By ELMIRA BAYRASLI

“You live with your boyfriend?” I recall asking Meltem, one of the teaching assistants at Istanbul’s Boğazıçı University.

Just after college, I attended for a semester for Turkish language instruction. I grew up speaking the language. But that was in Brooklyn, not Turkey. I wanted to understand Turkey better.

What I knew about Turkey I didn’t like. Turks were a conservative, traditional bunch who believed in arranged marriages, virginity and a girl’s place in the kitchen. Imagine my shock when the teaching assistant just a year older than me confessed she lived with her boyfriend — with her parents’ consent.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” she asked me, not guessing it was impossible for me. Not under the watchful eye of my Turkish parents. Even worse was not being able to talk about it, or any of the things that confuse us most: sex and love.

Much to my surprise, Turkish girls in Istanbul were having these discussions with their mothers, aunts and grandmothers. They assumed I did too. After all, I lived in America, the more progressive place.

I realized progress doesn’t come from a location, it comes from a community.

It doesn’t come by protecting traditions, it comes by supporting people, especially women. The open and honest exchanges that Meltem had with her mother in Istanbul gave her confidence, enabling her to focus on becoming the woman she wanted to be, not the one others wanted her to be.

I liked this Turkey. I wished the community I grew up in Brooklyn could embrace this Turkey. Instead their focus was holding on to traditions, so we children wouldn’t forget our glorious, proud roots. Ironically, by suppressing progress and modernity they made us all too anxious to abandon anything Turkish.

How can an emigrant community preserve its roots while adapting to the times?

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By day, Elmira Bayraslı takes care of press for a global non-profit that supports entrepreneurs. By night, she’s a writer and a yogi.
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