[Reader-list] Turkey Travelogue - Part III

[Sarang Shidore]

Merhaba friends,   I am writing this at the wee hours of dawn from my 
home in Austin. Yes, I finally got back last night. But although I am 
in Austin physically, my soul still lingers on in that majestic city 
on the Bosphorus Strait. As I have said before, New York and Berlin 
awed me, London excited me, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Budapest charmed me, 
Singapore and Taipei impressed me, Rome and Florence enchanted 
me...but Bombay, Istanbul and Mexico City are the only cities that 
have inspired me. Perhaps because I remain (and will always remain) 
in my heart a citizen of the so-called "third world", the 4/5ths of 
the planet often derisively dismissed in the corridors of power for 
its supposed backwardness. But if we wish to see life in all its 
colliding contradictions we Moderns must step outside the cool 
comforts of our homes in Cupertino, CA and Austin, TX, even if it 
is a moment in the otherwise blissful existence of our gated soap 
operas.   We, having accepted Modernity as our new ideology, are now 
determined to wage a new crusade to convert the heathen. The advent 
of some sort of Modernity is inevitable in our time. But by 
transforming what is essentially a complex historical wave (with its 
own diverse timescales and forms) into a single overarching dogma of 
Progress we are sowing the seeds of immense pain. We Moderns believe 
it is our obligation, indeed a duty to rapidly bring the vast yonder 
into our fold. It is our new Manifest Destiny, our call to arms. 
We believe we hold in our hands the keys to universal happiness. We 
believe that we have little to learn from those who came before us, 
or those who live in alternative realities in our age.   How blindly 
and how blithely do we accept the need - no the desirability - to use 
and re-use the most destructive weapons humankind has ever known as 
tools to achieve our grandiose dreams? Our various gigantic 
ideologies - Marxism, Positivism, Fascism, Capitalism, Nationalism, 
Conservatism, Neo-Liberalism and all the other (mainly Western) isms 
that follow in their wake - have reduced the human community to a set 
of social security numbers. We have taken the individuality out of 
the individual, the beauty out of the beautiful. Our mass produced, 
brand-name culture of glittering commodities in gigantic superstores 
and antiseptic feel-good messages overwhelms us and sedates us every 
single day.   We Moderns may have tranformed Convenience into a fine 
art form, but the reality is that we are increasingly marooned in a 
automated web of action and reaction. We have lost the art of 
contemplation, which the ancients recognized and practised. We live 
in a dream-like stupor chasing our insignificant dreams of More and 
Bigger in our narcissistic self-centered existence. We have many 
lessons to learn before we are truly Awake.   OK, back to Istanbul. I 
have written to some degree of the Turkish language in my earlier 
letter. Let me expand on this. Turkish belongs to a language family 
known as the Altaic family which includes Kazakh, Uzbek, Mongolian, 
Azerbaijani, and Tatar mainly. Some linguists have proposed that the 
Altaic family and the Finno-Ugric family (Hungarian, Estonian, 
Finnish) for  a part of a bigger supra-family known as the 
Ural-Altaic family. This is yet to be conclusively proven but there 
are apparently many similarities between these two families. Having 
been to Hungary and being somewhat of a language buff myself, it was 
very striking to me how similar they sound. The sorts of "feel" one 
gets from hearing Hungarian and Turkish is similar and vastly 
different from say Arabic or Russian. There are no guttural sounds 
(like in Arabic) and Turkish is spoken mostly from the front of the 
mouth. It sounds sweet to me (of course this is a matter of personal 
and subjective taste) unlike the harsh sounds of Arabic or Hebrew. 
Turks, like the Magyars who conquered Hungary in the 10th century, 
are an Asian (actually Siberian) people. Of course modern Turkey is a 
global tossed salad of the many ethnic groups that have criss-crossed 
Anatolia through the centuries. But many Turks do display a tendency 
towards higher cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes that is very 
pronounced in East Asia. (Of course there are many other Turks who 
look much more "Teutonic".) Dark hair is generally predominant, 
although various shades of brown are also common. Blonde is much less 
common, and some of the blonde women I saw probably used hair 
highlighters.   If you are in Turkey the first word you should learn 
is "Teshekkurler" which means Thank You. (Here and later I shall 
be rendering Turkish words into their phonetic equivalents  in 
English, i.e. as they are pronounced; which may or may not be the 
same as they are written). Some other words I picked up - "Merhaba" 
is hello. "Kahve" is coffee, "Kanun" is law, "Jawap" is answer, 
"Injir" is fig, "Tamam" is OK, "Tuvalet" is restroom, "Su" is water, 
and "Turkiye Jumhuriyet" is Turkish Republic, "Jaddesi" is street, 
"Sokak" is lane, "Taksi" is - well that's obvious!   My trip to 
Ankara was quite interesting. Ankara was a dusty city of 30,000 when 
Ataturk declared it to be Turkey's new capital. It was a conscious 
effort of moving the centre of power to Anatolia, as Ataturk's 
ideology of Turkish nationalism was centered in that region. In fact, 
for the first seven years of his presidency Ataturk never even set 
foot in Istanbul to ensure that the new capital gained the 
credibility he wanted it to.   To get to Ankara, take a taxi to 
Karakoy north of the Golden Horn right across the Galata bridge. From 
Karakoy ferries run every half an hour across to the Asian side. Take 
the ferry for Haydarpasha.   The Ankara Ekspresi departs Haydarpasha 
station at 10:30 p.m. to arrive in Ankara at 8:00 a.m. the next 
morning. I had booked a "Yakatla Vagon" or sleeping car with berths. 
The ferry ride was beautiful - late at night Istanbul is cool and 
wonderful in June with a genlt breeze blowing across the Bosphorus. 
The ferry was moderately full with a mix of working class and 
professionals from the city center heading to their homes on the 
Asian side. The ticket was 1.1 million liras which works out to about 
80 cents (US) or Rs. 38.   Smoking is very common in Turkey and this 
is one of the few things that bothered me here, of course used to the 
smoking-free environment in the United States. That is one 
disadvantage of taking the deck seat on the ferry because many people 
around you including many women, light up almost immediately. However 
it was a small price to pay for the fantastic ambience. Chai sellers 
were making the rounds as the ferry pulled out. The ride across takes 
about 20 minutes. The Haydarpasha railiway station is right behind 
the ferry dock literally 50 meters away. Both are beautiful, very 
distinctive buildings, quite old. The station is spacious clean and 
well equipped with amenities. Because most people in Turkey take 
buses rather than trains, the traffic on the rail system is always 
light. In general, I am told trains are much slower than buses in 
Turkey, the exception being the Istanbul-Ankara line. Being a major 
train fanatic, I couldn't care less anyway - nothing beats the 
rythmic excitement of rail travel!   Looking at the departure display 
at Haydarpasha sent a thrill down my spine - here there were trains 
listed for destinations such as Tehran, Iran and Aleppo, Syria. I was 
sorely tempted to jump into the train headed for Tehran, but....oh 
well, perhaps next year!   In Turkey you present your ticket to the 
train conductor who is standing at the bogie entrance. He keeps the 
ticket during the journey and returns it just before the journey is 
over. At leats this was the way it worked on the Ankara Ekspresi. The 
sleeping berth was excellent - very comfortable with a washbasin of 
its own and more than adequate storage space. There was also a 
restaurant car open all night with food and drink, but I was tired 
and slept through most of the journey.   All the guidebooks will tell 
you that Ankara is not worth visiting if you have limited time in 
Turkey. This is largely true - it is mainly a city of government 
offices and universities - but there are two major attractions there. 
One is the Anat Kabir or Ataturk's mausoleum. The other is the 
excellent Museum of Anatolian Civilizations which is the best museum 
in Turkey about the ancient history of Turkey right from the 
Neolithic era to the pre-Byzantine period.   My friend Derek met me 
at Ankara station and we headed to Anat Kabir. It is an imposing 
structure very much intended to strike an amotion of awe and 
reverence. It is interesting how the architecture is very European - 
indicating Ataturk's strong belief that the West was the center of 
current civilization, and Turkey had to Westernize in order to 
modernize, or as he put it "to raise Turkey above the level of 
contemprary civilization".   There is definite military air to the 
mausoleum as well. After all, Ataturk was a distinguished military 
general who seized power as the Ottoman empire was falling apart 
right after WW-I and the Allied powers had invaded Turkey. The plan 
by the redoubtable European powers and Woodrow Wilson, president of 
you-know-who, was to carve up Turkey into several statelets 
("mandates"), each under the control of an allied power. Thus all the 
prize territories - Istanbul, the Aegean coast, the Mediterranean 
coast, etc. were to go to the Allies leaving only a small arid core 
in Anatolia for the Turks. It was Kemal Ataturk that foiled these 
plans by defeating the allies (mainly the Greek army but also 
the French and the British) in the three year war of liberation. 
Finally, in 1922, Turkish forces recaptured Izmir and the war of 
liberation was over. One by one, the allies agreed to pull their 
troops out of Turkey, and the modern Turkish state was born.   Much 
as I am impressed with Ataturk's achievements, the fact remains that 
he was an authoritarian ruler who ruled by decree throughout his 
presidency. That by itself is not the end of the world (after all Lee 
Kuan Yew the dictator of Singapore made it what it is today), but 
there is no question that the reverence for Ataturk approaches that 
of a personality cult. His photos are everywhere, a bit like Mao's 
China, and criticizing Ataturk is a national offense in Turkey. So 
whatever you, do do not make negative comments about him in public 
anywhere in Turkey - foreigners are known to have been carted to jail 
because of this.   Kemalism, as Ataturk's ideology is known, is very 
much a dogma of the urban elite and middle class in Turkey. In fact, 
politically Turkey is a polarized nation - paranoid Kemalism rules 
the roost among the military (which controls Turkish foreign an 
defense policies), business elite and much of the professional 
classes. However the interior and the working class have over the 
past years increasingly embraced the idea of a vaguely Islamic 
counter-movement to Kemalism. This first became a major issue in 1995 
when the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) under the Islamist leader 
Necmettin Erbakan formed Turkey's first Islamist government since the 
Ottoman period. Refah was very much a moderate party (roughly like 
Vajpayee camp of the BJP) that was peaceful and opposed any sort of a 
violent revolution to achieve its goals. However, it was an Islamist 
party and wanted Turkey to assert its Islamic, rather than Turkic, 
identity. It spoke of a "look East" foreign policy, wanted Turkey to 
leave NATO, withdraw its plication to join the EU,  and cut off its 
(close) ties to Israel. This of course the military could not 
tolerate. in 1997, the generals engineered an ouster of 
the government (essentially a soft coup, with the tacit support of 
the United States and NATO) and Refah was outlawed. Its top leaders 
were barred from politics for several years. Turkey's Islamist 
experiment seemed to be over.   Not quite. Refah soon re-emerged as 
the Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party). Fazilet later split into a more 
hardline faction under Erbakan's successor and the so-called 
"Islamist Lite" Party of Justice and Development (AK Partisi) under 
the charismatic Recep Teyyep Erdogan, the hugely popular former mayor 
of Istanbul. The AKP jettisoned the opposition to NATO and EU which 
was a strong Islamist demand, and spoke of a Westward looking Turkey 
with an islamic culture. In the 2002 elections for parliment, the AKP 
won a huge landslide victory. Of the 10+ political parties in the 
fractious Turkish parliament, all but two were entirely wiped out. 
500 of the existing 550 lawmakers lost their seats. It was a 
political earthquake.   Today the AKP runs Turkey and all seems calm 
on the surface. But the deep fissure in Turkish politics remains and 
worries many analysts. Samuel Huntington writes of "Turkey doing a 
South Africa" i.e shedding its "cleft state" dilemma, rejecting large 
elements of Kemalism in favor of a new, more Eastward-looking 
paradigm. Has The rejection by the Turkish parliament of the American 
demand of military staging areas during the recent Iraq crisis  - an 
astounding and unprecedented act of defiance in US-Turkish relations 
- signalled a gradual shift away from the pro-NATO policy that the 
Turkish elite has embraced since WW-II? Perhaps Turkey will assert 
itself and strike a more balanced posture as a true bridge between 
the Middle East and the West. It will take a leader of Ataturk's 
vision to achive such a mounumental task, and no such figure is in 
sight today.   The most interesting part of Anat Kabir is the museum, 
which is essentially the official version of 20th century Turkish 
history. Some might term it state propaganda. Nevertheless it is very 
educational as it gives an insight into the ideology of Kemalism like 
nothing else in all of Turkey. There is a definite emphasis on the 
military side of Turkish history in the museum. In fact, in general, 
it will not be an exaggration to term Turkey as basically a military 
state with large areas of civilian autonomy. No wonder Pervez 
Musharraf looks up to Kemal Ataturk!   A striking part of the museum 
is the large oil painting depicting Greek atrocities against the 
Turks in the war of liberation. Greek soldiers are shown murdering 
women and children and Orthodox priests are shown in the background 
egging them on. Quite interesting.   Ataturk's view of women's role 
in society is worth mentioning. In one of his long quotes he talks 
about how women among the pre-Islamic nomadic Turks were equal to 
men, and how Islam subjugated them. This had to be reversed, 
according to him. (Talking of women's roles among the steppe warrior 
groups, the great Arabic traveller Ibn Battuta chronicles how shocked 
he was when he visited the Mongol territories by the way women and 
men interacted with each other. Ibn Battuta was a citizen of the 
settled Arab civilization that largely practised gender segregation. 
Ataturk's view seems to be consistent with this - after all the 
Mongols were close cousins of the Turks.In today's times, another 
warrior nation where gender equality reigns comes to mind - I am 
talking of the United States, of course!) Ataturk gave full political 
and economic rights to women  in 1934 (10 years before France did) 
and there is a section in the museum highlighting the achievements of 
Turkish women during the early years.   My own view of Kemalism is 
that it is a remarkable ideology, and essentially the response of a 
pre-moderm society (I have defined modernity here in a narrow sense - 
the attempt to put science and technology and individual material 
progress at the center of a society's endeavors.) to modern 
ideologies that were born out of the European Enlightenment. Thus it 
accepts the Enlightenment as the last word in civilization, but at 
the same time attempts to strengthen the Turkish identity by taking 
recourse to nationalism. A curious admixture of nationalism, 
Euro-centrism, and positivism is the result. No matter what one may 
think of Kemalism, it deserves to be studied by world historians and 
should form a part of the syllabus of every "developing" country 
curriculum.   I have been writing for more than two hours and it is 
time for me to awake to the realities and get ready to go to work! 
Thus I leave you for now, but I hope to write the concluding portion 
of my travelogue soon. Till then stay well!   Sarang


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