Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

ANKARA: An Invented History Flogged On The Nation's Gossip Pages

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • ANKARA: An Invented History Flogged On The Nation's Gossip Pages

    AN INVENTED HISTORY FLOGGED ON THE NATION'S GOSSIP PAGES
    by ETYEN MAHCUPYAN

    Today's Zaman
    Jan 14 2011
    Turkey

    Last week, every television channel in Turkey was in hot pursuit of
    two events in particular, with an effort by the media to unearth as
    many gossipy dimensions to these stories as possible.

    One of these events was the broadcast of the television series
    "MuhteÅ~_em Yuzyıl" (The Magnificent Century), which takes as its
    focus the palace and times of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the
    16th century. The other "event" was a statue by sculptor Mehmet Aksoy
    named "İnsanlık Abidesi" (Memorial to Humanity), whose construction
    began in the city of Kars but was left to stand unfinished for two
    years. It became clear last week that the media felt bored by the
    almost tortuous meanderings of news concerning the Kurdish issues
    and/or the economy. And so it turned to stories about a new TV series
    and the unfinished statue in Kars. Needless to say, these pieces of
    news spilled over easily into the gossipy, more paparazzi aspects of
    the news, and thus also easily tampered with the subconscious of the
    Turkish people.

    History has never belonged to the "civilian" arena in this country.

    When the elite cadres that formed the republican regime decided
    to create the "modern citizens" who would complement their own
    sense of legitimacy, a new intellectual effort aimed at Turkicizing
    Muslims emerged, and all of history was then rewritten through this
    perspective. The positivism embraced by this elite cadre viewed
    everything connected with religion as a possible ball and chain
    and thus began to view the Ottoman world as somehow outside "real
    history," instead treating it as some sort of auxiliary period of
    time. In line with this, the Turks were an ethnic group that had come
    out of Central Asia, spread across the world and never lost any of
    their ethnic characteristics.

    As they saw it, the Turks had acted as protectors of Islam and turned
    it into a great civilization, but it was their Turkishness that
    held precedence above all else. Islam and the general order of the
    Ottoman Empire were perceived by this intellectual effort as having
    prevented Turkishness, and as they told it, there thus came a point
    at which the Turks reared up and were in a sense reborn from their
    own ashes. This period of rebirth is expressed in the cleansing of
    Anatolia and the clearing out of different ethnicities. There was
    no room for non-Muslims amongst the Turks; non-Muslims were seen as
    extensions of Christian Westerners, people who had betrayed the Turks
    and who received their punishment.

    Not only did this version of events, created originally for children,
    become standard material for teaching in schools in Turkey, it also
    began to be constantly imposed by the media. And so the people of
    the nation, almost completely Muslim themselves, reacted in different
    degrees to this story according to their own levels of secularity. For
    secular citizens who felt close to the state, there was absolutely no
    problem whatsoever with this version of events. In fact, if anything,
    they might complain it lacked more details. As for the wider society
    at hand, which possessed Islamic sensitivities, there was a perception
    of this story that split the story itself into two parts: It outright
    rejected the judgment of the part of the story related to the Ottoman
    period. As Muslims saw it, the nearly flawless systems of justice,
    mentality and morality that reigned during that period were rewritten
    as having been simply figurative, while the symbolic Sultan Suleiman
    was remade as some sort of "sacred carrier."

    At the same time, Muslims also failed to embrace the judgments put
    forth by the state's version of the history of the final period: that
    non-Muslims were traitors who had sowed discord, and that whatever
    thus happened to them was the natural result of this behavior. In
    addition, the Ottomans had still behaved tolerantly, and even in the
    final period of the empire, supported them as much as possible.

    And thus emerged a society which sought its own identity through a
    shared history but which was at the same time separated from reality,
    the result of which was that everyone began to pursue their own version
    of invented histories. And so what this new TV series "MuhteÅ~_em
    Yuzyıl" did was to bring together this splintered fantasy of the
    past with the world of paparazzi. Two very different perspectives
    on history were combined, and it was a very good thing because what
    became immediately clear was just how unhealthy and insufficient each
    of these versions really was.

    As for the previously referred to piece of news about the unfinished
    "İnsanlık Abidesi" statue, it did not provide as wide encompassing
    a function as the TV series. The argument surrounding that statue took
    place within a narrower circle of people, one primarily concerned with
    civil rights. Interestingly, when the topic turns to non-Muslims --
    the Armenian issues, for example -- the distance separating Muslims
    from secularists closes quickly. Basically, there is no question in
    most people's minds that it was really the Armenians who were guilty
    and that the Turks acted with high-mindedness and much esteem.

    The only reason for the statue to even be in the news lately is that
    the government was damaged by words spoken by the prime minister about
    the statue itself and the fact that these words were used to try and
    portray the government as being opposed to modernity. The real goal
    in the presentation of that particular piece of news is to try and
    make Muslims appear opposed to statues in general. Outside of that,
    no attention is paid to the statue as a symbol of friendship between
    the Turkish and Armenian borders, and the fact that it was designed
    to be such a symbol.

    Turkish society is still stuck in the identity template created for
    it by the state. What's more, an ideologically driven view of history
    does very much act as a source of nurture for this sense of identity.

    For that reason, politics can only really spread out and take up space
    in the world of gossip and paparazzi, and the world of thought cannot
    get beyond its basic needs.




    From: A. Papazian
Working...
X