Camilo Calderon

Tracy Blahnik
PARA: Intro to Education
10-21-2015
Brief analysis on Turkish values and culture.
For this project I chose to interview one of my international friends. His name is Ilker Cakir, and
he is from Turkey. Turkey has an interesting location in the world because it is in the border
between Europe and Asia. Just as many countries in the middle east, Turkey is a muslim country,
mostly. It is a country with a long history that goes from the Ottoman empire in the 13th century,
to an independence war in 1919, and a current war against extremist rebels. Ilker was born and
raised in a metropolis; Istanbul, which is located in the western part of Turkey, and is considered part
of Europe. His childhood took place in a small, safe neighborhood apart from the typical city life.
With regard to the first question, Ilker gave me a concise but deep answer that, to be honest,
I had not thought about before. He said, you can find diversity when people that are different, live
together in a community and they all share equal rights and conditions. I had thought about the
people being different and living together, but it had never crossed my mind the idea of having
equality as part of that diversity classification.
In Turkey, family is very respected and important for the society, in general. According to him,
not only families, but relatives stay together and spend much time with each other. To me it seems
very strange because even though in Colombia family is very important, relatives like aunts or uncles
are not so tied. In contrast, Turkish people have deep value for the family including all close and far
relatives. They show their respect to them by calling them aunt, uncle, etc. even if they are not really
that.
One particular treat of the Turkish culture that I found very useful is the value they put on the
older people. It does not go from young people to old people, it goes from the younger to the older,

regardless of the age they have. Ilker said they see old people as wiser and they think they deserve
respect. One way the younger show respect to the older is with words; if the older person is older by
just a few years, the younger one would call him/her brother. If the older person is many years older
than the younger one, the younger one would call him/her aunt or uncle. Once again, the value they
put on family is shown greatly in this case, because if they call an stranger as aunt or uncle
means that they really value family, and they really respect people.
Moving onto gender expectations and values, Ilker told me that given that military service is
mandatory for them in Turkey, it is very important for men to serve the country. Society in general
expect men to join the army when they are twenty, and if a person does not enroll in the army, it is
seen as though he is defrauding. On the other hand, being a soldier is seen as prestigious and
noble. Women, however, are not expected to join the army, but in some parts of the country, they
have more conservative, patriarchal roles and values. Throughout the country, women are expected
to be good cooks in order to be good wives some day. They are also expected to adopt their
husband's families as their own, and, then again, they show it by using words. So you can find a
wife calling her mother-in-law as mom, of her brother-in-law as brother. The sad news is that in the
eastern part of the country, women do not usually have access to education, whereas in the western
part, it is normal to see women and men studying.
As I said before, Ilkers childhood took place in a small neighborhood in Istanbul. HIs street
was a dead-end street and traffic was basically null, which according to him made it a safe
environment to be outside. He started school at seven years old, but, before and after he started it,
he said he would spend a lot of time with his friends/neighbors. They would play long hours outside
and then, go to one of their houses to rest or play something else. That is pretty much how my
infancy took place in the first city that I lived in. One interesting anecdote he told me, was that it was
common there that, during the first month of classes of the first year of elementary school, moms
would stay inside the school to look after their children so that they do not cry, and rather get used to
be at school.

During Ilkers life in Turkey, he found rather a lack of diversity, where he met a lot of people
from different parts of Turkey, but not really from the neighbor countries, such as Greece, Italy or
Azerbaijan. However, they have immigrants in Turkey. They come from poor countries in Africa, most
of the times. They migrate to Turkey pursuing a better life, anyhow, they end up having low income
and non-formal jobs like selling things in the street. So, Ilker says that although immigrants in Turkey
are generally treated well, they still represent great part of the percentage of poor people in the
country. But, basically, he says that the lack of real diversity, in his own definition, has not affected
him much, because he always tries to treat people equitably.