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The white cap of hatred
Jun 1st 2007
Our Europe editor glimpses a nasty nationalism
Friday
BACK in Kars, we have dinner with the mayor, Naif Alibeyoglu. He is an
AK Party man, and a progressive fan of modern sculpture, examples of
which unexpectedly adorn bits of his city. The food and wine, as
always, even in far-flung parts of Turkey, are superb. Mr Alibeyoglu
is an optimist on the subject of improving ties with Armenia. He would
like to reopen the border, he wants to encourage Armenian tourists and
he invites Armenians to come, even if by roundabout routes, to his
local art and music festivals.
But he has plenty of enemies: Azerbaijan, for one, which fought a
ruinous war against Armenia in the early 1990s. Perhaps one-third of
Kars’s population is Azeri (the languages are both Turkic). The local
Azerbaijani consul-general is a positive fomenter of dissent with the
Armenians. But there are also plenty of Turkish nationalists to deal
with.
I go to see one of them, the local boss of the far-right MHP Party,
who says he expects to do well in the election in July. Surrounded by
a villainous-looking group of thugs, he puts forward several
hair-raising policies, including the early invasion of northern Iraq
and the execution of the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan. He is
against normalisation of relations with Armenia until and unless
Armenians stop calling this part of Turkey "western Armenia" and drop
their "absurd" demands for an acknowledgment of Armenian genocide by
the Ottoman Turks in 1915.
Nationalism in Turkey is, in a sense, the downside of Ataturkism. The
great man was a patriot above all else. But in the process of forging
a modern Turkey, he and his successors have lost the easygoing Ottoman
tolerance of a multicultural empire. This is not just a problem for
Kurds and Armenians. The Alevis, an Islamic sect, also feel
persecuted. It is dismayingly hard to open a Christian church
anywhere, despite Anatolia’s long Christian heritage. And the
beleaguered Greek community of Istanbul, the seat of the Orthodox
Patriarch and of the (closed) Halki Greek Orthodox seminary, are under
pressure as never before.
Trabzon the tarnished jewel
Walking through Kars, I stumble across a sad example of the new
nationalism. Three boys are playing football outside a former Armenian
church. One, hardly 12 years old, sports the white cap that was
supposedly worn by the young assassin of Hrant Dink, an ethnic
Armenian newspaper editor shot dead in Istanbul. The assassin seems to
have come from Trabzon, north of Kars, now a hotbed of Turkish
nationalism. Ironically it was, as Trebizond, once a jewel of Greek
Orthodox and Jewish culture. We remonstrate with the boy about wearing
such provocative headgear outside an Armenian church – but his response
is merely to kick the church wall.
As we head back to Erzurum in search of some of the city’s obsidian
necklaces and worry-beads, I brood again on Turkey’s fractious
politics. The heavy-handed military intervention in defence of
secularism and the rejection of the AK Party’s candidate for the
Turkish presidency have inflamed passions ahead of the election in
late July. It looks as if the AK Party will win, and Recep Tayyip
Erdogan will continue as prime minister. But Turkey’s angry
nationalism and the bitterness unleashed before the election will play
into the hands of those in the European Union, including the new
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who are against its EU membership.
Turkish and European Union leaders have much fence-mending ahead of
them.
Thursday
TO LEAVE Istanbul and Ankara and head east is to visit another
country. In the towns and villages around Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish
south-east, one can still find a grinding rural poverty that would be
unimaginable in the sophisticated west of Turkey. In the north-east,
in Erzurum and Kars, where I now go, the poverty may be slightly less
grinding, but the sense of being on a frontier is if anything even
stronger – as is a renewed and unattractive spirit of Turkish
nationalism.
Erzurum is the sinister backcloth to John Buchan’s "Greenmantle", set
in the first world war. This was then a key playground in the great
game with the Russians, who had long occupied a chunk of what is now
north-eastern Turkey. At least they left intact the city’s wonderful
madrassas (religious seminaries), though in accordance with Ataturk’s
precepts these are today all secular museums. Farther east, in Kars,
most of the grey stone buildings, including the city’s best hotel,
were actually built by the Russians. Kars is also the setting of Orhan
Pamuk’s novel "Snow".
Appropriately enough, even in May the mountains around the city are
still topped by snow. This is a high-altitude place, in the foothills
of the Caucasus and quite near the biblical Mount Ararat. On a chilly
afternoon we head east out of Kars and towards Armenia. Our goal is
not that country, however, for the land border is still firmly closed.
It is Ani, one of the world’s great historical and architectural gems.
As capital of Armenia in the tenth century and a great trading station
on the old silk road to China, Ani once vied with Byzantium as a place
of wealth and of Christian observance. It is located on a plateau high
above the River Arpa that divides Armenia from Turkey – but it is firmly
on the Turkish side. Given the testy relations between the two
countries, and a revival of nationalist feeling in Turkey, it is not
surprising that the Turks should have somewhat neglected the place,
which is entirely deserted as we wander around (save for a couple of
glum-looking soldiers who come from the old fort that looks across
into Armenia).
Noah’s old neighbourhood
At least, some restoration has been done here in recent years. There
are four or five early medieval churches, one of which later became
the first mosque in Anatolia, most of them complete with some superb
frescoes. They would create a sensation if they were transplanted
lock, stock and barrel to western Europe. But here they are tramped
over by the resident sheep and goats, and very little else. There is
no hotel, restaurant, bar or guide anywhere in sight. The atmosphere
is all the more haunting as a result. My advice is to go to Ani, or,
if you cannot, at least visit its excellent website, before the
world’s tourists discover and ruin it.
As an antidote after such high-blown culture, we decide on returning
to Kars to visit a well-known local truckstop and bar. The chief
attraction of the place is not the food and drink, however: it is the
Azeri prostitutes who lounge around one of the tables, being gawped at
by the almost entirely male clientele. Occasionally one of them
wanders around the bar singing and inviting customers to stuff
banknotes into her skimpy top. But the beer is expensive, and the
ladies are scarcely more beguiling than their intended clients. At
least I can put the excursion down to experience – and, with luck,
charge the tab to expenses.
Wednesday
ON TO Ankara, Turkey’s unattractive capital. A small village when
Ataturk picked it as the new capital, it is now a dusty metropolis of
more than three million residents. It has a shiny new out-of-town
airport, but still no direct flights to London, Paris or the United
States.
Ankara is suffering an outbreak of political fever as the election in
July approaches. The area around the Turkish parliament is thick with
television crews; inside deputies were recently engaged in fisticuffs.
A pro-secular politician wanders over to promise that the ruling AK
Party is "finished" and that voters will rally to the opposition.
I wonder. Opinion polls give AK and its charismatic prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, around 40% of the vote, up from 34% in 2002
(when the party won a huge parliamentary majority because only one
opposition party crossed the 10% threshold).
One reason voters may back Mr Erdogan is that he has given them five
exceptionally successful years. Before 2002, when the country was run
by varying coalitions of secular parties, it lurched from one crisis
to another, with inflation roaring, banks going bust and frequent
recourse to the IMF.
The ground for Turkey’s recovery was laid by Kemal Dervis, finance
minister in 2001; but the AK Party stuck to his course, tamed
inflation, restored growth and won the prize of accession talks with
the European Union. However much they dislike Mr Erdogan’s Islamist
leanings, even fierce secularists concede that his economic and
political record is impressive.
Their secularism is best sensed by visiting Ataturk’s mausoleum high
above the city (pictured, left). Here you find not just the great
man’s coffin and a museum about his life, but such other memorabilia
as his cars, his cigarettes and even three of his chickpeas. A film
records how Ataturk saved the nation, and then personally educated and
modernised it. The atmosphere is almost religious in fervour: to coin
an oxymoron, it is a place of secular religion.
It is plain that modern Turkey owes a lot to Ataturk. Without him it
might have been summarily chopped up into pieces by the allies in
1918-19. Yet there is something creepy about the reverence that he is
now accorded. It is an offence to insult his memory in even the most
trivial way. And it is thanks to him that the army is treated as an
oracle by secularists – and by much of public opinion.
Yet Turkey’s military is no great respecter of human rights – nor of
democracy, for that matter. Besides waging a long and brutal war
against Kurdish rebels, its habitual response to critics has been to
try to silence them.
For many years the generals backed Turkey’s aspirations to join the
EU, because they saw this as the ultimate fulfilment of Ataturk’s
dreams. Now, however, some seem to be having second thoughts. The EU
has a pesky way of insisting on freedom of speech and religion, on
human rights – and on subordinating the army to civilian authorities.
As it happens, the talk in Ankara is that Turkey’s EU ambitions may
come to nought because of rising opposition from the French, Austrians
and Germans. But there is here another paradox about Ataturkism. The
army considers itself the guardian of Ataturk’s legacy. But if Turkey
is to achieve true modernisation by getting into the EU, the military
must lose its special status. And that is also why, despite the
secularists’ arguments, I conclude that another AK victory will,
ultimately, be the right result.
Tuesday
NOBODY should visit Istanbul without going to the Topkapi palace and
Aya Sofia, both now museums. The Topkapi houses a fabulous collection
of rugs, weapons, jewels, pottery and mosaics accumulated by sultans
over the centuries. But almost as big an appeal is its setting: grassy
courtyards, fountains and cool flowerbeds all set high above the
Bosporus. You can while away hours watching the boats, tankers and
ferries scurrying across the busy waters of Istanbul’s harbour.
What really pulls in the tourists is something else: the Topkapi’s
famous harem, which was opened to the public only in 1960. Yet though
it sounds salacious, in reality it simply houses the private quarters
of the sultans, including several of the finest rooms in the entire
palace. Because it imposes an extra charge and does not admit guided
tours, the harem is also mercifully quieter than the rest of the
museum – and than Aya Sofia outside.
Sadly, Aya Sofia (pictured below) is disfigured by internal
scaffolding, but the immense scale of the basilica, built by Justinian
between 532 and 537 AD, is staggering. It was turned into a mosque on
the day that Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. It is fitting,
given today’s arguments over his secular legacy, that it was Ataturk
who turned it into a museum in 1935. Besides the mosaics on the first
floor, I am intrigued to stumble across a memorial to Enrico Dandolo,
the blind 90-year-old Doge of Venice who led the appalling 1204 Fourth
Crusade – in the course of which, instead of going to Jerusalem, the
crusaders sacked Constantinople, paving the way for the fall of the
city to the Turks.
That is enough history, I reflect, as I wander off to meet Norman
Stone, an eminent British historian who decamped from Oxford to Turkey
a decade ago, basing himself first at Bilkent University in Ankara,
and now at Koc University in Istanbul. He complains about the traffic
and says that he might return to Ankara if a high-speed train link is
built with Istanbul. We talk about the political situation in Turkey.
But I swiftly find that it is impossible to escape the burden of
history. For one of Mr Stone’s bugbears is the Armenian "genocide" of
1915.
He shares the mainstream view of many Turks: it happened at a messy
time during the first world war; some Armenians were fighting (with
the Russians) against Ottoman forces; a decision was taken by the
Ottoman government to deport them; a large number of Armenians died.
But he insists that this did not amount to genocide. Other historians
disagree. They have found archived plans laid by the Young Turks in
Constantinople that had the explicit aim of killing Turkey’s ethnic
Armenians.
I cannot judge the truth, but I note one peculiarity with regret.
Inside Turkey, it is an offence to talk about the mass-slaughter of
the Armenians. A number of writers have been prosecuted. An ethnic
Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, was gunned down recently on his
own doorstep in Istanbul. Elsewhere, it can be an offence to deny that
this was a genocide. The French National Assembly recently passed a
bill to this effect, and there is one before the American Congress.
With laws like these flying around, whatever happened to free speech
and the disinterested unearthing of historical truth?
Monday
BY ANY measure Istanbul is a world-class historical city. As first
Byzantium and later Constantinople, it was capital of a Roman Empire
that lasted longer in the east than in the west. It became the Sublime
Porte, capital of the Ottoman Empire and seat of the Islamic
caliphate. Coming into the city from Ataturk airport, you pass right
through the thick walls of Constantine (which kept Ottoman besiegers
at bay until 1453) before emerging into a forest of minarets perched
spectacularly above a blue sea.
Yet this is no dead town from the past. Istanbul now has over 10m
people, making it Europe’s biggest and fastest-growing city (in 1950
it had only about a million). The noise, the traffic, the streets
crowding down to the Bosporus and the Golden Horn are overwhelmingly
busy. There is little sign of the political crisis that threatens to
engulf Turkey, and provokes my visit.
This crisis is over the secular inheritance of Ataturk, father of
modern Turkey, who abolished the Ottoman sultanate and the caliphate
in the 1920s, and moved the capital to Ankara. Turks revere Ataturk,
whose secular legacy is jealously guarded by the army. A month ago the
army put out a statement criticising the government’s choice of
Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, as candidate for the Turkish
presidency, and implicitly threatening a military coup.
The army has always disliked the AK Party government, led by Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, for its Islamist roots. Mr Gul’s particular offence is
to have a wife who wears the Muslim headscarf, which is banned in
public buildings.The details of the subsequent in-fighting and court
cases are too boring to discuss, but the upshot is that no president
has been chosen and Turkey is preparing for a general election in late
July.
It seems likely that the AK Party will win again, though perhaps not
with the same big majority that it won in 2002. The party may again
try to install a mild Islamist as president. So the threat of a
military intervention still hangs over Turkey, which has a long
history of coups.
You might expect that the worldly elite of Istanbul would deplore such
heavy-handed military threats and firmly back democracy. But that is
not the opinion of most of the journalists, former diplomats and
bankers who gather at a splendid dinner party hosted by colleague here
in her apartment in the city’s Galata district. On the contrary, they
are overtly sympathetic to the army, concerned to preserve secularism
in Turkey, and suspicious that the AK Party has a hidden Islamist
agenda to turn their country into a new Iran.
In an era of creeping fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world, such
concerns are understandable. Yet to a Westerner from Europe the notion
that a military coup might be preferable to a woman’s sporting a
headscarf in the presidential palace in Ankara seems bizarre. The
truth is that, in Turkey, secularism has turned into another form of
fundamentalism that trumps other values, including democracy and the
country’s prospects of joining the European Union.
Here prosperity and urbanisation play a part. Behind these arguments
lies a class issue. What the elite really objects to is the influx of
scarf-wearing Anatolian Muslim peasants that has swelled the
population of Istanbul and other cities. Yet, as in many other
countries, this is something they will just have to learn to live
with.
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