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Which Way Turkey? A Personal Reflection

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  • Which Way Turkey? A Personal Reflection

    WHICH WAY TURKEY? A PERSONAL REFLECTION

    Foreign Policy Journal
    April 4 2014

    by Terry Cowan | April 4, 2014

    Turkey is somewhat in the news these days--and not in a good way. A
    recent New York Review of Books article considers three books on the
    current state of affairs, and particularly the fraying relationship
    between the Gulen movement and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I
    have only the most superficial understanding of the Gulen movement
    and the intricacies of this struggle for leadership among Turkey's
    Islamists. Plots and conspiracies abound within this whirlwind, aided
    in large part by a complicit judiciary on one side and a police
    community on the other, each willing to do the bidding of their
    particular faction. And in probably the most important story that you
    didn't read in this last week's news cycle, a video caught high-ranking
    Turkish government officials planning a false flag attack on northern
    Syria. Add to that the fact that the Turkish economic miracle may be
    fading. And of course, many still recall the demonstrations in Taksim
    Square from last summer.

    A street scene in Istanbul (photo courtesy of the author)

    I am a great lover of Turkey and recall my first exposure with great
    fondness, stumbling into the country in 2003, almost as by accident.

    On a whim, I decided to interrupt an exploration of Bulgaria and
    take the Balkan Express to Istanbul for a few days. (This was also
    the occasion of perhaps my personal best as a traveler-making my
    reservations for a sleeper in mangled French--the only language common
    to me and the clerk in Sofia.) I first set foot on Turkish soil at
    Kapipule, at two o'clock in the morning, as we piled out of the train
    and made our way, bleary-eyed, across the tracks to the dumpy little
    border crossing. The train was about to leave by the time I figured
    out that I must purchase a visa in one building before having my
    passport stamped in another. In my confusion and haste, I actually
    boarded the wrong train. But after a momentary panic, I retraced
    my steps and found my car. The following morning, I disembarked at
    Istanbul's Sirkeci station--quite literally the end of the line in
    Europe. If someone at age 48 could still be described as wide-eyed,
    then that was my reaction to the city. The bustle of Sultanahmet--and
    the East--beckoned me in the same way it has captivated other Western
    travelers through the centuries.

    I returned time and again, in and out of Turkey six or seven times
    by 2011. In the course of these travels, I visited most every major
    region of the country, save for the southern coastline around to
    Antakya. For someone with an appreciation of history, the Anatolian
    countryside yields new discoveries around every corner. And along the
    way, I came to love the open hospitality of the Turks themselves. To
    educate myself further, I read Orhan Pamuk, and followed the commentary
    of Mustafa Akyol. Louis de Bernierres' Birds Without Wings remains
    one of my favorite novels (an incredibly powerful narrative of the
    tragedy--for it is that--of modern Turkey).

    Back home, I become an enthusiastic advocate, if not apologist,
    for Turkey. In 2003, the atmosphere here could only be described as
    feverish. The U.S. had just shocked and awed Iraq, and Turkey's refusal
    to allow its bombers to fly-over still rankled in people's minds. At
    least in my uninformed part of the country, the Turks were simply
    part of the unintelligible Muslim other, no different than any other
    over there. And so, I talked a lot about Turkey, even to the point of
    joining the crackpots who wrote letters to the local newspaper. I would
    explain--with mixed success--the all-important differences between
    Turk and Arab and Kurd and Persian, and that the Sufi-influenced
    Islam of Anatolia had perhaps always been more moderate than elsewhere.

    I often related the anecdote from an acquaintance in Izmir. He told me
    of wealthy Saudi tourists arriving at the Izmir airport, destined for
    the Aegean beach resorts. The women would shed their head-coverings
    in the airport lobby and toss them in the nearest trash bin as soon
    as possible. So you see, I pleaded, Turkey was different. The most
    common question I would receive had to do with whether I was "safe"
    over there. This is, of course, laughable to anyone who has traveled
    in the region. I assured them that I never once worried about safety
    until my plane touched down in Texas.

    My more informed acquaintances questioned the Islamist faction of the
    new ruling AKP Party. I reassured them by making a comparison to our
    own Republican Party. Just as the GOP contains social conservatives, or
    Movement Conservatives as they are called now, as well as traditional
    business interest Republicans, so the AKP contains both conservative
    Islamists and the rising entrepreneurial middle class, both long
    frustrated by the Kemalist stranglehold on power. In each situation,
    the two factions have their own particular agendas, which may very
    well conflict with the other at times.

    Certainly some of my Turkish acquaintances fell into this latter
    category--young, ambitious, educated, western-oriented and not
    particularly religious. But Istanbul is not really Turkey in the
    same way that New York City is not really America (and I write this
    as someone who loves both cities). A foreign visitor to our largest
    city can be forgiven for not comprehending that a more representative
    sampling of this country might be found, for example, at the truck
    stop I recently patronized on Interstate Highway 40 between Memphis
    and Nashville. And so, even at the first, I sensed that my cool
    friends in their nice cars might not be the full story of this new
    Turkey. At Topkapi Palace (not my favorite Istanbul "must-see"), we
    foreign visitors were probably outnumbered by Turkish tourists from
    the conservative hinterlands of Anatolia. These sturdy Turkish women,
    heavy and broad, identically dressed in thick, drab, monochrome gray
    overcoats and scarves, quite literally elbowed and man-handled me
    away from a display case in the museum. It seems I lingered too long
    examining some hairs from the beard of Mohammed.

    To my Orthodox Christian co-religionists, I suggested that the AKP,
    in their supposed piety, might actually be loosening the noose ever
    so slightly on the Greek church there. Some signs indicated that the
    continuing persecution of the Church came more from the entrenched
    judiciary than from the Islamist faction of the AKP. I encouraged
    friends to travel to Turkey. I developed travel itineraries with tips
    to make the most of their time there, while avoiding the usual scams.

    Even from the first, however, some aspects of the Turkish
    mindset irritated me to no end. I bristled at their pervasive
    Turkocentrism--smug and unquestioning. Perhaps this is merely
    their variation of the U.S.'s own equally unrealistic American
    Exceptionalism. If so, it is equally unappealing. The Turks have a
    mythic view of themselves, as we all do, I suppose. Theirs, however,
    often seems more detached from real history. In all things, we would
    do well to understand that they consider themselves Turks first,
    Muslims second, and Sunnis last.

    Beyond this, one often finds an indifferent attitude to their past,
    dismissive and obtusely ignorant of the civilizations that preceded
    them in Anatolia, or recognizing that Turkish culture itself is
    greatly derivative of that which went before (my good friend Turan
    being a notable exception to this). History begins with the Seljuks
    (if not the Ottomans), and nothing much matters before then. I have
    found Turks to be notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism
    of their past. This unquestioning of history is not unique to the
    Turkish nation, but the skepticism which many Americans have come to
    view our own past seems largely absent in Turkey. On the other hand,
    they seem unusually susceptible to the wildest of conspiracy theories.

    Turks can display a deft ability to ignore or deny real history. The
    Armenian Genocide is, of course, the best example of this mindset. In
    2006, I endured a tour of the Museum of the Turkish Genocide in Igdir.

    The Turks have concocted an alternative history in which the poor
    Turkish peasants were the genocidal victims of the Armenians, not
    the other way around. The museum and monument is visible from the
    Armenian border, replete with lurid, cartoonish murals depicting
    crazed, gun-toting priests leading the Armenians against the noble
    Turks. So there is that.

    None of these concerns prevent me from returning to Turkey, however.

    In fact, I will be in the far eastern reaches of the country in May of
    2014. But my enthusiasm for all things Turkish has waned. My defense of
    the AKP has come to an end. Broadly speaking, the ruling party displays
    the same authoritarian bent as the former regime. The judiciary seems
    no less corrupt. In countless sundry ways, the particular religiosity
    of the AKP base is making its presence known.

    The recent ban on the sale of alcohol after 10:00 p.m., for example,
    will be noticeable to even the casual Istanbul tourist.

    Hopes of resolving long-standing issues with the Greek Orthodox Church
    have withered. The cat-and-mouse game between the Patriarchate and the
    Turkish government regarding the return of Halki Seminary has turned
    out to be just that, a game. In the 1990s, the government looked the
    other way while Kurds undertook the ethnic cleansing of the Suriani
    Orthodox Christians in the Tur Abdin. And there seems no outcry
    within Turkey today as their judiciary completes that operation,
    confiscating the 1,400 year old Mor Gabriel Monastery, one of the
    last Christian enclaves in the region (visited by this writer in 2006).

    For political reasons, the exquisite Hagia Sophia Church--the jewel
    of the Trapezuntine kingdom--has now been converted into a mosque
    though Trabzon hardly lacks for Muslim worship venues. And this
    brings us to the current discussion of doing the same with the Hagia
    Sophia in Istanbul. In the past, this would have been unimaginable,
    and I would have dismissed such as wild conspiracy talk. In the
    new political realities of Turkey, such an outcome looks more like
    a distinct possibility. Robert Ousterhout, the respected Byzantine
    scholar, calls this the "litmus test" of conservative members of the
    ruling party. We know how such litmus tests proceed in this country,
    and so the slow strangulation of any non-Turkish element in society
    continues apace.

    Indeed, the cosmopolitan air of old Constantinople has been largely
    just a memory for a long time now. For better or worse, Istanbul will
    be--must be, apparently--a thoroughly Turkish city.

    One detects a strong sense of national insecurity in all this. Why
    must any remembrance of the pre-Ottoman past be extinguished? Why
    cannot their minorities be allowed to flourish? The new Turkey will
    be a duller, sadder, and even more melancholy place.

    The 100-year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide rolls
    around next year. You can count on the official government's
    response/repudiation/rejection to be rather ugly in tone. One can
    also depend on the unofficial reaction among Turks in general to be
    even uglier.

    And now we have evidence of Turkey's messy involvement in the Syrian
    Civil War, as well as their deep level of support for the insurgents.

    At first, these actions seemed incomprehensible to me. Turkey
    certainly managed to stay out of the Iraqi war on their border. If
    so inclined, they could do the same with Syria. But by stepping back
    a bit and taking the long historical view, their actions are more
    understandable. By the time the U.S. gained its own independence, the
    Ottoman Empire was already the "Sick Man of Europe," and would remain
    so until its death in 1919. But they were not always sick. For some
    time now, Turkey has communicated its desire to take a larger--indeed,
    its historical--role in the region. Perhaps the best summation of
    their behavior in this matter is that they are simply Turks being
    Turks once again.

    In examining my own growing disaffection with the new Turkey, I
    realize the problem lies more in our own expectations. We warmed
    to the western-oriented Istanbul, where supposedly casual Islam
    accommodated nicely with modernity. We were charmed by its exotica,
    and somehow expected its religion to be of the emasculated variety
    which would not jar our secular sensibilities. This now appears more
    wishful thinking than reality. As realists, we should face the Turkey
    that is, not the people we imagined them to be.

    http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/04/04/which-way-turkey-a-personal-reflection/#.Uz8gYMaKDIU

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