Protecting Turkey’s Byzantine Heritage

Last weekend we took a ride on the new Marmaray Metro. We dove deep underground near the market at Kadıköy (ancient Chalcedon), boarded a train and rode one stop to Ayrılık Çeşme at ground level where we transferred to another line, plunging immediately into the earth again. Passing under Üsküdar (formerly Scutari of Florence Nightingale fame) we entered the tube that would take us, in a brief six minutes, below the waters of the Bosporus to Sirkeci, once terminal of the legendary ‘Orient Express’. Our destination, however, was one stop further, Yenikapı (Newgate), in days gone by, site of Roman Constantinople’s main harbour of Theodosius Caesarius.

Sad to say, not much of this history is readily detectable by the casual observer today. There are Eastern Orthodox (and Armenian) churches in Kadıköy, but none survive from the days when Roman bishops held their Ecumenical Council there in 451 CE to codify tenets of the new state religion, Christianity. There is, I understand, a small museum dedicated to that legendary Imperial British Lady of the Lamp, but it is tucked away in one corner of a vast military barracks, and requires official permission to visit. There is certainly a cavernous excavation next to the modern station at Yenikapı where archeologists unearthed thirty-five sunken Roman galleys and other treasures, delaying completion of the Metro line by two or three years – and a purpose-built museum to house and display these relics and artifacts, so all is not hopelessly lost.

The Yenikapı Metro station is an impressive modern structure that will eventually be a major transport hub for Turkey’s largest city, providing connections to four rail lines as well as access to passenger and vehicular ferries crossing the Sea of Marmara and the mouth of the Bosporus to Asian Istanbul and other cities in Anatolia. The station’s interior is tiled with images representing the layers of history uncovered during excavations, dating back to 6,500 BCE.

Exiting the station, we crossed the street and set off towards Divan Yolu, once the Mese, the main shopping thoroughfare of Roman Constantinopolis. We didn't have any particular destination in mind so we took a zigzag course through back streets to see what turned up. What we chanced upon was a brick edifice of antique design, sporting a minaret but clearly owing its architecture to an earlier period of history. It was built on a kind of raised terrace and accessible by a broad stairway. Beneath the stairs however, was an intriguing entrance that we decided to explore first. Inside was a very large circular space filled with small shops selling leather goods, jackets, bags and such. Of more interest, to me at least, were columns of obvious antiquity, topped by carved capitals.

Bodrum Mosque - Myrelaion Church

To cut a long story short, we visited the so-called Bodrum Mosque on the terrace above and questioned one or two locals, without learning much about the history of our discovery. A little research was necessary and I can now share with you the following.

Jan Kostenec, writing in the ‘Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World’ identifies the circular building as a rotunda, built in the 5^th century and reputedly the second largest in the Roman/Byzantine world after the Pantheon in Rome. Experts apparently argue about its original function. Possibly it was part of a palace for the royal princess Arcadia; or perhaps a market place with a secondary function as a place of execution, similar to the practice in present day Saudi Arabia. Much later the rotunda was converted to a cistern and used as the foundation for a palace built in the 9^th century. Subsequently it was reinvented again as a nunnery when its owner Romanos Lekapenos became emperor in 920 BCE. A small church known as Myrelaion attached to the convent survives as the present day Bodrum Mosque whose architecture had first caught our attention. It is said to contain the remains of six members of the Lekapenos dynasty.

Well, it is undoubtedly a bathetic end for a 1,500 year-old Roman rotunda to find itself functioning as a not-very-up-market bazaar for bargain-hunting tourists. And very likely there are Eastern Orthodox Greeks, archeologists and historians of the ancient world who would be disappointed to see a 1,200 year-old Byzantine church serving as a place for Islamic worship. Especially since very few of the congregation would have any awareness of, or interest in the history of the building in which they pray. The Turkish Government and its citizens come in for a good deal of criticism for their careless neglect and even destruction of their archeological inheritance. I read a report published by the TASK Foundation (for the Protection of History, Archeology, Arts and Culture) in 2001 entitled ‘Archeological Destruction in Turkey’. The report was prepared by a group labeled collectively the TAY Project and aimed to document all the archeological settlements in Anatolia and Thrace - a monumental task but indisputably worthy.

The report lists 313 sites all over Turkey representing periods from Paleolithic to Medieval Roman/Byzantine and explains why and how they are under threat. The most common reasons given are uncontrolled housing development and road building, which are said to account for fifty percent of the destruction. Among other causes, one is 'unconscious usage', an example of which is the tilling of the old defensive ditch surrounding the walls of ancient Constantinople for market gardens.

Well, those TASK people are right, of course. The land area of modern Turkey has been home to more human civilisations and prehistoric settlements than probably anywhere else on the face of the earth. It is a paradise for archeologists and a priceless treasure house of antiquities holding keys to unlock many mysteries of humanity's march to post-modernity. Still, the implication that destruction only began after the Ottoman conquest, and worsened under the Turkish Republic is maybe a little unfair.

Statue of the Tetrarchs -
note the prosthetic foot

Much of Imperial Constantinople was, in fact, already in ruins by the time Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror led his troops into the city in 1453. Our rotunda, for example, is believed to have been in a ruined state by the 8^th century, before being rebuilt in its new palatial identity. The population of Constantinople had declined from an estimated one million to around fifty thousand by the mid-15^th century and nothing remained of the once great Roman/Byzantine Empire beyond the mighty walls. Much of the destruction had in fact been wreaked by fellow Christians of the Fourth Crusade who sacked and pillaged the city in 1204 CE. An example of this is a porphyry sculpture known as the Tetrarchs, currently located in the façade of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. The statue depicts four Roman emperors who ruled concurrently from 293 to 313 CE and originally adorned the Philadelphion, one of the main squares of Roman Constantinople. Archeologists working around our Bodrum Mosque in the 1960s unearthed part of the missing foot of the fourth emperor. You can see it in the Istanbul Archeology Museum - though the statue in Venice is probably a tad more impressive.

It should be remembered that by the time of the Fourth Crusade, Constantine's capital was already more than eight hundred years old, at least four centuries older than Manhattan, New York, which itself has lost many of its heritage buildings, and is looking distinctly seedy in parts. It is only quite recently that we have started to become aware of the level of civilisation attained by Native Americans before they were largely wiped out after the arrival of Europeans.

Quite naturally the victorious Ottomans wanted to build symbols of their own power in their new capital, as we can see from the imperial mosques and other monumental structures dotted around older parts of the city. At the same time, however, those early sultans encouraged the return of Christian former citizens as well as the immigration of others such as Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Many churches continued to perform their original purpose. Undoubtedly some were converted to mosques, but it could be argued that this conversion preserved architecture and interior decoration that might otherwise have been destroyed. The marvellous mosaics and frescoes to be seen in St Sophia and Chora churches (now museums) were not removed, but plastered over out of Islamic sensitivity to idolatry, and have been subsequently revealed by archeologists in all their glory. These beautiful works of Greco-Roman art date, however, from the 10^th century or later, older ones having been removed by Orthodox Christian authorities themselves during the Iconoclastic period brought on by spiritual competition from the dynamic new Muslim religion.

Certainly much of the character of old Constantinople/Istanbul has been lost during the rapid urban development of the Republican period. Again, however, mitigating arguments can be made. At least Turkey's industrial revolution with its accompanying rural to urban migration and rapid population growth has taken place in an age more inclined to the preservation of antiquities. How much remains of medieval London or Paris, for example? Further, the Republic's new secular leaders ordered at least those two major Byzantine churches to be converted from mosques to museums, not ideal perhaps from an Orthodox Christian viewpoint, but arguably less offensive.

At the same time, however, as New Yorkers like Pete Hamill[1] will sadly tell you, no city can be preserved in a nostalgic time warp. The population of Istanbul has exploded from two million in 1970 to something like fifteen million today, with all that implies in terms of building construction, demands for water, power and telecommunications, roads, bridges, public transport, industrial development, retail outlets, sports facilities and entertainment centres. Town-planning authorities at national and local government level are caught in a constant tug-of-war between the demands of modern city-dwellers and the wishes of archeologists. 

Istanbul stands on possibly the world's largest unexcavated archeological site. Clearly, however great your interest in history, you will find it hard to justify demolishing a large chunk of the modern city to gain access to what lies below. Construction of the Marmaray Metro may have buried irretrievably places of archeological importance - but without it much would have remained inaccessible and undiscovered.

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[1] American journalist and writer of many books including ‘Downtown – My Manhattan’

Threat to Democracy in Turkey

Much ink is spilled and breath expended within Turkey and beyond its shores on the ‘increasing polarisation’ of the population. Generally this phenomenon is attributed to the machinations of ‘the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP)’ government. Most recently I read of a workshop planned for May 2014 in the enlightened Aegean coastal city of Izmir, entitled ‘Encounters with Europe in an Era of Democratic Stagnation in Turkey’.

The convenors, from Bilgi University in Istanbul, speak, in their abstract for the workshop, of an ‘authoritarian regime’, ‘legal and de facto restrictions [on] the freedom of press’, ‘use of disproportionate force by the police’, ‘anger and resentment against the government’s policies’, and ‘the EU . . . stressing its concerns.’

CHP's new mayoral candidate
Sevinç Özdemir

Well, all these things may be true, and if so, those Bilgi University academics are to be admired and congratulated for their courage in organizing such a workshop and allowing their names to be published. However, for all the talk of ‘authoritarian regimes’ Turkey remains a multi-party parliamentary democracy holding free elections every four years. What really puzzles me is the apparent inability of the opposite pole of this ‘polarised society’ to get their act together and support a political party capable of mounting a serious challenge to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) people.

It has longed seemed to me, and at last I hear other voices singing the same refrain, that the greatest threat to democracy in Turkey is not the paternalistic certainty of AK Party Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, but the lack of a parliamentary opposition with the nous to come up with some credible alternative policies or programmes that will encourage people to vote for them in sufficient numbers. It is not enough merely to say NO to everything the government of the day proposes, and engage in personal attacks on its leader (or his wife).

Unfortunately, on the contrary, the other two main parties (MHP – Nationalist People’s Party, and CHP – Republican People’s Party) represented in Turkey’s parliament seem completely devoid of any positive ideas to offer the electorate. What is worse, after saying NO and NO again to the government’s ‘Islamist-rooted’ proposals, they then do a complete about-face and adopt the policy they had just finished slamming the AK Party for. Possibly this is tacit recognition of the fact that Turkey’s population is ninety-nine percent Muslim – but at the same time it shows a rather sad ignorance of very real problems within the country that could be addressed by a serious opposition ‘people’s’ party. Three that spring to mind are:

• The education system. Pretty much everyone agrees that education in Turkey is unsatisfactory at every level, and the government, after ten years in office, has so far failed to show that it has any idea how to fix it.
• Conditions of employment and rights in the workplace. According to government statistics, Turkey has a workforce of twenty-five million, of whom a mere 3.9 million belong to any kind of trade union. As a result, collective bargaining is almost non-existent and workplace conditions are very much in favour of employers.
• Many work places display on the wall somewhere a framed certificate proudly announcing that here workers are paid asgari ücret – the basic minimum wage – currently amounting to 773 TL net per month (about $US 384), not much to support a family on, even in Turkey.

Instead of formulating policies to rectify these problems, and in so doing winning themselves a good deal of popular support, recent news items tell me that:

• The Republican People’s party, supposedly the heirs of Atatürk’s secular legacy, have nominated a head-scarved lady by the name of Sevinç Özdemir as a mayoral candidate in the forth-coming local body elections.
• Not to be outdone in the race for the Islamic vote, a Nationalist People’s Party member of parliament Yusuf Halaçoğlu has introduced a bill proposing that the 1,500 year-old Byzantine cathedral church of St Sophia, established as a museum by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1935, should be converted back into a mosque, as it was after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

What can you say? Will the true secular democrats in Turkey please stand up?

Tomb Robbers and Cultural Linguistics

Do different languages confer different personalities? The question was raised in an article I chanced upon the other day. The magazine was The Economist, and I confess it's not part of my regular reading fare. Nevertheless, the piece struck a chord with me because I am pretty sure I become a different person in certain subtle ways when I speak Turkish.

It’s not just that there is a whole range of set phrases in Turkish you can trot out in almost every imaginable social situation, though that’s part of it: when someone cooks you a meal, emerges from the shower or hairdresser, is working when you are not; when a friend’s relative has passed away, someone does you a good turn or you want to admire a new baby, there’s a neat little ready-made phrase you can offer. On my annual trips downunder to see family, I often feel tongue-tied in these situations.

But there is more to it than that. Turks, in fact, have a saying: “Bir lisan, bir insan; iki lisan, iki insan” . . . “One language, one person; two languages, two people”. As an example, Turkish has no word for frustration, that “feeling of distress and annoyance resulting from an inability to change or achieve something”[1]. What Turkish does have (and English does not) is a marvellous verb halletmek, meaning to find a solution for a problem, where the solution may not necessarily be one hundred percent ethical or even legal, as in Hallederiz, abi – We’ll sort it out, mate.

You can understand the cultural need for such a word from the existence of another delightful verb oyalamak, meaning to put someone off with trumped-up excuses. This activity is especially found in offices or workplaces where someone in a position of responsibility doesn’t actually want to do something, or accept responsibility for something that you quite reasonably thought he or she should do or accept responsibility for. A foreigner like myself will probably feel some frustration in this situation, whereas a Turk will find a way to halletmek the matter.

Turkey's Minister of Culture inspecting sarcophagus
(Click for a slideshow)

One of my regular sources of news and information is the Turkish daily Hürriyet. Last weekend a small item announced the opening of an unusual exhibition in the south Aegean town of Milas: İbretlik Sergi. Well, sergi is Turkish for exhibition, no problem with that – but I had to look up the other word, and I now know it means a lesson learned the hard way, in the school of hard knocks, as our old Grammar School headmaster Henry Cooper used to say. No single word for that in English!

The exhibition apparently features tools employed by a gang police caught in the act of grave robbing. OK, a little ghoulish interest there, perhaps, but hard to see crowds flocking in, you may think – but listen up. The grave in question is believed to be the last resting place of Hekatomnos, King of Caria in the 4^th century BCE, and father of the better known Mausolus, whose monumental burial place in nearby Halicarnassus (Bodrum) was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Carians, it seems, are something of a historical mystery. Their civilisation existed in southwest Anatolia long before Greek-speaking peoples arrived in the first millennium BCE. There is some relationship with the Leleges, indigenous inhabitants of Anatolia, and both spoke a now extinct Indo-European language related to Hittite. The Carian kingdom was incorporated into the Persian Empire in 545 BCE but our man Hekatomnos apparently managed to achieve a measure of independence for his people. His capital was Mylasa, but other important cities were Knidos, Myndos and Latmos, all of which sites can be seen by the visitor to modern Turkey. In the mountains above present-day Milas archeologists are working on the site of a temple to Zeus Labraundos, a cult said to have been founded by Hekatomnus. Its symbol is labrys, a double-edged axe symbolising creation and said to be the origin of the word labyrinth.

Anyway, it seems that the Milas tomb raiders had rented a property adjacent to the site and, over a period of time, dug two tunnels six and eight metres long into the crypt. According to reports, the gentlemen involved are locals but clearly they knew what they were looking for, knew exactly where to look, and had some serious financial backing. The equipment they had at their disposal is not what would normally be found in a Turkish villager's toolkit given that they had to drill through a thick marble wall to enter the burial space.

Turkey's Minister of Culture, Ertuğrul Günay announced the discovery of the robbery back in 2010, and said at the time it was obvious that artifacts and treasures had already been removed, presumably for sale on the lucrative antiquities black market. Fortunately the gang was apprehended before they had managed to make off with the large elaborately carved sarcophagus, or the coloured frescoes decorating the interior walls. The Archeological Institute of America listed the Milas tomb as one of the top ten discoveries of 2010, so it is a little disappointing, surprising even, that thieves got to it first.

Of course the entire area of Turkey is one vast actual and potential archeological dig, containing continuous layers of civilisation dating back at least ten thousand years, so it is inevitable that some wonderful new site will on occasion be accidentally discovered by a farmer working in his field or a tourist out for a stroll. However, it is evident that this tomb was not such a chance find. In April last year the government of Turkey made an official application to have UNESCO add it to that organisation's list of important historical sites. In their submission, the writers note that the mausoleum of Hekatomnos was discovered by a German scholar Jacob Spon back in 1675. Admittedly the burial chamber the thieves were working in was ten metres underground, but you would think that, in the intervening 325 years someone might have thought it worthwhile to fossick around a little below the surface.

Well, clearly someone finally did. Ten locals were netted in the police raid back in 2010, and five of them have been subsequently charged with offences under Turkey's strict laws relating to the theft and smuggling of antiquities. However, Mr Günay is convinced, probably correctly, that those taken into custody were not working alone, and he has vowed to investigate the likelihood that they were in the pay of a person or persons outside the country who were providing scientific and financial backing.

I have heard it offered as an excuse for the retention of priceless ancient treasures in offshore museums that Turkey is unable to look after its history and allows its own people to destroy relics of ancient civilisations. It'll be an interesting twist if wealthy foreign backers are proved to have been employing local labour to do their acquisitive dirty work for them. I have found Turkish people generally to be honest and tolerant, particularly in their dealings with foreigners. I will be sad if the hard lesson they learn from events like this results in a tougher attitude towards us.

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[1] According to my Apple desktop dictionary

TCA Commemorates the Lasting Legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

The Turkish Coalition of America posted this tribute to the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, who died on 10 November 1938:

‘On November 10th, TCA paid tribute to the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who led the Turkish National War of Liberation, founded the modern Republic of Turkey and launched an extraordinary series of reforms that continue to inspire the Turkish nation. World-over, Ataturk is honored as one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th Century. In the words of Scottish historian, Patrick Balfour (the 3rd Baron Kinross): “the soldier in Ataturk had saved his country, the statesman in him had won for it the honorable peace, the reformer in him was now to make of it a new country.”

‘Ataturk: The Soldier

In the life of Mustafa Kemal, World War I was a pivotal period, during which time he had emerged as a military hero when he repelled an Allied invasion during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. This successful military campaign earned Mustafa Kemal a distinguished military reputation and wide-spread admiration.

‘Ataturk: The Statesman

The War of Liberation was fought on multiple fronts. Throughout 1921, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, the army of the Grand National Assembly won victory after victory against invading enemy forces ultimately pushing them out of Anatolia. The Allied powers of World War I now had to negotiate a new peace treaty.

‘Ataturk: The Reformer

From the establishment of the Republic in 1923, to his death on November 10, 1938, in just 15 years, Mustafa Kemal introduced a sweeping set of reforms which constituted one of the world’s most effective campaigns of modernisation.’ Read more . . .

Human Rights, Democracy and Islam in Turkey and the Middle East

The longer I live in Turkey the more I come to understand the incredible diversity of this allegedly homogeneous country. One of the first statistics a visitor learns is that Turkey's population is ninety-nine percent Muslim. One of the most quoted sayings of the nation's founder and first President MK Ataturk is the one that goes: ‘How happy is the one who says I am a Turk!’

One face of Islam in Turkey

The official homogeneity, however, masks on-the-ground reality. A superficial indicator of this is the clothing worn by women in Turkey. The wearing of some kind of headscarf is traditional in this part of the world, and you will meet every variation, from the black burka covering all but the eyes, to the brightly coloured silk Armine fashion accessory complementing designer jeans and stylish make-up. Young ladies in the latter category are quite likely to be seen strolling the streets arm-in-arm with a bare-headed mini-skirted female friend, or publicly embracing a male one (probably without a miniskirt). Those women enveloped in black from head to toe are anathema to the secular fashionistas of Nişantaşı and Baghdad Ave, many of whom nonetheless fast during the holy month of Ramazan.

On a deeper level, it is estimated that ten to twenty percent of Turkey's population belongs to the Alevi sect, whose brand of Islam stems from the Shi’ites, one of the two main branches of Islam. Origins of the split date from the early days when the Prophet Mohammed died without making it clear who should take over his leadership role. Turkey's Muslims are predominantly Sunni, but the Alevi group, while maintaining a distinct identity, seems to have little in common with the fundamentalist Shi’ites who hold sway in Iran, or even the Alawi dictatorship of beleaguered Syrian president, Bashar al Assad. Further complicating the matter is the fact that many, though by no means all Alevis are ethnic Kurds, another twenty percent demographic who supported the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, but have resisted cultural and linguistic assimilation.

Apart from these major subsets, the boundaries of the republic contain several other ethnic, linguistic and religious groups: the Laz of the Black Sea region, Arab speakers in the southeast, descendants of Circassian refugees from the Caucasus region. Communities of Armenians and Eastern Orthodox are to be found, their churches and cemeteries occupying prominent sites, especially in Istanbul. Jews remain, still performing rites in the Ladino dialect their ancestors brought from Spain in the 15^th century. There is a sprinkling of Catholic and Protestant churches catering, one assumes, to small local congregations, with a little proselytising on the side - and one or two evangelical Christian sects clearly carry out missionary activities.

As a result of the foregoing, there are two conflicting forces at work in modern Turkey. One is the homogenising assimilating process set in motion of necessity by the republican founders back in the 1920s when armed struggle alone would save the land from division, partition and annihilation by the victorious allies after World War One. That struggle could only be initiated by creating a national identity with common roots of history, religion, language and culture, whose owners’ sacred duty was to defend the land on which they stood. Creating and sustaining this identity required a certain amount of myth-making, propaganda and suppression of dissent.

The other force, steadily gaining strength, is one acknowledging the diversity of Turkey's population, and seeking recognition and equal rights for all citizens. Tension between these two forces has been causing conflict such as the so-called ‘Gezi Park’ protests in the early summer. Perhaps surprisingly, far from indicating a failure of democracy in Turkey, this tension is entirely healthy. The democratisation process implemented by Turkey’s government over the past ten years has been slowly granting acceptance and equality to groups previously marginalised. Ironically, this reforming government is the one accused by some citizens of harbouring an ‘Islamist’ agenda - while the protesters are the conservatives supporting military enforcement of exclusive, so-called secular Kemalist values.

On location in Mardin, SE Turkey

I try to keep a finger on what's going on in the world of Turkish soap operas. It's a losing struggle, since there seem to be dozens of them, and they generally run for two years at most. Many of them are obsessed with intrigues in the lives of the rich and famous, showcasing palatial houses in the stratosphere of Istanbul's top-end residential market. While channel-surfing the other day, however, I did come across one that provided a refreshing alternative to the usual fare. ‘Adını Kalbime Yazdım’, (I’ve Written Your Name in My Heart), moved, in the episode I watched, between that Istanbul world of wealth and privilege, and the southeastern city of Mardin near the Syrian border, where the architecture is distinctly Arabic and many of the locals speak Turkish as a second language. The main man, Ömer, a tribal leader, is evidently making a life for himself in the western metropolis, and is engaged to a fashionable young city girl. His mother, however, back in Mardin, has taken it on herself to promise her number one son to the daughter of a rival clan chief, in an attempt to patch up the blood feud that has been seething for years. Our guy speeds back to his hometown to sort things out, but has clearly lost touch with Mardin realities. Rejecting the local girl after agreement has been reached is an unforgivable affront to the honour of both families. His own brother feels obliged to cleanse the sin in the time-honoured tradition - with a bullet.

Recently there was a conference in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya: An International Symposium on Children At Risk and In Need of Protection. A press release announced that one in three new brides in Turkey is under eighteen on her wedding day, and that thirty-five percent of these girls are actually ‘second wives’ - understood locally to mean a girl taken by a man in an unofficial ‘religious’ ceremony when he feels he needs a little more excitement than his first wife is providing.

The point I want to make here is that there is more to Turkey than what is common among the secular elite of Istanbul who move from fashionable Etiler, Nişantaşı or Baghdad Avenue to the ski slopes of Uludağ and the beach resorts of Bodrum and Antalya and back, with trips abroad for variety. Undoubtedly the gnomes of Brussels who oversee the European Union are well aware of this, which perhaps explains their reluctance to see Turkey's eighty million people gain free access to their civilised Christian club. It is certainly a better reason than their stated objections to the Cyprus problem, abuse of human rights and police violence against citizens.

As suggested above, a major irony of the Middle East these days (and for our purposes here let's include Turkey by reason of its Muslim identity) is that so-called ‘Islamist’ political parties are often the ones championing human rights, participatory democracy and national sovereignty. ‘Secular’ leaders, in contrast, are more likely to be reactionary, authoritarian and subject to undue influence by foreign powers. This creates difficulties in the minds of ordinary citizens in Western democracies, who are accustomed to associating religion, especially the Muslim religion, with intolerance and backwardness.

Take Iran as an example. Persia has been a land of high civilisation and culture since the dawn of history. This continued until the 18^th century when the Great Powers of Europe, especially Britain and Russia, began playing their expansionist games. The games turned to frenzy with the discovery and rise to prominence of oil as the energy to power the 20^th century. Anglo-petroleum interests moved in, the Middle East was occupied and divided into ‘spheres of interest’ and ‘mandates’ after the First World War, and a gentleman by the name of Reza Khan emerged from village obscurity and ascended to the throne of Persia with a little help from the Brits. Shah Riza himself apparently offended his erstwhile allies by insisting on Iran’s remaining neutral during the Second World War, and was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, the latter we must assume being more amenable to British Imperial interests. Fifty years passed with exploitation of the country's oil wealth by foreign interests aided and abetted by the local elite who enriched themselves at the expense of the ordinary Persian.

Finally, locals, in 1951, managed to elect a more sympathetic and effective Prime Minister who promptly nationalised the oil industry and encouraged the departure of Mohammed-Reza Shah. The new dawn didn’t last long, however. The British government, keen to protect its own interests but lacking former imperial might, persuaded the new US President Dwight D Eisenhower to get involved. The ensuing CIA-sponsored coup d'etat ousted PM Mossadeq and reinstated the Shah, who restored the status quo and ruled with an iron fist of oppression for twenty-six years until the Islamic revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini overturned the puppet monarchy in 1979. Well, I'm not extolling that gentleman's virtues or holding modern Iran up as a model of democratic freedom - but you might want to ask, who is responsible?

Similar case studies can be offered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States government supported and armed the Afghan Taliban fighters in their struggle against Russian invasion in the 1980s, then left the country to sort itself out after the Soviets had withdrawn. Saddam Hussein too was initially a useful US ally back then when he sent his military against the demon Iran. Unfortunately, the enemy of my enemy may quickly cease to be my friend, and become my enemy too. Sad to say, the US government seems still not to have learned this lesson. Instead of addressing the root causes of frustration and anger among Middle Eastern populations, President Obama's administration is continuing a policy of unilateral aggression, using its unmanned drones and SEAL commandos to invade the sovereign territory of other states and take out people considered hostile to its interests regardless of collateral casualties and damage to property.

Three examples. In early October, according to an article in Time, the CIA and FBI working with US military forces captured Abu Anas al-Liby, an alleged Al Qaeda leader in Tripoli, Libya. A few weeks later, in apparent retaliation for government complicity, the Libyan Prime Minister was kidnapped at gunpoint by local militia apparently working with ministerial personnel. I was talking to two exchange students from Libya the other day. They were keen to talk and their English was remarkably good. I couldn't resist asking how things are in their country these days. ‘Much better’, said one. ‘Nowadays everyone has a gun. In the old days it was just the police and the soldiers.’

Around the same time as the action in Tripoli, a contingent of SEALs (what a nice innocuous name for a murderous organisation) entered Somalia and inflicted casualties while failing in their objective of capturing or eliminating a leader of another terrorist group, Al Shabab. Just the other day a US drone strike was reported to have killed a Taliban leader in Pakistan, along with anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity at the time.

Successive US administrations supported the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for 29 years until he was overthrown by popular demand in 2011. His major appeal in the West was support for Israel, not something Egypt had been noted for in the past. Subsequent elections produced a government with Islamic connections (not altogether surprising in a country whose population is ninety percent Muslim). A military coup in July this year ousted the new democratically elected government and is bringing its leader, Mohammed Morsi, to trial. The US government was conspicuous in its refusal to acknowledge the event as a coup, but more recently has been obliged to take punitive economic measures against the military regime in the face of mounting international criticism of police and military brutality.

A new report by Amnesty International has accused the Egyptian regime of persecuting and rejecting refugees from the ongoing civil war in Syria. Of course it is a major problem for any country to deal with flows of penniless displaced persons from a neighbouring state, but these people are Muslims and fellow Arabs. In contrast Turkey, often the target of criticism by the Amnesty International people, has so far allowed around half a million fleeing Syrians to take refuge within its borders and is doing its best to provide for them. Fortunately the government of Turkey has managed so far to keep the country from descending into the sad state of its Arab neighbours. Anti-government protesters these days seem largely content with pressing the emergency stop button on the new rail link joining European and Asian Istanbul that passes through a chunnel beneath the Bosporus.

I wouldn't, in normal circumstances, look to a blond Hollywood movie starlet for guidance on political matters, but I was interested to see an article about Blake Lively in our local newspaper last weekend. The Turkish journalist had apparently caught up with her in Paris, and they were burbling on about the usual film star stuff - how the poor girl's biggest problem in life is trying not to eat chocolate so that she won't lose her figure. Before finishing, however, the interviewer couldn't resist seeking Ms Lively's opinion about democracy in Turkey and police abuse of human rights. I don't know anything about politics, she said, but I really want to go and see Turkey for myself. The young lady went up considerably in my estimation. Perhaps she could invite that sensitive novelist Paul Auster along when she comes.

Rugby in Turkey - Update

Back in September 2010 I wrote a piece about the emergence of rugby football as a sport in Turkey and the potential threat this could pose to the existing world order. I have to confess, I may have been a trifle premature. Three years have passed without the Turkish national team making the slightest ripple on the established pond of international rugby.

Well, these things take time. New Zealand selected its first national side in 1884, sending the lads on an eight-match tour of Australia. The sport’s overseeing body, the NZ Rugby Union, was formed in 1892, and the country’s reputation as an international powerhouse in the sport was established by the ‘All Black Originals’ team that toured the United Kingdom, France and North America in 1905-06 and won 34 of the 35 matches played.

The Turkish Rugby federation, in contrast, was founded in 2011, and the national team played its first match in 2012. Since, then, according to Wikipedia, the boys have played four matches for four victories, against Azerbaijan, Estonia and Slovakia (twice). Admittedly the opposition has not been of the strongest, but the victories have been convincing: 31-5 and 49-5, for example, in away matches against Slovakia and Estonia respectively.

Perhaps the best indication, however, that rugby is about to break into the field of serious sports in Turkey is the team’s appearance on the front page of the glamour supplement of our local newspaper ‘Hürriyet’. Soccer football is the national obsession, exceeding religion and politics in terms of media coverage. Footie of the round-ball variety is found, not only on the sports pages of newspapers, but in the economics section as well. Its stars (and their latest trophy girlfriends) are photographed by armies of paparazzis and published for the titillation of supporters and opponents alike. Ballots for controlling bodies such as the present maneuverings to choose a president for the Fenerbahçe Club arguably generate more excitement than political elections.

So, today’s article in the Hürriyet’s ‘Kelebek’ supplement is a recognition that something is going on. The piece is accompanied by a photograph showing eight of the national side baring their physiques in a photo op in the team dressing room. The writer goes on to say that there are now thirty-five teams around the country, not including women’s rugby, which is apparently also becoming popular. A national competition is due to start on 30 November. Organisers are planning to publish a calendar (along the lines of the French ‘Dieux du Stade’) featuring the flower of Turkish manhood wearing jockstraps or less in their search for sponsorship.

Well, getting back to New Zealand for a moment, no player or supporter of the All Black rugby team would give the national soccer squad the remotest chance of out-physique-ing them on a beefcake calendar – so I’m picking this could be the start of big things for rugby football in Turkey.