Born in Uganda to Indian Muslim parents, Mamdani has long been known as an activist for issues such as housing rights and access to healthcare. His open opposition to Israel’s apartheid, occupation, and genocidal policies has made him an “unusual voice” in American politics and, unsurprisingly, a target for the country’s billionaire class.

But in Türkiye, the real controversy wasn’t his politics. It was a 12-year-old tweet in which Mamdani said he did not approve of Atatürk’s legacy.

That single sentence triggered an old reflex. A Muslim immigrant who rose to prominence in the heart of Western politics suddenly became, for many, an object of a “civilization test.” A group of people, some of them prominent journalists, artists, and even academics, immediately rushed to lecture him: “You don’t know that man, let us explain.” Some extended their outrage into a familiar pattern, affirming secular pride by degrading the very religious identity they claim to have “transcended.”

This “let us explain” attitude isn’t just arrogance; it’s a manifestation of auto-Orientalism. Kemalism, as an ideology, has long internalized how the West perceives “the East” and then sought to model itself accordingly. It says, “I am not Eastern. We are secular. We follow science. We dress Western. We don’t eat with our hands.”

I doubt Mamdani is unaware of who Mustafa Kemal was. As the son of a well-known Muslim academic, he surely understands the late Ottoman period, the abolition of the Caliphate, and the way Turks were severed from the broader Islamic world. Perhaps that is precisely why he does not “approve.”

Whenever a Muslim achieves public success in the West, we rush to claim them as “one of us,” yet simultaneously exile them the moment they challenge “our values.” It’s an identity caught between two worlds, alienated from both the Muslim world and the Western one.

The roots of this tension run deep. The Ottoman Empire’s late fascination with the West wasn’t just admiration for its technology, it was a civilizational inferiority complex. The new Turkish identity was constructed through Western eyes: clothing, music, architecture, even names, all redesigned to say, “We are one of you.”

And perhaps the most tragic part is how this mimicry was internalized under the name of “modernization.”

Today’s attacks on Zohran Mamdani are the continuation of that legacy. For these critics, the idea of a “successful Muslim in the West” is a contradiction in terms.

You must either remain a marginalized Muslim,

or become secular enough to be accepted.

Yet this is precisely where the modern world is breaking open:

The West is beginning to question its own centrality, while some in the East still searches for identity in its shadow.

Figures like Zohran Mamdani represent a new kind of subject, one that neither hides from the East nor begs validation from the West.

And that, precisely, is why his presence feels so unsettling.

Mamdani is not a flawless figure, nor is he above criticism. As a Muslim, a socialist, and an immigrant, he carries his share of contradictions and errors. But that’s beside the point. What matters is that, in a world trapped between two exhausted poles of history, he reminds us that a new kind of subject is possible.

Ahmet Said Aydil