Negotiation of Whiteness Under the Orientalist Gaze: Towards Becoming a Middle Eastern Woman

Whiteness, as an ideological construct, takes on different forms across various geographical contexts (Shome, 1999; Arat-Koc, 2012; Razack, 2022). In this paper, I employ an autoethnographic research method to explore my personal negotiation with Whiteness. This negotiation began in my early years in Türkiye, where I grew up, and continues today in Canada, where I now live and work. In Türkiye, I identified as a Turkish woman aspiring to Whiteness. However, my experiences abroad have reshaped my sense of self, and I now identify as a Middle Eastern woman with no aspiration to Whiteness. I argue that the identity of a Middle Eastern Muslim woman was imposed on me through an Orientalist gaze. I am not suggesting that I fell victim to this imposed identity shaped by Eurocentric and Orientalist discourse. On the contrary, I have embraced my Otherness. My identity has become a political site to counter white supremacy, challenge Whiteness, and disrupt oppression (Badruddoja, 2022, p. 622).

To explore my identity transformation, I will frame my discussion within multiple spatial and temporal frameworks. I will start by examining the aspiration toward whiteness in Türkiye. When the Turkish Republic was founded, the elites of the new republic took on the role of "whitening" its citizens to "civilize" them. This pursuit of whiteness persisted into the 1980s, manifesting itself in different ways alongside Turkey's deeper integration into the global capitalist economy. Growing up in the 1990s, with the expansion of neoliberal policies, the concept “white Turk” emerged as a critique of white class culture within the context of a Middle Eastern country (Arat-Koc, 2028, p.391). Later, my migration to Canada has exposed me to the pervasive nature of white colonial violence, which prompted me to deconstruct whiteness and contribute to decolonial knowledge production.