A while ago, I wrote about my experience on a bus sitting next to a woman whom i consider to be nothing more than a total racist. Unfortunately, it will be a lie if i have you believe that racial profiling experience to be my first or my only experience since i moved to Istanbul. In the wake of the black lives matter movement around the world i feel it is only right that i share another act of racism that i experienced which was frustrating and repulsive.
I've been studying in Istanbul for two years going into my third, although learning the language has been difficult i sometimes make friends that help me navigate the Turkish society. I make friends everywhere i go, it became easier because Turks basically want to talk or form some kind of racially provoked relationship with black people, sometimes the relationships are sexual because they assume that all black men have big penises, sometimes the relationships are language-based, they need someone to practice English with and some just want to pretend to be your friend so they can ask you questions about how poor Africa is or show you off to their local friends. My story isn't about that, not disregarding the constant stares on the Metro and the buses, the weird questions, the constant weird picture requests, it is pretty obvious that some Turks are too ignorant to even recognize that they are racist.
Sometime last summer, one of the friends i made in my neighborhood invited me to hang out with some of his other friends, this wasn't the first time for sure, he has invited me to hang out with some of these friends before to show off his African friend, several times. On this particular day, he asked me to go to Kadikoy with him and these friends, the plan was to leave at 9pm so logically assume we were going to a bar or a club but i was wrong, they decided we should go there take a walk and sit near the water, eat biscuits and drink juice . While we were walking we came across four policemen, they decided to stop the five of us walking together amidst the hundreds of people out in the park near Moda at Kadikoy that night because they saw a black man, when they stopped us, they said hello to the Turks i was walking with and asked them to step aside so they could properly interrogate me. First, they asked where I'm from, they asked why I'm in Turkey, then they asked for my Residence permit which i considered to be a normal procedure at first but then they decided to do a body search. I promise you they were thorough, one of my friends walked up to them to ask them what they were searching for and one of the cops replied and i quote "genellikle üzerlerinde narcotic var" which roughly translates " they usually have drugs on them", immediately i realized that "they" meant black people plus they did not do the same to the guys i was walking with, they just assumed that i would be the one with the drugs if there was any. On the spot, i didn't want to give off an obvious reaction because i didn't want to get arrested so i said nothing pretended like i did not understand any Turkish, my friends said nothing too at first, so i asked them why the police stopped just us and why they searched just me out of all the people in the park and they replied " it is nothing", at that point i realized they don't even get what just happened. I was scared, i was really fucking scared, i looked around the park and i was the only black person insight, i was utterly and completely alone, i felt it in my soul. If i got into trouble with the cops that night it would have been easy to erase me without a trace.
Retrospecting the event of that night, seeing what is happening in the United States and around the world currently, it is becoming scarier to be black. We shouldn't have to be scared to be black, we shouldn't be worried that we are black. Every time I want to leave the house i have to think about the proper route to take so i won't create a rumpus with my blackness. I'm not optimistic about the world-changing, the stigma of slavery is still lurking so every other race still assume the black race is beneath them, everyone enslaved Africans and i mean everyone, it seems like no one has moved on from that part of history. To anybody of Turkish origin that reads this piece, I'm not saying your entire society is racist, i'm saying a lot of you are and even most Turks do not recognize racism as a factor, some are so ignorant that they do not even recognize that their actions are unacceptable. I think White people need to understand their privileges in order for them to understand racism, white people are treated better than colored people anywhere in the world even in Africa, black people are humans too, we shouldn't be treated differently just because of the color of our skin.
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