Turkey File

Turkey and New Zealand - Border Monuments

2012-02-06T21:27:00.001+02:00

Regular readers may remember a piece I wrote a year or so ago about the Turkish dessert, ashure. My short essay won a competition on the website 'Changing Turkey in Changing World'. I attempted to retain my title in their second 'Big Idea' competition, but this time I could only manage runner-up. The topic was:

Border monuments are oftendesigned to celebrate mobility and interconnectedness. According to thearchitect Cecil Balmond, “A border offers identity but one that is enriched byneighbours, so that it’s not so much a line of separation as a local set ofinterconnected values.”

We are seeking shortessays (max. 1,500 words) on any European border monument. Entries are invited onthese or any other border monuments located in Europe. We are particularlyinterested in learning why those monuments were built in the first place andhow they contribute to the connection between two separate communities.

And here's my response . . .

Preamble

The question calls for a European border monument,so I should briefly explain why I am focussing on four – two of which are farfrom Europe. In doing so, I have in mind questions of my own: If borders arelines drawn to keep people apart, is their real existence on a map, or in thehuman mind? Do values connect on the ground, or in the mind? Does the unitingof people take place in a physical location – or in the mind?

------------------------------------------------------------------

My home these days is in Istanbul,but I come from a country about as far from Turkey as it is possible to get. Myhometown, Auckland, New Zealand, is 17,000 kilometres away. Carry on a littlefurther, you’ll cross the International Dateline into yesterday, and be on yourway back. When my father’s ancestors left the old country, Scotland, in June,1842, they endured a four-month sea voyage. When I board my Airbus 340-600 on13 January, I’ll be looking at a trip of 31 hours and 20 minutes. I will checkout with Turkish Police at Atatürk Airport, and get a going-over from the NZborder people when I arrive in Auckland. In between, I will fly over half theworld, mostly at an altitude of around 10,000 metres.

It is self-evident that bordersthese days are not as straightforward as they used to be. Turkey has an almost10,000 kilometre-long border on land and sea – but where do customs officers domost of their business? Airports, I guess. New Zealand has 15,000 kilometres ofcoastline, and no border with another country – yet we are one of the world’smost peripatetic people, constantly crossing international borders, especiallyto destinations in Europe, where most of us have our roots.

Not many New Zealanders have rootsin Turkey. However, a surprisingly large number visit the country each year –many of them on a pilgrimage that has become an annual event towards the end ofApril. They flock to the town of Çanakkale, attend a solemn dawn parade withpoliticians and neighbours from Australia, and visit the cemeteries andkilling-fields of that long-ago exercise in military futility, the Gallipoliinvasion.

The first time I visited thatdesolate landscape was with a group from the Turkish school where I had begun workingas a teacher of English. The date was 18 March, a few weeks before thelatter-day Anzacs would arrive, but the day on which Turks commemorate theirvictory. The highlight for me was ascending to the ridge overlooking thepeninsula, known to Turks as Conk Bayırı, and in Anzac legend as Chunuk Bair. Thisnarrow strip of land was the key to the campaign, and the objective of atwelve-day battle in August 1915. Reports tell us that it was the only Alliedsuccess of the entire Gallipoli invasion – sad when you consider that a smallforce of New Zealanders fought their way up and held the ridge for a mere 48hours, suffering horrendous losses, before being driven off by the Ottomancounter-attack.

The positive thing, from a NewZealand point-of-view is that there, on that ridge of ghosts, stand two memorials.The larger one commemorates the hero of the Ottoman defence, Colonel MustafaKemal, who went on to become the founder and first president of the Republic ofTurkey. Alongside is a second shrine, to the memory of the young men from NewZealand who fought and died on that lonely ridge, so far from home and family.It is this latter monument on which I will focus, and to which we will return.

Seventeen thousand kilometres away,on a hillside near Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, a site chosenfor its remarkable similarity to the terrain of Gallipoli, stands anothermonument, this one to the memory of that same Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk).There is no line on any map linking or separating the two countries. Thedistance between them is as great as possible between two places on planetEarth – yet these two monuments so far apart, represent an interconnectedness,a sharing of history and values, that transcend mere physical distance.

Atatürk Memorial, Wellington, NZ

Young men from New Zealand andAustralia, loyal citizens of the British Empire, spent a month travelling byship to Europe, to fight for King and Country in the Great War. Thousands of them never returned, butleft their remains on foreign fields. One might expect that Turks, at least, wouldharbour some ill-feeling against people who travelled so far with aggressiveintent – but it is not so. Inscribed on that monument near Wellington are themagnanimous words of the Turkish leader:

“Thoseheroes that shed their blood and lost their lives . . . You are now lying inthe soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no differencebetween the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now herein this country of ours . . . You, the mothers, who sent your sons from farawaycountries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and arein peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sonsas well.”

It was inrecognition of this great-heartedness, that the government of New Zealandraised a memorial to Atatürk on the ridge above Tarakena Bay[1],and in acknowledgment of the Turkish government’s allowing the building of theNZ shrine at Chunuk Bair – commemorating the 850 Kiwi ‘Johnnies’ who ‘lie inthe bosom’ of the Turkish Republic. These two monuments link the hearts andminds of two nations whose birth pangs can be traced to those bloody months onthe Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. The words of a Turkish poet, Necmettin HalilOnan, are inscribed in huge letters on a hillside overlooking the DardanelleStraits, and the lines could be as true for New Zealand as for Turkey:

Traveler, pause.An era ended

Where you heedlesstread. Listen

And hear, in thesilence of this

Mound, a nation’sbeating heart.[2]

But there is more to thisconnection. A few years ago I was wandering along Raglan Beach, on the WestCoast of New Zealand’s North Island, when I chanced upon three carved woodensculptures, unmistakably Maori: a traditional tattooed male figure, a bird anda dolphin, all silver-grey and weathered by the winds and salt spray sweepingin from two thousand kilometres of one of the world’s wildest seas.

Aotearoa, as the indigenous Maori people call New Zealand,is a lonely, isolated land, bordered on all sides by vast oceans, and, it goeswithout saying, no contiguous neighbours. Anthropologists tell us that theseislands were the last habitable landmass to be populated by humans, who madetheir landing less than a thousand years ago. Those first arrivals, the Maori,maintained their splendid isolation for perhaps five centuries before Europeansbegan to arrive from the late 1700s. For the next hundred years, immigrantsfrom Europe faced a journey of four months on a sailing ship. And there we areto this day, descendants of those intrepid pioneers, inhabiting a cluster ofislands in the South Pacific Ocean, far from our roots in the British Isles,speaking a language whose closest relations are half a world away. The carvedfigures are not of European origin, yet they speak eloquently of our isolation,and search for identity.

I have seen a lot of Turkey, butthere is a line I have yet to travel – east from the capital Ankara through theAnatolian cities of Sivas, Erzincan and Erzurum, to Kars and the Armenianborder. Out there, 1174 kilometres, and a universe away from the Europeanmetropolis of Istanbul, lies the town of Manzikert (Malazgirt in Turkish) inthe province of Muş. As every Turkish school child will tell you, this was thesite of a battle in 1071 CE, when the forces of the Seljuk Turkish SultanAlparslan defeated the army of the Byzantine Emperor, Romanus Diogenes. Hisvictory opened the way for Turks to sweep into Anatolia, where they remain today– in defiance of the feelings of many Western Europeans, who wish they wouldreturn to whence they came.

My fourth monument is there, inthat remote East Anatolian town – erected in 1989 to commemorate a long agobattle. It may be debatable whether this edifice is in Europe, but the Turksindisputably are, as out of place with their language and traditions as wewhite New Zealanders are down there in the South Pacific. It’s a strange worldwe live in, and sources of conflict are easy to find. The borders we draw, onthe ground and in our minds, are often lines of defence. Crossing them to makeconnections requires imagination and breadth of vision. My four monuments canbe seen as unconnected and irrelevant – or as pointers to a new world where weseek the values we share, rather than the differences that divide us.

Word count (including Preamble) = 1495

[1] http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/ataturk-memorial-wellington

[2] http://www.canakkalesehitlerimiz.com/dur_yolcu.php - My translation

Tales of Smugglers and Indirect Taxation - The Şırnak Incident

2012-01-03T21:06:00.001+02:00

No doubt you’ve seen recent news coverage of the deaths of 35 villagers in south-eastern Turkey. According to reports, a convoy of young Kurdish smugglers was making its way by night towards the Turkish border leading donkeys laden with contraband petrol and cigarettes from neighbouring Iraq. Their presence was detected by military drones and thermal cameras, and they were taken for Kurdish insurgents belonging to the outlawed PKK, who apparently often use that border crossing to launch strikes against Turkish police and military targets from their bases in the mountains of Iraq. In a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the smugglers were strafed and bombed by Turkish warplanes. Reports say most of the dead were young men around 17 to 20 years old.

Uludere Village, Şırnak Province

The incident is a major embarrassment for the Turkish government, who have been pursuing a dual policy of hitting ‘terrorists’ hard, while trying to defuse the separatist issue by allowing discussion on the use of the Kurdish language and the practising of the Alevi religion. Political opponents, needless to say, have seen a golden opportunity to attack the government, making comparisons to the killing of dissidents by beleaguered President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria.

I made a journey into that south-eastern part of Turkey back in the summer of 1999. In retrospect, I was fortunate because, at that time, there was a brief window of relative peace following the arrest and imprisonment of PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and before George ‘Dubya’ Bush’s invasion of Iraq stirred up Kurdish activists again. I didn’t get right down to that distant corner of Anatolia, to Hakkari and Şırnak, where the latest incident took place, but I did make my way deep into parts of the country with Kurdish majority populations: Malatya, Diyarbakır, Mardin and Van. Despite the relative calm, we faced regular stoppages at checkpoints, with tanks and other serious-looking military hardware very much in evidence.

There were very few tourists – I met a group of young back-packers from Poland in Doğubeyazit, way out on the border with Iran, but saw no others. I was able to make a small contribution to international goodwill in that remote town, purchasing a New Zealand twenty-dollar note from a taxi driver who would have waited a long time for another such opportunity. Since hostilities resumed after 2003, I imagine the tourist trade has, if anything, declined. Certainly the New Zealand Embassy in Ankara sends out emails to ex-pat citizens and tourists warning us to avoid those parts of the country.

These hostilities are another instance of what we have come to know as asymmetrical warfare – where a professional national military machine combats groups of irregular guerrillas. We have read much about the post-traumatic stress disorder afflicting US servicemen returning from tours of duty in Iraq. One major cause of this stress, no doubt, is that, in such asymmetrical conflicts, the professional soldiers suffer from the disadvantage of having to wear a uniform, making them clearly identifiable targets. On the other hand, local guerrillas are not easily distinguished from harmless civilians, especially when you don’t speak the local language. As a result, the professionals are in a state of constant fear and uncertainty, and not infrequently kill or wound non-combatant citizens going about their lawful business.

Well, I’m not excusing the Turkish military for what they did down there in Uludere, in Şırnak province. However, the situation is, you’d have to say, somewhat complex. For a start, the victims of the air-strike were Turkish citizens intending to re-cross an international border, having, we must assume, previously left the country without notifying the proper authorities, for a purpose which could hardly be called lawful business, and this in the dead of night. Moreover, the path they were on is apparently used by PKK insurgents making guerrilla raids into Turkey from bases across the border in Iraq. Certainly those guys were too young to die, and the price they paid was disproportionate to their crime – but they were surely old enough to know the risk they were taking.

However, that’s not much consolation for those families in Uludere who have lost the flower of their local manhood – and it is certainly creating extra unpleasantness for the Turkish government in relations with their Kurdish citizens, even if they do fulfil their promise to pay substantial reparations. Still, ascribing blame is always a difficult task, and knee-jerk responses rarely address the underlying causes of a conflict, so let’s take a step back . . .

The Turkish Republic has one of the world’s booming economies these days. The middle class is expanding rapidly, the retail sector is on a roll, private sector commercial and residential construction is changing the urban skyline, and the government is proceeding with numerous large-scale public projects. They do, however, have some difficulties in collecting taxation. No one likes paying tax, of course, but not paying it is a way of life in Turkey. Collecting income tax from wage and salary earners is relatively straightforward – but what if the company doesn’t declare its employees? And getting tax out of the wealthy is notoriously problematic, even in countries with more reliable bureaucratic infrastructure.

One widely employed solution is indirect taxation. Everybody does it these days: GST, VAT, KDV . . . a nettle by any other name would sting as sharp. And then there are the special purpose taxes. Who can argue with extra duties on cigarettes and alcohol? If people want to drink and smoke themselves to death, why should I pay for their health care with my taxes? And petrol . . . well, drivers should contribute to the cost of roads and motorways and whatnot, it’s only fair and reasonable.

Turkey, however, is a special case. I read that Americans got upset when the price of gasoline reached $4 a gallon. Imagine the screams of outrage if they had to pay $8.50, as Turkish motorists do! They’d never get the protesters out of the parks! And if the US Federal Government tried to take 70% of the price in tax, the Tea Party would likely be organising airstrikes on the White House.

Then there’s the cigarette tax. There was a time when ‘to smoke like a Turk’ was axiomatic. Now I’m starting to feel sorry for Turkish smokers, who currently pay 9 Turkish Liras or more for a packet of smokes, of which 7.50 TL goes to the government. Unlike smoking, however, drinking is not such a big thing in Turkey. In tea consumption, Turks are right up there with the English – but Islam has traditionally frowned on alcohol. The land that probably invented wine production, allowed the art to die out until the last decade or so saw some kind of revival.

The exception to this abstemiousness has been rakı, the grape-based, aniseed flavoured spirit resembling Greek ouzo, which is a popular accompaniment to a Turkish night on the town. Perhaps I should have said ‘was’, since a litre bottle of the cheapest Yeni Rakı now retails for 61 TL, of which 62% disappears into government coffers.

So what’s the connection, you’re saying. The Turkish military kills 35 poor young villagers out east, and I’m blethering on about the price of grog and cigarettes. But don’t be hasty. It’s pretty clear that those kids were smuggling cigarettes and petrol. Of course it’s illegal, but when people take such risks to do it, you can safely bet that they are addressing a need, and that there is money to be made. Economic niches will be filled, by fair means or foul - Americans learned that lesson back in the 1920s when the Federal Government attempted to ban the consumption of alcohol. During the thirteen years the Volstead Act was in force, an unlooked for side-effect was the emergence of ‘rampant underground, organised and widespread criminal activity’.

People will drink, people will smoke tobacco, and people will drive around in vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, until satisfactory substitutes are found. That is the principle on which indirect taxation is founded, whatever alternative rationalisations are put forward. A 17^th century English poet, Henry Aldrich, once wrote:

If on my theme I rightly think,

There are five reasons why men drink,—

Good wine, a friend, because I ’m dry,

Or lest I should be by and by,

Or any other reason why.

Substitute ‘smoke’ or ‘drive cars’ for the underlined word, make one or two other necessary amendments, and the resulting epigram will be equally true. Governments know this, and see a bottomless source of revenue. Unfortunately, as with other forms of taxation, the burden tends to fall disproportionately on those at the middle and lower ends of the income spectrum. The wealthy find ways to circumvent the annoyance: company expense accounts, legal forms of tax avoidance, duty-free purchases while traveling abroad – or if the worst comes to the worst, most have plenty of slack in their disposable incomes.

In countries like Turkey, the problems are exacerbated by poverty. Turks, as has been noted, pay more than double the price for petrol that US drivers do, yet their per capita GDP is less than one quarter of that in the USA (IMF 2010 figures). And, of course, such figures represent a national average, and disguise the fact that 50% of the population have incomes substantially below the national average.

The bottom line, to use a phrase much beloved of businessmen and economists, is that indirect taxes hit hardest the poorest sections of the population. So what are they to do? For the most part, they won’t stop drinking and smoking (even paupers need some small pleasures in life), though they may be obliged to do without private cars. Human nature being what it is, then, we can expect the following results:

- Some enterprising souls will find ways to manufacture alcoholic beverages. In Turkey, there have recently been reports of deaths related to the consumption of illegally distilled spirits. In fact last summer there was a minor scandal caused by the deaths of some Russian tourists.

- Smuggling. ‘Kaçak’ is an important word in Turkish, with a multitude of meanings, but, in the case of cigarettes, for example, it has the connotation of ‘unofficially duty-free’.

- The involvement of organized crime syndicates. Some reports on the deaths in Şırnak province suggest that, at the very least, PKK insurgents are taking a commission from smugglers to allow safe passage.

So, coming back to where we began, and the question of blame for the deaths of the young men from Uludere, I would suggest that inequality of income and opportunity lie at the root of the tragedy. The New Year edition of Time magazine has chosen ‘The Protester’ as Person of the Year for 2011 – the protester to be found in Zucotti Park, New York and Tahrir Square, Cairo; in Syntagma Square, Athens, and the streets of London. Common factors in all these protests are lack of central leadership, frustration with the inability of governments to deal with manifest injustice, and a willingness to endure pain, suffering, even death, to make their message heard. One further factor is the participation of a more educated, middle class species of protester. The less educated, lower classes are likely to turn to more direct action, such as mugging and smuggling. In the end, if the privileged classes fail to address the valid grievances of their fellow citizens, they will find increasing need for draconian security measures, and not only in China and Syria.

Religious Tolerance and the Armenian Question

2011-12-31T12:35:00.000+02:00

Readers of this blog may remember that, in my February post, I referred to H. Res. 306, a resolution before the US Congress which would give official recognition to the events often referred to as 'The Armenian Genocide'. It appears that Congress, in its collective wisdom, has seen fit to pass the resolution. At this stage, I have other matters in hand, and I don't propose to comment. However, in the interests of giving both sides a fair hearing, you may like to check out the website of the Turkish Coalition of America.

Dersim and the Politics of Inclusion

2011-12-10T12:32:00.001+02:00

I first came to Turkey just after Mel Gibson and histeam won five Oscars for their 1995 cinematic hit, ‘Braveheart’. For some reason that romanticised tale of kiltedScots fighting manfully but futilely against their powerful southern neighbourstruck a chord or two with Turkish audiences. The film ran for three years inIstanbul cinemas without a break. ‘Titanic’didn’t come close in this part of the world!

Mel Gibson strikes a blow
for Scottish nationalism

I’m sure you remember the final stomach-churningscenes of the film, where the defeated but unrepentant William Wallace ishanged, drawn and quartered by his English conquerors as an example to otherswho might seek to emulate his troublesome ways. Wallace’s tormentor gives himthe option of a quick death on condition of swearing allegiance to His Majesty,the King of England. However, the Scots hero draws strength to undergo theagony ahead from a small boy in the crowd, who will clearly carry onthe fight if Gibson (sorry, Wallace) shows the necessary fortitude.

Scotland was an independent nation in those days –we’re talking about the early 14^th century – so it was perhaps a bitrough to treat Wallace as a traitor. Nevertheless, that gruesome punishmentremained in force in the United Kingdom for the crime of high treason into comparativelymodern times. The Crowns and Parliaments of Scotland had been well united bythe time Prince Charlie led his ill-fated rebellion against King George II in1745. It was only 60 years since his grandfather, James II, had allowed JudgeJeffreys to butcher survivors of the Monmouth Rebellion, so the Bonny Princeknew what to expect if he was caught. He wasn’t, luckily for him (speeding offto the Isle of Skye on his bonny boat, as the old song has it, and thence to alife of exile in France), but the Scots Highlanders who had supported him werenot so fortunate. The Battle of Culloden lasted just over an hour, say therecords. However, the aftermath of the English victory was not only amassacre of the wounded, but a prolonged killing or displacement of theclansmen, their women, children and the elderly. It was a systematic programme,more or less successful, to civilise the highlands, bring them under the ruleof law, and to suppress the Gaelic language and tribal culture.

Hanging drawing and quartering was apparently notconsidered a seemly punishment for women, for whom burning was the favouredpunishment in those times. The last burning in England took place in 1789 – theyear of the French Revolution (‘Liberty,Equality and Brotherhood’, you remember!). The more anatomically specific alternativefor males remained in force rather longer. The last man in England to sufferthe fate of William Wallace was hanged and beheaded in 1817. Several morefortunate rebels actually faced the penalty in 1839 – but their sentence wascommuted to transportation, and butchering as a punishment was finally removedfrom British law in 1870.

Well, that’s all very interesting, I hear you say,but what relevance does it have for the post-modern world. Even Turkey, with itsreputation for human rights abuses, could not possibly condone such treatmentof political prisoners or even terrorists. For sure! Capital punishment itselfwas abolished completely in Turkey in 2004.

Nevertheless, an event in 20^th centuryTurkish history has recently seen the light of day, and warrants a littleexamination. Dersim, now known as Tunceli, is an area in eastern centralAnatolia, traditionally home to Alevi, Zaza and Kurdish people. According toone source I came across[1],this was the last area within the Turkish Republic to be brought undergovernment control. It is not easy to come to a clear understanding of whothese people are. Kurds are an ancient race, of Iranian origin, speaking alanguage with Indo-European roots. Many of them espouse the Alevi branch ofIslam, held to spring from the Shi’asect (not of much consequence in Sunnimajority Turkey), but with connections to earlier religions and much older folktraditions. Zazas, it seems, generally incline to Alevism, but there isscholarly debate about whether their language is related to Kurdish, ordistinct from it.

Be that as it may, it seems that the inhabitants ofDersim/Tunceli had been resisting all attempts to bring them into the fold ofcivilisation for some time before the watershed events of 1937-38. According tovan Bruinessen,

‘the only law they recognized was traditional triballaw. Tribal chieftains and religious leaders wielded great authority over thecommoners, whom they often exploited economically. They were not opposed togovernment as such, as long as it did not interfere too much in their affairs .. . There was a tradition of refusing to pay taxes — but then there was littlethat could be taxed, as the district was desperately poor. Young men evadedmilitary service when they could . . .’

Undoubtedly there was a certain amount ofbrigandage and banditry, and government attempts to impose the rule of law mayhave met with actual physical discouragement. We may think that the situationwas similar to that of the Scottish Highland clans prior to the final solutiondiscussed above, with one major difference: we are talking about the 20^thcentury here, rather than the 18^th. The Turkish Republic was a merefourteen years old, and in a pretty parlous state. Republican reformers, led byMustafa Kemal Atatürk, were attempting to forge a nation from the ashes of thedefeated, divided and defunct Ottoman Empire. They were trying to create anidentity based on the hitherto unpopular concept of Turkish nationalism; toestablish a modern, secular democracy in a land whose tradition was Islamic,monarchic and borderline medieval. Their eyes were fixed on European models ofcivilisation, most of whose representatives had long since suppressed and/orcivilized their last remnants of nomadic or pastoral tribalism.

Furthermore, we are talking about the 1930s, nota period much renowned for the tolerant treatment of troublesome andundesirable minorities. So what happened in Dersim? It seems the government ofthe day made attempts to assimilate the Alevi Zazas into their brave newsecular civilized Turkish Republic - and the local tribes objected, to thepoint of open rebellion. The government, needless to say, had recourse tomilitary coercion. Many died, villages were destroyed, local people weredisplaced, martial law was established, there was a general ban on the Kurdishlanguage, dress, folklore and names, and, as one would expect, a good deal ofanger and enmity continued to seethe underground. Well, you can’t make acivilisation omelet without breaking a few eggs, it seems.

So what’s the solution? The present daygovernment of New Zealand is not about to hand Aotearoa back to its indigenous Maori inhabitants; just as theBritish government continues to resist attempts by Scottish nationalists to cedefrom the Union and go it alone. No Turkish government will ever accept thehanding over of its eastern provinces to an independent Kurdistan, even if themajority of ‘Kurds’ wanted it – something which is by no means certain. However,the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Erdoğan, recently apologized publically [2]for the events known collectively as the Dersim Massacre.

It’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it!You can’t ever right the wrongs of history. History itself is a progression ofsuccessive societies, chieftains, monarchs, invaders and whatnot, assertingtheir pre-eminence, and imposing their will on others by the right of might –irrespective of whether the ‘others’ may have had a prior and better claim tothe territory in question. Nevertheless, smart leaders of the victorious partytend to apply the principle of enlightened self-interest. The new nation youseek to establish, the new civilisation whose superiority you assert, will havea better chance of long-term success if you give the conquered people a shareof its fruits.

Nelson Mandela understood this when he becamethe first democratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa in1994. Mandela had spent 27 years of his life in prison, a victim of the apartheid political system that allowedwhite people, making up 10% of the population, to rule and oppress thenon-white 90%. It would have been understandable if he had taken theopportunity to exact revenge from his persecutors, now that he was in power – buthe didn’t. He encouraged his people to work on a process of reconciliation, toheal the wounds of the past and take the reborn nation forward.

The Ottoman Empire, for all its failings,survived for more than six centuries, and one reason for its longevity may havebeen the millet system, whereby itgranted freedom of religion, use of language and practising of traditions tothe disparate groups within its borders: Orthodox Greeks, Armenians and Jews,as well as Muslims of all shades. The British Empire may have beengeographically the largest the world has known, but even the most generoushistorian would not grant it a span of much more than 300 years. Morerealistically, the 19^th century and twenty or thirty years eitherside of it would encompass its actual period of power. Interestingly, theBritish one was probably the only Empire that never had an Emperor. Its subjectsowed fealty to the King (or Queen) of England – a rather remote concept formost of them, and the requirement to accept a homogeneity of language andculture may have hastened the empire’s demise.

But I’m not here to criticize the Brits. Mypurpose is to congratulate Mr Tayyip Erdoğan for his efforts in reaching out tothe unhappy Kurds and Zazas among the citizens of Turkey. Admittedly, hismotives have been called into question by some. He has been accused of takingadvantage of a sensitive issue to score points against his main politicalrival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, whose family apparently has Kurdish/Alevi origins inthe Tunceli/Dersim area. Well, it’s an unusual politician who does not availhimself of an opportunity to make political capital, and I’m not going intothat matter either. Mr Erdoğan’s words will be measured against his actions inthe future. Any apology for past wrongs will be hollow without governmentalmeasures to extend financial support to Turkey’s impoverished and disadvantagedcitizens in the east, many of whom are Kurdish. Schools and hospitals areneeded, and industrial development to provide employment opportunities. Povertyand deprivation are the soil in which rebellion and terrorism flourish.Alleviating these conditions will not make all the malcontents disappearovernight – but it will at least deprive them of a receptive audience.

In February 2008, the former Prime Minister ofAustralia, Mr Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the aboriginal people formore than a century of cruelty, oppression and marginalization inflicted onthem by successive governments. It’s too early to say whether Mr Rudd’s wordswill result in action to reduce the dreadful rates of infant mortality, educationalfailure and unemployment, alcoholism and drug abuse, petty crime and imprisonment,among Australia’s indigenous people – but certainly, without recognition andapology, nothing can change.

I want to make two points here. The first is that, unfortunately, nocivilized society can tolerate outlaws, despite their traditional romanticappeal. Pretty much every modern civilized society you care to examine has,somewhere in its history, an event or two where it felt obliged to useforce to suppress a group whose continued existence was perceived as a seriousthreat to its own integrity and stability. We’ve mentioned the United Kingdomand Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. We could go on to look at the United States’treatment of Native Americans, or its catastrophic Civil War, fought to preventa division into Union and Confederacy – but you get the gist. My second pointis that such use of force can, however, only be justified in the long-term ifthe result is a stable civilized inclusive state, the benefits of which extendto the vast majority of its citizens.

The Republic of Turkey has, since its inception, looked to the West as amodel of cultural and economic development, of democracy and civilisation. TheWest, for its part, has often chosen to judge and belittle Turkey for itsperceived backwardness and barbarity. It is important, then, for Westernnations, if they are to maintain the moral high ground, that their civilizeddemocratic institutions demonstrate a capacity for inclusion. Unfortunately,recent events seem to suggest that they do not. ‘Occupy Wall St’ protests havespread to major cities all over the developed world, suggesting a ‘CapitalistSpring’ (or ‘Autumn’) that has elicited outbursts of government force tosuppress it. One of the rallying cries has been ‘We are the 99%’ – the supposedproportion of society held in economic servitude to the 1% elite.

I don’t havethe numbers at my fingertips, but I have to say that I feel a 99:1 split may beexaggerating the situation a little. However, one statistic I did come acrossin the last week gave cause for alarm. A General Election was held in NewZealand the weekend before last, and reports are saying that voter turnout was,at 65%, the lowest in more than a century. Certainly, the implication that 35%of the voting-age population are so disaffected that they do not bother toexercise their democratic right is disturbing. General Elections in the UK inrecent years have produced a similar ominous trend. Figures in the USA are evenmore striking. Statistics show[3]that the proportion of eligible voters turning out to choose a new Presidenthovers around 50 to 55%. If you look at mid-term Congressional elections thepercentage drops below 40!

Well, it wouldrequire more exhaustive research than I am capable of, to demonstrate a clearcorrelation between these voting patterns and the August riots in UK cities,the Wall St protestors, the general increase in terrorist activity around theglobe, and the huge popularity of movies with anti-establishment heroes likeWilliam Wallace. All I can say for certain is that I applaud Tayyip Erdoğan forextending a hand of apology and reconciliation to the victims of the Dersimrebellion - and I fervently hopethat his words translate into actions which will achieve a more equitabledistribution of wealth in his rapidly developing nation.

[1] ‘The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38)’, Martin van Bruinessen

http://let.uu.nl/~martin.vanbruinessen/personal/publications/Dersim_rebellion.pdf

[2] 23 November 2011

[3] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

Vikings in Constantinople – Globalisation Then and Now

2011-11-13T17:47:00.001+02:00

Globalisation is an interesting business, withpositive and negative effects on all aspects of life in our contemporary world.Most of us tend to think of it as a modern phenomenon, when, in fact, the processhas been going on since time immemorial. Polynesian migrants, originating inAsia, traversed thousands of kilometres of trackless Pacific Ocean, eventuallyfinding their way to New Zealand, perhaps the last significant land mass in theworld to be populated.

The territory currently occupied by modern Turkey, onthe other hand, has long been at the focal point of mass migrations ofhumanity. Not everyone is aware, however, that Vikings, those widely wandering wayfarers, found their way down the navigable rivers of Eastern Europe to theBlack Sea and the largest city of the Medieval world, establishing a presencethere a thousand years before their modern descendents from Northern Europeflocked to the beach resorts of Mediterranean Turkey. I’ve always had apenchant for historical fiction. As a kid, one of my favourite writers wasHenry Treece, whose 'Viking' Trilogy included a novel entitled ‘The Road toMiklagard’. Check it out! Not only did those hairy guys with the horned helmetsdiscover America centuries before Christopher Columbus, they also had severalgoes at conquering Constantinople from the Byzantine Greeks, and if you canbelieve some sources, actually founded Russia in their spare time.

Longship in Viking Museum,
Ribe, Denmark

Like Turks, Vikings have tended to get a bad pressover the years. Raping and pillaging seem to have been pretty standard maleactivities for most of recorded history, so it is perhaps a little unfair to singleout Vikings (and Turks) for special mention. On the plus side of the ledger, theVikings had a pretty significant influence on much of Europe from the 8^thto the 11^th century, to the extent that that period of Europeanhistory is often referred to as ‘The Viking Age’. Certainly they propelled those distinctive dragon-prowedlongships to some quite surprising places. Advanced shipbuilding techniquessuch as the development of the keel, and clinker-built construction, inconjunction with sophisticated systems of navigation, enabled them to travelregularly to Iceland, Greenland and the east coast of North America.

For sure, the Viking reputation for violent invasionof other people’s territory is not undeserved. They actually managed to laysiege to Paris for a whole year in the late 9^th century – eventuallyhaving to be bought off by a couple of French Kings, remembered by historiansas Charles the Fat and Charles the Simple. You can’t help wondering who wouldhave given kings such unflattering epithets – their own disgruntled subjects?Or perhaps a gang of triumphant Vikings at a drunken after-battle celebration.Anyway, as a result, a significant chunk of north-western France became knownas Normandy (land of the Northmen) whose inhabitants famously conquered theEnglish in 1066, and may be said to have exerted a civilising influence on thelocal Anglo-Saxons. Certainly their monumental Romanesque architecture, and theiridiosyncratic dialect of French left lasting impressions on English cathedralsand the language of English law.

Well, Leif Ericson’s achievement in crossing theAtlantic and setting foot in North America is no longer controversial. Somemodern Americans apparently go so far as to commemorate his feat on 9 Octobereach year. Modern Russians, however, are understandably reluctant to acceptthat the origin of their very name is Scandinavian; still less that they owethe foundation of their nation to the Vikings. Nevertheless, there exists apersuasive argument . . .

The name ‘Rus’ referred originally to Swedish Vikingswho, in the 8^th and 9^th centuries, found their way to EasternEurope and what is now northern Russia. Needless to say, their practice ofexacting tribute did not always endear them to the locals. Nevertheless, itseems that indigenous Slavic and Finnish tribes, unable to agree amongst themselves,actually invited a certain Viking lord by the name of Rurik, to come and rulethem – this around the end of the 9^th century. The result, accordingto some historians, was the establishment of a proto-state, Kievan Rus, whicheventually evolved into modern Russia. Slavic historians, on the contrary, are notkeen on this theory; and they have, on their side, an absence of signs oflasting linguistic or cultural influence remaining from the Scandinavianpresence.

I have no intention of entering into the controversy,for the reasons that I’m not a historian and I don’t particularly care eitherway. However, it does seem to me that, from what we know of Vikings, theywere not especially interested in, or temperamentally suited to, putting downroots and investing the kind of long-term energy required to enforce theirlanguage and culture on local peoples. Some small linguistic peculiarities dosurvive in modern English, from the time when Viking invaders made theirpresence felt on England’s eastern coast – but on the whole it seems that theViking way was to move on to greener and more immediately profitable pastures.Those who remained behind tended to be assimilated into the local culture. Wehave already noted the Norman adoption of the French language – and it seemsthe Vikings who settled in what is now Russia, also adopted Slavic customs andlanguage.

But getting back to Henry Treece, and the point ofthis post – the Vikings apparently referred collectively to the towns and fortsthey established in what is now northern Russia as Gardariki. From there, the more adventurous among them found theirway down the Volga and Dnieper River systems to the Caspian and Black Seas,where they inevitably came into contact with the top dogs in that part of theworld, the Byzantine Greeks. Undeterred by the size and reputation of theByzantine Empire, the upstart Scandinavians apparently launched several attackson the great city of Constantinople (which they called Miklagard) in the 9^th and 10^th centuries.

These attacks were unsuccessful, of course, but theydid have the result of obliging the Byzantine Greeks to develop a healthy respect for theseblond berserkers from the frozen north. It was around this time that the risingpower of the Muslim Arabs to the south was beginning to pose a more seriousthreat to the Empire. With admirable pragmatism, the Emperor Theophilus beganthe tradition of employing Viking hatchet men in defence of his realm. Thus wasfounded the so-called Varangian Guard, which, in later years became thepersonal bodyguard of the Emperor Basil II and his successors. Evidently therewas considerable too-ing and fro-ing between Scandinavia and Asia Minor, withViking mercenaries sending at least some of their earnings home, before headingback to retire in comfort. It is said that this occupation was so enticing toyoung warriors that the King of Sweden felt obliged to pass a law preventinghis subjects from inheriting property while working for the ‘Greek’ Emperors.

Once again, not much evidence has survived of thepresence of these Norsemen in the Near East. There is, however, an interestingitem of graffiti in the cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, now the Aya SofiaMuseum in Istanbul. Carved into the marble balustrade of one of the galleriesis a runic inscription (dated to some time in the 11^th century)recording the presence of a certain Halfdan – who, one assumes, was finding theceremonial rites of the Orthodox Church a little tiresome. At the other end ofthe journey, two runestones, also dating from the 11^th century, havebeen found at Risbyle in Sweden.The stones bear inscriptions to the memory of Ulfr ofSkolhamarr, and one of them,it seems, includes an Eastern Cross, common in the Byzantine Empire at thetime. To commemorate the international connection, the local Swedish municipalityhas apparently included such a cross in its official coat-of-arms.

As a final twist to this story, it seems that theVarangian Guard began to lose its Viking character in the 11^thcentury. Around this time, the ranks of the Imperial bodyguard beganincreasingly to be filled by Anglo-Saxon warriors from England. Interestingly,however, the Vikings were also, albeit obliquely, responsible for this trend.Apparently the depredations of Vikings in England, and later, the conquest ofthe country by their kinsmen the Normans, led to considerable dispossession,redundancy and unemployment of the native English warrior class – many of whom,it is said, took their services elsewhere, namely, to the court of theByzantine Emperor in Constantinople.

Now, if you are a follower of this blog, you will beaware that one of my major themes is the inter-connectedness of historicalevents. I have written elsewhere about the Crusades, and my feeling that Papalmotives went beyond the normally stated objective of reclaiming the Holy Landsfrom the heathen Turks. As I was writing the above, it crossed my mind thatthere, in the 11^th century, you had significant numbers of middleand upper-middle class guys from England and other parts of western Europegetting a glimpse of the wealth of Eastern civilisation, and returning to telltales of its splendour to the folks back home. So, when Pope Urban II made hisfamous call, in 1095, to Western Christendom to unite in arms and make the 3000kilometre journey to liberate the Holy Places, there may well have beenthoughts of material as much as spiritual gain in the minds of those nobleknights and true. Such thoughts could conceivably have added persuasive force to the Holy Father's arguments.

Well, the more things change, the more they remain thesame, as the French say. The US government is currently working towards awithdrawal of its troops from Iraq, as Britain also seeks to cut back itsmilitary presence abroad. You might wonder, then, why so many Americans andother foreign nationals would opt voluntarily to go to Iraq and engage in thekind of activities that normally only trained soldiers would carry out. Thereasons, of course, are money and adventure. In August 2010 it was estimatedthat there were in excess of 11,000 ‘private security contractors’ (read‘mercenaries’) in Iraq – and analysts expect that number to rise significantlyas US military withdrawal continues.

So, the Vikings went to Miklagard,the Crusaders to Jerusalem (and Constantinople), and Americans will, no doubt,continue going to Iraq. The processes of globalisation, and its handmaiden,privatisation, are timeless and irresistible. But let’s not kid ourselves thatthey spring from altruism and benevolence towards anyone’s fellow human beings.

Atatürk's Republic and the Wall Street Protesters

2011-10-16T22:28:00.001+03:00

One of thepeculiarities that most strikes visitors to Turkey is the pervasive presence ofa political leader who died more than seventy years ago. Every classroom in every school, everyoffice in every government department has his picture on the wall; every publicsquare in every village, town and city has a statue prominently placed. Ourtendency is to feel that there must be an element of compulsion involved. Howcan a free people willingly engage in such idolatry? Certainly other nationshave their founding heroes, but I can think of none who holds the place in hispeople’s hearts that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk holds in the hearts of the people ofTurkey.

Perhaps the nearestrival is George Washington, whose pictorial place on the US dollar bill symboliseshis importance as founding father of the United States. The English have twoqueens with particular claims to fame: Elizabeth I, the mother of England, andVictoria, of the British Empire – but nobody much hangs their pictures on thewall these days. Cross the Channel to Europe and you’ve got Napoleon Bonapartein France. However, since he set back republican progress for the best part ofa century, you might question his achievement. Prior to him, you have to go backto the 9^th century to find a French leader of much note, but who’sheard of Charlemagne these days, much less knows what he did? Germany has amore recent claimant (if we tactfully ignore Adolf Hitler). Otto von Bismarckwas the driving force uniting the German nation in 1871, and you’d have to sayEurope would be in much deeper trouble these days without the Germans. Peterthe Great did a lot of big stuff for Russia back around 1700, but I don’t knowwhat the Russians think of him now. Outside of Europe? Well, Gandhi in India,of course, and Nelson Mandela in South Africa; hard to find fault with them.The Chinese might suggest Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro was the public face ofCuba for most of fifty years. That’s quite a club to join, isn’t it!

But how do you rankthem? What criteria would you use to determine their impact on the world? Ifyou go for population size of their countries, Gandhi and Mao Zedong top thelist. On the other hand, if you think in terms of global economic and militarypower today, and the lasting effects of his legacy, it’s hard to go past GeorgeWashington. When it comes to personal sacrifice and commitment to a cause,Mandela, and once again, Gandhi look pretty good. Take the business model oftime and motion effectiveness and Bismarck got the job done quickly, whichsuggests impressive personal power and influence.

Now I’m sure manyoutside Turkey will ask how a Turkish leader, however idolized in his owncountry, can be considered fit to stand in such company. Well, leaving theidolization aside for a moment, you may not be aware that the United Nations and UNESCO declared 1981 (the centennial year of his birth) as AtatürkYear in the World, the only occasion on which they have awarded such anhonour. The wording of the 1979 resolution goes like this:

The General Conference,

Convinced that eminent personalities whoworked for international understanding, co-operation, and peace, should serveas an example for future generations,

Recalling that the hundredth anniversaryof the birth of Mustafa Kemal Atatûrk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey,will be celebrated in 1981,

Bearing in mind that he was anexceptional reformer in all the fields coming within UNESCO’s competence,

Recognizing in particular that he wasthe leader of one of the earliest struggles against colonialism andimperialism,

Recalling that he set an outstandingexample in promoting the spirit of mutual understanding between peoples andlasting peace between the nations of the world, having advocated all his lifethe advent of ‘an age of harmony and co-operation in which no distinction wouldbe made between men on account of colour, religion or race’,

1. Decides that UNESCO shall co-operateon the intellectual and technical planes with the Turkish Government for theorganization in 1980, at that Government’s financial expense, of aninternational symposium designed to bring out various aspects of thepersonality and work of Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, whoseaction was always directed towards the promotion of peace, internationalunderstanding and respect for human rights;

2. Requests the Director-General to take the necessary steps for theimplementation of this resolution.

Well,that would seem to take care of the question of international recognition.Nelson Mandela has been named a UN Goodwill Ambassador, and UNESCO issued acommemorative medal to mark the 125^th anniversary of MahatmaGandhi’s birth – but neither, as far as I know, has yet been accorded a ‘Year’to himself. So let’s return to the reasons why Atatürk remains so beloved bythe Turkish people, and I want to draw your particular attention to these wordsfrom the UN resolution: ‘he was anexceptional reformer in all the fields coming within UNESCO’s competence’.These fields are summarized by the letters ESC in the acronym: ‘Educational,Scientific and Cultural’. So clearly the people at the UN had other factors inmind than mere military success when they decided to honour Atatürk. Books havebeen written on this subject, so for the purposes of this article, I want tofocus on one aspect – his achievements in the field of economics.

Undoubtedly,Mustafa Kemal’s military successes, achieved against global military powers ofthe day, were remarkable. Nevertheless, he himself recognized the limitationsof victory gained by force of arms. The report of the Turkish Ministry of Finance for 2011leads off with these words attributed to Atatürk:

‘The greatestpolitical and military victory cannot last and is doomed to fade away quicklyunless it is crowned by an economic victory.’

It is appropriate, then, to glance briefly at the Turkey whichgained its status as an independent republic in 1923. The first thing torecognise is that the new Turkey was the rump of the old Ottoman Empire, a onceproud entity that had become the plaything of European powers, and alaughing-stock for its social, cultural, technological and economicbackwardness. The Anatolian heartland comprised around twenty percent of theterritory of the Ottoman Empire in 1914, and a minute fraction of its peak inthe 17^th century. When it became the Republic of Turkey in 1923 it hadbeen devastated by ten consecutive years of war on fronts on all itsboundaries. The total population was around 13 million and productive manpowerwas severely depleted. Adult literacy was less than 20% and there were nearly13,000 people for every doctor. The Republic had been achieved, but the economywas in tatters. Building a modern developed nation required a vision and amechanism.

Mustafa Kemal’s economic mechanism was ‘statism’ (Turkish devletçilik). The essence of this isthat ‘the state has a major andlegitimate role in directing the economy, either directly through state-ownedenterprises and other types of machinery of government, or indirectly througheconomic planning’ [1].His vision was an educated population with an improved standard of living forall, and a nation free from foreign control. It was, we may say, the ‘ThirdWay’, so sought after (but sadly, not found) by New Labour politicians and pseudo-leftistsof the Tony Blair variety – avoiding the pitfalls of Socialism/Communism on theone hand, and unfettered free market capitalism on the other. To the extentthat Turkey under Atatürk vastly improved internal communications (includingnew and improved roads and railways), quadrupled electricity generation, andgreatly increased agricultural and industrial production, we can say hispolicies were successful.

An interesting question, of course, is how he managed to achievethese successes. Money does not grow on trees, as we are often told – andwithin six years of the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the world wasplunged into a catastrophic economic Depression. Now I’m not going to pretendthat I know where the money came from, but I want to share with you some thingsI do know about that period of world history, in which Atatürk was an importantand well-informed participant.

I have just been reading ‘A History of Economics’ by the eminentAmerican economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. It’s getting little old now, sinceit was published back in 1987, but I think, as an observer of our world ineconomic terms, Galbraith pretty much hits the spot – and his predictions forthe future have a ring of truth when tested against our own experience of thelast decades. He explains why classical orthodox economic thought was sohelpless in the face of the Great Depression. Simply put, the Depressionshouldn’t have happened. In an ideal free market world, prices, wages, investment,interest, and production all balance each other out at their optimum level.Leave it to the market, and all will be fine. But it wasn’t, of course, as fiveor six years of the laissez-faire approach served to show. In the end, it wasthe English economist, John Maynard Keynes, coupled with the economic stimulusof the Second World War that got the world into the good years of the 50s and60s. Keynes it was who sanctified deficit spending, whereby governments werepermitted, nay, encouraged, to push-start their moribund economies by spendingbeyond their income, the gap to be bridged by private-sector borrowing. Keynes’s legacy lives on, despite the ranting ofconservatives for balanced budgets. The USA is far and away the largestdebtor-nation on Earth.

Something you won’t find in such histories of economics is reference to a debate that shook the world of finance inthe 1920s and 30s, and continued in some countries well into the 50s and 60s.This was the question of where money actually comes from. As Galbraith says,and everyone knows who pauses to think for a moment, ‘money’ is not an easyconcept to tie down. Clearly the notes and coins in our wallets are a smallpart of it. There are the bank deposits that we may or may not choose to callon with our chequebooks and ATM cards. There are the credit cards with theirgenerous limits that we may or may not choose to make use of. There are thepersonal loans for cars, houses and holidays that my bank often offers me, of whichI may or may not avail myself. Some economic thinkers and politicians after theFirst World War were of the opinion that what they called the ‘nation’s credit’should be under the sole control of the state.

I want to inject a little New Zealand history here, since thatis what I am most familiar with. At the height of the Great Depression, in1935, New Zealanders, in desperation, elected their first ever LabourGovernment. The leader of that government, Prime Minister Michael JosephSavage, is undoubtedly the nearest thing we have to an ‘Atatürk’ in ourhistory. Twenty and even thirty years later, pictures of that saintly man werestill to be found hanging in the houses of grateful citizens. A large mausoleum standsto his memory in a park in one of Auckland’s most beautiful locations. Savage’sfame rests primarily on one achievement: the building of a large store of statehouses. The project employed thousands of New Zealanders at a time whenunemployment was at a disastrous level; stimulated industrial production at atime when there was no money for investment; and provided low-rental, goodquality accommodation for previously impoverished and ill-housed citizens. Inthe eyes of ordinary New Zealanders, Savage was a worthy candidate forbeatification!

John A Lee - my favourite New Zealander

The thing is, it wasn’t really Savage who did it. The mostlyforgotten architect of the scheme was a First World War hero, charismatic orator and self-educatedeconomics whiz-kid by the name of John A Lee. Despite being a major factor inthe Labour Government’s electoral success, he was overlooked for ministerialappointment, and thrown the under-secretaryship of housing as a consolation.Seizing his chance, Lee persuaded his cabinet colleagues to authorize theprovision of Reserve Bank credit (ie new money) at minimal interest to financethe housing project. It was the one and only time such a measure was used. NZ’sFinance minister was summoned to London, where it is thought he was told bypolitical and financial leaders to toe the orthodox line in future. Lee, whorefused to cooperate, was expelled from the Labour Party – and subsequentLabour Governments have fallen into the accepted borrow-and-hope mould.

But it wasn’t just an isolated incident. Canadians especiallyliked the Social Credit (as it became known) financial concept, and publicpressure forced the government to set up a Royal Commission on Banking andCurrency in 1933. Continuing electoral support for the idea obliged the NewZealand Government to follow a similar course in 1955. Both Royal Commissionsacknowledged that money creation is, in fact, a function of the private bankingsystem, rather than the sovereign right of the state, as most people naivelycontinue to believe. It has been suggested that Keynesian deficit financing wasa direct response to, and an attempt to destroy the momentum of the monetaryreformists. If so, it was largely successful. ‘Money is power’ [2],and these days, the idea has pretty much disappeared from sight or publicinterest. Present-day US citizens attempting to invade Wall Street, andlike-minded souls protesting in cities throughout the world against theimmorality and social destructiveness of the activities of the financial sectorknow what they are angry about – but unfortunately have no rallying philosophyor mechanism to offer as an alternative.

That’s another reason why we need to take another look atMustafa Kemal Atatürk and his generation of thinkers from the 1920s and 30s.Atatürk must have had almost unlimited opportunity to amass a personal fortuneand establish a political or financial dynasty – but he didn’t do it. Hedivorced his only wife, sired no children (as far as we know), and his surnamedied with him. I would like to leave you with three quotations from the storeof wisdom the man left to us:

Social status is of no use tothe nation – service is the thing. Whoever serves the nation has the higheststatus.
Educators, what our republicneeds from you is young people who can think, know right from wrong, and haveopen minds.
War can only be just or justified if it isfought out of sheer necessity or for reasons of national defence, or pursued bya people awaiting their sovereignty, their very lives depending on it.

FurtherReading (if you would like to follow up some of these ideas on economics andalternative financing):

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6870

http://www.interest.co.nz/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Lee

http://publiccreditorbust.blog.com/

http://spontaneousgenerations.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/article/viewFile/978/1106

http://douglassocialcredit.com/resources/resources/contemporaryrelevance.pdf

[1] Wikipedia quoting the Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy

[2] A quote attributed to Russell H. Conwell, Baptist minister and founder of Temple University, Philedelphia

Cyprus, Turkey and the EU – Getting it wrong again?

2011-09-24T21:46:00.002+03:00

I don’t remember when I took out my firstsubscription to Time Magazine. I’m sure I must be one of their most loyallong-standing followers. Certainly there are occasions, generally during thelead-up to another United States presidential election, particularly when theopposition are going through the seemingly endless mumbo-jumbo of trying toselect a candidate to challenge the incumbent, when I wonder why I bother. ButI renew my subscription, mainly because I have never found a satisfactorysubstitute: a convenient and colourful package which keeps me more or lessup-to-date with what’s going on in the world, from arts and literature totechnology and politics, international affairs, sport and economics, tomedicine and the environment.

Scary thought!

Sometimes you have to read between the lines, ofcourse, and always be aware of its Americo-centric viewpoint – but lately theyseem to have been working on that. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see anumber of distinctly Muslim-sounding names showing up among their team ofwriters. On the other hand, there’s been another, more disturbing trend inrecent issues: a most uncharacteristic negativity, or pessimism about the stateof the world: the inevitability of food shortages, how to deal with the realityof sea-level rise – and, scariest of all, a cover story entitled ‘The Declineand Fall of Europe’[1].

I’m not an economist, and I’m not privy to any insideinformation. Some of us thought the capitalist system was on the verge ofcollapse back in the 70s, but somehow it managed to keep itself going. The USDollar, the Euro and the Pound Sterling seem remarkably strong, considering theparlous state of the economies they represent, so clearly there are issuesinvolved beyond my ken. Nevertheless, if United Europe does survive into thethird decade of the 21^st century, it will, in my opinion, be more aresult of good luck than good management.

The original six nations of the 1957 European EconomicCommunity had expanded to twenty-seven by 2007. The European Commission hasstated that it believes accepting countries like Bulgaria and Romania into theUnion will encourage them to make the reforms needed to bring them in line withEuropean standards – and it’s becoming increasingly evident that they werewrong. There is no need for me to question the wisdom of accepting twelve newmembers since 2004. The current economic woes of the EU speak eloquently forthemselves. I do not intend to argue for the acceptance of Turkey. I am wellaware that the Commission has many reasons for postponement. However, it seemsthat the long-running Cyprus problem is about to blow up again, and this, Ibelieve, is a direct result of misguided EU policies.

The Government of Turkey has announced its objectionsto two matters related to the Cyprus problem. The first is that the Republic ofCyprus (in fact the Greek republic of Southern Cyprus) isplanning to begin offshore drilling for natural gas. The second is that theaforesaid ‘Republic of Cyprus’ is in line to take over the rotating presidencyof the EU in 2012. The Turkish Government is understandably upset, and theMinister of Foreign Affairs has conveyed their strong feelings to the EUCommissioner[2].

Interestingly, the report I read referred to ‘the 37-yearCyprus conflict’, which implies that the problem began when the TurkishGovernment at the time sent troops to the island and established the partitionwhich continues to this day. This line of thinking has led to internationalcondemnation of Turkey, and recognition of part of the island as representingthe whole. However, it doesn’t take much research to establish that the rootsof the problem go back way beyond 1974.

Like everywhere else in this part of the world, theisland of Cyprus has a long history of conquests and occupation. It became aRoman province in 58 BCE, and subsequently part of the Eastern ByzantineEmpire. When the Arabs began their expansion in the late 7^thcentury, Cyprus was in the firing line, and the Byzantine emperor came to a compromisearrangement with the Muslim caliph whereby both ruled the island jointly –until the Eastern Christians were able to reassert ownership in 965 CE. As wehave noted elsewhere, crusading Christians from Western Europe did not focustheir aggression on Muslims alone. Ever wondered where Richard the Lionheartactually was when Robin Hood and the downtrodden English were strugglingagainst wicked King John? It seems at least some of his time was spentconquering Cyprus (from Christians) and rescuing a French damsel-in-distress(as knights were expected to do in those days).

For the next four hundred years, Cyprus was occupiedand ruled by a succession of crusaders and their hangers-on, various localpotentates and Genoese mercantile interests, until finally it was purchased bythe Venetians, from whom the Ottomans took it by conquest in 1571. It should benoted that, during those four centuries, the religion of the rulers was RomanCatholicism, whose adherents had little love for their Eastern Orthodoxcousins, whom they persecuted and kept in subservience.

Needless to say, the Ottoman conquest was not apeaceful affair. It was pretty much standard practice in those days forconquering armies to exact revenge on the defeated populace in proportion tothe amount of difficulty they had put the conquerors to. Nevertheless, theOttomans subsequently applied their ‘millet’ system to the island, whereby theGreek Orthodox community was allowed to maintain its own culture, language andreligion. Without this tolerance, it is arguable that there wouldn’t be aCyprus problem today – the island would be simply Turkish and Muslim. Take as acomparison, the situation in contemporary France and Spain, where religiousdissidence was violently suppressed, resulting in homogeneous communities of (Roman Catholic) ‘faith’.

So, Cyprus became Ottoman territory, and remainedsuch for the next three centuries. Its Greek Orthodox inhabitants may not havebeen altogether happy, but at least they were allowed to stay, to speak theirown language, practise their own religion, and within certain limits,administer their own affairs. Ottoman domination came to an end in 1878 whenthe British claimed the right to occupy the island. How this came about is aninteresting example of 19^th century European power politics. Russiais a huge country, but an ongoing historical problem has been the lack ofconvenient all-seasons sea access to the west. Consequently, a major focus ofits expansionist drive has always been gaining access to the Black Sea, theAegean and the Mediterranean. An important facet of Britain’s foreign policy inthe 19^th century was preventing them from doing just that.

In 1877-78, the Ottomans were engaged in a losing warwith Russia, who were altruistically supporting the nationalist struggles ofRomanians and Bulgarians in the Balkans, and Armenians in eastern Anatolia. Atthe conclusion of this war, the European Great Powers met, at the Congress ofBerlin, with the Ottoman Empire, to reorganise the Balkans, which more or lessmeant ejecting the Ottomans. While everyone was looking the other way, theBrits managed to insert a clause whereby they acquired ‘informal’ control ofCyprus. Behind this move, of course, were, the recent opening of the Suez Canal, thegrowing importance of oil as an energy source, and the associatedinclination of Britain to consider the Mediterranean part of their own sphereof influence.

Informal control of Cyprus was formalised in 1914when the British illegally annexed the island. The Ottomans weren’t happy, butwere far too occupied fighting for survival elsewhere to offer any opposition. ManyMuslim Turks left the island, especially during the population exchanges at theend of the Turkish War of Independence in 1923. In the 1950s a struggle forindependence began, largely involving the Greek community who wanted not only independence, but ‘Enosis’ (union with mainland Greece). The British Governmenton its part was reluctant to surrender its strategically important militarybases on the island, and opposed the insurgents, often employing local Turks aspolice to maintain order (thereby, needless to say, exacerbating inter-communalbitterness).

Eventually, however, the struggle was partially successfuland Cyprus became an independent nation in 1960. The new constitution,guaranteed by the British, Greek and Turkish Governments, enshrined significantrepresentative rights to the Turkish minority, somewhat reduced, but stillclose to twenty percent of the population. The Greeks hadn’t given up, however,and the main evidence of this was their choice of Michail Christodolou Mouskos, a.k.a.Archbishop Makarios III as first president of the new republic. Hard to imaginea more provocative choice, given the saintly archbishop’s well-knowninvolvement in the Cyprus independence movement and strong support for Enosis,but there you are. Within three years he was proposing amendments to theconstitution to reduce specific Turkish representation. Cypriot Turks withdrewfrom the government and increasing incidents of inter-communal violence brokeout. Greeks from the mainland began entering Cyprus to aid the struggle forEnosis and Turks began to retreat into safer conclaves. In 1964, a United Nationspeacekeeping force was set up on the island.

Over the next fewyears, The Turkish Government repeatedly warned the international communityabout violence and intimidation of the Turkish minority. Therewas talk but little action, and in July 1974, the military junta in mainland Greecesponsored a coup to depose the good archbishop and take over the island. Turkey’s first response to thiswas to ask the other guarantors of Cyprus’s independence, Greece and Britain,to intervene to stop renewed violence on the island. Receiving no reply, thegovernment under Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit sent troops, and enforcedpartition of Cyprus into northern and southern sectors, which continue tothis day. Interestingly, it was the threat of war with Turkey that led (by aprocess too complex to detail here) to the restoration of parliamentarydemocracy on the Greek mainland.

Interesting too isthe fact that Great Britain (or the United Kingdom - the terminology stillconfuses me) retains two significant chunks of the island (in total, a littleover 250 km²) where it maintains military bases. These areas, of course, are notwithin the Turkish sector, though in theory they are not Greek either.

Despite all theforegoing, it is the Greek southern section of the island that is recognized bythe international community, and Turkey that is continually blamed for causingand perpetuating the problem. A 1998 decision of the European Human RightsCommission held Turkey responsible for denying human rights to Greek Cypriotsby preventing them from returning to their homes in Northern Cyprus. On theother hand, in 2004, the European Union admitted the (Southern, Greek) Republicof Cyprus as a member, despite a clear stipulation in the 1960 Constitutionthat both sectors of the Cypriot community must agree before the island couldjoin another state. Evidently going for the letter of the law rather than itsspirit, the EU decided that, since it is not actually a ‘state’, the conditiondidn’t apply. Perhaps, in retrospect, Turkish Cypriots would have been betternot to resign from the government back in 1963 – though, given the violencebeing perpetrated against their people, it’s difficult to see what else theycould have done.

As I mentioned earlier,it is stated policy of the EU Commission to admit countries which may not havefulfilled all the prerequisites of membership, on the principle that, once theyare in, they can more easily be brought into line. Well, ask Angela Merkel ifshe feels that Greece and Ireland, Spain and Portugal made much effort tobring their economies into line with EU requirements after joining. As for the’Republic of Cyprus’, it’s hard to escape the feeling that international and EUacceptance has merely hardened their attitude to their Turkish brethren in thenorth. United Nations Secretaries-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan,both proposed peace settlements for the Cyprus issue. The most recent of these,the Annan Plan (2002), was accepted by the Turkish Government and the people ofTurkish northern Cyprus in a referendum, but rejected by the Greeks in thesouth.

Once again theCyprus issue is making headlines around the world. The Turkish Government isvociferously objecting to Greek Cypriot plans to conduct natural gasexploration in waters off the coast, and to the likelihood that Greek Cypruswill provide the next EU President. It is unlikely that Turkey would beprepared to go to war over either of these issues, given that they wouldundoubtedly be warned off by Europe and the USA. However, it is a sign ofTurkey’s increasing confidence in the region that its government is prepared totake the initiative on the Cyprus issue rather than continuing to accept a defensive pariah role. If the international community decides to take a moreeven-handed approach to solving the problem, Mr Erdoğan and his government willprobably consider the risk to have been worthwhile.

[1] Time Magazine, 22 August 2011

[2] http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/enlargement-turkey.b9v

UK Riots and the Istanbul Grand Prix - The End of the Golden Rapture?

2011-08-25T18:30:00.003+03:00

Faith and belief are marvellous things, aren’t they? I’ve never been one for millenarianism or doomsday predictions. I never doubted for a moment that my Apple Mac would see me through to the 21^st century. I’m content to meet my Maker when He (or She) decides the time has come, and I’d sooner not know the date in advance, though I can see how some might want to. I don’t have a great deal of faith in politicians – but I do have some sympathy for the impossible situations democracy puts them in. They have to promise heaven and earth to get elected, then have to back-pedal rapidly when post-election reality bites. Hands up who really thought Barack Obama would be allowed to close Guantanamo and stop the water-boarding.

So I’m not generally one to point the finger at politicians and accuse them of breaking promises. I was pretty sceptical in the first place. And I’m certainly not generally given to laughing at the misfortunes of others. Those recent riots in cities across the UK looked pretty scary, and nothing can excuse the burning of property and looting of businesses large or small. David Cameron’s government re-established the rule of law, and good on him, you have to say. However, I couldn’t help noticing that he pre-empted criticism by referring to his own pre-election promise to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’. It seems that ‘There are pockets of . . . society that are not just broken but frankly sick’ which seemed to suggest that mending society might be just a tad trickier than British voters had been led to believe. We need a medical professional rather than a simple repairman. But then most of us knew that already, right?

I’m not going to join the ranks of those who suggest that inequalities of wealth distribution are the root cause of these riots, and other forms of violent social unrest. I certainly do not intend to suggest that burning and looting are understandable or acceptable responses to social injustice. In fact, I want to agree 100% with Dave Cameron in his belief that pockets of modern society are sick. On the other hand, I’m not sure he and I would agree totally on which ‘pockets’.

My work-place is located on the southern outskirts of Istanbul, on the Asian side of the city. It’s a pleasantly green spot still, despite the building of airports, industrial complexes, monstrous shopping centres and acres of two-storey villas with private swimming pools. A kilometre or so across the fields from our campus stands Istanbul Park, the venue for the Turkish Formula One Grand Prix. Most of the time it sits there, in patient torpor, waiting for the one weekend a year when it will spring to life, and the hills will echo to the whine of high performance engines operating at rpms that would cause our Honda Jazz to melt down to a blob of metal and plastic.

Istanbul Park -
Former home of Turkey's Grand Prix

I couldn’t help wondering what sort of money went into this project, so I checked it out, and I can tell you that Istanbul Park was built in 2005 at a cost of €80 million (about 200 million Turkish Liras at today’s rates). I went to the Grand Prix in Auckland once. We didn’t see any spectacular crashes, and we weren’t sitting in a corporate box being served chilled Dom Perignon and crab claws, so maybe I didn’t get the full effect, but honestly, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Still, I’m not one to spoil other people’s fun. Sadly for those other people, however, it seems that the 2011 Turkish Grand Prix may actually be the last one to take place at Istanbul Park. Apparently Bernie Ecclestone, the head honcho of international Formula One racing, decided to double the fees Turkey would be charged for hosting the race. The Turks said ‘%&$#?@ off!’ or words to that effect, and that, it seems, is that.

Well, of course, running a business like Formula One racing costs money, and no one would begrudge Bernie his right to make a living – but this spat did come to mind when I saw a news item in July that the most expensive house in the USA had just been sold to . . . Bernie’s 22-year-old daughter Petra. Reports say the 5600 m² house in Bel Air, Los Angeles had been on the market for two years for $150 million, but some tough negotiating got the sellers down to $85 million. I just hope Petra’s making a generous donation to help those starving kids in Somalia. By the way, for the sake of comparison, I read that Mr and Mrs Brad Pitt have just put their California mansion on the market for a relatively modest $13.75 million. I guess at that level, the 0.75 is still important.

Nevertheless, one swallow doesn’t make a summer – and one sick billionaire doesn’t make a sick society, right? But did you see that film, ‘Inside Job’ that won the 2010 Oscar for best documentary? As the Time reviewers said: ‘If you’re not enraged by the end of the movie, you weren’t paying attention.’ I’ve read a number of articles about a gentleman by the name of Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group. Most sources agree that he is a major player in the world of finance, and he has been quoted as saying in a speech in March 2009, that 45% of the world’s wealth had been destroyed by the global credit crisis. However, he took heart that the US government was committed to the preservation of financial institutions (like his, one assumes) and would do whatever it took to restart the economy. It’s hard to establish exactly how much money Mr Schwarzman earns. Some say he made $5.1 billion in 2007, down to $702.4 million in 2008. Some say he took a 99% pay cut in 2009 down to a paltry $350,000. Whatever the truth of it, it’s a fair bet that a good chunk of that missing wealth ended up in his pocket. But somehow, I suspect that’s not one of the ‘pockets’ David Cameron was referring to.

Getting back to Petra Ecclestone, and her generosity to the kids in Somalia, don’t you find it interesting how a girl (or a guy) can make mega-tanker-loads of money from some dodgy enterprise, then, at some later date, donate large sums to a pet charity, and suddenly she’s on the fast track to benefactor’s heaven? Back in 1992 a Hungarian born gentleman of Jewish parentage by the name of George Soros achieved fame (or notoriety) as ‘the Man who broke the Bank of England.’ Surprisingly, the ‘breakage’ didn’t involve safe-cracking, ripping ATM machines from walls, armed holdups, or, in fact, any violence at all. The technique is known in the trade as ‘short-selling’, and, according to well-informed sources, it allowed George to pocket a cool $1.1 billion (whatever that was in sterling at the time).

Well, Wikipedia tells me that Mr Soros is ‘a financier, businessman and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and causes’, but it hasn’t always been so. Back in 1997, when Asian economies suddenly began to crash, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, went public with his opinion that the crash of Asian currencies had in fact been caused by Mr Soros and his short-selling ilk. To be fair, it seems George didn’t actually invent this dubious financial activity. That honour goes to a Dutch merchant named Isaac le Maire, who, it seems, came up with the scheme in 1609. Subsequently, the British Government banned it totally in the 18th century, but more recently un-banned it. Some economists blame short-sellers for the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the US Government passed regulations controlling it – which, apparently, were also repealed in July 2007. Any significance in that date, I wonder? Still, you can’t blame a guy for making a buck any way he can – but again, I feel pretty sure that Dave Cameron wasn’t referring to George Soros’s pockets when he sought the cause of the UK riots. Interestingly, one of united Europe’s attempts to save their common currency has recently involved the banning of short-selling in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.

If you don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere, you probably don’t care overmuch, but New Zealand is about to play host to the 2011 Rugby World Cup Tournament. Old guys like me can actually remember when rugby was still an amateur sport, but these days, it sure as hell isn’t. Professionalism, as you know, means a whole lot more than merely paying the players to play. Commercial sponsors are the life-blood of professional sport – but there are times when they seem to lose sight of the fact that, without the nameless millions of supporters, blood wouldn’t flow. Sportswear giant Adidas is one of the major sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, and they have recently upset rugby fans in New Zealand by offering to sell replica ‘All Black’ uniform jerseys for $NZ220. Quite steep, you might think, especially with the current strength of the NZ dollar – and most NZ rugby fans thought so too, more so when they found the jerseys were available online for about half the price . . . until, that is, Adidas managed to close the sites to purchasers in New Zealand.

Still, manufacturers are entitled to earn a fair living too, and, as the Adidas people have pointed out, they invest a good deal of money in New Zealand rugby. On the other hand, most Adidas products are produced in Asian factories where workers typically earn around $1 an hour. It’s been estimated that the cost of producing the replica All Black jerseys in a Chinese factory is approximately $8 – which leaves a tidy profit for the owners and shareholders of Adidas to pocket. But I don’t suppose David Cameron was referring to those ‘pockets’ either.

Back when I was a lad, science fiction was a popular literary genre. There were some prophets of doom, but, on the whole, there was a strong feeling around in those days that science had, or would soon have, the answers to most of the world’s problems. Labour-saving devices would remove the drudgery from human existence, the green revolution would do away with famine and starvation, and anyway, if by chance we weren’t able to solve all the problems on earth, such as over-population, it wouldn’t be long before we set up colonies on the Moon, Mars, or other extra-terrestrial real estate. The future was generally expected to be Utopian.

Well, somehow, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. A recent Time magazine article[1] on rapidly increasing global food prices suggests that the only way for prices from here is further up. Increasing population, climate change, the channeling of food-growing land to bio-fuel production and falling water tables will all contribute to a continuing rise of demand over supply. ‘Enjoy your dinner tonight,’ the writer concludes. ‘While you can still afford it.’

So it seems that technology isn't going to save us after all, and you’d have to think that most of the major techno-companies in the world have figured that out. Make your buck while you still can, they seem to have decided. Get cell phones into the hands of the Somalian public, and at least they’ll be able to keep in touch while they’re dying of starvation. I guess it’ll be a while before they can afford self-driving cars, but the rest of us have that to look forward to – once the automobile industry gets the bugs ironed out. Despite the entry of Google into the market, I’m backing the Germans to sort out that technology first. Apparently Google’s self-drivers are still tail-ending each other on the testing circuit.

Well, if technology hasn’t got the answers after all, what’s a person to do? Surely there must be hope somewhere. Luckily, there is, and, according to another recent Time article [2], a lady by the name of Michele Bachmann has the matter in hand. Michele has stormed on to the scene as the possible Republican nominee to contest the US Presidency, and she’s hot! Apparently God Himself thinks so, because, so she says, ‘She’s hot for Jesus Christ.’ This divine support has clearly struck a chord with Middle America – probably some of those recently disappointed by the failed doomsday predictions of Harold Camping. The Time writer quotes one of Ms Bachmann’s supporters, a certain Becky Magee, as saying, ‘I think Jesus is coming to get us. I think we’ll be raptured soon.’

Now I’m going to make a confession here, and confide in you that, until May 22, the day after Harold Camping and his flock attracted media attention because the world didn’t end as they had expected, I had always thought rapture had something to do with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. But the world has changed in many ways, and even my MS Word dictionary hasn’t caught up with the new usage, as evidenced by the squiggly red line underneath the word when I typed it. Microsoft’s best suggestion was, in fact ‘ruptured’, which may not be far from the truth. My trusty old Chambers lexicon at least provided a range of options:

Rapture: a seizing and carrying away [it says], extreme delight, transport, ecstasy, a paroxysm (a fit of extreme pain, laughter, passion, coughing, etc)

From Latin – to seize and carry off [3]

Well, much as I’d like to think Jesus or some other omnipotent immortal would come and save the world from the consequences of our greed and stupidity, I just can’t seem to get my head around the concept. I have to say, it seems more likely to me that we’ve had the ‘Rapture’; the good old days are over, and we’d better start figuring out ways to save ourselves and Planet Earth, because time, I reckon, is running out.

[1] Time, July 25, 2011

[2] ibid.

[3] Chambers English Dictionary, 1990)

Returning the Treasures of Turkey - Credit Where Credit's Due

2011-08-14T15:44:00.003+03:00

One of the things I love about the ‘blogspot’ site is the statistics page. I check it obsessively at least twice a day to see who’s reading me, what country you live in, and which of my posts attracted the most attention. Interestingly, the page which consistently receives the most visits is one I wrote more than two years ago, entitled ‘Where are the Ancient Treasures of Turkey?’ Well, I was very new to the blogging business in those days. In my attempts to create an identity for my blog, and to be provocative, some of my implied criticisms may have been a little unfair. It has been suggested to me that modern nations with ancient treasures weren’t looking after them properly – and anyway, the governments of those nations gave permission to foreign archeologists to carry off their finds.

Those claims may in fact be true, and I don’t intend to examine them here. What I do want to do is bring to your attention, in case you may have missed them, three recent instances where a major museum in a western country has decided to return an important artifact to its place of origin.

Seneb and his wife

Some years ago I visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It was a marvelous experience, to see those fabled statues and relics of ancient Egypt that I was so familiar with from pictures and films. There was the eleven-kilogram solid gold mask of Tutankhamun sitting in a glass case. More interesting, though, for me, was a statue representing a gentleman by the name of Seneb, with his wife and children. This Seneb was, apparently, head of the royal weaving factories in the Sixth Dynasty (around 2200 BCE), and he was a dwarf. His wife, however, wasn’t.

Perhaps you haven’t had an opportunity to visit Cairo, but you may have done the next best thing, and toured the Egyptian section of the British Museum, which is also pretty impressive. I haven’t actually been able to establish which of the two museums houses the greater number of mummies – but my impression was that the prize might go to the institution in London. Now it may be, as my critics suggest, that these mummies were all legally obtained, and anyway, they were just rotting away back there in Egypt. Nevertheless, I was heartened to read, in a Washington Post article [1] that the Metropolitan Museum in New York has decided to take a lead in returning some disputed artifacts to their place of origin.

The British archeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. Most of his major finds can be seen in the Cairo Museum, but it seems he did retain a number of nice pieces for his own private collection. On his death, these were bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum which, at the time, maintained an ‘expedition house’ in Egypt. When this was closed in 1948, the pieces were, it seems, ‘transferred’ to the New York location. Discussions have, according to the report, been continuing for some time, but in July, the director of the ‘Met’ announced that nineteen artifacts, including a miniature bronze dog and a sphinx-shaped bracelet ornament, would be sent back to Egypt.

Well, pretty much everyone knows something about Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh Tut and his tomb’s discoverer Howard Carter. It’s a high profile case, and not altogether surprising that the dispute received international media attention. Less well known are similar disputes between the government of Turkey, and other renowned museums holding priceless antiquities found within Turkey’s borders. Just a week before the Met’s gesture, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston announced that it would return the top half of a statue known as the ‘Weary Herakles’ [2]. Apparently the MFA had bought the piece in 1982 without thoroughly checking its provenance. Turkish authorities had finally convinced them that it was a perfect match for the lower half unearthed in Perge in Southern Turkey in 1980 – not so difficult given that the two halves of the statue were broken cleanly on a diagonal line.

Two months prior to this, the Prussian Cultural Foundation agreed to return a 3000-year-old Hittite sphinx. The sphinx was found by German archeologists excavating the Hittite capital of Hattusha [3] in 1907, and had been in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin since 1934. It was one of a pair of sphinxes forming part of the gate of Hattusha, dating from the 2^nd millennium BCE, and will now be reunited with its mate in the Istanbul Archeology Museum.

It’s a vexed question whether antiquities are better left in situ or taken away for safekeeping. Few would argue that irreplaceable relics of ancient civilizations should not be taken to museums where they can be restored and preserved by experts. Further, not everyone has the opportunity to travel to distant parts of the world to see the original locations, so it is undoubtedly desirable that exhibitions of relics should be presented elsewhere. It is also true that not all nations are equally interested in preserving their historical and cultural heritage. The Buddhas of Bamiyan received international coverage when the Taliban government of Afghanistan dynamited them in March 2001. The missing genitals and breasts of classical Greek and Roman statuary are more a result of the prudishness of early Christians than the ravages of time. Similarly, the picturesque ruins of monasteries and abbeys dotted around the English landscape have been that way since Henry VIII, in his reformist zeal, decided to ‘dissolve’ them.

However, these days, most civilized countries recognize the need to restore and preserve their antiquities, and to build modern museums in which to house them. Museums and art galleries all over the world are part of a community that organize sharing and exchange of relics, artifacts and works of art for local exhibitions which are well publicized and well attended. It is undoubtedly best that five Caryatids on the porch of the Erechtheion at the Acropolis in Athens should be plaster copies, and the real ones displayed in the Athens Museum. More debatable is whether the British Museum itself might make do with a plaster copy, and return the sixth one to its true home.

Anyway, hats off to the Americans and the Germans for making a start!

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/nys-metropolitan-museum-to-return-artifacts-from-king-tuts-tomb-to-egypt-next-week/2011/07/30/gIQA7bFcjI_story.html

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14246476

[3] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377

Turkey’s historical heritage - Drop a spade into the ground

2011-07-22T17:24:00.005+03:00

Gümüşlük, on the Bodrum peninsula of Turkey’s south Aegean Coast, is our getaway retreat of choice for the hot summer months. My morning routine is to cycle four or five kilometres to the village bakery to get simits for breakfast. In case you didn’t know, simits are one of the reasons people choose to live in Turkey – and one of the things Turks miss most when they are away from home. A simit is a bagel-shaped bread roll, whose crispy crust is coated with sesame seeds, the perfect accompaniment for a Turkish breakfast of feta cheese, honey, olives, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.

Cycling as a post-modern lifestyle choice is still not a big thing in Turkey, and a guy of my age sweating and grunting around country roads is something of a curiosity. I used to greet the sentry at the gate of the local gendarmerie, and we would exchange a brief word of mutual appreciation for the demanding tasks we were undertaking . . . until this year. Now there is no sentry, and the white double-storey building that used to house him and his military colleagues stands empty.

The Bodrum peninsula is an Aegean paradise of white stucco houses, crimson bougainvillea, azure sea and never-ending sunshine . . . but there is, of course, a downside. Currently, our household water is trucked in and rationed out from a central reservoir at certain hours of the day. We, and most of our neighbours, have circumvented this inconvenience by installing our own tank with a pump that allows us the luxury of a 24/7 water supply. Now, however, in response to demand, the local council is working on a pipeline that will connect us to the town water supply system, and herein, in case I had left you wondering, can be found the reason for the disappearing gendarmes. But before I solve that mystery for you, I want to digress a little into the mists of prehistory.

Church in Gümüşlük

There is an exhibition currently showing at the Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, entitled, simply, ‘Across’ (Karşıdan Karşıya’ in Turkish). The exhibition contains artefacts from the civilisation that existed in the Cycladic Islands around 3000 BCE. These people, among the first to turn pottery on a wheel and smelt metal for tools and weapons, interacted and cross-fertilised with similar groups on the south Aegean coast of Anatolia, where lies our little village of Gümüşlük. Its geographical advantages have long been recognised, among them, a natural harbour with a circular bay almost enclosed by a narrow peninsula sheltering it from the prevailing winds. Today, tourists are given sketchy information about the ancient city of Myndos[1] that grew around the shores of this bay. Indeed, the observant visitor will notice finely dressed black stones reused in modern buildings, fragments of marble columns lying in the fields, and door posts and architraves, clearly from an earlier time, garnishing the deconsecrated village church.

Like many ancient sites in Turkey, Myndos has yet to be excavated by archaeologists, and surprisingly little is known about its history. However, excavations of another kind are currently progressing, with the aim of laying the pipeline that will carry the town water supply I mentioned earlier. Apparently, workmen tunnelling beneath the gendarme base near Gümüşlük stumbled upon the remains of an ancient necropolis. Luckily for historians and archaeologists, there was at least one person in the construction crew capable of recognising the find for what it was, and the gendarmes have had to move their operations to an empty school building in the vicinity.

Who knows what will come to light once experts start to uncover the long-hidden secrets of Myndos? Ancient Greek writers attributed the origins of the city to the Leleges, generally assumed to have been the aboriginal inhabitants of Anatolia. When Alexander the Great arrived on the scene in 334 BCE, it was part of the kingdom of Caria, owing allegiance to the Persian Empire. The capital of this kingdom was Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), famous for the wondrous funerary edifice erected by Queen Artemisia on the death of her brother (and husband) King Mausolus, from whose name we derive our word mausoleum. That was nearly two and a half millennia ago, and the site has been continuously inhabited since, passing from Hellenic hands, through classical Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman to modern times. The church I mentioned earlier, lost its primary purpose after the population exchanges following the Turkish War of Independence in the 1920s. These days it comes to life again in the summer months when it hosts well-attended concerts of classical music.

By now you have probably guessed the reason for the title of this piece. If you drop a spade into the ground pretty much anywhere in modern Turkey, you stand a good chance of unearthing astounding evidence of an earlier civilisation. I feel sorry for Turkish school kids for many reasons – but one in particular is the amount of history they have to learn. If you, like me, struggled with the Tudors and Stuarts, the causes and course of the Hundred Years War, or the incomprehensible entities historians refer to as the Holy Roman and Hapsburg Empires, spare a tear of sympathy for the Turkish child, required to come to grips with a mind-numbing assortment of sequential and overlapping societies and civilisations extending back to Palaeolithic times.

The Museum of Ancient Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara recognises the need for ten further sections after the Neolithic Age ended in Anatolia around 5500 BCE. The Çatalhöyük site near Konya is recognised as one of the earliest urban conglomerations. Then follow:

The Chalcolithic (copper/stone) Age (5500-3000 BCE), eg Alacahöyük.
The Early Bronze Age (3000-1950 BCE), dominated by the Hatti tribes.
Assyrian Trade Colonies (1950-1750 BCE), such as Kültepe which I mentioned in an earlier post.
Hittite Period (1750-1200 BCE), whose capital was Hattusa (modern Boğazköy).
Phrygian Period (1200-700 BC), which produced the legendary King Midas.
Late Hittite Period (1200-700 BC), whose best known site is Carcemish.
Urartian Period (1200-600 BCE), with sites in Eastern Anatolia, especially around Lake Van.
Lydian Period (1200-600BCE), with another famous king, Croesus (the rich one).
The Classical Period.

If that list is not enough to addle your brain, consider that the Carians and the Leleges are merely subsets, and the Classical Period, which lasted around a thousand years, encompasses all of Ancient Greek and Roman times. Then you have the Byzantines, generally considered to have had an Early, Middle and Late period in their own thousand-year history. Somewhere in that Late period, the Turks appeared on the scene and proceeded to establish two major empires, the Seljuks and the Ottomans, not to mention a confusing array of beyliks and fiefdoms.

In recent years, quite a number of spades have been dropped into the ground in Istanbul as a result of the Marmaray Project. ‘Marmaray’ is a massive rail transit project aimed at linking the European and Asian sides of the city via a submarine tube under the Bosporus Straits. Several huge underground stations on the opposite shores will feed passengers into a network of lines fanning out all over the metropolis. The project was originally scheduled for completion around 2008 – but current expectations are for the first stage to be opened in 2012. ‘Why?’ you may ask. Are Turks really that disorganised and inefficient? The fact is that construction work has been constantly interrupted by the need to allow teams of archaeologists into the excavations to sift through the latest stupendous find[2].

Just to put this business in some kind of context, I would like to share with you brief excerpts from two books I came across recently. The first is entitled ‘The World Beneath Istanbul’ by Ersin Kalkan. It’s not awfully well written (at least the English version), and it’s rather anecdotal than scholarly. However, it does open a fascinating subject. In his introduction, the author quotes Dr Johannes Cramer, of Berlin Technical University’s Institute of Architecture: ‘Did you know,’ he asks rhetorically, ‘that the underground city of Istanbul is eight times bigger than that of Rome?’ I didn’t, and I don’t know how he arrived at that figure, but even allowing for some exaggeration and a generous margin for error, it’s food for thought, isn’t it! The second book is ‘Walking Through Byzantium’ by Jan Kostenec, If you can’t find the book, the website is definitely worth a peek. Here’s what Kostenec has to say in his introduction: ‘Unlike other ancient capitals, modern Istanbul has witnessed virtually no urban archaeology, and basic elements of the Byzantine city, such as the street system, public spaces, and housing, remain all but unknown.’

So, you can imagine hordes of drooling archaeologists lurking around the various Marmaray construction sites, trowels and wheelbarrows at the ready, waiting for the first glimpse of a marble fragment or a shard of pottery. As it turned out, the finds have been rather more spectacular, and provided sufficient material for an earlier exhibition at Sabancı Museum, entitled '8000 Years of a Capital.’[3] In fact, finds dating back to 6000 BCE have considerably extended the time frame in which the site of Istanbul is known to have been continuously inhabited. Discoveries from more recent times include remains of the original city wall built by Constantine the Great in 330 CE, and the main harbour of the city he founded, the 4^th century Port of Theodosius. The most spectacular find to date has been an almost intact medieval Byzantine galley, complete with all its cargo of amphorae and other goods.

The Marmaray project, clearly, has provided a rare opportunity for archaeologists to delve beneath the surface of the modern city of Istanbul. At the same time, it provides an illustration of the tension between the existence of a living city, and of the layers of history that lie beneath it. There can be few places on earth where this pressure is as great as in Istanbul, where the history is as long, and the pace of metropolitan growth so rapid.

A lesser-known example is the 9^th century Christian Satyros Monastery[4] recently unearthed at Küçükyalı on the Asian side of the city. Küçükyalı is well within the urban sprawl of modern Istanbul, with its estimated population of 15 million – but perhaps twenty kilometres beyond the walls of medieval Constantinople. Needless to say, excavations have necessitated some disruption to the local community, including the removal of a section of asphalt road and a children’s playground, and have so far brought to light the large central monastery building and a water cistern with associated pipes and channels.

What we learn from this is that the archaeological riches of Turkey are not confined to contemporary population centres or sites mentioned in the visitors’ guides. Anywhere in the country, an unsuspecting spade may suddenly turn up a Bronze Age figurine, a Roman villa or a Greek theatre. In fact, for my last example, I want to take you to a small city in the western Black Sea region of Turkey. Zonguldak is a very new city by Turkish standards, having been founded in 1849 as the port for shipping coal from the mines of Ereğli. Nizamettin Oral[5], a 65 year-old farmer living in a nearby village, was excavating in his garden with the aim of building a greenhouse. What he found was the mosaic floor of a 3^rd century Roman villa, which has led to two years of work by archaeologists from Ereğli Museum. More mosaics and frescos have been unearthed, and it has been suggested that the finds are part of a larger classical Roman settlement.

I haven’t been able to learn what has happened to Nizamettin Bey, his farm, and the progress on his greenhouse. I would guess that agricultural activities have pretty much ceased in the vicinity. I hope that he has been well compensated by the government as an incentive to other citizens who may stumble upon similar discoveries. Clearly, another message that comes out of all this is that preserving the past is an expensive business – and for a country like Turkey, with an embarrassment of historical riches and an economy struggling to join the developed world, the money is not always easy to find. Imagine the cost overrun of that Marmaray project and its four-year delay! The 16^th century Süleymaniye Mosque, flagship achievement of Ottoman master architect Sinan, was recently renovated at a cost of nearly USD 15 million.

In London, I remember seeing a small section of the ancient city wall in a glassed-off area of the Barbican Centre. I understand that other similar sections can be seen elsewhere by determined explorers. In Istanbul I have actually walked around the walls of the ancient city of Constantinopolis. It’s relatively easy, in the sense that most of them are still standing – but difficult in another way. They are approximately twenty-two kilometres in circumference, and it took me three trips on separate days to complete the circuit. Restoration work is in progress. But at least they’re above ground, and you won’t need a spade to find them.

[1] http://www.bodrumpages.com/English/textgumusluk.html

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7820924.stm

[3] http://muze.sabanciuniv.edu/page/legendary-istanbul-from-byzantion-to-istanbul-8000-years-of-a-capital

[4] http://www.en.istanbul2010.org/proje/GP_584603

[5] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=rome-in-his-backyard-2010-09-21

Gay Rights and Syrian refugees

2011-07-05T22:05:00.004+03:00

There was a big Gay Pride march in Istanbul last week. I have to tell you right out that I didn’t participate. In fact, to my shame, I didn’t even take a lot of interest in the event, so what I’m about to share with you was gleaned from a retrospective reading of the CNN report:

‘Activists say the annual Turkish Gay Pride Parade, now in its ninth year, is the only march of its kind in a majority-Muslim country. Several thousand supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights carried signs and rainbow flags as they made their way down one of Istanbul's busiest pedestrian thoroughfares.’[1]

Gay Pride marchers in Istanbul

Now the reason I’m telling you this is that I read a news item last week summarising a report released by the human rights group, Amnesty International. The headline read ‘Amnesty report condemns Turkey’s gay rights laws.’ Well, I didn’t know much about the details of Turkey’s laws in this area, so the article inspired me to do a little research, and here are some of my findings:

Same-sex sexual activity is illegal in the following countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Samoa, Jamaica, Barbados, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Morocco.
It is legal for women, but illegal for males, in Singapore, the Cook Islands and Tonga.
In Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (which includes Dubai), offenders can be punished by fines, a prison sentence, or whipping. Practising gays in Jamaica can be sentenced to ten years imprisonment with hard labour.
In Turkey, on the other hand, it has been legal since 1858. By comparison, it was legalised for males in New Zealand in 1986, and in Australia, as recently as 1994.[2]

I was curious to know what the Amnesty International report had to say about these other countries, some of which are on friendly trading and sporting terms with progressive and enlightened Western nations. Accordingly I googled ‘amnesty international gay rights report’ and was interested to find that most of the results referred to the report’s censuring of Turkey, and none of them even hinted that there might be countries with worse records.

As the CNN report above pointed out, the Istanbul Gay Pride parade is the ‘only march of its kind in a majority-Muslim country’. Still, the marchers could have been (and some of them apparently were) protesting about the treatment of gays in Turkey. It’s perhaps worth noting, then, that demonstrators from a nearby pro-Kurdish gathering, fleeing from police teargas, found sanctuary among the ranks of the proud gays, who apparently were allowed to proceed with their activities unmolested. Turkish police are not noted for their soft approach to undesirable demonstrations, yet the gay marchers were permitted to exhibit their pride without let or hindrance.

Still, you will say, turning a blind eye to one brief march on one day of the year doesn’t necessarily prove that the Turkish authorities show the same tolerance all year round, and I agree with you – so I looked further. I checked out the tourist scene, and I turned up a website calling itself ‘Pink News’. Under a header announcing ‘Turkish Delights’, the travel writer had this to say: ‘Fancy a break that offers more than a week in an average hotel or a whirlwind city guidebook tour of your destination? If you’re looking for a holiday that’s far from the madding crowd or something with a slightly different twist, then travel company Journey Anatolia might just have the ideal options for you. Oh, and did we mention that they’re all in Turkey? So, chances are you’ll need to pack the sunscreen for some beautiful weather.’[3] Positively gushing, and no mention of whippings or hard labour.

For a second opinion, I turned to my trusty ‘Lonely Planet Turkey’[4]. ‘The gay scene in Istanbul,’ they said, ‘has been characterized as homely rather than raunchy . . . There are an increasing number of openly gay bars and nightclubs in the city . . . Hamams (Turkish baths) are a gay fave . . .’ Outside of Istanbul, ‘attitudes are changing . . . but there are sporadic reports of violence towards gays – the message is discretion.’

Aha! ‘Violence towards gays!’ There it is! However, it seems that such violence is more likely to occur within families than as a result of institutional brutality. Undoubtedly, in certain parts of Turkey, among uneducated villagers, there is still a culture that sees killing as a way of cleansing a family’s honour – and this violence is as likely to be directed towards wayward heterosexual young women, as against gays. Of course it is wrong, and Turkey needs to extend civilization and education to all parts of the country before it can expect to be welcomed into the European Union. However, I would like to balance the ledger by offering two points for your consideration.

First, there is a big, wild world out there, and not all of it is exactly as we well-brought up, well educated, open-minded, tolerant, humanitarian fortunates from developed nations might wish it to be. We do well to remember this when we go a-traveling in foreign climes. As Lonely Planet clearly warns, ‘the message is discretion’. I read just last week about a countryman of mine, visiting Papua New Guinea, who was filled full of arrows and nearly killed by a local tribesman who apparently had taken a fancy to his French girlfriend[5]. I’m not saying I don’t sympathise with the poor guy, and his girlfriend, who was reportedly raped at the same time. However, we know that Papua New Guinea is one of the last paradises on Earth for anthropologists keen to see how our less civilised relatives eke out an existence – and the flipside of this is very likely to be a certain unpredictability on the part of natives who may be unaware of the niceties of courting rituals in more civilised circles.

Another compatriot achieved international fame as a yachtsman a few years ago. Sir Peter Blake was knighted by the New Zealand government after setting a circumnavigation record in the Whitbread Round-the-World race, and winning (and defending) the coveted America’s Cup in the 1990s. After retiring from yacht racing, Sir Peter was being spoken of as a possible successor to the legendary Jacques Cousteau. Tragically, his boat was attacked, and he was killed, by pirates at the mouth of the Amazon delta while on an environmental exploration trip gathering data for the United Nations. Once again, I’m not intending to show a lack of human sympathy here. I merely want to point out the obvious – that it probably wouldn’t have happened if he’d stayed at home in Bayswater, Auckland. Peter Blake knew that too, of course, and he chose to go, knowing the risks.

My second point relates to what some might consider a more immediate human rights issue. During the first weeks of June, refugees were fleeing across the border from Syria into southeast Turkey to escape the violent suppression of protests against President Bashar al-Ashad’s regime. Some 15,000 Syrians reportedly crossed into Turkey before Syrian forces closed the border towards the end of the month. Since then, reports say, several thousand have returned to Syria. The reasons are not totally clear, but it seems men may have brought their families to the sanctuary of Turkey before returning to continue the fight on their own soil. The plight of these refugees was recently given more media attention in the West as a result of a visit by UN goodwill ambassador, Angelina Jolie.

Well, as I think I acknowledged above, Turkey, cannot claim a lily-white record on human rights across the board. On the other hand, if the truth be told, few countries can. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a balanced picture, showing our strengths as well as our weaknesses.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/06/26/turkey.gay.pride/index.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory

[3] http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7900.html/

[4] 2007 edition

[5] http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwi-pulls-arrows-his-chest-after-jungle-attack-4274756

Neo-Ottomanism: A new direction for Turkey?

2011-06-18T16:50:00.005+03:00

Once upon a time I dabbled a little in politics, to the extent that I actually tried twice to get myself elected as a Member of Parliament. It was a great experience and I’m glad I did it. I guess my main motivation was to preserve my right to criticize. People would say, ‘Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you do something constructive to change things?’ I wasn’t successful, of course, and I’m equally glad, in retrospect, that I wasn’t. To get elected on a party ticket you have to juggle the dictates of the party itself, the fickle winds of public opinion, the oppressive power of the media circus, your own desire for power, and your private beliefs and personal integrity. All too often, the still small voice of the latter is drowned by the insistent bellowing of the former.

All politicians know this, of course, and choose to pay the price for success, so you can’t feel too sorry for them. Barack Obama should have known (if he truly didn’t) before swearing the presidential oath, that the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to shut down Guantanamo and stop the torture; that adhering to the demands of the Armenian diaspora would run him into difficulties with the Turkish Government; and that the too-big-to-fail US banking sector would force him to help them out of their self-dug hole with a multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded handout. Democracy is the machinery that allows us to call politicians to account when they stray too far from the path we want them to follow. Never fear, America, here comes Sarah Palin to the rescue!

I guess have a longish history as a political sceptic, but I do feel a certain sympathy for those charged with the responsibility of forming Turkey’s foreign policy these days. Neo-Ottomanism is a word I hear bandied around a lot. The implication seems to be that Turkey is moving away from the Western orientation it has followed since the founding of the republic, turning instead towards the Central Asian and Middle Eastern regions associated with its Turkic and Ottoman origins. The argument clearly has appeal for those, abroad and at home, wishing to label Turkey as eastern, Islamic, uncivilized and ‘other’; and the present government as all those things, plus backward-looking and anti-democratic. What do I think? Let me share my thoughts . . .

The Turkish Republic had its birth in a land devastated by decades of war – and it has often been said that the first casualty of war is truth. The Ottoman Empire had been reduced by a century of nationalist splintering from within, and imperialist manipulation from without, to a shrunken rump on the verge of collapse. The last nationalist movement to emerge was Turkish nationalism, forced into self-awareness by the threat of imminent destruction. In order to foster this national identity, the leaders of the republican independence movement were obliged to create an identity of Turkishness, to decimate the elitist Ottoman language and exalt its poor Turkish relation; to develop myths of a legendary Turkish past, and sever ties to the Islamic Empire which had finally been brought to its knees by Western European power.

Osman Gazi,
founder of the Ottoman dynasty

The new Republic had, from its inception, an uncomfortable relationship with the Ottoman Empire from which it sprang. Osman Gazi, the founder of the Ottoman state, was a 13^th century Turkish warlord. The Ottoman Sultans, for centuries, claimed, largely by dint of military might, the title of Caliph, or leader of the Muslim ‘nation’. Nevertheless, though officially Muslim, the empire contained relatively autonomous populations of Jews and Christians, as well as the various Islamic communities. The Ottomans did not regard themselves as ‘Turkish’. Turks were the warriors and tillers of the soil. The basis of the Ottoman language may have been Turkish, but it had substantial overlays of Arabic and Persian, incorporating three distinct language families[1]. The Ottomans were a ruling elite intermarrying with Russian and Greek princesses, and happily mingling with maidens fair from the conquered lands of Europe. In its declining years, however, their Empire had become a virtual puppet of the European Great Powers, accepting support and indignities from all and sundry to eke out its existence a little longer. When the armed forces of France and Britain occupied Istanbul at the end of the First World War, the ‘virtual puppet’ status became reality. The Sultan and his ministers were compelled to sign at Sevres a treaty that would have dismembered the once mighty empire. The final insult must have been the Entente-sponsored invasion of Anatolia by the army of Greece, intent on re-establishing its ancient Byzantine glory.

In short, we can say that the founders of the Turkish Republic had to split from and deny pretty much everything that the Ottoman Empire had represented. The fostering of a Turkish national identity required a rejection of all things Ottoman, even religion – yet the new state, unlike its predecessor, was now almost exclusively Muslim. Contradictions abounded, so, of necessity, there was some rewriting of history, some adjusting of reality, some myth-creation in order to ensure the survival of a nation that, like Hans Andersen’s ugly duckling, no one else in the world really wanted.

It is only recently that Turks have started to become comfortable with their Ottoman heritage. Sufficient time has passed that they can begin to feel pride in the achievements of ancestors whose existence cannot be denied. Most of the excesses of early republican nationalism and secularism are being quietly put away on high shelves. Atatürk himself insisted that the ezan, the Muslim call to prayer, should be intoned in Turkish. Now that is a dead issue. Even the most ardent Kemalists seem content to hear Arabic broadcast at high volume five times (or more) a day from a forest of increasingly lofty minarets. One of the most popular drama series on television these days is “Muhteşem Yüzyıl” (“The Magnificent Century”), set in the 1500s, during the reign of Sultan Süleyman, generally acknowledged to have presided over the Ottoman Empire at the zenith of its power. Modern Turkey is achieving a synthesis, as its middle class multiplies and the process of urbanization accelerates, of modernity, economic consumption, globalization, secular democratic government, Islamic traditions and Turkishness. That is as it should be. The government may try to direct these processes but it cannot control them.

So far, then, I have been looking at the domestic situation in Turkey, but of course, there is another aspect to the label of Neo-Ottomanism. When the Turkish Republic came into being, its founders resolved to turn towards the West in the search for a new direction. The founding principles included democratic republicanism, separation of religion and government, state-sponsored economic development, and reforms of alphabet, language, clothing and religious practices. Europe represented the goals of the new republic, and all things Western and European became desirable. Although remaining neutral during the Second World War, Turkey sent armed forces to the Korean conflict, and was a major military contributor to NATO defences during the Cold War. I have recently learned that, when President JF Kennedy was indignantly ordering the Soviets to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, the United States had bases in Turkey with missiles trained on the USSR. I suspect the Soviets knew about these, were not too happy about them, and very likely had Turkish locations pretty high on their list of targets to hit, should the need arise. It was a risk the Turkish Government took, one assumes out of a desire for friendship with the West.

At this point, I would like to quote from Wikipedia on the subject of Turkey’s attempts to gain admission to the European Union. I am aware that some people disparage Wikipedia as a source, but on this one I’m prepared to trust them. You can check the facts elsewhere if you have the time and the inclination:

“Turkey's application to accede to the European Union was made on 14 April 1987. Turkey has been an associate member of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors since 1963. After the ten founding members, Turkey was one of the first countries to become a member of the Council of Europe in 1949, and was also a founding member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1961 and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1973. The country has also been an associate member of the Western European Union since 1992, and is a part of the "Western Europe" branch of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the United Nations. Turkey signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership on 12 December 1999, at the Helsinki summit of the European Council. Negotiations were started on 3 October 2005, and the process, should it be in Turkey's favour, is likely to take at least a decade to complete. The membership bid has become a major controversy of the ongoing enlargement of the European Union[2].”

It looks to me as though Turkey has been pretty determined, one might say patient, in its efforts to be accepted into the European fold. I am well aware of the arguments against acceptance, however, spoken and unspoken, and (just between you and me) I suspect that a blue moon will rise over a cold day in hell when the EU finally welcomes Turkey aboard as a full member. So what are the Turks to do in the mean time?

The key issue that makes Europeans shy away from inviting Turkey into their club, namely religion, is the very factor that gives Turks an advantage when it comes to dealing with nations in the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslims have felt marginalized by Western societies for a long time now, and the accelerating speed of modernization has served to accentuate the sense of superiority in the West, and corresponding sense of exclusion in the rest of the world. Turkey, with its unique combination of secular democracy and traditional Islamic viewpoint, coupled with the detachment that its Turkishness brings to the mix, finds itself in a position to play a mediating role in an area that remains a mystery to most in the West. Central Asian Turkic republics, freeing themselves from decades of oppression by Russian and Soviet conquerors, see Turkey as the big brother that has trodden the difficult path they themselves aspire to follow. Middle Eastern states have a more problematic relationship with their liberal neighbour, but still, Turkey stands as an example of a country that has managed to achieve impressive political, social and economic freedoms while retaining its Islamic identity.

Is it any wonder, then, that the government of Turkey, and the private sector of its own accord, have been working to build bridges with neighbouring states in their immediate vicinity and further to the east? Can Western nations continue dangling carrots while holding Turkey at arm's length, and at the same time, seriously expect the Turks to forego all other international contact in the hopes of future acceptance? The United States at least, has a pragmatic approach – unlike France for example, they refrain from grandstanding to special interest groups at home who have a historical axe to grind. They encourage EU members to adopt a more positive approach to Turkey’s membership application – even if only because of Turkey’s strategic geo-political significance. Britain also pushes Turkey’s case from time to time – though a cynic might suggest this stems more from its desire to maintain a Euro-sceptic position than from any great love for Turks as a race.

In the mean time, we see Turkish construction companies working in partnership with locals in Kazakhstan and Libya, and Turkish educational foundations building schools. We have seen the Turkish government (in league with Brazil) trying its own approach to ease international tensions over Iran’s nuclear development programme. We are seeing tent cities established near the southeast border to accept thousands of refugees fleeing violence and oppression in neighbouring Syria. Students from 130 nations are currently in Ankara to participate in the 9^th International Turkish Language Festival.

In 2010 Istanbul was chosen as one of Europe’s Capitals of Culture, and, major projects were carried out all over the city to showcase its historical riches. Twenty-one million Turkish Liras were spent on a three-year restoration of the 16^th century Süleymaniye Mosque, simply the best of many architectural treasures built during the reign of that ‘Magnificent’ sultan. But it is not merely Istanbul and Ottoman treasures that demand huge sums for historical restoration and preservation. A farmer near the Black Sea city of Zonguldak, better known for its coal mines, recently uncovered, while digging foundations for a hothouse on his property, the perfectly preserved mosaic floor of a 3^rd century Roman villa[3].

Then there are the Ottoman heritage buildings beyond the boundaries of modern Turkey. The international community recognises the debt owed to the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome, and there is no difficulty in raising money to restore and preserve classical remains, wherever they may be located today. The British Empire left its architectural footprint all over the world, from Sydney to Kolkata, Istanbul to Shanghai. Most of those cities are in countries that have long-since thrown off the colonial yoke, yet they are happy to find new uses for the buildings. The Ottoman heritage is a different matter. In the Balkans and Greece, emergent Christian states couldn’t wait to erase all traces of their Muslim Ottoman past. In Central Asia, a century or two of Russian and Soviet hegemony, and economies with little surplus for luxuries, have combined to the detriment of important historical sites. Recently the Turkish Government has been involving itself in the restoration of their historical heritage in neighbouring nations. There are critics who see this as yet another aspect of emerging Neo-Ottomanism. Yet imagine the outcry if Turkey allowed, never mind contributed to, the decay and destruction of a 15^th century church or cathedral within its borders. Without Turkish Government involvement, the six-century-old Fethiye Mosque in Athens would continue its descent into rubble; the Orhun inscriptions in Mongolia, the oldest known written documents of Turkic history, would meet the same fate, as would, probably, the madrasah where Mevlana Jelaleddin Rumi was born in Afghanistan[4].

As I said in my opening paragraphs, I don’t generally have much sympathy for politicians. Dealing with criticism is part of their job, as are making unfulfillable promises and obfuscating the truth. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that the present Turkish government gets more than its fair share of unreasonable criticism. Can they really be in the United States’ pocket, and at the same time, have a shariah and Neo-Ottoman expansionist agenda? Should they spend tax-payer money restoring and caring for their historic buildings, or leave them to rot and decay – and if restoration is the decision, who should decide which ones and where? Should Turkey cut itself off from contact with its Muslim and Central Asian neighbours in the hopes of currying favour with Europe? The path of political success is a minefield, and I’m pleased, when I look back, that New Zealand voters kept me from it.

[1] English, in comparison, though indebted to several major sources, is pretty pure Indo-European.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union

[3] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/16253467.asp

[4] http://www.todayszaman.com/news-246215-turkey-takes-care-of-ottoman-legacy-abroad.html

The Price of Progress - Turkey's Economic Miracle

2011-05-20T20:32:00.005+03:00

Turkey’s economy is booming. Reputable sources (the World Bank, the IMF and the CIA) rank Turkey as the 15^th or 16^th largest in the world by GDP, with an annual growth rate of 6 to 8%, putting it up there with China and India. The Spanish newspaper ‘El Pais’ ran an article recently on the Turkish ‘Economic Miracle’, citing as its chief symbol, the Istanbul Sapphire Tower, currently, at 261 metres, the tallest building in Europe.

In 1973, the Bosporus was spanned by an impressive suspension bridge. In 1988, a second was opened to keep pace with Istanbul’s growth. Last year, the go-ahead was given for a third bridge; a rail tube/tunnel is due to open in 2013, linking the Asian and European sides of the city – and plans are currently afoot for a road tunnel. There are 38 universities listed in Istanbul alone, and 74 modern shopping malls, with ten new ones scheduled to open in the next two years.

Last month, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced the grandest project yet – a proposed 50-kilometre canal linking the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, allowing much of the tanker and container ship traffic that currently passes through the centre of the city, to bypass the Bosporus Strait. PM Erdoğan has attracted a fair amount of flak locally for his ‘crazy and magnificent’ scheme, but, in fact, it looks like a modest proposal when measured against the Grand Canal of China, completed in 609 CE, and reputed to measure 1794 kilometres in length! Nevertheless, if it comes to fruition, the Istanbul canal will not be much inferior in scale to the Suez or Panama waterways.

This exponential growth is not confined to Istanbul alone. The former imperial capital is, of course, by far the country’s largest urban area, with an estimated population of over 13 million. However, there are at least eight other cities exceeding the one million mark. A month or so ago, I was in Konya for a conference. I had been there twelve years previously when it was a rather sleepy central Anatolian city best known for its Seljuk architecture and as a place of pilgrimage for those visiting the tomb of Mevlana Rumi. On my latest visit, the view from my hotel window was dominated by a 42-storey office tower rising from the opposite side of the street – this in Turkey’s seventh largest city.

Number 8 on the list is Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, which I also had the pleasure of visiting recently. Antalya, the ancient Greek city of Attalia, is one of the jewels on what is sometimes referred to as the Turkish Riviera. We EFL teachers were treated to three nights at the Vogue Avantgarde, a 5-star establishment near the village of Göynük. A sign at reception announced the price of a single room as $450, with a reduction to $660 if you could find someone to share a double. I doubt if any of the guests, us or the Russian tourists, were actually paying that much, but it was a pretty nice place, with multi-lingual staff, its own beach plus several swimming pools, entertainment on tap, and food that wouldn’t have disappointed the guests at Kate and William’s wedding.

Now I couldn’t begin to guess how many similar palaces of hospitality line Turkey’s 4300 km of Mediterranean and Aegean coastline – and no doubt it must still be possible to find a relatively unspoiled beach. Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly difficult, and this entry in a recent edition of ‘Lonely Planet Turkey’ for the resort of Ölüdeniz is representative: ‘Unfortunately, the paradise that many past travellers fondly recall has all but been ruined by the tightly packed belt of hotels behind the beach. [This] used to be one of the highlights of independent travel in Turkey but the development of identical air-conditioned hotels, loud bars and over-priced restaurants has hardly bolstered its appeal.’

Some friends of mine from Istanbul moved down south to Antalya a few years ago to build their dream house in a village somewhere out of town amidst the orange groves, with views of the Taurus mountains. Most of us have dreams, but not many of us get to fulfil them, so I hope Andy and Burcu (not their real names) will forgive my mentioning them here. They have a beautiful place to live, and we denizens of megalopolitan Istanbul can only envy them, and hope that the urban sprawl of Antalya will leave them in peace.

Nuclear power comes with a cost

Some 300 kilometres to the east of Antalya, citizens of another important Turkish city are bracing for the approach of a different aspect of modernity. Mersin is another urban centre approaching the magic 1 million population, Turkey’s largest port, and proud possessor of a 52-story tower, the nation’s tallest when it was built in 1987. A hundred kilometres down the road from Mersin is the town of Akkuyu, where Turkey’s first nuclear power plant for the generation of electricity will be built by the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. Some folks may find it a little strange that Turkey, a notoriously seismically unstable land, is going ahead with a nuclear power station at a time when Japan is struggling to contain the fallout from its crippled plant at Fukushima, damaged by the tsunami in the aftermath of the March earthquake. Nevertheless, Akkuyu is only one of two sites which the Turkish government has earmarked for nuclear-powered electricity generation – the second being at Sinop on the Black Sea coast.

Some may also question Turkey’s wisdom in entrusting the building of these facilities to a Russian company. 1986 is fading from living memory, and becoming ancient history, but Turks have good cause to remember the Soviet-era nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in nearby Ukraine. Perhaps the effects of the radiation leakage are less immediate these days. However, the Russian government is currently engaged in building a huge concrete shield to cover the still threatening Chernobyl plant. An expert was asked how long the site would remain a danger. His answer? Around 20,000 years!

Well, Turkey needs energy, there’s no questioning that. The country’s GDP may exceed that of Saudi Arabia, but it does not possess the oil riches that bless (or curse) its neighbouring guardian of the holy cities of Islam. Turkey is rich in water, a resource arguably more beneficial in the long-term than oil. The GAP project, harnessing the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers includes the world’s fourth largest dam. However, the rising waters will soon cover the ancient city of Zeugma, location of some of the most magnificent mosaics of the ancient world. Highlighting the paradoxical truth that a blessing can also be a curse, Turkey’s treasury of historical riches adds hugely to the cost of every development project. The Istanbul Metro system is several years behind schedule, and no doubt considerably over budget because excavations constantly turn up remains of Greek and Roman temples, harbours, churches and cemeteries, which demand the attentions of armies of archeologists before construction can continue. A bridge which will carry the Metro trains over the Golden Horn has had to be redesigned several times to comply with UNESCO demands that it must not blight the domed and minaretted skyline of ancient Istanbul with incongruous modernity.

So that brings us back to nuclear power stations. Nobody wants to live next door to one, but what can you do? George Bush the Elder Is notorious for his refusal to accept the recommendations of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 with the immortal line: ‘The American way of life is non-negotiable.’ Back then, perhaps, the danger we face as a planet was not so clear, at least not to the GOP and its supporters. Now that China, with its 1.3 billion population, has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy, we are starting to get it. What happens when those rising Chinese middle classes are able to afford the ‘American way of life’ to which they probably aspire? And then there’s India, picked to succeed China as the most populous nation by 2025. I don’t know their figures, but I can extrapolate from what I know about Turkey, with its comparatively miniscule population of 75 million. Anyone who lives in Istanbul will tell you about the nightmare of traffic in the city - yet the ratio of motor vehicles per capita in Turkey is less than 25%. What will happen when that figure approaches the Western norm of 70 to 80%? Then do the maths for India and China. Then give some thought to installing a solar water heater and a wind-powered generator on your rooftop.

Turkey's Foreign Policy - Alone on the World Stage

2011-05-06T21:25:00.004+03:00

I read an interesting article in a recent issue of ‘Time’ magazine. It was entitled ‘How Syria and Libya got to be Turkey’s Headaches’. It interested me on two counts - first, because it seemed to contradict my own feelings about how events in the Arab world would affect Turkey; and second, because it was written by a Turk who seemed to be portraying her country in an unnecessarily pessimistic light in an international news magazine.

The writer, Pelin Turgut, began by announcing that, with the current crisis in Syria, the ‘Arab Spring [had] arrived on Turkey’s doorstep.’ What do you take from that? It seemed to me an unfortunate statement, pandering, as it does, to misinformed Western stereotypes of Turkey. Turks are not Arabs. Unlike the Arab nations experiencing popular unrest, Turkey has a democratically elected parliament and government. Further, there has been no sign of the kind of grass roots protests that have racked neighbouring states. Ms Turgut knows these things, yet she seemed to be implying something different.

In her article, Ms Turgut seems to have compiled a litany of innuendo aimed at discrediting the Turkish Government, with little solid foundation. She calls the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ‘Islamic-rooted’. What does that mean? Turkey’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim, and any government that does not at least pay lip service to that fact has no chance of success at the polls. For nine years I have heard ‘secular’ Turks claim that Mr Erdoğan’s party has a secret agenda to dismantle the secular state and introduce shariah law. If that is the case, they are showing remarkable stealth and patience.

Ms Turgut goes on to suggest, with weasel words, that the Turkish government has forsaken attempts to join the European Union, and instead, moved closer to Islamic Arab states. She highlights Mr Erdoğan’s criticism of Israel, and seems to imply that his government’s bridge-building with Syria and Libya were in some way, a bad thing. In fact, as I read it, world opinion has been shifting against Israel’s intransigence in the West Bank. It is Israel who is defying the United Nations, not the Turkish government. Similarly, it is the European Union that, rightly or wrongly, has been rejecting Turkey’s attempts to gain membership for fifty years – not the other way around. It is hard to imagine that anyone in the USA or Europe would have been happy to see Turkey and Syria go to war – yet Pelin Turgut seems to be implying some kind of hypocrisy in Turkey’s peaceful overtures under Mr Erdoğan’s leadership.

Similarly, she criticizes what she seems to see as inconsistency in Turkey’s attitude to neighbours experiencing the ‘Arab Spring.’ She notes that the Turkish PM ‘denounced’ Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, while remaining silent on Libya and Syria - ignoring the fact that the Turkish PM got it right with Egypt, and the jury is still out on Libya. Turks have to live in this part of the world. They don’t have the luxury of 2000 km of Europe and 5000 km of Atlantic Ocean buffering them against the realities of the Middle East, so it’s hardly surprising that they are less than enthusiastic about charging into neigbouring nations with guns blazing.

Ms Turgut enlists the support of a couple of ‘Turkey experts’, Soli Ozel, ‘international relations professor at Bilgi University and a political columnist’, and Henri Barkey who apparently wrote ‘an article for the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’. With all due respect to these gentlemen, despite Turkey’s increasing interest in playing a peace-keeping and mediating role in the Middle East, it has no power to, and probably no desire to coerce neighbours to follow its wishes. The ‘neo-Ottoman’ label may have a catchy ring to Turkey’s detractors, but on examination, it is a largely meaningless tag. The Ottomans were a religion-centred, autocratic, monarchic empire. The modern Turkish republic is none of these things. However, should a lack of power to enforce its wishes prevent Turkey from attempting a moderating role in the region? Surely no one with a genuine interest in world peace would argue so.

As an example of failed policies, Pelin Turgut cites the presence of Turkish construction companies and workers in Libya. Admittedly, the Turkish government has had to evacuate large numbers of its citizens from that troubled nation – but one could argue that sending builders to construct projects is preferable to sending bombers and cruise missiles to destroy them. How many soldiers does the US have in Iraq and Afghanistan? And has their presence there been more successful than the Turkish presence in Libya? Henri Barkey is quoted as criticizing Turkey for having become ‘a status quo power’ in the region. That may be a little unfair, given Erdoğan’s reprimands of Israel and Egypt’s Mubarak, and the United States’s record arms sale to Saudi Arabia and its major financial contributions to Mubarak’s military machine. In the end, a nation’s foreign policy is its own affair – and who is to say that Turkey’s foreign policy is any more self-serving than that of the United States or France?

Soli Özel, the international relations expert from Bilgi University asserts, almost gleefully, that "Turkey now finds itself very alone on the world stage." It may be so, but who is to blame? Turkey will never be truly accepted by the Arab Islamic countries, because Turks are not Arabs, and they espouse secular democratic ideals. By its very existence, Turkey is a threat to its autocratic Arab neighbours. On the other hand, it will (most likely) never be fully accepted as one of the Western democracies because it is a Muslim country. Being alone on the world stage is nothing new for Turks. Nevertheless, United Sates foreign policy-makers at least, recognize Turkey’s value as a key player on the spot in the volatile but vital Middle East. And Turks themselves, in my opinion, should recognize their need to work together in their isolation.

Islamic Dominoes in the Arab Spring – Will Turkey be next?

2011-04-15T17:12:00.006+03:00

It looks like a crusading Republican president’s ultimate fantasy come true! Populist uprisings sweeping fundamentalist dictators from power throughout the Islamic world, bringing democracy to the oppressed and opening new markets for Coca Cola and Subway. Pity it had to happen while a Democrat was in the White House; and pity for the Democrats that it had to be their man who launched the next military strike on an asymmetrical foe. Nevertheless, when things at home are not looking so rosy, it’s a positive sign for the American Way that its greatest threat is seen to be succumbing to the rising power of democracy from within.

Unfortunately, global events are rarely so simple. The reality on the ground is rather more complex. I want to take a quick look at what seems to be happening in Muslim lands in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean from the point of view of one living in such a land. First of all, then, a brief round-up of the main locations:

The recent unrest kicked off in Tunisia back in December last year when a young man set himself on fire in protest at the repressive policies of Zine el Abidine ben Ali, president for the past 24 years. At first the military tried to suppress the resulting riots, but later changed tack and removed President ben Ali. It has been subsequently reported that huge quantities of jewellery and cash in various foreign currencies have been found in the former presidential palace.
Protests in Algeria have so far been less successful, having been ‘quelled’ by riot police operating under the state of emergency which has, apparently, been in force since 1992! The country has been ruled for 11 years by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ‘elected’ in 1999 with the aid of the military and a fraudulent vote.
Jordan was pretty much a British puppet until after the Second World War. Since then it has remained a fairly unconstitutional monarchy with a strong military financed by the US, the UK and France. Recent protests in February and March were forcibly dispersed, and protestors severely beaten, if we are to believe reports.
Oman’s head of state is a hereditary sultan, currently Qaboos bin Said al Said, who has led the country since overthrowing his father in 1970 (interesting interpretation of ‘hereditary’). Ministers are appointed by the sultan. There have been popular protests this year, but recently they have been broken up with increasing violence.
Yemen has been ruled by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for 32 years since he more or less assumed power after the assassination of the previous president, Ahmed bin Hussein al-Ghashmi. According to Wikipedia (quoting other sources), ‘almost half of the population of Yemen live on $2 or less a day, and one-third suffer from chronic hunger. Yemen ranks 146th in the Transparency International 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, and 15th in the 2010 Failed States Index’. Protests have continued through February and March and pro-Saleh forces have been using increasing force to suppress them[1].
Hosni Mubarak, essentially a dictator installed in 1981 after a military assassination of Anwar el Sadat, ruled Egypt for thirty years until obliged to resign after the armed forces decided to stop supporting him in the face of a popular uprising. According to a recent Time article, ‘US taxpayers [had been] spending $3.5 million a day on the Egyptian military, buying it everything from F-16 jets to M-1 tanks’ [2] – helping to make it the world’s 10^th largest military. Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly whose side we’re on.
Problems in Lebanon seem to come down to religion rather than popular unrest. Since the French moved out at the end of World War Two, the country has been governed by an interesting system of power-sharing among the Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shi’i Muslims. It’s not easy to understand exactly what’s going on in Lebanon these days except that the Shia militant Hezbollah group have been steadily gaining power, and are suspected of having had a hand in the assassination of the Western-backed Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, in 2005.
Kuwait is said to have the world’s fifth largest oil reserves, and to be its 11^th richest country, on a per capita basis. It claims to be a constitutional monarchy, but the ‘constitution’ seems to consider the hereditary emir to have pretty much absolute power over his subjects. There have been street protests recently, but not much outside support is likely. You may remember George Bush Snr disinterestedly stepping in to rescue little old Kuwait from that big bully, Saddam, back in 1991.
Lucky little Bahrain, with a total population of just over one million, has the good (or bad) fortune to be rich in oil and pearls. Since 1970, when the British moved out, it has been an absolute monarchy. The present King, Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, has been on the throne for eleven years. Recent street protests demanding rights and freedoms have been ‘brutally’ put down. Again, we’re unlikely to see much Western assistance for the down-trodden masses, given that the incumbent monarch very kindly allows the United States Fifth Fleet to operate from his nation’s waters.
Well, Libya, of course, is another matter. Muammar Gaddafi has been president since leading a military coup in 1969 to oust the monarch, King Idris. You wouldn’t expect to find him on any Western leader’s list of people to invite to his/her birthday party. President Reagan sent in the US Air Force in 1986, in an unsuccessful attempt to take Gaddafi out. Twenty-five years later, we have a similar scenario, though the US have been hanging back a little and allowing the French to lead the way with their Mirages. Libya, incidentally, has the world’s 10^th largest proven oil reserves. Interestingly, France and Italy (another participant in the bombing) are its two biggest customers.
Morocco is another ‘constitutional’ monarchy whose king, Mohammed VI has wielded fairly all-encompassing powers since ascending the throne in 1956. Parliamentary elections are periodically held, but clearly the public don’t feel very represented. Recent protests have been snuffed out by firm police action.
Pro-democracy campaigners in Saudi Arabia have been largely discouraged from venting their rage by shows of strength from security forces. King Abdullah is not known as the most enlightened of monarchs, and Amnesty International regularly express serious concerns about his commitment to upholding human rights. The CIA website[3] has this to say: ‘Saudi Arabia is a destination country for workers from South and Southeast Asia who are subjected to conditions that constitute involuntary servitude including being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, non-payment of wages, confinement, and withholding of passports as a restriction on their movement; domestic workers are particularly vulnerable because some are confined to the house in which they work unable to seek help; Saudi Arabia is also a destination country for Nigerian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Afghan, Somali, Malian, and Sudanese children trafficked for forced begging and involuntary servitude as street vendors; some Nigerian women were reportedly trafficked into Saudi Arabia for commercial sexual exploitation.’

Clearly, you are less likely to be held internationally accountable for such activities if you have the world’s largest oil reserves. One might be more likely to accept President Obama’s concern for human welfare in Libya if his government hadn’t recently agreed to sell $60 billion worth of high tech weaponry to the Saudis – the largest arms deal in history. Interestingly, 23% of Saudi Arabia’s population consists of foreign nationals, yet no one seems to be advising or assisting them to leave.

So what do you get from all that? I’m not sure that I want to draw any sweeping conclusions, except to note that, as I suggested above, the situation is deeply complicated. It is probably safe to say, however, that support for the rise of democracy and the recognition of human rights in the Islamic world are not the major priorities of governments in the United States and the European Union.

‘But what about Turkey?’ I have been asked. ‘Aren’t you worried that this revolutionary fervour may spread in that direction?’ Well, frankly, I’m not, and I’d like to tell you why.

Let’s begin with the nature of government in Turkey in comparison with those countries listed above. The modern Republic of Turkey was born in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The last hereditary Ottoman sultan had, the previous year, seen the writing on the wall and allowed himself to be whisked away to safety on a British battleship, HMS Malaya. At that time, Istanbul had been occupied by the British and their Allies since the end of the First World War, and Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin had become their puppet. Turkey was not yet a democracy, but it had definitely asserted its independence, in the face of Allied attempts to subdue and dismember it – and the monarchy had become a relic of the past.

The first true multiparty election was held in Turkey in 1950. It seemed to pass largely unheralded, as far as I am aware, but 2010 marked the 60^th anniversary of that moderately significant event. Why it went uncelebrated is open to conjecture. I can think of two possible reasons. The first is that Turks were probably reluctant to accept that the father of their Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had ruled as head of state for 15 years without troubling himself to hold an election. The second reason may be that, in 1960, 1971 and 1980, the Turkish military intervened in civilian politics and ousted elected governments, so the 60-year period has not been without its hiccups. Nevertheless, those periods of military government were brief, and the reins of power were quickly passed back into elected civilian hands.

Sixty years is quite a significant time span, in global terms, as is the 87 years that have elapsed since the founding of the republic. France is currently into its fifth republic, and had hosted one revolution, two empires, one restoration of the monarchy and the establishment of an alternative monarchy within its first 60 years. The United States republic was still enslaving a large portion of its population eighty years after its foundation, fought a vicious and bloody civil war after ninety years, and was still committing ethnic cleansing on its indigenous peoples after a hundred.

When considering the state of democracy in Turkey, it tends to be forgotten that several important members of the European Union have worse records. Spain, for example, was ruled by a military dictatorship for most of the years from 1923 to 1975, and did not become a democracy until 1978. Portugal managed the feat two years earlier in 1976, after a left-wing military coup in 1974 had ousted the right-wing dictatorship that had been trying to maintain the anachronistic colonial empire. Greece’s seven-year military dictatorship collapsed in 1974, interestingly, in the face of a threat of war with Turkey. The junta strongman, Brigadier Ioannides had sponsored the military coup in Cyprus that led to Turkish intervention on the island, and his supporters deserted him as a result. So it could be argued that Greeks should thank Turkey for the re-establishment of democracy in the land which claims it as its home.

Of course, mature democracies understandably view military coups as undesirable, and inconsistent with the ideal of government of, by and for the people. Clearly it didn’t do Turkey’s claims for international recognition much good to have three such events in the space of twenty years. What those mature democracies may fail to understand is that (paradox though it may seem) the military in Turkey was constitutionally entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining democracy. The threat of militant Islam is very real in this part of the world, and fear of it, very deep-seated in the hearts of secular republicans. The present government in Turkey has been gradually working to curb the power of the military to interfere in political affairs – and has come under a deal of criticism for so doing.

Another positive development in recent years has been the phenomenon known in Turkish as ‘açılım’, or ‘opening-up’. Turkey has long been criticised by Europe for human rights abuses, mistreatment of minorities, and curbing the freedom of the press and the right to protest. Few would argue that Scandinavian levels of personal freedom have been attained – but at least the ‘opening-up’ has allowed discussion to begin on issues such as the Kurdish situation and relations with Armenians. The Turkish film industry has flourished in the past fifteen years and formerly taboo subjects such as the on-going war in the east, the treatment of villagers, and civil rights abuses under the military regimes, have begun to reach the mass market.

In the end, of course, there’s nothing like money to stop people complaining about their lot in life – and clearly much of the unhappiness in those North African and Middle Eastern states is related to perceived disparities in wealth and opportunity. Certainly, Turkey is no paradigm for egalitarian wealth distribution, but average incomes are on the rise, and there is a rapidly growing middle class with real discretionary purchasing power. Per capita GDP increased by 34% in the first decade of this century, while inflation fell from an astronomical and chronic 70% to an acceptable 7%. The process of urbanisation is continuing, and this, combined with rapid population growth, has, of course, created problems. Both rates are now decreasing, however, and this should lead to greater stability and rising standards of living across the board.

Ironically, it may be said that one of Turkey’s blessings is a lack of indigenous fossil fuel resources. If a generalisation can be drawn from its neighbours in the region, oil riches can bring disadvantages. Too much wealth can attract unwelcome attention from outsiders, and have a negative affect on the character of its possessors. Despite its lack of oil, Turkey has a larger and more healthily diverse economy than any of its Muslim brother states. Lists compiled by the IMF, the World Bank and the CIA give it a global ranking of 17^th, ahead of Indonesia (with four times the population) and the oil-rich Saudis.

Undoubtedly there will be those who say I am painting an unduly rosy picture of a state that still has some way to go to reach the living standards and personal freedoms of the best of the Western nations. There are social and economic injustices in Turkey, and a crying need for more equitable access to education. Turkey has the misfortune to be emerging from its sometimes murky past at a time when Western nations themselves are struggling to maintain the living standards, freedoms and equality they may once have taken for granted. Nevertheless, these days you are less likely to hear Turkey ranked with the Islamic states of the world, and more likely to hear it mentioned in the same sentence as China, India and Brazil.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Yemeni_protests

[2] Time Magazine, 14 Feb 2011

[3] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sa.html

New Zealand and Turkey - What's the Connection?

2011-03-24T15:00:00.008+02:00

It’s been a bad month for countries located on geological fault lines. First there was the 6.3 quake that devastated New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch. More recently, a tsunami generated by an 8.9 seismic monster levelled coastal towns and cities in Japan.

I have been watching and reading about the tragic events from my home in Istanbul, and I have been struck once again by the kindness and concern of my Turkish friends and neighbours. People here were constantly approaching me and asking about events back ‘home’ - was my family ok? Luckily, they are, but another thing to strike me was how large a part luck, or fate, plays in these tragedies.

Didem Yaman was a young woman from Çanakkale in Turkey – ironically the town on the Dardanelles that Turks associate with the campaign known to New Zealanders as Gallipoli. Unfortunately there is more than one irony here. Didem was interested in the Asia Pacific region and her English was so good that she was accepted by Otago University to study for a doctorate in International Relations. Her area of interest was historical ties between Turkey and Australia and New Zealand. She had been in NZ for four years, living in Dunedin, but she made the ill-fated trip up to Christchurch to visit a friend – a Chinese friend in fact, from a country also known for its earthquakes. Didem’s family continued to hope that their daughter was alive, despite not having heard from her since the earthquake – until (irony upon irony) her body was discovered in the ruins of a health clinic, located in a collapsed shopping centre.

The main reason why Turks are so sympathetic towards people affected by earthquakes is, I guess, that Turkey itself sits astride several major fault lines, and has experienced its share of seismic disasters over the years. The most recent was the Marmara event which left at least 17,000 dead on 17 August, 1999. I wasn’t in Turkey at the time, but I remember it well because I missed it by one day. On 11 August I had been drying out on a beach after a swim in Van Lake. I was out in the east of Turkey visiting places a little off the normal tourist track, and I donned my special spectacles to watch the moon move slowly across the face of the sun – not quite 100 percent blackout, but maybe 95 percent, and quite impressive. Less than a week later I flew to London, and woke up on the morning of 18 August to read about the 7.6 magnitude quake that had followed the solar eclipse and caused so much damage and loss of life.

The town in Turkey where Didem Yaman’s family are mourning the loss of their daughter, will, of course, be the focus of a minor migration from Australia and New Zealand next month. It is the most convenient base from which to visit the beaches, ravines and ridges which were the stage for the horrific slaughter of young men in 1915 that Turks call the Battle of Çanakkale.

On 25 April, thousands of mostly young Australians and New Zealanders will gather at dawn on the other side of the narrow strait that witnessed the spilling of so much blood and the loss of so many young lives. The day has assumed an importance in both countries out of proportion to its significance as a historical event. The eight-month campaign, which can only really be viewed as a sideshow to the main events of the Great War, and a wasteful defeat which prolonged the bloodbath in the trenches of the Western Front, has taken on a powerful symbolism for antipodeans. Two small nations whose constitutions still recognise the Queen of England as head of state, have come to see ANZAC Day as the defining moment in their search for an independent identity. Lacking an Independence Day, or a Republic Day, and with some misgivings about the traditional days inherited from their origins as outposts of empire, New Zealanders and Australians have adopted the day of the Gallipoli landings as marking the beginnings of the emergence of a national consciousness.

I say ‘the beginnings of the emergence’, because clearly the participants at the time were not suddenly struck with a Road to Damascus experience. It has been a slow, developmental process, but undoubtedly the experience of the ANZACs was pivotal. For a start there was the journey. Although the first convoy set out from Albany in Western Australia, and, passing through the Suez Canal, went only as far as Alexandria in Egypt, the sea voyage, with the benefit of steam engines, took a month. Perhaps it crossed the minds of those young men that their great grandfathers and grandmothers, 75 years earlier, had spent six months on a sailing ship to make the journey in reverse. They must have begun to realise how far removed in space they now were from the land of their ancestors.

And now they found themselves on an alien shore, served up as cannon fodder to a foe against whom they had no grievance, by officers and politicians whose aims and motives had no relevance to their own lives and experience. The survivors who made it back to their southern hemisphere homes were lauded as heroes for defending an empire they had mostly ceased to believe in – and their experiences laid the foundation for the sense of selfhood and nationhood that slowly began to emerge over the next half century or so. The distance from Europe had become spiritual as much as spatial.

In terms of written history, New Zealand and Australia are suckling babes compared to the lands that make up modern Turkey. Here rise the two rivers that bound Mesopotamia, one of the original birthplaces of civilisation. Here can be found the mountain on which Noah’s Ark is said to have grounded as the floodwaters of the deluge receded. So many more biblical events recorded in the Old and New Testaments took place here; so much of what we think of as Greek or Roman history unfolded here. The annals of history stretch back so far that the Turks, who have been here for a thousand years and more, are still looked on as newcomers and interlopers.

Therein lies another connection I want to make between Turkey and New Zealand. Here are the Turks, on the back doorstep of Europe, speaking a language no one can understand, with their roots way out in Central Asia. Show them, however, a TV channel from just across the border in Azerbaijan and most of them experience mild culture shock. As for their Turkic cousins in Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan or Tuva, they may feel some distant twinges of kinship, but there is no going back. Whatever Europeans may think, Turkey is not Asia. Its European credentials go back to Alexander the Great and beyond. For the same reason, whatever Turkish nationalists may wish to believe, the modern Turk has little or no genetic connection to the warrior horsemen that swept out of Central Asia in Europe’s darkest ages.

In much the same way, New Zealanders find themselves well settled on an island group in the South Pacific Ocean – speaking English in a region where Austronesian and Asiatic languages are the norm. Our cultural roots are half a world away, in the British Isles – but when we go there for our customary OE, or to research a family tree, we quickly realise that ‘we’ are not ‘they’, and ‘they’ are not ‘we’. For New Zealanders and Turks, the questions ‘Who are we?’ and ‘Why are we here?’ have more significance than mere philosophical pondering.

I want to return now briefly to that normally sleepy town on the Dardanelles. Unlike New Zealand and Australia, Turkey is a republic. Its head of state is a president elected by its own parliament. The people have their own Republic Day (29 October) on which to unite in pyrotechnic celebrations. The town of Çanakkale, however, awakes each year from its customary drowsiness on 18 March, and it can be argued that this date has more significance to the existence of modern Turkey. I have discussed elsewhere why the Turks celebrate their victory on that date, while we allies of the British prefer to think that we weren’t defeated until our final evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsula eight months later. Be that as it may, the crucial point for Turkey is that the Battle of Çanakkale represented their one outstanding victory in an otherwise bleak war. The architect and inspiration of the success was Colonel Mustafa Kemal who went on to lead the army of national independence and become the first president of the Republic of Turkey. Most foreign visitors are puzzled and a little incredulous at the manifest signs of adulation directed towards Atatürk – but to Turks, he is the sine qua non of their existence as a nation. Turning back the invasion at Gallipoli undoubtedly earned him the credibility that powered him to his later achievements.

New Zealand is a small country with a tiny population, far from the halls, corridors and stages of geopolitical events – unlike Turkey, which is right there, on the spot and un-ignorable. For decades, Turkey was one of the major bulwarks of NATO and Europe when the former Soviet Union was vying with the USA for world domination. Hard to imagine now, but so it was, until the Soviet Russian Empire began to disintegrate in 1989. Most of us didn’t know it at the time, when the late great President Kennedy was self-righteously ordering the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba – but he and his Pentagon buddies had several bases in Turkey with their own nuclear hardware trained on the Russkies. For sure, the Russians knew, though, and had Turkey high on their list of targets for pre-emptive or retaliatory strikes. Even today, the US maintains a military base in the South East of Turkey, and George Bush Snr was happy to use it in launching his Operation Desert Storm. Western Europe has good reasons to be grateful to Turkey – yet it is unlikely they will ever welcome their big, loyal eastern cousin into their EU club. Well, these days you might think that acceptance would be a mixed blessing anyway, but still . . .

New Zealand, on the other hand, has never been of strategic importance in anyone’s plans for world domination – and thank God for that, say I! But we have played our part over the years, following, first Mother England, and later Uncle Sam, into wars which were of very peripheral concern to us: the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Viet Nam . . . We even made one or two offers that weren’t taken up. But when we tried to get involved in the big boys’ games, like asking the French to please explode their experimental nuclear bombs a little closer to their own backyard, did we get any support? A gang of French ‘secret’ agents bombed a protest vessel right in the centre of our largest city. Luckily, they were so incompetent that our police caught them – but then our government was forced to bow to diplomatic pressure and let the buggers go. Thanks, friends!

Well, I’m tired of international politics, and I’m sure you are too, so let’s go back into history, where I, for one, feel a lot more comfortable. There’s a fair dollop of Scottish blood in my family tree, as there is in that of many New Zealanders. Even today, some of us are not averse to donning a kilt, if we’ve got the legs for it, skirling the pipes, or sipping a wee dram at hogmanay. Scottish history is a complex business for such a small country, not helped by the likes of Mel Gibson confusing issues here, and oversimplifying them there. However, most of us like to feel a certain kinship with those mad Gaelic highlanders who needed a wall to keep them from rustling the sassenach’s cattle.

Forests, mountains and fast rivers
in the Turkish Black Sea region

Imagine my surprise, nay, disbelief, when, on a journey into the remote mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea coast, I followed a strange melodious wailing in the village I was visiting, and came upon a young man playing . . . a bagpipe! Sure enough! They call it tulum in those parts, and it’s a more primitive instrument, lacking the drones of its Scottish relative – but a relative nonetheless. No one really seems to know where those Celts and Gaels came from, though some suggest a Circassian or Central Asian origin. From there they spread all over Europe and, yes, Anatolia. Their name is immortalised in the comic strip hero, Asterix the Gaul, and in the country Wales, which Turks, interestingly, call Galler. The New Testament evangelist Paul, renowned for his epistles, wrote one to the Galatians, inhabitants of the region around modern Ankara, whose name again preserves their Gaelic heritage. Even in Istanbul itself, the area beside the Golden Horn where Europeans set up their trade and diplomatic posts is known as Galata, and some say this name has its origins in those early Scottish ancestors!

I want to conclude this discussion of the similarities between Turkey and New Zealand with a nod in the direction of my hippy flower power youth, and a return to nature. Everyone in the world surely knows that New Zealand is the cleanest, greenest country on earth, even if we ourselves know that we are continually doing our best to screw up the beauty God gave us. We are proud that our country was the most authentic place to shoot the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies. Most of us appreciate the chance we still have to tramp through primeval forests and dive into crystal clear pools beneath pristine cascades of snow melt rivers flowing from majestic alpine peaks. We identify strongly with our flightless avian symbol, the kiwi, and take pride in the fact that this word from the language of our indigenous Maori race has found its way into most of the languages of the civilised world. We are less proud of the fact that 277 species of our native flora and fauna are listed as endangered, but we care, we really do.

Everyone in the world may be less aware that Turkey has 167 species on that same list – nothing much to be proud of, until you consider that, at least those species still exist in Turkey, when they have been pretty much wiped out from the rest of Europe and the Middle East. The closest thing I have seen to the forests of West Coast New Zealand is the Black Sea region of Turkey, where a snow-capped 4000 metre mountain range plunges down through rain-forested slopes to the coast, sending fast-flowing rivers through precipitous gorges to the sea. Turkey has huge biogeographic diversity, and is a key location for many species of migratory birds. The largest remaining stands of Lebanese cedar are here, as well as breeding places for the Mediterranean monk seal and the caretta caretta turtle. Contrary to popularly spread rumours, the first episode of ‘Star Wars’ was not filmed in Cappadocia, but it might have been, if George Lucas had got his way – in which case, it could well have been an even more spectacular film.

I confess, there are times when I feel a long way from home – and, measured in kilometres, it’s a major trip, for sure. But most of the time I feel remarkably at home in Turkey, largely because the people are hospitable, just like us.

Who Killed the Armenians?

2011-02-13T21:41:00.006+02:00

There is currently a resolution before the United States Congress to give official recognition to the event in 1915 often referred to as ‘The Armenian Genocide’, and to incorporate this recognition into US foreign policy. For the sake of brevity, this resolution is referred to as H.Res.252, and it was introduced in March 2009. Barack Obama, prior to his election as President, made it clear that he fully supported such official recognition. It is a measure, then, of the controversial nature of the issue that, two years on, the resolution has not been passed, and very likely never will be. Mr Obama, for his part, seems to have cooled off on the issue.

I doubt that any of my readers are ignorant of the claims underlying this resolution, but, to be fair, let’s hear them from the Armenian National Institute:

‘The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions . . . It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923.’[1]

Sounds bad, for sure, and not something that can be easily dismissed. However, no event in history can be isolated from what preceded it, so I plan to take you on a trip back in time. Before departure, though, I want to draw your attention to a small but significant detail in the first sentence of the ANI statement above: the genocide was planned and administered by the Turkish government between the years of 1915-1918. Admittedly there is a reference, later in the same sentence, to the Ottoman Empire, but I am sure the distortion is deliberate. In fact, there was no Turkish Government until it was established when the Republic of Turkey came into being in 1923, just as there was no United States Government until independence from Britain was declared in 1776.

I am not, at this stage, taking issue with anything else in the ANI’s statement – merely clearing the way for our journey back to an earlier and arguably happier time in the Ottoman Empire, whose government should more correctly stand accused. Generally dated from 1299, it was one of the longer-lasting empires in world history, and one of its features, little-known but deserving of recognition, was the ‘millet’ system of government. A ‘millet’ was a community of faith whose members formed a relatively autonomous group within the empire. They had their own leader, administered their own laws at a local level, collected and disbursed taxes, practised their own religion, educated their children, spoke their own language – and lived alongside members of the other millets in comparative harmony.

There were five millets in the Ottoman Empire: Muslims (not just Turks, by the way), Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, Jews, and later, Syriac Orthodox Christians. It was a system based on religion rather than race or nationality, because that’s the way the world was in those days. No doubt as a system of government it had its imperfections, but set it alongside what existed in Europe at the same time and it looks like a beacon of tolerance and open-mindedness. Take Spain, for example, as Roman Catholicism established itself in the Iberian Peninsula to the accompaniment of Inquisitorial torture, burnings and forced conversions of Muslims and Jews. Many of those Jews accepted the invitation of Sultan Beyazit to settle in the Ottoman Empire, and their descendants can be found in Istanbul today, worshipping in their medieval Spanish dialect.[2]

Recently restored Armenian church,
Lake Van, Turkey

So maybe the question arises in your mind, as it did in mine: if the Ottomans were so tolerant and open-minded, why did they suddenly decide to commit genocide on those poor, harmless, law-abiding Armenians? The roots of the answer lie in the growth of the major European powers during the 18^th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the associated forces of Romantic Nationalism and Imperialism. The Ottomans had been a (if not the) major European power until the end of the 17^th century, but times were a-changing. In particular, the imperial ambitions of its northern neighbour Russia were threatening its territorial integrity. Russia was expanding in all directions, but its southern march posed the greatest threat to the Ottomans. As they moved towards the Black Sea, into the Crimea and the Caucasus, the Russians pursued a policy of Russification, killing and displacing the majority Muslim inhabitants of those lands and replacing them with Christian Russians, Slavs and if necessary, Armenians.

As well as loss of territory, another negative result of this for the Ottomans was an enormous influx of penniless refugees who had to be fed, housed and settled – a huge financial drain on an empire that was already struggling economically. The Russian advance into Ottoman territory continued right into the First World War, and the Armenian population became an increasingly important tool in their expansion. It suited the Russian cause to encourage Armenian nationalism with promises of support for the creation of an independent state in return for assistance against their Ottoman overlords. The Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects, for their part, became increasingly intolerant of Armenian acts of insurrection and terrorism within their borders. It is interesting to note that, when the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed at the end of the Great War, far from supporting their independence, the new Communist Government swallowed the Armenians into their Soviet maw in 1921, after a scant three years of national sovereignty.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself here. There was one positive outcome for the Ottomans, at least in the short term, from the emergence of the Russian threat. The other European powers, in particular Britain and France, began to take an interest in the unfolding events. For a start, they were determined to prevent the Russians from achieving their ambition of controlling the Istanbul straits and gaining free access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. One of the key issues in the foreign policy of all the European powers in the 19^th century was what became known as ‘The Eastern Question’, the essence of which was: When will the ailing Ottoman Empire finally collapse, and which of us will get what parts of it when it does? The corollary of wanting to get the best bits for yourself, of course, was, naturally, ensuring that your rivals didn’t get them.

In practice, this involved encouraging national consciousness among the subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire in order to hasten its fragmentation and demise. Needless to say, it is not to be thought that the European powers concerned had any great love of nationalism as a philosophy per se. If you have any doubts about this, ask the Irish or the Indians, or the Algerians, or the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. The first ‘nation’ to benefit, however, was the Greeks, the success of whose struggle for independence was ensured by the intervention of the British, French and Russian navies, which combined to destroy the Ottoman fleet in 1827. A little publicized side effect of Greek independence was the massacre and displacement of thousands of Muslims whose families had lived there for centuries.

The original Greek state established at this time was perhaps only 40% of its present area. Over the next century, successive governments took advantage of the weakening and embattled Ottomans to expand their domains northwards and eastwards into Macedonia, the Balkans and the Aegean Islands. As they advanced, non-Christian minorities were slaughtered or driven out. An interesting example is the city of Salonika, which fell to the Greeks in 1912. At that time the second city of the Ottoman Empire, Selanik had the largest Jewish population of any city in Europe. Fifty percent of its inhabitants were Jewish, twenty-five percent Muslim and the remainder, mostly Orthodox Christian. In 1917, a mysterious fire broke out destroying most of the Jewish and Muslim parts of town. Subsequently most of the Jews and Muslims, prevented from rebuilding their homes and businesses, departed. There were still, however, a large number of Jews in Salonika when Nazi Germany invaded in 1941. As far as I know, there is no suggestion that the Greeks conspired with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews – but they certainly benefited from the destruction of the large historic Jewish cemetery, where the city’s university is now located.

Interestingly, if you visit Istanbul and make inquiries, you will be shown numerous Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish churches, synagogues and cemeteries occupying large and prominent sites in very expensive parts of the city. The land they stand on must be almost priceless – yet they remain, respected and untouched in this nation of Muslims. In contrast, Athens is one of the few European capital cities which lacks a functioning mosque, despite the existence of half a million Muslim residents [3].

Which brings me back to the Armenians – whom I am sure you were beginning to think I had forgotten. I mentioned, above, that the Russian Empire massacred and expelled hundreds of thousands of Muslim Tatars, Circassians and Abhazis as it expanded into the Crimea from the 1770s, and the Caucasus from the 1790s[4]. An article in a recent Time magazine[5] discussing the January terrorist attack at the Moscow airport, alleges a link to Chechen activists, and blames the situation on 200 years of Russian oppression. As occupied territories were cleared of their Muslim inhabitants, they were systematically resettled by Christians, more likely to be supportive of their co-religionist overlords. Among the groups used as pawns in this game of Russification were the Armenians, many of whom were invited to occupy the homes and farms of the dispossessed Muslims. Undoubtedly the Muslim refugees who flooded into Ottoman Anatolia would have harboured some resentment against the peoples who were seen to be profiting from their tragedy, and we need look no further for the roots of the sectarian hatred that began to build through the 19^th century.

As an interesting aside[6], there are attempts internationally to have present-day Russia acknowledge a ‘Circassian Genocide’ that allegedly took place in the second half of the 19^th century. The Putin government, of course, rejects responsibility for events that took place under the Czarist regime – yet, according to the Time article cited above, similar policies continue to be implemented against Muslims in the area to this day.

What happened in Anatolia during the 19^th century, then, was increasing encroachment on Ottoman territory by the Russians, and increasing desperation in the Ottoman Empire as their boundaries retreated, impoverished refugees flooded in with tales of horror, and the Armenian ‘millet’ (see above), encouraged by the Russians, increasingly resorted to terrorist attacks and insurgency.

But let’s not pick on Russia alone. I recently came across writings of a gentleman by the name of Edward J Erickson.[7] Apparently he is a retired regular US Army officer at the Marine Corps University in Virginia, recognized as an authority on the Ottoman Army during the First World War. He writes of the activities of the Royal Navy in the Eastern Mediterranean from December 1914. In particular he refers to an RN cruiser, HMS Doris, commanded by a Captain Frank Larkin, which conducted operations around the Ottoman port of Iskenderun (Alexandretta), shelling shore installations and gathering intelligence from local Armenians. Erickson suggests that the Ottoman high command expected an allied invasion. They did not know where it would take place (with hindsight, we know it was directed at Gallipoli and the Dardanelles), but the rail links near Iskenderun were of enormous strategic importance to the Ottoman forces, and at the same time, very vulnerable to a sea-launched attack. Erickson suggests that the activities of Captain Larkin and the Doris, as well as the military incursions and machinations of the Russians, were instrumental in the decision to ‘relocate’ Armenians later in 1915.

In fact, ‘relocate’ is Dr Erickson’s word, not mine. Undoubtedly, Armenian people in the east of Anatolia suffered a terrible tragedy[8]. I do not have the space here to discuss the extent to which the present Republic of Turkey should be held responsible for the sins of the Ottoman Empire; nor whether there was actually an official government decision, and if so, what its aims were. I do not intend to get involved in the discussion of how many Armenians died (also apparently a highly debatable issue), nor to question why so many Armenians remained in Istanbul, the seat of Ottoman Government, retaining their property, churches and cemeteries to the present day. My aim has been solely to suggest that whatever happened in that part of the world in 1915 needs to be seen in terms of events leading up to it in the previous 130 years. To compare what happened with the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire to the Nazi German extermination of the Jewish people is not only a distortion of historical evidence, but a grave injustice to the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

[1] http://www.armenian-genocide.org/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/world/europe/05iht-greek.1.6505511.html

[4] http://everything2.com/title/Russian+Expansion+in+the+19th+Century

[5] Putin’s Terrorist Problem, Time European Edition, February 7, 2011

[6] http://www.circassian-genocide.info/

[7] http://www.tc-america.org/media/Ericson_LarkinandtheTurks.pdf

[8] http://books.google.com/books?id=EQtCPAo1XU8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+forgotten+minorities+of+eastern&source=bl&ots=rKfVXvWqia&sig=RhahUcFxNalgn_xOBjfw0RW50To&hl=en&ei=HB9YTc7MB-CK4gaynNynBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v

Turkey and the European Union

2011-01-13T19:50:00.004+02:00

OK – A geography question for all you pub trivia freaks out there. What’s the capital city of Estonia? Yeah, I know it’s on the tip of your tongue. Come on, spit it out! Tallinn, right? Bravo, well, done! And, of course, you knew it would be European Capital of Culture this year, right? Along with Turku, Finland? Seems the gnomes of Brussels accept that they erred last year. Essen, Pecs and Istanbul were just too many culture capitals for one year, so from now on, they’ve decided two at a time will be enough.

So, it seems we have two things to congratulate the Estonians on. The other, of course, is their elevation to membership of the EU Euro club as of 1 January 2011. No doubt the Germans will be delighted to know they’ve got the ‘Baltic Tiger’ at their side to help bail out those frailer members of the club: Greece, Ireland, and the other ones making up the economic barnyard of ‘PIIGS’.

But seriously, folks, I really have to admit I knew nothing about Estonia until I read that news item on the latest member of the Euro Club . . . so I checked them out, and I want to share my findings with you.

I had previously heard of the ‘Baltic Tiger’ – apparently a reference to their booming economy around the time they were accepted into the EU in 2004. Sadly, it seems the growl has gone out of the tiger in recent times. The CIA World Factbook website^[1] reports that, since the real estate bubble burst in 2008, their economy has been contracting at an annual rate of around 15%, one of the highest (or lowest) rates in the world.

Still, the Germans don’t need to fear a major drain on their financial largesse. According to the 2000 census, Estonia had a total population of 1,370,000 – not a figure to strike fear into anyone’s heart. Interestingly, according to latest estimates, that population has fallen by 30,000 in ten years. Wonder where they went?

Another item of interest I came across on the CIA site, and I’m quoting here:

Estonia is a ‘growing producer of synthetic drugs; increasingly important transhipment zone for cannabis, cocaine, opiates, and synthetic drugs since joining the European Union and the Schengen Accord; [there is] potential money laundering related to organized crime and drug trafficking is a concern, as is possible use of the gambling sector to launder funds; major use of opiates and ecstasy.’

Well, that’s enough on Estonia. I don’t want to dwell on their plight – looks like they’ve got enough troubles to go on with. However, the news about their joining the Euro club did prompt me to check out one or two other recent additions to the united Europe. Bulgaria and Romania were judged to have met the EU’s membership conditions, and joined on 1 January 2007. BBC News, around that time, ran an article on the subject, asking, among other questions, whether these two former Communist countries were really ready for membership. Again, I’m quoting:

‘Officials at the European Commission [were] quoted as saying that they are not really ready, but that delaying accession may not be the best way to encourage further reforms. The Commission was hoping, for example, that Bulgaria would take big steps over the summer to tackle high-level corruption and organized crime, but officials in Brussels say they have been disappointed.’ ^[2]

According to the same report, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia are expected to join in the near future. Meanwhile, Turkey’s membership talks are on again-off again, which brings me to the point of this article. I’ve just been reading an interview^[3] with a Turkish academic, Dr Armağan Emre Çakır, assistant professor at the European Union Institute of Marmara University in Istanbul. Dr Çakır has apparently, recently published a book entitled ‘Fifty Years of EU-Turkey Relations: A Sisyphean Story’.

Now Sisyphus, as I’m sure you are aware, was a king in ancient times who was punished by the gods in a particularly infuriating way. A thoroughly objectionable character, Sisyphus apparently let it be known that he considered himself superior, not only to his mortal subjects, but to the gods themselves. His divine punishment was to roll, for all eternity, a huge boulder to the top of a hill. The fiendish nature of the punishment was that, with the summit in sight, the boulder would roll back down to the bottom, whence the unfortunate king would have to begin his task again.

Now, I haven’t read Dr Çakır’s book, so I can’t say whether, with this analogy, he is comparing Turkey to the obnoxious King Sisyphus, justly punished; or Turkey’s attempts to join the EU to the task of rolling the boulder uphill. In the interview, the learned professor claimed that he had taken great pains to avoid seeming biased in Turkey’s favour, so it may, indeed, be the former.

Nevertheless, I checked out the other part of the title, and it’s true: Turkey did, in fact, first apply to what was then the EEC (European Economic Community) for associate membership in July 1958. Almost 30 years later, in April 1987, after making little appreciable progress, the Turks applied for formal membership into what was now the European Community. Since then, the occasional crumb has been thrown their way. In 1995, for example, a customs union agreement was signed between the EU and Turkey. One assumes, the thinking behind this is to keep them nibbling at the hook – to keep them believing that acceptance is just around the corner, if they’ll only try a little harder.

You can understand why Europe would want to do that. Turkey has been a member of NATO since its inception, and has always been a major contributor to its military forces. The US maintains at least one important air force base on the Turkish mainland, and makes it clear to all and sundry that Turkey is an important ‘friend’. Turkey joined the Council of Europe in 1949 and the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in 1973. Coming straight out and telling them to get lost is clearly out of the question.

On the other hand, to accede to the EU, Turkey must first successfully complete negotiations with the European Commission on each of the 35 chapters of the acquis communautaire, the total body of EU law. Afterwards, the member states must unanimously agree on granting Turkey membership to the European Union. And the day that happens, a squadron of flying pigs will land at Istanbul International Airport, and be given an official welcome.

Call me a cynic, but I can’t see either event happening. Whatever misgivings Europe has about Turkey’s political and social fabric, it is clear that, when they want to accept a country into their fold, they do so, in the stated belief that desirable change is more likely to take place once that country has become a member. One of the major sticking points in Turkey’s on-going negotiations for membership is the Cyprus situation. In 2004, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, submitted a plan for the reunification of the island. The plan was supported by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, but rejected by the Greeks. Shortly thereafter, the (Greek) Republic of Cyprus was admitted to membership of the EU.

I can’t escape the feeling that the antics of Western leaders re Turkey’s application for EU membership are simply a variation of the ‘good cop-bad cop’ routine. The UK Prime Minister and the US President, and the occasional other high profile politico, regularly go public with statements about the desirability of admitting Turkey. However, for my money, I’d give more credence to the words of French President Sarkozy, and German Chancellor Merkel, both of whom have made it abundantly clear that they see no place for Turkey in the European Union.

Would it be surprising, then, if Turkey began to take an increasingly independent stance on international affairs; and to seek economic and strategic alliances elsewhere?

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/en.html

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2266385.stm

[3] http://changingturkey.com/2011/01/08/interview-with-dr-armagan-emre-cakir-on-turkey-eu-relations/

Merry Sufi Christmas and a Happy Chinese New Year! - Globalising Religion

2011-01-08T17:32:00.002+02:00

First up, I want to wish all my loyal readers (and any new-comers to the fold) health, happiness and prosperity in the New Year, the Year of Our Lord, 2011. Uh oh, hang on a minute – let me adjust that – 2011 CE. It was a measure of the grip globalisation has on us all, that midnight, December 31^st was celebrated with parties and festivities from Sydney to Seoul; from Auckland to Amritsar and Allahabad; in Times Square, New York, and Times Square, Hong Kong; that the world’s most expensive Christmas tree was to be found in Abu Dhabi, and the tallest New Year fireworks display, in Dubai, on the 828 metre Burj Khalifa. Even the Chinese joined the party, despite the fact that their new year, the Year of the Rabbit, incidentally, and 4707, 4708, or 4647, depending on who’s counting, will not click over until February 3^rd.

Burj Khalifa Tower, Dubai

I kind of liked that. I’ve never been a big capitalist, but you have to respect the power of an idea to bring people together, don’t you! Socialism has been dead and buried for a few years now, and life is getting increasingly difficult for religious fanatics. But Mammon is hard at work out there, binding Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, atheists and reformed Communists into one big happy family. It’s pretty clear that there’s never been an ‘–ism’ like it!

However, in the midst of all the Santa Clauses, Father Christmases, New Year pyrotechnics and what not, another date slipped by pretty much unnoticed . . . the 17^th of December. I hope the Sufis among you will forgive my stating the obvious, but that day marked the 737^th anniversary of the death of Mevlana Jalal al-din Rumi, the 13^th century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, philosopher and Sufi mystic, known in the West more simply as Rumi. I have to admit, though, I might have missed the date too, if one of my students hadn’t pointed it out to me. Nevertheless, once it was drawn to my attention, it got me thinking . . .

Those of you who read this column regularly will know how much I love my adoptive home, the Republic of Turkey, and the respect I have for my Muslim brothers and sisters who have become my friends, neighbours and even family. You will perhaps have marvelled that the son of a nation which once joined a military invasion to subdue this land, could have stayed so long, and developed such affection for former enemies. But there it is, and I make no apologies.

Still, if there is one thing I can’t get my head around, it’s the lunar calendar. I’m a firm believer in a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay – but I like holidays, nonetheless. I’m used to my Christmases and Easters and New Years and Labour Days and Queen’s Birthdays, and all that stuff we take as an inalienable human right back in New Zealand. I may have seemed to take it for granted when I was younger, but I have always been grateful to those nameless activists who fought to ensure that, even though no one was exactly sure when Jesus was nailed to that tree, we would get a Friday and a Monday off school or work every year in sympathy. No doubt those in the know always got together on the correct day to cheer Elizabeth Regina as she blew out her birthday candles – but we in New Zealand could always count on the first Monday in June as the day for honouring our sovereign lady queen.

It therefore seems to me that no one would suffer much harm, and the devout could continue to sacrifice and fast, if the Muslim holy times of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha (Kurban Bayram) were similarly fixed, perhaps sometime in autumn and spring. I understand that, for tribes living in a harsh desert environment not much conducive to sowing and harvesting, solar seasons were pretty irrelevant, and the phases of the moon seemed as good a measure of the passing of time as any other. If you can sleep through the heat of a desert day, fasting from dawn till dusk may not be such a trial. If you’re not bound to the five-day working week, it may not matter much if your days of feasting fall on weekends or weekdays. But these days, when we are all, to a greater or lesser extent in the clutches of the above-mentioned Mammon-ism, it makes a big difference. We need to feel that we can plan our lives (including our holidays) and that important festivals will take place at stable and predictable times each year - and, for better or worse, that means the solar year.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Those Islamic months are set in stone. God gave the Koran to the Angel Gabriel, who gave it to the Prophet Mohammed, and that’s it, end of story. No amendments, no interpretations, no alterations. Lunar months are ordained by God. The Ramazan month of fasting will start when the ‘Hilal’ crescent at the beginning of the ninth lunar month is spotted by the official ‘spotter’. Any government of a Muslim country that tried to ‘rationalise’ the calendar for the modern world would be committing political suicide. But spare a thought for the poor school kids, who will soon face an academic year without a break because the religious holidays all fall during the summer vacation. What of the employed faithful who will have to work through 30 summer days without letting a sip of water pass their lips? Anyway, with Muslims spread all over the globe, there’s no way that one ‘spotter’ can do the job for the whole community any more.

And there’s another thing – the reason I brought up Mevlana Rumi in the first place, in case you were wondering. Did you notice that date, 17 December, 1273? And did you wonder, as I did, why it wasn’t 6 Jumada al-Thani, 672 A.H.? Well, again, I have to admit, I found a site on the Internet [1] to do the conversion for me, but you get the point I want to make. There was a guy who was born, lived and died a Muslim in important cities in an Islamic empire at a time when that religion was assuredly in the ascendant. Thousands of devout Muslims visit his tomb in the Turkish city of Konya every year. Without doubt, the date on his tombstone would read (if we could read Arabic) 672, and not 1273. Yet every year, around 17 December, a clearly non-lunar date, Muslim Turks welcome the faithful and the interested, to join them in commemorating the passing on of the great Sufi mystic.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m glad to find there is one other ‘–ism’ with an interest in bringing folks together, rather than tearing them apart. I don’t want to get into the debate about whether Islam is a religion of war or peace. It seems to me that, depending on where you’re starting from, you could argue either way, just as you could for most other religions and ideologies.

Mevlana Rumi, however, was ‘. . . not a Muslim of the orthodox type. His doctrine advocates unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. To him and to his disciples all religions are more or less truth. Looking with the same eye on Muslim, Jew and Christian alike, his peaceful and tolerant teaching has appealed to [people] of all sects and creeds.’ [2]

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) organised events to commemorate, in 2007, the 800^th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana Rumi. They did this because they believed that his ideas and ideals coincided with the ideals of UNESCO, which you can find on their website [3]:

UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’S mission and activities.

UNESCO’s mission is to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.

Pretty good stuff, you have to admit. And if Rumi believed in that, then I’m with him, even if he was a Muslim.

[1] http://www.islamicfinder.org/dateConversion.php

[2] www.mevlana.net/

[3] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/about-us/who-we-are/introducing-unesco/

What Have Turks Given the World?

2010-12-18T21:20:00.004+02:00

In my previous post, I attempted to show that Western Europe tends to have a rather stereotyped and historically questionable view of Turks which colours their dealings with the modern Republic of Turkey. I wasn’t trying to argue for any cultural identity to replace the misconceptions, and certainly not to suggest any kind of cultural superiority. Nevertheless, the article seems to have provoked a response in some circles, and a question I have been asked is: What have those Turks actually given the world?

‘The problem is that Turkey was never part of the Enlightenment, and didn't produce a Madame Curie or any significant medical or scientific discovery that benefited mankind that has any resonance with people in the West.’

Well, it’s a fair question, I guess, if a little unkind, and I’m grateful for it because it has given me a theme for this article – and new inspiration doesn’t always come easily. An apparently simple question, however, does not always elicit a simple answer. I guess, if there is a unifying theme to these articles, that would probably be it. One question often leads to another, and yet another, and before you know it, you have a 2,500 word rave!

At the outset, then, it’s important to define our terms. Who, exactly, do we mean when we say ‘Turks’ or ‘Turkey’. As I tried to suggest in my previous post, Westerners tend to have a rather confused concept of Turkish-ness – and even ‘Turks’ themselves would have difficulty defining the word. In an earlier article I discussed the concept of ‘Greek-ness’, another term that tends to be confused in the mind of the ordinary Westerner-in-the-street. Do we mean the people of the modern nation we Westerners call ‘Greece’? Or do we mean the citizens of the loose confederation of city-states we choose to call ‘Ancient Greece’? Do we include the ‘Greek’ speaking, ‘Greek’ Orthodox citizens of the Byzantine Empire? In both of the latter cases, the majority of the people concerned actually lived on the ‘Turkish’ side of the Aegean Sea, so you see the nature of the problem.

Turkish coffee - and Turkish Delight

Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, is often quoted as saying: “Happy is the one who says, ‘I am a Turk.’” It wasn’t just rhetoric. The Ottoman Empire was falling apart, with major assistance from the European victors of the First World War. Nations were being created from the ethnic groups that formerly made up the Empire: Greeks, Bulgarians, ‘Yugoslavians’, Armenians . . . In order to save at least the Anatolian heartland of the Empire, Ataturk was obliged to create a national identity that could be fought for. So, if you wanted to live in the new country, and you said you were a Turk, that’s what you would be.

There is an analogous situation in New Zealand, where a proportion of seats in the Parliamentary House of Representatives are reserved for members of the indigenous race. There are no blood or DNA tests, or examinations of skin, eye and hair colour; nor is there any compulsion. Essentially, if you identify with the concept of Maori-ness, say you are Maori, and have your name entered on the Maori electoral roll, the law of the land will consider you Maori.

So, the first definition of ‘Turk’ we can consider would be ‘a citizen of the modern Republic of Turkey.’ If we accept this narrow sense of the word, then there was no ‘Turk’ and no ‘Turkey’ prior to 1923. However, I suspect that is not what the questioners have in mind. It’s certainly not a definition that would be accepted by the Armenian genocide activists, who insist that modern Turkey is responsible for the sins of the Ottoman Empire. So we need to look for something else.

One of the points I was trying to make in last month’s article was that the present-day citizens of modern Turkey have very little in common with the Turkic tribes that emerged in waves from the steppes of Central Asia from time immemorial, despite what Turkish school kids are taught in their history lessons. The connection is probably comparable to the relationship between the modern citizens of the United Kingdom, and the Anglo-Saxon migrants who invaded ‘England’ in the 5^th century CE. In fact, given that the existing religion and culture in Anatolia were stronger, the Turkish cultural influence was very likely less. Nevertheless, I will resist the tempting diversion of asking what those Anglo-Saxon tribesmen (and women) gave the world. I will merely direct the curious reader to a wee poem, much loved by my Scottish kinfolk, entitled ‘Wha’s Like Us?’ – in which thirteen key inventions of English daily life are shown to have been actually invented by Scotsmen[1].

Anyway, I don’t want to be seen as avoiding the issue, or using cheap debating tricks to turn the tables on my interrogators. So, let me address myself to what is probably the spirit of the question: What did those Turkic invaders from the steppes give the world? And I hope I may be allowed to include the Ottomans here. If modern Turks are expected to shoulder responsibility for the sins of their predecessors, it seems unreasonable to deny credit for their virtues.

Well, let’s start with the Central Asian Turks, since those are the ones who started the problem in the first place. If they’d just stayed where they were, Europeans would’ve been a lot happier and more comfortable. They could have just kept on fighting each other in their petty little wars and not had to bother about uniting against a major outside threat. If nothing else, it might have saved them from having to take collective responsibility for the present-day debts of the Greeks and the Irish. Certainly they wouldn’t have had to fight the Crusader Wars; and they could have continued traveling overland to Asia, so they might never have had to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and maybe they’d never have ‘discovered’ America. In which case, Native Americans would probably have been a lot happier too – and maybe quite a number of Africans and their descendants could have continued to live undisturbed in their benighted ignorance.

But enough of the negatives. Are there any positives? Well, yoghurt, for a start. You knew that one, didn’t you! What about the stirrup? Bet you didn’t know the Turks brought that out of Central Asia and it didn’t reach Europe until the 7^th century CE. However, once it arrived, it apparently caused great upheavals. Some historians have even claimed that it led to the birth of feudalism[2]. And on a related subject, take the composite reflex bow, a handy little weapon that allowed mounted horsemen to shoot arrows to deadly effect. Despite its small size, it is claimed to have a 50% greater range than a longbow, with less effort required to bend it. Of course, its advantages faded with the introduction of firearms – but then, gunpowder itself came from China! I’m not going to claim shish kebab for the Turks, since ‘kebab’ apparently originated in Persia – but the word ‘shish’ is indisputably Turkish. The making of felt from wool is another debatable one, since its origins are lost in the mists of time – but the Turks certainly had it early, and used it to good effect in making tents and clothes to withstand the rigours of winter on the steppes. Then there is Turkish delight, which I will return to later; and the Turkish bath . . .

Let’s move on to the Ottomans, rulers of an empire that lasted from 1299 till 1923 – a five-century regime that compares favourably in duration with pretty much any other empire you could name. In fact, if you care to include their predecessors, the Seljuks, whose empire extended from the Central Asian steppes to the shores of the Aegean, you could add at least another two centuries to that. Hard to imagine that anyone could rule anyone or anywhere for that length of time without leaving some kind of cultural mark. However, specifics are called for, so let’s delve in . . .

I have to confess that one thing that has prevented me from really familiarising myself with the growth and spread of Islamic culture, has been its sheer complexity and multifariousness. My eyes tended to glaze over as I read of Sassanids and Abassids, Samanids and Ghaznavids, and other clearly important ‘-ids’ who succeeded each other in controlling ‘the East’ for centuries after the armies of the Prophet emerged from the Arabian desert.

However, if you would like a grotesquely over-simplified nutshell version of what was going on, you could do worse than think in terms of a Turko-Persian culture, which, from the 8^th century, began to take over from the Arabs and spread its influence from Bengal to Asia Minor, absorbing, moulding and synthesising, as it grew, the languages, sciences, literatures and technologies with which it came in contact. Initially Turks were apparently brought in by the dominant Persians to serve as soldiers and palace guards, but eventually they themselves rose to dominate their one-time masters.

Now I would like to draw back a step from this breathtakingly outrageous oversimplification to consider what happened when these Turks entered the world of Arabic-Persian Islam. Undoubtedly they saw much that was new and impressive, and they learned to take on board the ways of their adoptive culture. We may further imagine that the Turks who were brought in for martial purposes were predominantly male. From this we may suppose that, if they were not to die out in a generation, they must have found spouses from among the resident population. Another step of logic will tell us that the Turkic blood would quickly have mixed itself with that of the Persians and others who dwelt in this enormous area.

Recent studies suggest that the DNA of present-day inhabitants of Anatolia resembles that of peoples throughout the Mediterranean area. It seems that the Turkic tribes of Central Asia made a barely detectable contribution to the genetic make up of the modern day ‘Turk’. This is more or less as we would expect if we accept estimates that the late Byzantine population of Anatolia was around 12 million, and the inflow of ‘Turks’ from the 11^th century is unlikely to have exceeded one million[3]. Nevertheless, those ‘people of the West’ whom my questioner is representing would, I am sure, want to include the Ottomans within their definition of ‘Turks’ so I’m going to run with that. In so doing, I want to return to that Turko-Persian culture we were discussing in the previous paragraph-but-one.

One thing is very clear if we take the trouble to look at the historical development of Islam as a world religion. It began with the Arabs in what is now Saudi Arabia, but within a century it had spread beyond their control, and by the 13^th century, it was the dominant religion of several empires extending into Central Asia, India, West Africa, Malaya and parts of Europe. Without wanting to go into the details of how it happened, we know that, by the early 16^th century, the Ottoman Sultan had assumed, as one of his many titles, that of Caliph, political leader of the Muslim ‘nation’. The language of the Ottomans, the ruling elite of the Empire, was an amalgamation of Persian and Arabic on an essentially Turkish base, written in a modified version of the Arabic alphabet. The Ottomans were the last manifestation of the Turko-Persian culture, until their demise at the end of the First World War.

What I’m getting at here, in case you were wondering, is that it’s not terribly easy to identify which of the multitude of gifts to world civilisation that spring from that Turko-Persian Islamic culture can be directly attributed to ‘Turks’. Coffee is a case in point. It seems it was first consumed as a drink in a form we might recognise in Mokha, Yemen, in the 15^th century, from where it spread throughout the Middle East, and thence to Europe via the Venetians towards the end of the 16^th century. Well, who was in control of the Middle East in those days? And who were the Venetians trading with? The Ottoman (Turks) of course. We tend to associate the tulip flower with the Netherlands – but in fact it was first cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, and the word itself comes to us from Persian by way of Ottoman (Turkish).

Tin-glazed pottery originated in Persia in the 9^th century and reached its peak as an art form in the Ottoman Empire (Iznik, in modern Turkey), from where it passed into Europe, emerging as Delft ware in Holland in the late 16^th century. The Sufi order of mystical Islam was not a ‘Turkish’ development, but its greatest figure, Mevlana Rumi, although born in Persia, lived most of his life in the Anatolian city of Konya, at that time (13^th century) capital of the Rum Sultanate of the Seljuk Turks.

If you are ever in the Turkish city of Edirne (former Adrianopolis) near the border of Turkey and Greece, I advise you to visit the mosque complex of Sultan Beyazit II. The ‘külliye’, as it was called in Ottoman Turkish, is now a museum. From its construction in the late 15^th century, it included a medical school and hospital, part of which was given over to treatment of the mentally ill. Contemporary documents show that such treatment included soothing sounds such as the playing of music, the running water of fountains and manual tasks such as basket-weaving. As an interesting comparison, the Royal Hospital of Bethlehem in London served as the city’s ‘lunatic asylum’ well into the 19^th century. It was notorious for the brutal treatment of inmates, and, as late as 1814, 96,000 people paid a penny to stare at the antics within its walls. The word ‘bedlam’, a corrupted form of Bethlehem, entered our language from this source.

That 15^th century Ottoman hospital was not an isolated aberration. The so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Islamic culture, from the 9^th to the 13^th century, produced the world’s first hospitals, and the world’s oldest degree-granting university. The concept of ‘doctorate’ originated in their teaching of law and the issuing of licenses to practise. İbn al Hasan (Latinised as Alhacen or Alhazen) is credited with being the world’s first true scientist. I haven’t seen it myself, but I have it on good authority that you can see, in a chamber of the US House of Representatives, a likeness of the 16^th century Ottoman Sultan Suleiman, in recognition of his codification of an entire system of jurisprudence.

Well, from such heights, how can I descend to the bathetic depths of baklava, Turkish Delight and sherbet; of sofas and divans; of kiosks, bazaars, lutes and Turkish carpets; of syrups, elixirs and genies? I don’t intend to even mention the Turkish bath. It seems unlikely that those Asian invaders brought them brick by brick on horseback from the steppes. Simply, I would like to leave you with two verses form the Rubaiyat of the 11^th century Persian poet, Omar Khayyam:

But leave the wise to wrangle, and with me,

The quarrel of the universe let be,

And in some corner of the hubbub couched,

Make game of that which makes as much of thee.

There with a loaf of bread, beneath the bough,

A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou

Beside me, singing in the wilderness,

And wilderness is paradise enow[4].

[1] http://thecapitalscot.com/pastfeatures/likeus.html

[2] Check out ‘The Great Stirrup Controversy’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup#The_stirrup_in_Europe

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people

[4] I think he wanted to say ‘enough’, but it didn’t rhyme!