Who Killed the Armenians?

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.’

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.

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, I'm told, one of the few European capital cities which lacks a functioning mosque, despite the existence of half a million Muslim residents.

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. 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, 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 [1] cited below, 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. 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. 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.

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

Turkey and the European Union

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 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.’

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 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?

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

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 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.’

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:

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.

What Have Turks Given the World?

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Turkish coffee and Turkish Delight

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[1].

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

Those Terrible Turks!

Among the surprises that I experienced in my first year of teaching English in Turkey was calling the roll and finding that one of the students was named Genghis. Well, I have to admit that was after I’d begun to get my head around the idiosyncrasies of the Turkish alphabet, and realised that’s how we write the word spelled ‘Cengiz’ in Turkish. Anyway, there he was, a slightly overweight 15 year-old, with nothing much to distinguish him from his uniformed classmates – Genghis!

Now, of course, I think nothing of it. I have worked with and taught several more Genghises, and suffered no physical harm at their hands. I have had colleagues and students, to all intents and purposes, quite normal, well-adjusted human beings, despite carrying the name Atilla. Kubilays and Timurs have passed through my classes arousing no more interest than if they were so many Michaels or Tylers. Nevertheless, my initial experience of shock, or at least surprise, illustrates an essential disjuncture between the world-views of the peoples of Western Europe and Western Asia. Clearly, an educated, law-abiding, middle-class Turkish couple choosing to name their new-born son Genghis, are unlikely to have in mind the same picture of a barbarian chieftain leading his marauding hordes out of Central Asia that the name conjures up in Western circles.

Genghis Khan and his Heirs -
Exhibition at the Sabancı Museum

What I want to explore here is the thesis that Western views of Turkey have been shaped by historical and societal events going back at least a millennium and a half and continuously reinforced by subsequent events, and by religious and political leaders for their own, sometimes questionable, purposes.

I’m taking, then, as an arbitrary starting point, the activities of one, Atilla the Hun, who terrorised the Western and Eastern Roman Empires in the 5^th century CE. This legendary character headed an empire that extended well into Western Europe. His military forays took him through Germany into France and Italy, and threatened the twin capitals of Rome and Constantinople. Atilla’s origins are not entirely clear, but certainly the Huns emerged from Central Asia, and may have spoken a Turkic language. Undoubtedly there is a long-standing association, in European minds, of Turks with mayhem, rapine, and generally uncivilised, anti-social activities.


For some reason, this association does not seem to extend to Arabs, despite the fact that the armies of the Prophet swept through North Africa and into Spain in the 7^th century CE, establishing an empire that stretched from Spain to India. Perhaps it is because Europeans recognise the debt we owe to Arab scholars who preserved the writings and wisdom of the classical world, which later fuelled the European Renaissance. Or perhaps it is that the rise of the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks established them as leaders of the Muslim world, relegating the Arabs to a minor role in international affairs. Perhaps too, the European mind, for some centuries, considered it unnecessary to distinguish between Turk and Arab, finding it convenient to tar both with the black brush of Islam. In recent years, with rising fears in the West of cross-cultural clashes and axes of evil, the focus has tended to be on the adherents of Islam rather than on Arabs, who have arguably contributed more to the negative image of Muslims in the US and Europe.


Whatever the case, it was the Turks who bore the brunt of Western Europe’s fear of and antipathy towards the Muslim religion, which seems to have emerged strongly in the 11^th century. It was in 1096 that Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade – an army (or two) of Christians from Western Europe who set off on the sacred task of defending Christendom from the Muslim ‘invaders’, and liberating the Holy Places (Jerusalem etc) from their clutches. As usual, there is debate amongst historians as to the exact reasons for this and subsequent waves of Crusaders that launched themselves eastwards.

In the first place, there was certainly an appeal addressed by the Byzantine Emperor Alexus Comnenus to the Pope in Rome for his help in fighting the Seljuk Turks who had recently defeated the Eastern Christians in a major battle, and begun serious incursions into Syria, Palestine and Asia Minor. While it may seem at first attractive to imagine brother Christians helping each other against a common (heathen) enemy, in fact, there was little love lost between the Eastern and Western churches. It had been only 40 years since the final schism in 1054, which firmly established their mutual incompatibility.

Secondly, it is certainly true that Western Christians were at least partially motivated by the belief that the Holy Places of their religion had fallen into the hands of unbelievers. It is also true, however, that these places had been in the hands of Arab Muslims for more than 400 years. Why the sudden concern, we might ask? Undoubtedly the Turks posed a threat of a different kind. The Eastern Christians had managed to maintain a buffer against Arab Islam, and Constantinople had withstood their attempts to conquer it. The existence of this Eastern barrier had protected Europe from Muslim invasion at a time when it would have been particularly vulnerable. The Arabs were obliged to take the long way around, via North Africa, into Spain, by which time, we may imagine, their supply lines were somewhat stretched. Suddenly, however, in 1071, the Byzantines had been heavily defeated by a Muslim Turkish army – it could have looked like the thin edge of a new wedge.

Third, this event happened at a crucial time in European history. European Christendom was a fragile, relatively new bud. The Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne that had emerged in the mid  8^th century, had fallen apart by the middle of the 9^th. A century later, the Pope had found a new hero in a German king by the name of Otto, and begun grooming him to be temporal ruler of a new Holy Roman Empire. However, Europeans at that time had no real concept of themselves as such, and Western Europe was divided into numerous warring feudal states. The Seljuk Turks, then, might be seen as a convenient threat whose existence could be used as a means of uniting Europeans against a common enemy. In fact, they were not ignorant barbarians, as their art, architecture, literature and philosophy show. Educated Westerners know the verses of Omar Khayyam, through the translation of Edward FitzGerald, and the Sufi philosophy of Mevlana Rumi. But religious leaders, and seekers of political power are not always interested in the whole truth, and a timely war can help paper over internal divisions and generate a unity of spirit and purpose, as Margaret Thatcher and the Bush father and son can verify.

So, the Seljuk Turks became the Pope’s bogeyman to terrify Western Christians into laying aside their internecine squabbles and uniting under the banner of true religion. They were assured of finding a place in paradise in return for fighting the good fight against the Saracens, pagans, infidels and Ishmaelites who were polluting the Holy Places. It may also be that the Holy Fathers were a little envious of their Eastern Christian brethren who had retained a temporal empire to go with their spiritual dominion, and saw an opportunity to bring them down a peg or two. Certain it is that the forces of the 4^th Crusade in 1204 took time on the way to engaging the Muslim foe, to stop over long enough to besiege, conquer and loot the Christian city of Constantinople. That city remained in Western hands until the Byzantines were able to retake it some 50 years later, by which time much of its fabled wealth had been relocated to Italian cities, and Byzantine power had been seriously diminished.

Genghis Khan, on the other hand, deserves much of his bad press. His armies swept through Central Asia and the Near East in the early 13^th century. After his death, his son Ogedai continued the thrust into Hungary and Poland. Whether or not the Mongols were Turks is a moot point, but certainly they were not Muslims at this time in history. Muslims in fact suffered at least as much as Christians from Mongol depredations – Persia (modern Iran) was invaded and much of Islamic-Arabic civilisation was destroyed. Ironically, it may well be that Genghis and his Mongol hordes thus assisted Christendom by facilitating their re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

Timur, (Tamerlane), another Central Asian warlord, and another open to several interpretations, is in fact less known in the West, perhaps because he caused more damage to Turks, fellow Muslims and Hindus than to Christians. The Ottoman Empire was on the rise in the late 14^th century when Timur and his armies defeated Sultan Beyazit, creating an inter-regnum and a serious blow to the emerging power in Anatolia and the Balkans.

Nevertheless, all these events and characters have been lumped together in European folk history to create an image of ‘The Turk’ that, by the 16^th century had crystalised into a heathen figure of darkness and savagery. I haven’t personally counted them, but I have it from a source[1] I have no cause to question, that there are thirty-five references to Turks in Shakespeare’s plays, all of them referring to a fearsome threat in the East. Indicative of the confusion in European minds is the play ‘Tamburlaine’, written by Christopher Marlowe in 1587. Timur, as discussed above, undoubtedly had a far more recent connection to Central Asian Turkishness than the Ottoman Sultan, but English theatregoers were encouraged to cheer Beyazit’s defeat and humiliation at the hands of Marlowe’s hero.  Of course, the reign of Kanuni Süleyman (1520-66), known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent, marked the pinnacle of power of the Ottoman Empire, as his armies achieved dominance through North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe as far as the gates of Vienna, while his navy controlled much of the Mediterranean. The existence and power of the Ottoman Empire at this time were a major spur to the ocean-going explorations of Western European nations, who needed a safer route to the East.

The Ottomans were not, in fact Turks, in any genetic sense of the word. It had been nearly 500 years since their ancestors had conquered the Byzantine army at Manzikert. Modern DNA analysis suggests that the genes of those Seljuk invaders had been thinned by intermarriage with the indigenous inhabitants of Asia Minor. Ottoman Sultans filled their harem with toothsome young lasses from the lands they had conquered, and by the 16^th century, Süleiman’s Turkic blood would have been well diluted. To be Turkish, in fact, did not convey a very high status in a cosmopolitan empire whose citizens included Christians, Jews, Arabs and Persians. European use of the title ‘The Grand Turk’ to refer to the Ottoman Sultan, and the name ‘Turkey’ to refer to their dominions, likely sprang from an attempt to belittle and diminish a people they, perforce, had to respect and fear. Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, had his work cut out for him in his attempt to forge a unifying identity from those who remained after other national groups had split off and gone their separate ways.

However, I am jumping ahead of myself here. We are still back around the turn of the 17^th century, but the tide was turning in European affairs. The Ottoman Empire was still a major force, and would remain so until its final demise in the First World War. However, new military technology and training, professional armies and the ability to work together against a common enemy were beginning to give an edge whereby rare and infrequent victories over the Ottomans became more regular and eventually the expected norm. Fear of ‘The Turk’ began to be replaced by a curiosity and interest in things Turkish. As trade and diplomatic relationships increased, wealthy Westerners began to imitate and adopt aspects of Ottoman/Turkish art and culture – it was known as ‘Turquerie’, and was particularly fashionable from the 16^th to the 18^th century. By the 19^th century, as the Near East became increasingly accessible to the Western traveller, ‘Orientalist’ artists began to portray ‘Ottoman culture as colourful, exotic and sensual, qualities to be seen the work of the French painter Ingres who was particularly keen on depicting ‘odalisques’ – less exalted members of the Ottoman harem whom Ingres is most unlikely to have seen, particularly in the unclothed state in which he was fond of showing them.

From quaint, sensual and exotic, it was but a skip and a jump for Europeans to accept the diagnosis of the Ottoman Empire, generally attributed to Czar Nicholas I of Russia, as ‘The Sick Man of Europe.’ As the 19^th century wore on, the major European powers became more confident in using the Ottomans in their power games, now attacking, now supporting, as they manoeuvred around to ensure that each got the best deal when the ‘Sick Man’ finally expired. The Ottomans, and thereby the Turks, came to be seen as enfeebled, dissolute and corrupt, and fair game for Western empire-builders as they jockeyed for position in the new world that was emerging. It is entirely understandable. The once-feared enemy had become vulnerable, and it was too tempting to mock and belittle now that the threat had passed.

Nevertheless, it can be dangerous to start believing your own propaganda. I have written elsewhere on the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, and the war that led to the emergence of modern Turkey in the 1920s, so I don’t intend to repeat the details here. It is pretty clear, though, in retrospect, that the British and their Allies in the First World War seriously underestimated the ability of Turks to defend their own shores from foreign invasion. It is also clear that certain influential figures in the military misrepresented ‘The Turk’ to the British public. Again, I dealt somewhat harshly with Winston Churchill in an earlier piece, so I’m leaving the poor man alone this time. There is another gentleman, however, who does deserve a little attention. T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) was undoubtedly a scholar and a gentleman (at least on his father’s side, though he apparently adopted his mother’s family name, for reasons we don’t need to go into here). Nevertheless, it does now seem that some of the more titillating passages in his ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ may have been influenced by his quirky sexual proclivities, which included paying a military colleague to administer beatings to him.

Coming up to more modern times, I recently watched ‘Midnight Express’, that 70s classic film of a young American’s experiences in a Turkish prison. Well, I guess, it has come to be recognised as a somewhat exaggerated and distorted presentation of Turkey and its justice system. Billy Hayes, the real-life victim, and the scriptwriter who turned his book into a screenplay have subsequently admitted that fairly major liberties were taken in the making of the film. Perhaps there is no significance in the fact that the owner of MGM studios at the time was an Armenian-American, but you can’t help wondering. I have to say that, as I watched it, I couldn’t escape the feeling that, perhaps, US authorities, concerned at the activities of their young citizens abroad, might have had some input, in the interests of scaring them into being more careful. After all, Billy Hayes confessed in the film, if only to his father, that his aim was to make money by selling hashish back in the USA. I don’t know what the law says in Turkey or America, but in New Zealand, if you are caught in possession of more than a certain amount of a particular illegal substance, there is an assumption that you are a dealer.

Well, Turks get a bad press; I guess that’s what I want to say. Some of it, perhaps they deserve. Show me the perfect country and I’ll move there tomorrow. But a lot of it they don’t deserve, and I’ve tried to show how our attitudes in the West have been shaped by ignorance, and sometimes, even by deliberate distortions. Turks themselves are not wholly innocent in the unfortunate image they have abroad. I recently asked some Turkish friends if Genghis Khan and Atilla the Hun were Turks. ‘Probably not,’ was the unanimous answer. And perhaps, to be fair, those names are not as common in classrooms as they once were. But sabre-rattling is an activity much-loved of nationalists everywhere, and the ignorant are easily exploited by unscrupulous politicians. In the end, the only defence is true knowledge. Seek it out!

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[1] Gönül Bakay: http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-multiculturalism/article_2273.jsp