A Cultural Chasm between America and Turkey

Nearly seven decades ago the United States Army asked Prof. Ruth Benedict to prepare a cultural analysis of Japan. The Army was making plans for an eventual occupation of Japan and it wanted to have at the ready a serious analysis of Japanese culture: its customs and mores, the way people behaved in their everyday dealings; the way they conducted their lives.

The Army also wanted to know how Japan and America differed culturally. Knowing what to expect from the Japanese was one thing. Knowing how American soldiers and diplomats would react, quite another.

The result was a wondrous book called: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

This to introduce Claire Berlinski's jaw-dropping report from Turkey, the country she currently calls home. Link here.

If were to try to invent a culture where people live by the principles that define the therapy culture, I could not do better than today's Turkey. If it were not true it would, at the least, be a compelling fiction.

Since it is true, it is terrifying.

Imagine a world where Western notions of ethics do not apply, where people do not feel compelled to keep their word, where facts do not exist, and where truth and reality are what you feel at any particular moment.

As Berlinski describes it, business does not really get done in Turkey. People jerry-rig solutions to problems but do not expect that they will last.

No one keeps his word; no one thinks to keep his word. If you object to the fact that someone has not done what he has promised he will shower you with negative emotion about how you have offended him. People are consumed by petty emotions, to the point of being dysfunctional.

Since everyone lives in the same culture they do not know that they are dysfunctional. They are, however, deeply resentful and bitter about cultures that are functional, especially America and Israel.

When Turkish people insist on the importance of their honor and dignity, the claim is a joke. The culture does not value propriety or respect for the feelings of others. Screaming about your sacred honor counts for them as having a sense of honor. To us, it makes you look like a clown or a menace.

Take a look at some of Berlinski's comments:

1. "I live in Turkey. On good days, I love Turkey. But I have long since learned that its people are apt to go berserk on you for no reason whatever, and you just can't trust a word they say. As one Turkish friend put it...: 'It's not that they're bad. They don't even know they're lying.'"

2. "People here... see 'truth' as something plastic, connected more to emotions than to facts or logic. If it feels true, it is true. What's more, feelings her tend to change very quickly-- and with them, the truth."

3. "Arguing a mild difference of opinion by screaming and threatening would come across to Westerners as weak at best, lunatic at worst. Not here. No shame attaches to displays of anger that in the West would result in the issuance of restraining orders. The fights dissipate as quickly as they start; everyone proceeds to drink tea and moistly proclaim their mutual love."

4. "In Turkey, it is normal and expected to say that you will do something, have done something, or agree with something when, in fact, you won't, haven't, or don't. This is so common that no one thinks of it as lying, in the sense that it is not viewed as unethical. It is just being polite."

5. "The emotions are the facts. Stranger still, Erdogan almost certainly believes that the objections are rooted in envy. He too assumes everyone lives in a world like his, one in which the emotions are the facts, and it is not an incidental point that in Turkey envy is particularly important emotion. Envy of the West-- in tandem with envy's sibling, resentment-- has certainly helped define modern Turkey, so it could truly seem plausible in his mind, that the sentiment runs both ways."

Surely, Berlinski is correct to call the cultural divide a "chasm." Is it bridgeable? Are we trying through the therapy culture to bridge the chasm with foreign cultures?

Perhaps so. But that might also mean that we are headed in the wrong direction.

Keep in mind that Far Eastern Asian cultures place the greatest importance on the principles of good character. Confucius declared that keeping one's word was crucial to normal social intercourse. And the Japanese do business on a handshake. They place so much importance on trust that they prefer not to have lawyers draw up contracts.

If Turkey decides that it prefers to become socially and economically dysfunctional, there is probably little we can do to stop them. At the least, we should not even be tempted to follow them off that cliff.