No, not really. Your big clue here is the "re-"(=again) in "recognize". So you recognize something from having seen it before. When you identify something, you're basically matching up information successfully: what you know and what you see both match.

both recognize and identify mean acknowledging something you've seen before or heard of before. There is a very small difference. When you are identifying something, you are first recognizing it and you are also able to give more information to it (ex: name). For example, let's say you are given pictures of possible crime scene suspects. When someone asks you if you recognize any, you can say "oh yeah....the guy in the middle looks kinda familiar. I recognize him". When someone asks you if you can identify, the answer would be more like "yeah, the guy in the middle, I know him. He's my neighbor." or you could even go as far to know his name or address. So identifying is pretty much recognizing something with a little more in depth.

They are in no way interchangable. Recognize means you knew of it before and now remember what it was, while identify means you only just now realized, through some sort of research, what it is.

The context in balalaika's answer is correct, her example, lame and drifty. As good examples are often the best descriptions in an existential society, consider this bit of realism: 'A kid can see right through her bald, fat-cat principal with his pricey suits, sleek cars and big desk pretending to care about children's educations whilst longing for the blonde Spanish teacher and eventual power status in the community as the Head of the Board'. Here, the traits/characteristics/behaviors have been 'Recognized' by the child as she alludes to seeing similar scenarios. The cause/ideology/ego/universal reasoning(hopefully) are later 'Identified' in life by the adult, as they cognitively apply the gathered information. You could go even further here and say the child is using 'Intuition' and the adult, 'Knowledge'. But I'm gonna shut up now before I really fall over the edge...