Bodrum to Gallipoli - A week’s wandering in Aegean Turkey

A major benefit of receiving visitors from abroad – apart from the happiness of catching up with family and old friends – is the motivation they provide for getting out and seeing the sights of Turkey through fresh eyes. We had a family wedding in May which brought guests from the USA, and took us down to Bodrum a month or so earlier than usual. Then some old neighbours arrived from New Zealand, and together we took a slow trip through the Aegean region back to Istanbul.

Here are a few highlights:

Myndos is the ancient name for the modern village of Gümüşlük-by-the-Sea where our journey began. There is no evidence to indicate that it had much more importance in those days than it has today – which is perhaps its saving grace. The Bodrum Peninsula is in serious danger of succumbing to the curse of over-development, but the existence of classical ruins beneath its humble surface has so far saved Gümüşlük from the worst depredations. Its small natural harbour and sandy beaches lined with atmospheric fish restaurants and small shops selling tasteful handcrafts, and jams and marmalades made from locally-grown fruits, attract visitors desperate to escape the English breakfasts, English football and Turkish nightclubs that blight other resorts on the peninsula.

Recently archeologists from Bursa’s Uludağ University have been fossicking around remains of temples, churches, theatres and bathhouses – and council workers laying pipes accidentally turned up a Roman necropolis. So far, fortunately, nothing’s been found that’s likely to attract coachloads of tourists or titanic cruise liners.

Magnesia-on-the-Meander. Certainly there are other sites on the road deserving a visit, but this one is a little publicized gem. My previous visits had been in the heat and dust of July or August, so carpets of red, purple and yellow spring flowers made for an extra delight. The city was renowned for its temple to Artemis Leucophryeno which, in its heyday, was little inferior to the better known temple at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sadly, not much remains today, but a short walk will take you to a 20,000-seater stadium, wonderfully preserved as a result of being buried for centuries under a landslide caused by a 7^th century earthquake. Incidentally, our word ‘magnet’ is said to come from lodestones found in Magnesia.

The modern town of Selçuk is a popular base for tourists wishing to visit Ephesus and other neighbouring cities of classical antiquity. Americans and touchingly credulous Roman Catholics climb a nearby mountain to pay their respects at a site purported to be built over an earlier house once inhabited by Mary, mother of Jesus (or of God Himself, if you are of that persuasion). The ‘purporter’ was apparently a stigmatised ecstatic visionary German nun who, despite never having left her home territory of Westphalia, provided directions to the said house, delivered to her in a visitation from the said Mary.

If you do go to Ephesus, I recommend shelling out a few extra dollars for admission to the terrace houses, a work in progress recreating the lives of well-heeled Ephesians back when the apostle Paul was writing to them (well, maybe not to those Ephesians). An international crew of dedicated archeologists is carrying out unbelievably painstaking work reassembling wall frescoes and floor mosaics from thousands of fragments that you and I would probably not even notice.

It is generally understood that carpet-sellers in Turkey are a local hazard to be avoided at all costs. However, an exception to the rule is a government-sponsored co-operative located behind the (currently closed) Selçuk museum on the back road to the 13^th century Mosque of Isa Bey. We stumbled upon it by accident and allowed ourselves to be inveigled in. It did, however, turn out to be a worthwhile mishap. Apart from providing a place for master (or mistress) weavers to work and train young apprentices and market their wares, the centre also gives insights into the age-old art of silk production. One interesting fact I learned – the ancient Egyptians used silk threads to cut the stones used for pyramid building. Well, true or not, I have always wondered how those artisans of old were able to accurately cut thin sheets of marble for lining their temples and churches.

It’s a bit of a trek from Selçuk – and probably you need a vehicle of your own – but Aphrodisias is a magical site well worth a visit. At this point I have to give a plug to my friend Adrian. We were fortunate to find him in town, sipping a cold ale at Eksellans Bar on Saturday evening, and he was gracious enough to let us tag along on his Sunday tour. Aphrodisias is, of course, named for the goddess Aphrodite, since there was a major cult of followers located in the city in ancient times. I wouldn’t be the first to suggest a connection between the Greek goddess, earlier Aegean deities Cybele and Artemis, and the cult of the Virgin Mary that subsequently developed when Christianity became the state religion in these parts.

For my money, Aphrodisias is a more atmospheric site than the better known, and more accessible Ephesus. Precisely because of its lesser accessibility, of course, you will find fewer tour buses from the cruise liners of Kuşadası. The on-site museum is a treasure house of fabulous sculpture, and the almost intact stadium redolent of Russell Crowe’s ‘Gladiator’. If you are lucky enough to have Adrian in your party, you will be treated to translations of the many inscriptions for which this site is renowned.

The modern Turkish town of Bergama is located at the foot of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon. Many of the best finds are more likely to be seen in the eponymous museum in Berlin, but still it’s a spectacular site with a breath-taking theatre built on the precipitous hill. Roman engineers brought water by aqueduct from 40+ kilometres away, and some local inventor came up with the idea of parchment. Apparently commodity traders in Cairo had started stock-piling papyrus in anticipation of a shortage thereby creating a shortage, and got their come-uppance in a big way!

A brisk walk from the bottom of the hill will bring you to the Asklepius Medical Centre, whose residents included the famous physician Galen. Among its patients were some with psychiatric disorders, who were treated with music, dream interpretation and the sound of a sacred spring burbling down the corridor. Incidentally, if you’re looking for place to stay with a little ambience I can recommend the Athena Pension, an old Greek house with a view of the acropolis from its walled garden.

Following our hosts’ recommendation, instead of retracing our steps, we took a back road through Kozak – according to locals, the richest town in Turkey because of its trade in pine nuts. The road brought us out a little north of Ayvalik where we stopped for lunch at a delightful little place called Zeytin Altı Kır Bahçesi – A Country garden under the Olive Trees. As with many of the best Turkish eateries, its menu was limited to what they do best: grilled köfte and gözleme, both of which were delicious! We also picked up a few local products, fruit juice and a kind of molasses (pekmez) made from mulberries, and some tasty sliced olives in tomato sauce.

Our final stopover was the town of Çanakkale on the southern coast of the Dardanelles, where we booked a tour to the killing fields and cemeteries of Gallipoli, that long-ago exercise in military futility that has nevertheless bequeathed a sense of identity to Australia, New Zealand and the modern Republic of Turkey. My guests and I felt a strong admiration for the Turks who have allowed former invaders to maintain cemeteries to their fallen heroes, to build a large memorial on the crucial ridge of Chunuk Bair, and have even erected a signpost directing visitors to Anzak Koyu (Anzac Cove).

One of our fellow travellers on the tour bus was a young Maori lad who told us that he intended to perform a haka in honour of his ancestors who had fought and died for a king and empire to whom they had little cause to feel obligated. It was an impressive one-man performance that brought a tear to my eye – and a little anger against an elderly Anglo-Australian woman who demanded indignantly to know why we had to be subjected to such a spectacle.

A curious incident occurred as we were about to board the ferry that would take us across the water to the town of Eceabat. One of our guides, a young Turkish lass calling herself Zuzu, with a Goth hairdo and numerous body piercings, announced that we would in fact take a later boat because there were a few Turkish police on our intended ferry, and ‘they kill people’. I wonder what what the short-stay tourists made of that.

Another Anzac Day in Turkey - Modern myths and legends

Another Anzac Day is just a few weeks away. It's not the big one. 2015, in fact, will see the centennial of that dreadful exercise in military futility known in English as the Gallipoli Campaign, and to Turks as the Çanakkale War. Next year visitor numbers will be limited, I understand, to politicians, celebrities and ordinary folk lucky enough to have their number drawn in a ballot.

'Evacuation' - Anzac statue in
Australian War Memorial Museum

This year, I guess, there are fewer restrictions, and the usual crowds of pilgrims from Downunder will converge on the beaches, battlefields and cemeteries where more than eleven thousand of their grandfathers left their mortal remains during eight months of bitter trench warfare.

One reason I am writing this a little early is that I wanted to bisect the dates selected by Turks and Anzacs to commemorate the event. For Turks, in fact, it has passed. 18 March is when they celebrate their victory - sadly ironic for Australians and New Zealanders who remember 25 April as the day our boys first came ashore at Anzac Cove. As far as Ottoman Commanders were concerned, the major threat came from battleships of the combined French and British navies attempting to storm through the Dardanelles, heave to at the entrance to the Bosporus, train their 15 inch guns on the Sultan's palace and offer him the chance to come out quietly with his hands up.

Like many well-laid and not-so-well-laid plans of mice and men, the naval gambit didn't come off. Three battleships (one French and two British) were sunk by the shore batteries and mines inhospitably emplaced by Ottoman defence forces. The Royal Navy and its French allies beat a strategic retreat, and Plan B was put into action. Plan B was, of course, the beach landings with which we antipodeans are more familiar. For their part the Ottomans, trusting in conventional military wisdom which favours the defenders in a marine-based invasion, backed themselves to turn it back - which they ultimately did, after eight months of fairly pointless slaughter.

These days, however, what we descendants of those Anzac lads choose to commemorate is something more symbolic. At the time, of course, the British Empire was still claiming to rule the seas and an empire on which the sun never set. New Zealanders, at least, were still colonials and thinking of Britain as 'Home'; the King and Country they were fighting for, George V and Mother England. Many of us these days, rightly or wrongly, look upon 25 April 1915 as the date we began to grow up as a nation, to cut the imperial apron strings and to forge our own identity. The brave young men who performed above and beyond the call of duty in those Gallipoli valleys and on the ridges planted the seeds of independence and self-determination in our national psyche.

The actual day of commemoration in Turkey may be different, but that bloody struggle has an equally important place in the popular consciousness. Defeat in the First World War heralded the end of the 600-year Ottoman Empire. Victory in the Çanakkale War marked the beginning of the rise of Mustafa Kemal who went on to lead the resistance movement that turned back a military invasion, expelled occupying forces and founded the modern Republic of Turkey.

Legends abound on both sides of extraordinary courage, heart-rending pathos and minor events with major repercussions. One such is known to Turks as ‘the watch that changed a nation’s destiny’. One of the crucial engagements of the campaign took place on the ridge of Conk Bayırı (Chunuk Bair). During that closely fought encounter, a piece of shrapnel is said to have struck Col. Mustafa Kemal in the chest – the watch in his breast pocket taking the impact and very likely saving his life. Turks often say, ‘If not for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, there would be no Turkey.’

'A Man and his Donkey'
Melbourne War Memorial

On the Anzac side, an enduring story is that of Private Simpson who, with his trusty donkey, earned fame and gratitude by ferrying wounded comrades back to the shore under constant fire in an area known as Shrapnel Gully. Prints of the man and his beast hang on walls of RSA clubrooms, and a statue by sculptor Wallace Anderson in the Australian War Memorial in Melbourne enshrines the legend.

In Turkey too, statues are to be found that embody the courage and self-sacrifice of young men who managed to retain their humanity in those inhuman conditions. There is Corporal Seyit, a gunner who is reputed to have carried single-handedly three artillery shells weighing 275kg to the shore batteries silenced when the shell crane was damaged.

Another, in a location known to Anzacs as Pine Ridge, immortalises the deed of a Turkish soldier who carried a wounded Allied officer to safety.  According to an article in The Daily Telegraph, the officer, a captain, ‘lay in no man's land while a ferocious battle raged around him. A white flag tied to the muzzle of a rifle appeared from a Turkish trench and the shooting suddenly stopped. A Turkish soldier climbed from the trench, picked up the officer, delivered him to the Australian lines and returned to his own side.’ The story is considered reliable since it was reported by a Lieutenant Richard Casey who later became Governor-General of Australia.

It is a surprising thing to me that Turks seem to harbour no resentment against the descendants of those Anzacs who invaded their country and killed eighty thousand of their young men. On the contrary, I have found that my New Zealand nationality seems to give me a special status in Turkey. We are accorded free-of-charge a three-month visitor’s visa when we enter the country – a gesture, I am sad to say, our government does not reciprocate. The magnanimous words of Atatürk to the mothers of Anzac soldiers killed in action are often quoted:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives . . . You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent your sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well”

I was a little saddened, then, to read the following article in my local Turkish newspaper last week (I am translating directly from the Turkish):

“On the 99^th anniversary of the Çanakkale Naval Victory, and as Anzacs prepare for ceremonies commemorating their war dead, an 89 year-old insult has come to light.

A statue entitled ‘Evacuation’ in the collection of the War memorial Museum in the Australian capital city Canberra depicts an Anzac soldier leaning against a gun carriage with a Turkish flag under his feet . . . and beside the flag a human skull assumed to belong to a Turkish soldier. The gun carriage on which the Anzac soldier is leaning represents war and the disaster of Gallipoli. The Turkish flag and skull on which he is standing symbolize the territory they invaded and the enemies they killed.

The Museum’s website contains photographs, and information that the statue was modelled in clay in 1925, moulded in plaster in 1926 and cast in bronze in Melbourne in 1927. According to notes on the website, the 82 cm-high statue was later bought by the Australian War Memorial Museum and added to its collection.

While our boys during the Çanakkale War were waving a white flag to pause hostilities and behaving like gentlemen in carrying a wounded Anzac soldier back to his own trench, the continued presence of this statue in the collection after 89 years has drawn a reaction from history scholars.

Every year on Anzac Day, April 25, Australians and New Zealanders coming to pay their respects to their forebears are welcomed at Kanlısırt on the Gallipoli Peninsula by a monument depicting a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded Anzac soldier in his arms.”

Well, I checked it out and it’s true. There is such a statue in the Australian War Memorial Museum, and it seems to contain the details the Turkish columnist was objecting to. The sculptor referred to earlier, Wallace Anderson, served in France during the First World War, so he had first hand experience of the conflict. Apparently he saw it as his artistic mission ‘to show the public the qualities of Australian servicemen, rather than just the details of war’. This particular piece, entitled ‘Evacuation’, according to the museum website, portrays an ‘idealised depiction of Australian manhood’, an admirable sentiment, as far as it goes. We should recognize, however, that what may have been important to Australians and New Zealanders back there in the 1920s may have been superseded by the requirements of living in the 21^st century global village.

One of the myths of Gallipoli, from an Allied point-of-view is that, although we were unsuccessful, we put up an almighty fight, and in the end, by remarkable feats of ingenuity and cunning, managed to spirit ourselves away from under the noses of the Turkish gunners without major loss of life. It is just possible, however, that those Ottoman commanders, seeing the invaders were obviously intent on vacating the premises, and buggering off back to wherever they had come from, elected to let them go without inflicting more unnecessary casualties. It may have been deemed necessary, in Australia in 1925, to maintain the myth by suggesting that, in spite of the manifest failure of the Gallipoli invasion, our boys had trampled on the Turkish flag and inflicted heavy casualties on those young men defending their homeland – but 90 years on we may want to accept that such jingoistic imperialism belongs, at best, to the footnotes of history.

One of my favourite New Zealand writers, Maurice Shadbolt, produced a book based on interviews he carried out in the early 1980s. Realising that the Gallipoli generation would not be around much longer, Shadbolt hunted out a number of survivors and visited them in old folks’ homes around New Zealand. ‘Voices of Gallipoli’ is a collection of transcripts of the interviews he conducted with these men, now in their 80s, some of whom had not spoken of their experiences from that day to this. Their poignant recollections convey, with dramatic simplicity, the contrast between the idealised heroic glamour of war and the dehumanising squalor, terror and personal loss of the Gallipoli experience:

“I lost my dearest friend, Teddy Charles, that day.  We joined up together and saw the campaign through together until Chunuk Bair.  There were no officers left, no NCOs. Just soldiers.  Teddy led thirty men forward to try and hold the ridge.  He called, “Come on, Vic”, but I was impeded by Turkish fire.  We never saw those thirty men again.  Later, in the dark, I thought I heard Teddy’s voice calling for his mother, then for me. But then the place was crawling with Turks and I couldn’t get to him.  He’s still on Chunuk Bair, a pile of bones.”

“Veterans of the Wellington battalion remember a member of the machine-gun section being sentenced to death for sleeping at his post. It happened in late July at Quinn’s Post. The sentence was remitted on medical grounds as the man had not been relieved from sentry duty at the proper time.  He continued to serve on the peninsula and was killed in the August battles.”

Interestingly, there is very little information about this book online – it seems to be out of print and I was unable to find an in-depth review. How many years must pass before we are able to view historical events with dispassionate objectivity? Very occasionally we are permitted a glimpse into a ‘familiar’ event through the eyes of another observer – and the experience can be sobering.

I read another Turkish source suggesting that, if the invasion of Gallipoli had succeeded and Allied forces had been able to supply and reinvigorate the Czarist Russian military, as was their aim, the Bolshevik Revolution might have been delayed and perhaps never have occurred. The red tide of British Imperialism might have flowed a little longer – and that of Soviet Communism faded before it began. The world might have been spared the mindlessly suffocating half-century of Cold War threats and posturing.

History is full of ‘Ifs’ and ‘might-have-beens’ . . . and it’s worth remembering that there are at least two sides to every story.

The Kadıköy Bull - A picaresque tale

I don’t spend a lot of time in Starbucks. It’s not that I have any major philosophical objection to them. Their website tells me it is their “mission to inspire and nurture the human spirit,” and I applaud that. It also asserts that they are “passionate about ethically sourcing the finest coffee beans, roasting them with great care, and improving the lives of people who grow them.” No exploitation of labour in the developing world either. I can sip my latté with a clear conscience.

Kadıköy's rampaging bull

So there I was, the other day, in Altıyol Starbucks, Kadıköy, sitting high above the intersection where six roads intersect and the antique tram turns right into Bahariye Avenue pedestrian mall. With a few minutes to spare and nothing much else to attract my attention, I found myself reading the text of an informative mural on the back wall, purporting to tell the history of the Kadıköy Bull.

Altıyol is a popular meeting point for locals heading for an evening out in the district’s multitude of bars, cafés and restaurants. It’s an easy location to find, even for those unfamiliar with the area, because right there, on an island in the middle of the intersection, is a very realistic life-sized bronze statue of a well-endowed bull, head lowered, vicious-looking horns ready to gore and maim. Say, “I’ll meet you at The Bull”, and everyone will know where you mean. Ask for directions to ‘The Bull’ and anyone will point you the way.

Nevertheless I was curious to learn how, when and why the taurine beast had come to be in that location. Republican Turkey is replete with statues of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, mounted on a rampant stallion, at a blackboard instructing children on the use of his new Latin alphabet, or merely standing presidentially dignified in a well-cut suit gazing pensively into the future. Graeco-Roman Constantinople was, I understand, well supplied with imperial statuary mounted on pedestals in squares and fora around the ancient city. Ottoman Istanbul, however, a Muslim city, did not go in for idolatrous representations of the human form (or animal for that matter). So the Kadıköy Bull is a beast of a different nature.

So I read with interest the information on the back wall of the Altıyol Starbucks. ‘The Bull’, it informed me, was created by the French sculptor Isidore Bonheur in 1864 and erected, so to speak, in a square in the then French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. I say ‘then’ because that region has long been disputed. Lorraine is undoubtedly French – but German Shepherd dogs are alternatively known as Alsatians, a fact which hints at the problem. So it was that when Prince Otto von Bismarck was aggressively uniting Germany, his Prussian army humiliated the French and seized the disputed borderlands, acquiring, in 1871, as an incidental spoil of war, the bull in question. In Germany it remained, the Starbucks wall tells me, until Kaiser Wilhelm gifted it to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet V in 1917.

All well and good – but I couldn’t resist googling that French sculptor, Isidore Bonheur. Sure enough, there was such a gentleman (1827-1901), and he did indeed specialize in animals, his bulls being apparently of particular note, one even having found its way to Venezuela . . . but not to Turkey, according to a definitive list of his oeuvres.

So I did a little more googling, and found varying stories on several websites. According to Milliyet newspaper archives, the statue was actually commissioned in 1864 from another French sculptor, Pierre Louis Rouillard (1820-1881) by Sultan Abdülaziz. It seems that sultan was quite a fan, and ordered a number of other pieces at the same time – which I now intend to keep an eye out for. A list of Rouillard’s works, however, states that The Bull was still in France for the Paris Exposition of 1878, and that M. Bonheur did in fact have a hand in its construction.

Another Turkish site, Finans Caddesi, concurs in attributing The Bull to the combined efforts of Rouillard and Bonheur, but returns to the Starbucks date of 1917. Originally, they tell us, he was set up in the grounds of the Beylerbeyi Palace - admittedly constructed as a summer getaway by said Abdülaziz in the 1860s, which may account for some of the confusion. This source, however, maintains that our bovine beast was actually a present from Kaiser Wilhelm to Enver Pasha, Ottoman Minister of War and leading member of the Young Turk triumvirate which more or less ruled the empire during the First World War. The Pasha was Number One OttoMAN at that time, but his star lost its glitter when his country was defeated. Sacked by the sultan, he and his two buddies Talat and Cemal fled into exile, presciently anticipating the Court-Martial that found them guilty in absentia of war crimes (including the infamous deportation of Armenians) and condemned them to death.

Enver, it seems, attempted to stay involved in the affairs of his country after the foundation of the Republic, but was not much loved by the founding president, Mustafa Kemal, which pretty much sealed his fate. According to biographers, deprived of a role in the new Turkey, Enver Pasha turned to meddling in the affairs of another new state, Soviet Russia, and was killed in a skirmish while fighting for his vision of a Pan-Turkic union in Central Asia. Originally buried where he fell in Tajikstan, his remains were apparently brought back to Turkey in 1996 and reinterred in the Istanbul district of Şişli.

But getting back to our Bull . . . according to Finans Caddesi, he was moved to the grounds of the new Hilton, opened in 1955 as Istanbul’s first modern five-star hotel. From there, for some reason, in 1969 he was relocated to Kadıköy, to the garden of the old local government building on the waterfront, whence it was a short rampage up the hill to his present site at Altıyol. Whatever the actual route taken, our beast, despite his seemingly immovable bronze bulk, has apparently made quite a tour of the city.

Well, I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Enver Pasha – an important figure in Turkey’s march to modernity, despite his tarnished reputation. Then I came across a website, Bir Istanbul Hayali, which took me back to the other claim involving Sultan Abdülaziz’s 1864 order, insisting that the controversial critter had been put to pasture in the garden of the newly constructed Beylerbeyi Palace in 1865. From there, for some reason, he was conveyed to a more rural setting, the so-called Bilezikçi Çiftliği (Farm), whence he subsequently visited a couple of aristocratic manor houses and had a spell in front of the Lütfi Kırdar Sports and Exhibition hall in Harbiye, before eventually finding his way to Kadıköy, first to the old council building on the waterfront and thence to the Altıyol intersection in 1987.

So who do we believe? Another site I visited was insistent that our Bull had been spotted at a Universal Exhibition in Paris. Faded photographs seem to confirm this, though there appears to be confusion over the date – this source sets it in 1867, however there was indeed an exhibition in 1878, and another in 1889 celebrating the centenary of the Storming of the Bastille. It is, of course, possible that there was more than one bull, but then that begs the question – where are the others now?

Isn’t the Internet a fabulous monument to the genius of humanity! Here I am sitting at my desk at home following these leads in a way I couldn’t have imagined not so very long ago. One of my favourite relatively unknown heroes is the guy credited with inventing the ‘www’, an Englishman by the name of Tim Berners-Lee. Well, to be fair, Good Queen Bess II did honour him with a knighthood in 2004, and in 2012 the Sultan of Oman awarded him the Sultan Qaboos Order for Culture, Science and Arts (First Class) – but still, where would Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have been without him? And who made all the money? But thanks to Sir Timothy I have been able to roam through space and time from the Bull in Kadıköy to the estate of a wealthy Ottoman Armenian back in the mid-19^th century, and to learn about a talented and unusual musician in 21^st century Los Angeles.

Names are important, aren’t they? And I liked the sound of that website Bir İstanbul Hayali – ‘An Istanbul Dream’. Maybe that’s why the name of that farm caught my eye – Bilezikçi Çiftliği. There has been much ado in recent months about one of the Turkish Government’s mega-projects, a third bridge across the Bosporus Strait, whose construction requires building approach roads through one of the city’s last extensive sylvan areas, the Belgrade Forest. Well, apparently the so-called Bilezikçi Farm is an extensive estate adjoining that forest, named after the Armenian Bilezikçiyan family who owned it back in Ottoman times.

The first hit in my next Google search turned up a news item from Milliyet newspaper in April 2006 reporting that one of Turkey’s largest companies, Alarko Holding, owned by a Jewish gentleman, İshak Alaton, was upset with the government. Apparently Alarko Holding was/is the current owner of the 400 hectare ‘Bilezikçi’ estate which borders on the Belgrade Forest – and in the interests of free market capitalism, was planning, for the benefit of wealthy foreign residents of Istanbul, a major development incorporating 4,000 luxury villas and sports facilities including basketball and volleyball courts, and a golf course.

Public park - or villas for wealthy foreign ex-pats?

According to the report, the government decided to step in and expropriate the estate, with the aim of turning it over for public recreation and forestry research, offering to pay Alarko €6.1 million as compensation. It seems Mr Alaton and his team believed they would get a good deal more from the wealthy foreigners, and were taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights – an interesting interpretation of ‘human rights’, you might think. As far as I can gather, the case has not yet been resolved – although construction on the 3^rd Bosporus Bridge is well under way and the government continues to field a good deal of criticism over it.

As for the Bilezikçiyan family, like many of their congregation, they were extremely successful and influential people back in the days of the Ottoman Empire. Another source tells me that, in the 1850s, a certain Agop Bilezikçiyan and several other Armenian businessmen were involved in the establishment of Turkey’s first limited liability company, Şirket-i Hayriye, forerunner of the company that today runs Istanbul’s ferries. In 1910 their large rural estate was sold to a buyer referred to simply as Abraham Pasha, and shortly after, in 1913, passed into the hands of a certain Nimetullah Hanım, wife of that Enver Pasha we spoke of earlier.

What happened to ‘The Bull’ during those lost years? Did it ever, in fact, graze in the pastures of the Bilezikçiyan Farm? And what became of the Bilezikçiyans themselves? I have no idea how common it is or was among people of Armenian descent. I did come across a passing reference to the name in a fascinating paper discussing the activities of Armenian separatist gangs in Anatolia during the First World War. And undoubtedly Enver Pasha was no big supporter of Armenians. On a more peaceful and artistic note, I turned up a contemporary ‘Armenian Los Angeles-based musician and composer’, John Bilzikjian whose music I intend to hunt out.

In future, when I pass that muscular masculine bronze brute posing for photographs at the Altıyol traffic lights, I will perhaps muse a little on the transitory nature of human affairs, the complexities of history and the need we all have for a thread to lead us safely out of the labyrinth.

Turks and Anzacs - A strange friendship

Overcoming Conflict: How The Battle Of Gallipoli Sparked A New Friendship – OpEd

By Eurasia Review

By Onur Işçi and Sevin Elekdağ

Every year on April 25, Turks join with Australian and New Zealand friends to commemorate ANZAC Day. On this day 98 years ago, with the Allies at their side, the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACS) landed on the Gallipoli peninsula to invade the Ottoman Empire’s capital, modern-day Istanbul, and take control of a precious WWI supply route to Russia. As support for the war waned, the British came to Australia with a propaganda machine aimed at encouraging young Australian men to sign-up to fight in this war on a foreign land half a would away. Over the next nine months, the Turks fought a bloody battle against the ANZACs, and while the Ottoman army ultimately prevailed, both sides suffered great hardships and heavy casualties. Read more

The Last Word on Armenianism – In search of solutions

If you happened to be in Berlin recently, you may have indulged your musical appetite with an evening out at the Young Euro Classic Music Festival, a two-and-a-half week event taking place at the Konzerthaus on Gendarmenmarkt Square. The programme included orchestras from all over the world, African jazz, ballet, dance and choral groups, with the common factor of young people playing and enjoying music.

One of the concerts featured an assembly of musicians calling themselves the Turkish-Armenian Youth Orchestra, playing works by Beethoven, as well as by one Turkish and one Armenian composer. According to the festival website:

‘For the first time, Young Euro Classic presents an Armenian-Turkish Youth Symphony Orchestra. Initiated by Young Euro Classic, this ensemble unites young musicians from Armenia and Turkey in one joint orchestra. This ambitious project has great symbolic importance, given the political tensions between the neighbouring countries of Turkey and Armenia. The young Turkish and Armenian musicians distinguish themselves through the joy they take in their excellent music-making.’

The event attracted my attention because I had recently read an article in the New York Times by a gentleman called Taner Akçam. In fact, because of its tone and content, the article received some small attention in our local Turkish newspaper as well. The title was ‘Turkey’s Human Rights Hypocrisy’, and the writer, a well-known activist in the area of Armenian-Turkish relations, was drawing a connection between the contemporary situation in Syria, and the mass deaths of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The essence of Mr Akçam’s argument was that Turks should shut up about what Bashar al-Assad is doing to his people in neighbouring Syria until the Turkish Government admits to carrying out genocide against the Armenian race, and (unstated but we may assume) pays appropriate reparations. According to him, Christians and other minorities in Syria are choosing to support al-Assad’s murderous regime because of some strange connection in their minds between political freedom and Ottoman killings of Armenians in the 1^st World War. Well, Mr Akçam can set his friends minds at rest, I think. Even if Turkey had the aim of wiping out ‘Christians and other minorities’ (which I am pretty sure they don’t) – it seems clear that they have no interest in invading and annexing Syria.

I’m not going to expend energy going through Akçam’s article point by point to debate his weasel words and dubious logic, but I did pick up on one term that was new to me – denialist. It’s not a word you’ll find in older dictionaries, but it’s a pretty useful one, I’m sure you’ll agree. It goes beyond the Freudian term denial, perhaps because that word was losing its force from over-use. When you call someone a denialist, the –ist ending adds extra power to the criticism since it implies some kind of political/ideological conspiracy. The beauty of it is, as was the case with the earlier word in popular usage, it does away with the need for further debate, since you have at one blow established, without need for actual proof, that your opponent’s arguments are flying in the face of all scientific and historical evidence. So Turks are engaging in denialism on the issue of Armenian genocide – end of argument.

I guess that’s roughly where I started from when I first arrived in Turkey. Not that I knew a lot about it, but I knew what pretty much everyone knows: Turks slaughtered Armenians, right? In 1915, right? One-and-a-half million of them, right? That’s where Hitler got his inspiration for the Jewish Holocaust, right? Then I started to read about the Ottoman Empire that ruled what is now Turkey and much else in the region for over six hundred years until it whimpered out of existence in 1923. I learnt that Armenians were a respected millet within the Ottoman Empire along with Jews and Orthodox Christians; granted freedom to worship, use their own language, bury their dead in their own cemeteries, educate their children in their own schools, run businesses, get rich, rise to high positions in society . . . and my curiosity was aroused. Why would the Ottoman government suddenly decide to genocide these people?

Our local newspaper is running a series of articles during the month of Ramazan about significant mosques around the country. One article featured the Aksaray Mosque of Pertevniyal Valide Sultan, the mother of the 19th century Ottoman Padishah, Abdulaziz. The writer credits the building to the architect Sarkis Balyan, five generations of whose family served as builders and architects to the Ottoman regime through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I checked him out on a website called World Architecture Map and I learned that he lived from 1835-1899, but the space for Place of Birth was blank, and alongside Nationality there were three question marks (???).

Still, pretty much everyone knows that people with surnames ending in –yan or –ian are more than likely of Armenian ethnicity, and Wikipedia confirms that about the Balyans. So, credit where credit’s due – five generations of this Armenian family worked for the Ottoman dynasty and were responsible for the building of some of the city’s best known landmarks: the imperial palaces of Çırağan (now a 5-star Kempinski hotel) and Dolmabahçe, along with numerous mosques, public buildings and major factories. I haven’t been able to confirm the facts, but I would make an educated guess that, despite his Armenian ethnicity, Sarkis Balyan was an Ottoman citizen, born in Istanbul. I can’t say for sure why the WAM people couldn’t establish that one way or the other, but I have my suspicions.

Still, I hear you. Just because there were a few successful and respected Armenians in the empire it doesn’t mean genocide didn’t happen. Being a pillar of society didn’t save many Jews in Nazi Germany, did it? Nevertheless, you take my point. I wanted to know why the Ottoman state, after five centuries of relatively peaceful coexistence, would suddenly decide that genocide of Armenians was the way to go. Of course, once I started, I found that I had opened a can of worms. One question led to another, and another, and another, and I can truthfully tell you that I cannot give you a conclusive answer on this one. What I can say, however, is that labelling Turks ‘denialist’ in no way does justice to the complexity of the issue. Undoubtedly a horrifying number of Armenian people lost their lives in a tragic series of events in 1915, set in train by officers of the Ottoman Empire. This much seems to be accepted by all, but thereafter, important questions arise:

• Were these events part of a state-sponsored programme whose aim was the extermination of a race? Proponents of the case for genocide claim to have seen official documents proving this. Opponents claim that at least some of these documents are falsified.
• How many died? Obviously, in the circumstances, it is impossible to get an accurate count, but numbers vary enormously depending on which case is being argued. Still, even the lowest estimates seem to accept that several hundred thousand died – clearly an unacceptable number.
• Is Turkey responsible? Whatever happened, happened in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, which was not a nationalist state. Europeans had for centuries chosen to label the Ottoman rulers Turks, and their empire Turkey, but this is a distortion of the facts, a bit like outsiders calling citizens of the USA Yanks. Turks, incidentally, tend to refer to the United Kingdom as İngiltere, and its citizens as İngliz. The Ottoman Empire was defeated, along with its ally Germany, in the First World War, and thereafter divided among the conquerors, principally Britain, France, Italy and Greece. The modern Republic of Turkey was established in 1923 after a struggle by nationalist freedom-fighters who expelled invading forces from Anatolia and Istanbul, marginalising and subsequently abolishing the Ottoman Sultanate and its government. So there is only a tenuous connection between the perpetrators of whatever happened in 1915, and the present-day Turkish Republic.
• Is what happened to the Armenians comparable to Nazi German measures to exterminate Jews? First of all, the Germans set up a bureaucratic machine and invested in plant and facilities to expedite their scheme. There was large-scale state propaganda designed to justify Nazi actions. The Germans invaded other sovereign states and carried out their policy in those places also (France, Poland and Greece, for example). As far as I am aware, none of these factors was present in the case of Ottoman Armenians. It is also clear that extermination was the primary object of the Nazi German programme. The Ottoman aim was to remove/relocate people perceived as a serious security threat at a time when their state was at war and fighting for its survival on at least three fronts. Third, there is a long history in Europe (not only in Germany) of state-sponsored discrimination and violence towards Jews. This was definitely not the case in the Ottoman Empire (see above). Finally, there was no context in which Nazi German actions could be justified. The Jewish people posed no security threat to Germany and gave no provocation. On the other hand, Armenian nationalist groups had been carrying out terrorist activities in Ottoman territory for decades. As American military personnel in Iraq testify, in a guerrilla warfare situation, it is by no means easy to distinguish dangerous militants from law-abiding villagers – and remember, the Ottomans were operating on their own soil, with at least some modicum of moral authority. Further, it is also historically verifiable (as I have written elsewhere) that Russian Imperial expansion into Ottoman territory had involved the incitement of Christian minorities (including Armenians) to revolt against their lawful government, followed by large-scale killing, terrorising and displacement of Muslims from the areas they conquered.

OK, I admit I am working from secondary sources here. Like most of you, I don’t have the time or the language skills to check primary documents. I am not employed and paid a salary by any university’s Department of Genocide Studies. I can say, however, that I have read a broad sample of the literature on both sides of this question, and I can assure you that there are some quite reputable scholars who question the application of the term ‘genocide’ to this Armenian business. One in particular you may like to check out is Justin McCarthy, Professor of History at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, two of whose publications are listed in the sidebar. One is actually available as a free eBook, so take a look.

Now, I know that, if you are a follower of Armenian Genocide Studies, you will be aware that McCarthy and others who attempt to balance the ledger on this issue, come in for a deal of criticism, and not simply on a scholarly level. I read an article recently by a lady identifying herself as a Latin Americanist (there's that -ist again). She was waxing warm on the Armenian issue, and informed the reader that our Taner Akçam (above) had received death threats for his outspokenness. She went on to say that he ‘fears prosecution’ if he ever sets foot in his native Turkey. Interestingly, then, the Wikipedia entry reveals that this ‘wanted man’ attended the politically-charged funeral of Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007, and managed to get safely back to his job of criticising Turks and their country at Clark University, Massachusetts. I'm not saying that the poor fellow hasn't received a death threat or two. I even got one myself while teaching at a prestigious high school in Auckland, New Zealand. The house of UCLA Professor Stanford Shaw was bombed in 1977 after he published a book on Turkish history in which he questioned the accuracy of Armenian genocide arguments, and Armenian ultra-nationalist organizations (to borrow a phrase) were responsible for the deaths of forty-two Turkish diplomatic staff abroad between 1973 and 1994, so make what you will of that.

As for the personal attacks on ‘denialist’ scholars, that Wikipedia entry on Taner Akçam names a certain Vahakn Dadrian as his academic mentor. I checked him out and learned that Dadrian is a ‘towering figure in the field of Armenian genocide history’. The quote is attributed to an academic by the name of David Bruce MacDonald. He too has a very nice entry in Wikipedia, but the managers of the site warn that ‘a major contributor to this article appears to have a close relationship with its subject’. Getting back to Mr Dadrian, I further learned that he had been dismissed from his position as Professor of Sociology at the State University College in Geneseo, New York for sexually molesting an 18 year-old student. According to the report I read, Mr Dadrian had escaped punishment for a similar offense ten years earlier by pleading ‘cultural differences’. Given that the learned professor had pursued his academic studies at reputable universities in Europe and the USA, you'd think he might have gleaned some understanding of acceptable teacher-student behaviour in Western cultures. Anyway, the excuse apparently didn’t wash the second time he was caught.

The Wikipedia entry on Akçam states that he is ‘recognised as a leading international authority on the subject’ (their quotes) of Armenian genocide. If you check the referenced footnote, you’ll find that the words are attributed to a David Holthouse of the Southern Poverty Law Centre. If you follow that lead, you’ll learn that the SPLC published an apology for that particular article and retracted claims made therein that, among other untruths, another scholar arguing for a more balanced view of the issue, Guenter Lewy, was in the pay of the Turkish Government.  But I'm not here to blacken anyone's name - merely to suggest that there may be more to this business than simply ‘truth’ and ‘denialism’.

I am not at all a reader of horror literature, but I am about to finish a book that is seriously frightening me. Probably the scariest thing about it is, it is not a work of fiction. The writer is Kevin Phillips, a political and economic commentator from Lichfield, Connecticut, and former strategist for the US Republican Party. In the book ‘American Theocracy’, he posits an unholy alliance conjoining big oil, the finance industry and fundamentalist Christianity which he claims has taken over the GOP and pretty much the governing of the United States. To put the thesis of a 400-page book in a nutshell, the ‘FIRE’ sector (finance, insurance, real estate) is enriching a small elite by encouraging indebtedness at every level of society (spend like there’s no tomorrow – it’s your patriotic duty!); as US oil runs out, it becomes necessary to control the major global areas of supply (did you ever believe Iraq was not about oil?); and fundamentalist Christian leaders hold that an inerrant Bible justifies man’s exploitation of the environment, salvation is by faith alone (which means no need for social welfare programmes, hence no taxes), unbelievers must be converted or destroyed, and the end-times are coming when true believers will be ‘raptured’ and the last battles will be played out in the Middle East, home of the anti-Christ and his evil followers (Muslims).

All this wouldn’t be particularly relevant here, except that, in my rummaging around on the internet, I learned that Taner Akçam had been giving talks to an organisation called CSI – aka the Christian Solidarity Foundation. On their web page, their CEO has this to say:

‘CSI is unique. It is currently the only organization working in the field to free slaves captured by Islamic jihadists [another -ist] during Sudan's civil war, and we are one of the few organizations to shine a light on the disappearance, forced conversions and forced marriages of Christian women in Egypt. My colleagues have repeatedly traveled to terror-torn Iraq to stand in solidarity with that country's beleaguered Christian community, and CSI supports the tiny remnant of Christians who remain in Turkey following the great anti-Christian Genocide and its devastating after-effects.

‘These are troubled times for Christians and other religious minorities in the broader Islamic Middle East where an upsurge of radical Islamic supremacism [that –ism again] threatens their very existence. The situation is especially dire in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Iran.’

A man is a bird without wings
and a bird is a man without sorrows

Well, hate comes easy to human nature, I guess. Unfortunately, there are many organisations hiding behind words like peace, freedom, truth and democracy while pursuing programmes of discrimination, prejudice and violence. There is a wonderful novel, ‘Birds Without Wings’, by the English novelist Louis de Bernieres. It deals with events surrounding the time of that ‘great anti-Christian Genocide’ in a rather more even-handed manner. A minor character, Daskalos Leonidas, is schoolteacher in the small Anatolian village of Eskibahçe where most of the story takes place.  The village is a microcosm of the Ottoman Empire, with Muslims, Greek and Armenian Christians getting along as they had for centuries, before the great upheavals of the 20^th century tore them apart. The teacher is a lonely bitter man who sees his mission as being to educate his Greek Christian neighbours in ‘their own culture’ and to foster a spirit of nationhood which they will then fight to achieve. The result is the disaster of the Greek-Turkish War and the tragedy of the population exchanges that followed.  I wish the organisers of that Berlin Festival well, and hope that their attempts to demonstrate the power of music to heal wounds and unite souls will not be in vain.