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Being a Kurdish-Turkish mistake

As a Kurdish child, I grew up in Kirkuk under the Baath regime thinking I was an existential mistake: but I liked being a mistake. I still like being a mistake.

By Robert Leonard Rope and Saladdin Ahmed
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559px-Portrait_of_Saladin_(before_A.D._1185

Portrait of Saladin the Great (before A.D. 1185; short. Wikicommons/Ismail al-Jazari (1136–1206). Some rights reserved.Robert Leonard Rope(RLR): Please briefly describe your background. Were you named after Saladin the Great? And what was it like to teach at a university in Turkey?  

Saladdin Ahmed (SA): I never know how to answer questions about my background mainly because my identity has always been shaped around negations rather than the promotion of a certain upbringing. I wouldn’t say I have an identity crisis, but I would say identity, at least in today’s world, is itself a crisis.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0