About Mark

Mark is from Butte, Montana and went to Washington for high school, graduating in 1966. His grandfather immigrated to New York from Turkey in 1909 and later settled in Butte, which was a big mining city. His grandfather established a Turkish coffeehouse and billiards hall in 1927 and left behind a notebook with some information about his journey. His grandmother’s family emigrated from Austria and she married his grandfather in 1923 after meeting him in Butte. Mark has faced racism and discrimination due to his last name, particularly on airlines. He is not very familiar with his culture but has learned some Turkish and Kurdish words and would like to learn Turkish in the future. He has been working on piecing his grandfather’s immigration story together with the limited information he has and feels closer to his culture because of it.