9/11 changed how his community was treated, so this Obama Leader dedicated himself to connection

Q&A with Army veteran Murat Akaydin on growing up Muslim after 9/11, serving in Afghanistan, and building collective power across differences.

Murat Akaydin, a Turkish-American man with a medium skin tone, on the right side, smiles as he poses with a man with a light skin tone and a woman with a medium skin tone at the Muslim Americans in Public Service meeting. Murat Akaydin is wearing a navy suit.

Murat Akaydin was 11 years old and sitting in a sixth-grade classroom in Brooklyn when the Twin Towers fell, the plane went down in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. He didn't know it yet, but the fear his family felt around wearing traditional head coverings in public as Muslim New Yorkers, his later decision to enlist in the U.S. Army, and a war that took a friend and fellow Brooklynite, would shape his life into one devoted almost entirely to helping others.

Akaydin joined the U.S. Army, created multilingual voter guides for New York City, helped to found Muslim Americans in Public Service-New York, and graduated from law school—but even in all this, he felt like he couldn’t be himself, as he carried the weight of constantly being an ambassador for his faith and religion, rather than showing up as his most authentic self. 

Years later, after enlisting, fellow soldiers who learned he was Muslim sometimes asked why “his people” hated Americans.

“I’m from New York City,” he remembered thinking. “I was the one that was attacked.”

But when he became part of the Obama Leaders USA Program, it gave him something he hadn't had before: permission to tell his story. Through the Obama Leadership Network, he says he has continued to find collaborators: leaders running for office and building coalitions and systems with people who share his belief that democracy starts with the people closest to the problem.

On this anniversary of Sept. 11, we caught up with Akaydin about where his commitment to service comes from and what he believes it will take to protect democracy today.

An old color photo of Murat Akaydin, a Turkish-American man with a medium skin tone, his four siblings, and his mother in the middle. All are smiling and dressed in gray suits and white dresses.

  • Where does your passion for service come from, and how does it carry into the work you do today?

    The simple answer is my mother. She was an immigrant single mother raising five children while working to keep the family afloat, but no matter how little she had, I remember her still looking for ways to help someone else. She taught me to never talk big, and that no one has so much that they will never need a hand, and no one has so little that they can never offer one. 

    That could mean helping someone carry a stroller up the subway stairs or taking on something much larger. She taught us to treat everyone as human, because we all go through our journeys.

  • In high school, you founded a Muslim cultural club in the aftermath of 9/11. What was your mission?

    After 9/11, I became more conscious of my Muslim identity. I watched relatives become hesitant to be visibly identifiable as Muslim, while my own “culturally ambiguous” appearance largely spared me from the hostility others experienced and left me wanting to better understand my own connection to the faith.

    At John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, I joined the Council for Unity, a program centered on empowering students and communities with the tools needed to promote unity and to seek change. Inspired by that experience and what I had witnessed after 9/11, I started a Muslim Cultural Club to create a community for Muslim students while challenging misconceptions among the broader student body. I wanted to open up the campus to a more communicative and peaceful space for all the folks.

A young Murat Akaydin, a Turkish-American man with a medium skin tone, in an army uniform. An American flag is in the background.

  • How did your military service shape your understanding of duty, identity, and service?

    I enlisted after high school, drawn by the GI Bill benefits (Opens in a new tab) , and by a sense of obligation to the country where my family had built its life. But in the Army, I sometimes found my Americanness questioned because I was Muslim. Some soldiers assumed I had come from another country; others spoke about Muslims as though I stood outside the American “us.” I found myself representing whichever part of my identity others understood least.

    As an Army intelligence specialist, I debriefed soldiers and analyzed intelligence at the division level. In Afghanistan, I worked alongside Marine Nicholas Alman, who, I later learned, grew up nearby; we'd even had some of the same teachers. Alman was killed in action. I kept telling myself it should have been me. I had to honor his sacrifice the only way I knew how, by doing as much good as I could in his memory.

  • Since 9/11, you've supported your community in and out of uniform. Walk us through that path and why you continue to serve.

    After the Army, I volunteered with New York Cares, worked for the New York City government, and later interned at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at NYU School of Law dedicated to reforming, revitalizing, and defending American democracy and justice, all while finishing law school part-time this year and taking the bar exam. For six years, I chaired Generation Vote Education Fund's board, growing it from a college network into a national one. What drew me to the work was its emphasis on giving young people more than an invitation to participate. Generation Vote isn’t about asking young people to show up for someone else’s movement. It's about empowering intersectional youth to lead a movement rooted in their own lives and experiences.

    Over time, my focus expanded from helping people navigate institutions to making sure the people most affected by decisions had a meaningful role in shaping them. In 2022, I helped launch Muslim Americans in Public Service-New York and served as its founding vice president. Nearly two decades after starting a Muslim club in high school, I found myself returning to a familiar purpose. MAPS-NY is about making sure Muslim public servants don’t have to navigate government alone. It’s about building community, supporting one another professionally, and giving people a collective voice.

    My veteran advocacy grew from the same belief that participation should come with real agency. Through Veterans for All Voters, I found a way to connect his military service with my commitment to democracy. Serving democracy doesn’t end when you take off the uniform. Veterans can continue serving by helping make sure every voter has a meaningful voice in the government that represents them.

    My work with Five Borough Veterans brought that principle closer to home, creating opportunities for veterans to build community and engage directly with public officials and candidates. The Obama Leaders USA Program later helped me see connections among experiences I had often thought about separately. The Foundation’s emphasis on pluralism helped me put language around something I had experienced for years: people do not have to erase their differences to understand one another, find common ground, and work together.

  • How can everyday people, especially young people, support democracy?

    No matter how many people on a high level try to push for change, it's the people on the ground that make the change happen. The people most affected need to have a real voice in identifying the problems, shaping the solutions, and bringing those solutions back to their communities. If you don't stay engaged and if you don't go out and get involved, it's not going to get better. But if you get your neighbors, get your family, get everybody to pay attention to what's happening, and try to make a difference—that's the only way it'll actually happen.

    My message to young people: Don't be afraid to put yourself out there and don't fear failure. Your experiences give you something valuable to contribute. The more you use your voice, the more you begin to understand the power you already have.