u/Empty-Pace-4228

Jamala, one of Ukraine’s most beloved artists, who won the 2016 Contest with “1944,” a song that is in half-Turkic and half English, about the suffering of the Crimean Tatars under the USSR. Even before Eurovision, she frequently took part in Crimean Tatar cultural events and spoke about the pain endured by Turkic peoples during the Soviet era. She won the Eurovision that year!

Although she could understand Turkish better than she could speak it, Jamala sent her love to Türkiye in interviews with Turkish media during Eurovision 2016. After the July 15 coup attempt, she shared a condolence message in Turkish for the citizens who lost their lives and later performed in their honor. In interviews, she also said "Atatürk is my hero".

Jamala, as a half-Armenian woman, dedicated her career to introduce Turkic culture and recently published an Album called "Qırım" where she sings traditional Turkic songs, not only from Crimea but also from Anatolia and Nogai Turks.

Unfortunately, Jamala does not speak Armenian and has never performed a song in Armenian. Yet as someone who is Tatar on her father’s side and Armenian on her mother’s side, she reminds us that pain has no ethnicity, and that we can mourn every innocent life lost in the same way. A Turk can have empathy for an Armenian, and an Armenian can have empathy for a Turk. It is beautiful to have cultural bridges like this between two countries

Greetings to Armenia from Turkey.

Do you have any stories to tell? I start with my personal experience!

Romanians
Romania has a very special place in my heart. When I first came to Europe, the first friend I made was a guy from Bucharest. We were friends for about five years, and his family treated me like one of their own. They invited me to their meals and welcomed me into their home. I met his whole family, and not once did I hear anything negative about me being Turkish. We were even joking between each other, saying that we are like Mehmed and Vlad. But to be honest, aside from my friend’s family, I didn’t really interact much with other Romanians.

Bulgarians
Here, I met a girl who was half Turkish and half Bulgarian, and we became friends. My dentist here was also Bulgarian, and she was always very friendly toward me. Other than that, I haven’t really had the chance to closely observe the Bulgarian community.

But I myself am a Bulgarian Turk. Most Bulgarians in Bulgaria see us as Bulgarians and do not recognize us as Turks, while some are prejudiced. So although they don’t have a definitive opinion, there is a segment among them that claims we are not integrated into Bulgaria. I can say that the Turks in Bulgaria generally acknowledge and accept Bulgaria’s national identity.

Albanians
Here, I met around 5 to 10 Albanians in different environments, so I got to know them better than some of the others. The first Albanian I met here was the owner of a phone shop where I went to buy a charger. He realized I was Turkish from my accent and asked me, “Are you Turkish?” When I said yes, he replied, “I figured,” and then said in Turkish, “Hoşgeldin Kardeş,” which means “Welcome, brother.”

After talking with him that day, he didn’t greet me when he saw me on the street afterward. He was typically a rather cold person. I don’t think this had anything to do with being anti-Turkish, since one of his business partner was Turkish.

When I started university, one of my law student friend’s classmates was Albanian, an older guy than me. Just like the others, he realized I was Turkish from my appearance, and when I told him I was Turkish, he said, “I knew it!” At one point I started wondering, “Does my forehead literally say ‘Turk’ on it?”

He was a religious Muslim and talked to me about the shared words between Turkish and Albanian. When we started talking about politics, he told me he knew about the Kurdish community in the country we were staying in and said something like, “There are even PKK supporters among them! Astaghfirullah! May God destroy them!”

Then our law student friend interrupted and asked, “What does PKK mean?” The Albanian friend replied, “They are people who formed an organization and committed massacres in the name of having a state for their own ethnicity.”

He later graduated and got married.

A girl I used to sit next to in class was sooo beautiful, and I was really mesmerized. I started talking to her, and eventually I asked where she was from. She told me she was Albanian.

Since I liked her, I tried to build some rapport and told her, “There are millions of Albanians in Turkey. I know Albanians, they’re very good people,” and things like that. She replied, “Yes, I know. We are related.” and she said it very casually like a historical fact, I was genuinely surprised.

Later, she told me she was from Kosovo, so she wasn’t actually from the State of Albania itself.

In class, I also met a girl through a friend of mine. Our conversation went well, and she asked me where I was from. When I told her I was Turkish, she suddenly reacted as if she had jumped out of her seat, turned her whole body toward me, and said, “Wait a second… you’re Turkish?!” I said yes, and she started smiling and almost looked like she was about to hug me. While pointing her fingers at herself, smiling, “Well, I’m Albanian!” she said. She genuinely seemed very happy.

Later on, for some reason, I spoke a bit too freely and asked her, “You know Albania is half Christian and half Muslim, which one are you?” She told me she was Catholic. At that moment I got nervous, because I thought that since she wasn’t Muslim, she might develop a negative attitude toward me knowing that I'm Turkish, but it was nothing like that.

One day, while we were walking toward the train station together, politics came up. I told her, “You know, people say Turks and Albanians don’t get along well with Greeks.” But she misunderstood me and thought I had said “Turks, Albanians, and Greeks don’t get along with each other.” She immediately interrupted me and said, “Whaaat?! Sorry, but I completely disagree with that! We, Turks and Albanians are brothers, that’s it!” I was genuinely surprised. In the country I was living in, I had never seen reactions like that from anyone except Arabs. Then I clarified what I had actually meant. Then, she told me that she finds Greeks "too arrogant", then she added that Greeks claim Albanian land and history but they will "never succeed". (It is her words, I'm not accusing anybody or group for anything).

One day she told me, “You are good people, but you have one problem: you imposed your religion too much. But it’s okay, we forgive you, after all, we don’t have any problems between us today!” Since she was Catholic, I could understand where she was coming from. She also told me that we stole Börek and Pide from them, since I don't know the origins of the recipies I didn't say anything.

I replied, “You are looking at the 1500s as if they were today. How do you expect a medieval empire to treat its subjects?" After that we argued a little, and she said that some Albanians had been forcibly converted to Islam.

I didn’t continue arguing with her about it because I thought there might still be some tensions between Catholics and Muslims in Albania (I don't know if there is but I didn't wanna take the risk), and that she might carry some personal bitterness about the subject deep down, so I chose not to push the discussion further. I told her I'm sorry for the pains that they've been throuh.

She was also very interested in Turkish songs and listened to the songs I sent her. One day, I told her that her name meant “cute” in Turkish. Her name really did mean "Cute” in Turkish. She blushed.

The sandwich shop in the neighborhood where my university is located is run by a slightly older Albanian married couple, probably in their 50s. They are also Catholic. The man has a deep and theatrical voice; when he speaks, he almost sounds like an opera singer, and his facial expressions and gestures are extremely animated. If I hadn’t known he was Albanian, I probably would have assumed he was Italian.

He knows the Turkish words “Arkadaş” (“friend”) and “Güle güle” (“goodbye”), and he uses them when talking to me. Whenever I come into the shop, he greets me with “Merhaba arkadaş!” meaning “Hello, friend!”

When they first learned I was Turkish, the man told me things like, “Turkey is my domain, I know Turkey well. I traveled all over it. I had friends who worked there. I could go from one end of the country to the other without getting lost!” Then his wife interrupted him and said in French, “Arrête de dire n'importe quoi !” which means, “Stop talking nonsense!”

I also talked with them about Albania. I listed the Albanian cities I knew, and they told me that I should visit someday.

GREEKS
Back in high school here, I had a Greek friend in class. He had a light beard, was a gymrat, and had a bit of a playboy vibe. He was a pretty chill and friendly guy. There were also two other Turks in the class besides me, and we never had any problems with him.

On Instagram, he was the type to post pictures squatting in front of his car wearing tight shirts with Nike sweatpants, and he constantly wore a large cross necklace. I don’t really know his ideological views; the only thing I know is that he used to go on vacation to Cyprus and share photos from there.

When I started university, I met a lot more Greeks.

Most Greeks (especially the ones coming from the US and Canada) would say things like, “We don’t really get along, do we?” or “Our countries are enemies,” after learning I was Turkish. Usually, before you even had the chance to respond, they would say “Anyway…” and immediately change the subject. It was pretty obvious that they kept a certain distance.

I also talked to a Greek girl who had been born here because her family had fled the colonels’ regime. One time we sat together on a train and had a long conversation. She didn’t bring up historical topics herself, but even when I started comparing certain aspects of our histories (for example military coups) she would get a disturbed expression on her face whenever I talked about my country. So I decided not to push her too much.

Aside from that, a girl I had met at a party once spent half an hour trying to teach me the correct pronunciation of “Thessaloniki” because I couldn’t pronounce it properly. Overall, my impression was that they generally tried to keep some distance from us. I met tens of Greeks here, but almost every one of them became somewhat distant toward me after learning that I was Turkish. Because of that, I never really got the chance to know them closely.

******

Besides Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians and Albanians, I didn't see any Balkaners here. If that counts, there was a Slovenian lady (in her 40s or 50s) that I was chatting with in my dentist's waiting saloon and at the moment that she learnt I'm Turkish, she stopped talking with me immediately. But I'm not sure if Slovenia is considered as Balkan or not.