The black girl looks out of the window

Afro-Turks - An Almost Forgotten Minority. Why? Because the Black Turkish minority had hardly spoken out publicly for decades and many people - in and outside Turkey - know little of their existence.

"The black girl looks out of the window" ("Arap Kızı Camdan Bakıyor") is a quote from the song "13,5" by the Afro-Turkish singer Esmeray from 1975. In this song, she sings about her experiences with racism in Turkish society. Esmeray was very popular all over Turkey and addressed racial issues in Turkish pop culture, which wasn't very typical at that time.

It has been estimated that there are about 20.000 - 80.000 African Turks living in Muğla, Ula, Köyceğiz, Arcata, and Dalaman regions. Nevertheless, although descendants of Africans have been living in Turkey since the time of the Ottoman slave trade, not many people seem to be aware of their longitudinal presence within the broader Turkish culture. The Ottoman slavery system did not prevent having mixed marriages, which explains the high estimation of Turks with African genes. These people have for long been culturally adapted within Turkish culture, and as a consequence, there is almost nothing that indicates an African heritage in a cultural sense. Importantly although there was no restriction to the master, it was very uncommon that one was a slave for life.

After being released from slavery, the black Turks were relegated to a situation that left them completely unprotected: without possession, they were more or less forced to stay and work at the plantations without the legal obligation of the landowners to take care of them: to give food and shelter. The Africans eventually assimilated into Turkish culture. Without a common language. - religion and tradition of their own, it is nevertheless still possible for Afro-Turks to recall certain ancestral ceremonies and even perform religious practices that are believed to be associated with the African homeland.