When I first
came to Turkey in 1995, I knew little about the country. In fact, that is not
entirely true. As a New Zealander, I had grown up with the stories of the
Gallipoli campaign, that bloody sideshow of the First World War, which cost so
many lives and achieved so little. Brought up in a church-going family, I was
well-versed in the scriptures and gospels, especially the epistles of Paul to
the churches of ancient Christendom. As a student of a model English grammar
school, I spent five years studying Latin and the achievements and culture of
the Roman Empire. Being a reader, and having an interest in history, I knew, of
course, of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. I had even heard of Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, and somewhere or other had come across the modern Turkish alphabet, a
deceptively familiar yet not-quite-accessible version of our Latin-based one,
with its peculiar accent marks and unexpected cedillas. My studies of 19th
century European history had familarised me with ‘The Eastern Question’ and
‘The Sick Man of Europe’, and my readings of Shakespeare had mixed ominous
references to the ‘heathen Turk’ with the folk culture that embodied names like
Gengiz and Attila with a power of evil beyond the capacity of mere words.
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| Model English grammar school |
Yet I had
no concept of the country that is the modern Republic of Turkey. I had all
these snippets of knowledge buzzing around in what I liked to think of as my
world-view. But I had no unifying idea that they all occurred within the
boundaries of that little known and little understood nation on the
back-doorstep of Europe.
Perhaps it
was to my advantage that I came from a country far from the fast-lanes of
geopolitics. There was no visible Turkish diaspora in New Zealand to imbue me
with a prejudice against migrant workers. My prejudices were more deep-seated
and subliminal, but nonetheless real, being part of the cultural baggage I
carried as an educated product of an Anglo/Euro-centric system and culture.
Almost
from the moment the wheels of my British Airways Boeing hit the tarmac at
Atatürk Airport, I found these cultural assumptions challenged in ways that I
had never imagined. In the thirteen years since then, while making a life for
myself as a teacher of English in Turkey, I have continued to benefit from the
mind-expanding shocks and jolts that strike the foreigner in this
much-misunderstood land.
I remember
looking at an atlas, on first coming to Turkey. It was quite a good atlas, a
reputable publication which I had bought while reading Geography at Auckland
University. I still have it, in fact, and I have counted twenty-one pages on
the British Isles, ten pages on the US of A, and even little old New Zealand
warrants a two-page spread. Interestingly, however, there is not one single
page devoted to the modern Republic of Turkey, a country three times the size
of New Zealand, or Great Britain, or Japan, and in population, second only to
the united Germany among European nations.
It is a
small thing, perhaps, and of no special significance. I’ve never been a fan of
conspiracy theories. But again, I couldn’t help being puzzled when I learnt
that the Turks celebrate 18 March as Victory Day in their Çanakkale War (what
we know as the Gallipoli campaign). Hang on a minute! We (ANZACs etc)
didn’t even get there till 25 April! As educated adults, we need to feel
confident that history has an objectivity that places it above partisan
politics and racial stereotypes, so how to account for this major disparity of
dates? In fact, as I intend to discuss in a later article, the Gallipoli landings
were Plan B, made necessary because of the failure of Plan A. For the Turks,
their success in turning back the Royal Navy from the Dardanelles was the more
important part of the victory. For the British Empire, no doubt, that was a
setback better consigned to the footnotes of history.
Historical
events, dates and personages are one aspect of the construct of the world that
we all carry with us. But there is another, less overt, perhaps more powerful
force shaping our judgments of other peoples and races: the proverbial wisdom,
folk knowledge and cultural assumptions that we inhale with the air of the
society in which we grow up and receive our education. So Genghis Khan and
Atilla the Hun have such a basic existence in the consciousness of Western minds
that no knowledge of history is necessary to conjure up images of marauding
barbaric hordes sweeping out of the Asian steppe, laying waste all in their
path like an invasion of killer bees. When I learned that the principal of my
school, a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman of scholarly bearing was called
Genghis, it required in me a shift of mental gears. Hearing also that Atilla
was the name of that polite, hand-raising, homework-doing young lad in my year
9 class was a further surprise for which my Euro-centric upbringing had not
prepared me.
I would
like to share some of the experiences I have had since I first came to this
surprising country, and some of the eye-opening knowledge that has come my way,
bringing me to a better understanding of a place that has become my second
home.
Among the topics I intend to cover are:
- The Ancient Treasures of Turkey – what was there, and where is it now?
- Çanakkale / Gallipoli – There are two sides to even the best-known stories.
- The Fall of Constantinople – and the clash of civilizations.
- The Turk through the ages – that bad press goes back a long way!
- Benevolent dictators – could there ever be such a thing? And did Turkey have one?
- Cyprus – what are the Turks doing there anyway?
- The origins of Christianity – divine revelation and political expediency.
- The Fall of the Roman Empire – what actually happened when the barbarians came roaring through?
