Moderator: Prof. Dr. Tülin BUMİN Political Philosopher, Professor at Galatasaray University Philosophy Department, Turkey
Prof. Dr. Nilüfer NARLI- Sociologist, Dean at Kadir Has University Faculty of Communications, Turkey
Dr. Oruç ARUOBA- Philosopher, writer, poet, Turkey
Dr. Erwin LUCIUS- Consul, Former Austrian Cultural Attaché, Turkey
David BARCHARD- Writer of the Cornucopia magazine, UK
Tülin BUMİN- My acquaintance with the European Cultural Association dates back to last year when they organized several events. My impression was that these events were appropriate and highly meaningful. I am happy to be amongst them this year as well. Now, if you please, I would like to introduce the participants. I would like to add that this is the first time I’ve been asked to be a moderator. David Bachard is one of the writers of Cornucopia magazine and a former journalist of the Financial Times. One of the rare specialists on Turkey in England, he has conducted academic researches on Turkish-European relations. Let me present shortly his studies: he is currently working on a research on the outlook of England on Turkey since 1821. He has many works presenting a great interest for Turkey as well. Nilüfer Narlı, sociologist and Dean of the Communication Department of the Kadir Has University. The question she will be treating bears the title “Turkish Culture and Europe”. To my left, Dr. Erwin Lucius, former Cultural Attaché of Austria. He stands equidistant to Austria and Turkey due to his prolonged sojourn in Turkey. Lately, he has retired from the Office of Culture and Culture and Press Undersecretariat in the Embassy of Austria in Ankara and he independently continues his work on the same field between Vienna and İstanbul. Oruç Aruoba, philosopher, writer, poet, a teacher who has brought up many pupils, a university on his own, continuing his work. I presume that ever since he quit his job at the university yielding to his anger, he has been practising this profession as a freelancer. Isn’t it so? Now, let us take up this course as indicated in the program.
Nilüfer NARLI- Turkish Culture and Europe - Harmony in Diversity
The major characteristic of the Anatolian culture is harmony in diversity. It is a mosaic of various cultural and religious elements blended in the course of history. Turkey, the land of many cultures, decorated with the impressive historical ruins and monuments of these glorious ages and epochs, has been the cradle of many civilizations. It has been home to a rich variety of tribes and nations of people since 6500 BC: Hattis, Hittites, Phrygians, Urartians, Lycians, Lydians, Ionians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and the Ottomans. They have all made a contribution to Turkey's history and enriched its culture.
Turkish religious culture is also rich and diversified. The Turks converted from Shamanism to Islam in the 8th century and they became Muslims by the 10th century. Some of the Shamanic practices survived as part of folk Islam -the totality of the Islamic beliefs and values blended with centuries-old Islamic and pre-Islamic Turkish customary beliefs and practices-. Rather than being orthodox Muslims, the Seljuks and the Ottomans gave freedom to heterodoxy, which in turn cherished Sufism and mystic tradition. It also promoted tolerance that was instrumental in creating a peaceful co-existence of all the religious groups and sects in the Ottoman State.
The Turkish mystics put awareness i.e knowing the self and the others and the love of God before the outward trapping of worship. With the tolerance of non-conformists and those of other faiths and the stress on expressing and experiencing divine love, it was under the mystical movements that poetry, music and literature flourished. The Mevlevi tarikat founded by Mevlana Celalattin Rumi (1207-1273) and the 13th century Bektashi movement, founded by the philosopher Haci Bektas Veli (1209-1271) are the examples of un-orthodox Islam preaching love of God and value of human being. Yunus Emre (d.ca 1320) whose poems treated the themes of humanitarianism and freedom of consciousness is another example of tolerant religious tradition that deviated from the orthodox pattern.
Cultural and religious diversity has grown through interacting with the geography and the political system of Europe since 15th century. Despite the constant conflict with the Christian West, Ottoman Sultans did not hesitate to encourage cultural borrowing from the West. They were not intimidated with “strangeness” in the cultures they interacted, in as much as the political culture of the Ottoman State was an amalgam of various sources. The Ottoman State was ostensibly organised on the basis of Islam. Nevertheless, its philosophical foundation included non-Islamic elements. According to the leading historians, the Ottoman Statecraft combined pre-Islamic Turkish customs, the Persian tradition of siyasetname, and medieval Islamic political philosophy in a technique of imperial rule that departed significantly from Sunnite theories of political legitimacy in its broad acceptance of social stratification, bureaucratization, and man-made law (kanun). Eastern Roman cultural elements added new ingredients to the Ottoman political culture as the Empire did not only consider itself an Islamic state, but also could claim to be the political descendant of both the Islamic and Eastern Roman State traditions.
Diversity in religion and political culture created a milieu where various religious groups lived in peace and practiced their faith. Respecting the other's faith, his or her human dignity and freedom were the virtues shared by all the religious groups.
Such a rich cultural and religious diversity made Turkey an integral part of the cultural values of Europe. It created a fertile ground for cherishing the democratic values and reformist ideas that led to the birth of the secular republic where human rights and women's rights have been respected, despite the difficulties resulted from the oscillations between authoritarian rule and democracy. Nevertheless, women have progressed and in turn, have begun to contribute to conflict resolution, to the creation of a culture of peace, and to inter-religious dialogues. Women have gone a long way until they reached a stage to help to the progress of others.
Turkish Cultural Interaction With the West
Would there have been a “European history” without Turkey? Some argue that Turkey has been in Europe, not of Europe. Yet modern Turkey is the inheritor of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, which have shaped Europe.
The historical place of the Ottoman Empire at the heart of Europe, despite as its “sick man”, has been obvious. Historical sociology corroborates diplomatic practice in this respect. In conquering Constantinople, the Ottomans did not take Byzantium out of Europe. To make its conquest, it relied on the support of Greeks; it incorporated Christians and Jewish elites into its power structure; it welcomed the Sephardic Jews after their expulsion from the Iberian peninsula; and it sought the support of the Orthodox church to help it govern its new territories.
Culturally, Turkey has inherited the entire legacy of the Eastern Empire; its music and cuisine are very much influenced from neo-Byzantine. Its political culture is also very much European in character.
Such a European Ottoman past explains why there has been over a long period a strong impulse to become part of Europe. The reform (Tanzimat) and modernisation movements of the late 18th century had played a significant role in flourishing it. The urge to be part of Europe augmented with the reforms of Atatürk, whose mission was the elevation of the Turkish people to the level of contemporary civilisation, identified as that of the West. It was Atatürk's remarkable attempt to shape the new state so that, despite history and the Islamic nature of Turkish society, modern Turkey too, would be in a position to flow into European civilisation. The goals were national security based on territorial integrity and full sovereignty, the modernisation of society and the democratisation of the political system. This orientation to the West was a conscious continuation of the late Ottoman policy. It was not based on any romantic attachment to the West. Atatürk and his friends had spent their professional lives defending the Ottoman State, and then the Republic against Western predations. It was a practical decision based on the fact that the West represented success and that only by achieving those standards would Turkey be accepted as an equal. Initially, the Western orientation remained philosophical and technical designed to gain acceptance and to modernise, but After World War II the relationship took on strong military and security dimensions.
The recognition of the common security interests with the West motivated Turkey to join NATO in 1952. Turkey also realised that its relations with the West had to develop beyond being mere cooperation in the area of security. This is why Turkey applied to the European Economic Community (EEC) for partnership status on July 31, 1959. On September 12, 1963, Turkey signed Ankara Agreement on the establishment of the partnership relationship that took the EEC and Turkey into a custom union. Turkey became an associate member of the European Community. Article 28 of the agreement envisaged eventual full membership. Then in 1999 at Helsinki Summit Turkey became a candidate country. Following this, on December 17, 2004 the EU decided the start of accession talks with Turkey.
Within the last 5 years, the governments have implemented revolutionary reform packages that have further matured democratic culture and taken Turkey to the political cultural environment of the EU. Democracy is deep-rooted and in no way artificial. Turkey did not inherit the democratic institutions from the colonial powers, as it was the case in many Middle Eastern states. Parliamentary democracy and its institutions were the choice of the people. They invented them in the course of a long political struggle. Today, there is a very vibrant and dynamic civil society promoting democratic values and gender equality.
Oruç ARUOBA- An important source of concern one has to put up with in similar types of meetings is one’s initial anticipation of both the multitude and total absence of things to say. To begin with, I shall therefore attempt to examine the concept: “Culture”. I will commence with an anecdote you are perhaps already familiar with. Around 1380, as the Ottoman princedom rules over fairly large frontiers, Murad the 1st bears the title of Bey. I fail to remember the name of the contemporaneous Byzantine Emperor. Murad has a son called Savji Bey, the Shakhzade heir to the Ottoman throne. The Emperor too has a son, called Prince Andronicos. These two conspire to overthrow the rule of their fathers in order to unite the two states and set off a rebellion. In the beginning, they do carry on their deed with a certain success; in effect, they take over domains in Thrace, or so I believe. Then this raises their fathers’ rage, with which they march on their sons. Murad captures them in Dimatoka, -I totally ignore where this city stands, except that it should be somewhere in the North of Greece, in the Balkans-. He then bids that both be blinded, though the execution of the order on Andronicos remains unaccomplished. As he then has Savji Bey slayed, he hands Andronicos over to his father. Andronicos is said to have one sound eye, I don’t know how long he has lived afterwards. I also don’t know why I’m telling you about this anyway.
Now, one could understand a multitude of things under the word “culture”. In its widest sense, it probably is that which belongs to a given group of people in common. However, the fact stands that in the beginning and in the end, there is always language. In order to speak of culture, a common idiom is de rigueur. Next, they should roughly share a common view regarding the quiddity of the type of world they are living in. Is it necessary that they inhabit the same space? Maybe not, and I mean by this that they might be people living in different regions of the earth but belonging to the same culture. Moreover, a sort of blood kinship, a race, an answer to the question “why do these people form a community” should be supplied.
Seen from this point of view, would it be possible to talk about a single European culture? This is a little difficult at first glance. For example, if we were to call in an Austrian, a Swab, a Bavarian and a Berliner around the same table, they would first of all fail to understand one another fluently, presuming of course that each should speak his own dialect. Especially, if there is a Swiss German amongst them, they might be unable to catch a single word. They start to understand one another first when they start speaking “High German”. But to what extent can they be said to have a community? What I’m talking about is no rapport between a Swede and a Portuguese. Will this lead us to pronounce that there is no such thing as a single European culture? This is too hard a thing to say. Wherein does it reside then? Should we now turn our regard to the history of Europe, we will see that, in the period before the Renaissance, there exists indeed a very prominent, mostly religion-based European culture, which even has a common idiom: Latin. Thomas More and Erasmus, an Englishman and a Hollander, can communicate with ease, while they both speak Latin, and are good pals. The community is based on a community of religion. Now, you will say “Which religion?” Here the Catholic; there the Protestant, the Anglican and the Presbyterian –we leave aside the Orthodox who fails to present any demographical importance in Europe. Once again we fall short of an actual community from this point of view.
Yet, with the New Age, a community of a different sort starts to form. Descartes let’s say, is of course obviously French: he publishes his work partially in Latin, partially in French. Nevertheless he, as a thinker, is no longer French, but European. The writings he comes up with aim not at a single community of people, i.e. not the sole French society, but bear the hope to be read by everymen. In a wider extent, we could consider artworks. A certain Goethe bestows this with a name and uses for the first time the term “World Literature”. An endeavour to reach people outside the realm of one’s own community sees daylight. This is to say that concepts are created independently from the particularities of a single human community. The thought of human rights which implies that man has a nature common to all human beings i.e. that being a human being is independent from one’s belonging to one single community… However, on the other side, a bizarre turn brings nationalism into play, taking effect naturally before the French Revolution. This time, a weird situation is brought about in Europe, which lasts about two centuries, namely from the 18th to the 20th. As, on the one hand, an understanding of culture based on that community, on “being human” is developed, on the other hand we begin to observe the rise of nationalism which seems to be exactly the opposite and the founding of national states. These in a sense contradictory two conditions reach their peak in the two world Wars. If we consider the abovementioned concepts -one single community, one single worldview, one single language, these functioning as an ideal or culture founding elements- we observe that these three ideas reach their final culminating point in the example of German nationalism, which, in spite of all, is defeated and wiped out from the course of history. Sadly enough, nationalism is still not completely effaced, has free play over the world and still bursts out relentlessly…
In this, two important thinkers have their share before the uproar towards the end of the 19th century. One of them is Marx. Marx is also important as regards the functioning of history, but one of his most significant contributions is the investigation of the developmental characteristics of the European continent as a whole and not of its single constitutive societies. England, Germany and France no longer exist as separate entities, but capitalism does. Capitalism is what constitutes the community. Nietzsche, who ostensibly represents the direct opposite position, says, on the contrary, that he is the first good European. The first European in the following sense: he states for the first time that the creation of a human community or cultural values does not depend on human communities in themselves, but on the virtue of creative people. When I say for the first time, I mean the first time with a theoretical hypothesis.
Hence, if today we are to use a status constructus such as European Culture, this culture presents itself as founded on the negation of the three aforesaid elements apparently enabling its constitution as a culture-possessing community. That is to say, it does not issue forth from a single community, not from a single worldview, not from a single language. Culture, i.e. European Culture in its present state is exclusively founded on a basis of this sort. If we should at present direct our attention on Turkey: I keep remembering the case of Savji Bey and Andronicos. I wonder in what language they communicated. Savji Bey probably spoke Greek, maybe Anronicos had learned Turkish. Did they use translators? For it must have been necessary for them to converse to be able to conspire against their fathers. As our friend mentioned a moment ago… They get captured in 1385. Since 1385, there are relations between what we call today the Turkish society and the people whom we call European. What kind of relations? Once, on a Greek channel, there was a choir singing Byzantine hymns. I had goose bumps. As much from astonishment as from contentment… For it was practically identical with the Court music performed in the Ottoman palace. Only ours was probably a little more complex in its form.
If we skip the period of Beneficial Reforms (Tanzimat), the 1st and the 2nd Constitutional Periods in Ottoman History, we arrive at the epoch of Mustafa Kemal. He didn’t appear out of nowhere. If one is to take into account the language he uses in his Discourse to the Turkish Nation, it is an extraordinary specimen of Ottoman prose, anon he himself wants to abandon that very style. I do not think it meaningful to meddle with the question to what extent we Turks as a human community are Westernized, if we are Westernized indeed, and to what extent we can be said to be Europeanized. Nevertheless we could at least trace these two reactions amongst those builders of culture who worked with the Turkish society in the Turkish Republic as they profess their self-opinion: on the one hand, there are those who say: “I have always been European”, on the other those who object: “I would never want to be European”. In my opinion, both viewpoints are intrinsically European. In a sense, we are European whether we want it or not. For the denunciation of the European identity is equally European in attitude. The most outstanding character trait of the abovementioned builders of culture is their standing against and criticising the dominant mentality of their own societies, in their own communities. I would like to conclude with a citation from Melih Cevdet. Sadly enough, it has never reached beyond the realm of newspaper readers. He says: “I’m European in any case, the ultimate reaction I can give to Europe is to criticise it”. This is all I have to say.
Erwin LUCIUS- I’ve been asked to speak in Turkish. I will do my best. As regards “the Contexts and Perceptions on Turkey-Europe Cultural Relations”, I would rather like to lay emphasis on the socio-cultural status. There are things we heard about cultural history and the history of the accession of Turkey to the EU yet there was a persisting problem. Are Turkey and the Ottoman Empire veritable European States or societies, or is it not the case? As far as history is concerned, it is clear that the Ottoman Empire was a powerful and important actor in European history throughout the ages. If we consider the expansion of the Turkish-Ottoman territory in the Balkans, the First and the Second siege of Vienna-which are very important to them-, the troublesome problem of Herzegovina in the 19th century as well as the Berlin Congress in 1983, we see that the Ottoman Empire was up to that date a European power, an active factor. In the 20th century, the status of the Ottoman Empire in World War I was evident; I needn’t linger on the subject. But I will say that it is a generally forgotten fact that when the European Council was founded in Strasbourg in 1949, the Turkish Republic was one of the first members. Turkey had directly become a political side in Europe with the result she obtained in her steps toward the EU. We could also mention the Ankara Treaty of 1963, the member status in Helsinki in 1999, the negotiation date given on the 17th of December last year, her tight relations with the EU as well as those she keeps up with the whole Western hemisphere.
If we consider the socio-cultural status, this is what we see: the image of Turks in Europe changed from one epoch to the other, always formed in parallel with transformations in politics. At the same time, both an exchange and a conflict occur with regard to culture. You have mentioned the unity in the Middle Ages; Latin was a cosmopolite fact, the dominant religion was Christianity. When the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire extended to Europe, religion was put forward for propaganda purposes and especially as a tool to point out the Turks as enemies in the Christian-Muslim conflicts of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Anti-Islamic polemics were circulating as an inseparable part of Christian tradition and this propaganda was not solely against Turks, but also Arabs. In Europe, and particularly in Central Europe, Islam is associated with Turks. Therefore, a tremendous front was constructed against Turks.
On the other side, travellers visiting the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries have made impartial and analytical observations regarding Turks. This brought a new dimension to how people considered Turks and in addition to these new dimensions, not in Central but in Western Europe, the works produced by Dutch, French and English scholars on Islam and the East gradually turned the negative image of Turks into a positive one. For example, Voltaire was saying at that period: “It is not possible to have a sound picture of Turks as long as one doesn’t know them closely enough.” European thinkers began to consider the Ottoman Empire and in particular Turks differently and from a more positive, impartial point of view. Especially the Orientalism and Turcophilia existing in the Age of Enlightenment found approval only amongst the elite of high socio-cultural status. Turkish music, Turkish fashion, Turkish gardens were very fashionable. Although Turcophilia was a trend amongst the elite, at the level of the commons the age-old inimical image went on in their religious practices. What I would like to say is this: despite the fact that intellectuals regarded Turks positively, among the common run of people antipathy and enmity persisted due to religious reasons. This goes on even today. Nevertheless, from a historical perspective, we shouldn’t forget this quote by the Austrian thinker Egon Friedel: “In a convex mirror, the main lines of history always seem more obvious and distorted”. We look at history through a convex mirror. Add to this that we always look at it according to our set of ideas and from where we stand. Thus, it is not possible to write or understand history impartially.
Concerning the present day situation, there is an analysis of Hans Lukas Kieser, Professor of history in the University of Zurich: “Pious Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe to the west one and a half centuries ago and Anatolians who came to Europe for various reasons as of 1960’s have shared more or less the same destiny. The members of both societies are found to be odd by autochthones because of their strange look and tight attachment to old traditions and practices.” I esteem this to be a very important observation. Sadly though, the Jewish immigration starting from Eastern Europe in the 1870’s on lead to a Hitler because of the dominant nationalistic tone. Wherefore? For the group of newcomers had adaptation difficulties and the autochthones refused to show sufficient tolerance. We observe similar circumstances in the case of the immigration of Anatolians into Europe from the 1960’s on. There is an observation made on that issue by the journalist Yalçın Doğan. He points out, for example, that a great part of the Turkish associations in Austria belong to islamic and fascist groups and claims that this is “the Third Siege of Vienna”. And in his own words he continues: “an ideological siege before the bewildered eyes of Austrians”. Now, a short while ago I said that religion is an important element amongst the common run of people. The groups of newcomers have not renounced their religion, traditions and practices. Since assimilation is undesirable, we confront the problem of integration. However, we encounter great difficulties in that respect. I think we can say that we are face to face with a phenomenon of Diaspora. These people assume an attitude that is harsher, more radical, fanatical and fundamentalist than that of the countries they come from. Consecutively, they go through difficulties of adaptation and integration. On the other side, Europe has not and could not understand them fully. For example, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Austria and the Minister of Sciences, Mr. Erhardt Busek once said this: “Until now, the EU has been helpless before the problem of integration of the minorities and hasn’t made any substantial accomplishments. There is a big problem in this regard.” Despite all these facts, once more according to Kieser: “Turkey and Europe are actually connected to one another due to the fact that they constitute opposite poles. While it is obligatory that these poles be in the right direction. If not, a coming together is not possible and coming closer means “language.” The major point I would like to stress is this: Language takes different forms, but it always gives rise to a dialogue, to communication, science and modern art. If two societies, states or communities are in dialogue, one can always find a solution and a dialogue is the most perfect tool for Turkey to prove and express herself.
Turkey, modern Turkey has derived this chance through the reforms of Atatürk. As a result, Turkey should evince that she is modern and European together with all her characteristics. You have talked about culture, a common language etc. The European Union has also another definition: common values. If we take those common values as a basis, Turkey and Europe can easily be in dialogue, move towards a positive solution and come to a result desirable for both sides. Once again, there is another statement by Busek which I find very meaningful. He says: “Is the EU ready to have borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Caucasia and Central Asia? The EU should ask itself this question and consider it seriously. This does not signify the leaving out or rejection of Turkey; it is just a question concerning the maturity of Europe, the existence of the EU.”
To conclude, I would like to say that Turkey and the EU can and should be in a perfect dialogue under the motto “unity in diversity”. Thank you very much.
David BARCHARD
The Ambigous Legacy: Turkey and Europe in the Nineteenth Century
Current opposition to Turkey in Europe descends partly from the “Eastern Question”
In this necessarily very brief discussion I want to touch quickly on a number of themes in Turkish-European relations which may be relevant today but of which most Western and Northern Europeans are unaware. I apologize in advance to my Turkish hearers who may well find little that is new or unfamiliar to them in what I have to say.
I would probably not have given this paper a year ago before the recent eruption of hostility towards the very principle of Turkish EU membership. The speeches of former EU Commissioners, Bolkestein and Fischler last autumn, the remarks of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, and those of Frau Angela Merkel in Germany and M. Nicholas Sarkozy and former President Giscard d’Estaing in France, obviously raise very serious issues for the future of the Turkish-European relationship. Reluctance to accept a country of 70 million people on their own terms is a very curious and unusual phenomenon. Current day issues—migrant workers, the clash of civilizations and fear of Islam after 9/11—are obviously part of the story but only a part. Much of the difficulty, I believe, arises from a carry-over from attitudes towards the Ottoman Empire which emerged during its final century when the great and small countries of Christian Europe, waited in the—as it turned out—false expectation of being able to devour all its territory.
In my view this problem has little to do with European attitudes to the Ottoman Empire before the mid-eighteenth century. It is a product of the legitimating myths and ideas which grew up around “the partition project” of the western powers.
Throughout the 19th century, Christian nationalists in Europe argued that Turkey would disappear fairly soon.
From about 1774 onwards, and particularly after the Greek uprising of 1821, the Ottoman Empire faced a manifest threat of possible elimination. Much European opinion did in fact hold throughout the 19th century and up to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 that Turkey was destined to disappear from the world scene and the Turks with it. This view (which was not held by all European opinion but by a section of it) was legitimated by two further ideas. The first was that the Turks were few in numbers and did not constitute a nationality. The second was that Ottoman Turkish rule was innately cruel, inefficient and incapable of improvement. These notions eventually became widespread in Britain, Continental Europe, and North America and flourish in those areas to this day, but their origins can be traced back to Serbian and Greek Christian nationalist movements for whom they performed two functions. First, they legitimated violence for the elimination of Turkish rule (the “bag and baggage” argument). Second, they invoked the intervention of the European Great Powers to assist the nationalist movements on ostensibly ethical grounds. International law evolved during the 19th century along lines designed to ease Great Power intervention in the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Christian populations. These European humanitarian concerns did not extend to the Empire’s Muslims.
But this view was disproved by the Ottoman Empire’s regeneration as a modern state.
During the first three quarters of the nineteenth century however, the Ottoman Empire confounded its critics. It did not disintegrate and die. On the contrary it made substantial advances. Unlike the Khanates of Central Asia, Turkey demonstrated early on that, full-scale Russian conquest would be more expensive than Russia was prepared to accept. The conceptual framework for subsequent policies -the conversion of the Ottoman Empire into a modern state run along lines parallel to those of the other European 19th century dynastic empires- was articulated by Mahmut II (1808-1839). Military reforms, followed by legal, administrative, and educational ones, were made possible by the breaking of the power of the Janissaries in the Vak’a-i Hayriye of June 1826. Under Mahmut’s successor, the Tanzimat (Peristroika) statesmen created the basic institutions and mechanisms for a modern state. In 1820 the empire had a palace “scribal class” of 2000 persons along traditional lines. By the end of the 19th century it had a bureaucratic civil service of about 100,000 administering a huge area.
Nineteenth century Ottoman multiculturalism has been underestimated.
Though western Europeans objected that the rule of Muslims over Christians was intrinsically wrong and unacceptable, the Ottoman Empire was no longer an Islamic state in the way it had been before 1800. From Mahmut II onwards the Ottoman Government began to embrace a version of multiculturalism and common citizenship. Mahmut said that he would henceforth recognize Muslims only in the mosques, Christians only in the churches, and Jews only in the synagogues. In February 1856, formal legal equality for all the Empire’s citizens was proclaimed. This step separated the late Ottoman Empire from all previous Islamic polities and gave it a legitimate claim to be considered part of the modern European community of nations. Christians were promoted to senior levels of the civil service and there were attempts to introduce non-sectarian schooling. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century Turkish ambassadors in western European capitals were usually Ottoman Christians such as Musurus Pasha and Costaki Pasha. This attempt at multiculturalism essentially failed not because the Ottomans were not serious about it, but because the Ottoman Christians masses rejected it, preferring nationalism and the Western European powers ignored it.
These reforms were accompanied by accelerating social and intellectual westernization, and the adoption of current western lifestyles, the forerunner of the cultural changes of the Republic. (There is at least one case of a Turkish woman wearing European dress in the 1840’s while traveling abroad.) All these administrative and social changes, accompanied by population shifts (the influx of Muslim immigrants displaced in the Balkans, Crete, the Caucasus, and Central Asia) ensured that Turkey would remain a large European state down to our own times.
Turkey’s progress towards integration with Europe halted after 1878.
Towards the middle of the 19th century prospects for the long term integration of Turkey into the general life of Europe looked fairly encouraging. For example members of the Ottoman bureaucratic elite seemed to be moving towards becoming parts of the circles of European public life. In the final quarter of the nineteenth century this process was interrupted, even though by then Turkey was developing the clear lineaments of a modern country. Ottoman high officials were no longer accepted by European high society on terms of social equality as, for example, Veli Pasha had done during his two spells as Ottoman Ambassador in Paris in 1856 and 1862.
Nineteenth century Europe spurned Turkish efforts to create a liberal multicultural modern state.
A turning point came in 1876-78 when the Ottomans lost half their European possessions in war with Russia, while liberal Europe did not support the attempts of Mithat Pasha and his supporters to turn the Ottoman Empire into a liberal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government. With European endorsement, these might have succeeded, in which case the “soft landing” which the reformers envisaged for the Ottoman Empire and its diverse populations might have become a reality or at least events in the following fifty years would have unfolded less painfully.
After the fall of Mithat Pasha, Turkey was internationally isolated under the autocratic rule of Abdülhamit II (1876-1909). The main European ambassadors in Istanbul acted as a sort of committee to impose changes, mostly affecting the national aspirations of the Christian minorities, and the expansion of the territories of the post-ottoman Christian nationalist Balkan states. They saw this role as a preliminary to the orderly final dispersion of the empire’s territory.
The rise of the post-Ottoman Christian national states in the Balkans meant the eviction of their Muslim populations.
Balkan Christian nationalisms expanded at the expense of the Muslims. One of the first actions of modern Greece was to eliminate the Muslim population of the Peloponnese. “If Christians gain their freedom, the Moslem leaves the land of his birth, whatever pledges the new authorities may give,” wrote the British scholar, David Hogarth. Hogarth however was one of very few western Europeans who made such comments. There were a much greater number of European enthusiasts for the new nationalisms who promoted their causes and demonized the Turks as incorrigible. The new Christian nationalist states of Europe, from Serbia and Greece to Romania and Bulgaria were “monoethnic” in spirit: they aimed at cultural and linguistic homogeneity and, wherever possible, tried to remove their indigenous Ottoman Muslim populations. This led to large scale evictions and migrations and, as far as can be calculated, the deaths of 5.5 million Ottoman Muslims between 1821-1923—a detail of its history about which Christian Europe refuses to take an interest, despite its comparability in scale with the Nazi holocaust, and even though the Bosnian war of the 1990’s and events such as the massacre at Sbrenica (and, arguably, the Cyprus dispute) suggest that the process still continues to some extent.
Migration into the Ottoman lands triggered the birth of a new Turkish nation.
However migrations such as those during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) reinforced the demographic base of Turkey and helped stimulate the growth of a new national consciousness which was the prelude to the War of Independence (1919-1923) and the establishment of the Republic.
Western European misperceptions of Turkey during the 19th century thus caused major historical opportunities to be missed; generated several massive human tragedies for both Christians and Muslims including of course the Gallipoli landings; and failed in their main aim -the partition of Turkey in the Sevres agreement in 1920. Instead, despite its continuing rebuffs, Turkey responded to its European liberal critics by becoming a “monoethnic” national state along essentially European liberal lines. It became the first multiparty democracy in a country with an Islamic historical heritage and also the first industrial nation state. Any limitations in the success of this enterprise might be attributed to the fact that it had to be undertaken in isolation.
Turkish-European partnership is important for both sides
Current moves to reject Turkey from Europe thus have a long and morally dubious background which should be born in mind during the current debate. Experience during the past 200 years suggests that Turkish-European partnership and integration is important and at least as beneficial to both sides as any other international partnership.
Tülin BUMİN- We will only be able to spare five minutes for questions. But before we move on, I will say a few things which will only take two minutes. The first of them is to Mr. Lucius: the Diaspora in Europe is such as you described. The uneducated masses have stronger religious beliefs. The common people who go there and show more fundamentalist sympathies as a question of identity are strangely the mass behind Turkey’s will to join Europe because they are the ones who have firsthand knowledge of Europe. While many intellectuals were still struggling with various questions, those people at least knew this much: there they had better chances of living, of being well treated. Minimum one person from each village went there, can you imagine? They have at least 5 to 15 relatives or a village full of people to whom they could transmit their message; this is a very significant factor. I honestly believe that we owe the European Union lobby in Turkey to our ignorant compatriots living there.
My second point concerns the question whether one is European or not. In my opinion, this is an utterly ideological inquiry. The desire for being European could be nothing but a fiction, because Europe is such a land that, when you travel across it for a whole day, you encounter so many cultures and languages, more than anywhere else on earth. The wealth of Europe is precisely this inner diversity. But that which makes Europe what it is is its aspiration to universality –that’s the deadlock of the question. This universalism gave rise to colonialism and to imperialism as well. However, it could also give rise to more agreeable things for it does derive from science and philosophy, i.e. a claim for universality. Therefore, if this universalism has the aspect of a non-delimited universalism ready to establish a relationship with the other, i.e. with Turkey, this could result in a universalism devoid of its erroneous qualities which could assure ease to humankind in a new formation. These were the remarks I wanted to make. Now, we could take a few short questions.
A listener – I’d like to ask my question to Mr. Aruoba. Could you explicit the ideas behind the claim made by the French President Jacques Chirac that “We all are the descendants of Byzantium”?
Oruç ARUOBA- Now, I’m not in a position to speak in the name of Chirac, I hope that’s not what you expect from me. If we consider the formation and the functioning of the Ottoman Empire, we can see that to a great extent it is founded on the institutions of the Byzantine Empire of which it is in some sort the continuation. Ernest Gerner wrote the most important book on the Islamic society in the last decade called “Muslim Society”. In that book, he states that all Islamic societies ranging from the Hindukush Mountains to Gibraltar have common features and explains them. He also says that the sole exception is the Ottoman Empire. In a way, he states that the Ottoman Empire is not an Islamic society. In this respect, perhaps what Chirac was saying is of course true for the French but it is also true for us because the Byzantine Empire is an enormous culture on which the Ottoman State was founded. Another point: the phrase “Turkey is an Islamic country” is in free circulation. Is it really true? I hesitate to say anything about the Seljuks, but I feel urged to say that the Ottomans have never been Muslims. When we consider the functioning of the Ottoman society, its laws etc., we realize that it is so. First of all, they revere a book which they never understand. Not only it is impossible for them to understand the Holy Book, but translations were forbidden until a very late date. Is an umma which can never read and understand its own book really an umma? Today, if an Arab is sufficiently well educated, he can read that book written in the Qurayshite dialect, a Turk cannot. What they actually do under the name of Qur’anic recitation is the reproduction of certain sounds by looking at certain forms. No one understands what is said in it. Anyway starting from here we can reach many other things. I would have preferred to have been Byzantine.
Tülin BUMİN- But the fact that he did not understand that language did not keep Sinan from building the mosques he built. There certainly is a cultural bound with Islam.
Alican GÜZEL- From the Viennese Association “The Meeting Point of Cultures”. Did you mean that our compatriots in Diaspora, ignorant as they are, contributed to the accession of Turkey to the EU?
Tülin BUMİN- We can nearly say that they are the only ones who make a contribution.
Alican GÜZEL- But can we also not say that their contribution can be a negative one?
Tülin BUMİN- They might have kept Europeans from liking us, but they also made us admire Europeans.
Alican GÜZEL- If it were not to the waves of immigration of non-qualified workers following the first wave of immigration, Turkey would have been closer to Europe.
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