By Mustafa Akyol
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 3, 2004
In its Nov. 22nd issue, Frontpage Magazine posted an article by Gamaliel Isaac, entitled “Turkey’s Dark Past.” Mr. Isaac’s piece was basically an attempt to rebut of one of my previous articles, “European Muslims and The Quest For the Soul of Islam.” I have argued there that, among many other things, Turkey has had an Islamic heritage free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism and has now an atmosphere quite favorable to open society. Further, I suggested that the West should certainly support Turkey’s entry into the European Union, noting that this would blur the “civilizational” boundaries and create a model for other Muslim nations.
Mr. Isaac did not agree with these points and presented several quotes and comments about Turkey’s alleged “dark past.” This past, according to Isaac, was rife with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish hatred.
I believe that Mr. Isaac is deeply mistaken about this. But I am glad that he brought up such criticism, because it will help me to unveil some myths and biases about Turkey and Islam in general. The “dark past” in question is “dark” because of those myths and biases. To illuminate it, we have to revisit Mr. Isaac’s article.
The Turks and the Armenians
Mr. Isaac’s article starts with a long quote from Srdja (“Sergei”) Trifkovic, a Serbian nationalist and author of the anti-Islamic polemic The Sword and the Prophet. Later in this article I will take a closer look at Trifkovic himself, including his links with Serbian war criminals, but first of all let’s focus on his arguments.
The first paragraph Mr. Isaac quotes from Trifkovic is about “the history of the Turkish oppression of the Armenian Christians.” Since Armenians lived peacefully and flourished under Turkish (Ottoman) rule for many centuries until the late 1800’s, that “history” would at worst refer to a short period in Ottoman experience. Moreover, it is not a “history of oppression” but the history of a clash between Armenians and Turks, a clash in which both, but especially the former, were inspired by nationalism, which was a new phenomenon in Ottoman lands.
To call the Armenian-Turkish clash “oppression” or a “genocide” of Armenians would be to see only side of reality. In his book, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, historian Justin McCarthy tells us about that much-neglected side, too. He also tells about the emergence of mutual hatred between Ottoman Muslims and Armenians. According to McCarthy:
The period that led up to World War I was one of increased polarization in the east. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 resulted in further additions to the de facto population exchange of Muslims to Anatolia and Armenians to the Caucasus. The wartime aid given the Ottomans by Caucasian Muslims and aid given the Russians by Anatolian Armenians reinforced the primacy of ethnic and religious affiliation over loyalty to governments. In Anatolia, Armenian revolutionary agitation and Kurdish raids both exacerbated the hatred and divisions between Armenians and Muslims. In the Caucasus, the same hatred and divisions surfaced in a bloody fashion during the Revolution of 1905.[1]
The “Armenian revolutionary agitation” is deliberately neglected by those who argue that Armenians experienced a Holocaust under Ottoman rule. They truly suffered, especially in 1915, and I am in no way willing to minimize or trivialize that tragedy. But that was not a “holocaust.” In the real Holocaust, Nazis exterminated 6,000,000 Jews simply out of an unprovoked, sadistic hatred of the Jews. What happened in 1915, and beforehand, was mutual killing in which the Armenian loss was greater than that of the Muslims (Turks and Kurds), but in which the brutality was pretty similar on both sides. In the words of Bernard Lewis, a most authoritative commentator on the Middle East, “the suffering of the Armenians was limited both in time and space to the Ottoman Empire and, even there, only to the last two decades of Ottoman history. More important, it was a struggle, however unequal, about real issues; it was never associated with either the demonic beliefs or the almost physical hatred which inspired and directed anti-Semitism in Europe and sometimes elsewhere.”[2]
Justin McCarthy sums up the nature of the struggle between Armenians and Turks:
“In 1895 in Anatolia and in 1905 in the Caucasus, inter-communal warfare broke out. Prior to that time, Muslims and Armenians had supported either the Russian or the Ottoman empires. Now the Muslims and Armenians had set about killing each other in their villages and cities. This war was not a thing of armies, but of peoples. It had been building for almost a century, brought about by Russian invasion, Armenian nationalism, and Ottoman weakness. By 1910, the polarization that was soon to result in mutual disaster was probably inevitable. Blood had been shed and revenge was expected and desired. Whatever their individual intentions, Muslims knew they were at risk from the Armenians, and Armenians knew they were at risk from the Muslims. Once World War I began, each side naturally assumed the worst of the other, and acted accordingly.”[3]
Thus when we deal with the fate of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, we should see both sides of the tragedy in question.
What Trifkovic — Mr. Isaac’s trusted source on Ottoman history — does is to strip events of their true historical contexts, present inter-communal conflicts as unilateral aggressions, and show exceptional cases of violence as the norm.
This type of distortion is also evident in Trifkovic’s following statement:
“The bloodshed of 1915-1922 finally destroyed ancient Christian communities and cultures that had survived since Roman times — groups like the Jacobites (Syrian Orthodox), Nestorians (Iraqi Orthodox), and Chaldaeans (Iraqi Catholic)…”
One might wonder how those Christian communities and cultures survived in the first place “since Roman times.” The answer is what some people can’t bear to hear nowadays: Islamic tolerance. The Christians in question had been under the rule of Arab and then Turkish governance for the preceding thirteen centuries, and they did pretty well in light of pre-modern standards.
What happened, we should ask, between 1915-1922? The answer is quite clear: Turkey and its Muslim peoples (Turk, Kurds, and other ethnic Muslim groups) were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Great Powers of Europe. Turkey joined WWI as an ally of Germany in 1915, and fought many bloody battles with the invading British, French, Russian, Italian and Greek forces. When the war ended in 1918, the destruction of Turkey began and Anatolia, the historical homeland of Turks, was invaded and carved up by these allies. This was followed by the Turkish War of Liberation, which secured the borders of modern Turkey.
During these long years of war, some of the Christian communities in Turkey aligned themselves with the invaders. As a result, they became targets of Turkish war effort in some cases. These were not justifiable phenomena, but they are were understandable. They were not examples of a Turkish onslaught against Christians, but rather of bitter inter-communal conflict in a time of severe crisis and destruction.
A better example to illustrate the historical truth in question and the way it is distorted by Trifkovic would be the bloodshed in Smyrna in 1922.
The Bloodshed in Smyrna — With the Truth Behind
In Mr. Isaac’s article, we read the following quote from Trifkovic:
“The burning of the Greek city of Smyrna and the massacre and scattering of its three hundred thousand Christian inhabitants is one of the most poignant – if not, after the vast outrages of the 20th century, the bloodiest – crimes in all history. It marked the end of the Greek community in Asia Minor. On the eve of its destruction, Smyrna was a bustling port and commercial center. It was a genuinely civilized, in the old-world sense, place. An American consul-general later remembered a busy social life that included teas, dances, musical afternoons, games of tennis and bridge, and soirees given in the salons of the highly cultured Armenian and Greek bourgeoisie. Sic gloria transit: sporadic killings of Christians, mostly Armenians, started as soon as the Turks overran it on September 9, 1922.”
And the quote goes on with the details of “Turkish violence” against the Greeks in the city.
If a reader doesn’t know much about the history of Turkey, what will he picture from this? A civilized Greek city invaded and destroyed by the savage Turkish hordes, right? Yes.
But nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that Smyrna (known as Izmir in Turkish) was an Ottoman city that included a Greek quarter, and the Turks were not invading Smyrna, they were liberating the city from the occupying Greek army. This army had started its invasion of Smyrna three and a half years before and then had occupied much of Western Anatolia.
During this occupation, local Greeks in Smyrna, who were Ottoman citizens, welcomed the invading Greek Army and aligned themselves with the intruders in nationalist zealotry. The intruders were incredibly brutal to the Muslim population of Anatolia. Many cases of the slaughter, rape and torture of Turkish Muslims are known. These, as one could expect, aroused a Turkish rage against the Greeks. The bloodshed in Smyrna in September, 1922 was an act of vengeance.
Ernest Hemingway is one of the Westerners who wrote in detail about what happened in Smyrna at the time. He was, like many others, highly critical of the Turks. Yet, again like many others, he neglected the other side of the truth. In a recent article in The Hemingway Review, author Matthew Stewart, Associate Professor of Humanities at Boston University, acknowledges:
” … it should also be stated that Greek forces had engaged in unnecessary brutality during the Greek occupation of the Anatolian regions in question, first, upon their entry into Smyrna, and more particularly during their hasty retreat towards Smyrna in the final, losing stages of the war some three and a half years later. Arnold Toynbee, serving on the ground in an official oversight capacity, provides a noteworthy voice of contemporary protest against Greek misconduct (by present standards quite possibly amounting to war crimes). Indeed, the cycle of outrage and reprisal had unfortunately been woven into the history of the area long before the conflicts of 1919-22. In his fiction and reportage, Hemingway notes instances of cruelty originated by both sides, and perhaps, on the whole, comes down harder on the Greeks than the Turks.”[4]
Of course this does not justify the bloodshed in Smyrna, but it helps us to see that what Trifkovic shows us as Turkish cruelty was simply the cruelty of war itself.
The distortion Trifkovic evinces here is indeed one that needs attention. Now imagine: What would you think if you saw someone who talks about the evil Americans, Russians, British, and French who destroyed the civilized German cities in 1945, without even bothering to mention that Nazi Germany invaded and tortured nearly the whole of Europe and Russia before that? You would suspect that this “revisionist historian” is a Nazi sympathizer, right? Or, a Nazi himself.
Well, you can suspect something similar in Trifkovic’s case. And the reasons are abundant.
Trifkovic — The Devil’s Advocate?
Srdja Trifkovic is not a Nazi, but rather an advocate of a more recent fascism: aggressive Serbian nationalism, which was responsible for the ethnic cleansing and the related war crimes committed against the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina during 1992-95.
Actually this is not much of a secret. A quick search on the internet will reveal to you that Srdja Trifkovic was one of the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs during the years of ethnic cleansing. Unsurprisingly, he has an online article titled “The Hague Tribunal: Bad Justice, Worse Politics,” in which he argues that there was no ethnic cleansing at all against Bosnian Muslims by Serbs. His subtitle reads “The Myth of the Bosnian Holocaust,” and to support his eccentric case he repeatedly accuses the U.S. authorities of distorting or covering up “facts” about Bosnia to accuse Serbs unjustly. His anti-Islamism seems to produce, as a by-product, some anti-Americanism, too.
No wonder that the website that presents Trifkovic’s mentioned article includes slogans like “Free Milosevic – Hands Off Yugoslavia – Now!” and, instead of Milosevic, presents Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Madeline Albright as “wanted war criminals.”
In the same article, Trifkovic openly supports Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic and argues for their innocence. These two have been indicted by the U.N. Tribunal on sixteen counts of genocide and war crimes regarding the Bosnian war of 1992-1995 and are still fugitives.
Trifkovic’s sympathy for these mass murderers is evident in his writing, but his link to Slobodan Milosevic, the architect and mastermind of the Bosnian genocide, was recently debated. Stephen Schwartz, an authoritative commentator on Islam, world politics and Balkan affairs, revealed Trifkovic’s links to Milosevic and his ilk in a Frontpage article. In his reply, Trifkovic repeatedly denied any link to Milosevic. Yet, there is some undiscussed information that seems to render his denials unpersuasive.
That information comes directly from The Hague Tribunal on Yugoslavia. In March, 2003, Trifkovic appeared as a defense witness in the trial of Milomir Stakic in this court. On July 13, 2003, Stakic was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty on the following counts:
Count 4: Extermination, a Crime against Humanity
Count 5: Murder, a Violation of the Laws and Customs of War
Count 6: Persecutions, Crimes against Humanity, incorporating
Count 3: Murder, a Crime against Humanity, and
Count 7: Deportation, a Crime against Humanity.
The entire Judgment of the Tribunal in the Stakic case may be found at www.un.org/icty/stakic/trialc/judgement/stak-tj030731e.pdf
The Stakic case is of great importance in the overall context of the Bosnian war and The Hague Tribunal, because it centers on the expulsion of non-Serbs from the area of Prijedor in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which the notorious concentration camps of Keraterm, Omarska and Trnopolje were located. Stakic himself stated on television that the camps of Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje were “a necessity in the given moment.” The Stakic trial is among the most important proceedings at The Hague.
And Trifkovic was at The Hague to defend the crimes of Stakic. The expert testimony of Srdja Trifkovic, as he identifies himself in the record, appears at this link: www.un.org/icty/transe24Stakic/030313ED.htm
There are some illuminating points at Trifkovic’s testimony. At page 13757, Trifkovic admits that he served as “representative of the Republika Srpska between 9 November, 1993 and July, 1994, in London,” a fact that he had omitted from the C.V. he submitted to the Tribunal. The Republika Srpska [R.S.] was the Serbian occupation zone in Bosnia-Herzegovina created on the orders and under the direction of Slobodan Milosevic.
At page 13806 Counsel Korner confronts Trifkovic with the following question: “Dr. Trifkovic, isn’t it in fact the case that far from being an objective observer of these events and their aftermath, you are in fact a strongly committed Serb nationalist?”
On March 19, 2003, Judge Wolfgang Schomburg comments on the character of Trifkovic’s testimony, which he describes as showing “the clear lack of tolerance, the poor basis of facts relying on secondary instead of primary sources. And not going into details, we discussed some examples yesterday. This is clear. But as I said yesterday, this has nothing to do with Dr. Stakic being the accused here in this Tribunal.”
That is, the Judge states that the opinions of Trifkovic should not be attributed to the defendant Stakic. The opinions of Trifkovic were so extreme they should be excluded so as not to prejudice the defense of a man who finally was given the first LIFE SENTENCE for his crimes against Bosnian Muslims!
So you can understand why Trifkovic’s “book”, The Sword of The Prophet, is full of distortions and biased presentations of history, as I have demonstrated above, in just a few examples about Turkish history.
I hope Mr. Isaac will be much more cautious about the distortions of this “strongly committed Serb nationalist,” who is an advocate of the criminals that planned and executed the Bosnian genocide. The Psalms declare, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked” (1:1), and I think Mr. Isaac might need to reconsider his sources in order to deserve that blessing.
*
Cyprus Revisited
After this revealing information on Mr. Isaac’s sources, let’s return to the content of his article.
He asks about the “war verses” in the Koran, and I have explained the necessary exegesis on those verses here and here.
However, his flawed method — that is, stripping historical events from their contexts — is apparent in his article in many instances. His comments about Cyprus are exactly of that fashion. He starts telling about the island’s history of violence by saying that “[in] 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus,” and continues with the effects of that occupation that he finds destructive.
One wonders why Turkey occupied the island in the first place. The answer is one that anybody with a knowledge in recent history would know: from the early 1960’s the nationalist Greek movement in Cyprus carried out a bloody terrorist war against the Turkish minority. Many Turkish villages were attacked, their inhabitants tortured and killed, their women raped. Further information about those Greek atrocities can be found here.
Actually, just very recently, on November 22, the Greek daily Alithia published a shocking exposé of the ex-EOKA guerilla Andreas Dimitriu, describing how his comrades massacred eighty-nine innocent Turkish peasants in the village of Taskent (Tohni). Such cold-blooded massacres were carried out with the support of the Greek secret service, Dimitriu added.
The sole aim of the Turkish occupation of Cyprus was the saving of Cypriot Turks from ruthless ethnic cleansing. Besides, just a week before that, an ultra-nationalist junta had overthrown the legitimate — but already very Greek-dominated — government of Cyprus. A full-scale extermination of Turkish Cypriots was imminent, and that is why Turkish troops landed on the island on July 20, 1974, based on the international agreement on Cyprus that had given Turkey a guarantor status. It was a military expedition to save and liberate the endangered Turks.
I am sure the Greek side has a different perception. They tend to remember not the EOKA massacres but the death of their troops and guerrillas during combat with the occupying Turkish army and some excesses that individuals in the latter committed. These different perceptions can be discussed and judged, and a fair history of the Turkish-Greek clash on the island can be written. I am all for it.
But in Mr. Isaac’s article, we only read the Greek perception. He only sees and mentions their suffering, but completely neglects that of the Turks. And that is what people call bias.
Turks and Jews: A History of Friendship
When we look at the second basic premise in Mr. Isaac’s article — that Turkish history is riddled with anti-Semitism — his bias becomes even more obvious: because Turkey has a really good record on this, and this is acknowledged not only by Muslims Turks like me, but by Jews themselves.
If Mr. Isaac gets a chance to read some important books by Bernard Lewis, such as Semites and Anti-Semites or the Jews of Islam, he will see that Islamdom in general and Turkey in particular have a much better record of tolerance and co-existence with Jews than Christendom has.
Another individual who has done a great deal of work on this topic is Mr. Naim Avigdor Guleryuz. He is one of the prominent leaders of the Turkish Jewish community. He is the founder and curator of the Jewish Museum in Istanbul, among his many other important titles. In a study entitled The History of Turkish Jews, which is also available on-line, he explains that the Ottoman Empire was significantly tolerant and hospitable to Jews from its very beginning:
“When the Ottomans captured Bursa in 1326 and made it their capital, they found a Jewish community oppressed under Byzantine rule. The Jews welcomed the Ottomans as saviors. Sultan Orhan gave them permission to build the Etz ha-Hayyim (Tree of Life) synagogue which remained in service until the 1940s …
Early in the 14th century, when the Ottomans had established their capital at Edirne, Jews from Europe, including Karaites, migrated there. Similarly, Jews expelled from Hungary in 1376, from France by Charles VI in September 1394, and from Sicily early in the 15th century found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. In the 1420s, Jews from Salonika, then under Venetian control, fled to Edirne. . .
Ottoman rule was much kinder than Byzantine rule had been. In fact, from the early 15th century on, the Ottomans actively encouraged Jewish immigration. A letter sent by Rabbi Yitzhak Sarfati (from Edirne) to Jewish communities in Europe in the first part of the century ‘invited his co-religionists to leave the torments they were enduring in Christendom and to seek safety and prosperity in Turkey … ‘
When Mehmet II ‘the Conqueror’ took Constantinople in 1453, he encountered an oppressed Romaniot (Byzantine) Jewish community which welcomed him with enthusiasm. Sultan Mehmet II issued a proclamation to all Jews ‘… to ascend the site of the Imperial Throne, to dwell in the best of the land, each beneath his Dine and his fig tree, with silver and with gold, with wealth and with cattle … ‘ In 1470, Jews expelled from Bavaria by Ludvig X found refuge in the Ottoman Empire.”
One memorable example of Ottoman generosity was their welcoming the Jews of Spain which were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. Mr. Guleryuz states:
In the faraway Ottoman Empire, one ruler extended an immediate welcome to the persecuted Jews of Spain, the Sephardim. He was the Sultan Bayazid II … This humanitarianism demonstrated at that time, was consistent with the beneficence and goodwill traditionally displayed by the Turkish government and people towards those of different creeds, cultures and backgrounds. Indeed, Turkey could serve as a model to be emulated by any nation which finds refugees from any of the four corners of the world standing at its doors … In 1992, Turkish Jewry celebrated not only the anniversary of this gracious welcome, but also the remarkable spirit of tolerance and acceptance which has characterized the whole Jewish experience in Turkey …
The celebration was spearheaded by the Quincentennial Foundation, which was founded in Istanbul in 1989, by the leaders of the Turkish Jewish community and by some prominent Muslims in Turkish public life. The Foundation still carries out many activities that present the historical friendship between Muslim Turks and Jews as an “example for humanity.”
Mr. Guleryuz tells about other milestones in that exemplary experience:
Over the centuries an increasing number of European Jews, escaping persecution in their native countries, settled in the Ottoman Empire. In 1537 the Jews expelled from Apulia (Italy) after the city fell under Papal control, in 1542 those expelled from Bohemia by King Ferdinand found a safe haven in the Ottoman Empire. In March of 1556, Sultan Suleyman ‘the Magnificent’ wrote a letter to Pope Paul IV asking for the immediate release of the Ancona Marranos, which he declared to be Ottoman citizens. The Pope had no other alternative than to release them, the Ottoman Empire being the ‘Super Power’ of those days.
And what about the dhimma status given to Jews and Christians in Ottoman lands? While it is true that this involved a second class citizen status in today’s terms, it was quite advanced and preferred in those pre-modern times.[5] Thus, no wonder, as Guleryuz explains:
Ottoman diplomacy was often carried out by Jews … In the free air of the Ottoman Empire, Jewish literature flourished. On October 27, 1840 Sultan Abdulmecid issued his famous ferman concerning the ‘Blood Libel Accusation’ saying: ‘… and for the love we bear to our subjects, we cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented as a consequence of accusations which have not the least foundation in truth …”
Maybe we should also add that the blood libel and other such standard anti-Semitic nonsense was unknown in Muslim lands until the 19th century. These were introduced to the Middle East by the “westernized” elite, who had been infected by the anti-Semitic plague from its ultimate source: Europe.
Struma and the Righteous Gentiles of Turkey
Mr. Isaac also writes about the “Turkish hostility to the Jews during World War II [which] led them to refuse to allow Jews to flee Hitler into Turkey.” And he gives one instance — simply because there is no other — as evidence:
“In one instance 769 Jews packed into an old, dilapidated cattle boat called the Struma and made it to the shores of Turkey. The Turks denied them entry and eventually towed them out to sea where they sank.”
Actually the Struma did not sink by herself, but was hit by a Russian submarine. But, yes, it is true and shameful that Turkish authorities did not welcome the unfortunate Holocaust survivors on the boat. But the reason was not “hostility to Jews,” it was the narrow-minded fear of some officials who worried about the possible consequences of accepting Jewish refugees at a time when Nazi Germany seemed to be the conqueror of the world.
However, beyond this one instance, Turks indeed have a quite honorable record with regard to the Holocaust. Naim Avigdor Guleryuz explains:
“As early as 1933 Ataturk invited numbers of prominent German Jewish professors to flee Nazi Germany and settle in Turkey. During World War II Turkey served as a safe passage for many Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazism. While the Jewish communities of Greece were wiped out almost completely by Hitler, the Turkish Jews remained secure. Several Turkish diplomats … made every effort to save the Turkish Jews in the Nazi occupied countries, from the Holocaust. They succeeded. Mr. Salahattin Ulkumen, Consul General at Rhodes in 1943-1944, was recognized by the Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile “Hassid Umot ha’Olam” in June 1990. Turkey continues to be a shelter, a haven for all those who have to flee the dogmatism, intolerance and persecution.”
Actually the Turkish help to Jews during the Holocaust is so famous and memorable that recently a documentary film, named Desperate Hours, was produced on this issue. In a news story titled “Turkey Thanked for Saving Jews in Holocaust” which appears on The Canadian Jewish News, we read,
“Desperate Hours documents the ways Turkey, neutral until near the end of the war, helped both its Jewish citizens and other Jews escape the Nazis. A highlight is the story of Marseilles vice-consul Necdet Kent, who boarded a railway car full of Jews bound for Auschwitz, risking his own life in an attempt to persuade the Germans to send them back to France. He succeeded, but only three hours out of the station. “Other diplomats, those from the West, turned their heads. Turkey did not,” said B’nai Brith Canada executive vice-president Frank Dimant, who called the award a long overdue thank-you. Dimant said Turkey continues “to stand with the Jewish people” even as anti-Semitism looms again.”
If Mr. Isaac decides to visit Turkey one day, I would be most pleased to take him to the Jewish Museum in Istanbul and show him the stand about those righteous Turkish gentiles who saved many Jews from the Holocaust — among many other examples of Jewish-Turkish friendship. I am hopeful that Mr. Isaac, as a righteous Jew, would reconsider his views about Turkey and Islam then.
Towards A Better Turkey
From the beginning I have been trying to show that Mr. Isaac’s article, which pictured Turkey as a bastion of anti-Western and anti-Semitic hatred, is an astonishing distortion of the facts. But while defending Turkey’s virtues, I am not trying to whitewash its sins and mistakes. I am not a die-hard nationalist and do criticize my country whenever she acts against the moral truths that I believe in.
Thus, I do stand against some cases of true intolerance we can find in Turkish history. And, although this might be a surprise to some Westerners, these cases are mostly from the Republican period, not from the preceding Ottoman one. It is a general rule that nation-states are less tolerant to cultural diversity than empires, and this holds true in this part of the world as well. This is wisely captured by Robert Kaplan in his most recent Atlantic Monthly article. Kaplan states:
“Who says empires are bad? The multi-ethnic Ottoman Turkish Empire, like the coeval multi-ethnic Hapsburg Austrian one, was more hospitable to minorities than the uni-ethnic democratic states that immediately succeeded it. The Ottoman caliphate welcomed Turkish, Kurdish, and other Muslims with open arms, and tolerated Christian Armenians and Jews. The secular-minded, modernizing “Young Turk” politicians who brought down the empire did not.”
There are some understandable historical reasons for this. The Young Turks and their Republican inheritors faced the fall of a great empire mostly because of ethnic and religious conflict. The lesson they inferred was that ethnic and religious diversity was a dangerous concept and we should instead have a homogenized “fortress Turkey.” This resulted in the suppression of Turkey’s Kurds and, to a lesser extent, its religious minorities. The “religious majority,” i.e. Sunni Turks, also had their share of difficulties from the iron hand of Kemalists — those who produced a cult of personality from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, our Founding Father, and turned his pragmatic policies into a dogmatic ideology.
That iron hand is responsible for probably the worst case of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish discrimination in Turkish history: the “wealth tax” that was imposed on Jews, Armenians and Greeks of Turkey during 1942-44. It was a very unjust taxation on the non-Muslim citizens in order to support creating a “genuinely Turkish” bourgeoisie. Had Mr. Isaac taken a closer look at Turkey, he could have used this to support his arguments.
However, Turkey has been growing up since then. The early Republican indoctrination has lost its impetus, but the target it wanted to achieve, i.e. modernity, is being absorbed by Turkey through democratization, economic development, the rise of the middle class and a more pluralistic public life. Thanks to the great reforms of the last few years, different ethnic and religious components in Turkey, including the non-Muslim minorities, are now freer than they have ever been before.
In this brave new Turkey, Islam is more visible and widespread than it was before, too, but this is not a fundamentalist backlash, as some Westerners like Mr. Isaac would fear. The influx of some radical Islamist rhetoric from the Middle East has radicalized a part of Turkey’s Muslims youth since late 1970’s, but this movement has lost its strength in the last decade. The rising new Islam in Turkey is not what you would find in the Middle East; it is democratic, modern, moderate and pro-Western. The war in Iraq stirred some controversy, as it did in the U.S. itself, but Turkey’s sympathies still go well with America — especially for conservatives like me, who admire it for being boldly “a nation under God,” while most of Europe is still suffering under the disillusionments of 19th century materialism and cynicism.
In short, Turkey’s history is much brighter than that which Mr. Isaac presented, and its dark spots are being illuminated more and more every day. That’s why Turkey won’t be a Trojan Horse in Europe as Mr. Isaac worries. On the contrary, it will gain a lot, but also add a lot to the “old” continent. I think, besides all our educated young manpower, booming economy, cultural heritage, and strategic strength, we Turks could even dare to add a philosophical insight to the extremely cynical continent: compassionate conservatism based on theistic values.
That is why I look forward to Turkey’s accession into the EU. As I Turk, I don’t just want Europe for Turkey; I also want Turkey for Europe.
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[1] Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ. 1995. p. 109
[2] Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, 1998, p. 21
[3] Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ. 1995. p. 126
[4] Matthew Stewart, “It Was All a Pleasant Business: The Historical Context of ‘On the Quai at Smyrna'”, The Hemingway Review. Volume: 23, Issue 1, 2003. p. 58
[5] Actually, most non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were quite happy with the dhimma system. Jews were often merchants while the majority of Muslims were peasants. So the Jews travelled all over the empire and also established its trade with the world. Jews also had a flourising printing industry and system of rabbinical schools. Not a single Sephardic religious authority can be cited to the disfavor of the Ottoman state. Jews and Christians, under the dhimma, were exempt from military service. Thus some of them protested against abolition of the dhimma in Bosnia; they did not want to serve in the army.
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