About

eastwestmindset is a perspective — thought over, noted down and researched for years — turned into a website.

It sets out from a single concept — play, death, silence, shame — and examines it through two worlds: East and West, the developed and the still-developing. It touches history and works its way into philosophy.

The aim is not to prove one side right, or to raise one above the other.

The aim is to show how the same word becomes two separate universes in two civilisations — and, where those universes meet, to open a new way of seeing for the reader.

My mother tongue is Turkish. I write the essays in Turkish and then publish them, adapted, in twelve languages: Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Urdu, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic. Like the site itself, these languages aim to offer a shared meeting point across the alphabets and tongues of two different worlds.

Who writes all this?

I was born and raised in the East and have lived in the West for some time now. I enjoy thinking and writing about the differences between the viewpoints I meet every day, and about the places where cultures touch one another. I believe that tolerance and difference give rise to growth.

I hope you enjoy it. You can reach me by email through the “Reach the Author” box on the site.