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WHICH WAY TURKEY? A PERSONAL REFLECTION
Foreign Policy Journal
April 4 2014
by Terry Cowan | April 4, 2014
Turkey is somewhat in the news these days--and not in a good way. A
recent New York Review of Books article considers three books on the
current state of affairs, and particularly the fraying relationship
between the Gulen movement and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I
have only the most superficial understanding of the Gulen movement
and the intricacies of this struggle for leadership among Turkey's
Islamists. Plots and conspiracies abound within this whirlwind, aided
in large part by a complicit judiciary on one side and a police
community on the other, each willing to do the bidding of their
particular faction. And in probably the most important story that you
didn't read in this last week's news cycle, a video caught high-ranking
Turkish government officials planning a false flag attack on northern
Syria. Add to that the fact that the Turkish economic miracle may be
fading. And of course, many still recall the demonstrations in Taksim
Square from last summer.
A street scene in Istanbul (photo courtesy of the author)
I am a great lover of Turkey and recall my first exposure with great
fondness, stumbling into the country in 2003, almost as by accident.
On a whim, I decided to interrupt an exploration of Bulgaria and
take the Balkan Express to Istanbul for a few days. (This was also
the occasion of perhaps my personal best as a traveler-making my
reservations for a sleeper in mangled French--the only language common
to me and the clerk in Sofia.) I first set foot on Turkish soil at
Kapipule, at two o'clock in the morning, as we piled out of the train
and made our way, bleary-eyed, across the tracks to the dumpy little
border crossing. The train was about to leave by the time I figured
out that I must purchase a visa in one building before having my
passport stamped in another. In my confusion and haste, I actually
boarded the wrong train. But after a momentary panic, I retraced
my steps and found my car. The following morning, I disembarked at
Istanbul's Sirkeci station--quite literally the end of the line in
Europe. If someone at age 48 could still be described as wide-eyed,
then that was my reaction to the city. The bustle of Sultanahmet--and
the East--beckoned me in the same way it has captivated other Western
travelers through the centuries.
I returned time and again, in and out of Turkey six or seven times
by 2011. In the course of these travels, I visited most every major
region of the country, save for the southern coastline around to
Antakya. For someone with an appreciation of history, the Anatolian
countryside yields new discoveries around every corner. And along the
way, I came to love the open hospitality of the Turks themselves. To
educate myself further, I read Orhan Pamuk, and followed the commentary
of Mustafa Akyol. Louis de Bernierres' Birds Without Wings remains
one of my favorite novels (an incredibly powerful narrative of the
tragedy--for it is that--of modern Turkey).
Back home, I become an enthusiastic advocate, if not apologist,
for Turkey. In 2003, the atmosphere here could only be described as
feverish. The U.S. had just shocked and awed Iraq, and Turkey's refusal
to allow its bombers to fly-over still rankled in people's minds. At
least in my uninformed part of the country, the Turks were simply
part of the unintelligible Muslim other, no different than any other
over there. And so, I talked a lot about Turkey, even to the point of
joining the crackpots who wrote letters to the local newspaper. I would
explain--with mixed success--the all-important differences between
Turk and Arab and Kurd and Persian, and that the Sufi-influenced
Islam of Anatolia had perhaps always been more moderate than elsewhere.
I often related the anecdote from an acquaintance in Izmir. He told me
of wealthy Saudi tourists arriving at the Izmir airport, destined for
the Aegean beach resorts. The women would shed their head-coverings
in the airport lobby and toss them in the nearest trash bin as soon
as possible. So you see, I pleaded, Turkey was different. The most
common question I would receive had to do with whether I was "safe"
over there. This is, of course, laughable to anyone who has traveled
in the region. I assured them that I never once worried about safety
until my plane touched down in Texas.
My more informed acquaintances questioned the Islamist faction of the
new ruling AKP Party. I reassured them by making a comparison to our
own Republican Party. Just as the GOP contains social conservatives, or
Movement Conservatives as they are called now, as well as traditional
business interest Republicans, so the AKP contains both conservative
Islamists and the rising entrepreneurial middle class, both long
frustrated by the Kemalist stranglehold on power. In each situation,
the two factions have their own particular agendas, which may very
well conflict with the other at times.
Certainly some of my Turkish acquaintances fell into this latter
category--young, ambitious, educated, western-oriented and not
particularly religious. But Istanbul is not really Turkey in the
same way that New York City is not really America (and I write this
as someone who loves both cities). A foreign visitor to our largest
city can be forgiven for not comprehending that a more representative
sampling of this country might be found, for example, at the truck
stop I recently patronized on Interstate Highway 40 between Memphis
and Nashville. And so, even at the first, I sensed that my cool
friends in their nice cars might not be the full story of this new
Turkey. At Topkapi Palace (not my favorite Istanbul "must-see"), we
foreign visitors were probably outnumbered by Turkish tourists from
the conservative hinterlands of Anatolia. These sturdy Turkish women,
heavy and broad, identically dressed in thick, drab, monochrome gray
overcoats and scarves, quite literally elbowed and man-handled me
away from a display case in the museum. It seems I lingered too long
examining some hairs from the beard of Mohammed.
To my Orthodox Christian co-religionists, I suggested that the AKP,
in their supposed piety, might actually be loosening the noose ever
so slightly on the Greek church there. Some signs indicated that the
continuing persecution of the Church came more from the entrenched
judiciary than from the Islamist faction of the AKP. I encouraged
friends to travel to Turkey. I developed travel itineraries with tips
to make the most of their time there, while avoiding the usual scams.
Even from the first, however, some aspects of the Turkish
mindset irritated me to no end. I bristled at their pervasive
Turkocentrism--smug and unquestioning. Perhaps this is merely
their variation of the U.S.'s own equally unrealistic American
Exceptionalism. If so, it is equally unappealing. The Turks have a
mythic view of themselves, as we all do, I suppose. Theirs, however,
often seems more detached from real history. In all things, we would
do well to understand that they consider themselves Turks first,
Muslims second, and Sunnis last.
Beyond this, one often finds an indifferent attitude to their past,
dismissive and obtusely ignorant of the civilizations that preceded
them in Anatolia, or recognizing that Turkish culture itself is
greatly derivative of that which went before (my good friend Turan
being a notable exception to this). History begins with the Seljuks
(if not the Ottomans), and nothing much matters before then. I have
found Turks to be notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism
of their past. This unquestioning of history is not unique to the
Turkish nation, but the skepticism which many Americans have come to
view our own past seems largely absent in Turkey. On the other hand,
they seem unusually susceptible to the wildest of conspiracy theories.
Turks can display a deft ability to ignore or deny real history. The
Armenian Genocide is, of course, the best example of this mindset. In
2006, I endured a tour of the Museum of the Turkish Genocide in Igdir.
The Turks have concocted an alternative history in which the poor
Turkish peasants were the genocidal victims of the Armenians, not
the other way around. The museum and monument is visible from the
Armenian border, replete with lurid, cartoonish murals depicting
crazed, gun-toting priests leading the Armenians against the noble
Turks. So there is that.
None of these concerns prevent me from returning to Turkey, however.
In fact, I will be in the far eastern reaches of the country in May of
2014. But my enthusiasm for all things Turkish has waned. My defense of
the AKP has come to an end. Broadly speaking, the ruling party displays
the same authoritarian bent as the former regime. The judiciary seems
no less corrupt. In countless sundry ways, the particular religiosity
of the AKP base is making its presence known.
The recent ban on the sale of alcohol after 10:00 p.m., for example,
will be noticeable to even the casual Istanbul tourist.
Hopes of resolving long-standing issues with the Greek Orthodox Church
have withered. The cat-and-mouse game between the Patriarchate and the
Turkish government regarding the return of Halki Seminary has turned
out to be just that, a game. In the 1990s, the government looked the
other way while Kurds undertook the ethnic cleansing of the Suriani
Orthodox Christians in the Tur Abdin. And there seems no outcry
within Turkey today as their judiciary completes that operation,
confiscating the 1,400 year old Mor Gabriel Monastery, one of the
last Christian enclaves in the region (visited by this writer in 2006).
For political reasons, the exquisite Hagia Sophia Church--the jewel
of the Trapezuntine kingdom--has now been converted into a mosque
though Trabzon hardly lacks for Muslim worship venues. And this
brings us to the current discussion of doing the same with the Hagia
Sophia in Istanbul. In the past, this would have been unimaginable,
and I would have dismissed such as wild conspiracy talk. In the
new political realities of Turkey, such an outcome looks more like
a distinct possibility. Robert Ousterhout, the respected Byzantine
scholar, calls this the "litmus test" of conservative members of the
ruling party. We know how such litmus tests proceed in this country,
and so the slow strangulation of any non-Turkish element in society
continues apace.
Indeed, the cosmopolitan air of old Constantinople has been largely
just a memory for a long time now. For better or worse, Istanbul will
be--must be, apparently--a thoroughly Turkish city.
One detects a strong sense of national insecurity in all this. Why
must any remembrance of the pre-Ottoman past be extinguished? Why
cannot their minorities be allowed to flourish? The new Turkey will
be a duller, sadder, and even more melancholy place.
The 100-year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide rolls
around next year. You can count on the official government's
response/repudiation/rejection to be rather ugly in tone. One can
also depend on the unofficial reaction among Turks in general to be
even uglier.
And now we have evidence of Turkey's messy involvement in the Syrian
Civil War, as well as their deep level of support for the insurgents.
At first, these actions seemed incomprehensible to me. Turkey
certainly managed to stay out of the Iraqi war on their border. If
so inclined, they could do the same with Syria. But by stepping back
a bit and taking the long historical view, their actions are more
understandable. By the time the U.S. gained its own independence, the
Ottoman Empire was already the "Sick Man of Europe," and would remain
so until its death in 1919. But they were not always sick. For some
time now, Turkey has communicated its desire to take a larger--indeed,
its historical--role in the region. Perhaps the best summation of
their behavior in this matter is that they are simply Turks being
Turks once again.
In examining my own growing disaffection with the new Turkey, I
realize the problem lies more in our own expectations. We warmed
to the western-oriented Istanbul, where supposedly casual Islam
accommodated nicely with modernity. We were charmed by its exotica,
and somehow expected its religion to be of the emasculated variety
which would not jar our secular sensibilities. This now appears more
wishful thinking than reality. As realists, we should face the Turkey
that is, not the people we imagined them to be.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/04/04/which-way-turkey-a-personal-reflection/#.Uz8gYMaKDIU
Foreign Policy Journal
April 4 2014
by Terry Cowan | April 4, 2014
Turkey is somewhat in the news these days--and not in a good way. A
recent New York Review of Books article considers three books on the
current state of affairs, and particularly the fraying relationship
between the Gulen movement and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I
have only the most superficial understanding of the Gulen movement
and the intricacies of this struggle for leadership among Turkey's
Islamists. Plots and conspiracies abound within this whirlwind, aided
in large part by a complicit judiciary on one side and a police
community on the other, each willing to do the bidding of their
particular faction. And in probably the most important story that you
didn't read in this last week's news cycle, a video caught high-ranking
Turkish government officials planning a false flag attack on northern
Syria. Add to that the fact that the Turkish economic miracle may be
fading. And of course, many still recall the demonstrations in Taksim
Square from last summer.
A street scene in Istanbul (photo courtesy of the author)
I am a great lover of Turkey and recall my first exposure with great
fondness, stumbling into the country in 2003, almost as by accident.
On a whim, I decided to interrupt an exploration of Bulgaria and
take the Balkan Express to Istanbul for a few days. (This was also
the occasion of perhaps my personal best as a traveler-making my
reservations for a sleeper in mangled French--the only language common
to me and the clerk in Sofia.) I first set foot on Turkish soil at
Kapipule, at two o'clock in the morning, as we piled out of the train
and made our way, bleary-eyed, across the tracks to the dumpy little
border crossing. The train was about to leave by the time I figured
out that I must purchase a visa in one building before having my
passport stamped in another. In my confusion and haste, I actually
boarded the wrong train. But after a momentary panic, I retraced
my steps and found my car. The following morning, I disembarked at
Istanbul's Sirkeci station--quite literally the end of the line in
Europe. If someone at age 48 could still be described as wide-eyed,
then that was my reaction to the city. The bustle of Sultanahmet--and
the East--beckoned me in the same way it has captivated other Western
travelers through the centuries.
I returned time and again, in and out of Turkey six or seven times
by 2011. In the course of these travels, I visited most every major
region of the country, save for the southern coastline around to
Antakya. For someone with an appreciation of history, the Anatolian
countryside yields new discoveries around every corner. And along the
way, I came to love the open hospitality of the Turks themselves. To
educate myself further, I read Orhan Pamuk, and followed the commentary
of Mustafa Akyol. Louis de Bernierres' Birds Without Wings remains
one of my favorite novels (an incredibly powerful narrative of the
tragedy--for it is that--of modern Turkey).
Back home, I become an enthusiastic advocate, if not apologist,
for Turkey. In 2003, the atmosphere here could only be described as
feverish. The U.S. had just shocked and awed Iraq, and Turkey's refusal
to allow its bombers to fly-over still rankled in people's minds. At
least in my uninformed part of the country, the Turks were simply
part of the unintelligible Muslim other, no different than any other
over there. And so, I talked a lot about Turkey, even to the point of
joining the crackpots who wrote letters to the local newspaper. I would
explain--with mixed success--the all-important differences between
Turk and Arab and Kurd and Persian, and that the Sufi-influenced
Islam of Anatolia had perhaps always been more moderate than elsewhere.
I often related the anecdote from an acquaintance in Izmir. He told me
of wealthy Saudi tourists arriving at the Izmir airport, destined for
the Aegean beach resorts. The women would shed their head-coverings
in the airport lobby and toss them in the nearest trash bin as soon
as possible. So you see, I pleaded, Turkey was different. The most
common question I would receive had to do with whether I was "safe"
over there. This is, of course, laughable to anyone who has traveled
in the region. I assured them that I never once worried about safety
until my plane touched down in Texas.
My more informed acquaintances questioned the Islamist faction of the
new ruling AKP Party. I reassured them by making a comparison to our
own Republican Party. Just as the GOP contains social conservatives, or
Movement Conservatives as they are called now, as well as traditional
business interest Republicans, so the AKP contains both conservative
Islamists and the rising entrepreneurial middle class, both long
frustrated by the Kemalist stranglehold on power. In each situation,
the two factions have their own particular agendas, which may very
well conflict with the other at times.
Certainly some of my Turkish acquaintances fell into this latter
category--young, ambitious, educated, western-oriented and not
particularly religious. But Istanbul is not really Turkey in the
same way that New York City is not really America (and I write this
as someone who loves both cities). A foreign visitor to our largest
city can be forgiven for not comprehending that a more representative
sampling of this country might be found, for example, at the truck
stop I recently patronized on Interstate Highway 40 between Memphis
and Nashville. And so, even at the first, I sensed that my cool
friends in their nice cars might not be the full story of this new
Turkey. At Topkapi Palace (not my favorite Istanbul "must-see"), we
foreign visitors were probably outnumbered by Turkish tourists from
the conservative hinterlands of Anatolia. These sturdy Turkish women,
heavy and broad, identically dressed in thick, drab, monochrome gray
overcoats and scarves, quite literally elbowed and man-handled me
away from a display case in the museum. It seems I lingered too long
examining some hairs from the beard of Mohammed.
To my Orthodox Christian co-religionists, I suggested that the AKP,
in their supposed piety, might actually be loosening the noose ever
so slightly on the Greek church there. Some signs indicated that the
continuing persecution of the Church came more from the entrenched
judiciary than from the Islamist faction of the AKP. I encouraged
friends to travel to Turkey. I developed travel itineraries with tips
to make the most of their time there, while avoiding the usual scams.
Even from the first, however, some aspects of the Turkish
mindset irritated me to no end. I bristled at their pervasive
Turkocentrism--smug and unquestioning. Perhaps this is merely
their variation of the U.S.'s own equally unrealistic American
Exceptionalism. If so, it is equally unappealing. The Turks have a
mythic view of themselves, as we all do, I suppose. Theirs, however,
often seems more detached from real history. In all things, we would
do well to understand that they consider themselves Turks first,
Muslims second, and Sunnis last.
Beyond this, one often finds an indifferent attitude to their past,
dismissive and obtusely ignorant of the civilizations that preceded
them in Anatolia, or recognizing that Turkish culture itself is
greatly derivative of that which went before (my good friend Turan
being a notable exception to this). History begins with the Seljuks
(if not the Ottomans), and nothing much matters before then. I have
found Turks to be notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism
of their past. This unquestioning of history is not unique to the
Turkish nation, but the skepticism which many Americans have come to
view our own past seems largely absent in Turkey. On the other hand,
they seem unusually susceptible to the wildest of conspiracy theories.
Turks can display a deft ability to ignore or deny real history. The
Armenian Genocide is, of course, the best example of this mindset. In
2006, I endured a tour of the Museum of the Turkish Genocide in Igdir.
The Turks have concocted an alternative history in which the poor
Turkish peasants were the genocidal victims of the Armenians, not
the other way around. The museum and monument is visible from the
Armenian border, replete with lurid, cartoonish murals depicting
crazed, gun-toting priests leading the Armenians against the noble
Turks. So there is that.
None of these concerns prevent me from returning to Turkey, however.
In fact, I will be in the far eastern reaches of the country in May of
2014. But my enthusiasm for all things Turkish has waned. My defense of
the AKP has come to an end. Broadly speaking, the ruling party displays
the same authoritarian bent as the former regime. The judiciary seems
no less corrupt. In countless sundry ways, the particular religiosity
of the AKP base is making its presence known.
The recent ban on the sale of alcohol after 10:00 p.m., for example,
will be noticeable to even the casual Istanbul tourist.
Hopes of resolving long-standing issues with the Greek Orthodox Church
have withered. The cat-and-mouse game between the Patriarchate and the
Turkish government regarding the return of Halki Seminary has turned
out to be just that, a game. In the 1990s, the government looked the
other way while Kurds undertook the ethnic cleansing of the Suriani
Orthodox Christians in the Tur Abdin. And there seems no outcry
within Turkey today as their judiciary completes that operation,
confiscating the 1,400 year old Mor Gabriel Monastery, one of the
last Christian enclaves in the region (visited by this writer in 2006).
For political reasons, the exquisite Hagia Sophia Church--the jewel
of the Trapezuntine kingdom--has now been converted into a mosque
though Trabzon hardly lacks for Muslim worship venues. And this
brings us to the current discussion of doing the same with the Hagia
Sophia in Istanbul. In the past, this would have been unimaginable,
and I would have dismissed such as wild conspiracy talk. In the
new political realities of Turkey, such an outcome looks more like
a distinct possibility. Robert Ousterhout, the respected Byzantine
scholar, calls this the "litmus test" of conservative members of the
ruling party. We know how such litmus tests proceed in this country,
and so the slow strangulation of any non-Turkish element in society
continues apace.
Indeed, the cosmopolitan air of old Constantinople has been largely
just a memory for a long time now. For better or worse, Istanbul will
be--must be, apparently--a thoroughly Turkish city.
One detects a strong sense of national insecurity in all this. Why
must any remembrance of the pre-Ottoman past be extinguished? Why
cannot their minorities be allowed to flourish? The new Turkey will
be a duller, sadder, and even more melancholy place.
The 100-year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide rolls
around next year. You can count on the official government's
response/repudiation/rejection to be rather ugly in tone. One can
also depend on the unofficial reaction among Turks in general to be
even uglier.
And now we have evidence of Turkey's messy involvement in the Syrian
Civil War, as well as their deep level of support for the insurgents.
At first, these actions seemed incomprehensible to me. Turkey
certainly managed to stay out of the Iraqi war on their border. If
so inclined, they could do the same with Syria. But by stepping back
a bit and taking the long historical view, their actions are more
understandable. By the time the U.S. gained its own independence, the
Ottoman Empire was already the "Sick Man of Europe," and would remain
so until its death in 1919. But they were not always sick. For some
time now, Turkey has communicated its desire to take a larger--indeed,
its historical--role in the region. Perhaps the best summation of
their behavior in this matter is that they are simply Turks being
Turks once again.
In examining my own growing disaffection with the new Turkey, I
realize the problem lies more in our own expectations. We warmed
to the western-oriented Istanbul, where supposedly casual Islam
accommodated nicely with modernity. We were charmed by its exotica,
and somehow expected its religion to be of the emasculated variety
which would not jar our secular sensibilities. This now appears more
wishful thinking than reality. As realists, we should face the Turkey
that is, not the people we imagined them to be.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/04/04/which-way-turkey-a-personal-reflection/#.Uz8gYMaKDIU