Turks are Turks

Turks are Turks (published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=76629 )
'Biz bize benzeriz,' Ataturk used to say. 'We are like ourselves.'
It is a mistake, I believe, to say Turkey is European, or Asian, or Middle Eastern.
Its geography includes all of these. But its culture can only be called Turkish.
The political system is like West Europe, the military and police seem more East European, and the main religion is from the Middle East.
The language is from Central Asia but is now written with the Roman alphabet. The food is a combination of Central Asia and the Mediterranean.
The people and their culture are a mix of all the above places. Anatolia seems close to Asia. Istanbul and the Agaen coast seem closer to the Balkan countries and Greece.
I have read that the Ottomans always wanted more people in their empire. Race was not important, and as early as the time of Fatih Mehmet the Turks were a minority in their own empire.
The result is a culture that can only be called Turkish.
Perhaps the most unusual part of this is the language. It is the main connection with the origins of the Turks who first came here.
It is a close relative of other languages in Central Asia, and a more distant relative of East Asian languages such as Mongolian, Korean and Japanese.
Some experts say there is a connection between the Turks and the native Americans. DNA testing has supported this idea.
The popular theory is that native Americans came from East Asia toward the end of the last Ice Age, when much lower sea levels created a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
Hugh Pope, a journalist in Istanbul, writes in his book 'Sons of the Conquerers' that a Turkish friend of his in America has found 500 Turkic words in Navaho Indian and 500 more in Mexican Maya.
The Turks of Central Asia could even be more closely related to some native American peoples than they are to the majority of people in Turkey.
It is very interesting that the Turkish language survived the journey across Asia when many other things changed.
It also survived the rise and fall of an empire that in the time of Kanuni Suleyman was the biggest in the world, ruling much of the Middle East, North Africa and South East Europe.
Turkey is a bridge in many ways. But it is also the home of a unique, fascinating and important culture that has given a lot to the world around it, and which can only be described as Turkish.
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