TURKS REVEL IN THEIR GLORY DAYS
Thomas Seibert
The National
rticle?AID=/20091027/FOREIGN/710269894/1135
Oct 27 2009
UAE
The Panorama 1453 Museum cleverly depicts the Ottoman assault on
Constantinople. Kerem Uzel / NarPhotos ISTANBUL // With the roar of
battle filling the air and scenes of fierce fighting all around him,
Ismail Uysal said he could not have been happier.
"I wish I could have been there," Mr Uysal, a 22-year-old university
student, said during a visit to the Panorama 1453 History Museum
in Istanbul. The centrepiece of the museum is the inside of a dome
covered with a 360-degree painting depicting the successful Ottoman
assault on what was then Constantinople on May 29, 1453. A lifelike
display of the battleground with cannons, carts, arrows and dug-outs
between the visitors’ ramp and the painting as well as sound effects
with battle cries, war drums, horses and explosions are also part of
the exhibition.
"It was an important day," Mr Uysal said about the fall of
Constantinople that ended the thousand-year reign of the Christian
Byzantine empire and turned today’s Istanbul into the capital of the
Muslim Ottomans, then an emerging new power which went on to conquer
much of south-eastern Europe and the Middle East. "That is how our
ancestors came here, came to Istanbul," Mr Uysal said.
Wide-eyed admiration for the Ottoman era of the sort expressed by
visitors in the Panorama museum is often found in conservative circles
in Turkey. Some observers say an uncritical admiration for the past,
fuelled by a one-sided way of teaching history in state schools,
makes it difficult for modern Turkey to understand and deal with
problems that present themselves in today’s world.
The museum, which is close to the historic city walls, provides a
romantic view of the decisive battle. The painting, covering 2,350
square metres, shows Ottoman soldiers, directed by Sultan Mehmet II
on a white horse, storming the city walls of Constantinople. "The
conquest of Istanbul was as much a technological marvel as it was
an epic story of uncommon valour," Kadir Topbas, Istanbul’s mayor,
wrote in a brochure for the museum.
"What happened here has great significance for me as a Turk and
a Muslim," said one visitor, Mutlu Karabas. Close by, excited
schoolchildren were following their teachers around the visitors’
platform, pointing out battle scenes to each other.
One day last week, the museum, which has attracted tens of thousands
of visitors since it opened at the start of the year, was filled with
schoolchildren, tour groups and individual visitors. Many expressed
awe at what their ancestors did.
"This is my ninth time here but I feel the same way every time,"
said Derya, a 23-year-old accountant who gave only her first name. "A
museum like this was long overdue. It was overdue for us to take
possession of our history."
Derya led a friend, Tugba, around the display, and both women said the
museum made them appreciate the importance of the day Constantinople
fell to the Ottomans. "It was a day that makes you proud," Tugba said.
"Here you feel even more like a Turk."
School education in Turkey encourages strong nationalistic views. Sara
Nur Yildiz, a US-trained historian at the Orient Institut in Istanbul,
a German research institution, and a former teacher at the liberal
Bilgi University in the city, said Turkish schools use a "non-critical"
approach. "They teach people to be proud to be Turkish," she said.
That view of history is sometimes expressed in academic circles as
well. "There are black pages in the history of every nation," Mehmet
Celik, a historian, told a panel at Atilim University in Ankara last
year, according to the university’s website. "But in the history of
the Turkish nation, there is not even one black page."
But Turkey needs to face the fact that not all of its past was golden,
critics say. One of them is Selahattin Demirtas, a leading member of
the Party for a Democratic Society, or DTP, Turkey’s main Kurdish
party. Referring to nationalist protests against recent agreements
between Turkey and its longtime foe Armenia to normalise relations, Mr
Demirtas told parliament last week that the country had to take a close
look at the reasons why so many people still saw Armenians as enemies.
A distorted view of events that led to the death of several hundred
thousand Armenians at the end of the First World War had been built
into history books in schools, Mr Demirtas said. The official version
of history taught in schools played up the fact that Armenian rebels
had killed Muslim Turks during the war but treated Turkish aggressions
against Armenians "as if they had not happened", he said.