Turkish men and more: Part 1

Submitted by Junaid (United States), Jun 3, 2008 at 19:52

Dear all,

I have read many of the posts here and would like to contribute to it a little. I am originally from Istanbul, Turkey, but have been in the US for the past 8 years, recently got my Ph.D etc.

First and foremost, I believe relationships are based in large part on the quality of individuals. Whether a person is Muslim, American, Turk, or Hindu, is a secondary issue. Quality people live in every part of the world.

This is not to say, however, that ethnicity, nationality, or religion are unimportant. These along with various other socioeconomic factors affect how different people behave. Plus genetics, of course.

Success in a long-term relationship (e.g. marriage) depends not only on the quality of the individuals parties, but also on the quality of the match itself. Two very high quality individuals may produce a very unsuccessful relationship.

So, how do we know whether the relationship we want to form is a high-quality one? This is a very difficult question to answer. That is partly why there are so many disappointments, sorrows listed on this website.

The major difficulty is the informational asymmetries: That is, it is difficult to know for sure the "type" of the person we are prospecting for. Differences in ethnicity, nationality, religion and the like only serve to add to these informational frictions. Therefore, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that relationships that involve people with significantly different backgrounds have a smaller likelihood of success.

The mitigation of informational problems is one key objective of the match-making institutions in countries like Turkey. Typically, before a man gets married to a woman (and vice versa), family and friends make a big effort to find out as much as they can about the prospective partner in order to make an informed decision. Because marriage is generally viewed as once-in-a-life-time event by many people, extensive care is given to ensuring a good quality match before partners do actually get married.

This type of assistance is clearly much less available to people who want to form relationships across faiths, ethnicities, and so on. Therefore, I would recommend that people in such situations be very cautious before making big decision or falling in love. If you are communicating over the internet with someone from another country, you are highly exposed to an informational problem. If the person is in the same country as you, then I'd be more careful with those who do not have visas, as they might have an extra incentive to marry a domestic person in order to get citizenship.

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