[spectre] Sarang Shidore: More from Istanbul

[Andreas Broeckmann]

(i want to forward also these next two section of this interesting
travel report from turkey; ab)

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From: Sarang Shidore <sarang_shidore at yahoo.com>(by way of Monica Narula)
Subject: [Reader-list] More from Istanbul
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 14:29:52 +0530


Merhaba,

I am writing this on a pleasant sunny afternoon in the heart of old
Istanbul (Sultanahmet). Today is my last day in this wonderful city.
The last three days have been very exciting. I have seen and done a
lot and it would be difficult to capture everything in this letter.
But I will try.

After spending most of Monday at the fabulous Topkapi Palace, I paid
a visit to the Yerebetan Cistern the next morning. But first a few
words about Topkapi and Turkish history. This was the seat of the
Ottoman (Osmanli) dynasty from the time of Suleyman the Magnificent
who is roughly a contemporary of Emperor Akbar. It was his gorgeous
and ambitious wife Hurrem, or Roxelana, who persuaded the Sultan to
move the family and the harem to the Topkapi. Before this it was
strictly a seat for administration. The story of Hurrem is
insteresting - she was a Russian slave girl captured in a Tatar raid
and sold in Istanbul to the Sultan's harem. Suleyman was so
captivated by her laughter that he decided to eventually marry her
and make her the chief queen. This cause consternation in the empire,
but who could challenge the sultan....

To understand the Turkish nation one has to go back to the 11th
century when the Seljuk Turks, a nomadic warrior band from Central
Asia swept into Anatolia. (Central Asia seems to have been the source
of many conquering warrior tribes throughout history. The Scythians
(Sakas), Mongols, Huns, Turks, Tatars, and others terrified the more
settled urban civilizations south of the steppe with their raids.
Iran's destruction by the Mongols in the 13th century was so
traumatic, the holocaust so terribly brutal that it took more than a
hundred years for the society to recover.) The Seljuk advance was
less damaging to Anatolia, apparently just 40,000 troops grabbed the
arid central plain with little resistance from the Christian subjects
of the Byzantine empire.

However, somehow Constantinopole survived for another 350 years. Each
time the Turks were close, the Byzantine emperor managed to put up a
heroic fight and saved the city. However during this period the city
suffered its worst man-made disaster - the armies of the Fourth
Crusade, sent to "liberate" Jerusalem turned on their fellow
Christians in Constantinopole instead and days and days of looting,
pillage, and rape almost completely destroyed the beautiful city. The
Sancta Sophia was desecrated and a prostitute apparently paraded
through its stately halls. A truly bizarre episode, but apparently
not unknown in the annals of the supposedly spiritual armies of the
Western Crusades!

Inspite of this disaster in the early 13th century, the city managed
to magically spring back to life. A great program of rebuilding by
later Byzantine emperors restored most of the homes and gardens.
Luckily for us all the Fourth crusade did not manage to destroy
Sancta Sophia's main structure and some of the art inside, as well as
a few of the ancient churches which can still be seen today (such as
the Chora Church in Western Istanbul).

Incidentally, the language used by the early Byzantines was Latin but
as time passed, Old Greek (spoken by most of the subjects) became the
official language of the state. The schism between Eastern (Orthodox)
Christianity and Catholic Rome is largely due to the Byzantine
episode in history.

After the Seljuk empire disintegrated, another Turkish clan called
the Osmanli seized power. Under 21-year old Mehmet the Conqueror
Constantinopole finally fell to the Osmanli's. Large-scale looting and
violence followed the conquest, as Mehmet's troops were as covetous
as any conquerors before. However, when Turkish soldiers started
hacking away at the marble columns of the Sancta Sophia, Mehmet
stopped them, declaring "there is no God but God and Mohammed is His
Prophet". Sancta Sophia became the Aya Sofya Mosque.

OK, enough of history. The Yerebatan Cistern is a beautiful
underground reservoir of water built by the Byzantines in the 5th
century to store water for the city. It has a few hundred pillars,
some of them carved in traditional Greek styles. I had a really
interest›ng conversation with a young guide there who was working
part time and also going to college at Bosphorus University. He
invited me for tea at an art gallery the next day and we chatted
quite a bit about Turkey. Among other things he also had some choice
words to say about George W. Bush and American foreign policy!

In general in Turkey I have noticed (not surprisingly) a strong
dislike of US policies in the region. One shopkeeper went as far as
to tell me "We know our government is with the Americans, but we also
know what are their real intentions. We in the Middle East are
patient people and say OK to everything but one day there will be a
surprise."

In Turkey everyone is a millionaire. 1 dollar buys you 1/4 million
Turkish Liras! So, a short cab ride from Sultanahmet to Beyoglu costs
6 million Turkish Liras. A newspaper costs 1 million. The train fare
to Ankara by a fast express train came out to 85 million Liras. By
now, I have finally managed to distinguish between the 500000 Lira
bill and the 5000000 Lira bill without counting the zeroes! I
consider this as one of my greater achievements in recent months :-).

There are many common words between Turkish and Hindi/Urdu. Not
surprising as both languages were influenced by Farsi and Arabic. So,
sabzi is vegetable, sharap is wine, misafir is traveller, duniya is
world, asik is lover, and chai is, of course tea! There were many
more such words but Mustafa Kemal (the Turkish nationalist founder of
modern Turkey) abolished many of them under his Turkification program
of the 1920's. The Arabic alphabet was replaced by a Latinate one,
the Caliphate was abolished, Turks were forced to adopt last names -
these had to be Turkish last names even if you were a Kurdish or
Armenian speaker - the Ottoman legal system was replaced by a Western
code based on the Swiss model, women were given the right to vote and
participate in government, classical Turkish music was de-emphasized
and Western classical music promoted and Turkey was redefined as a
state of the Turks. Strict separation of mosque and state was
enforced, the fez cap banned, the hijab forbidden in government
buildings, and the Caliphate abolished. Turkey firmly set its eyes
Westward rather than Eastward. (More on this later.)

To understand the geography of Istanbul imagine the Bosphorus strait
which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and forms the
barrier between Asia and Europe. The European side of Istanbul is
further bisected by a body of water known as the Golden Horn. Ottoman
Istanbul is south of the Golden Horn. This is what I have mainly
described so far. But north of the golden horn are the areas of
Karakoy, Beyoglu, Taksim and Levent which are the heart of modern
Istanbul. Beyoglyu was the residence of European ambassadors in the
19th century and the architecture is very European influenced.
Stately buildings line Istikilala Caddesi, its main thoroughfare
which is now Istanbul's trendiest shopping and clubbing district.

If you are ever in Beyoglu don't miss the Haci Abdullah restaurant
which is a fantastic place to get some great ottoamn era food. My
friend Serra took me there and we had a blast. Of course I love food
(who doesn't) and am always game for trying out new cuisines. But
Haci Abdullah was mind-blowing. I started with a delicious creamy
lentil soup followed by an eggplant dish called Imam Bayildi (the
Imam fainted) which is a whole eggplant spiced and roasted - a little
bit like Baingan Bharta! Then I had a dish of lamb cooked in a sort
of a crepe with spices and garnishing. This was followed by a Turkish
fruit salad. Turkish coffee would normally have ended the meal but I
have discovered that its incredible strength does some interesting
things to my system so I decided to skip it!

Walking along Istikilal Caddesi is an experience. It was Tue evening
but there were thousands of Turkish youth there shopping, hanging
out, strolling. There are lots of interesting stores for the shopping
minded, but selling mostly modern items clothes jewellery, footwear
etc. The clubs are all in the side streets off the main avenue.

Unlike the US where seeing couples and individuals is common, in
Turkey it is quite normal to see large groups of friends going out
together. Often I have seen people hanging out rather aimlessly at
street corners, a lot like in India. Spending an hour, just lounging
around after finishing coffee at a cafe is normal. The stress that I
feel in the air in the United States is almost entirely missing here.
Of course it could be because I am on vacation but I don't think so!

I have written this letter in a rather meandering fashion and ended
up writing more about history than I originally intended. There is
much more I have to say - about the 5 hour Bosphorus cruise I took,
my visit to the working class areas of Fener and Balat, the day I
spent in Ankara after taking the overnight train there, and other
things - but it is nearly 2 p.m here and I shall soon be meeting
Serra for a trip to the ancient Grand Bazaar! So it is time to sign
off. Perhaps I will get a chance to write again from London tomorrow.
Till then stay well!

Sarang in Isanbul






From: Sarang Shidore <sarang_shidore at yahoo.com>(by way of Monica Narula)
Subject: [Reader-list] Turkey Travelogue - Part III
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 18:09:03 +0530


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