The Symbolism of Ashure

This month I want to reward my loyal readers who waded through my 3000-word piece on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in October. I hereby present you with 499 words on the subject of defining Turkish society. In fact, if the Guinness people have a category for ‘Absurdly short answers to impossibly complex questions’, I think I stand a fair chance of getting a mention in the next edition. However, to mute the howls of protest from wise heads who may feel that 499 words are insufficient to do justice to such a subject, I wish to plead in my defence that 500 was the word limit imposed for entries to an essay competition entitled ‘Changing Turkey in a Changing World’. The question was:

Where do you locate Turkish society in the civilizational context? Is it Eastern? Islamic? Western? Post-western? Sui generis? Please explain why.

Ok, here we go . . .

A Melange of Cultures

Each year Muslims prepare a delicacy known as ashure in remembrance of Noah and his people, who survived the flood of God’s anger. Search for the recipe of this ancient dessert. You will find many experts willing to share their knowledge – but little agreement, other than that it has a large variety of ingredients. For this reason, ashure has been used as a symbol of multi-culturalism. Yet, in the end, it is just a dessert – one item in the culinary wealth that is Turkish cuisine. How much more difficult to define the peoples currently in possession of this land lying at the meeting point of Asia and Europe!

Excavations at Çatal Höyük, near the Turkish city of Konya, have revealed a site dating from 7500 BCE, the oldest centre of civilisation on earth. The modern name, Konya, derives from ancient Iconium, which was a city in the time of the Hittite empire, around 1500 BCE. It was an important city in the kingdom of the Phrygians, in the 8th Century BCE, later falling to the Persians, and again to Alexander the Great, before being assimilated into the Roman Empire. The Book of Acts records that St Paul preached a sermon there around 50 CE. Its Christian history ended in the 11th century when Konya became the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate, and Muslims still visit the tomb of the Sufi mystic, Mevlana, in this iconic Turkish city.

Plunge a spade into the ground anywhere in Turkey, and you will find traces of similar antiquity. Preparations for Istanbul’s year as ‘European City of Culture, 2010’ have been slowed by the city’s archaeological riches. Work on the Metro line has unearthed thousand year-old harbours and ships from Istanbul’s days as capital of the Byzantine Empire. In the last thirty years, its population has swelled from three million to more than fifteen million. Shopping centres comparable to any in Europe exist in proximity to shantytowns of migrants from the Anatolian heartland, where methods of agriculture have changed little in two millennia.

The European stereotype of a Turk is the image evoked by names such as Genghis Khan – squat, swarthy, muscular Mongolian horsemen, thundering in hordes out of the Asian steppe, raping, pillaging and burning – locating themselves on the lower rungs of a rational person’s ladder of civilisation. Yet even the physical characteristics of a Turk are hard to classify. Almost every shade and combination of skin, eye and hair colour will be met, and a striking range of body shapes and sizes, from Naim Süleymanoglu, the pocket Hercules weightlifter who measured 1.47 m and won three Olympic gold medals from 1988 to 1996, to Sultan Kösem, who, at 2.47 m, was recently recognised by the Guinness people as the world’s tallest living man.

One thing can be said with certainty: attempting to glibly define Turkey and its people, and to locate them on some arbitrary continuum of civilisation is risky. Your stereotypes may bounce back to confound you.

Benevolent Dictator? Thinking About MK Atatürk

At 9.05 am on 10 November life in Turkey will come to a halt. In every city, town and village throughout the country, sirens will sound, traffic will stop, work-places and schools will fall silent, and for one minute, most of the 70 million population will stand in mute respect for a president who died at that precise minute on that day 71 years earlier.

Now I want to ask you a question. Do you even know who the political leader of your country was in 1938? OK, then, a follow-up: can you think of a leader in the history of your country for whom the whole nation as one would stop and pay such respect (readers in North Korea excepted)?

Perhaps the thing that most strikes first-time visitors to Turkey is the ubiquitous presence of a dead politician. All of those aforementioned cities, towns and villages have prominent statues of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, on horseback, in top hat and tails, as a bas-relief, or a larger-than-life bust. Every school classroom, public building and office workplace has his photograph on the wall. At some stage, the cynical question pops into our minds, is the real religion of this country Islam, football or Ataturkism?

The religious aspect of the matter is accentuated by the inscription on some of the busts and statues. ‘Born 1881 . . . ‘ We Christians know all about that. We measure our calendar according to when Jesus Christ was born, and how old he is now. But most of us don’t take that very seriously these days. The difference is that Turks do! That man in the tinted photographs actually does live on, in their hearts! The leader of a one-party state who held the position of president for 18 years until he died in office; the self-appointed leader of a nationalist resistance movement, who established his own revolutionary government which then duly elected him president. We don’t have many precedents for that kind of thing in Western democracies. But scratch the surface of those democracies, and what do you find? . . .

My father never involved himself directly in politics, but he did his duty as a responsible citizen of a democracy for which he had served in the 2nd World War. He always turned out to vote, supported a political party, and took an interest in the affairs of the country, especially as regards economic policy. In our household we always followed the news media coverage of election night vote counting. When dinner parties were held, the conversation regularly turned to politics and world affairs. But we don’t idolise our politicians in New Zealand – not now, not then.

One topic of conversation I do remember among my father’s friends when they were sounding off about the ills of the nation and the unreliability of its leaders: ‘What we need,’ the refrain would go, ‘is a benevolent dictator.’ As far as I can understand, the reasons were these:

1. The country is going to the dogs;
2. You can’t trust our political leaders – they say one thing and do another; promise the earth and do nothing;
3. Democracy is all fine and dandy, but it’s not a good system for making tough decisions;
4. I, in fact, know what needs to be done, but I’m too busy and/or lazy to get involved in politics;
5. The only way to really get things done is to have a dictatorship. However, you can’t always trust dictators to do the right thing, so . . .

. . . we need a benevolent dictator! QED.

Interestingly, the subject cropped up in a recent issue of ‘Time’ Magazine. A certain Joel Stein, in an essay entitled ‘Dictator of My Dreams’, pondered the question of whether ‘America might not be better off under a dictatorship.’ Now perhaps Mr Stein had his tongue in his cheek. Certainly he writes with self-effacing humour. Nevertheless, you feel you may detect a certain wistful longing in his penultimate sentence: ‘But in an age of overwhelming choice, some dictatorial direction would help.’

I’m sure you’ve heard the same idea. You’ll get a few hits if you ‘google’ the phrase, but most of them have to do with a business model. The only thing I came up with in a national context was Fredrick II, the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740-86. Well, he may have been a fine fellow, but, Prussia? And when you think about it, there wasn’t really much democracy to be found in the world in the 18th century, so dictatorship, as a political system, wasn’t such an unusual thing as it had become 150 years later.

So, there isn’t much competition for the title of ‘Benevolent Dictator’. Neither does there seem to be much agreement on what such a figure might look like if he or she did exist. Nor, in fact, in our age of pretty universal cynicism with respect to the trustworthiness of political leaders, is it easy to imagine even a ‘benevolent’ politician. We are far more inclined to be looking for ways to curb their influence than giving them the all-encompassing powers of a dictator.

Well, I’m going out on a limb, here, and I’m going to propose that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, is the one leader of a significant nation in the history of the world who may actually qualify for the title. And I know I’m going to cop it from both sides here. Most Turks will reject my use of the word ‘dictator’; Non-Turks will insist that a dictator is a dictator and adding the word ‘benevolent’ merely creates an oxymoronic nonsense. Nevertheless, I’m going to run with it.

Where to start? Probably the first thing we need to do is examine how Turks came to have this man as their political leader. And in addressing this question, we need to understand that, although it may in some senses be true that the modern republic of Turkey sprang from the ashes of the former Ottoman Empire, prior to 1923 there was no political entity corresponding to modern Turkey. Just as, prior to 1870, there was no political entity corresponding to the modern state of Italy, nor a Germany prior to 1871. The difference is that Germany and Italy resulted from the amalgamation of several smaller states and kingdoms; while Turkey was the heartland and rump of a disintegrated empire.

In previous articles I have looked at some of the processes and stages of this disintegration, so I don’t intend to repeat that here. It is enough to remember that, over a period of 100 years from approximately 1820, in spite of its leaders’ best efforts to hold it together, as a result of a series of wars within and without its borders, the Ottoman Empire reached the point, with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, where it virtually signed its own death warrant.

There was no military coup where the rightful sultan of the empire was deposed and replaced by a victorious general. Nor, however, was there an election where a sovereign nation state chose a new leader to replace the old. In fact, under the aforementioned treaty, the Ottoman Sultan would have continued to head a nominal Ottoman Empire, since clearly this suited the aspirations of the main sponsors of the treaty, Britain and France. However, it would have been a seriously shrunken, emasculated empire, whose head-of-state would have remained merely as a puppet of the victorious Western powers.

When Mustafa Kemal left the occupied capital of the Ottoman state on 19 May 1919, with an authorisation from Vahdettin, Sultan Mehmet VI, as ‘Inspector of the 9th Army’, his official role was ambiguous, but no doubt, in his own mind, he knew what he had to do. And, according to his recent biographer, Andrew Mango, he knew that he was the man to do it.

For a start, the Ottomans, in spite of past military glories, had had a hard time of it during those previous hundred years. Victories had been few and far between, and a victorious commander was something to be welcomed and cherished. Mustafa Kemal, as the successful defender of the Allies' attempted Gallipoli invasion, was one such. We can say that he had the military credentials to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, it can’t have been easy to persuade his exhausted countrymen to gird up their loins for another struggle. There were others who believed in the need to fight – but few with the necessary vision and unshakeable self-confidence to inspire and unite the nationalist revival.

It is inevitable that legends will form around a successful national leader, and many are the tales told about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: from the watch in his breast pocket that miraculously warded off a shrapnel fragment at Gallipoli; the clock in his room in Dolmabahçe Palace ‘stopped’ at the moment of his death; to the mystical significance of the numbers 9 and 19 in his life. It is futile but nevertheless interesting to speculate about whether such leaders are born or made. Hagiograpic biographies imply that Mustafa Kemal was born to save his nation, which may, or may not be true. But undoubtedly, by the time the Greek army set foot in Izmir on 15 May 1919, he was pretty well convinced that his moment in history had arrived.

Revolutionary resistance grew around the charismatic leader and a Representative Committee was established in the central Anatolian town of Erzurum. By the time it was moved to Ankara in January 1920. Mustafa Kemal was its clear leader. By March of that year, he was in a strong enough position to declare that the Sultan’s government in Istanbul no longer represented the Turkish people, and the Revolutionary Committee was the only legal government. At the same time, he was smart enough to let other nations in the Islamic world understand that he was fighting for the Sultan (also the Muslim Caliph) who was being used as a puppet by the Allied forces. In the mean time he was negotiating with the newly formed Soviet Union for the supply of arms and munitions for the nationalist army.

It is not my purpose here to give a detailed description, nor even attempt to summarise the events of the Turkish War of Independence, which lasted from May 1919 to September 1922. It is sufficient for our purposes to note that the Greek Army was finally driven out of Anatolia. French and Italian forces also withdrew from the Marmara region as Mustafa Kemal led his troops north, leaving the British alone to prevent the liberation of Istanbul. The Turks rejected a British ultimatum to withdraw or face the consequences, and in the end, the British also chose to withdraw. As Mustafa Kemal is reputed to have predicted, ‘As they had come, so did they go.’ That is, pretty quietly and without a great deal of fuss.

Mustafa Kemal had been elected leader of the national struggle at Erzurum in July 1919 and president of the Grand National Assembly (we might call it the provisional republican government) in April 1920. In this capacity he swore allegiance to the Sultan and the Prophet – but there can be little doubt that his intention was to establish a republic and to institute reforms aimed at creating a secular state. And it seems equally clear that he recognised that in the short term, popular votes and democratic methods would not achieve these goals. During the course of the war with Greece, dissident elements on the Turkish side were silenced one way or another – unruly local commanders and over-zealous communist sympathisers among them. Now that victory had been won, and Mustafa Kemal was once again the hero, he was in a position to carry out his goals as architect of the rebuilding of his country.

But to return to this matter of the benevolent dictator. Clearly, as well as being highly controversial, it is a self-evident oxymoron. In the normal run of things, a dictator seizes power by military means, and retains it by some form of terror. And, as has been discussed above, while history abounds with dictators, no one has really made a strong case for any of them having benevolence as a salient characteristic. Now undoubtedly, Atatürk was a military man, who achieved much of his early fame through feats of arms. What sets him apart in this area is that his martial efforts were against the forces of alien powers invading his homeland. His own people gave him their whole-hearted support for this very reason – and, for the most part, appear to have given it willingly.

Furthermore, when his army had driven out the last of the invaders late in 1922, and he might have been justifiably intoxicated with success, he ignored more bellicose voices within his own new nation, and resisted the temptation to press on and try to reclaim former lost territories, contenting himself with defence of the Turkish heartland.

Be that as it may, it is also clear that the leader of the new Turkish Republic had powers which the leaders of modern democratic states can only dream of. For one thing, despite the occasional token election, he ruled as head of a one-party state to the end of his life. Opposition parties were briefly allowed (and hastily dissolved) in 1924, 1930 and again in 1934, but the first two-party election was not held until eight years after his death. Here, then, we can find the source of the decisive government for which our ‘Time’ journalist, Joel Stein, has been longing.

Sovereignty is a key concept in the Turkish republic, and it is clear that their first leader believed in it on three levels: for the Turkish nation, it was his unwavering goal. Turkey had narrowly escaped subjugation by the European imperial powers, largely thanks to his efforts. In terms of his leadership, it is equally clear that he saw himself as the saviour of his nation, justified in wielding sovereign power in order to realise his vision. And on a personal level, it is of undoubted significance that he insisted on retaining sovereignty over his private life. His one attempt at marriage lasted two years and ended in divorce. He might have used his virtually absolute power to establish a dynasty but he did not. He enjoyed the comforts of modern civilisation, but accepted financial accountability, and refrained from living in oriental opulence.

During the years following his victory in the War of Liberation, Atatürk[1] transformed his new nation:

• In 1924, the Islamic Caliphate was abolished, and all members of the Ottoman dynasty were sent into exile. A national system of education was instituted marginalizing traditional Islamic schools. Religious courts were closed down, and the ban on alcohol was lifted;
• Economic development of the impoverished nation was begun on a system of state monopoly;
• In 1925, western-style clothing was required by law, with the passing of the famous ‘hat law’. Dervish lodges were closed down as hotbeds of religious reaction; and the wearing of veils and headscarves by women was discouraged; the status of women was further enhanced by legislation the following year;
• A new penal code based on the Italian system was adopted, and in 1928, Islam ceased to be the official state religion. The Arabic alphabet used for Ottoman Turkish was replaced by a new Latin-based script; and the following year a committee was formed to begin purifying the Turkish language by eradicating and replacing words of Persian and Arabic origin;
• German Jewish academics, displaced by the Nazis in the early 1930s, were welcomed into Turkey, and encouraged to assist in the westernisation of Turkish universities;
• The use of Arabic in mosques was discouraged, and the call to prayer was required to be made in Turkish after 1933;
• In 1934, Turks were required to adopt surnames, and traditional titles and ranks were abolished; the wearing of clerical dress outside of mosques and religious ceremonies was banned, and Sunday was made the day of rest in place of the traditional Muslim Friday.

There can be little doubt that this revolution in the way of life of the people could not have been achieved by a government bound by the need to cajole and appease voters. Turkey under Atatürk was a one-party state, and Atatürk was repeatedly re-elected to the role of president. Not a few dissenters and plotters against the president paid the ultimate penalty for their opposition and disloyalty. However, in Turkey, it was not the party which wielded the power, as in Soviet Russia, but the state. There was no uniformed para-military force suppressing opposition or terrorising the population. Mango says that, in his later years, ‘[Atatürk] behaved not like a modern dictator, but like a latter-day king, who had delegated government to his chief minister.’

When Atatürk died, on 10 November, 1938, his protégé, İsmet İnönü was unanimously elected to succeed him as president of the republic. There was a huge outpouring of national grief, and seventeen nations attended his state funeral, among them, those who had been most embarrassed by his success in founding the Turkish republic. We can be sure that the cultural revolution implemented by Atatürk had its opponents. The religious establishment was a big loser, and an older generation educated in the Ottoman language must have been shocked to see linguistic and literary links to the past severed so abruptly. Yet in spite of that, the ideals of Atatürk’s revolution live on in modern Turkey, and the country is a lone star of westward-leaning democratic secularism amongst its Islamic neighbour and brother states. Turks themselves, regardless of their political leanings, are in no doubt that, had it not been for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, their country would have virtually ceased to exist. Mango prefers the term ‘enlightened authoritarianism’ to describe Atatürk’s government – and Joel Stein would probably be equally happy with that. Whatever term is used, it is not easy to find an equivalent figure in the political history of any other nation. That is the reason for those pictures and statues adorning classroom walls and village squares all over Turkey – and the reason the country will halt its normal frenzied activity for a brief moment on Tuesday, 10 November. Few nations can claim a leader with the stature of Atatürk. Turkey was lucky to get him.

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[1] Atatürk – Mustafa Kemal assumed this name after passing a law making surnames compulsory in 1934.

The Liberation of Istanbul

In 2007 a Turkish graphic novel named ‘Son Osmanlı’ (The Last Ottoman) was turned into a film named for its hero, Yandım Ali. Released under the English title of ‘Knockout Ali’, the film made little impact elsewhere, despite achieving considerable popularity in its home country. Not so surprising, really. The Turkish film industry is one of the largest producers of films in Europe, but few of its oeuvres find much viewership beyond the borders of the home country.

A Turkish Robin Hood

Yandım Ali is a latter-day Robin Hood figure, roaming the streets of Istanbul/Constantinople immediately after the First World War. His city, however, is under occupation, with the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men replaced by the British military. If you can find your way past the Turkish accents of local actors roped in to play the parts of British officers, you see a population chafing under the injustices and oppression of a foreign invader. Ali is the handsome tough guy whose national pride cannot tolerate the bullying arrogance of the occupying forces, but his puny opposition is doomed to failure without a good King Richard to give it focus. The Lionheart’s role is filled by a young Turkish officer, Mustafa Kemal, about to embark on a momentous quest to liberate his people.

Well, you’re saying, I can see why that didn’t attract much interest outside Turkey (except maybe among ex-pat Turkish communities in Germany and elsewhere). It’s pretty clearly a hopelessly slanted, highly romanticised piece of anti-British propaganda. And of course, romanticised and slanted it is indeed. But sometimes it is good for us to see another slant on events we think we understand, in order to appreciate the slant that has influenced our own perspective. ‘O, wad some power,’ said Rabbie Burns, ‘the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us.’ Such insight is not always a comfortable thing, but ‘Yandim Ali’ begs a question or two that I’d like to investigate. Once again, a trip back in time is necessary . . .

The Istanbul of Yandım Ali was, of course, the capital city of the Ottomans, the ruling elite of an empire which had exerted a major influence on the domestic and foreign policies of European nations for more than 600 years. The empire was at its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, only finally being turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1683. From then on its decline was gradual but inexorable, though its existence, albeit in an ailing capacity, continued to shape the policies of the Great Powers of Europe throughout the 19th century, up to and including the First World War. The workings of this influence were covered by the term, ‘The Eastern Question’, which can be summarised as: ‘When will the Ottoman Empire finally fall apart, and which of us (i.e. the European Great Powers) is going to get what when it does?’

Two great driving forces of events in the 19th century were Nationalism and Imperialism. Clearly these forces are, in essence, mutually contradictory. As the Great Powers of Europe expanded their empires, it goes without saying that they impinged more than a little on the sovereign rights of national groups within their expanding borders. It may be said that the one thing the leaders of the Great Powers agreed on was the need to suppress nationalist minorities. At the same time, however, they were not averse to employing the disruptive power of such minorities when to do so suited their own expansionist goals.

The later years of the Ottoman Empire provide several examples of this ambivalent approach to nationalist self-awareness. Contrary to the bad press they frequently receive on the subject, the Ottomans were remarkably tolerant of differences of language and religion within their borders. Of course, Islam was the official religion, and Ottoman Turkish the language of government. However, Orthodox Christians (as well as, incidentally, Armenians) and Jews were allowed to practise their religion and use their own languages and alphabets provided they paid their taxes. I would not be the first to suggest that it was this tolerance by the Ottomans of national differences within their empire that contributed to and hastened its disintegration.

However that may be, it is certainly true that the one area where the Great Powers of Europe were remarkably tolerant, even encouraging of the aspirations of nationalist minorities, was within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. In an earlier article I touched on the support given by Britain, France and Russia to the cause of Greek independence in the 1820s. In 1827, fleets of these three nations combined to defeat the Ottoman navy, paving the way for the foundation of the modern kingdom of Greece. Why ‘kingdom’ you may ask? Well, because it allowed the big brother nations to install someone from their own ranks, the 17 year-old Bavarian Prince Otto, who became King of the new ‘Greece’. Less than 30 years later, Britain and France were in league with those same Ottomans, smashing the Russians in the Crimea. What had changed? Pass on another 60 years and you’ll find Britain and France, back together with Russia again, intent on finishing off the Ottomans who were now supported by Germany! Make sense?

Let me give you a quick run-down. First, the Greeks. Well, they were Christians, weren’t they? Obviously being oppressed by those terrible Muslim Turks. Never mind that Greek Christians within the Ottoman Empire were allowed to speak their language, practise their religion, hold important positions and get rich. But, and it’s a big ‘but’, at least as far as Western Europeans were concerned, Greek Christianity was not the right sort. There was always a major danger that they would unite with (or be subjugated by) their Orthodox cousins, the Russians. Then there was the confusing business of what you actually mean when you say ‘Greek’. Philhellenes on the continent (see my previous article) had a hazy idea of Greek-ness as being an ancient, classical, pagan but nonetheless romantic birthplace of modern civilisation centred on Athens. Modern Greek nationalists, on the other hand, were more inclined to imagine a medieval Orthodox Christian empire centred on Constantinople.

So, if you were a British political leader in the 19th century, you might find it convenient to give moral, and even logistical support to the cause of Greek independence, since it would be useful to have a grateful puppet-state in the eastern Mediterranean. On the other hand, you might also feel a little nervous of the southward-expanding Russians, who were encouraging, for their own ends, the nationalist aspirations of Christian minorities within the Ottoman borders. Especially since the Russian brand of Christianity had a lot more in common with those ‘oppressed’ brothers (and sisters).

Another complicating factor was the appearance on the stage of Europe, in the 1870s, of two ‘new’ powers with imperialist aspirations: Italy and Germany. Illustrating perfectly the dichotomy that existed in Europeans’ minds of the time with respect to imperialism and nationalism, these two emergent powers owed their existence to the nationalist dream of uniting people with a common linguistic, racial and cultural heritage. Having achieved this goal, however, they immediately entered into competition with the older powers in the field of empire building (and, hence, of course, in overriding the nationalistic ambitions of others).

It is also obvious that, as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the importance of oil as a new source of energy, added to the strategic importance of the Suez Canal for access to India, the ‘jewel’ in the British Imperial crown, increased the tensions and power games in the Near (Middle) East. Western Europeans are not generally known for their love of Arabs, yet they were only too ready to lionise TE Lawrence as he championed Arab nationalism against the evil Ottomans.

Well, sorry for the digression – it’s not my aim to make a detailed examination of 19th century power politics. Just to give enough background to follow what I want to say about the aftermath of World War I as it affected the country we now know as Turkey.

The European summer of 1914 was ignited by the assassination of an Austrian archduke (whatever an arch-duke may be) with little other claim to fame. By the beginning of August, all the major powers of Europe were at each other’s throats, with the exception of the Ottomans who were understandably uncertain who, if anyone, they should support.

This situation was resolved for them in October largely owing, once again, to our old friend, Winston Churchill. The Ottoman navy had been a major client of British shipyards for some years, and had recently ordered two modern battleships, paid for by public subscription. Winston’s brainwave was, apparently, to ensure Ottoman neutrality by ‘requisitioning’ these battleships for the duration of the war, and paying a kind of rent for their use in the British navy. Germany seized the opportunity to present the Ottomans with two modern warships of their own, and immediately proceeded, after hoisting the Ottoman flag, to sail across the Black Sea and bombard one or two Russian ports and bases. Not much room left for diplomatic manoeuvring after that!

Well, it took four years, and a lot of death and destruction, but the upstart Germans were eventually brought to their knees, especially after the entry of the USA into the war in 1917 (once again, if you can believe the rumours, with some behind-the-scenes manipulation on the part of W.L.S. Churchill). Once it became obvious that they had backed the wrong horse, the Ottomans requested an armistice, which took place on October 30, 1918 on the Aegean Island of Lemnos. Perhaps they expected reasonable treatment from their former allies, especially since they hadn’t actually invaded anyone else’s territory – but they were to be disappointed. Within two weeks, British and French troops had occupied the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, and there they remained as an army of occupation for the next five years.

The two members of the Entente Cordiale then set about implementing plans long-held, to divide up the Ottoman Empire and erase it from the world map. The instrument used was the Treaty of Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920. Interestingly, neither the United States nor Russia was party to this treaty. Under its terms, the Ottoman government would continue to rule in name, but in reality as a political and financial puppet of the Allies (France and Britain). Ottoman ‘war criminals’ would be handed over to the Allies for trial and punishment. Most of the Near/Middle East, Palestine (there was no Israel in those days), Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were given as ‘mandates’ to Britain and France – and a mini-kingdom was established around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, one assumes, as a sop to Arab nationalism. France also laid claim to a large chunk of modern Turkey north of Syria, while the Italians were given most of Mediterranean Anatolia, including offshore islands. A new nation-state of Armenia was to be established, with its border extending to the Black Sea around the modern Turkish port of Trabzon.

There were a few bitter pills to swallow there, you’d have to think – but representatives of the Ottoman Government duly signed. Perhaps they truly believed there was no alternative. Enter ‘Yandım Ali’ and Richard the Lionheart! What precisely was the spark that ignited the tinder of Turkish nationalism is open to debate, but it’s hard to imagine your average Mehmet on the Karakoy omnibus being pleased to see his ‘Greek’ neighbours and fellow citizens dancing in the streets of Istanbul (Constantinople) and Izmir (Smyrna) as they welcomed the invading forces. It is said that the French general entered Istanbul mounted on a white horse, as his conquering Turkish predecessor, had done in 1453. Perhaps the last straw was the sight of an army from mainland Greece (backed by their big brothers, Britain and France) landing on the Turkish mainland from whence their ancestors had been expelled 466 years previously.

Whatever the final cause, certain it is that Turkish nationalism was stirred into life. A four-year struggle ensued, at the end of which the Greek invaders were again expelled, and the Italian, British and French governments decided to cut their losses and withdraw. The Treaty of Sevres lapsed for want of support and was replaced by a new Treaty, signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, recognising the existence of the new Republic of Turkey. On 6 October, thousands of Istanbul school children will have a holiday to celebrate getting their city back.

Actions and Reactions - The Emergence of Modern Turkey

A question on British history for those with an interest in the subject: What international event brought about the collapse of the victorious Liberal/Conservative coalition government after the First World War, the political demise of its heroic leader, David Lloyd George, and the exile to the political wilderness of that other great hero of British politics, Winston Churchill? Not to mention the emergence of Canada as an independent nation within the British Empire?

The Chanak Incident, I hear someone cry, – and you would be absolutely right! But for those of you with a more superficial interest in British history and politics, or a less persistent determination to learn about an event which receives scant attention in general histories or in biographies of those two gentlemen – let me give you a quick run-down . . .

These two English gentlemen, Churchill and Lloyd George (well, Lloyd George it seems was Welsh, with quite an enthusiasm for Welsh nationalism, at least when he first entered parliament), are not generally remembered with much fondness in Turkey. However, it is my contention that modern Turks should be more grateful, because, without them, it is possible that the modern Turkish Republic might never have come into being.

Of course, as with all historical events, specific dates are necessarily arbitrary, in the sense that every event has prior causes and subsequent repercussions. To understand what happened in September 1922, we need to flashback a little, to the declining years of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the once great empire had been declining for a century or two – held together during the 19th century largely by the conflicting ambitions of the European Great Powers, who were unanimous on one thing at least: none of them wanted any of the others to get anything out of the Ottoman collapse.

‘Sick’ though it might have been, the empire still occupied a strategic location. The Russians desperately wanted to control the Bosphorus Straits which would give them easy access to the Mediterranean. The British, on the other hand, were pretty determined not to let them. At the outbreak of World War I, while they were both looking the other way, a maverick Geman admiral named Wilhelm Souchon sailed his two warships into the Black sea, hoisted an Ottoman flag, and proceeded to bombard several Russian ports. This rather forced the Ottoman government’s hand. Suddenly, they found themselves at war, not only with the Russians, but also with the French and the British.

Now, I’m not writing a history of the First World War here – not even the Middle East theatres thereof, so bear with me if I skip few months, leaving aside all that bloody business on the Western Front, for example. The stalemate there did, however, bring Winston Churchill on the scene, with his grand ‘Gallipoli’ scheme to take the Ottomans out of the war and help organize Russia to attack the Germans from the other side.

Well, with hindsight, of course, we know the plan was a bit of a blunder – a lot of lives lost, a lot of discontent sown amongst hitherto loyal members of the British Empire, and a rather embarrassing withdrawal by Allied forces, whatever brave face we may try to put on it. But the point I want to make here is this – the Gallipoli Campaign (or the Çanakkale War, as the Turks call it) provided the opportunity for a young Turkish officer, Mustafa Kemal, to make a name for himself as a successful strategist and commander of men. Churchill’s hare-brained scheme may not have done much for the Allied war effort, but it can be seen as an indispensable step on the rise to prominence of the eventual founder of the Turkish Republic. Good one, Winston!

Nevertheless, despite the efforts of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the Ottoman Empire, its government and people, found themselves on the losing side at the end of that Great War. Victory gave the Allied leaders the opportunity they had long sought to carve up the empire’s territories and distribute them among themselves. This carve-up, long planned by Britain and France, was given full expression in the Treaty of Sevres (10 August, 1920). The plan was to retain the Imperial government in Istanbul/Constantinople (to the chagrin, it may be added, of the Greeks, who refused to ratify the treaty) while giving control over the Imperial finances to the conquering Allies. Ottoman armed forces would be effectively emasculated and ‘war criminals’ would be brought to trial. Even the Anatolian heartland of Turkey would be divided up, with the southern coast and hinterland coming under Italian control, the south-east bordering Syria being ceded to France, and a referendum held to decide the fate of ‘Kurdistan’.

So dispirited was the Ottoman government, and its people so exhausted by years of continuous war that it is possible these provisions, humiliating as they were, might have been put into effect. However, there was one last item . . . the city of İzmir and its surrounding region, and the region of Thrace, north of the Sea of Marmara to within a stone’s throw of Istanbul, would be ceded to Greece – and to ensure this happened, the Greek army, encouraged and supplied by the Allies, occupied Izmir and began advancing into Anatolia.

Leaving the Greek army in Anatolia for a moment, I’d like to return to Mr Lloyd George. Our Dave apparently belonged to the Philhellene school of thought, a position popularized by the poet Lord Byron, and generally subscribed to by aristocrats who had had a love of all things classical beaten into them from an early age by the English public school system. During the 19th century, English philhellenes supported the cause of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, and even encouraged them in their megali idea-listic dream of recreating a Hellenic empire around the Aegean Sea.

Secure in the belief (misguided, as it turned out) that the might of the British and French was behind them, the Greeks plunged into Anatolia, intent on resurrecting their former Byzantine glory. Had they not been blinded by these visions of grandeur, it might have occurred to them that the philhellenist gentlemen had their illusions based on a more classical, pagan Atheno-centric ancient kind of Greekness. They would probably have had trouble getting their C of E heads around the Byzantine Orthodox Christian variety centred on Constantinople. Certainly, it’s a fairly safe bet that the Allied powers had no intention of letting the modern Greeks get their hands on the city of Byzantine dreams. We may imagine that they were more interested in putting an end, once and for all to Turkish power, and setting up a suitably grateful puppet state in the eastern Mediterranean.

Whatever the true case may be, it’s another reasonably safe bet that the event which finally fanned the spark of Turkish nationalism into flaming life, galvanised Mustafa Kemal Pasha into revolutionary action, and assisted his cause in raising an army, was this incursion into the ancestral Turkish Anatolian heartland by Greek invaders who had been finally defeated and sent packing four and a half centuries earlier.

It took a few years to get them out, of course. Mustafa Kemal escaped from Allied-occupied Istanbul, and the puppet government of the last Ottoman Emperor, in May 1919. During the next three years, he organised a resistance movement, established an alternative nationalist Turkish government, built an army, negotiated with foreign powers (notably the new Bolshevik Russia) to supply munitions, and fought a successful war of liberation, driving the Greek Army back to İzmir.

There is considerable debate about subsequent events in that city, but most accounts agree that, for whatever reason, Allied ships (mostly British) in Izmir harbour, refused to pick up Greek military and civilian refugees from the Turkish victory. Whatever the truth of it, the Turkish army then turned north towards Çanakkale, with the intention, no doubt, and not unreasonably, of liberating Istanbul. There was, however, a small garrison of French and British troops near Çanakkale, and the British cabinet (in particular, Messrs Churchill and Lloyd George), instructed their men to turn the Turks back – in fact, threatening them with the might of the British Empire should they not go quietly.

A tricky situation, you might say, for the fledgling Turkish nation to find itself in – but Mustafa Kemal Pasha apparently decided to call the British bluff, which at this point, turned out to be exactly that. The French Prime Minister pulled his troops out, the British parliament and public expressed outrage at the thought of entering another war so soon after the last one; and the Dominions of the British Empire (most notably Canada, but with the exception of ever-loyal New Zealand) declined to get involved.

The result was the complete withdrawal of occupying forces from Istanbul, the drawing up of a new treaty (at Lausanne, Switzerland) recognizing the emergent Republic of Turkey with rather more favourable boundaries, the political humiliation of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, and the collapse of the wartime British coalition government (one can imagine, amidst a crescendo of recriminations!).

Win and Dave, of course, resigned, Lloyd George, at least, never to return in any major capacity. Churchill, however, recognising his indispensability to the British people, quickly forsook the Liberal Party he had helped to destroy, and joined up with the Conservatives – and to the devil with political convictions and party loyalty. Before long he was back in full voice, demonstrating the diversity of his talents, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as an advocate of the enlightened use of poison gas (some years ahead of Saddam Hussein) on rebellious Kurdish tribesmen, who were perhaps not 100% convinced that the British Empire had any right to be in their particular neck of the woods.

Anyway, as they say, that’s another story. I do think, however, that residents of modern Turkey should cast an appreciative nod in the direction of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George as they celebrate their Day of Victory on August 30th. The camel may not fully appreciate the nature of his predicament until the last straw is dropped on to his back.

Cyprus - What are the Turks doing there anyway?

No one in the world recognises the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus except Turkey, and, one must suppose, the people who actually live there, but we can’t count them, because no one recognises them, except Turkey, and the people who . . . Well, clearly this isn’t getting us anywhere! We’ll need to try starting somewhere else.

One of my first expeditions out of Istanbul was with a busload of Turkish High School students and teachers. It was an educational trip, for me perhaps more than the students. We visited the battlefields and cemeteries of Gallipoli, the excavations of ancient Troy, and the ruins of Assos scattered through the rustic village of Behramkale.

The hill rising above the blue waters of the Aegean commands an impressive view over the sea and the islands so steeped in history and beloved of modern sun-seeking tourists.

‘What’s that island?’ I asked one of my Turkish colleagues, pointing to a largish land mass rising from the sea about 10 km away.

‘Well, we call it Midilli’, was the reply, ‘but Europeans know it as Lesbos – it’s a Greek Island.’ A quick check of Google Earth reveals that the government in Athens is some 230 km from the island. I didn’t know that at the time, but I definitely couldn’t see the coast of Greece from where I stood.

So how does a strategically significant and desirable piece of island real estate 10 km off the coast of Turkey come to belong to the government of a foreign nation more than 200 km away (a pretty  major distance in the Balkan region, as a glance at recent historical developments will show)? As with most seemingly simple questions in this part of the world, the answer is somewhat less than simple.

‘Greece’ is an interesting word. In fact the modern inhabitants of that nation call it Ellada, but like it to be known officially, in English, as the Hellenic Republic. People speaking a language related to modern Greek spread throughout the region in the last millennium BCE. Various kingdoms and city states rose and fell until most were united after conquests by the armies of Rome in the 2nd century BCE. Latin, of course, became the official language and so continued for many centuries. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, the power base of the Roman Empire shifted to the eastern capital of Constantinople, and the Greek language bubbled back to prominence again, in much the same way as did English in the centuries after the Norman (French) Conquest.

The island of Lesbos continued as part of the Roman (Byzantine) empire until, with the decline of Byzantine power, it passed into the hands of, first, the Latin crusaders, and then to the Genoese in the 14th century. The Ottomans incorporated it into their empire in 1462, where it remained for some 450 years until the break-up of that empire in the early 20th century. One important feature of Ottoman rule (in all parts of their empire) was the tolerance they granted to conquered peoples to continue using their own language and practising their own religion. They did, however, import and settle Muslim families from their Anatolian heartland to live alongside the locals.

It is with the dawning of the 20th century and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire that the matter seems to become more clouded. The English version of Wikipedia, on the subject of Lesbos, contains this laconic sentence: ‘The island was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1462. It remained under Turkish rule until 1912 when it was ceded to Greece.’ The entry in Turkish is a little more explanatory: During the Balkan Wars, in January 1913, Greeks occupied the island without firing a shot. It was then given to Greece under the terms of the Treaty of London, 30 May 1913. In 1922, during the exchange of populations after the Turkish War of Liberation, the Turkish population was sent to Anatolia and replaced by Greeks from the Turkish mainland (my translation).

So what, you may ask, has all this got to do with Cyprus? Well, the first thing I’d ask you to do is to take a look at a map of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Have a close look at the Greek Islands in particular, and notice how close most of them are to the Turkish mainland. Then, leaving aside other considerations, ask yourself how may other nations would accept the continuing occupation, by a foreign power, of islands so close to their own shores. The attitude of successive US governments to the island of Cuba springs to mind as an example.

Tragedy for Othello - and the Venetians

But of course, as you were no doubt quick to point out, we can’t leave aside other considerations. We need to delve a little into history in order to understand where we truly are in the present. As one might expect of an island with such geo-political importance, ownership has passed through many hands. It came under the sway of the Byzantine Empire in 395 CE,  before falling into the hands of the Arabs for three centuries. The Byzantines reclaimed the island in 966 CE before losing it finally to a succession of Crusading princes and Venetians starting in 1191. It was from the Venetians, then, that the Ottomans seized control in 1570, despite the report in Shakespeare’s Othello that the invading Turkish fleet had been destroyed by a storm.

As noted above, the Ottoman Empire applied a relatively enlightened policy (in the context of history) in allowing minority groups (such as Jews and Orthodox Christians) to use their own language and practise their own religion. It has been suggested by at least one historian that things might have turned out better for the Ottomans in the long run if they had been less accommodating – but there you are.

The nineteenth century was characterised by the rise of nationalism as a political force. Encouraged by the Great Powers of Europe, with an eye to their own advantage, minorities within the Ottoman Empire began to demand independence and autonomy. After the kingdom of Greece was established in 1830, other Greek peoples within the Empire (known as ‘Rum’ in Turkish) began increasingly to nurture the hope of a reincarnation of former Byzantine glories.

In 1878, folowing a secret agreement with the increasingly desperate Ottoman government, the British occupied the island of Cyprus. ‘Why?’ you may ask. In fact, by the 19th century, the Mediterranean had ceased to be an Ottoman lake and had pretty much become a British one. In 1814, the island of Malta had become part of the British Empire. The territory of Gibraltar, on the south coast of Spain, has been a British possession and site of a naval base since 1713. After the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, and the increasing threat of Russia to British interests in India and the Near (Middle) East, Cyprus was seen as having major strategic importance. In fact, despite granting independence to the island in 1959, Britain maintains, to the present day, two military bases there at Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

In the last years of British administration after 1955, as Greek nationalists (EOKA) began a campaign of guerilla tactics, Turkish Cypriots were used in a policing capacity by the British, and internecine violence began to escalate. Anti-Greek riots broke out in Istanbul resulting in the last major exodus of Greeks from the city.

After independence was achieved, a constitution was established creating a Greek-Turkish state in Cyprus, but violence continued, fueled by a desire among members of the Greek community for Enosis (union with mainland Greece) and the perception, among the Turkish minority, that they were being driven out.

The issue came to a head on 15 July 1974 when the ruling military junta in Greece authorised a coup in Cyprus to take over the elected government and make Enosis a fact. There is some divergence of opinion about what happened next. The Greek position is that Turkey used this as a pretext for their military invasion; the Turks claim that they asked Britain and France to intervene to stop the violence on the island, but, receiving no reply, took the matter into their own hands.

These differing claims are reflected in the words used to describe the events of July 1974, which most of the world calls ‘The Turkish Invasion’ but Turks refer to as ‘The Peace Operation’. 

Conquering Constantinople - The 'Otherness' of Turkey

In 2001 there was a UEFA Cup football match in Istanbul between a local club Fenerbahçe, and a Greek team from Athens, Panathinaikos. The Greek team lost the match, and their supporters received a lot of negative publicity for the damage they caused after the match to the Fenerbahçe stadium. I remember seeing a photograph in a local newspaper of a group of Fenerbahçe supporters who, during the course of the match, delighted in waving a large banner on which was emblazoned the inflammatory message: ‘Welcome to Istanbul – ours since 1453!’

This date, 1453, is sometimes taken by historians as marking the end of the Middle Ages – it is arguably of more international significance than the year (1483) when Henry Tudor defeated the Yorkist usurper, Richard III, in a relatively minor island state on the western outskirts of Europe, as my school textbook suggested.

Not that it’s a year much celebrated outside of Turkey. This year, 29 May marked the 556th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople – so you’d have to think that the likelihood of the Turks packing their bags and heading back to Central Asia where they came from is decreasing with the passing years. Nevertheless, they still seem to have some difficulty in getting themselves accepted as bona fide members of the Europe Club.

The most obvious problem is that the Turks are overwhelmingly Muslim, and the mental baggage we Westerners inherited from our Crusader ancestors, inclines most of us to view Muslims with suspicion at the very least. But it’s not just that. There’s a serious dichotomy in the prevailing Western view of the part of the world currently called the Republic of Turkey, which goes back beyond the arrival of marauding hordes from the steppes of Asia.

Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire of which it was the capital city, was ‘Christian’, and therefore the fall of the city was a terrible blow struck against Christendom by the forces of Islam. John Julius Norwich, in his History of Byzantium, postulates that, had it not been for the persistence of the Eastern Roman Empire for a thousand years after the fall of Rome, the whole of Europe could well have been overrun, and we would see nothing strange about trotting off to the local mosque five times a day at the call of the muezzin.

On the other hand, the Byzantine Empire (and hence Constantinople), was not ‘real’ Christian, i.e. they were heretics and schismatics who did not belong to the ‘true’ church (viz. the church of Rome). For this reason, medieval western Christendom would not send aid to their fellow Christians against the threat of militant Islam (knew the cause was hopeless is also possible, but debatable).

Constantine the Great -
by York Cathedral, UK

When Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in 330 CE, the city was, by definition, the centre of an empire which was unquestionably European. However, as the city of Rome lost its imperial power and became dependent for its prestige on the rise of Christianity and the Bishops of Rome (read ‘Popes’, if you prefer), it became necessary to emphasise the ‘otherness’ of Constantinople, which retained its temporal power (along with powerful religious influence) for centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

This concept of ‘otherness’ was later solidified in Western thinking by the adoption of the term ‘Byzantine’ to describe the Roman Empire in the east which survived after the fall of the western Roman Empire to the barbarians in the 5^th century. In fact, the word ‘Byzantine, was not used by those people to describe themselves, and according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, was first used by European historians in the mid-17^th century.

We may account for the adoption of this term by hypothesising that classical scholars in succeeding centuries were enamoured of the (pagan) Roman Empire which they saw as epitomising all the virtues to which they aspired as sons of a new world empire. Naturally they were reluctant to accept that the direct heirs of this great classical empire were the decadent, heretical, pseudo-Christians of the eastern Mediterranean.

During the Middle Ages, crusades were sent from Western Europe to free the so-called Holy Land from the yoke of the Islamic Turks, despite the fact that there was a Christian power on the doorstep of those holy places. One can easily imagine that the whole Crusade business was a ploy by the Bishops of Rome to unite western Christendom against a common enemy in an attempt to regain the temporal power that had been lost with the fall of Rome to the barbarians (which power, we may assume, they greatly envied their eastern brothers). The fact that these western ‘Crusaders’ did not consider the Eastern Christians co-religionists is emphasised by the sack of Constantinople by forces of the 4^th Crusade in 1204.

Returning to an earlier point (Constantinople as a disaster for Christendom as a whole), western sources of dubious historical veracity have subsequently tried to assert kinship with the brave defenders of the city by a) reminding us that there were Genoese and Venetians (the right kind of Christians) among the defenders and b) asserting that the desperate defenders held ecumenical services of communion in the cathedral of St Sophia as the axe began to fall. We gather that the errant Easterners were beginning to see the light, though sadly for them, it was too little, too late.

Linking to an issue which I intend to discuss in a later article, in the 19th century, European interests, especially Great Britain, were encouraging the Greek-speaking peoples of the Aegean to form a nationalist consciousness and rebel against the Ottoman Empire. The emergence of the modern nation-state of Greece in 1832 was made possible only with major support from the British and French fleets of the day. This encouragement culminated in an invasion of Western Anatolia by a mainland Greek military force under the aegis of the victorious Allies at the end of the 1st World War.

The ‘megali idea’, on which this invasion was based, was the concept of the recreation of a semi-mythical Greek empire centred on the Aegean. Of course, for the Greeks, this dream could never be fulfilled without the inclusion of the former imperial and religious capital of Constantinopolis – something which, one suspects, the Allies had no intention of allowing. The city straddling the Bosphorus Straits, and bridging the continents of Europe and Asia, had too much geo-political significance to be given over to what could only ever be a minor player in world politics. It is fairly clear that the ‘megali idea’, and the encouragement of Greek nationalism by the western powers, was primarily aimed at dismantling and disempowering the Ottoman Empire, and creating a puppet state in the strategic zone of the eastern Mediterranean.

It’s a complex history, made more complex after the conquest of Constantinople by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453 and the city’s status as capital of their Islamic empire for nearly 500 years. The Western point-of-view seems always to have struggled to come to grips with reality in this part of the world. Witness the invention of the word ‘Byzantine’ to name the Eastern Roman Empire that survived for 1000 years after the fall of Rome.

The refusal of history to conform to Western plans was further confirmed when, against all expectations, a blond, blue-eyed genius from Salonika led the Turkish rump of the Ottoman Empire to military and political success in the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey.

After 556 years, 29 May is still a big one for Turks – and a thorn in the side of visiting football teams from Athens.