My interaction with our supposedly upper-crust Turkish neighbors in the resort town of Tuzla became a major impediment to maintaining a home in Turkey, never mind any thoughts of a bond with a Turkish woman, which family and friends insisted I needed. With father talking about his need to start dialysis treatments in U.S.A., soon my sisters and I could have for free our villa at this exclusive resort town in Istanbul. Did we want it, father asked us. My sisters could do without a home in Istanbul, but I wanted to make sure. While deliberating, I made an effort to get to know our neighbors. The Turks consider themselves as very smart, without so much recognizing that their's is more like a survival IQ that most people especially in the developing world possess. (The really smart Turks are likely the ones who migrate to more advanced countries in order to find real outlets for their intellect.) They are also very warm and sociable--things they intensely and incessantly complain about lacking when they are in the States. On the surface the neighbors were indeed engaging, but eventually it became apparent that what I was being subjected to was a well-practiced but insincere courtesy and friendliness--or “sahte nezaket and samimiyet” as they would say in Turkish. Underneath the effervescence, I found them rude and crude in manners, like inviting me to a party and then canceling the invitation just before the party, and this by one who had qualified me as a personal friend. (And I suppose this was still a better “friend” than another friend who did not bother to invite me to his party in the first place.) Since I was the only bachelor among the adults there, at first I assumed my status was their dividing line. Then I sensed that there was strong objection by many to my presence as far as private parties were concerned. I had not done anything remotely objectionable to anyone. I was sociable with the few people with whom I interacted more frequently, but otherwise I remained independent and self-sufficient, not seemingly needy of constant company and chit-chat—traits that are alien to the Turks when they are among themselves. That I attended (or not) their parties with lots of drinks and “western” music and gushing small talk--with lots of gestures to each other as to how westernized they had become--did not bother me. I had had my fraternity parties at the university, when I was that age, and in a week or two I would be back in Washington, D.C. with my girlfriend.
What interested me was the petty politics they played. OK, I was being ostracized. I knew that Turkish people, who copy everything (easy to copy) from the west, openly embrace all foreigners and foreign things, except a native Turk who no longer acts Turkish. The crux of what annoyed them most was not that I had attempted to assimilate to the U.S.A., which a few of them who had spent time in U.S.A. had too, though only superficially just to get by, but that I seemed to have succeeded in becoming more American than Turkish. I had discerned this already by 1980s, after four or five short stays in Tuzla. I decided that I did not want such a static base in Turkey (or in U.S.A. for that matter), with the same like-minded people around me at all times. But since parents were still there, when I arrived, I too began to play an elaborate game with the neighbors. I made sure I acted even less inhibited and more independent, and actually even started heavy physical exercises, like running and jumping rope openly, activities that no Turk my age would indulge in, just to rub in. Unlike my age of Turks, I was athletic, youthful, colorful and a bit daredevil too. Heck, I liked their impression of me and wanted to savor the prize. So, in fact, my assimilation process to the U.S.A. was concluded not in the United States but in Tuzla, Turkey, though I adored my Turkish mother and two sisters—who, by this time, like me, had also assimilated to the U.S.A. and were as American as they were anything else.
We sold our villa in Tuzla in May 1993 and permanently returned to the U.S.A.; I purchased an exquisite water-front condo in South Beach (SoHo, Miami), and we never looked back. We heard some neighbors were surprised that we could leave such a paradise as Tuzla. We always knew we had that choice, and unlike them, we felt more at home in U.S.A. I have hence traveled to 316 places in 130 countries, traversed the U.S.A. (and Turkey) by car, train, bus and plane, visiting most major national parks; wrote my book of family history and a 400-page diary to boot; prepared a web site with 648 pages and nearly 15,000 photos, and came to the realization that aside from my parents and sisters, daughter Belinda, and one or two old friends from college, I am happier to be alone, also to preserve my sense of romance and adventure, and the freedom to dance to my own tune. For us, this self-actualization process had started in 1958. Parents paid homage to their years and memories in Turkey by maintaining their Turkish citizenship for life, but they remained in U.S.A.
