are people from the middle east Asian or European? And where is the line?
In: 4
They are Middle Eastern and live on the contenent known as Eurasia. Asia is a subset of that and it stretches all the way through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey
Asian technically, if we are naming people by continent. Asia ends at the Bosporus, which is where Istanbul, Turkey is. And Africa ends at the Suez area, right before the Sinai Peninsula.
Racially, Asian too. But race doesn’t make any sense and I think putting all the people of Asia into one gigantic basket doesn’t make any sense either.
The short answer is that they’re Asian (or African, since many parts of north Africa are considered culturally “middle eastern”) and the line is the Sea of Marmara, separating the European and Asian parts of Turkey. But this isn’t a very satisfying answer for a lot of reasons.
The long answer is that “middle east” is a kind of made-up category. It was invented by European colonial understanding of the world that divided what they called “the orient” into a “near east” (the places that weren’t European or Christian, but had close contact with Europe) and the “far east” (the whole rest of Asia.) The middle east came about especially as British officers were interested in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and the Gulf as a fast route to India. Since it was farther away than the Ottoman empire – the near east – but clearly not part of what they called the far east, it became the middle east. But then this term has for some reason come to be the dominant term for the Arab, Turkic, and Persian world at large even when it doesn’t really make sense.
So are people who live there Asian or European? It depends on what you really mean by those terms, and it isn’t a question ultimately with a clear answer.
Officially the line starts in the Mediterranean Sea, runs through the Turkish Straits, into the Black Sea, across the Caucasus Mountains, into the Caspian Sea, across the Ural Mountains, and then into the Kara Sea.
In reality, of course, there is no line; it’s a smooth continuum. Iraq, say, is more closely related (geographically, historically, culturally, genetically, etc.) to Europe than Iran is, but less closely related to Europe than Syria is.
Latest Answers