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A country on the cusp
Irish Times
Oct 02, 2004
Turkey: Any explicator of contemporary Turkey - that mysterious,
wildly beautiful dissolution of Europe into Asia - must contend with
the fear and ignorance instilled in Western minds by centuries of
conflict between Ottoman and Christian forces, writes Joseph O'Neill.
The threatening figure of "the Turk" - a dark-browed, sensual
Mohammedan, addicted to barbarism - lives on; and whereas the horror
of the prison scenes in Midnight Express (1979) still lingers, the
images of, say, Abu Ghraib (or, for that matter, the intermittent
revelations of the shockingly primitive workings of the domestic
criminal justice system in the US) quickly fade ina detergent flood of
counter-narratives. Mud sticks to Turkey. Or, as the self-pitying old
Turkish saying has it, the Turks have no friends but themselves.
This is, of course, untrue. It is, in fact, remarkable how frequently
foreign observers fall head over heels in love with the country and
its people, and how much of the literature, however critical, is
tinted with affection and even bedazzlement. From appreciative
travellers such as Freya Stark to hard-bitten diplomats, journalists
and academics, visitors are emotionally susceptible to Turkey's
extraordinary charms. Andrew Mango, a BBC veteran turned Turkish
scholar, is the latest sympathetic onlooker to put pen to paper. This
book,which follows his acclaimed biography of Atat'rk, assesses the
state of modern-day Turkey and the progress of its historic
Westernising mission.
That mission was, of course, conceived and drastically pursued by
Kemal Atat'rk. The trajectory of the republic he founded bears, it so
happens, many similarities to that of the Irish republic. Both shook
off foreign rule in or around 1922; both spent their first three
decades of independence in isolationist mode, staying neutral during
the second World War; both have been afflictedby political violence;
both have vexed relationships with their pasts and their national
myths; and both now espouse a cult of entrepreneurship and economic
growth at the expense of traditional values. So why is Turkey, by
comparison with Ireland, still a poor, undeveloped country? What can
be done to make things better?
These are vital questions. Although there is, in Mango's view, little
danger of Turkey undergoing an Islamic revolution, it is obviously
crucial that it succeeds in establishing itself as the first
fully-fledged Muslim democracy- which, in practice, means accession to
the EU. The position here is well known. Even if EU economic criteria
are satisfied, Turkey must do justice to its Kurdish citizens, end the
widespread perpetration of physical abuse by agents of the state,
remove its clumsy restrictions on political, cultural and religious
expression and dispose of the need for the army to intervene
periodically to rescue the country from the dangerous incompetence of
its elected governments. These concerns are not the product of
historical prejudices about "the Turk". They reflect substantial and
legitimate concerns that increasing numbers of Turkish citizens share.
Without hesitation, Mango puts his finger on the underlying
difficulty: the shortage in Turkey of what, in a Kemalist turn of
phrase, he calls "modern knowledge". (Atat'rk once peevishly asked:
"Can a civilised nation toleratea crowd of people who let themselves
be led by the nose by sheiks, dervishes and the like, and who entrust
their faith and their lives to fortune-tellers, magicians,
witch-doctors and amulet-makers?") The most profound attribute of a
modern European nation - an inclination to rational, non-supernatural
explanations of good and evil, and, consequently, to certain shared
moral reflexes - characterises only an educated minority of Turkish
citizens, the mass of whom (including many members of the political
class) are still given to conspiracy theories, paranoia and weird
blind spots on questions of freedom and justice. Turkey is a place
where honour killings persist and, as Mango points out, where the
World Trade Centre attacks may seriously be attributed to the Mossad
and the CIA. It's also a place where the government actively
considered the criminalisation of adultery until finally scrapping the
proposal last week .
Mango's attitude to such issues seems to be that, given time,
encouragement, and understanding, Turkey will muddle its way into the
European mainstream.He certainly does not advocate radical
liberalisation. After all, when Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Georgia, not to
mention prickly Greece and Armenia, nestle on your borders, when you
have a separatist conflict on your hands, when your politicians tend
to be self-serving demagogues and when the voting public is vulnerable
to extremist populism, it may be that you have little choice butto
proceed carefully and incrementally. This - conservative
progressiveness, Mango c alls it - remains the stance of the Turkish
army and its allies in the Kemalist establishment.
Which brings us to an unfortunate feature of The Turks Today: it
sometimes reads as if it were written by and for the Turkish
authorities. Although Mango favours an informed and analytically
critical Turkish culture, he exhibits precisely the limitations that
continue to hold back Turkish thinking. Thus, Kurdish political
violence is largely attributed to the "truculent" ambition of one
individual, the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and the "tradition of
violence endemic in Kurdish society"; almost nothing is said of the
oppression of the so-called mountain Turks and their long-standing
claims to self-government.The Armenian genocide is subjected to a
cursory, misleading summary that culminates with the statement:
"Turkey holds that claims and counter-claims should be examined by
historians and not by politicians." Never mind that historians have in
fact examined the Armenian claims and, overwhelmingly, upheld them.
Andrew Mango's new book is often expert; but to be of true service to
the country he knows so well, he cannot go native on matters of
intellectual and moral honesty.
The Turks Today By Andrew Mango John Murray, 292pp. GBP20
Joseph O'Neill is an author. His most recent book is Blood-Dark Track:
A Family History (Granta Books)
Irish Times
Oct 02, 2004
Turkey: Any explicator of contemporary Turkey - that mysterious,
wildly beautiful dissolution of Europe into Asia - must contend with
the fear and ignorance instilled in Western minds by centuries of
conflict between Ottoman and Christian forces, writes Joseph O'Neill.
The threatening figure of "the Turk" - a dark-browed, sensual
Mohammedan, addicted to barbarism - lives on; and whereas the horror
of the prison scenes in Midnight Express (1979) still lingers, the
images of, say, Abu Ghraib (or, for that matter, the intermittent
revelations of the shockingly primitive workings of the domestic
criminal justice system in the US) quickly fade ina detergent flood of
counter-narratives. Mud sticks to Turkey. Or, as the self-pitying old
Turkish saying has it, the Turks have no friends but themselves.
This is, of course, untrue. It is, in fact, remarkable how frequently
foreign observers fall head over heels in love with the country and
its people, and how much of the literature, however critical, is
tinted with affection and even bedazzlement. From appreciative
travellers such as Freya Stark to hard-bitten diplomats, journalists
and academics, visitors are emotionally susceptible to Turkey's
extraordinary charms. Andrew Mango, a BBC veteran turned Turkish
scholar, is the latest sympathetic onlooker to put pen to paper. This
book,which follows his acclaimed biography of Atat'rk, assesses the
state of modern-day Turkey and the progress of its historic
Westernising mission.
That mission was, of course, conceived and drastically pursued by
Kemal Atat'rk. The trajectory of the republic he founded bears, it so
happens, many similarities to that of the Irish republic. Both shook
off foreign rule in or around 1922; both spent their first three
decades of independence in isolationist mode, staying neutral during
the second World War; both have been afflictedby political violence;
both have vexed relationships with their pasts and their national
myths; and both now espouse a cult of entrepreneurship and economic
growth at the expense of traditional values. So why is Turkey, by
comparison with Ireland, still a poor, undeveloped country? What can
be done to make things better?
These are vital questions. Although there is, in Mango's view, little
danger of Turkey undergoing an Islamic revolution, it is obviously
crucial that it succeeds in establishing itself as the first
fully-fledged Muslim democracy- which, in practice, means accession to
the EU. The position here is well known. Even if EU economic criteria
are satisfied, Turkey must do justice to its Kurdish citizens, end the
widespread perpetration of physical abuse by agents of the state,
remove its clumsy restrictions on political, cultural and religious
expression and dispose of the need for the army to intervene
periodically to rescue the country from the dangerous incompetence of
its elected governments. These concerns are not the product of
historical prejudices about "the Turk". They reflect substantial and
legitimate concerns that increasing numbers of Turkish citizens share.
Without hesitation, Mango puts his finger on the underlying
difficulty: the shortage in Turkey of what, in a Kemalist turn of
phrase, he calls "modern knowledge". (Atat'rk once peevishly asked:
"Can a civilised nation toleratea crowd of people who let themselves
be led by the nose by sheiks, dervishes and the like, and who entrust
their faith and their lives to fortune-tellers, magicians,
witch-doctors and amulet-makers?") The most profound attribute of a
modern European nation - an inclination to rational, non-supernatural
explanations of good and evil, and, consequently, to certain shared
moral reflexes - characterises only an educated minority of Turkish
citizens, the mass of whom (including many members of the political
class) are still given to conspiracy theories, paranoia and weird
blind spots on questions of freedom and justice. Turkey is a place
where honour killings persist and, as Mango points out, where the
World Trade Centre attacks may seriously be attributed to the Mossad
and the CIA. It's also a place where the government actively
considered the criminalisation of adultery until finally scrapping the
proposal last week .
Mango's attitude to such issues seems to be that, given time,
encouragement, and understanding, Turkey will muddle its way into the
European mainstream.He certainly does not advocate radical
liberalisation. After all, when Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Georgia, not to
mention prickly Greece and Armenia, nestle on your borders, when you
have a separatist conflict on your hands, when your politicians tend
to be self-serving demagogues and when the voting public is vulnerable
to extremist populism, it may be that you have little choice butto
proceed carefully and incrementally. This - conservative
progressiveness, Mango c alls it - remains the stance of the Turkish
army and its allies in the Kemalist establishment.
Which brings us to an unfortunate feature of The Turks Today: it
sometimes reads as if it were written by and for the Turkish
authorities. Although Mango favours an informed and analytically
critical Turkish culture, he exhibits precisely the limitations that
continue to hold back Turkish thinking. Thus, Kurdish political
violence is largely attributed to the "truculent" ambition of one
individual, the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and the "tradition of
violence endemic in Kurdish society"; almost nothing is said of the
oppression of the so-called mountain Turks and their long-standing
claims to self-government.The Armenian genocide is subjected to a
cursory, misleading summary that culminates with the statement:
"Turkey holds that claims and counter-claims should be examined by
historians and not by politicians." Never mind that historians have in
fact examined the Armenian claims and, overwhelmingly, upheld them.
Andrew Mango's new book is often expert; but to be of true service to
the country he knows so well, he cannot go native on matters of
intellectual and moral honesty.
The Turks Today By Andrew Mango John Murray, 292pp. GBP20
Joseph O'Neill is an author. His most recent book is Blood-Dark Track:
A Family History (Granta Books)