans carrying flags of countries that lost citizens on September 11, 2001 at the Turkish Day Parade on May 18, 2002

170 Picture 2: World Turkish Congress based in New York (not in Istanbul or Ankara) takes part in the Turkish Day Parade every year. Date: May, 18, 2002

Picture 3: Turkish State and Tourism Ministries at The Turkish Day Parade. Date: May, 18, 2002

171 Picture 4: The Janissary Military Band, a symbol of the Ottoman Past, performs at Bryant Park in New York and at the Turkish Day Parade almost every year. The band consists of both Turkish civilians and military personal. It is sponsored by the Turkish military.

Picture 5: I am standing with the band at the Turkish Day Parade on Madison Avenue, New York.

172 Picture 6: Turkish Folk Dance Groups often take part and perform during the Turkish Day Parade.

Picture 7: The Amity School, one of the two Turkish private schools in the New York metropolitan area, marches in the Turkish Day Parade every year.

173 Picture 8: The Turkish Day Parade is a place where Turkishness is transmitted to the young generation. Date: May, 18, 2002.

Picture 9: Other Turkic groups such as Azerbaijanis take part during the Turkish Day Parade.

174 Picture 10: Young Turkish Americans.

Picture 11: Seymens are a folk dance group from Ankara, Turkey. They have a symbolic meaning in modern Turkish memory because they danced for Ataturk when he first came to Ankara

175 Picture 12: Turkish-American Medical Association was founded by Turkish physicians who came to the United States during the second Turkish immigration wave in the 1950s and 1960s.

Picture 13: Another scene from the Janissary Military Band

176 Picture 14: Oz (Osman) Bengur, a second generation Turkish American, seeking the support for his candidacy for the US Congress from Baltimore during the Turkish Day Parade

Picture 15: Turks in New Jersey taking part in the Turkish Day Parade

177 Picture 16:13 The Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) based in Washington, DC, is one of the two Turkish American umbrella organizations.

Picture 17: Second generation Turkish American females

13 Pictures from 16 to 21 are from the website of American-Turkish Associations 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 at http://www.atadc.org/en/Pictures/TurkishDay/2001.asp. Last accessed on 9/28/03. 178 Picture 18: Another of picture of Turkish Americaness

Picture 19: Annual Turkish American Day Parade Festivities at Dag Hammarksjold Park

179 Picture 20: Annual Turkish American Day Parade Festivities at Dag Hammarksjold Park

Picture 21: Korean War Veterans take part in the Turkish Day Parade every year to remember the togetherness of Turkish and American solders during the Korean War

180 Picture 22: King’s Ankara Meat Market and Grocery. Paterson, New Jersey. The scripts in Arabic are for Palestinian costumers, who are looking for Halal (Muslim “Kosher”) meat, as Paterson is also home to many Palestinians, along with being home to a significant number of lower class Turkish Americans.

Picture 23: Turkiyem Video in Paterson, New Jersey, has a large collection of Turkish movies and TV shows

181 Picture 24: Turkish ethnic businesses also include barber shops. Turkiyem (my Turkey) Beauty and Barber Salon is located in Paterson, New Jersey.

Picture 25: Fund raising for Oz Bengur for his campaign for the US Congress at the house of the president of World Turkish Congress Ata Erim. They served Doner Kebab (Turkish name for gyro). Date: June 22, 2002

182 Picture 26: Oz Bengur, a second generation Turkish American, with Turkish Americans for his fund raising for the US Congress: Date: June 22, 2002

183

APPENDIX D

TURKISH AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS14

ALABAMA Turkish American Cultural Association of - TACA-AL Huntsville, AL

ARIZONA Turkish American Association of - TAA- Tempe, AZ Webpage: http://www.futureone.com/~graphic/turkish.html

CALIFORNIA Turkish American Alliance for Fairness Los Altos, CA Webpage: http://www.taaf-org.net

Turkish American Association of Southern California - ATA-SC Irvine, CA Webpage:http://www.atasc.org

Turkish American Association of California - TAAC Los Altos, CA Webpage: http://www.taaca.org

COLORADO Turkish American Cultural Society of - TASCO Highlands Range, CO Webpage:http://www.tacsco.org

CONNECTICUT Turkish American Cultural Association of Southern New England - TACA-SNE Milford, CT

14 Detailed information is provided only for major Turkish American organizations 184

Istanbul Technical University Alumni Association Intl, Inc East Hartford, CT 06109 Webpage:http://www.turkishnews.com

Turkish American Physicians Association - TAPA Stratford, CT

Connecticut Turkish Islamic Cultural Association New Heaven, CT

DELAWARE Valley Muslim Associations - Selimiye Mosque

FLORIDA Florida Turkish American Association - FTAA Lighthouse Point FL

Association of Turkish American Scientist-ATAS Coral Gables, Florida Webpage: www.atas.org

Turkish American Cultural Association of Florida - TACAF Brandon, FL 33509-3303 Webpage:http://www.tacaf.org

Florida Turkish American Association, Women's Club

GEORGIA Turkish American Cultural Association of - TACA-GA , GA Webpage:http://www.tacaga.org

Turkish American Society of Georgia Atlanta, GA

HAWAII 185 Turkish American Friendship Association of - TAFA-HI Honolulu HI

ILLINOIS Turkish American Cultural Alliance of Chicago - TACA-Chicago Chicago, IL Webpage: www.tacaonline.org

Turkish American Association for Cultural Exchange - TAACE Naperville, IL

Turkish American Cultural Alliance TACA Chicago, IL

KANSAS Turkish American Association of Greater City Kansas City, MO Webpage:members.aol.com/taaofkc

LOUISIANA Turkish American Association of - TAAL Metaire, LA

MASSACHUSETTS Turkish American Cultural Society of New England, Inc.-TACS-NE Boston, MA Webpage:http://www.tacsne.org

MARYLAND American Turkish Association-MATA Columbia, Maryland

Washington Turkish Women Association-WTWA Kensington, MD

Turkish Children Foster Care Saverna Park, MD

186 Turkish American Neuropsychiatric Association-TANPA Grand Blanc, MI

Turkish American Cultural Association of Michigan-TACAM Walled Lake, MI Webpage: http://www.tacam.org

MINNESOTA Turkish American Association of -TAAM Minneapolis, MN Webpage: http://www.taam.org

MISSOURI Turkish American Cultural Alliance of St. Louis-TACA-St. Louis St. Louis, MO

NORTH CAROLINA American Turkish Association of - ATA-NC Raleigh, NC Webpage: http://www.ata-nc.org

NEW JERSEY Azerbaijan Society of America Clifton, NJ Webpage: http://www.azerbaijan-america.org

Karacay Turks Mosque and Cultural Association North Haledon, NJ

Solidarity of Balkan Turks of America Paterson, NJ

Young Turks Cultural Aid Society Bedminster, NJ

Turkish-American Community Center, NJ

187 Flanders, NJ

Turk Ocagi Lyndhurst, NJ

Turkestanian American Association Parsippany, NJ

Turkish Cypriot Cultural and Educational Association of NJ Morganville, NJ

Turkish American Association of New Jersey, Inc Lyndhurst, NJ

NEW YORK The American Turkish Society, Inc.-ATS New York, NY Webpage: http://www.americanturkishsociety.org

The American Turkish Society was founded in 1949 New York and has a membership of over 400 American and Turkish Diplomats, banks, corporations, businessmen, and educators. Some of its activities include promoting economic and commercial relations. It also aims to increase cultural understanding the people of the United States and Turkey.

Turkish-American Business Forum, Inc. New York, NY Webpage: http://www.forum.org

The Business Forum is a not-for-profit organization established in New York in 1997. Since it was established, the Business Forum's membership has already exceeded 500 business people and entrepreneurs representing a variety of industries and business segments such as financial services, technology, new media, architecture, design, law, textiles, fashion, trading, logistics, tourism and construction. During my study in 2002, I also learned that the organization’s activities also serve as a gathering place for dating purposes. Several of my interviews also participated in the Business Forum’s activities.

Federation of Turkish American Associations-FTAA New York, NY 188 Webpage: http://www.ftaa.org

Founded in 1956, the FTAA is one of the oldest Turkish-American organizations with over 30 other local and national Turkish-American organizations. It plays an important role in organizing the Turkish Parade, which takes place in May. It is devoted to advance educational interests and to maintain knowledge of Turkey’s cultural heritage.

Turkish Society of Rochester Rochester, NY

Turkish American Cultural Association Lawrence, NY

Syracuse Turkish Association Syracuse, NY

American Turkish Islamic and Cultural Center Forest Hills, NY

US Council for Human Rights in the Balkans, Inc. Forest Hills, NY

The Turkish American Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Maritime TradeSM TACCIM Webpage: http://www.taccim.org

The Society of Turkish American Architects, Engineers and Scientists, MIM New York, NY Webpage:http://www.m-i-m.org

Anadolu Club Patchotue, NY

United American Muslim Association Brooklyn, NY

Turkish Cypriot Aid Society

189 Bronx, NY

Turkish Society of Rochester TSR Rochester, NY Webpage: http://www.tsor.org

Turkish American Physicians Association New York, NY

The Turkish Women’s League of America New York, NY

The TWLA was founded in New York in 1958 to promote equality and justice for women. It also encourages cultural and recreational activities to foster relations between the people of Turkey, the United States, and other countries. This includes new Turkish republics of the former Soviet Union.

Turkish American Eyup Sultan Islamic Center, Inc. Brooklyn, NY

Young Turks of America Cultural Aid Society New York, NY

Association of Balkan Turks of America, Inc. Brooklyn, NY

American Association of Crimean Turks Brooklyn, NY

Intercollegiate Turkish Student Society ITSS New York, NY Webpage: http://www.itss.org

Turkish American Youth Association

OHIO Turkish American Association of Central - TAACO

190 Columbus, OH Webpage: http://www.taaco.org

Turkish American Society of Northeastern Ohio-TASNO Cleveland, OH

Turkish American Association, Ohio Delaware, Ohio

OKLAHOMA Turkish American Association of - TAA-OK Tulsa, OK

PENNSYLVANIA Pittsburg Turkish American Association - PTAA Pittsburgh, PA Webpage: http://www.ptaa.org

Turkish American Friendship Society of the United States-TAFSUS Philadelphia, PA Webpage: http://www.tafsus.com

Turkish-American Muslims Cultural Association Levittown, PA

TEXAS American Turkish Association of Houston-ATA-Houston Houston, TX Webpage: http://www.atahouston.org

Turkish American Association of Northern -TURANT Dallas, TX Webpage:http://www.turant.org

VIRGINIA The Melungeon Heritage Association Inc. Wise, Webpage:www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Inn/1024

191

WASHINGTON Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington-TACA Kirkland, WA Webpage:http://www.tacawa.org

WASHINGTON, DC Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATA) Washington, DC Webpage: http://www.ataa.org/

Assembly of Turkish American Associations is one of the largest Turkish-American organizations with over 10,000 members. It was founded in 1979. Based in Washington, DC, the ATAA coordinates activities of regional associations for the purpose of presenting an objective view of Turkey and Turkish Americans and enhancing between these two groups.

American Turkish Association of Washington DC-ATA-DC Arlington, VA Webpage: http://www.atadc.org

American Turkish Council-ATC Washington, DC Webpage: http://www.americanturkishcouncil.org

The American-Turkish Council (ATC), which today represents the consolidation of the American-Turkish Friendship Council and the U.S. Section of the Turkish-U.S. Business Council, is a tax exempt, not-for-profit trade association organized and operated pursuant to Section 501 (c) (6) of the Internal Revenue Code. ATC is the leading business association in the United States devoted to the promotion of U.S.-Turkish commercial, defense and cultural relations. ATC maintains a diverse membership including U.S. and Turkish companies, multinationals, mid-sized companies, small enterprises and individuals with an interest in U.S.- Turkish relations. ATC is located in Washington, DC.

Ataturk Society of America-ASA Washington, DC Webpage: http://www.ataturksociety.org

192 Turkish Student Associations Assembly of Turkish Student Associations-Wash., DC Washington, DC Webpage:http://www.atsadc.org

WISCONSIN Turkish American Association of -TAAM Milwaukee, WI

American Turkish Association of Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI

TURKISH-AMERICAN MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

The Turkish Times It is biweekly-published newspaper of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. It covers Turkish American issues with news articles, editorials, cultural events, and business information. It is located in Washington, DC.

Zaman America It is a daily newspaper in Turkey but it is published weekly in New York. It not only looks at issues of Turkish-Americans but also political, cultural and economic issues of Turkey and matters of Turks living in the United States. It is printed both in English and Turkish.

Turk of America It is a monthly Turkish Magazine published in New York by Cemil Ozyurt and Omer Gunes and deals with issues of Turks living in America.

Mezun Life It is a monthly Turkish magazine published in the United States and owned by mezun.com (a website of great sources for Turkish immigrants and the Turks who want to come to the United States). It also deals with issues of Turkish Americans and Turkey.

Turkish Daily News It is published daily and contains information about Turkish economy and government. It is published in English in Ankara and has a website updated daily.

193 Turkuaz Published quarterly in both Turkish and English, Turkuaz offers recommendations, cultural information and community news and interviews to Turks, Americans and Turkish-Americans. It mainly targets Turkish Americans on living the West coast.

In addition to the newspapers and newsletters published in the United States, almost all major Turkish newspapers and magazines are available online. Major Turkish newspapers such as Hurriyet, Milliyet, Sabah are delivered by air and distributed to Turkish Americans living in New York. They function as main source of news from Turkey for Turks in the United States. There are also numerous websites put on the web by Turkish-American organizations, including student organizations, to bring Turkish-Americans together and keep the sprit of being Turkish alive while living in a multicultural country, the United States.

Although with the increasing use of internet their number is decreasing, various Turkish American organizations have monthly newsletter or bulletins.

American Turkish Society Bulletin It is quarterly newsletter of the American Turkish Society and located in New York

Turkish Newsletter It is monthly published by the Turkish American Association and is located in New York.

194

APPENDIX E

APPROVAL MEMORANDUM FROM THE HUMAN SUBJECTS COMMITTEE

195

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202

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Ilhan Kaya was born on May 1, 1974, in Turkey. After finishing high school at Eleskirt

High School in 1989, Ilhan went to Ataturk University in Turkey, where he received his

Bachelor of Science degree in Geography in 1994. In 1996, Ilhan earned a full scholarship from the Turkish Ministry of Education to pursue a graduate degree in the United States. Ilhan began his Master of Science (MS) in Geography in 1997 and finished it in 1998 at Florida State

University, where emphasized geography textbook adoption policies and politics. Soon after completing his MS, Ilhan began his Ph.D. in Geography at Florida State University and taught classes such as World Regional Geography and Human Geography. Ilhan’s research interests include cultural geography, political geography, politics of identity, the Middle East, Muslim

Americans, and Turkish Americans.

203