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.

Where are the Ancient Treasures of Turkey?

Her çiçek bahçesinde

Her eser ülkesinde güzeldir

Every flower is beautiful in its own garden

Every work of art in its own country

(A plaque on the wall of the Selçuk Museum, Turkey)

Another tourist season is beginning. Chartered planefuls of Brits, Russians, Germans, descend again on the resorts of Turkey: Kuşadası, Bodrum, Alanya . . . regale themselves with Efes Pilsen and breakfasts of bacon and eggs as they toast themselves fashionable shades of pink in the unaccustomed heat of the Mediterranean and Aegean sun. Increasing numbers of them, lured by the foregoing pleasures, and the relatively affordable property prices, purchase a slice of local real estate and return to the same villa year after year, or send their neighbours from back home.

For many foreign visitors, this is Turkey. But of course, there are other Turkeys, and many other reasons for visitors to come, no less in the 21st century than in the 13th. For Christians there are places of pilgrimage in this nursery of early Christianity: the great church of St Sophia, the house of the Virgin Mary at Ephesus, St Peter’s first church in ancient Antioch (modern Antakya) to name only three.  For students of history, and those with a passing interest, this is one of the cradles of civilisation, its ancient land buried in layers of more long-gone peoples and empires than probably any other place on Earth: Hittite, Lydian, Lycian, Ionian, Roman, Seljuk . . .

So we visit the museums, the unearthed and reconstructed sites of ancient cities, and, if we have a modicum of imagination, we guess that even the grains of sand, on which we arrange our white plastic şezlong, are the eroded remains of palaces and bath houses, monuments and triumphal fountains of once-great empires. Perhaps, in the raptures of such imaginings, we pick up a fragment of white marble lapped by the waves at our feet, and secrete it in our pack to use as a paper-weight in memory of our travels. What harm in that? Who could object?

I guess it’s a question of scale. There must surely be a continuum of theft, from the accidental accumulation of clay or sand on the soles of my shoes accompanying me back home after my holiday – to the meticulously planned heist which removes a priceless Van Gogh or Monet from the wall of the Müsee d’Orsay to grace someone’s private art collection.

I paid another visit to the museum at Selçuk last summer.  It’s a small museum, but important in that the town of Selçuk is, of course, a popular base for exploring the ruins of the city of Ephesus, once capital of the ancient Aegean region of Asia Minor, and home to the early church to which St Paul addressed one of his famous epistles.

Section of the Parthian monument - see it in Vienna

Among the important archeological finds at Ephesus is the Parthian monument. The Parthians were a  warlike race whose territory lay at the Eastern border of the Roman Empire. There were ongoing wars between the Romans and the Parthians involving victories on either side, but the Romans never succeeded in subduing them. The monument commemorated a victorious campaign undertaken by Roman forces against the Parthians during the reign of the Emperor Trajan in 116 AD, and was decorated with reliefs showing scenes from the wars. Some of the reliefs that once adorned the monument are displayed in the Selçuk Museum – the rest are, apparently, in the Ephesus Museum in Vienna. Nice for the Viennese!

If this were a single event in which the priceless remains of an ancient civilisation had been removed from their original site to a museum abroad it would be serious enough. A strong case might be made for their return to Turkey. It is, however, just one instance of countless cases where ancient flowers have been removed from their natural garden to some public museum or private collection in another country. And, as we all know, there is safety in numbers, Why should I return my reliefs until they return their caryatids?

Just a short stroll down the road from the marble columns and friezes of Ephesus is the site of the fabled Temple of Artemis. Of course, as an important goddess in the Greek pantheon, Artemis had more than one temple built in her honour. But this was THE Temple of Artemis, one of the reasons for the fame of the city of Ephesus, and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Sadly, visitors today will be disappointed if they expect to see more than orderly rows of foundation stones and a half-hearted reconstruction of an ancient column. Those from London especially could have saved themselves the airfare to Turkey, when a tube ride to Russell Square and a short walk to the British Museum would have enabled them to see more of the temple than can be seen in situ.

And for those Brits who read this column in time to save on the plane ticket, while you’re at the British Museum, check out the statues and other remains from the Mausoleum of Hallicarnassus, another of those legendary Seven Wonders. If you were expecting to see much of it during breaks away from the Bodrum nightclubs, you’d be better off ordering another Efes Pilsen.

Still, we can’t blame only the Brits. I’ve already mentioned the Viennese, and in fact it was crusading Christian knights who originally dismantled most of the fabulous mausoleum to build their castle defending the harbour at Bodrum. U.S. presidents would do well to check their history books before siding too readily with those medieval crusaders. On one of their sacred outings in 1204, they stopped off on their way to fight the Muslims in the Holy Land, and sacked the city of Constantinople. Some sources tell us that the sacking of the city and raping of the (Christian) inhabitants went on for three days, during Easter week! Sure the city was conquered by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453, but by then most of the riches of the St Sophia cathedral and nearby imperial statuary had already been shipped off to Venice and Florence, where they can, so I’m told by reliable sources, be seen today.

But in spite of all this, many of us still go to Turkey, and not just for the beaches. Of course, it is still a rich storehouse of remains of ancient cultures. What about Troy? You’ve seen the movie, and you know the Greeks sailed across the Aegean to recapture the beautiful Helen. Again, sadly, visitors to Troy are likely to be disappointed. A certain Heinrich Schliemann,19th century German archeologist, and his wife, who apparently rejoiced in the delightfully classical name of Sophia Engastromenos, with the connivance of a corrupt Ottoman official, spirited away the legendary treasures of Troy.

Never mind, you may think. Anyway, I was going to Berlin to check out the Pergamon Museum, which, as you know, was purpose-built to exhibit the altars, statues and friezes taken from the site of ancient Pergamon, near the town of Bergama in modern Turkey. I can kill two birds with the Berlin stone, you may think. But again, you will be disappointed. The Trojan treasures apparently disppeared from Berlin in 1945, and their whereabouts remained a mystery until 1993, when the Pushkin Museum in Moscow announced that they were, in fact, in safe-keeping, stored in their basement, and would shortly go on display. Can making off with already previously made-off-with artifacts be considered a crime? Working on the principle of two negatives making a positive, one might plead not.

Well, I could go on and tell you more about the whereabouts of the treasures of ancient Turkey. I’ve barely touched on the riches of Constantinople and Pergamon, now securely housed elsewhere, and I haven’t even mentioned Sardis, a once grand city at the western end of the trade route linking Mesopotamia to the Aegean region, capital of the proverbial Lydian King Croesus – but I think you get the picture. Luckily for Turkey and the rest of us who love to travel, the best efforts of treasure-hunters and pillagers from the West have as yet been unable to denude Turkey of the wealth of ancient cultures to be found within its borders. Drop a spade into the ground anywhere in Istanbul, or elsewhere in Turkey, and the chances are you’ll uncover something of deep historical significance. It’s certainly worth a visit – and not just to Kuşadası!

Touching Down in Turkey - Surprises for a Western visitor

When I first came to Turkey in 1995, I knew little about the country. In fact, that is not entirely true. As a New Zealander, I had grown up with the stories of the Gallipoli campaign, that bloody sideshow of the First World War, which cost so many lives and achieved so little. Brought up in a church-going family, I was well-versed in the scriptures and gospels, especially the epistles of Paul to the churches of ancient Christendom. As a student of a model English grammar school, I spent five years studying Latin and the achievements and culture of the Roman Empire. Being a reader, and having an interest in history, I knew, of course, of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. I had even heard of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and somewhere or other had come across the modern Turkish alphabet, a deceptively familiar yet not-quite-accessible version of our Latin-based one, with its peculiar accent marks and unexpected cedillas. My studies of 19th century European history had familarised me with ‘The Eastern Question’ and ‘The Sick Man of Europe’, and my readings of Shakespeare had mixed ominous references to the ‘heathen Turk’ with the folk culture that embodied names like Gengiz and Attila with a power of evil beyond the capacity of mere words.

Model English grammar school

Yet I had no concept of the country that is the modern Republic of Turkey. I had all these snippets of knowledge buzzing around in what I liked to think of as my world-view. But I had no unifying idea that they all occurred within the boundaries of that little known and little understood nation on the back-doorstep of Europe.

Perhaps it was to my advantage that I came from a country far from the fast-lanes of geopolitics. There was no visible Turkish diaspora in New Zealand to imbue me with a prejudice against migrant workers. My prejudices were more deep-seated and subliminal, but nonetheless real, being part of the cultural baggage I carried as an educated product of an Anglo/Euro-centric system and culture.

Almost from the moment the wheels of my British Airways Boeing hit the tarmac at Atatürk Airport, I found these cultural assumptions challenged in ways that I had never imagined. In the thirteen years since then, while making a life for myself as a teacher of English in Turkey, I have continued to benefit from the mind-expanding shocks and jolts that strike the foreigner in this much-misunderstood land.

I remember looking at an atlas, on first coming to Turkey. It was quite a good atlas, a reputable publication which I had bought while reading Geography at Auckland University. I still have it, in fact, and I have counted twenty-one pages on the British Isles, ten pages on the US of A, and even little old New Zealand warrants a two-page spread. Interestingly, however, there is not one single page devoted to the modern Republic of Turkey, a country three times the size of New Zealand, or Great Britain, or Japan, and in population, second only to the united Germany among European nations.

It is a small thing, perhaps, and of no special significance. I’ve never been a fan of conspiracy theories. But again, I couldn’t help being puzzled when I learnt that the Turks celebrate 18 March as Victory Day in their Çanakkale War (what we know as the Gallipoli campaign). Hang on a minute!  We (ANZACs etc) didn’t even get there till 25 April! As educated adults, we need to feel confident that history has an objectivity that places it above partisan politics and racial stereotypes, so how to account for this major disparity of dates? In fact, as I intend to discuss in a later article, the Gallipoli landings were Plan B, made necessary because of the failure of Plan A. For the Turks, their success in turning back the Royal Navy from the Dardanelles was the more important part of the victory. For the British Empire, no doubt, that was a setback better consigned to the footnotes of history.

Historical events, dates and personages are one aspect of the construct of the world that we all carry with us. But there is another, less overt, perhaps more powerful force shaping our judgments of other peoples and races: the proverbial wisdom, folk knowledge and cultural assumptions that we inhale with the air of the society in which we grow up and receive our education. So Genghis Khan and Atilla the Hun have such a basic existence in the consciousness of Western minds that no knowledge of history is necessary to conjure up images of marauding barbaric hordes sweeping out of the Asian steppe, laying waste all in their path like an invasion of killer bees. When I learned that the principal of my school, a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman of scholarly bearing was called Genghis, it required in me a shift of mental gears. Hearing also that Atilla was the name of that polite, hand-raising, homework-doing young lad in my year 9 class was a further surprise for which my Euro-centric upbringing had not prepared me.

I would like to share some of the experiences I have had since I first came to this surprising country, and some of the eye-opening knowledge that has come my way, bringing me to a better understanding of a place that has become my second home.

Among the topics I intend to cover are:

• The Ancient Treasures of Turkey – what was there, and where is it now?
• Çanakkale / Gallipoli – There are two sides to even the best-known stories.
• The Fall of Constantinople – and the clash of civilizations.
• The Turk through the ages – that bad press goes back a long way!
• Benevolent dictators – could there ever be such a thing? And did Turkey have one?
• Cyprus – what are the Turks doing there anyway?
• The origins of Christianity – divine revelation and political expediency.
• The Fall of the Roman Empire – what actually happened when the barbarians came roaring through?