Turkey Is Very Hard To Fit Into Anyone's Rigid Mold

Turkey was the subject of two separate talks in London last week. One conference in Whitehall with noted speakers from academia and diplomatic circles covered the usual ‘wither Turkey and the West’ question that has been plaguing Western statesmen for several hundred years. It was interesting to hear the same sort of concerns that must have resonated in the same halls more than 150 years ago when what was left of the Ottoman Empire was regarded as something necessary – but not quite what you would bring into the front parlor.

            “However disagreeable its rulers may be, we cannot afford to let Turkey and the straits fall into the hands of the Russians. We must continue our efforts to bring Turkey onside and not let the Russians grab everything.”

           

           Talks in last week’s conference weren’t much different. “We know that President Tayyip Erdoğan is difficult to deal with and not quite anyone’s idea of a real democrat. But we simply must carry on with some sort of dialogue. We don’t want to wake up one morning and find that the country has jettisoned the West in favour of Putin.”

            True enough. But treating Turkey as a distant, dyspeptic relative who shows up uninvited for a long weekend in the Cotswolds obscures the powerful social, political and economic forces driving the country today. It is those forces, not the temporary rule of Tayyip Erdoğan, that will determine the future of Turkey. With all the headlines and outbursts surrounding Erdoğan it is sometimes easy to forget that the country is much, much more complex than the bombast of its leader.

The reality of modern Turkey belies the simplistic, one-dimensional characterization that Erdoğan and many outside observers love. Terms like ally, enemy, religious, secular, democrat, autocrat have absolutely no meaning by themselves. Turkey can, at the same time, be one or all of these things. Trends like rising education levels, the growing middle class, deepening interaction with the global economy, sharp social and political divisions make it impossible to slot Turkey into a rigid mold. Anyone who thinks he begins to understand modern Turkey would be well advised to stop and think again.

            It was the internationally-acclaimed author Elif Şafak who took us beneath the dry diplomatic concerns about Turkey and offered a clear-eyed, sympathetic view of that reality. The talk at one of London’s leading bookstores ostensibly was to discuss her most recent novel, Three Daughters of Eve. The book discusses the lives of three Moslem women – one pious, one hostile to Islam, and one unsure where she stands on religion -- studying at Oxford.

Elif  Şafak

             Şafak also shared her concerns and frustrations that the vibrant intellectual and social life that once dominated big cities like Istanbul and Ankara is becoming stifled under the rigid vision of Erdoğan. Conversations at dinner parties and other gatherings are stilted because people feel extremely nervous about expressing their real thoughts. “Let someone hear you say the wrong thing, and you could wind up in prison” seems to be ruling fear. No one is allowed to have ‘doubts’ any more. To be seen or heard ‘doubting’ Erdoğan’s version of reality is to invite close scrutiny by your neighbors or the authorities. Forget about humor. Jokes or cartoons about Erdoğan are just a one-way ticket to a jail cell.

            She also bemoaned the tendency of Turkey’s current rulers to present the country in simplistic nationalistic, religious and social terms. The Turkey she described, and one I experienced in more than two decades in the country, is not the un-differentiated, homogeneous mass that Erdoğan and his acolytes would have people believe. Turkey is in fact a rich, heterogeneous mixture of people and religion. Yes, most of the people are Moslem, but there are several shades and varieties of Islam within the country. Even the subject of nationality is not straightforward. The question of who, exactly, is a Turk becomes even more complex when you consider the question of the millions of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens.

            While people are proud to call themselves citizens of the Turkish Republic they are equally quick to point out their unique family histories. Some are indeed direct descendants of the Turks who swarmed out of the Altai mountains more than 1,000 years ago. Some of these families proudly claim direct links to the non-Ottoman tribes that controlled different parts of Anatolia. Others claim their heritage from the far-flung regions of the Ottoman Empire: the Balkans, Crete, Yemen, Egypt, mainland Greece. Many of the villages along the Aegean coast that were vacated during the population exchange with Greece in the 1920s were re-populated with Turks driven out of their homes in the Balkans.

 

Modern Turks trace their roots from all over the Ottoman Empire

            Erdoğan also ignores the complex reality of the modern Turkish economy and how much it is intertwined with the global economy. Under his mis-management the economy may be sliding fast, but it remains closely tied to the wider world in critical areas like finance and trade – including trade in those very basic raw and intermediate materials that keep Turkish factories working.

            Given Erdoğan’s overwhelming control of almost all political discourse in Turkey today it is revealing that estimates about the outcome of the referendum giving him total control are as close as they are. But perhaps the very complexities he ignores in his quest for this control could result in his unexpected defeat. Even he is learning that ‘one-size-fits-all’ does not really apply to Turkey.

Ghosts From The Past Have Much To Teach Us

The growing number of leaders around the world wanting to turn their countries into stagnant ponds filled with frightened xenophobes should take a careful look at two of the two of the longest-lived empires the world has ever seen. They would learn that one of the main reasons for the 1,600-year collective longevity of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires in what was then, as now, a very troubled part of the world was their willingness to incorporate outsiders into the very fabric of the empire.

Unlike today’s leaders they saw the value, the necessity, of bringing fresh ideas, different experiences into the empire. Not for them the narrow-minded fear of ‘Johnny foreigner.’

The Byzantine Empire lasted about 1,000 years from the mid-4^th century AD to the mid-15^th century. During that time, it was surrounded by threats on all sides such as Persians, Avars, Russians, Bulgars, Latins, Visogoths, Arabs, Mongols, Turkic tribes, and finally the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantines are too easily dismissed in much of today’s history books as effete, unreliable, and more obsessed with bloody palace intrigue than true statesmanship. That simplistic characterization obscures their ability to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances. The 1,000-year run didn’t happen by chance alone.

Byzantine Emperors Justinian and Constantine presenting Haghia Sophia and city to the Virgin Mary

When strong enough, resort to military measures. When weaker, resort to diplomacy and what we call today ‘soft power.’ Compared to much of the rest of the region the Byzantine Empire, more particularly the glories of Constantinople, was so splendid that many foreigner rulers were gladly co-opted into that splendour and, in some cases, the Orthodox faith. The period was highlighted by strategic inter-marriages, alliances, financial tribute, trading privileges and much more. Jonathan Harris put it very nicely in his recent book The Lost World of Byzantium.

“Thus if Byzantium has one outstanding legacy it is not perhaps Orthodox Christianity or its preservation of classical Greek literature. Rather it is the lesson that the strength of a society lies in its ability to adapt and incorporate outsiders in even the most adverse circumstances.”

            The Byzantine Empire finally and totally collapsed one spring day in 1453 when the Ottoman Turks succeeded where so many others had failed and breached the formidable walls that had protected Constantinople since the 5^th century. The Byzantine Empire may have disappeared as a political and military entity, but the early Ottoman leaders were smart enough to maintain the essential characteristics of religious tolerance and using talent wherever they found it. Far from being frightened by religious or ethnic diversity these Moslem leaders valued the strength that diversity gave the Empire.

            In a new book, Aleppo, The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City, Philip Mansel recounts some advice that Suleyman the Magnificent gave to his council that was considering expelling Jews from the province in the mid-16^th century.

“The more sorts of nations I have in my dominion under me as Turks, Moors, Grecians, etc. the greater the authority they bring to my kingdoms and make them more famous. And that nothing may fall off from my greatness, I think it convenient that all that have been together long hitherto, may be kept and tolerated so still for the future.”

 

Suleyman, perhaps the greatest of the Ottoman sultans

            The Jews stayed put in Aleppo and continued to contribute to Suleyman’s greatness. It is no coincidence that the ultimate decline of the Ottoman Empire was hastened when its rulers ignored Suleyman’s advice on the value of diversity. The greatest of Ottoman sultans must be looking on modern Turkey with great despair as the current rulers do their best to eradicate all traces of that tolerance and diversity.

            But Turkey is far from being alone in its headlong retreat from those two values. One need only to look at some of the countries in the European Union where walls and barbed wire have replaced Welcome signs. And then there’s Donald Trump in the United States. He not only has pledged to build a gigantic wall along the Mexican border but to expel more than 10 million immigrants now living in the U.S. The famous Statue of Liberty must be blushing at the thought of that happening.

            The shameful immigration ‘debate’ in Britain is so far a debate without any facts or even a real discussion. The anti-immigrant rantings of UKIP and many Tory members of parliament are taken at face value without a shred of proof that foreigners – specifically those from the European Union -- are taking over the country. The actual, official, numbers on immigration into Britain tell quite a different story – one that demonstrates clearly that crust-less watercress sandwiches and tea are not about to be replaced by kielbasa and vodka. But bringing this reality into the debate would require an act of statesmanship and political courage – two qualities completely lacking in the entire Brexit discussion up to now. Those two long-gone empires have a great deal to teach modern politicians.