I spoke with someone named Matthew last night, an American living in Amsterdam who knows some Turkish because he’s had two Turkish girlfriends and took lessons in Germany. He also studied philosophy.

We had a good conversation, and he mentioned the idea that Turks may be having some small bit of a “colonized mindset”, looking too much to the west rather than at their own history.

Over the last day, I was thinking about this and giving it some credence. Modern Turks generally do seem to look westward for their cultural inspiration, and seem to associate that type of modernness with “quality”.

But then I was just watching the baris manco Arkadasim Essek video and it made me think

Turks may really have their own form of western secularism that is uniquely Turkish and not born out of some sort of envy or “colonization of the mind” by western forces. In fact, it may be a “colonizing” mindset to assume that anyone whose values begin to align in western ways is born out of a colonization.

This thought has given me a bit of a new depth of feeling about the way secular Turks take pride in their modernism. It’s associated with westernism, but I’m not sure it’s because of a cultural takeover done by the west.

Modern french don’t have a colonized mindset regarding pre / post french revolution. Why should we assume Turks do? Turks act like the west while not looking like the west, which makes us feel like we’re seeing a loss of culture. When in fact Turkish modernism is its own creation born out of its own culture.

Not to discount the impact of western culture on Turkey and many other growing nations over the 20th century. But I think this gives me a bit more pause before declaring that something is born out of a colonization of the mind

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