Coming through cultures
by Linda Hays

Before coming to the United States to study genetic engineering, UI researcher Bahri Karacay of Turkey dreamed of coming to America. Today, Karacay and his American wife, Kate Karacay, combine their cultural and religious differences to raise a family.

Like many American boys during the 1970s, Bahri Karacay had a crush on Melissa Gilbert, the brown-haired actress who played Laura Ingalls on the “Little House on the Prairie” television series. But Karacay was not American. Instead, he watched the show syndicated on Turkish television in Erzurum, a culturally historic city in the northeast part of the country where he was born and raised.

He can vividly recall a moment from his childhood when he told his father, “I’m going go [to America] one day, and I’m going see those lands with my own eyes.”

Karacay came to the United States 17 years ago to study genetic engineering, and he has lived here ever since. He resides in Iowa City and is an associate research scientist in the UI pediatrics department. Not only did he get to see the prairie, but he even married his own “Laura Ingalls,” a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American woman named Kate Schuetz.

Though his accent marks him as a “foreigner,” Bahri Karacay has become an American at heart. Kate Karacay said her husband’s family contends that he is not Turkish anymore. “He’s an American, and he acts like one,” she said.
Bahri Karacay interacted with Americans for the first time at a NATO base located in his hometown. He and his older brother, Baki, went to the base in middle school and tried to improve their English by speaking to soldiers. The brothers also spoke English with the tourists who visited their city.

Meeting people from many different cultures at a young age and learning about their customs opened his eyes to the world, Bahri Karacay said. These early interactions with tourists helped prepare him for his transition from Turkey to the United States and strengthened his interest in other cultures.

He graduated magna cum laude from Ataturk University in Erzurum. While studying in Germany at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, he developed an interest in genetic engineering but knew the best graduate schools for that field were in the United States.

After being one of two people selected for a program to go to the United States and to study for a master’s degree in genetic engineering, Bahri Karacay first set foot on American soil at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, enrolling in English as a Second Language courses.

While there, Bahri Karacay lived with a host family — a widowed woman named Jodi and her dog, Milkshake. Jodi wanted him to meet women, so she told him to go to the “meat market.” He was confused, because he took the term for its literal meaning, thinking the grocery store was not the best place to meet women.

He received another lesson in American culture while working toward a master’s degree at Ohio State University, a school known for its Big Ten football culture. He found it interesting that on the football field it was OK for men to touch each other, but off the field such contact between men was taboo. “In Turkey, we are very huggy-kissy people,” he said.

In 2001, while finishing his postdoctoral fellowship at the Columbus Children’s Hospital, his former boss asked him to join her at the UI, where she has become the chief of the hematology and oncology division in the UI pediatrics department.

One night in Iowa City, Bahri Karacay went with Salih, his roommate at the time and friend from Ohio State, to the Green Room, at that time a club on Gilbert Street that had salsa dancing on Tuesday and Thursday nights. While at Ohio State, Bahri Karacay had learned to salsa dance.

Kate Schuetz entered the club with a friend of hers.

“I said, ‘Wow, how beautiful. She’s gorgeous, but too bad she’s smoking,’ ” said Bahri Karacay, who had never smoked.

While Karacay was dancing with another woman, Salih asked him to teach two women, including his future wife, how to dance.

Bahri taught Kate some basic steps, and then the two headed for the dance floor. At one point, he spun her around, but she accidentally elbowed him in the face and gave him a fat lip. She felt terrible and asked if there was anything she could do for him.

“You can go out with me,” Bahri Karacay said.

She agreed. “I thought Bahri was very good-looking,” she said. “I have a thing for foreign men, and I thought he was Italian or Venezuelan when I first saw him. I was excited to hear he was Turkish, because I have always found Turkish culture different and exotic.”

Though cultural and religious differences could cause problems for some intercultural couples, the Karacays worked well together because of Kate Karacay’s interest in Islam and the two’s willingness to compromise on cultural differences. Her parents are devout Christians, but she said they know her husband is a good man, so they get along well.

Bahri Karacay’s father said he considered his son’s wife to be from the “same house,” referring to Islam and Christianity both coming from Abraham’s sons. Dating Kate Karacay was also not such a shock to Bahri Karacay’s family — almost all of his previous girlfriends had been Christian.

Kate Karacay had been interested in religions at a young age. When she was an undergraduate at the UI, she studied ancient and medieval history, so she learned about Islam and the history of the Ottoman Empire. As a codirector of the United Nations Association of Iowa and a doctoral candidate in international education at the UI, she continues to be interested in religion and foreign affairs. She founded the Iowa Human Trafficking Awareness Project and in 2007 won a Stanley Fellowship for research abroad to study human trafficking in Turkey.

The Karacays’ wedding was held in the IMU Ballroom in the summer of 2002. The ceremony was more secular, with one reading from the Koran and one reading from the Bible. But the two had technically been married since October 2001; worried about the aftermath of terrorist attacks on 9/11, Bahri Karacay wanted to get his green-card application started as soon as possible.

“I think those terrorists hurt Muslims the most, really,” he said. Although he acknowledges that the attacks were a great tragedy for the United States, he also said the entire Muslim world was affected by the negative stereotypes of Islam in the aftermath.

Though Kate Karacay does not consider herself to be extremely religious, she still respects the importance of Islam with her husband and his family. When they visit Turkey, Kate Karacay says the namaz (Islamic prayers) and recites from the Koran with Bahri Karacay’s mother.

“It makes her happy, and it makes Bahri happy, too,” she said.

The first time Bahri Karacay took his wife to Turkey, she experienced a culture shock because Turkish life is much more collective than American life. Bahri Karacay’s parents are seen as the grandparents of their neighborhood, so they always have visitors, especially children. His mother also gets phone calls, even in the middle of the night, for advice because she is known as the “wise woman.”

Adjusting to this interdependence was hard for Kate Karacay, because she felt like there was no sense of privacy. “When I would go off to another room by myself to read, his family often thought something was wrong,” she said. “Bahri had to explain that Americans are particular about privacy and being alone.”

Bahri and Kate Karacay have raised their 5-year-old twin daughters, Annalisa and Ilene, in a more secular household, though their father said he wishes he could teach the girls more about Islam.

Having so many cross-cultural experiences in his life, Bahri Karacay said it is unfortunate that there is a division in the world based on religion, when humans are so genetically close to one another.

“One thing that I could change in the world to make it a better place would be to take people and switch their countries and have them live in a different part of the world,” he said. “All would have a paradigm shift, and they would realize they are all one. You know, maybe we eat a little bit differently or go to the restroom a little bit differently, but then when we laugh and we cry, it’s the same.”

About the writer Linda Hays is a UI journalism student from Barrington, Ill. When she isn’t writing or selling concessions at the Englert, she enjoys attending rock concerts with her friends, where she starts mosh pits and laughs when the punks start whaling on each other..