Without a Country

by Ayşe Kulin

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,”

But something else was upsetting the German hospital administrators and professors: Turks resented them.

He’d seen this before. It was why he’d left Germany. Nationalism, propaganda, rumormongering, bans on freedom of expression—was that where this county was headed, too?

“Mother, I’m Atatürk’s daughter,” Susy said in Turkish. “All right, then, we’ll change your last name to Atatürk.” “We can’t do that! There’s only one Atatürk. Only one!” “That’s true,” Elsa said.

Life had become a daily struggle for everyone, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, German or Turk. Inflation was soaring. Food and clothing were in short supply. The impoverished people of Turkey were surrounded by a sea of fire that could engulf their young republic at any moment.

“It’s always the minorities who get targeted when nationalism boils over,”