Are Turks appropriating European culture?

Greek neighbour here. And hello to my neighbours!

“Cultural appropriation.”

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

I also happen to think that as a cultural critique, the notion of “cultural appropriation” is so vague, so clumsily wielded, so thoughtlessly conscripted in identity battles, that it deserves to be subverted by deplorables. Which is what this question sounds like.

Cultural appropriation is not cultural borrowing. Cultural appropriation is making bits and pieces of an oppressed culture your own, without acknowledging the origin and context of the bits and pieces, and without respecting the bearers of the source culture.

Believe me, Atatürk did not make everyone wear a hat instead of a fez, and wear a tux, as a gesture of disrespect to the Franks.

I’m Greek, and I have my own conflicts and questions about whether Turks are Europeans. I have the same questions about Greeks.

But, my “European” friend, that’s the price you pay for cultural hegemony. Your culture really is no longer your own. Every swarthy Other out there gets to partake of the culture you guys have been evangelising.

And you know what? That’s a good thing.

2 Comments

• John Cowan says:

  January 15, 2018 at 3:07 am

  See Mark Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), and weep that we Americans didn’t listen to him when we could have.

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  • opoudjis says:

    February 12, 2019 at 3:17 pm

    … Wow.

    Sorry I had not noticed your comments before; for some reason, I was not getting notifications from this blog.

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