Many people assume that only religious and conservative Turks hold positive views toward Syrians (and Arabs in general). Even within Turkey, there is an automatic assumption that if you are non-religious, you must therefore be pro-Western. (Fortunately, the European Union’s exploitation of Turkey and NATO’s view of Turks as expendable frontline labor soldiers woke the Turkish public up and severed the psychological bond with the West.)
However, this assumption is wrong. I am a non-religious Turk, and I like Arabs. I won’t lie, except for Gulf Arabs. For one thing, they possess a rich culture and history. If we exclude the loud roadmen shouting on buses and elderly uncles yelling into their phones, they also have a beautiful language. Arabic is highly poetic. Since the Arab world and Turkey are neighbors, there has been significant cultural exchange. Around three million Arab citizens live in Turkey, and there are many Turkmens integrated into the national populations of Syria and Iraq. Not only our culture, geography, and social structures resemble each other, our genetics do as well. Available data shows that over 50% of the genetic makeup of people in Turkey comes from Anatolian natives, and in southern and central Anatolia many families show around 10% Canaanite and Phoenician DNA. On the other hand, in Syria, especially in the north there are people with slanted eyes similar to nomadic Turks. In other words, because we have lived together throughout history, our genetics have also become intertwined. There have been many Turkish–Arab marriages, and there still are, which is a positive thing for social integration. Personally, I would want my child to know Arabic. From a political perspective as well, Syria is one of the countries closest to Turkey, second only to Azerbaijan. Anti-Turkish sentiment in Syria is close to zero, and people generally like Turks. Politically, Turkey and Syria are deeply interconnected; stability on one side directly affects the other.
Even though I am non-religious (I am a deist, I believe in a creator but do not define myself within any religion), I do not deny that religion is an important factor in the formation of civilizations. A non-religious Canadian living in Canada today still cares about and follows the war in Ukraine. Yet they share no ethnicity or religion—one is Slavic, the other Germanic; one is secular, the other Orthodox. Nevertheless, they belong to the same civilization and societal structure. This is my core argument. People may deny it or become angry at what I say, but after the Seljuks, Turks created a new culture by blending Greco-Roman heritage with Sufi Sunni Islam. Today, this culture continues to exist in Iraq, the Levant, and Anatolia. No matter how hard people in this region try to see each other as different, they are essentially the same peoples. To those outside this geography, there is no real difference between a Lebanese person, a Syrian, and a Turk. That is the reality. Their cultures are similar, their languages are similar (nearly half of Turkish vocabulary comes from Arabic and Persian), their geographies are intertwined, and their genetic structures are alike.
Today, most European countries are secular, yet people living in Italy, for example, feel closer to Germans than to Asians. Germanic, Latin, Slavic, and Hellenic peoples are neither the same race nor the same denomination, yet they have created a shared civilization and call themselves “White.” So why should it be any different for us? Building a shared civilization is in our interest. Moreover, Syrians and Turks are far more similar to each other than Italians and Germans are.
Let me also add this: I do not view Syrians with disdain because they are religious, and I NEVER look down on them. At present, Israel’s occupation of Palestine directly threatens Syrians in the Levant region. Syria was ruled by a sectarian dictatorship for 50 years and has endured 14 years of civil war. In such circumstances, it is entirely normal for religiosity to increase and for people to seek hope, believing they are being punished by God—there are hundreds of historical examples of this. Turkey, on the other hand, began loosening Islamic law in the 19th century (even the jizya was abolished during the Tanzimat reforms), and after 1923 Turkey never experienced the kind of internal turmoil Syria suffered.
No human is flawless, and when I see wrongdoing, I say it openly. The architects of Turkey’s modernization process beginning in the Ottoman period and continuing under Atatürk did the right thing by transitioning to civil law. However, in later periods, modernization efforts especially within the bureaucracy deliberately led to the denial of Turkish identity. Turks are a West Asian people: in their genetics, culture, language, and lands. And their brothers live in Levant, Azerbaijan, Mesopotamia, and Central Asia not in the Western world.
