I was a natural cosmopolitan. Sweden, and the far right, changed all that
I was born in Turkey and am now based in Lund, on the southern tip of Sweden. Most of my life I’ve probably been the quintessential cosmopolitan, and proudly so. But I’ve also spent too many hours in the consulates and airports of various EU countries coveting a multiple-entry Schengen visa, or enduring the suspicious looks of customs officers, to believe that I could be a “citizen of nowhere” with a Turkish passport.
My cosmopolitanism was more a moral ideal based on compassion, and did not preclude a yearning for belonging or roots. It simply defined them in a different way.… Seguir leyendo »