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As someone coming from an Arabic Muslim country, I'm really interested to understand why you have this view.

In my country (Egypt), Turkey is actually seen as being a huge part of Islamic history, and it's often cited as a proof of the diversity of the Islamic and Arabic world that it was hugely impacted by the Turkish culture (Words, Foods..etc).

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Because Turkey is a very heterogeneous country with different people mostly deeply disliking each other (sad but true). Diversity != tolerance. I lived in the Bay Area and Boston area for years, and for example, these cities are more ethnically and racially diverse, but in my experience Istanbul is much more culturally rich (i.e. there are more heterogeneous groups). Inside this group there are "secular" and "religious" Turks who are roughly half of Turks. Due to years of politics and other stuff, these groups deeply hate each other. They try to live differently, act different, eat different stuff and even talk different languages. I grew up in a "secular" middle/upper class Turkish family (my family was also non-practicing Muslim) and when I met more religious people in my high school years it was clear even the language we speak was different. For me, I grew up in a bubble and never had any contact with any culture other than mine (except some Jewish people who were majority where I lived). Anyway, pretty much all groups had a similar experience, but when one of them has the power, they basically try to control everyone and this brings insane amount of frustration to other side. The entire political history of the Republic is all about seculars trying to make conservatives secular and vice versa. This is so crazy it affects things like language, education, art etc... I was very frustrated of this whole mess and luckily (thanks to my family's wealth) I went to US for undergrad to restart my life.

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