Turkey is full of riddles, maybe Portugal has the answers

Notes on social norms, failed belonging, and a one-way to Portugal.

This piece has been in the making for about two weeks now. I’ve been hesitant to hit publish because I haven’t felt comfortable sharing my experience. But now with less than three hours to go to my flight to Portugal—yes, I’m writing from the airport, and yes, I need to be at the airport at least three hours before my flight otherwise I feel sick to my stomach—I decided there’s no better time to finalize this piece than right now.

Although I’m incredibly excited for a fresh start, I’m also undeniably fidgety, scared, and worried about whether I’m making the right decision. I booked my one-way ticket and accommodation six months ago, after a particularly rough couple of weeks where I’d felt defeated about living in Turkey. Back then, I didn’t think about the logistics of it all. I just knew I needed a change.

Well, I have no choice but to think about them now.

While I know this move is technically temporary, with my accommodation booked for just under three months, the primary purpose is to determine if I’d like to live in Portugal long-term. And even though I know I have free will—and no one’s holding a gun to my head to stay if I don’t like it—the reality of this move, however temporary, has been creeping in as anxiety.

I’m questioning whether safety and loneliness will be issues, and whether my “why” for leaving—the pursuit of novelty, sense of belonging, and an overall surrendering to my gut-level pull toward Portugal—is strong enough to justify such a drastic decision.

If I’m being honest, I’m feeling quite naive and stupid.

I have no family there, zero job prospects, and barely any friends. The only thing asking me to physically be there is the Portuguese classes I’ll be taking to integrate into (and appease) a society that’s (understandably) sick of foreigners and Airbnb culture.

These feelings of unease are new to me in this context as I’ve done several months-long solo trips before without this much dread. Perhaps I don’t have the same bravado and risk tolerance as I did when I was in my early twenties, when I’d make rash decisions with no regard for consequences or repercussions.

Worried about the why, what, how, and what-the-fucks of moving to another country for, technically speaking, no reason whatsoever, I remind myself of what made me make this decision in the first place. Why I’ve been feeling the itch to leave Turkey.

It’s not the lifestyle at all—I love Istanbul. I love my day-to-day here. Long beach strolls, access to quaint islands by ferry, and my overall healthier lifestyle are what’s kept me here for two years.

But that’s about it.

When it comes to finding my “tribe,” it’s been an entirely different story. I don’t mesh well with the people here. And I can’t even pull the woe-is-me card because it’s mostly my fault: I was naive enough to think that being half Turkish would allow me to integrate into the country seamlessly.

Well, shock, it didn’t.

If I’m honest, I don’t know what’s happening most of the time. I don’t get Turkish people. They operate using a very different social fabric from any other country I’ve lived in, placing more emphasis on the unspoken than the spoken.

Context—who’s speaking, to whom, and in what setting—carries more weight than the actual words people use in conversation. Not only that, but the words they use rarely represent what they mean.

In a country where being blunt or direct is considered rude, people veil the substance of what they’re saying with flowery language that can be very hard to pick apart unless you’re born here.

For this reason, I’ve spent the past two years making a hobby out of riddle-solving and reading between the lines.

Still, the indirectness with which everyone but me manages to communicate makes me feel like everyone’s in on a joke that I’ve been intentionally left out of. Everyone can quickly decipher the cryptic code carved into each social interaction, while I’m the only seemingly missing the cipher key.

And as someone who barely grasps the Turkish language in its basic form, every conversation with a Turk has involved a brain-frying amount of mental gymnastics.

I’ve often made the mistake of *gasp* taking people’s words at face value and responding to exactly what they said, forgoing the seemingly mandatory excavation of hidden meaning they expected me to do mid-conversation. I was subsequently met with disappointment as people assumed my reply was based on the “true” subtext, not the literal words they’d used. Of course, though, this disappointment was never verbalized directly. It was delivered using ominous remarks like “You’re a very funny person…” paired with a head shake of disapproval.

It’s not just the delivery of your words you have to be careful about. It’s your non-verbal cues as well. These carry more weight than you (or I) could ever imagine.

And I don’t mean that in the 48 Laws of Power-type bullshit about “taking up physical space to assert dominance” or regurgitated pop psychology statements like “if their body’s facing you, they like you!!!”

I mean everyday, ordinary gestures that are harmless in the West, such as eye contact, come loaded with heavy implications here.

When I first moved here, I greeted everyone with eye contact, having been taught that this is a sign of respect.

In Turkey, however, it can be seen as a sign of fervent, rabid, and primal interest, where looking a man in the eye risks being interpreted as: “I can’t wait to buy a Kama Sutra book and work through all the positions with you—A to Z, cover-to-cover.”

And I don’t even mean “fuck me eyes” or “fox eyes,” or whatever the internet discourse around seductive eye contact is. I mean literally just humanizing someone by looking them in the eye.

Due to all of these little nuances, a lot of social interactions in Turkey have felt like walking through minefields or being thrown into rapid-fire chess and checkers when I don’t even know the rules of either game.

I’ve been left constantly questioning myself, other people’s intentions, and whether I’ve made the grave mistake of leading someone on by sneezing in their direction.

I couldn’t wrap my head around what makes Turkey the way that it is. And I can’t just live-and-let-live when I don’t understand something. My brain turns into a toddler on loop, going WHY WHY WHY until I get an answer.

To self-soothe, I did some basic research (that I should’ve already known before moving, really.)

Turkey’s roots are in the Ottoman Empire, which operated on an honor-shame culture driven by Islamic influence, social hierarchies, collectivist principles, and gender segregation—all of which still shape communication in Turkey today.

Every action should be self-scrutinized, as the slightest misstep can reflect poorly on your entire family; every gaze carefully policed, in case it’s mistaken for temptation.

This tendency to inflate micro-signals into mating signals traces back to Ottoman rule, where direct interaction between men and women was heavily restricted and typically required an intermediary. Because of this, every direct glance or gesture was illicit by default—and therefore loaded with meaning.

Lovers even had a whole hidden language using handkerchiefs. A white handkerchief meant “I love you”; a yellow one meant “I was sick and couldn’t go out.” One dropped on the ground in a park was an invitation to meet, and one held from the middle meant “I’m waiting for you tonight.”

While people can now skip the handkerchiefs, this coded way of communicating persists to this day. People—especially men and women—can’t express themselves too directly due to delicate social norms, so every smile, glance, or word becomes another straw to grasp at.

My crash course in history did help with understanding some unspoken rules better, but that doesn’t mean I like them any more.

I always thought that when I’d move to Turkey, I’d be returning to a part of me I never had a chance to meet. That I’d feel whole having deepened my understanding of a culture that’s half of me.

But my attempts to integrate felt like wading through a freezing body of water, each step knocking the breath out of me.

While I previously thought I was too warm-blooded for the West, these past two years have made me realize I may just be too Western for the Turks. So where does that leave me?

For now, I’m not sure. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve made so many plans in life, thinking I was the only one holding the reins of control. But of course that’s not the case, and things don’t always go as planned.

Part of me thinks I’m overthinking this whole belonging thing. Maybe feeling out of place is the norm, and everyone has made peace with it without needing to constantly uproot their life like me.

I hope the answers come to me in Portugal. I think they will. They have to. I’m tired of chanting “the only constant is change” each time I throw myself into yet another leap of faith I keep promising will be my last.