Mango, The Turkish Model

The Turkish ModelAuthor(s): Andrew MangoSource: Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 726-757Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283603 .Accessed: 10/10/2011 14:16

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The Turkish Model

ANDREW MANGO

In June 1992 the former Soviet republics of Central Asia received a visit from Mme Catherine Lalumiere, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, a body dedicated to the defence and propagation of European concepts of human rights. Having seen how things stood there and looking hopefully into the future, Mme Lalumiere declared that Turkey provided a valid model of development for many a newly-independent country in Asia.

A Turkish political economist, Professor Aydin Yalkin, quoting Mme Lalumiere's statements, noted that the concept of the Turkish model had arisen outside Turkey. Inside Turkey, said Professor Yalqin, this had caused surprise mixed with pleasure, given that 'the reform movement which for nearly two hundred years had struggled to bring westernisation and modernisation cannot yet be considered to have produced a defini- tive result' and that there were even doubts whether 'in the face of the emergence of contrary trends in places, we have in fact created a specific, systematic and conscious model.' Talk of a Turkish model, Professor Yalqin added, acted as a stimulant in the difficulties and disappointments which attended his country's efforts to create a democratic and pluralistic society, at a time when it was still well behind the advanced industrialised states of the West.'

Only a few years ago the boot was on the other foot. Writing before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, David Barchard, an experienced and well-informed Turkey-watcher, wondered whether Turkey would follow the Iberian, the Korean, the Mexican, the Neo-Ottoman, the Latin American or the Marxist model.2 That Turkey was about to become itself a model was not foreseen. But now that the term has gained currency, one must consider what it signifies and what it portends.

The usual implication appears to be that the republic of Turkey is a model of a secular, democratic, Muslim country, aiming to achieve Western standards, in partnership with the West, by applying liberal free- market policies. But would this be an accurate perception of Turkish reality?

In his last study of the politics of the Middle East, Professor Elie

Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, October 1993, pp. 726-757 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

Kedourie expressed the view that 'In the light of seven decades' attempts to set up a modern constitutional state - attempts which have by and large failed - it would perhaps be unwise to count on the longevity of [the] latest constitutional arrangement' in Turkey. Professor Kedourie saw three reasons for caution: 'the standing, powerful temptation on the part of the rulers to print money'; the doubt whether 'the political parties are really willing to recognise one another's legitimacy and bona fides'; and the consideration that 'the tension between secularism and Islam present in Turkish politics from the foundation of the Republic, is ... far from

subsiding, let alone disappearing, and in certain circumstances might prove too strong for a still-fragile constitutionalism'.3

Of Professor Kedourie's grounds for caution, at least the first and third are conspicuous at the time of writing. And one could add a fourth source of concern for Turkey's democratic order: the growth of Kurdish nationalism.

There appear to be two sets of problems which Turkey has to solve before it can become a model worthy of imitation. The first has to do with the material aspirations of its citizens to the standard of living of the 'advanced industrialised states of the West', to use Professor Yalcin's term. The second derives from the ideological aspiration of most of its citizens to the rights and freedoms enjoyed in the West, and of some of its citizens to a distinctive religious or ethnic identity.

The Turkish experience is important because the problems posed by both sets of aspirations exist also in many, if not most, other countries of the world. Aspirations to a Western style and standard of living are universal; ethnic, confessional and cultural divisions exist in most societies. Success in meeting these aspirations and overcoming these divisions in Turkey would, therefore, bring hope elsewhere.

However, at least in one respect, Turkey has already achieved a record worthy of imitation. Throughout its 70 years of existence, the Turkish republic has avoided involvement in foreign wars. Since 1923 Turkish troops have fought outside the borders of the country in only three instances: in Korea under United Nations auspices between 1950 and 1953, in Cyprus in 1974, and in hot pursuit operations against Kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq in the last few years. All three were minor operations under adequate legal cover.

With these three exceptions, the governments of the republic have been able to defend and promote national interests without recourse to arms. Not only has Turkish diplomacy thus given the country 70 years of unbroken external peace, it has also secured considerable amounts of foreign military and economic aid.

One example of the economic benefits of Turkish foreign policy is

THE TURKISH MODEL 727

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

given in a recent study by Victor Lavy and Hillel Rapoport, who examined the manner in which Turkey restructured its foreign debt between 1978 and 1981. 'Western support ... has allowed Turkey to remain a net importer of capital in the post-debt-crisis period', they say. 'It is, therefore, understandable that countries like Brazil, Mexico or Cote d'Ivoire envy Turkey's relatively painless passage through the debt crisis, thanks to the large capital inflows it received. And while these countries are also allies of the West, they do not have Turkey's strategic importance and consequently cannot expect economic support of similar magnitude.'4 It was Turkish diplomacy which made the most of the country's strategic importance.

This remarkable achievement fails to impress Philip Robins of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the author of a recent study of Turkey's relations with the countries of the Middle East.5 Robins em- barks on his subject with the questionable assertion that 'there has been a noticeable lack of scholarly research on Turkey'. This can only mean that he sees little scholarly merit in the many and varied books that have been published on Turkish subjects in recent years, in numbers which, one would have thought, compared well with the volume of work devoted to comparable countries. Robins follows this up with the specific complaint that Turkish-speaking scholars 'lack the broader inter-state perspective of the area studies specialist' when they turn their attention to international relations. Using presumably this broader perspective, Robins discerns a 'lack of understanding', which, he says, 'Turkey periodically displays for its Middle Eastern neighbours'.6

Similar views have been voiced inside Turkey both by left-wing and by right-wing critics of the country's diplomacy. Yet it is difficult to point to any concrete damage done to Turkish national interests by this alleged lack of understanding.

A recent discussion paper produced by the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute in Ankara notes that 'in Turkey's relations with Middle Eastern states, gestures of religious solidarity and support for the Arab cause have not yielded particularly positive results' and concludes: 'While the failure of Middle Eastern states to give diplomatic support to Turkey goes against Turkish national interests, our vital national interest is affected more strongly by the threat posed by our neighbours to the south and southeast.'7 To parry this threat, the Institute proposes that Turkey should join in initiatives to prevent the excessive accumulation of weapons in the area; that it should follow a less pro-Arab line in the Arab- Israeli dispute; and that it should work with the West in ensuring uninterrupted oil supplies, possibly by trying to extend the NATO area to cover the Persian Gulf.8

728

These proposals do not bear out Philip Robins's charge that 'the Turkish approach to international relations is underpinned by a brooding suspiciousness of all states, friend and foe alike'.9 The record shows, on the contrary, that Turkish diplomacy has realistically sought out common interests, and that, where it found them, as it did with the United States and its other NATO allies, it has striven to preserve and extend them. Turkey would not have been able to draw the benefits which it has from its Western connections, if it did not 'comprehend adequately' either Europe or Asia, as Philip Robins believes. Robins may be right in saying that 'Turkey has not built a solid, reliable and working relationship with any' Middle Eastern state,10 but, if so, it is in good and numerous company and for good reason.

Critical of Turkey's past performance in international relations, Philip Robins is also pessimistic about the future. He believes that 'a rapidly changing international order ... is likely to affect Turkey more than most states, almost exclusively in a negative sense'. 'More than any other [NATO] member, it is likely to view a diminution of the alliance's defensive character with dismay. With regard to Europe, Turkey looks set to fare even worse.' 'Turkey', Philip Robins, concludes, 'has only two viable contexts though neither is perfect. The first is the Turkish nation [i.e. the Turkic republics]. ... The second option is the Islamic Con- ference Organisation'.

However, relations with the newly-independent Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union, which Turkey is certainly doing its best to foster, can yield benefits only in the context of Turkey's wider relationship with the advanced industrialized nations. They alone can supply the capital and technology which the Turkic republics need. With luck, Turkey may act as an intermediary or a partner in the exchange of Western money and know-how for Asian hydrocarbons and other raw materials.

As for the Islamic Conference Organisation (ICO), its recent performance during the Bosnian crisis has exposed its limited function as a forum where one can gain some publicity for one's views, but from which it is unwise to expect any action. Membership of the ICO, as of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO, the successor of Regionl Cooperation and Development - RCD, which succeeded the Central Treaty Organisation - CENTO, which, in turn, had replaced the Bagh- dad Pact), may conceivably enhance Turkey's standing in the West. It also allows Turkey to keep an eye on other Muslim countries, most of which are rivals rather than partners. But it is worth little in itself.

Philip Robins's book does not lack scholarship. It contains useful material on subjects such as Turkey's trade with the Middle East or the water dispute with Syria and Iraq. But it lacks discernment of the reality



of national interests and the substance of international relations. To speak of Turkey's 'exclusion from Europe"2 is to disregard the substance of a relationship which accounts for more than 40 per cent of Turkey's foreign trade, nearly all its tourist business, most of its inward invest- ment, and much of its technology and intellectual imports. Western Europe is home to some two million Turkish workers. It is also the favourite destination of Turks who travel abroad. Irrespective of any institutional arrangements, this relationship, which started when Ot- toman Turks first crossed into Europe in the fourteenth century, will continue and will develop as an important part of a wider process of world integration.

To say that Turkey is being bound into the Middle Eastern 'sub-system of states'"3 may be simply a ponderous way of pointing to relations, good and bad, between Turkey and its southern neighbours. But to the extent that the term 'system' suggests some coherent construct, there is neither a system nor a 'sub-system' into which Turkey could be 'bound' in the Middle East, but a congeries of powers and principalities with which Turkey, and other states, have to deal as best they can. To speak of 'the Arab people's strong fraternal trans-statal bond'4 is to reduce a complex and often bitter reality to a misleading half-truth.

In Philip Robins's book 'the broader inter-state perspective of the areas studies specialist' produces a querulous exercise in pattern-making, querulous because reality does not fit into the academic pattern chosen by the author. Its tone is relentlessly nagging. 'The Turkish economy', Philip Robins says en passant, 'has boomed, but only at the price of spiralling debt, high inflation and growing unemployment'.'5 Debt and inflation are, of course, the price of the boom. Growing unemployment is not. On the contrary, politicians have helped engineer the boom in order to decrease unemployment.

It remains true that unemployment, debt - domestic and external, national and personal - inflation and other economic and social difficulties are causing much discontent in Turkey today. The blame tends to be put on politicians elected to rule the country, At first sight this my appear reasonable. Could not the country's rulers have put to better use the peace which its diplomats secured and the foreign aid which they mobilized?

Perhaps they could. But all the while they have had to give a measure of satisfaction to the increasing expectations of a rapidly growing population. In the 70 years of peace, which the Turkish Republic has enjoyed, its population has increased fivefold from some 12 million to nearly 60 million. The rulers of the country are due some credit for the fact that these 60 million are better fed and better supplied with the necessities, as

730

THE TURKISH MODEL

well as with some luxuries, of life, than had been the original 12 million. The further fact that this teeming multitude has been kept, or has kept itself, in fair order points also to the presence of considerable political skills.

To understand Turkey one must understand the pressure of its growing population. Similarly, demographic trends are a key factor in any predic- tion of the fate of Turkey. In a recent (and as yet unpublished) paper, Professor Cem Behar of Bogaziqi University has argued that the process of demographic transition, that is, the fall of the birth-rate and the stabilization of the population, is now under way in Turkey, with the exception of the eastern provinces. According to the latest projections, both of the United Nations and of the Turkish State Planning Organisa- tion, Turkey's population, which was estimated at some 60 million in 1993, will rise to 66.5 million in the year 2000. By the turn of the century, Turkey will no longer be the most populous country in the Middle East, as by that time Egypt is expected to have 67 million and Iran 74 million inhabitants. Current trends suggest that Turkey's population will then grow to some 90 million by the year 2025, and will finally stabilize at between 105 and 110 million by the year 2050.16 A population of 110 million - almost double the present figure - could be accommodated

geographically. After all, the area of Turkey is three times that of the United Kingdom, which had a population of some 57 million in 1990. But accommodating the inhabitants' desire for a 'modern' standard of living will not be easy.

This desire antedates the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, as Cem Behar and Alan Duben show in their study of marriage, family and fertility among the Muslim population of Istanbul between 1880 and 1940.17 Their book, which is based on the data contained in population censuses, starting with that of 1885, and on a mass of anecdotal evidence contained in the press, biographies and imaginative literature, is a model of liberal, scholarly research.

The facts which Alan Duben and Cem Behar establish and the miscon- ceptions which they disprove help us to understand what is happening in Turkey today, and what may happen in neighbouring countries tomor- row. Contrary to the currently widespread notion that all Muslims are hell-bent on procreation, the two authors show that 'the process of fertility decline [among Istanbul Muslims] seems to have been contem- poraneous to that in many parts of western and northern Europe ... during the last quarter of the nineteenth century'. 'What is interesting is that after the 1880s they [the Istanbul Muslims] clearly wanted fewer and fewer children as time went on, and that by the 1930s they were basically just reproducing themselves in number - at a time when rural Turks were

731


eagerly producing large families to make up for the population losses of the long years of war and revolution.'8

Alan Duben and Cem Behar bring out the different factors involved in the prevalence of small families among Istanbul Muslims. Men married late 'very much in line with the pattern common throughout the Mediter- ranean world in the past'. 'Polygyny [what laymen call polygamy] was very infrequent ... The outcry against polygyny during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Istanbul was part of a larger ideological battle for egalitarian gender relations and a modern western way of life ... '19 'All, or most, of the signs of a child-oriented society were

present by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Istanbul.'20 After the foundation of the republic,

Though child care and child-rearing were increasingly articulated in nationalistic terms ... it is more likely that the decisions of most people in this regard merely coincided with the purposes of the ideologues, but in actuality followed the dictates of domestic neces- sity and, for many, the aspirations for a modern - read 'European' - way of life, of which the small conjugal family with healthy and properly educated chldren was an important component.

Alan Duben and Cem Behar point out that 'In no other Middle Eastern or Muslim city do we know of a parallel to these historical trends, nor does there seem to be any other where fertility started to decline so early, so efficiently, and on a such wide scale.'2'

True, 'Istanbul in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an extraordinary city. It was an amalgam of diverse influences from western Europe, the Balkans and Asia. It was a meeting place of civilisations.' But 'to hold that Istanbul was unique in many aspects of its social and cultural life does not ... mean that what happened in Istanbul ... was peripheral to the developments in Turkish society. On the contrary, it was quite central ... Istanbul came to be the crucible for the complex chemistry of cultural and social change that would reshape the identity of the entire society ...'22

Istanbul exerted an influence nationally, because its population was constantly renewed by arrivals from the provinces. 'Nearly two-thirds of all Muslim household heads in Istanbul in 1907 were born outside the Ottoman capital ... if we were to add in the impermanent population of the city it [the proportion] would be even higher.'23

The attraction of Istanbul has increased since then. A survey con- ducted in December 1992 by the KONDA polling organization for the newspaper Milliyet has found that only 28 per cent of the inhabitants of

732

Istanbul were born in the city, while the proportion of those whose fathers were also born in Istanbul is as low as 12 per cent. Yet, in spite of the provincial origin of the bulk of the city's population, the same survey found that the average number of children per marriage was only 2.07. However, among the 4 per cent of the citizens who described their national identity as Kurdish, the figure rose to 2.77.24

The survey established other disparities. The average monthly household income of people who described themselves as Turkish was TL 4,120,000 (roughly US$ 475 at the rate of exchange which prevailed at the time). For people who called themselves Kurds, the figure was TL 2,940,000 (say US$ 340). 'Turks' were better educated: 28 per cent were high-school graduates and 8 per cent had received higher education, against 15 per cent and 2 per cent respectively for 'Kurds'. 'Turks' had better jobs: 12 per cent were salary-earners and 11 per cent wage- earnings workers, while for 'Kurds' the proportions were 3 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.25

Disparities in Istanbul reflect those in the countryside, where conditions are more backward. Cem Behar found that, as far as population trends were concerned, the disparity between the west and the east was increasing. Thus, while the fertility rate dropped by 22 per cent in the last decade in the country as a whole, in the east and south-east it dropped by only 11 per cent. As a result, it was found in 1988 that while the national gross birth-rate was 2.8 per cent, it was 3.7 per cent for the east and southeast.26 Kurds are not the only inhabitants of that area, but that is where the bulk of them is concentrated.

The relative poverty and backwardness of the Kurds, whether in Istanbul or in the provinces, is one of the grievances of Kurdish nationalists and one factor in their increasing influence among their kinsmen. But that influence should not be exaggerated. The KONDA survey found that while 4 per cent of the citizens of Istanbul considered themselves to be Kurds, another 4 per cent described their parents as Kurdish, but thought of themselves as Turks. There must also have been at least some Kurds among the 25 per cent of the city's population who described themselves as 'Muslim' or 'Turkish Muslim'.27 Among the 4 per cent self-proclaimed Kurds, 64 per cent thought that the troubles of the southeast stemmed from the Kurds' desire for a national identity, while 63 per cent ascribed the cause to official discrimination against the Kurds.28 Only 22 per cent of the Kurds favoured an independent Kurdish state, a prospect to which 98 per cent of the Turks were, not surprisingly, opposed. What was more surprising was that as many as 24 per cent of the Kurds, but only 17 per cent of the Turks, thought that the troubles in the south-east would be ended if the terrorists were eliminated. The main

733 THE TURKISH MODEL


terrorist organization which is currently active is the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which, at least originally, campaigned for a Marxist- Lennist Kurdish state. A majority of both Turks and Kurds favoured the devolution of more power to local government as a means of dealing with the troubles.29

Allowance must of course be made for statistical and possible metho- dological error, for the fact that the interviews were confined to Istanbul, a Turkish city where the Kurdish respondents chose to live, and for the further fact that the interviewers were Turkish. Nevertheless, the unin- hibited reference to Kurds and Kurdish by the interviewers betokened a new liberal approach, which must have reduced the fears of, at least, some respondents. With all its limitations, the survey is an indication of Turkish awareness of the Kurds and of Kurdish self-awareness. Recent publications on the Kurds seek to spread this awareness to the outside world. The most dispassionate recent study comes from the pen of Martin van Bruinessen, a leading light in the small band of westerners with direct experience of the Kurds.30

Van Bruinessen says disarmingly in his introduction that when he first studied anthropology and sociology he came 'under the influence of the political and intellectual climate of the late 1960s [and] became strongly interested in the theories concerning the related issues of peasant revolts, messianic movements, nationalism and class consciousness.'31 In 1975- 76, he travelled through the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Syria and Iran, and used the material which he collected for his doctoral dissertation in 1978. He chose as his subject the primordial loyalties of the Kurds to the family, the tribe, the tribal chieftain or aga, and to the shaikhs, the popular mystics or saints who are also the leaders of religious brotherhoods.

Now enlarged and published in book form, van Bruinessen's work charts the tenacious survival of the old loyalties. 'The new loyalties, even where they develop, may carry within them aspects of the old primordial ones (such as with the young Kurdish leftist and nationalist who would stand by his agha against the Turkish leftists).' Kurdish nationalism, van Bruinessen goes on to say, became a mass movement during the late 1960s, not because of the nationalist propaganda by intellectuals, which stressed the abstract idea of the Kurdish nation, but because of the military and political successes of the Iraqi Kurdish tribal leader, Mulla Mustafa Barzani. By the 1970s and 1980s Kurdish nationalism and, to some extent, radical and populist varieties of socialism had become the dominant discourse among the Kurds; many moreover, explicitly and sincerely denounced narrow tribal loyalties. This did not mean, of course, the end of primordial loyalties. In virtually all Kurdish parties and organizations, leading roles were played by Kurds from the traditional

734

THE TURKISH MODEL

leading stratum - agas, shaikhs and their relatives and close associates. The only organization that had a radically different composition was the PKK. Soon, however, it saw itself forced to enter into alliances with 'patriotic' agas, and its liberation struggle degenerated into little more than ordinary tribal warfare, with the PKK resembling just another new tribe.

In a welcome break with the ideas of 1968, van Bruinessen concludes that 'economic factors alone cannot predict which loyalties will prevail - primordial, class or national ones'. And in two examples documented in the book, where exploited Kurdish peasants revolted against their traditional leaders, 'it was not economic change but external political factors that provided the decisive impulse'.32

In addition to data on modern Kurdish society, van Bruinessen provides geographical, statistical and historical information on the Kurds and their area. He believes that in 1975 the total number of Kurds was between 13.5 and 15 million, and that at least half of them were in Turkey, where they constituted 19 per cent of the country's population.33 The figure is probably correct for the number of 'potential Kurds', that is, Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent who might opt for a Kurdish identity. But, as we have seen, not all of them will wish to do so. In predominantly Turkish areas where Kurds have migrated, assimilation is, at least, as potent a trend as separate self-assertion. But even assimilated Kurds may display distinctive traits in voting behaviour, and other political and social preferences.

Van Bruinessen's work is essential reading for anyone who wishes to be informed about the Kurds and the problem which they pose in their countries of residence. Readers who wish to know how Kurdish nationalists see themselves and their people can turn to two other

recently-published books. Mehrdad Izady's The Kurds is described as 'a concise handbook'.34 It is

in fact a detailed handbook of the beliefs of a liberal Kurdish nationalist. Izady gives the name of Kurdistan to all the lands, where speakers of Kurdish languages are, or can be claimed to be, in the majority, and then extends the use of the term as far back as prehistory. In the manner of authors of other nationalist foundation myths, he lays claim to ancient heroes and kingdoms (such as Cappadocia or the Pontus of Mithridates, which he describes as Kurdish); ascribes to his real or presumed ancestors all manner of virtues, such as courage, toleration, liberality, and an enlightened view of women; uses ingenuous etymologies (deriving the Kurdish name 'Zin' from the Indo-European tribe of Alans, and the Arab 'Bakr' - in Diyarbakir - from Kurdish Bakran); appropriates customs and beliefs, which are common to many peoples; discovers services rendered

735


by his people in various fields of human endeavour, including, it seems, urban planning; and finds doubtful precursors of present-day nationalism. These claims are no more susceptible to argument than is Leopold Senghor's belief that ancient Egyptian civilization was an em- bodiment of negritude. Some nationalist myths have helped in the creation, and then in the consolidation, of nation states. Others have not. The effect of the current labour expended on the Kurdish nationalist myth remains to be seen.

Naturally, Mehrdad Izady gives high estimates of the number of Kurds and of the natural resources of the lands in which they live. Here he is on more dangerous ground. The Kurds, as he admits, are people of the mountain - and the mountains which they inhabit furnish a scant livelihood. If Kurdish nationalists fail to lay their hands on 'Kurdish oil' - in Kirkuk and in Iran, or to wrest from the Turks control of 'Kurdish water' - the Tigris, Euphrates and their tributaries (which are being harnessed by and at the expense of Turkish central government), any Kurdish independent or autonomous state will be a slum, whose inhabitants will seek to emigrate at the earliest opportunity. Turkey, where more than half of all Kurdish-speakers live today, does not exploit its Kurdish regions. It subsidises them, although it does not - and cannot - succeed in compensating for the natural disadvantages of a remote, poor and mountainous land. The backwardness of the inhabitants of this land is as much, if not more, a consequence of their inhospitable habitat as of official neglect. Izady refers to the current emigration of Kurds to Turkish cities lying to the west of their original homeland. He notes that 'metro- politan Istanbul probably houses more Kurds than any other city in Turkey or elsewhere, including in Kurdistan itself.'35 As we have seen, the KONDA poll suggests that half of the Kurds of Istanbul already consider themselves as Turks. The same process of voluntary assimilation, with which, as Izady admits, 'history is rife',36 is likely to affect the growing number of Kurds in Turkish cities such as Gaziantep, Adana and An- talya. Izady claims that two Turkish presidents - Ismet Inonii and General Kenan Evren - were of Kurdish descent. A better example is the best-selling and much-translated Turkish novelist Yasar Kemal, the scion of an earlier migration of Kurds to the region of Adana, who has used Kurdish folk tradition to enrich Turkish literature.

Izady's attachment to the cause of Kurdish nationalism is not indis- criminate. He recognizes that Sunni fanaticism was the moving force of the nineteenth century Kurdish chieftains Nurullah and Shaykh Ubaydul- lah. He notes that the Kurdish Alevi (Shiite) community 'sided with Atatiirk's secular republic in 1925 in order to protect itself from yet another Kurdish religious leader, Shaykh Sa'id'. He goes so far as to say

736

that the Kurdish tribal chief Ismail Agha Simko, who was active during and after the First World War, 'carried out enough atrocities in his 15- year political life to place him alongside such historical villains as Attila the Hun'.37 He admits frankly that, after the Second World War, 'the [Kurdish] Mahabad Republic ... was a creation of the Soviet forces

occupying Iran'.38 And he ends his section on modern history with the remark that 'The past two years ... have brought signs that finally the Turkish and Kurdish citizens of Turkey are beginning to try to live together in peace.'39

It is this hopeful prospect which the terrorists of the PKK are endanger- ing or, at least, delaying. Izady believes that many Kurds outside Turkey have come to revere the PKK leader Abdullah ('Apo') Ocalan and that his 'Mediterranean political culture and quasi-Western political conduct' (namely, his use of Marxist cliches to justify political thuggery) have earned him a place in the 'all-Kurdish political pantheon' next to that of Mustafa Barzani.40 The more's the pity.

Izady's handbook contains a mass of information, much of it useful, some of it questionable.4 There are bibliographies at the end of each section, but, unfortunately, no index. Naturally, there is a chapter on Kurdish languages and dialects, whose diversity contributes to the frag- mentation of the people. 'The Kurds,' Izady believes, 'are a multi- lingual, multi-religious, multi-racial nation, but with a unified, independent and identifiable national history and culture.'42 Gaps in this 'independent national history and culture' are being studiously filled by nationalist thinkers.

The connection between Kurdish nationalism and language, and the Kurdish linguistic panorama, are the subject of a recent monograph by Amir Hassanpour.43 Like other Kurdish nationalists, Hassanpour has to face the fact that Kurmanji (the form of Kurdish spoken north of the Zab river) and Sorani (used by Kurds to the south of it) are not readily mutually comprehensible, and that Zaza (or Dimili, spoken by a minority of Kurds in Turkey), and the related Gorani (spoken by a minority of Kurds in Iran) are so dissimilar as to be, arguably, separate languages.

Hassanpour believes that Kurdish will develop as a 'bi-standard language', with Sorani and Kurmanji coming to share the same spelling and the same neologisms, if political conditions are propitious.4 Kurdish nationalists are, it seems, working fast and furiously devising pure Kurdish equivalents of such terms as 'ablutomania' and 'condensation'. Hassanpour lists pretty well everything that has been published, and much of what has been broadcast in Kurdish. Specialists will find the information useful, but it will not entice the general reader to take up a study of Kurdish. Exhaustive on the subject of Kurdish language or



languages, Hassanpour's book deals also with history and politics. He is right when he says that 'Kurdish nationalism has, in fact, grown stronger under conditions in which ethnic loss is imminent.' Kurdish nationalism (Kurdayeti) is clearly here to stay. But Hassanpour's belief that 'a new middle class nationalism and increasing diversification in the ideology and culture of the speech community has [sic] gradually replaced the traditional way of life'45 runs counter to van Bruinessen's findings.

In view of the past efforts of all the governments who rule over Kurds to restrict and, if possible, suppress the use of Kurdish languages, Hassan- pour is justified in talking about 'linguicide'. However this is not the only threat to the survival of Kurdish. As Hassanpour points out,

even when legal restrictions on language rights are not present, the unequal distribution of economic, political and cultural power ... works against the survival of disadvantaged languages ... There is enough evidence to suggest that minority bilingual education results in the eventual loss of the mother tongue even if the purposes are language retention.46

The commercial failure of Kurdish-language newspapers, when these were finally allowed in Turkey, is a case in point. Even the PKK are more at home with Turkish than with Kurdish. Hassanpour notes gloomily that 'Although the Kurdish language in Turkey is not dead yet, prospects for its extinction do exist.' However, the use of Kurdish language/s will probably survive, if only as as part of the cultivation of folklore. Patient and wise government policies could conduce to this harmless result.

Whether or not the Turkish government displays these virtues, the Kurds present Turkey with its major political problem. Today the Turkish government prefers to contain it by day-to-day management rather than by the introduction of the wide-ranging reforms, which some liberal outsiders urge on it. If we remember the role played by European- backed reforms in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, we may conclude that the Turkish government may well be right in its cautious approach to the Kurdish problem.

When dealing with the Kurds, one must bear in mind that assimilation and national self-assertion are connected phenomena. Similarly, the Islamic revival in Turkey is inextricably bound up with the progressive organic secularization of life in the country. Philip Robins claims that 'secularism in Turkey is clearly receding before the tide of re-Islamisa- tion'.47 True, secularist legislation and administrative practice have become more accommodating towards Islam. But the convergence of Turkish and secular west European ways of life, which Alan Duben and

738

Cem Behar noted in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Istanbul, is extending further and further into Turkish society with each passing day. The hundreds of thousands - perhaps half a million - Turks who demonstrated in favour of secularism at the funeral in Ankara of the investigative journalist, Ugur Mumcu, assassinated by Islamic terrorists in January 1993, have shown that attachment to a secular form of government is not confined to a thin social crust in Turkey, as it is in most other Muslim countries. Moreover, vocal supporters of Kemalism are not the only products of secularization, which affects widely the largely lower-middle class, media-dominated, consumer society of Turkey.

The dialectical relationship between secularization and Islamic revival is brought out in some of the papers read at a conference in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in May 1988, and now published under the editorship of Richard Tapper, who contributes a useful introduction and, together with Nancy Tapper, a study of official secular and religious ideologies in the west Anatolian town of Egridir.48 The two authors found there a 'pervasive, almost puritanical work ethic.' They note that 'hard work is a key republican virtue ... But hard work is also part of the religious ethic.'49 Richard and Nancy Tapper present the hypothesis that:

Turkish republicanism/nationalism and Turkish Islam today are both expressions of a single underlying ideology of social control... Dissidents of left and right who created the terror of the late 1970s were seen as agents of outside powers. And to vanquish them after the intervention of 1980, the state, with its Islamic props, moved at first to a rather more hard-line, 'fundamentalist' nationalism.50

A similar conclusion emerges from Ayse Saktanber's analysis of religious picture-books published for Turkish children. 'The world view that emerges in these story books,' she says, is 'extremely empiricist and this-worldly ... The child (usually a boy) is presented with generally accepted social values ... which are nevertheless depicted as intimately connected with an Islamic way of life.' Ayse Saktanber regrets that there is in these books 'the absence of an image of "happy childhood"' and that there is no effort 'to encourage the development in the child of an independent, creative mind'. Of course, 'women are not even direct observers of this life of moral struggle ... of which they become cognisant only through the mediation of fathers, husbands and sons.'5

Official Islam is, however, only one part of religion in Turkey. Discuss- ing the teachings of traditonal Sufi orders in Konya and Trabzon, Sencer Ayata discerns two patterns: the first 'characterised by a very strong emphasis on abstinence from material inducements', while 'the second



pattern also strongly condemns immoral consumerism and greed, but it is marked by a tendency to compromise between religion and material concerns. '52

Professor Serif Mardin situates the development and the current political importance of the Naksibendi order in the context of the disarray of individuals, disoriented by social and political change. 'The NakSi- bendi case', he says, 'leads us to think of Islam as the primary, ideological anchor, the matrix for thinking and action which has the most basic ideological role to play, and of Muslim political activism, as well as diffuse democratisation, as something generated in the interstices of faith.'53

Professor Ilter Turan believes that religion is one factor, among many, affecting Turkish politics. 'Religion in Turkey', he writes, 'appears to be an underlying dimension of membership of the political community, it has a moderate role in the achievement of political legitimacy, it is one of the bases of political ideology, and, finally, it is a source of values which affect political goal-setting and behaviour in society'. Professor Turan wonders sensibly whether this state of affairs is really peculiar to Turkey.54

Ayse Giines-Ayata analyses two Islamic periodicals, one popular, and the other hoping to attract urban educated readers, and finds that anti- westernism is the main common denominator. This justifies the view that religious revivalism is a reactive phenomenon.55

Michael Meeker makes the important point that 'Muslim intellectuals are not unwilling urban residents yearning to return to the security of the rural town or village ... They are very much creatures of the contemporary Turkish city, like their secular counterparts.' But he warns that not just anyone at just any time is going to be successful in bringing Islamic tradition to bear on contemporary experience. 'What the Muslim intellectuals want to say and do is not the same as what they are able to say and do, given their individual capacities and circumstances.'56

Lale Yalqin-Heckmann makes use of her field work in the mountainous province of Hakkari, in the extreme southeastern corner of Turkey, to throw light on the currently topical subject of the relationship between ethnic Islam and nationalism among Turkish Kurds. She points out that 'the discourse of the Turkish state (which comes from the administrators, the military and especially political parties) includes Islamic discourse as well ... From local people's point of view, ethnic interests and univer- salistic Islam do seem to contradict each other at the level of Kurdish ethnic-nationalist organisation which is currently being propagated'. Certainly, at the time of writing, a bloody feud is being fought between radical, secularist Kurdish nationalists and Kurdish Islamists, who are certainly encouraged by Iran and who may also have links with shadowy

740

Turkish security organs. However, as far as Hakkari's ordinary tribesmen and peasants are concerned, 'ethnicity and Islamic loyalties are parts of a continuum rather than of an opposition, and they are not necessarily or

naturally in an endemic situation of ideological conflict, so long as both of these constructs continue to maintain their heterogeneity and fulfil certain roles in power strategies and political processes'.57 But one suspects it will not be long before the ideological style of politics and of religion undermine the happy catholicity of the backwoodsmen of Hak- kari.

Not all proceedings of academic conferences deserve publication. Richard Tapper is to be congratulated in organizing one which did. The papers which he has edited contribute to our understanding of a kul- turkampf, whose complexity is mocked by the use of such terms as 're- Islamization'.

Along with the unresolved tension between secularism and Islam, the government's propensity to print money was listed by Professor Kedourie as a reason for doubting the durability of constitutional government in Turkey. This propensity has certainly continued. Thus, the value of banknotes in circulation more than doubled from TL 21 trillion in January 1992 to TL 47 trillion in the middle of March 1993.58

Unchecked inflation may, of course, imperil constitutional government. But in Turkey it is also a consequence of constitutional government, since the country's rulers print money in order to buy electoral support with public expenditure which is not matched by tax revenue. This observation could be rephrased in a more kindly way, were one to say that Turkey's elected rulers want to spare the population the full cost of the economic development which it ardently desires.

Traditional Islamic morality considers it a grave sin to deprive people of the divinely allotted provision, without which no human being is born. Traditionalists held, therefore, that the disaster which struck the Unionists (the Young Turks) in the First World War was a divine punishment for the civil service cuts which they had instituted when they came to power in 1908, cuts which deprived thousands of good Muslim families of their livelihood. Ingrained piety can thus be added to electoral calculation as a reason for the persistence of inflation, which has qualified the success of the free-market policies officially embraced on 24 January 1980. These policies were introduced by the elected government of Siileyman Demirel, and then pursued by military rulers between Septem- ber 1980 and November 1983, and continued thereafter by the elected government of Turgut Ozal. It may be worth noting that Demirel, Ozal and General Kenan Evren, the military head of state between 1980 and 1983, are all adherents of the majority religion in Turkey, which can be



described as Islam-within-Kemalist secularism (rather like St.Peter- within-the Tower).

However fascinating, such aetiological speculation lies outside the scope of Anne Krueger, a former vice-president of the World Bank, and of Dr Okan Aktan, who have given us a well-documented and rigorous account of the effect of 'the measures of 24 January' on the Turkish economy, and particularly foreign trade.59 After examining all the statistical evidence, the two authors conclude:

Whatever the future may hold, it seems clear that the policy reforms of the 1980s have altered the Turkish economy irrevocably. The chronic balance-of-payments crises and foreign exchange shortages that had plagued Turkish policy makers in earlier decades had disappeared, no longer was it believed that Turkish producers were simply incapable of exporting ... The 1980s were certainly a decade of major economic progress for Turkey.6

Anne Krueger and Okan Aktan give many instances of this progress: the rise of the national product (which averaged 4.3 per cent a year over the decade); the growth of foreign trade (both absolutely and as a proportion of the national product); and the rise in the overall standard of living (although they do not delve into the uncertain and controversial subject of income distribution). But it is also clear from the data which they present that, while the official adoption of free-market policies did reduce the degree of protection enjoyed by domestic industry, protection has continued on a considerable scale (with import duties varying between 30 and 100 per cent in 1988).6' While various levies added to the cost of imports, exporters were helped, at first, by a depreciation of the national currency in excess of the rate of domestic inflation, and, to this day, by subsidies of various descriptions.

'The measures of 24 January' thus brought not free trade, but a move towards free trade. What they could not achieve was a diminution of government expenditure, which today represents a higher proportion of the national product than it did in 1980. And, as the two authors point out, 'the rises and falls in the rate of inflation, mirror the changes in the fiscal deficit'.62 In other words, the more the government overspent, the higher prices rose. At the time of writing the public sector borrowing requirement is variously estimated at between 13 and 15 per cent of the national product, and inflation is above 60 per cent for the fifth consecu- tive year.

Nevertheless, 'the measures of 24 January' have given rise to a remarkable phenomenon: today Turkey is readily given the credit which foreign banks and governments denied it in 1979. Yet the country's total foreign

742

THE TURKISH MODEL

debt has risen from US$ 19 billion in 1980 to US$ 56 billion at the beginning of 1993. Turkey continues to attract foreign loans because it enjoys the confidence of foreign investors. Foreign debts can thus be serviced and then more money borrowed. In spite of their warnings about the danger of continuing inflation, Anne Krueger and Okan Aktan suggest that Turkey's economy deserves this degree of confidence.

'The measures of 24 January' did not end government interference in the economy. But by adopting them the government finally renounced the principle of etatisme, one of the six principles (known as 'arrows') of the Republican People's Party which had governed Turkey until 1950. Dismantling the vast network of state-owned companies, which continued to grow even under the allegedly liberal successors of the RPP, will, however, take a long time. But the intellectual argument is over, and the question, much-debated in Turkey, particularly after 1960, whether private enterprise can ensure economic development has been answered in the affirmative, by all but a handful of left-wing radicals.

Can one, therefore, start writing obituaries of the cause of Turkish socialism? Igor Lipovsky, who has written a history of the Turkish socialist movement in its heyday between the first military coup in 1960 and the third in 1980, does not think so. 'The material preconditions for the spread of socialist ideology in the country exist, and moreover, are expanding,' he writes in his conclusion, adding for good measure: 'Only one thing is clear: unlike the Communist Party, the Turkish socialist movement has become an essential element of political life in the country, which any Turkish government will be obliged to consider.'63

The fact that the Social Democratic Populist Party (SDPP) is, at the time of writing, the junior partner in the ruling coalition government could conceivably be used to justify Igor Lipkovsky's conclusion. But the SDPP, far from being socialist, is less etatiste even than its precursor the RPP, whose most radical manifestation under Prime Minister Biilent Ecevit in 1978-9 failed to realize 'the hopes of the Progressists', as Igor Lipovsky puts it.64 Professor Serif Mardin is more to the point when he says in his introduction 'The present work is a detailed description of the ephemeral institutionalisation of the Turkish Marxist left and its demise.'65 In Turkey, as elsewhere, the demise has, of course, been sealed by the collapse of Communist regimes in eastern Europe.

Nevertheless, one must not begrudge Lipovsky the hopes which he places in the future of 'the socialist movement' in Turkey, for without the inspiration of this hope he would hardly have waded through the mass of leftist publications, which he has analysed for our benefit. A degree of sympathy is also essential to maintain interest in the convoluted ideological (and often physical) battles between various leftist factions.

743


Sympathy does not, however, stop Lipovsky from coming to some obvious conclusions: that 'Turkish socialists were unable to convert their parties into mass political organisations', that 'the vast majority of the proletariat supported the bourgeois rather than the socialist parties'; and that 'the absolute majority of members of the socialist parties ... were from the intelligentsia and the non-proletarian strata of the working people'.66

Lipovsky finds comfort in the thought that the fighting and the in- fighting were not all in vain. 'The failure of the theory of the leading role of the military and civilian intelligentsia in the revolutionary process in Turkey may be seen as an important positive development', he writes. Similarly, 'a positive aspect of the socialist movement in the 1970s must be seen in the attenuation of the influence of Maoist ideology, which had led to extremism and terrorism on the part of a section of the Turkish socialists in 1960s'.67 Alas, extremism and terrorism have continued. Unattenuated by any change of ideology, they are contained only by policemen who burst into terrorist safe houses and gun down their occupants. But, while armed revolutionaries continue to reproduce themselves, some of their intellectual mentors have abandoned the cause and achieved success in business, the media or the universities. It would have been useful if Lipkovsky had appended to his study a section under some such title as 'Where are they now?'

But one must not cavil. For those still interested in NDR (National Democratic Revolution, that is a coup by leftist officers), SR (Socialist Revolution, as advocated by the defunct Turkish Labour Party), DPR (Popular Democratic Revolution, on the model of the equally defunct East European 'popular democracies') and its twin PDR - and in their interminable arguments, will find a mine of information in Lipovsky's study. However, the social context within which the ideologues of the left moved is outside the scope of his study. Nor does Lipovsky consider the relationship between Marxist anti-imperialism and nationalism, the ideology in which most Turkish intellectuals have been nurtured. Although the term 'nationalism' has a right-wing connotation in Turkey, it affects the left, as well as the right.

There is much useful illustrative material on the beginnings of Turkish nationalism in a new book by Masami Orai of the Osaka City University.68 The author provides a content analysis of four nationalist publications: Turk Dernegi (Turkish Association), Genq Kalemler (Young Authors), Turk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland) and Islam Mecmuasi (Islamic Review), covering the years 1911 to 1918. There is also some information on the founders and members of the societies with which these periodicals were associated, and on the authors whom they published. Given that the

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THE TURKISH MODEL

authors' views changed pari passu with rapidly unfolding events, it is unfortunate that Masami Arai should have given only the number, but not the date of the issues which he analyses.

Nevertheless, there is much to be grateful for, including some telling quotations. Thus we learn from the introduction that Namik Kemal, known as 'the poet of liberty', wrote in 1878: 'we must annihilate all languages in our country, except Turkish'. And again: 'Certainly it is impossible to encourage the spread of our language among Greeks or Bulgarians, but it is surely possible among Albanians and Lazes, namely, Muslims. If we set up regular schools ... Laz and Albanian languages will be utterly forgotten in twenty years.'69

The analysis of the material published in the four periodicals leads Masami Arai to conclude that Turkish nationalism was, at first, introduced into the idea of Ottoman patriotism, which the early nationalists had inherited. He quotes the nationalist sociologist Ziya Gokalp's view that 'unless Ottomans are made into Turks, all Turks cannot identify themselves with the Ottomans'.7" But Ziya Gokalp wrote this in 1918, when the Balkan provinces were already lost and the Arab provinces about to be so, and when the collapse of the Tsarist empire had brought to the fore the hope of forging an all-embracing Turkish nation, independent of Russia. A few years later, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk chose Anatolian Turkish nationalism as the ideology of the new republic and Gokalp complied dutifully.

Masami Arai finds also that 'Contrary to received wisdom, Turkish nationalists did not necessarily pursue secularisation or westernisation; they were rather in favour of Islamisation and modernisation. They searched for a means of regaining the original truth of Islam, and a way of modernisation other than westernisation.'71 Once again, it was Ataturk who chose secularization and who realized that modernization and westernization were synonymous. And once again, most nationalists supported his choice. In any case, secularist ideas were not uncommon in nationalist circles. Masami Arai has given us an accurate account of the publications which he has studied. The trouble is that the contents of four nationalist periodicals, however influential, do not give an adequate idea of the varied and changing panorama of Turkish nationalism. Neverthe- less, Arai has added detail to the picture. The detail is useful, but it is risky to generalize on its basis.

Turkish nationalism was born in the second half of the nineteenth century in response to the adoption of nationalist ideologies by subject peoples. It then stimulated the development of Arab nationalism. The aim in every case was to create homogeneous nation states. But the ethnic and confessional map of the old Ottoman Empire was too complex to

745


allow the full realization of this dream, and minorities have survived to this day. Mordechai Nisan has now given us a sympathetic account of their history and present condition.72 One can certainly agree with him that 'there is a place to recognise and publicise the condition of the minorities. Many have engaged in courageous, perhaps futile, campaigns largely unknown to the world'.73

The trouble is that sympathy evokes judgements and leads to the use of terms which require considerable qualification. 'The Kurdish liberation struggle from 1961' did not involve all the Kurds, but did involve a great deal of fighting between Kurds. 'The Armenian genocide from 1915' was attended by the deaths of large numbers of Muslims, Turks and Kurds, larger probably than that of the Armenians who perished. The statement that 'the USSR orchestrates its moves on the side of freedom, and the United States is on the side of status quo order mixed with repression' invites refutation rather than qualification.74 Mordechai Nisan has good grounds for saying that Israel represents 'one minority victory'. But his view that 'Israel, following a veritable assimilationist-integrationist orientation, may - in a political paradox - threaten its own Jewish survival in its own state'75 is a nice intellectual conceit belied by reality. The basis of Jewish (or any other group) survival, is survival tout court. Jews survive in Israel; they have all but disappeared from other Middle Eastern countries.

Nevertheless, Mordechai Nisan's compendium of Middle Eastern minorities is not without its uses. Readers can dip into it for information on this or that minority group. But they would be well advised to check it, look elsewhere for the context, and take the author's judgements with a grain of salt.

One minority which has virtually disappeared is that of the Greeks in Turkey. The Greeks of Turkey, including the Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox communities of Anatolia, left in the exchange of populations which followed the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The indigenous Greeks of Istanbul were then allowed to stay on, but their number has dwindled to a few thousand - probably between two and three thousand. Two recent books deal with their history.

Gerasimos Augustinos examines the condition of Anatolian Greeks in the nineteenth century.76 The number of Greeks increased at the time, partly because of an improvement in material conditions, and partly because of the arrival of immigrants from the newly-independent but poverty-stricken Greek kingdom. But while the Greeks were more prosperous than their Muslim neighbours, the latter were also strengthened by the arrival of a stream of refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus.

746

THE TURKISH MODEL

Gerasimos Augustinos describes in detail the internal organization of the largely self-governing millet-i Rum, as the Greek Orthodox community was known to Ottoman administrators. Growing prosperity and the impact of Western ideas led to a proliferation of clubs and charitable societies which functioned in parallel with traditional clerical structures. The Ottoman Tanzimat reforms hastened lay participation in and a degree of lay control of the clerical organs of the community. At the same time, the kingdom of Greece busily exported irredentist nationalism, mainly through teachers trained in Athens.

The century thus witnessed a re-Hellenization of Anatolian Greeks, although the process was far from complete by the time the community met its doom in the First World War. As Augustinos notes, 'The Asia Minor Greeks did not progress as a body from millet to nation ... The Ottoman empire was a sufficient world for the Greeks as long as they had the latitude to manoeuvre among the various forces exerting power, including the Ottoman government, the Greek state, the capitalist economy, and their ecclesiastical leaders.'77

This explains one fact on which too little attention has been focused: in spite of the inroads of Greek nationalism, the Greek community in Anatolia remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire, until the latter col- lapsed in 1918. There had been some involvement of the Greeks on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (especially, in and around the town of Ayvalik) in the Greek rising of 1821. But, thereafter, the Anatolian (and Istanbul) Greeks, far from undermining Ottoman rule, did their best to profit from the reforms which it introduced. The terrorist campaign which Armenian nationalists mounted in the closing years of the nineteenth century had no parallel among the Greeks.

Some Greeks theorized that their increasing wealth would eventually win them control of the Ottoman state. Most just got on with the job of bettering themselves, largely through trade, often in conjunction with 'the European commercial world'.

The existence of the Greek state was, at first, an advantage, since those Greeks who could claim Greek nationality benefited from the privileged status of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire. But, in the end, it was the Greek state which, by invading Anatolia in 1919, destroyed the local Greek community. The Greek patriarchate in Istanbul, which had for a long time opposed the inroads of Greek nationalism, renounced al- legiance to the Ottoman state, while Anatolian Greeks joined willy-nilly the invading Greek army. It was probably bound to come anyway. As Richard Clogg has observed, 'what is most surprising... is that the millet- i Rum, should have survived for so long after the creation of an independent Greek state'.78

747


This survival was due both to the adaptability of Ottoman Greeks and to Ottoman tolerance. The West saw the first, but, on the whole, failed to give due recognition to the second.

As it seems so often to be the case, it was the last phase before the destruction of the community which was the most prosperous. Gerasimos Augustinos has produced a fit memorial to this lost golden age. One does not have to be interested in theories about the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism to read his book with profit and pleasure. The pleasure would, however, have been greater if there were more character sketches, more illustrations drawn from the lives of individual Anatolian Greeks. For this telling, existential detail one can now turn to Greek novelists of Anatolian origin who have recently been at work producing imaginative, often romantic, reconstructions of the Ottoman past of their families.

The slow death of the Greek community in Istanbul is the subject of an excellent study by Alexis Alexandris, which has just been reprinted.79 The Istanbul Greeks had grown in numbers and wealth under the rule of Sultan Abdiilhamit II, in spite of the brief Turco-Greek war of 1897. Then, the advent to power of the Young Turks brought the false hope of political participation in the government of the empire. According to figures quoted by Alexandris, there were some 330,000 to 350,000 Greeks (including 65,000 Greek nationals) in greater Istanbul on the eve of the Balkan wars in 1912-3, as against 132,000 in 1844.80 At the end of the allied occupation of Istanbul which followed the First World War, their number was down to an estimated 280,000. After the provisions of the treaty of Lausanne had been applied, and newly-arrived Greeks were forced out, while many old-established ones left of their own will, the number of Greeks in Istanbul was further reduced to some 127,000, of whom 26,000 were Greek nationals.81

As Alexandris points out, the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne conference wanted the compulsory exchange of populations to apply also to Istanbul Greeks. This is not surprising. 'Ethnic polarisation in the Ottoman capital reached a peak in 1918-20. 82 Throwing prudence to the winds, the Greek nationalist archbishop Dorotheos, who had become acting Patriarch in 1918, had demanded 'the complete and final expulsion' of all Turks from Istanbul.83 However, the Turkish desire to respond in kind was blocked by the allies, and some 100,000 Greeks were allowed to stay in Istanbul against a similar number of (Turkish) Muslims in Greek western Thrace.

Both communities were subject to administrative harrassment. The treatment of both depended on the relations between the two countries at any given time. Nevertheless, their numbers held up. In 1935, when

748

THE TURKISH MODEL

relations between the two countries were friendly at the official level, a Turkish census found 109,000 Greek-speakers amid a total of 125,000 Greek Orthodox in Istanbul.

In 1943 these Greeks, along with Armenians, Jews and others, saw much of their wealth confiscated by a discriminatory capital levy. This prompted many to leave, as soon as the Second World War ended. In 1955, when Greek nationalists launched a terrorist campaign in Cyprus, while the Greek government officially took up the cause of self-deter- mination, which was tantamount to the union of Cyprus with Greece, there were 87,000 Greek Orthodox and 80,000 Greek-speakers left in Istanbul. On 6-7 September of that year, the Menderes government connived at an anti-Greek pogrom in Istanbul, in which 'casualties ... were negligible',84 but much damage was caused to Greek churches and property, and the confidence of the community received a blow from which it never recovered. In the early 1960s, the Turkish government expelled most Greek nationals in an effort to induce a more cooperative attitude on the part of the Greek government. The 1965 Turkish census, which was the last to give data on mother tongue and religion, showed the presence of 48,000 Greek-speakers among 76,000 Greek Orthodox.85 Most of these melted away in the 1970s, when Turkey was plagued by terrorism, while Greece was stable and much more prosperous.

In the meantime, the number of Turks in western Thrace changed little, thanks to a high birthrate which offset the effects of emigration to Turkey. Alexandris notes the Greek nationalist argument that the Greek government 'has the right to restore the numerical balance of the two communities',86 that is, expel all but a handful of the Turks from western Thrace. But, he says, 'the Greek government, favouring a policy of appeasement and understanding towards Turkey, has been reluctant to reopen the minority issue'.87 In any case, now that Greece is a member of the European Community, as well as a signatory of Council of Europe conventions, the option of expulsion is not open to it. Administrative harrassment of the Turkish minority continues, but is unlikely to lead to its extinction, particularly since the possession of a Greek passport now allows the Turks of western Thrace to travel freely throughout the Community, a privilege which is denied to Turkish nationals.

Left virtually without a congregation, yet required by law to select its dignitaries among Turkish nationals, the Greek patriarchate in Istanbul is dying of inanition. At the time of the Cold War, Greek diplomats argued that it was against the interests of Turkey, as a NATO country, to drive out the patriarchate, since the primacy of the Eastern Orthodox churches would then be claimed by Moscow. The argument no longer applies. Most Turks view the patriarchate as a symbol of Greek claims to the

749


Byzantine legacy and would dearly love to see it go. But treaty obligations are preserving its presence.

Alexandris has done well to chronicle in detail the sad last chapter of the centuries-old Greek-Turkish cohabitation. At the time of writing, there are Turkish-Greek and Greek-Turkish friendship societies, active among liberal intellectuals in the two countries. Their political impact is slight. But Greeks have of late become increasingly interested in Ot- toman and Turkish studies, an attitude which has not been matched by any interest in Greek studies in Turkey.

Dr Elena Frangakis-Syrett's researches into the commercial history of Izmir (Smyrna) are a notable product of the new trend, which has been nurtured by western universities. Her doctoral dissertation, now published in book form,88 is based on a thorough examination of British, French, Dutch and Italian archival material on the Levant trade, and of relevant travel literature. Part of her findings, concerning the trade of cotton and cloth in Izmir from the second half of the eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, appeared earlier in a collection of papers read at a conference on the Ottoman Empire and the world economy, held at the State University of New York in October 1986.89

Textiles and the raw materials used in their manufacture were the mainstay of Smyrna trade between 1775 and 1820, the period on which Dr Frangakis-Syrett concentrates. Izmir exported cotton and cotton yarn from its immediate hinterland, mohair from central Anatolia, silk from Bursa and Iran, and carpets largely from western Anatolia. It imported finished cloth, first mainly from France, and then, after the Napoleonic wars, from Britain, whose manufacturing industry advanced ahead of its French rivals. In spite of wars and, to a lesser extent, civil disorder and recurrent outbreaks of plague, which caused sharp annual variations, trade grew prodigiously during the half century, with exports tending to be higher in value than imports.

French, British, Dutch, Italian and, later, Russian merchants dealt usually through non-Muslim intermediaries, Greeks, Jews and Armenians, who then increasingly began to trade on their own account. Greeks were predominant in the carrying trade, obtaining their initial capital from 'privateering and even piracy'.90 They were also active in currency speculation.91 Muslim merchants were engaged largely in domestic trade. Although non-Muslims were employed to collect some taxes and customs dues, administration was in the hands of Muslims. The power of the state was mediated largely by landowning local dynasties, among which the Karaosmanoglu were the most important.

Trade was and remains the bedrock of the prosperity of Izmir. By describing it in detail, Dr Frangakis-Syrett provides a vivid account of the

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THE TURKISH MODEL

life of the city in the period before the assertion of Ottoman central power and the implementation of the Tanzimat reforms. The reforms favoured trade and Izmir grew in importance as an outlet of Turkish exports, among which tobacco and dry fruit became increasingly important.

The Tanzimat enhanced further the numbers and status of non- Muslims, so that by the beginning of the twentieth century the Turks found themselves in a minority. In 1900 there were some 130,000 Greeks in a population of 250,000, and Izmir was the second largest Greek city in the world, coming after Istanbul, but before Athens. Cosmopolitan Izmir perished in the fire of September 1922, as the Greek invading forces were pushed out of Anatolia. The non-Muslims were replaced by Turkish refugees from Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans and by immigrants from the interior. The revival of the city quickened after the Second World War. Manufacturing enriched the economy, but contributed to the pollution of the Gulf of Izmir, which has become an environmental disaster. Today a purely Turkish Izmir is Turkey's third largest city (after Istanbul and Ankara). But as an outlet of Turkish exports it now takes second place to Mersin, which benefits from easier access, as well as from its rich hinterland in the Cukurova (Cilician) plain.

The collection of papers, edited by Caglar Keyder and Faruk Tabak, to which Dr Frangakis-Syrett has contributed a summary of her findings, derives from an interest in the institution of the qiftlik, the private or quasi-private estate which became conspicuous in the midst of state lands, particularly in the eighteenth century. Did the qiftlik mark the beginning of private property in land, and was it, therefore, a link in the development chain from feudalism to capitalism - and thence to imperialism, socialism and, finally, the Marxist heaven of communism? It seems it was not. It was, (aglar Keyder says in his introduction, 'a fleeting and easily reversible phenomenon'. It became 'a collection of unlikely money-making practices that were in a particular moment possible'. 'There was no logic to it, no economic theory to understand and explicate it.'92 It seems that the qiftlik, like Ottoman 'feudalism' and 'the Asiatic mode of production', has become useless to Marxist theory - and, of course, vice versa.

The absence of an 'explicating' economic theory enhances the value of the papers edited by Caglar Keyder and Faruk Tabak, as the contributors can concentrate on describing things as they were. This is the particular strength of a fascinating paper by Suraiya Faroqhi, who tells the story of the landowner, tax-farmer and money-lender Haci Mehmed Aga of Edremit in the olive-growing area of Turkey's Aegean coast. Haci Mehmed Aga profited from the flight of Greeks compromised in the rising of 1821. His 'political ambitions were modest and did not go beyond

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local tax collecting or loans to people influential at the provincial level'. But this did not save him from being sentenced to death, a sentence accompanied automatically by the confiscation of his property. By examining his assets and debts at the time of the confiscation, Suraiya Faroqhi throws light on the local economy, trade and way of life of an Anatolian community on the eve of the Tanzimat. She does not tell us when or on what pretext Haci Mehmet Aga was executed. It was some time in the 1820s, and the pretext is probably immaterial since the purpose of the sentence was to lay hands on property accumulated by fair means or foul. Toleration of money-making (miisamaha), followed by confiscation (miisadere) was a time-honoured Ottoman method of obtaining revenue, before the Tanzimat bestowed protection on life, property and honour. The lack of logic, to which Qaglar Keyder refers, would seem to have manifested itself not so much in the political and economic system, as in the behaviour of individuals who accepted the lot of turkeys fattened for Christmas. Perhaps they thought that they might be lucky. Suraiya Faroqhi's study is a reminder of the reality of oriental despotism - a system of government which bred long-lasting patterns of behaviour. The capital levy, which despoiled non-Muslims in the middle of the Second World War, was a throwback to this system. In Turkey it seems to have been its last echo. But in the Middle East, despotism and attendant arbitrary confiscation remain part of the scene.

There was, however, another side to despotism. In his study of the educational work of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Turkey, Aron Rodrigue quotes this observation made in 1893 by Gabriel Arie, the Alliance director of the Izmir school who had come from Bulgaria:

What strikes a Bulgarian when he enters Turkey is, before everything else, the air of freedom that he breathes. Under a theoretically despotic government, one definitely enjoys more freedom than in a constitutional state ... one almost does not feel that there is a government ... the absence of an irksome police, of crushing taxation, of very heavy civic duties, here is what the non-Muslim subjects of the Sultan should appreciate; the Jews in particular, can, quite justifiably, consider themselves in this country as the happiest of all their coreligionists in the world: enjoying all the rights, they have almost no duties ...93

But conditions had improved by the end of the century, largely as a result of the Tanzimat; and while Ottoman government retained the virtue of non-interference in the daily lives of its citizens, it had by and large put an end to arbitrary exactions. It was in the relatively happy days of the Tanzimat, in the 1860s, that the Alliance embarked on its task of

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'regenerating' Oriental Jewry in the image of the citizens of secular France. It was successful in raising the educational and, consequently, material standards of 'a Jewish community, whose decline had parallelled the fortunes of the Ottomans'.94 But, as Aron Rodrigue points out, while modern education, which relegated religion to the periphery, served to integrate the Jews in host societies in western Europe, in Turkey the Alliance assimilated the Jews to a foreign, French culture. 'The place given to French as the language of mass education created a non- integrated polyglot Jewry unprepared for the requirements of the new nation-state. The polyglot orientation of Turkish Jews has survived to this day, in spite of the process of Turkicization begun seriously under the Republic.'95 But there is surely nothing wrong in being a polyglot. Muslim Turks are today doing their best to send their children to schools and universities, which use English and French as a medium of instruction. The Alliance gave the Jews a head start, and its legacy has not stopped them being perfectly competent in Turkish. Nor did training in Alliance schools prevent the Jews from adapting to the requirements of the Turkish nation-state, which was, after all, constructed on a French model. Where the Alliance philosophy may have been at fault was in assuming optimistically that 'regeneration' through civic participation would guarantee security. Aron Rodrigue describes the conflict which eventually developed between the Alliance and Zionists, who, of course, also believed in civic virtue, but within a Jewish state. Inevitably, Zionism made converts after the experience of the capital levy in 1943. Many Turkish Jews emigrated to Israel, others moved on to the United States and elsewhere.

Those who stayed behind have not had to regret their choice. In 1992 a prosperous and well-integrated Jewish community took a prominent part in the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the decision of Ottoman Sultans to give asylum to Jews expelled from Spain. They praised Turkish hospitality and toleration, while hoping that the danger of Islamic extremism would pass them by. The legacy of the Alliance cannot be blamed for the persistence of this danger, which no amount of Jewish integration can ever diminish.

Aron Rodrigue dedicates his book to the memory of Jewish communities of Thrace. There remains a Jewish community in Edirne, although its numbers have been reduced by emigration, largely to Istanbul. But outside Turkish Thrace, Jewish communities have perished at the hands of the Nazis. No alternative system of education, nothing short of timely emigration, could have saved them.

The past of the city of Izmir, which Dr Elena Frangakis-Syrett illumi- nates so effectively, figures also in a recent book on women in Islamic

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culture by Julie Marcus.96 But while the former is content to present documented facts, the latter has a point to prove, namely that 'within western knowledge today there is only one real question: that of gender'.97

Julie Marcus went to Izmir to gather material for a description of the lives of Turkish women. But, she says, that the focus of her project changed to 'questions surrounding the construction of a hierarchy of genders'.98 Her starting point is that 'ethnography [in lay terms, the description of of people's customs] is the product of a particular politics and a particular time' and that 'this individually deployed politics is necessarily part of the myriad ways in which the relations of power of dominating economies are reproduced through the representation of other's cultures.'99 She treads in the footsteps of Edward Said, in whose work she finds only one fault, his failure to place 'the female body at the centre of a gender hierarchy'.°°

Does Julie Marcus's concentration on the female body tell us anything new about the condition of Turkish women? The answer is, not much. She has accompanied women to a popular shrine near Izmir and pon- dered deeply on its symbolic significance. She has read extensively on Izmir, Islam and much else besides. She makes a few perceptive, although not always novel, points about the prejudices of Western travellers, the recent Western origin of presumed ancient Turkish folklore, the origin of the shrine of Meryemana (the House of the Virgin Mary, near Ephesus) in the preoccupations of modern Catholicism, the comfort women find in their own 'space' in Turkey (and in Islamic society, generally).

But one misses the voices, the views of Turkish women themselves, whether in interviews with the author or in the growing body of books, both factual and imaginative, written by Turkish women.

Alas, Julie Marcus behaves no better than the western travellers whom she criticizes. She went to Turkey with her own prejudices and her own agenda, and then sought and, of course, found material to fit them. We are told of her views on the misdeeds of imperialists, the wickedness of President Bush in ejecting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, the horrors of 'heterosexist' modern medicine, the unfairness with which women are treated in Australian universities, the perversity of the world which fails to take adequate notice of the 'feminist critique'. Her theories on life, death, virginity, fertility, blood, water and purity are expounded at length, and illustrated by curious diagrams. So are her opinions on Islam and Christianity. Judaism escapes comparatively lightly, because although 'the same arguments' apply to it, she has not yet begun 'to work out the parameters of difference'.

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Readers interested in feminist ideology in the 'advanced industrialised countries of the West' will no doubt be fascinated by Julie Marcus. But for information on the concerns of Turkish women today one must turn elsewhere. These concerns vary from village to town, from shanty-town to flats in jerry-built blocks, from poor to rich, from traditional to westernized - with innumerable gradations in-between. There is, of course, an element of common culture, part Turkish-Islamic, part Western-consumerist. This shifting, changing culture, with its internal tensions, has to be observed and recorded as factually and objectively as possible, before it can yield material for grand ideologies. Fortunately, there are women, both Turkish and foreign, who are doing just that.

NOTES

1. Aydin Yalcin, 'Turk Modeli Kavrami ve Tiirkiye'nin Iktisadi Kalkinmasindaki Ozel- likleri' (The Concept of the Turkish Model and the Characteristics of Turkey's Economic Development), Forum, Ankara (Dec. 1993), p.22.

2. David Barchard, Turkey and the West, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 89-92.

3. Elie Kedourie, Politics in the Middle East, (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 151-2. 4. Victor Lavy and Hillel Rapoport, 'External Debt and Structural Adjustment in

Turkey', Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.28, No.2 (April 1992), p.327. 5. Phlip Robins, Turkey and the Middle East (London: Pinter for Royal Institute of

International Affairs, 1991). 6. Ibid., p.1. 7. Dis Politika Enstitiisu [Foreign Policy Institute], Turk Dis Politikasinin Hedefleri

[Aims of Turkish Foreigh Policy] (Ankara, 1992), p.10. 8. Ibid., pp. 12-14. 9. Robins, Turkey and the Middle East, pp. 10-11.

10. Ibid., p.114. 11. Ibid., pp. 116-17. 12. Ibid., p.116. 13. Ibid., p.2. 14. Ibid., p.16. 15. Ibid., p.15. 16. Cem Behar, 'Tendances r6centes de la population de la Turquie', typescript, pp. 13-

14. 17. Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility,

1880-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 1991). 18. Ibid., p.240. 19. Ibid., p. 158. 20. Ibid., p.232. 21. Ibid., p.242. 22. Ibid., pp. 247-8. 23. Ibid., p.58. 24. Milliyet, Istanbul, 28 Feb. 1993, p.11. 25. Ibid., 2 March 1993, p.11. 26. Cem Behar, 'Tendances r6centers', p.12. 27. Milliyet, 2 March 1993, p.11.

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28. Ibid., 3 March 1993, p.11. 29. Ibid. 30. Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State, (London: Zed Books, 1992). 31. Ibid., p.1. 32. Ibid., pp. 316-7. 33. Ibid., p.15. 34. Mehrdad Izady, A Concise Handbook: The Kurds, (Washington: Taylor & Francis,

1992). 35. Ibid., p.125. 36. Ibid., p.110. 37. Ibid., p.57. 38. Ibid., p.65. 39. Ibid., p.71. 40. Ibid., p.208. 41. For example, Art.44 of the Treaty of Lausanne referred specifically to non-Muslim

minorities (see Ismail Soysal, Turkiye'nin Siyasal Andlasmalari [Political Treaties of Turkey], TTK, Ankara,1983, p.97) and was not, therefore, relevant to the Kurds, as Izady believes (ibid., p.61).

42. Ibid., p.185. 43. Amir Hassanpour, Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918- 1985, (San Fran-

cisco: Mellen Research University Press 1992). 44. Ibid., p.463. 45. Ibid., p.65. 46. Ibid., pp. 146-7. 47. p.45. 48. Richard Tapper (ed.), Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion Politics and Literature in a

Secular State (London: I.B.Tauris, 1991). 49. Ibid., p.80. 50. Idem. 51. Ibid., pp. 185-6. 52. Ibid., pp.250-1. 53. Ibid., p.139. 54. Ibid., p.52. 55. Ibid., p.277. 56. Ibid., p.217. 57. Ibid., p.118. 58. Turkey Confidential (London, 1993), p.21; Milliyet, 17 March 1993, p.6. 59. Anne Krueger and Okan Aktan, Swimming against the Tide: Turkish Trade Reform in

the 1980's, (San Francisco: International Centre for Economic Growth, 1992). 60. Ibid., p.59. 61. Ibid., p.70, table 13. 62. Ibid., p.176. 63. Igor Lipovsky, The Socialist Movement in Turkey 1960-1980 (Leiden: Brill, 1992),

p.168. 64. Ibid., p.142. 65. Ibid., p.vii. 66. Ibid., p. 166. 67. Ibid., p.165. 68. Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 69. Ibid., p.3. 70. Ibid., p.96. 71. Ibid., p.97. 72. Mordechai Nisan, Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-

Expression, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1991). 73. Ibid., p.266. 74. Idem.

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75. Ibid., p.262. 76. Gerasimos Augustinos, The Greeks of Asia Minor: Confession, Community and

Ethnicity in the Nineteenth Century (Kent State University Press, 1992). 77. Ibid., pp. 211-2. 78. Richard Clogg 'The Greek Millet', in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds),

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), p.200.

79. Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations 1918- 1974, 2nd edn. (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992).

80. Ibid., p.51. 81. Ibid., p.142. 82. Ibid., p.319. 83. Ibid., p.62. 84. Ibid., p.257. 85. Ibid., p.291. 86. Ibid., p.315. 87. Idem. 88. Elena Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-

1820) (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992). 89. (aglar Keyder and Faruk Tabak (eds.), Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in

the Middle East (State University of New York Press, 1991), pp.97-112. 90. Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna, p.108. 91. Ibid., p.100. 92. Keyder and Tabak, Landholding and Commercial Agriculture, p.13. 93. Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the

Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 169-70.

94. Ibid., p.167. 95. Ibid., p.172. 96. Julie Marcus, A World of Difference: Islam and Gender Hierarchy in Turkey,

(London: Zed Books, 1992). 97. Ibid., p.viii. 98. Ibid., p.ix. 99. Ibid., p.vii.

100. Ibid., p.174.


Mango, The Turkish Model

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