Would life be much easier for everyone, if they were somehow able not to think in terms of historical homelands. The idea of historical homeland is so important for most people that it seems to have more power on people than their actual physical homes or the land their homes may cover. One may go start living in another country, let us say, under relatively all right material conditions and with relatively all right political rights, and he may still not be able to be attached to her present home(land) with the same ferocity she would have to her original homeland. Although we are all from the same planet this notion somehow does not mean much for us presently.
We are strangers to our planet, one may say, since we do not directly experience it. Our planet is only an idea that we experience through books, TV and movies. On the other hand, concepts like homeland and one’s mother country are also ideas, although I would agree that the socialization aimed at creating love for these constructs are much more affective and influential at least for now. If we perhaps had some aliens attacking to our planet than we might have felt some form of strong attraction to it, but this is not the case yet. It is strange that we always think of the aliens as invaders from other worlds , but not so much as simple visitors. Perhaps, we do not like strangers. Perhaps, since the producer of these notions, aliens invaders, is usually the West, what we are seeing is simply the projection of their own past adventures (colonialism) in other countries and the feelings attached to these adventures onto this notion of alien invaders from other worlds. They may simply know no other way to present outsiders.
Yes, we have not developed the notion of global citizenship yet. There are probably some serious political problems we first need to overcome in order to have this idea realized. On the other hand, there did not exist the concepts of motherland and historical homeland before the modern era, either. These were developed for us, and every kid now must go through this particular type of socialization aimed at making sure that one loves one’s motherland, one knows one’s historic homeland. We cannot have nation states without this minor detail anyway. Even in the case of the US, we see similar constructs in the 19th century, and it is now stronger than ever. Although in their case it is a bit too early to work on the notion of historic homeland, and perhaps they will never need it, it is clear that the idea of motherland is there even for the Americans.
The notions of historic homeland and motherland would be fairly harmless, if we did not have the Old World countries that have quite a few claims for the same land. One very obvious problem in these countries is having those who claim historic ownership to the land in question and those who either presently live on it in the same place. How do we solve this problem? It is a small planet. We no more have new continents to discover? And, in some cases, these two groups who have different but equally valid claims for the same land also come from very opposing identities and cultural histories. In some cases, they cannot even stand the sight of the other. It is a major mess in other words.
One obvious solution is to let these contenders fight to the end. Whoever wins gets the place. Sounds good at first sight, but if these contenders happen to get supported by others because of the value the land they are fighting for may have in the eyes of these others then the things will get even more out of control. This leaves us with the other option: negotiations. However, negotiations will be useless if they are not coupled with conceptual changes in the way people see themselves, the others and the land they are supposed to occupy.
I tend to think that if we want to be able to live with each other the idea of historic homeland must be thrown outside the window. It is nice to know and perhaps live where we used to live or where we came from, but not only that it does not make sense to impose a past ethnic geography on today’s world, it also aggravates the situation further by making those already existing ethnic/group identities and borders even more pronounced.
Present realities must be dealt with present ethnic geographies in mind. It is probably most desirable to have everyone see each other as fellow human beings, but the reality of the present situation is that we do not see each other as fellow human beings. We see ourselves as groups of different human beings as if each group represents another homo species. On the other hand, although dealing with our present problems in terms of the present ethnic geography may bring some solutions I am afraid these solutions are bound to be short term ones. For the groups who prioritize past ethnic geographies more than the present ones will feel they have been treated unjustly. Since in the case of some of these groups, these past geographies are very closely linked to their present identities it will be almost impossible and not very fair to impose on these groups those kind of solutions that will have very negative consequences in how they perceive themselves. Such solutions, even if they work for a short period, will start producing a counter theory, practice and political movement against the solution in question. Therefore, it is crucial, in my opinion, to deal with this historic homeland question in such a way that the concept of ‘historic homeland for a specific group’ will be transformed into a different kind of homeland concept.
Instead of calling ourselves of this or that descent,we should just be looking ourselves as people living in whatever country we are,and focusing on human needs.
It is interesting that you said your ancestry. I was expecting that you would say your nation or people, unless of course you mean one of these things by ancestry.
What exactly do we mean by these terms? While ancestry can be one’s family or one’s lineage, the terms nation or people refer to a collective group. Both ancestry and nation are difficult to define, although we tend to assume that they are self-explanatory.
For example, a person living in Turkey may find no problem in calling himself a Turk. I find no problem with this either, if this person is referring only to the present era, and by “present era,” I mean that particular period known for its habit of using the concepts of nation and culture as identity markers or makers.
I assume that there was something else before this. Although the concepts such as Turk, Arab, Kurd, Greek, Armenian, etc. did exist before this area, they all had different meanings or did not mean the same thing we mean today. Furthermore, even if they did refer to a an ethnic group, they were still different in that they did not activate the kind of nationalist or ethnic response that we, as members of various ethnic groups, are familiar with it and naturalized it fully.
So, what exactly do we mean by ancestry? Not only are we assuming that our present identity has come to us unchanged, but that there were no mixings or exchanges with other group-identities. For example, I know that I am a very mixed person, and I also know that I am not alone in this, although people are less willing to accept this fact. Most people are happy with the idea of having one homogenous and linear ancestral line. If I were to count only the ones that I am aware of, then I have Circassian, Turkish (both Anatolian and probably Central Asian), Balkan (Albanian, Slavic or Greek, I am not sure which one), southern Italian, German and English. These are all present day markers. This is another interesting point. We can use only today’s markers, the markers from our own era, to describe our roots. Most of the time we are not familiar with the identities from the past eras, but for some reason when we do know some of these past identities, then we have the problem of relating to them. For example, I used the term southern Italian, but I am sure that my ancestor from, say, a thousand years ago did not call him/herself a southern Italian. This person probably described him/herself using different markers. This would then make me a descendant of whatever group marker this person might have used. If I use the same logic for every branch I have just mentioned, I will have many more groups than I am assuming right now. This is all good, but what do I mean when I say that I am proud of my, say, Turkish ancestry or heritage. I can be proud of such an ancestry if I keep it within four or five generations. After that it is a different world. With my English heritage, assuming that they were English, I can probably go back many more generations that I can with the Turkish one, since there seems to be an English identity at least six, seven centuries ago, though I may be a bit off here.
In other words, it gets very confusing when we have to deal with multiple heritages. I realize that most of us talk in terms of one or two and maybe, in some exceptional cases, three markers, but the reality we try to represent with these markers is actually very different. If I were to meet one of my ancestors from, say, four hundred years ago, we would not even be speaking the same language. I do not even know what language my ancestors spoke, because I cannot really attach one particular language to my ancestors. Probably the people with very homogeneous heritages are luckier, but there will be breaks even in these cases if they travel back in time enough “distance.”