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Better relations that hark back to the imperial era

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  • Better relations that hark back to the imperial era

    Better relations that hark back to the imperial era

    The Times Supplement
    March 21, 2005

    Michael Binyon on the indelible legacy of the Ottoman Empire

    Some 26 countries with seats in the United Nations were once under the
    sway, in varying degrees, of the Ottoman Empire. And the legacy of
    this rule, lasting in some cases for 400 years, is indelible - be it
    buildings, laws or cultural and culinary traditions of a world that
    stretched from Morocco to the Gulf, from the gates of Vienna to Yemen.

    The shrinking of the empire was a melancholy, long withdrawal as the
    provinces broke away - by war, through colonial conquest or after
    the empire's final collapse in 1918.

    Many of the newly independent states tried to bolster their individual
    credibility with strident opposition to Turkey and the Ottoman past.
    Greece, Serbia, the Arab world and the Balkans have all incited
    popular emotion against the Turks.

    Times have changed. Astute diplomacy has strengthened Turkey's links
    with its neighbours.

    Reconciliation with Greece has been recent but spectacular. Turkey's
    size and economic strength gives it a regional weight that has proved
    influential. Turkey has also begun, cautiously, to explore links
    with its neighbours that hark back to imperial days.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of culture. Istanbul is
    the most vibrant city got 1,000 kms in any direction. At a crossroads
    between East and West, it is well placed as a centre where cultures
    interact.

    There has been a steady growth in regional links. The city is
    reaching out to its old constituency. Arab writers and film-makers,
    restricted in what they can say or show at home with censorship and
    social taboos, feel freer in Istanbul. They come from Cairo or
    Damascus, Tunis and Amman to take . up residence in a city that is
    sufficiently Muslim and eastern to provide a familiar framework but
    far more in touch with European culture than their own capitals.

    Turkey is also reaching out to its Balkan neighbours. As one
    intellectual remarked: "Every Turk has some ancestral connection.
    There is a homesickness for these lands running through our music
    and literature."

    The old connections were strikingly revealed during the Bosnian
    wars. Turkey took in a million Bosnian refugees seeking shelter.
    Turkey also took steps to save the physical heritage damaged by war.
    After its destruction, the famous bridge at Mostar, built in 1556,
    was rebuilt by Turkish engineers.

    There is no unifying language; the Ottoman empire was itself polyglot
    and did not insist on the use of Turkish everywhere. Northern Cyprus
    is the only fully Turkish area outside Turkey, and the cultural,
    political and ethnic connection to the mainland is as strong as it
    is controversial. Dervis Denis, Turkey's Minister of Tourism, says
    that Ankara is giving help to Northern Cyprus to develop its cultural
    assets, pointing out that 90 per cent of the island's heritage,
    including sites important to the Greeks and Christians such as the
    Orthodox monastery Apostoilos Andrea, are in the north.

    Mehmet Ala Talat, the Prime Minister of Northern Cyprus, says: "Arts
    and cultural activities should be used for peacemaking and to make
    people create empathy."

    In other areas, Turkey now understands its culture in a broad and less
    nationalistic sense and is taking tentative steps in controversial
    areas. There is, for example, daily discussion of the Armenian
    massacres, with columnists arguing over the claims that this was
    genocide.

    A museum in Istanbul recently put on a display of sepia postcards
    of the Armenian-inhabited towns before the First World, an evocative
    reminder of a world whose recall would once have been taboo.
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