Turkey

Here in Australia we've just commemorated Anzac Day and today it's its holiday so it turns out to be a timely occasion to consider who the people were that the Anzacs faced at Gallipoli at dawn on April 25 1915.

The recent history of Turkey, of course, must take into account firstly its Ottoman past and then (especially after that war) the imprinting upon it of the nationalistic revolution that brought about the modern Turkish state.

The Ottoman ruler’s relationship with his subjects, or flock (ra’iya – also used in some Arabic Christian contexts) was that of a ruler to his subjects. Nationalist ideas of a nation state replaced this binary relationship in the imaginations of Turkish Ottoman elites quite gradually, actually. The idea of the Sultan ruling a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire was thus replaced by that of the citizen of the republican and more homogeneous Turkish nation gradually while the actuality when it came seemed rather more revolutionary. This more homogeneous paradigm was thus formed in such a way that remnants of old Ottoman attitudes were necessarily (due to the exigencies of time) permitted to survive in Turkish culture, attitudes, bureaucratic forms and indeed the Turkish relationship with Europe.

The Turkic peoples first came into contact with Islam in the 9^th Century when the ‘Abbasid caliphs brought them from outside the caliphate as slave-soldiers. It was possible from an early period to rise through the ranks of the slave army to achieve great power as evidenced by at least two great Turkic dynasties of rulers in Egypt as early as that first century of contact, the Tulunids and the early 10^th Century Ikhshidids. From the mid 11^th Century Turkic peoples became associated with Islamic power also in the Mashriq as the Seljuk Dynasty. They had succeeded in conquering Asia Minor (now roughly the territory of modern day Turkey excluding the European bit) where the Arabs had previously run out of puff after the early Islamic conquests. The Seljuks had never been slaves, however.

A small Turkic group now known as the Ottomans who had in the process settled in and eventually controlled a small corner of Asia Minor finally broke out of the confines of that small territory to ultimately control most of the Arab lands and parts of Eastern Europe including finally the Eastern Roman Empire’s Christian former capital city of Constantinople which we now know as Istanbul. They were in turn influenced by the Arab and European cultures over which they then reigned.

The greatest and most longstanding influence on the Ottomans as a Turkic people was naturally the Arab culture but a European outlook was also manifested in the outlook of Mustapha Kemal who came to be called Atatürk (Father of the Turks). He believed when he came to power in an acceleration of the Westernisation that had begun under the Ottoman Sultans, modernisation and secularisation (mainly of the new Turkish political system). This attitude and orientation to the West was possibly at least partly also induced by what he may have regarded as the treachery of the Arabs against the Ottoman state during the First World War when they revolted against it with the support of the British including T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia). At the same time he may have sought to make a statement that Turkey was Asian (as it is mostly in Asia geographically) and Turkish rather than European by moving the capital from Istanbul most of which is on the European side of the Bosporus to Ankara in the centre of Anatolia (or Asia Minor) on the Asian side.

Atatürk’s nationalist ideas especially were clearly originated in the Ottoman period. Subjects of the Ottoman state had been influenced for some time by nationalism from Europe and even European nationalist movements in the Ottoman lands themselves (inspired in part by French revolutionary ideas) which had virtually brought about the end of Ottoman rule completely in Eastern Europe, where large numbers of non Turks such as Greeks, Hungarians and Slavs lived. The state had approached the gates of Vienna on more than one occasion in an earlier era. Following this reversal, both the Arabs and Turks thus saw the potential ‘national’ political advantages of national pride. The Arabs in the Fertile Crescent and in coastal Arabia had been somewhat closely controlled by Ottoman Turks for some time. Egyptians and North Africans had generally been less closely controlled and Morocco was not even under the formal control of the Ottomans (Muhammad ‘Ali’s dynasty was governing Egypt and European powers (England and France (and Italy in Libya)) had come to govern North Africa). The Turks were eager to learn to govern the Arabs (and the Armenians – the other remaining subject race) as a ruling race from an obviously resurgent Europe and the Arabs became eager to throw off the remaining shackles of this very attempted government using the same ideas. The similar hopes of the Armenians were, of course, brutally suppressed in a series of 20^th Century massacres. The Turks of the early 20th century were especially influenced by the racial and nationalist ideas then being touted in Germany.

But before that, in the 19^th Century, the Ottoman state tried to forestall its demise as a multi-ethnic Turkish-ruled empire with the modernising so-called “Tanzimat” reforms to its millet structure. The German ideas nevertheless naturally produced a crisis in this ethnically, confessionally and linguistically diverse empire that could not be forestalled. On the Turk side, the nationalists insisted on Turkish as the only possible official language for the empire. This naturally provoked an indignant nationalist impulse in the other sides, encouraged as they were by the modernising changes which had given them new possibilities in a novel system of representation.

The upshot of all the nationalism was the formation of the nationalist “Party [or Committee] of Union and Progress” (also known to history as the Young Turks) by a group of Turkish army officers that included Atatürk and that attempted a coup in 1908 to overthrow the Sultan. The reference in their name to “Union” reflected the group’s desire to maintain the Turkish/Arab/Armenian union. The reference to “Progress” reflected a time of optimism regarding the future of this empire and a desire to actively reach for that future with progress from the present circumstances.

Turkish nationalism was the clear background to the events leading up to the First World War and the British, of course, wisely sought to exploit the strong Arab nationalism the Turkish nationalism had produced. As we know (and apparently to the intense personal shame of T.E. Lawrence expressed in his famous “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” account of the war-time Arab revolt against the Ottomans) the British exploited a passion with promises it chose not to fulfil. During the war, while they were still encouraging the Arabs to fight for their independence, the British and French had secretly agreed to divide much of the Arab land between them and the British Foreign Secretary further supported a “national home” (although not necessarily a state) for the Jews in the so-called Balfour Declaration of 1917.

The Turks, ostensibly the real enemy of the Western powers, thus emerged from the war with a Turkish homeland, Turkey, while the relatively innocent Arabs and Armenians received something much less from a dictated peace (the Turks themselves had had to repel a post-armistice allied attempt at occupation of at least part of Anatolia). Kemal (later Atatürk) played a leading role in this successful repulsion and consequently acquired the islamically significant Arabic honorific, Ghazi (Warrior - in modern day Turkish it would be spelled Gazi).

His coming to power would mark the beginning of a great programme of major reforms. The red flag with white crescent and star was virtually all that he didn’t change (although even it was legally standardised in 1936). The fez was outright banned and he personally adopted either a bare head or western head attire. Ironically the fez is actually Western being derived from head gear worn first in the Ottoman Greek colony and by non-Muslims. Turks also began to become more secular in attitude and attire more or less voluntarily under his influence. Mehmet V and VI continued for a while as figureheads only but the Sultanate (and alleged Ottoman Caliphate) was finally ended completely in fairly short order. As long as Kemal lived and despite its nomenclature of republicanism, the state thus effectively became a one-party and secular dictatorship.

The context of this confident secularisation of the new Turkish state was actually a cynical process of asserting a religious basis to what was a dying and essentially secular Ottoman system by occasionally claiming the title Caliph by the last few Sultans.

Since the end of the ‘Abbasid caliphate in 1258 (with the fall of Baghdad to the then pagan Mongols) with which the Ottomans thus sought to associate themselves, there had in fact been no further caliphates and to the extent that caliphate was claimed in this interval it appears to always have essentially depended on genealogy rather than any clear religious virtue of any ruling dynasty. A family member of the last ‘Abbasid caliph’s family (the last actual Caliph had been killed in Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258) had been immediately cultivated for their own purposes by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt. He was given the title Caliph, Muhammad’s alleged mantle and a sceptre but no actual power – either religious or secular. This regime was finally defeated by the Ottomans, who at that point and for many centuries appeared to have no real interest in claiming the title of Caliph, in the 16^th Century. Selim I was more interested in expropriating the mantle and sceptre than the alleged Mamluk Caliph of Cairo. He accepted merely the title “Servant of the Two Holy Shrines [of Mecca and Medina]”. In any event acceptance of the name Caliph has never really proved anything about the religious flavour of a regime. The Umayyads (who preceded the ‘Abbasids) were certainly less inclined to pay even lip service to Islam than their ‘Abbasid successors who were no angels themselves in their actual lives.

After the attempted use of the title Caliph by the most recent ailing Ottoman Sultans was finally put an end to by Kemal, King Fouad of Egypt briefly flirted with the idea of assuming the title for himself but he ultimately didn’t consider it politic to do so. The noted Jewish Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, apparently had a variety of connections with this family of the last Ottoman 'Caliphs'. Fouad had ‘grown his beard out’ in order to seem more worthy of the title and had a fake genealogy prepared for the purpose of the claim but neither he nor the title were considered sufficiently important at the time to warrant much attention and he simply allowed the claim to drop. The so-called khilafa movement for the restoration of a (the) Caliphate began at about this time, ironically mostly in India which had never in fact been ruled by any ruler claiming the title Caliph.

Returning now to the modernisations, a major one was the Romanisation of the Turkish script which had previously used a slightly modified Arabic script (since the 11^th Century following the Persian adoption of the script in the 10^th Century). This certainly indicated a Western orientation.

Turkish is an Altaic language which means it’s closely related to Finnish and Korean. The sound formerly represented by the Arabic Jeem (ج) as used in Jamil was now represented by a “c” and the guttural Arabic Kha’ (خ) was now represented by “h”. Thus the Arab name we usual write in the West as “Khalil” would be denoted in Turkish by “Halil” and this Arabic guttural sound thus also became less pronounced in spoken Turkish.

Along with this reform, attempts were made to reduce the number of Arabic words in the language when European words were available to be co-opted instead. The result of these reforms that led to most children being taught only new Turkish was that by the late 1920s they were limited in reading the words of any of their parents who had been slow to learn the new Turkish. Young Turks were now also faced with the need to learn Arabic in order to understand state archives written in Turkish that were then only a few years old. The word for culture that had been an Arabic inspired “madiniyat” became “kultur” following the German “Kultur”. The word for school which had been “madrasa” became “okul” after the French “école”. These cultural rifts are similar to those faced by Serbs (who use an essentially Cyrillic script) and Croats (Roman) and Hindi (Devanagari-Sanskrit) and Urdu (Arabic) speakers. The two pairs also speak essentially the same language as the ‘neighbouring’ one but are limited in written communication by the learning of different scripts. There is a movement today to translate Ottoman archives that has run into difficulty finding a sufficient number of competent translators due to the script and word changes together with an Ottoman love of now-nearly-unintelligible abbreviations.

Religion was clearly a special target of this new regime and of course the main target was Islam in this predominantly Muslim nation. As well as removing Islam from most of the symbols of state it was to be removed as much as possible from public life and the social and cultural space of Turkey. The rather extreme French ideal of laïcité was the model here. Sufism, which had been quite popular, was completely banned. The Naqshbandi and one or two other orders had been especially popular. While the traditional call to prayer that can generally be heard in majority Muslim nations was not abolished, it and public prayers in general were to be made in Turkish rather than the traditional Arabic. The Ottomans had begun to regulate religion and Kemal continued the trend towards more of this regulation. All Islamic religious functionaries from the high mufti (senior jurisprudent) to the lowly muezzin (who performed the call to prayer) became effectively functionaries of the state. Sufi properties became property of the state in a manner reminiscent of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Although Islam had been banned from politics, Kemal always remained a Muslim, however.

With regard to the female wearing of the veil he nevertheless convinced several of his female relatives to dispense with wearing it. There was no general veil ban, however, as there had been a fez ban for the men. The veil was thoroughly disapproved, however. A female politician could expect to be thoroughly castigated should she attempt to wear the antiquated veil in the modern majlis. Subsequently, actual bans were introduced in certain public places. In contrast to the disapproval then, today the wives of both the President and Prime Minister (both of whom belong to a moderate Islamist party) publicly wear the veil and this is accepted.

While the disapproval of the veil was an issue while Kemal was ruling, of much more concern to the majority was that he had become a dictator. In the universities an ideology was also introduced that also attempted to downplay the significant of the Arabs in Turkish history. Turkey became linked instead with great Turkic civilisations that predated Islam and in some cases even Christianity. The 4^th Century emperor, Attila the Hun, thus became a much admired figure and as a result Attila became (and remains today) a popular given name in Turkey.

Major social changes might have been expected to follow from this suppression of religion. People were now relatively free to drink alcohol, go dancing, not fast and not pray as a matter of personal choice. Nevertheless, as Muslims, the people generally chose not to exercise this relative freedom. In fact, many regarded the new personal freedom itself as a persecution of the religion. The symbolism of the state (devlet), people (halk) and representative republic (cumhuriet) now assumed an importance that they didn’t possess in the Ottoman Empire and it is ironic that all three words were derived from Arabic. In contrast, for example, with the Pahlavis in Iran, Kemal had no interest in establishing a dynasty after assuming power, as dictatorial as he may have been in life.

A slow democratisation process followed Kemal’s death in 1938. The next president was also a military man, General İsmet İnönü. Other parties came to be accepted. The Kemal party was essentially nationalist and there were soon also both socialist and essentially democratic parties. The legacy of the Kemalist constitution, however, was (and continues to be) that the Turkish army saw itself (and sees itself) as having the very particular role of maintaining the newly secular nature of Turkey and keeping religion out of politics, whatever this may mean for democratically elected governments. By contrast, the last Ottoman constitution was explicitly Islamic admittedly out of the then demands of realpolitik in introducing the novel concept of a written constitution. Many constitutions in the Arab world continue to be explicitly Islamic for similar reasons.

This army position thus derives partly from a certain pride in the success of one of their number, Kemal, in progressing beyond the deprivations of the First World War brought on under the old constitution by means of stripping the old constitution of its essential religious phoniness. Several coups with varying degrees of success in at least the 1950s and 60s were the result when democracy produced governments that appeared to wish for a return to a religious basis for secular politics and life generally. The government of Adnan Menderes was one of those governments thought to be errant. It began in 1950 and ended in 1960 with the arrest and execution of Menderes. One of his reforms was not permanently reversed by the junta who had deposed him, however. It was the return of the Arabic call to prayer. There was evidently a period of transition until the late 1960s, however, before the old musicality returned again to the Arabic call in Turkey (according to Professor Ahmad Shboul of the University of Sydney). The multi party system was restored from the 1960s but the army remained watchful, as it remains today with a very devout but moderate party in government, for any further ‘constitutional breaches’.

As far as the partial ban on the wearing of the headscarf by Muslim women is concerned it is probably a step too far towards secularism in a Muslim country. It probably makes more sense in a country like France which still maintains a partial ban and was lifted by the current Turkish government. This was viewed as a grave anti-secular development by a number of secularists in Turkey and the constitutional court subsequently overruled the government's change. However, while it was certainly disapproved of, even Pahlavi Iran had no actual ban on the headscarf. The Ayatollahs there went to the other extreme of course and that extreme, too, is today being challenged. Several secularist intellectuals in Turkey have expressed concern that the recent lifting of the ban was a first insidious stage on a slippery slope leading to more radical Islamising reforms. The battle with elements of the military and the secularism debate continues in Turkey.

In the modern world, Turkey is engaging with the European Union and this move is supported by many Turks who see Turkey as a natural part of Europe (Turkey has already been a member of NATO for some time despite being far from the North Atlantic). Since the recent flood of new admissions, however, there are now already 27 EU states and Turkey is being made to jump through hoops before being further considered. Even if they are able to jump through the hoops there may be considerable opposition from current member states as many Europeans regard the EU as properly an essentially Christian union. In order to counteract this opposition Turkish proponents of membership therefore tend to emphasise the secular nature of the Turkish state. It’s therefore easy to see how important maintenance of that secularity may be for Turkey’s future alliances.

There are also many within Turkey who wonder whether the EU hoops are actually worth jumping through if such discrimination is significant and suggest seeking more natural alliances rather in Turkic Central Asia newly independent from Russia. Alliances with other Middle Eastern countries are also under consideration despite the linguistic differences (which also exist to a significant extent between Turkey and Turkic Central Asia).

The third possible option under active consideration within Turkey (existing beside alliance with either ‘the East’ or ‘the West’) is national self-reliance. This may well have been Kemal’s intention in moving the capital city of Turkey to the centre of Anatolia although he himself was born in Salonika in Greece. He saw Turkey as Anatolia but had no special affinity with the Arab leaders of his time, either, although he met early with the then king of Iraq, King Faisal. Oil has been a major factor in the closeness that he promoted then with the Arab world and also with Iran.

Turkey was also a founding member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1969 suggesting that Turkey was not averse to a religious rather than purely geographical basis of alliance (somewhat ironically perhaps for this secular state). The OIC’s current Secretary General is in fact a multi lingual and erudite Turk, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. The current crop of politicians and Turks are returning to observance of pilgrimage to Mecca, which further tends to cement this alliance at all levels.

At the same, Turkey has recognised Israel for many years now, indicating its independence, although it appears many current politicians would wish to reverse this recognition in the unlikely event that it was politically possible in Turkey to do so (given Turkey’s fruitful current alliance also with the US).