Representations of the "Other/s" in the Mediterranean World and their Impact on the Region 9781617191251, 1617191256

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Representations of the f f Other/s f f in the Mediterranean World and their Impact on the Region

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Representations of the ffOther/sff in the Mediterranean World and their Impact on the Region

Edited by

Nedret Kuran-Bursoglu Susan Gilson Miller

The Isis Press, Istanbul

preSS 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2004 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

ISBN 978-1-61719-125-1

Printed in the United States of America

Representations of the "Other/s" in the Mediterranean World and Their Impact on the Region A Refereed Book of CIRP Crossroads Interdisciplinary Research and Policy Platform (*) 1 st Issue

Editorial Board Chief Editors Prof. Dr. Nedret Kuran-Bur^oglu, Professor of Translation and Comparative European Cultural Studies at Yeditepe University, President of CIRP. Dr. Susan Gilson Miller, Senior Lecturer of History, Director of the Moroccon Studies at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, Member of CIRP. Editorial

Advisors

(in alphabetical

order)

Prof. Dr. Peter Bendixen, Professor of Economics and Cultural Management, Co-founder of the Rudolph Arnheim Insitute for Music, Performing Arts and Art Management, Hamburg, Member of CIRP. Prof.Dr. Enrique Banus, Professor of Imagology, Director of the Center for European Studies and Jean Monnet Professor at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Member of CIRP. Mrs. Odile Chenal, Director of Research Projects and Grants at European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam, Member of CIRP. Dr. Mehmet Rifat, Editor, Senior Lecturer of Semiotics and French Literature at the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Bogazi$i University, Member of CIRP. (*) CIRP is an international NGO that was founded in Istanbul, on September 7 t h , 2001 by 13 Scholars, of Humanities Social, Sciences and Cultural Studies from different countries of the world, at the end of the Workshop entitled, "A New Mediterranean Cultural Policy in the Making: Towards a Multicultural Dialogue, Coherence and Accountability." (For the Declaration and more Information about the Platform see Appendices 1 & 2 at the end of the book.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

7

Introduction

9

Part I: Comparative Imagological Approaches. *1. *2.

Enrique Banus: Between Atlantic and Mediterranean: Spain's Imagological Antagonisms Katica Kulavkova: The Mediterranean 'Chronotopos' and its 'Differentia Specifica'

Part II: Historical *3. *4. *5.

*6. *7. *8 .

13 41

Perspectives.

Mladen Ancic & Stipe Grgas: Medieval Bosnia and TransAdriatic Traffic in Images and Goods Lily Hamourtziadou: The People's Myths: The Case of the Bosnian Nations Mustafa Soykut: A Practical Application of "Otherness" in Political History: The Italian Case and The Ottoman Empire (15th-18th Centuries) Alexander Kitroeff: Greek Images of the Ottomans and Turks Hercules Millas: The "Other" and Nationbuilding - The Testimony of Greek and Turkish Novels Avi Rubin: East, West, Ottomans and Zionists - Internalized Orientalism at the Turn of the 20th Century

57 73

93 125 141 149

Part III: Current Perceptions. *9.

George Terzis: The "Other"/ "Turk" in the Greek National Media: The Construction of "Oppositional Metaphors" *10. GUI inang Barkay: Representations of "Other/s" in the "Virtual World": www.other.gov/cyprus *11. Nida Bikmenl Diane Sunar: Representing the Ethnic "Other": Stereotypes of Ethnic Groups in Turkey

169 187 201

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CONTENTS

*12. Ayhan Kaya: Circassian Diaspora in Turkey: Stereotypes, Prejudices and Ethnie Relations *13. Jean Pierre Gerfaud & Jean Paul Tourrel: 'Saison Violente' by Emmanuel Robles (1974), or The Literary Work as Meetin *14. Lawrence Raw: Marketing the Mediterranean Museums *15. Melita Richter Melabotta: How the "Others" Change *16. Esra LaGro: The Transformation of the Mediterranean Identity: A Multidisciplinary and Dynamic Approach *17. Mohamed Moulfi: Pour Un Cosmopolitisme Méditerranéen

217

281 289

List of Contributors

299

Appendix 1:

Research Project Announcement

303

Appendix 2:

Statute of the CIRP

305

Appendix 3:

Declaration of the CIRP

307

241 253 269

PREFACE

This book forms an integral part of a comprehensive Research Project that aims to lead to a new Mediterranean Cultural Policy that is based on a multicultural dialogue, mutual trust, coherence and accountability. The volume contains a selection of papers that were sent as a response to a Call for Papers (see Appendix 1), issued by myself, in December 2000. The papers were selected by the screening committee of the Research Project from among 35 papers that were received, and were then refereed by an international committee that comprised experts in humanities and social sciences. Articles 3,5,7,8,9,11,12 have been edited by Susan Miller and articles 1,2,4,6,10,13,14,15,16 have been edited by myself. Two generous grants received from the UNESCO and the European Cultural Foundation, and four matching funds provided by the Quincentennary Foundation, Bogazigi University Foundation, Turkish Prime Minister's Office for Communication and Information, and Istek Foundation made it possible to bring the Project to the attention of a broader audience within the scope of two Workshops, that took place at Bogazi§i University and at Yeditepe University, in September 6-7 th , 2001, and in December 20-21st, 2001, respectively. As the initiator of this Research Project, and the organizer of the two Workshops, I would like to acknowledge the valuable support of our sponsors gratefully. My special thanks are due to Odile Chenal, Peter Bendixen, Mehmet Rifat and Sylvia Zeybekoglu for their helpful assistance in reading and selecting the papers of this volume. I would like to thank Susan Miller for the great work she put in this book by editing a group of the papers. Finally, I would like to thank all the authors of the articles, who with their valuable and interesting academic research not only gave shape to this multidisciplinary volume, but also provided an insight and a base for further steps within the framework of our new Mediterranean Cultural Policy Project.

Nedret Kuran-Bur^oglu

INTRODUCTION

Mediterranean space, the focal topos of this volume, had given birth to a number of civilizations; from Phonetian to Egyptian, from Minoan Mycanean to Hellenistic civilizations... Huge empires had been founded and grown on its shores; Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires... The three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam emerged in this space. Philosophy, literature, drama, architecture and fine arts were born and flourished in this region. Exchange of goods, and later on, ideas provided interaction among human beings and gave a meaning and richness to their lives. This is the reason why people have called the Mediterranean space the cradle of civilizations. Civilizations were born in the southern and eastern shores of this sea and moved towards the north and the west and then they took the reverse directions. Obviously there were favourable conditions that enabled these civilizations to emerge - ideal geographical position, fertile lands, homogeniously varied landscapes, mild and friendly climate, positive effects of the sea can be counted among them. Mediterranean region has also been significant with the paradoxes that it has accomodated. Due to its unique geographical position it is combining the three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa, but at the same time dividing them. It has bridged communities of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but at the same time it has constituted a barrier that has been separating them. Being the cradle of civilizations, but at the same time providing a battle-field for them. Encountering societies, that share common climatic, geographical, temperamental and to a great extent cultural experiences, but differ in their individual political and social systems. Mediterranean is transnational, multicultural, multilingual and multiethnic. It is also geographically dispersed and supports many microregions. What, then, is the basis for its identity as a region, and how is that identity expressed? What forms do representations of the region take? What other elements support a sense of a shared identity? Could history, and /or ecology be taken as binding (or separating) elements, or in the contemporary period, through the European Union, can political ties be seen as such? The collection of articles that are grouped in three Parts; i.e. Comparative Itnagological Approaches, Historical Perspectives and Current

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Perceptions, shows the Mediterranean region in this transnational perspective. It examines the micro as well as the macro levels, by taking a look at how the "other" is defined and represented in various conflict situations. It also examines transnational cooperation and seeks to uncover various means to maximize it. It questions the impact of globalization on the Mediterranean identity, and examines this phenomenon in context.

Susan Gilson Miller & Nedret Kuran-Burçoglu

Enrique Banús University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain BETWEEN ATLANTIC AND MEDITERRANEAN: SPAIN'S IMAGOLOGICAL ANTAGONISMS

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust, claims Goethe's Faust. And Thomas Mann's Tonio Kröger feels in his life and inner world the antagonism towards two identities. The suffering that stems from experiencing identity problems seems to be a German topic. But at the end of the 19th century, the identity problem had become fashionable in Europe, 1 gaining influence as well in Spain. 2 Even so, individual identity problem did not seem to be essential to Spanish literature. The situation regarding the collective identity, on the other hand, is different: the question "What is Spain?" has a long tradition,3 it has achieved dramatic accents in some moments of history, 4 and is probably one of the factors contributing to the start of the Civil War in the 1930s.5 Outside of Spain, Spain-images 6 have been limited to literary themes that can be considered as "typically Spanish." Philipp II and Carmen could be the most representative of them - even if in rather strange contradiction. While, for instance, Don Quixote has been considered during some periods as "typically Spanish," he has achieved (mainly through elaboration with German idealism and through the works of several Russian authors) a 1 See, for example, the great works of Pirandello; this may be especially clear in Uno, nessuno e cento milla. 2 See, for example, the works of Unamuno, especially Niebla, and the poetry of Antonio Machado. 3 For the so-called "Spanish question," see SCHMIDT 1975. 4 Since the 18th century, it has been a tradition to speak about the "two Spains." Spain's loss of its last colonies at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was a truly dramatic episode in the history of Spain. 3 Following the "two-Spains-debate," both parties to this war were convinced that they were realizing the genuine Spain, protecting it from dangerous influences from abroad. 6 We use a term that is common in Comparative Literature. See above all DYSERINCK 1966, 1982, 1988a and 1988b; also PAGEAUX, FISCHER, FIRCHOW, LEERSSEN, and mainly DYSERINCK 1981, 125ff. It is well known that the French school of Comparative Literature has developed an imagological perspective (see the important foreword from Jean Marie Carre to the handbook of Marius-Fran?ois Guyard (see CARRE 1951).

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supranational, a universal category. 1 Moreover, Don Juan, another Spanish "product" has been "denationalized" - in his name as well since he is more famous in the Italian Don-Giovanni-version than in the original Spanish one. Mozart (and Lorenzo da Ponte) could be responsible for this change, but it is obvious that he has become a universal prototype 2 . So Philipp II remains representative of the dark Spain — with its highest expression found in Schiller's Don Carlos and Carmen as prototypical of the exotic Spain in the novel of Mérimée and mainly in the opera of Bizet, where the music underlines its literary image. The assumption in this genre guarantees a higher degree of diffusion. It is interesting as well to remember that Don Carlos was also transformed into an opera by Verdi, one of the most paradigmatic masters during a time in which opera contributed to the formation of a collective consciousness more than in any other period and more than any other art. These characters summarize two long traditions, two coexisting imagotypes of Spain, and, of course, they live and form mentalities, independently of the fact that incongruities may appear when confronted with reality. So, the literary Carmen, a gypsy woman (and this is not an unimportant detail but a constitutive part of her character), speaks the Bask language, which is extremely rare. 3 In the current version of Don Carlos, the real protagonist is Marquis Posa, who in the dialogue with Philip II expresses the famous words: Sire, geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit! through the content of the drama. 4 In real history, Marquis Posa did not play a relevant role in the Spanish court. But history knows nothing about Don Carlos' love for the Queen. This is something that, thanks to Schiller's interest in the topic, is material for mainly psychoanalytical interpretations.

1 For the reception of Don Quixote, see the very serious work of BRÙGGEMANN. Here evidence is collected for the "national vision" of Don Quixote in the French Enlightenment (as representative for the Spanish religious fanaticism) and in the German Romantic Period (mainly by the Schlegels), as the new mythology coming from a country that has maintained contact with its own roots, without foreign influences. This is the start also for the universal interpretation, for example, of Fichte. 2 It is very eloquent that Albert Camus includes Don Giovanni as one of the modifications of the Sisyphus-myth, it means, of a universal character. There were some efforts to re-nationalize Don Juan. The most famous in Ramiro de Maeztu: Don Quijote, Don Juan y la Celestina. 3 She says that she comes from Etchalar in Navarra. More commonly, gypsies are related with Southern Spain, with Andalusia, where they really have influenced the folklore, for example. 4

In the first version, Marquis Posa was not so dominant, and the protagonist was a Don Carlos seen in the manner of the Sturm-und-Drang-characters. For the next version he wanted to write, Schiller had foreseen to develop more the person of Marquis Posa, maybe also changing the title of the drama.

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But the images that are formed in "history" are rarely independent of academic preoccupations. The images of Spain mentioned above are really the result of long traditions, which could be - with a small simplification - designed as the "enlightened" and the "romantic" way of describing the Spanish identity. Indeed, for the European Enlightenment, Spain was the dark country of nonEnlightenment, the reign of the obscure Catholicism of which the Inquisition was prototype. It was the country that had not broken with medieval tradition. At the beginnings of the modern world in which Gedankenfreiheit, inner freedom, was one of the emerging values, Philip II represents the old world of oppression under a state that felt compelled to guarantee the unity of Catholic Europe. Dark, inhumane, against the rights of the individual, catholic — this was the enlightened view of Spain. The exotic gypsy "femme fatale," Carmen corresponds to one of the Romantic visions of Spain, perhaps more accurately, visions emerging from the impact of vestiges of pre-Romanticism on Romanticism, most importantly from Johann Gottfried Herder, who discovered in Spain the survival of a particular fusion of cultures, which he summarizes under the term "orientalism."1 This "discovery" engendered enthusiasm on account of the different romantic attitudes in existence: the sympathy for the harmonic fusion of different elements saw Spain as one example, and the Romantic wave of exoticism looked at Spain as an exotic culture. Carmen is exotic; Carmen is "oriental." Carmen also represents the power of basic vital forces against reason. A "primitive" world — in the word's best sense: a world close to the origins; one that is authentic. We can go a step further by introducing a topic that is of higher interest for this volume: Philipp II evokes the Castillian dimension of Spain, which is in contrast to Carmen who, on the contrary, summons up the Mediterranean one. It is the latter that is understood as an exotic cultural space, subsumed under the "oriental," and associated with fascination, attraction, and mystery. On the other hand, the Castillian dimension is linked with the Atlantic component of the history of Spain, the discovery of 1 In literary history, one of his disciples will be Friedrich Bouterwek, who in his relevant history wrote, for example, that the Spanish Renaissance poets restored "den alten Orientalismus ihrer Nation" or underlined, using another imagotype about Spain: "Selbst aus den Werken der Wenigen unter den spanischen Dichtern, die es, wie Luis de Leon, Cervantes, und die Brüder Argensola, mit der Korrektheit der Gedanken und Bilder, nach antiken und italienischen Begriffen, am strengsten nahmen, blickt die Tendenz zum spanischen Orientalismus hervor" (BOUTERWEK 614).

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America, which is another element that negatively influences the image of Spain and which has been used extensively by the vision of the Enlightenment. 1 Two hetero-images coexisting not only in literature but also in the mentality of the so- called "common people." As for the vision of selfidentity, what is the image that Spain has (or has had) of itself? What are the constituent elements of this image? What is the "cultural identity" of Spain — if we want to use this term, under the suspicion that this identity is a construct, an image and does not have a metaphysical (or physical) reality? 2 Indeed, every concept of collective identity seems problematic. 3 In recent years, the origins of collective identities have been undergoing a process of deconstruction. In fact, in contrast to the essentialism — common in earlier periods 4 — it is now argued, that we are dealing with "inventions" 5 - with "realities" that are present solely in the imaginary, with "constructs" 6 which are the result of a cultural (Anderson 7 ) or socio-economic process (Hobsbawm 8 ). They are often self-interested constructs, ideas, imagined and devoid of any real basis, which some authors do not hesitate to call myths. 9 When associating "culture" with "collective identity" we cannot help but wonder whether culture is being instrumentalized for other then cultural purposes.

1 Very significant is the reception of Bartolomé de las Casas' work. This reception has been seen by some right-wing Spanish historians as "black legend." See JUDERIAS. o The author has analyzed the complex problem on "cultural identity" and different theories about it - related to Europe - in BANUS 2002. The concept has been used, as one of the keywords, at the Unesco-World Conference in Mexico 1982 (see the documents in UNESCO 1982). 3 For an analysis cf. SZALO 246ss. There also on the origins of this concept in Durkheim and the "culture and personality" school in American cultural anthropology. 4 The term is used also in SPIER1NG 115. 5 For Spiering, the authors in these fields are "constructivists" (SPIERING 116), for S0rensen, "inventionists" (S0RENSEN 10). The best- known author in this argumentation is, of course, Anderson (see ANDERSON). 6 An example of the construction of a nation (France) with its symbols in NORA. 7 For him, the concept of nation is "an outgrowth of cultural change" (HELLY 37). "The state appeals to cultural and historical references, which are often fictional and always artificially constructed" (HELLY 46). 8 See HOBSBAWM-RANGER; due to the Marxist attitude of the authors, the fundamental role is attributed to economic elements. 9 One can believe that elements that are usually considered as parts of the make up of collective identity "belong to myths, but not to realities" (SALAZAR 767). The title of CITRON is paradigmatic. In summing up the debate, Helly has categorically stated: "All writers concur to say that the notion of the nation as a community of people of common origin (...) is fictional" (HELLY 36). The "essentialism" versus "inventionism" positions can be summed up as follows: "There would seem to be two extremes in the historiography of nationalism. Either you trace back 'Englishness' (or 'Danishness', or whatever) to time immemorial, blaming its long dormant periods on the pernicious influence of foreigners succeeding, in alliance with an anational upper class, in suppressing popular national feeling for centuries until the people finally 'awakens'. Or (...) you see the whole idea as a modern one, with national identities being 'invented' or 'imagined' by intellectuals who, through education and the media, indoctrinate "the people." The latter perspective is today widely adopted" (RASMUSSEN 24).

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With these remarks as background, we can return to the question of the "self-image" in Spain. It makes no sense to describe the different opinions expressed throughout the centuries. 1 It seems more fruitful to search for the broadest historical moment at which the image has been established, which ensures that it will remain part of collective consciousness for a long time. 2 Here we must remember again the function of factors that often have been forgotten or neglected - factors that we can include under the heading "mediators."3 Mediators have had a place in the French school of Comparative Literature, 4 but their significance for intellectual life cannot be emphasized enough: indeed, they often transmit mental categories that become part of a collective consciousness. 5 And it is this consciousness that includes answers to the question: Who are we? What is our identity? - In our case: What is Spain? Schooling is a very significant mediation system. It has an effect of creating uniformity in a generation that receives the same contents, the same orientation 6 . In Spain, the generalization of schooling is a phenomenon of the 20th century. Another phenomenon, not of the 20th but of the end of the 19th century, is the introduction of "literature" as an independent discipline in the high school system. 7 There, high school literature teachers are trained not only according to the knowledge they need, but also with respect to particular values, perspectives and prejudices 8 under which knowledge is selected, interpreted and transmitted, in a double hermeneutic procedure 9 — remembering that at least human sciences are not the reign of asepsia10 but a 1

They are very well presented in the quoted work of SCHMIDT 1975. Today, after the breakdown of centralized Franco-Spain and the emergence of a decentralized Spain, this vision is no more dominant. 3 To the often-underdeveloped view on the importance of mediators, see BANUS 1997. 4 To the different directions in Comparative Literature see DYSERINCK 1981. 5 FISH explains that the reading and understanding of literary works happens in the frame of "interpretative communities" with great influence for the reader. 6 Schools are "especializadas en la transmisión del bagaje cultural de una sociedad" (GARCIA AMILBURU 145); they assure "die literarische Sozialisation der Kinder und Jugendlichen" playing "eine Schliisselrolle bei der Ausformung der literarischen Tradition" (GAISER 132, 99). It has been proved that the individual concept of literature depends from the socialization institutions (HINTZENZBERG). All this happens in an age in that "el niño no interioriza el mundo cultural en que es introducido (...) como uno de los muchos posibles, sino como el mundo: el único existente y concebible" (GARCIA AMILBURU 142). 7 For a very convincing summary of the history of literary studies in Spain, see GALVAN. 8 There importance for communication has been underlined very often; see SCHMIDT 1990 99; JAUSS 1987, 79; BOURDIEU 287; EVEN-ZOHAR 39; IGLESIAS 338; GUILLEN 346 : GOULEMOT 125; CASAS 253. 9 For this procedure, see BANUS 1997. 10 At this moment, it is really difficult to believe in the "asepsia" of human sciences or -more generally- culture: neutrality seems in any case impossible in human behavior. The willingness to not transmit values necessarily ends in the non-conscious transmission of values. For a good analysis of the relation between culture and values see JAUSS 1989, especially pp. 252-255. 2

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special case of reception. 1 One of the elements of this perspective is the national view that has dominated - and probably continues to dominate Philology all over Europe. 2 Furthermore, the state, as "owner" of schooling, is at that time interested in the consolidation of an identity that is predominantly national. The nationalist view was that the concern of literary studies was the knowledge of ones' own "national" literature. Nevertheless, it also held that - in the Romantic tradition - literature was symbol and expression of the national character. Just at the time when literary studies in Spain were growing and becoming common topics in University, two decisive philologists, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo and Ramón Menéndez-Pidal,3 seriously worked on literary studies, imbuing Spanish national literature, with a sense of "nation" and its character. 4 Both intellectuals were greatly under the sway of (especially German) Romantic theories, 5 but it is also clear that the two were very much influenced by positivism, in a strange and eclectic mixture of these two different intellectual directions. 6 The differences between Menéndez y Pelayo and Menéndez Pidal are also remarkable, with their orientations obviously clashing with respect to several relevant points. But this is not critical for the topic we have to develop. What is significant is the great influence they have had, the tradition they have established7 and the change of paradigm 8 they have introduced in the history of Spanish philology. 9 Their great discovery is "Castilla," which is linked with the rediscovery of one text of the Spanish literature, the medieval Cantar de Mio Cid. The literary motif of the Cid was 1 This has not been sufficiently stressed due to the opinion that researchers are "approximatel optimal informierte Leser" (GROEBEN 190). But Gunter Grimm has shown very convincingly that also the researcher lives in a tradition of receptions (GRIMM 287). 2 For the history of literature, see BANUS 1998. 3 See, for example, GALVAN 1999. ^Friedrich Bouterwek speaks in the Romantic tradition in his literary history, "Geist der spanischen Nation" (BOUTERWEK, 545). 5 On the importance of the German Romanticism for the Spanish Philology see, for example, FLITTER (mainly chapter 5); JURETSCHKE 1975, 95-99; and 1989,41f, 58f; HOFFMEISTER 143f; BAASNER 250. 6 "Eclecticism" is a dominant stream in Spanish philological tradition. Peers has shown that in Spain Romanticism very soon developed into an eclecticism (PEERS 1972, 2 118f). 7 Menéndez Pelayo "acquired such a reputation as an authority that he almost single-handedly laid down the lines of standard Spanish literary history" (WARDROPPER). 8 We use very consciously this term from Kuhn, which Jauss has applied to literary history. ^ Important authors are convinced that it is necessary to take into account the history of an academic discipline. See for the Philology, for example, DYSERINCK 1985a; 1985b, XIII s.; MAHRHOLZ; MAYER; WEHRLI; MÜLLER-SEIDEL 19. Max Wehrli expresses this necessity with the following words: "Wissenschaftsgeschichte (...) kann selber Methodologie sein (...), kann (...) zur Bestimmung und Abklärung des eigenen Standorts beitragen, zur Einsicht führen in die zeitliche und räumliche Bedingtheit der jeweiligen wissenschaftlichen Positionen und Vorsicht lehren im Gebrauch einer immer geschichtlich vorbelasteten Terminologie" (WEHRLI 30).

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well known in literary history, both in and outside Spain. It is well known that Pierre Corneille wrote a drama Le Cid, which was the occasion for a great literary debate in France in the 17th century. And Herder's enthusiasm for the Cid has provoked in Germany a wave of hispanophylie. But neither Corneille's nor Herder's inspiration was the Cantar de Mio Cid. They were fascinated by the Cid romances. The Cantar was practically unknown at their time, because — as far as we know — there existed only one manuscript, which was printed, without success, and mainly with bad reviews, in 1799.1 The romances (and other medieval Spanish texts) present a very different image of the protagonist than the Cantar. Against the popularity of the Cid of the romances, Menendez Pelayo and Menendez Pidal rediscovered the Cid of the Cantar, and did so using the assumptions of a national view of literature: the Cantar and its protagonist became in this way representative for Castilla, and Castilla is in their eyes Spain's core, the nucleus in which identity is realized in a pure manner.2 The rediscovery of the Cantar is synonymous with the invention of the Castillian identity as the essence of the Spanish identity. Literary criticism is again linked with the establishment of a process of self-identity. We shall not forget that — especially in the case of Menendez Pidal — the thesis that the Cantar is "expression of the Spanish character" implies the rejection of the opinions of some other philologists that it was influenced by French chansons de geste: independence becomes, in this way, one of the

1

See BANUS 2000c. For Menéndez Pelayo, the Poema del Cid is plenty of "ardiente sentido nacional", so that "es para nosotros símbolo de la nacionalidad" (MENENDEZ PELAYO 1903, 315). "Se juntan los más nobles atributos del alma castellana": "la gravedad en los propósitos y en los discursos, la cortesía ingenua y reposada, la grandeza sin énfasis, la imaginación más sólida que brillante, la piedad más activa que contemplativa, el sentimiento sobriamente recatado y limpio de toda mácula de sofistería o de bastardos afectos, la ternura conyugal más honda que expansiva, el prestigio de la autoridad doméstica y del vínculo militar libremente aceptado, la noción clara y limpia de la justicia, la lealtad al monarca y la entereza para querellarse de sus desfueros, una mezcla extraña y simpática de espíritu caballeresco y de rudeza popular, una honradez nativa, llena de viril y de austero candor" (MENENDEZ PELAYO 1903, 316). For Menéndez Pidal, "el Poema del Cid no es nacional por el patriotismo que en él se manifieste, sino más bien como retrato del pueblo donde se escribió" (MENENDEZ PIDAL 1913, 112): "En el Cid se reflejan las más nobles cualidades del pueblo que le hizo su héroe: el amor a la familia, que anima la ejecución hasta de las más altas y absorbentes empresas; la fidelidad inquebrantable; la generosidad magnánima y altanera aun para con el rey; la intensidad del sentimiento y la leal sobriedad de la expresión. Es hondamente nacional el espíritu democrático encarnado en ese "buen vasallo que no tiene buen señor"" (MENENDEZ PIDAL 1913, 112-113). 2

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constitutive elements of identity. Realism, 1 sobriety, nobility, loyalty to the family, dignity, are other elements of this Spanish-Castillian "identity."2 In a certain sense, the closeness to one's own world is one characteristic, too. This interpretation marked the "canonized" view of this text, setting an end to the variety of interpretations in former times and mainly throughout the 19th century. But this interpretation fixed also a certain view of what is Spanish: the essence of Spain lies in Castilla and can be understood looking to this part of a very diverse country: Castilla becomes in this way more than a part — it is identical to Spain. This identification is a simplification - as is usual in establishing identities. Menéndez Pidal is, of course, not alone in this opinion 4 (if he had been only a voice crying in the desert, he could not have reached the success he did). He expresses in philology what others expressed in literature. And indeed, the writers of the so-called 98-generation were discovering Castilla in their poems and travel books and essays. One of them 5 invented this appellation for a group of writers who were preoccupied with discovering the essence of Spain. 1 This will be one of the most successful characteristics in describing Spanish literature: it is considered as full of realism. And the Cantar is - and this marks a difference to the French chansons de geste - marked by this realism: For Menéndez Pidal the Poema del Cid is written in "absoluto realismo de concepción y de estilo. Y así el primer monumento conservado de las tres literaturas peninsulares es la primera obra capital de ese realismo que tanto domina en el arte español, y que, con diferencias de épocas y de cultura, se encontrará en grandes genios de los siglos de oro" (MENENDEZ PIDAL 1910, 281). (See also the chapter "Verismo y verosimilismo" in MENENDEZ PIDAL 1964, 70ff.). This tradition has been applied decades later to very different authors. About Garcia Lorca, for example, wrote a well-known philologist: "García Lorca señala a su vez cómo el sentido de la realidad es innato a cada español" (CIPLIJAUSKAITE 344). Some other poets from the same generation as Garcia Lorca had expressed similar opinions: for Pedro Salinas, Garcia Lorca is synonymous of the universalization of "el verdadero realismo español, de alma y cuerpo" (SALINAS 1941, 310); for Gerardo Diego, García Lorca represents "el realismo popular a la manera tradicional española" (DIEGO 1969, 6).

This can be considered also as a follow-up of the German Romantic tradition. In his Geschichte der alten und neuen Literaturen, Friedrich Schlegel describes the Spanish-Castillian character -which for him is identical- as follows: "Geist der Ehre, der strengen Sitte, und des festen Glaubens" (SCHLEGEL 1815, 265). 3 See GALVAN 1999. 4 He is also in the tradition of German Romanticism. Schlegel wrote about the Cantar: "Spanien besitzt in dem historischen Heldengedichte von seinem CID, einem eigentümlichen Vorzug vor vielen andern Nationen; dieses ist die Gattung der Poesie, welche auf Nationalgefühl und Charakter eines Volkes am nächsten und am mächtigsten wirkt. Ein einziges Andenken, wie das vom CID, ist mehr wert für eine Nation, als ganze Büchersäle voll von Geisteswerken des bloßen Witzes ohne nationalen Gehalt (...). Es ist der reine, treuherzige, edle, altkastilianische Geist" (SCHLEGEL 1805, 207). And Ferdinand Joseph Wolf follows him when he describes the essentials of the Cantar as follows: "Gerade das "Poema del Cid" (...) ist seiner inneren wesentlichen Beschaffenheit wegen am geeignetsten, die Darstellung castilischen Lebens und Dichtens zu eröffnen. In ihm sehen wir den Grundtypus des alt-castilischen Nationalcharakters noch ganz rein von aller fremdartigen Beimischung ausgesprochen (...). In ihm sehen wir dessen Grundzüge: Selbständigkeit des Einzelnen, Liebe des Weibes und der Familie und die Treue des Vasallen gegen seinen Herrn" (WOLF 55: 263-264). 5 It was Azorin (see AZORIN 1975).

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The designation, which links this concern with the year in which Spain lost its last colonies,1 was not accepted by all the members of the group, 2 but it is not particularly relevant here; what is relevant is the fact that they really write about Castilla as a symbol, as essence of Spain. Their discovery of this identity has to do, in a certain sense, with an approach from abroad, because all of them are from "periphery" — they are not Castillian: Antonio Machado was born in Andalusia, Pío Baroja, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maeztu in the Bask Country, Azorin near Valencia by the Mediterranean Sea, and Ramón del Valle-Inclán's roots (if he can be considered as a member of the generation) in Galicia. But, in fact, they deliver the vision in which Castilla is the core of Spain, 3 has realized the Atlantic vocation and must live now with its own misery, precisely because in history it has forgotten itself, thinking only in realizing the "American dream." The important values of purity, of honor and dignity, of non-contamination 4 are exhausted. The view of the landscape is plenty of admiration 5 for this hard and gray earth, 6 which has produced hard, austere people, able in the past to do great things in history. 7 But now it is time for hard work without any fruit, 8 time of decadence, of silence, 9 of endless passing of time, 10 of monotony, 11 without any sense for

1 Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. It is not really clear just how important this concept has been for them since it is difficult to find ; n their writings references to this event. 2 Baroja was against it. 3 "Castilla, que hizo a España" (MACHADO 160). We present the vision of Castilla from the poet Antonio Machado as representative of this generation. According to the Machado's poetic vision, some times he expresses not a "collective" view from Castilla or the people as whole, but individuals, living in the Castillian environment, of which they are representative. Obviously, these lines do not intend to present an exhaustive analysis of Machado's poetry. 4 "Castilla, mística y guerrera, Castilla la gentil, humilde y brava, Castilla del desdén y de la fuerza" (MACHADO 214). 5 "Hermosa tierra de España!" (MACHADO 95). "Soria, ciudad castellana, tan bella! baio la luna" (MACHADO 173). 6 "La infértil tierra" (MACHADO 105). "Esta castellana tierra que barren los vientos de la adusta sierra" (MACHADO 127). "Desnuda está la tierra" (MACHADO 141). "Y otra vez roca y roca, pedregales desnudos y pelados serrijones (...) ¡Oh tierra ingrata y fuerte, tierra mía! Castilla, tus decrépitas ciudades! La agria melancolía que puebla tus sombrías soledades! Castilla varonil, (...) Castilla del dolor y de la guerra, tierra inmortal, Castilla de la muerte!" (MACHADO 157). 7 See the poem "A orillas del Duero" (MACHADO 15 Iff). 8 "En páramos malditos trabaja, sufre y yerra" (MACHADO 153). 9 "Hoy sólo quedan lágrimas para llorar. No hay que llorar, silencio!" (MACHADO 137). 10 See the topic od the watch in Antonio Machado's poetry (for example "El viajero" in: MACHADO 87: "En la tristeza del hogar golpea el tictac del reloj. Todos callamos.") "Pasan las horas de hastío por la estancia familiar, el amplio cuarto sombrío donde yo empecé a soñar. Del reloj arrinconado, que en la penumbra clarea, el tictac acompasado odiosamente golpea. Dice la monotonía del agua clara al caer: hoy es lo mismo que ayer" (MACHADO 128). "Clarea el reloj arrinconado, y u tic'tic, olvidado por repetido, golpea. Tic-tic, tic-tic... Ya te he oído. Tic-tic, tic-tic... Siempre igual, monótono y aburrido. Tic-tic, tic-tic, el latido de un corazón de metal. En estos pueblos, se escucha el latir del tiempo? No" (MACHADO 219). 11 See "Recuerdo infantil" from Antonio Machado: "Monotonía de lluvia tras los cristales" (MACHADO 90). "Una tarde de soledad y hastío" (MACHADO 122).

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future, plenty of nostalgia 1 but without fulfillment of desires 2 : algo que pasa y que nunca llega.3 The vision is not an enthusiastic one: Castilla seems exhausted after a glorious history, 4 closed in itself and not open for new challenges,5 a wasted, inhuman landscape.6 It seems that the time has stopped there. And now it is the time to discover the inner history, to forget the outside dimension and the great commitments, to abandon America — the Atlantic way — as the historical vocation. 7 It is time to live in the own territory, to realize there the great adventures (like the Cid 8 and, in a significant mixture, Don Quixote), and the quietness is deplored: America is no more there, the last generations have lived without thinking, planning, working for the future, and now the time has come to awake. In any case, Castilla is Spain or — better — Spain is Castilla, the Spanish history seems identical to Castillian history, 9 the Spanish problem seems to be the problem of this Castilla which has neglected the own world by working outside, by following the direction of the Duero, the great river in Castilla, 10 going to the Ocean. 11

"Y el demonio de los sueños abrió el jardín encantado de ayer" (MACHADO 101). "Me dijo un alba de la primavera: Yo florecí en tu corazón sombrío ha muchos aflos" (MACHADO 108). "Pregunté a la tarde de abril que moría: Al fin la alegría se acerca a mi casa? La tarde de abril sonrió: La alegría pasó por tu puerta -y luego, sombría: Pasó por tu puerta. Dos veces no pasa" (MACHADO 117). "Juventud nunca vivida, quién te volviera a soñar!" (MACHADO 144). "Buscando una ilusión Cándida y vieja", but there is only "aroma de ausencia" (MACHADO 92). 3 MACHADO 94. 4 See again the poem "A orillas del Duero" from Antonio Machado (MACHADO 151ff). 5 "Castilla miserable, ayer dominadora, envuelta en sus andrajos desprecia cuanto ignora" (MACHADO 152). " "Son tierras para el águila, un trozo de planeta por donde cruza errante la sombra de Caín" (MACHADO 154) n In Antonio Machado's poetry a common topic is the Spaniard who was in America and has returned (the so-called "indiano"), often oíd and melancholic (see for example, again, his poem "El viajero": MACHADO 87). 8 "Castilla no es aquella tan generosa un día, cuando Myo Cid Rodrigo el de Vivar volvía" (MACHADO 152). And the last generations have not made history: "Prisionero en la Arcadia del presente, le aburre; sólo el humo del tabaco simula algunas sombras en su frente. Este hombre no es de ayer ni de es de mañana, sino de nunca; de la cepa hispana no es el fruto maduro ni podrido, es una fruta vana de aquella España que pasó y no ha sido, esa que hoy tiene la cabeza cana" (MACHADO 225). "El vano ayer angendrará un mañana vacío" (MACHADO 232). 10 "El Duero cruza el corazón de roble de Iberia y de Castilla" (MACHADO 152). 11 "Atónitos palurdos sin danzas ni canciones, que aún van, abandonando el mortecino hogar, como tus largos ríos, Castilla, hacia la mar" (MACHADO 152). "¿Acaso como tú y por siempre, Duero, irá corriendo hacia la mar Castilla?" (MACHADO 158). "¡Castilla, España de los largos ríos que el mar no ha visto y corre hacia los mares!" (MACHADO 255).

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The source for this model is not the nostalgia of some right-wing intellectuals: it appears especially clear in Antonio Machado, and he is clearly left-oriented: he died in France on the way to exile, leaving Franco-Spain. It is the model of a generation with some common preoccupations, with common views, with common images, independent of their political attitudes. These views have become a part of the canonized history of Spanish literature, because this group is considered as one of the most important groups in literature in the 20th century, being introduced in grade school and high school. For generations, they have contributed to the formation of the collective identity, to the provision of points of reference with which the question of identity can be answered. Once again, Castilla, the inner Spain, appears as condensation of the identity. And what about the Mediterranean sphere? It must be recognized that in Spanish literature - just as in other European literatures - at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century (also before the 98-generation and contemporary to it, following the romantic stream) there is a renaissance of regional literatures, either using less diffused languages1 or dialects2 or the use of the Castillian language having regional themes. In some cases, it meant the renewal of literatures that were important in former times, but which lacked continuity (this is the case of Galician, which was one of the most important literatures on the Spanish territory in Middle ages, or Catalonian literature); in other cases it meant the beginning of a regional literature. The great period for Catalonian literature was the so-called Renaixenga, came with such leading figures as Jacinto Verdaguer (and, later, Joan Maragall), Rosalía de Castro, in the case of Galician literature, and Gabriel y Galán, and others, with the first efforts of a literature from Extremadura (a region bordering Portugal). It was not only poets who discovered the exotic value of the localism and regionalism. 3 . Great novels are also associated with certain regions: this is certainly the case of the works of José María Pereda with Cantabria, on the Atlantic coast, of José Valera, with Andalusia, or of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, with Valencia.

1

y Like Catalonian or Galician. o Like the dialect in Extremadura.

Interesting is the interpretation of Hans-Joachim Lope, for whom the regionalism is like the exoticism of nearness (see LOPE).

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In this context, there is also a presence of the Mediterranean area in literature. Gabriel Miró's novels are like a song to the Mediterranean area,1 in which one quality is distinguished above all: the light. The Mediterranean means light; 2 the world is full of light and color. 3 From there it is easy to establish a connection to a world which appeals to all the senses, experienced in "synaesthetical" fullness, 4 with special intensity of smells, 5 a world in which the moment is rich in sensations, of vital-sensual experiences. 6 The scenarios of his novels mainly take place in his own region; nevertheless, he is oriented to un modernismo universal o europeo? And he believes in the influence of the Mediterranean on creativity. 8 But there is no theory, no projection of this world onto a collective identity. No effort is made to indicate in which way this element has contributed to the formation of "Spain." Neither have the Catalan authors, whose nearness to the Mediterranean area — not only geographically but also historically — could be the starting point for such reflections, taken this intellectual path: their subjects are others who are often strongly tied up with Spanish destiny and with Catalonia's 1 In reality, he refers often to his region, Alicante and the Spanish Mediterranean coast: one author has written that in Miro's work "el paisaje levantino lo es todo: decorado, tema, hombres, estilo" (BAQUERO 11). But in Figuras de la Pasión del Señor, he applies his view of the Mediterranean world to the region in which Jesus lived. There is, therefore, a kind of vision of the Mediterranean surroundings as whole. The examples in the following footnotes are taken from this book, as evidence of this affirmation. 2 For the descriptions of heaven in Miro's work, see RAMOS, 175-177. 3 From his own experience, he wrote: "En mi ciudad, desde que nacemos, se nos llenan los ojos de azul de las aguas. Ese azul nos pertenece como una porción de nuestro heredamiento" (MIRÓ 1949, 756). Significant is the first sentence in Figuras de la Pasión del Señor. "Levantaron las mujeres sus ojos al azul de la tarde" (MIRÓ 1928, 9). Cf. the numerous evocations of the sun, the heaven, the light: "Se doraba de sol viejo la ribera de Genezareth" (12); "Y quitóse el koufieh para recibir la gloria del día en toda su frente (...). El lago era un óvalo candente; y en el aire de oro tendían sus alas las barcas pescadoras" (17); "Las eminencias de la ciudad santa ardían como antorchas de sol (...). Jerusalén resplandece de una azulada blancura" (30f). 4 "Todas las cumbres de Israel relumbraban como fuentes ungidas, llenas de emoción gloriosa de todo paisaje, coronadas de guirnaldas de golondrinas y palomas. De los vergeles y granjas del collado de los olivos, y de los jardines de poniente, llegaban olores de abundancia y de suaviedad (...). Como en un descanso del éxodo, el aire está traspasado de un polvo dorado y de balidos de los rebaños pascuales" (MIRÓ 1928, 32). For an extensive analysis see RAMOS 1970, chapter "Las sensaciones", p. 270ff. 5 "Ya salía foscor de los hondos y cañadas, y se enfriaban los olores. Olor de viña verde, olor de sembrado maduro, de gruíales y promesa" (MIRÓ 1928, 34). 6 Very marked is the description of Jesus' feeling at the Last Supper: "Por las abiertas ventanas se acercaba a su vida la caricia de la noche. Y probó en sí mismo los sabores de la grandeza del escogido (...). Le rodeaba una Creación perfumada, vaporosa, de sueños de jardines y luna. En todo pasa un delicado temblor de goce" (MIRÓ 1928, 42). 7 HODDIE, 11. 8 In one of his novels, he writes about the proganist: "Comenzó Sigiienza una encendida alabanza de su Levante, de las mañanas doradas y dulces como el panal, de estos crepúsculos de misticismo y exaltación. Y cuando esta serenidad y esta belleza hallan un alma levantina propicia a su gracia, entonces surge un artista maravilloso y elegido" (MIRÓ 1949, 632-633).

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role in it than with the openness to the Mediterranean Sea. 1 Joan Maragall, for example, one of the most important representatives of Catalonian literature at the beginning of the 20 t h century, includes the Mediterranean dimension in his view of the Peninsula, terra entre mar, Iberia"2 and specifically of Catalonia. Castilla's identity is seen precisely in the lack of contact with the sea; this is the reason for Castilla's solitude and sadness, 3 and also for its rejection of the European cosmopolitism, and consequently for its backwardness. 4 Nevertheless, his project of a renewal for Catalonia, which has to search for the intellectual independence of a "dead" Madrid, 5 is oriented to Europe, 6 without a specific Mediterranean dimension, although he describes Catalonia as linked to the Pyrenees and to the clear and open Mediterranean Sea. 7 It is seen in the traditional manner of opposition, in that case to Castilla. 8 One author of the 98-generation, Azorin, quotes Maragall, agreeing with his explanation of Castilla's solitude and melancholy 9 : it is marked by

Jacinto Verdaguer, for example, dedicated a long poem to Atlantis, the world which has disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean and how Columbus wanted to discover it, realizing again the "Iberian vocation." Manuel de Falla began to compose a symphonic poem based on this work, but he could not finish the work, which was completed by his disciple Ernesto Halffter. Another important poem of Verdaguer, his "Catalan" work Canigd is related with the fights of the Christian against the Arabs - again the Iberian topic, the inner problem. In the beginnings of the Renaixença, within the Romanticism, Aribau has dedicated in the different journals he had led strong interest to the connections to the European currents (El Europeo was the significant title of one of these publications). In his famous "Himne ibéric" he mentions the relation of different Spanish regions with the sea (see MARAGALL, vol. 1, 173f.), which for him is synonymous of freedom: "el mar (...) és un etern deler de llibertat" (MARAGALL, vol. 1, 174). The quotation above is from there, p. 174. "Sola, sola enmig dels camps, / terra endins, ampia és Castella. / I está triste, que sols ella / no pot veure els mars llunyans. / Parleu-li del mar, germans!" (MARAGALL, vol. 1, 174). "Los progresos materiales inducen al cosmopolitismo, y Castilla, metida en un centro de naturaleza africana, sin vistas al mar, es refractaria al cosmopolitismo europeo" (MARAGALL, vol. 2, 631). 5 According to an author of his time, he wanted "fugir de la mort, la qual, per al cas, va aparellada amb el veil esperit de l'Espanya morta, representada per l'Espanya oficial" (VALLS ITABERNER, 1238). " "El pensament espanyol és mort (...). A Catalunya hi ha quelcom de moviment intel.lectual europeu, viu, espontani, jove" (Article "La independència de Catalunya" -1897- in MARAGALL, vol. 1, 739f.); "el dia que la nostra independència intel.lectual sija complerta, lo demés será lo de menos, i Catalunya formará part d'Europa" (MARAGALL, vol. 1, 741). 7 "Los adustos Pirineos descienden en pétreo oleaje apaciguándose a medida que se aproximan al dulce mar latino, de claro horizonte: en el horizonte del mar hay las claridades de Italia, de Grecia" (Article "Alma catalana" -1904- in MARAGALL, vol. 2, 681). 8 Catalanism is for him "un amor y un desamor: un amor a Cataluña, que es desamor a Castilla (en el sentido de España castellana)" (Article "El sentimiento catalanista" -1902- in MARAGALL, vol. 2, 630). 9 "Un poeta que vivía junto al Mediterráneo ha plañido a Castilla porque no puede ver el mar. (...) No puede ver el mar la solitaria y melancólica Castilla" (AZORIN 1973, 127). From the "sadness" in Maragall to "melancholy" in Azorin: a very significant change for the "fin de siècle" attitude.

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dryness, silence, dust of landscape 1 and people, 2 instead of the openness and immensity of the sea.3 And then came the arrival of the next generation, 4 the so-called 27generation with Federico García Lorca, Pedro Salinas, the Nobel Prize Vicente Aleixandre, Luis Cernuda, Gerardo Diego, Dámaso Alonso, Jorge Guillén, Rafael Alberti and a large list of so-called "second class poets" who could have been literary leaders in other times — but (history is often unfair) who have experienced the unlucky situation to write at the same time in which one of the best groups of poets in Spain was publishing. 5 It is here that we have a new imagological discovery: Andalusia. It becomes now the center of attention, the core of poetic inspiration, the essence of Spanish idiosyncrasy. Andalusia, the "eternal" Andalusia, 6 here becomes identical to the Gypsy world, with the "flamenco" as their music, 7 with a mysterious, vitalistic world, plenty of symbols and profound connections. This has been the interpretation Federico García Lorca also made — surprisingly - b y his contemporaries 8 (against his own occasional resistance 9 ). The vision of Andalusia as core of Spain has entered the history of literature 10 — very successfully indeed.

1 "Por la ventanita de este sobrado columbramos la llanura árida, polvorienta; el aire seco, caliginoso" (AZORÍN 1973, 132). 2 "Estos labriegos secos, de faces polvorientas, cetrinas, no contemplan el mar" (AZORÍN 1973, 128). 3 "El mar se aleja inmenso, azul, verdoso, pardo, hacia la inmensidad" (AZORÍN 1973, 127). 4 The model of generations for dividing the literary history, which was developped in Germany without any succes (see above all PETERSEN), has been successful in Spain at least for two movements in the 20th century. 5 Some of these poets must be expressly named: Juan José Domenchina, Manuel Altolaguirre, Ernestina de Champourcín, Emilio Prados, León Felipe, in a certain sense José Bergamín, and, a little bit later, Miguel Hernandez, among others. 6 It is possible to find expressions like "sensibilidad andaluza de todos los tiempos" (GONZALEZ I 326). 7 Especially the "cante jondo", the most profound and misteryous part of flamenco. Federico García Lorca wrote a "Poema del cante jondo." 8 See BANUS 1989. 9 See the letter from Garcia Lorca to Jorge Guillén in GARCIA LORCA 1968: 1614), rejecting the opinion that he is a gypsy poet. Nevertheless, some other poets of his generation are speaking about this point: for Salinas, Lorca achieves "suma grandeza [...] cuando se sume su poesía en el mundo de lo gitanesco" (SALINAS 1958, 518). For Alonso, he expresses "el alma de la España andaluza, gitana y romana, patente y densa" (ALONSO 1956, 279), and for Cernuda, García Lorca is "como un lírico mercader miliunanochesco" (CERNUDA 1931, 12). This "remoto e inconsciente dejo de poesía oriental" (CERNUDA 1938, 14) is responsible of "la riqueza de su visión y el artificio [...], lo recamado de la expresión y lo exuberante de la emoción" así como de "la manera natural de expresar su sensualidad" (CERNUDA 1957, 181). Salinas speaks about his "poesía entrañablemente andaluza e hispánica" (SALINAS 1941, 309 s.). 10 See BANUS 1989a. In a history of literature one can read the following from "Andalusien, das stolz für Spanien an sich stehen darf" WITTSCHIER 126.

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Andalusia seems to be the exact opposition to Castilla 1 due to the color, superficiality and gratia.2 It seems typically meridional3 and connected with the Arabs. 4 And indeed, many literary historians are speaking expressly about this opposition. 5 It is important to remember that one of the masters of this group of poets was the composer Manuel de Falla. 6 He was well aware of the efforts made by the folklorists at the end of the 19th century 7 to rediscover the Flamenco; but after that he experienced the exoticism of Andalusia during his stay in Paris, where music and literature "invented" this exotic world. From Spain via Paris to Spain — it is not uncommon in Spanish cultural history that the own past is rediscovered abroad 8 — and, then, with the connotations of exoticism. The Andalusian world is again seen as being mixed with the oriental world: the auto-image repeats the hetero-image, and the antagonism of the auto-images is a mirror of the antagonism of the hetero-images. 9

The Andalusian literature is described in histories of literature as marked by "tendencia a la ornamentación, nota colorista y lenguaje preferentemente metafórico" (DIEZ-ECHARRI 505), "gusta (...) más de los valores formales que de los morales e ideológicos" (GONZALEZ I 326), "Die typischen Merkmale der andalusischen Dichtung (sind) Wohlklang, Musikalität, quellende Fülle, oder besser noch, Üppigkeit" (ANTON ANDRES 114), "derroche de luz y de sonoridad" (GARCIA LOPEZ 635), "gracia y aire del verso; gesto de desgana y elegante hastio ante la vida, y, sobre todo, sabor, autenticidad y belleza" (DEL RIO 430). 2 In histories of literature ,it is possible to find this term in different languages and synonyms applied to the "Andalusian" literature; some examples include: "unnachahmliche andalusische Grazie" (PETRICONI 136), "l'inexprimable et 'inexportable' grace andalouse" (MERIMEE 588), "grazia andalusa" (MANCINI 670), "sal andaluza" (GARCIA LOPEZ 216), "donaire andaluz" (AULLON 215), "gracia andaluza" (VALBUENA 578). 3 An historian of literature writes that it is an expression of "fantasía típicamente meridional" (DIEZ-ECHARRI 1179). Antón Andrés writes that the Andalusian writers are "getrieben von ihrem südlichen Temperament" (ANTON ANDRES 42). cf. "Herrera es un buen representante de la tendencia meridional de España a la imagen sonora, colorista y llena de plasticidad" (VALVERDE 46). 4 The characteristics of the literature written by Andalusian authors evoke "un atavismo árabe" (VALBUENA 578); "la vieja ascendencia árabe de la raza se acusa en cierta atmósfera de melancolía (...) y en ese tono fatalista" (DIEZ-ECHARRI 1180). 5 "Guillén y Salinas, no se olvide, son castellanos; los poetas a quienes ahora vamos a referirnos (Alberti y García Lorca) han salido de Andalucía, y de allí han sacado la mejor materia prima para sus versos" (DIEZ-ECHARRI 1311); Mérimée speaks about "différences appréciables et qui, plus ou moins, persistent à toutes les époques", for him, Andalusians are characterised by "imagination" or "profusion des couleurs", and Castillian by "measure", "la justesse et la sobriété," this is in his eyes expression of an "opposition entre les caractères des deux régions" (MERIMEE 255). ^ This is only one example of the insufficiently considered importance of music on literature. 7 For example, the father of Antonio Machado, José Machado. 8 It was German romanticism that led Spaniards to rediscover, in the 19th century, their baroque drama with authors like Calderón, Lope or Tirso de Molina (creator of the ubiquitous literary figure of Don Juan). 9 See the opinion of Alfred Owen Aldridge: "One country's image of another is likely to depend on its image of itself' (ALDRIDGE 278).

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No one in Spain would recognize his or her country in the dual and paradox faces of Philipp II and Carmen, but the auto-images which have been successful in the development of the own cultural identity, in the selfdefinition as "we-group" 1 reproduce the typification of both simplifications: Castilla or Andalusia seen as the fusion with exotic elements. Here, the Mediterranean area is only the carrier for this exotic element. But in the end, both Spanish regions - Castilla and Andalusia — apparently opposite to one another, are not so far away from each other, because in Andalusia there is also the spirit of melancholy. 2 Thus they are both described as profound, melancholic,3 mysterious, tragic,4and closed. In the collective consciousness, the Mediterranean element is less important than the openness to the Atlantic Ocean or than the exotic Andalusian mixture. At this point, it is appropriate to look at the political situation of the last years: when, while becoming member of the European Communities, Spain offered certain advantages due to its geo-strategic and historical links. One of them was Latin America; the other was the reinforcement of the Mediterranean dimension. The hope that the membership of Spain could improve the quality of relations with the Latin American market (and world) has been only partially fulfilled. The more comprehensive desire was that this bridge to Latin America could contribute to the stabilization of this continent (also via integration, for which the European Communities could be the model) has unfortunately not become reality. After some decades of positive economic and political evolution, the situation in Latin America today is again chaotic. With respect to the second point, the Mediterranean dimension, Spain has worked seriously: under the Spanish Presidency of the Union, the EuroMediterranean Conference was organized in Barcelona. Moreover, some steps for peace in the Mediterranean area around Israel, Palestine and the Arab countries were introduced. In 2002, again under the Spanish Presidency of the Union, the "spirit of Barcelona" was renewed. The problem is that these political efforts are neither based in an intellectual and literary tradition nor in 1

The expression is taken from GURVITCH 196s, as quoted by SKILJAN. Only one example among several: "Gerade diese Schwermut wiirde durchaus einer weniger bekannten Seite des andalusischen Volkscharakters entsprechen, der 'tristeza andaluza"' (PETRICONI 13). 3 "La tristeza fundamental del español, pueblo triste si los hay, pasaba subterránea bajo su obra" (CERNUDA 1938, 19), wrote the important poet Luis Cernuda speaking about GarciaLorca. 4 The historian García López wrote: "Lejos del colorismo superficial, García Lorca nos da aquí una interpretación lírica que no se detiene en lo externo, sino que llega al fondo misterioso y trágico del mundo andaluz" (GARCIA LOPEZ, 688). 2

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a collective consciousness. And here a reflection about the double face of "images" could be added. Images are not convincing, because they often are simplifications. They are often also based in opposition of "we" and "the others" which are considered as a danger for ourselves. 1 Nevertheless these "images" contribute to the creation of this sense of a "we." While this sense can serve as the basis, of course, for hatred towards the other, it can also be the foundation for enthusiasm, identification with a collective effort and, in the end, support for political measures. With the advent of World War II, Western Europe recognized how deadly could be the images involved in nationalism and how images of an enemy — outside and, more risky, inside the society 2 — can be created. European integration also could be interpreted as an effort to substitute images with dialogue. However, at the end of the 20th century, for example in the former Yugoslavia, we have observed, with surprise and horror, how "images of exclusion" have been used in a manner we thought had been eradicated in Europe. The question is whether there are other images than these "images of exclusion." These types of images were typical of the 19th century, during the heyday of nationalism: it is important to remember that it was in the 19th century that the 18th-century nationalistic fervor reached its height with the consecration of the nation-state as the almost exclusive agent of political, as well as cultural, life. 3 Moreover, the growing national identity at this time needed elements to define the people upon which the nation-state was at least supposedly based. In fact, States have tended to consider cultural unity as an important part of political unity. 4 Inherent to the process of nation-building 1 The "establishment of group identity" is often made "by means of differentiation from other group identities" (FIRCHOW 1986, 185). Indeed: "According to the sociological hypothesis, every We-group implies necessarily the existence of the others, and it is based upon the distinction between us and the others" (SKILJAN 1998, 828, again with reference to GURVITCH 1966). In this way, "the notion of alterity became synonymous to that of antagonism" (JENKINS-SOFOS 1996a, 286). Strath expresses the same from another perspective: "Identity construction is a matter of a very fragile balance (...) between 'inward' and 'outward'" (STRATH 41). This has produced often definitions "in negative terms" (BOYCE 306), that is, by indicating what "we are not" and by excluding those who "are not." Indeed, "concepts like nationhood (...) have an inherent capacity to 'exclude' as much as to 'include'" (JENKINS-SOFOS 1996, 2), which means, "including the construction of images of undesirable 'Others'" (BOYCE 305). y See, for instance, the very impressive example in Max Frisch's Andorra. 3 Cf. GUERRA. 4 "El Estado nacional ha nacido a través de una lógica impuesta sobre la contraposición entre una mayoría étnica, identificada por una historia común, una cultura común y lengua (...) y las llamadas 'minorías étnicas', consideradas como marginales y peligrosas para un desarrollo armonioso del Estado. El Estado nacional ha sido construido sobre la base de una explícita e intencional negación del Estado-multinacional" (DONATI 14).

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seems to have been cultural homogenization, 1 giving rise to a "cultural identity." "The collective identity finds its expression in symbols" 2 : it requires shared symbols, "iconic devices" 3 and a common history. 4 From a more skeptical point of view it is possible to argue that nationalism needs the Macht der Mythen.5 And cohesion within the nation-state, in the ideal model, required not only cultural unity, but also the referent "foreign" as a screen to reflect that cohesion. The definition "who we are" was made mainly in terms of "who we are not": the really important definition of the identity 6 is fundamentally negative as delimitation against "others" and a constant need to find those "others" to stigmatize and exclude. Following this argumentation, nationalist exacerbation has often led to the study of national culture in isolation although, in reality, it has been developed in constant contact and permeability with cultural movements beyond their borders. This form of comprehension of collective identity corresponded to the looking at personal identity - following one typical idea of the 18th century, the conviction that there is a correspondence between the personal and the collective level. There are several examples in literature showing that the search for identity and its realization was, for a long time, a key argument in many books up until the crisis of the second half of the 19th century and then more intensively at the end of the 20th century. 7 In this sense, literature can assume the function that Peter E. Firchow has described: to contribute to the "establishment of group identity by means of differentiation from other group identities." 8 But the philosophy of the 20th century, at least one of its directions, has gone further, 9 developing the philosophy of dialogue. According to authors like Martin Buber or Emmanuel Lévinas, the experience of myself includes the encounter with "the other." The identity is no more constituted in

1

See BIRNBAUM 41. WENTURIS 188. On culture as a symbol, see the classic text by CASSIRER. 3 PEREZ-SOLORZANO 118. 4 For the common perception of the history as element of the cultural identity, see SMITH 1925. 5 So the expressive title of BRUSIS with an impressive description of the problems of these myths in Slovic-Hungarian relations. 6 "Mit der Frage nach der Identität ist das elementare Konstruktionsprinzip moderner Gesellschaften thematisiert" (WEIDENFELD 14). 7 Especially clear are the examples quoted in the work Uno, nessuno e cento milla from Pirandello and Tonio Kröger from Thomas Mann. 8 FIRCHOW 185. 9 In others, for instance in existentialism, it seems that the problem of isolation of the individual has been exacerbated more then before. This can derive to the massive problems of lack of communication that are present in a part of modern literature. 2

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opposition to "the otherness," but in dialogue with it. 1 Could there be here as well a new approach for the experience of collective identity? If so, it would probably have to underline the exchange as constitutive for identities, the creative mixture, the cultural metissage. In another article, I have expressed my firm conviction that — far away from the "essentialist" search 2 for European identity 3 — this is the most adequate way to define the European culture: as a follow-up of encounters, of exchanges, of influences, of crossborder transmissions. 4 Moreover, it is probably the case that culture has always been a community of receptions, of messages received and changed throughout history. How far is this perspective present in the views of Spain we have thus far mentioned? The Castillian view of Spain underlines — in both forms, as auto-image and hetero-image — precisely the opposite attitude: the closeness. Looking from abroad at this Castillian Spain, the perspective includes one element that apparently explains this closeness: the religious predominance in the history of Spain. This element does not play an irrelevant role in the view of the 98-generation, 5 but its members underline the closeness, too: the lack of openness is seen as one explanation for the decadence and, at the same time, as its expression. Oriental Spain includes the encounter: the cultural phenomena in Southern Spain are the consequence precisely of the influence of foreign elements. But this exotic mixture has produced again a closed world, plenty of mystery, hermetic and very difficult to be understood if you are not part of it. Ultimately, in both cases, there is closeness instead of openness. 6 The final thesis of this very provisional approach to this topic is that openness for 1 Also literary works expressing this conviction are especially clear in Le petit prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). 9 "Im Rahmen der Kulturdifferenzhypothese gibt es einerseits die Vorstellung, kulturelle Identität sei etwas Essentielles, das in seiner Substanz fixiert ist. Darauf gründet die Auffassung, daß kulturelle Differenzen bestehen, die sich nicht überwinden lassen" (BUROW 739). Auf der Suche nach europäischer Identidad" - "Searching the European Identity": so the title of HENRICHSMEYER. 4 See BANUS 2000. This is probably related to the personal attitudes of the authors. 6 In a famous article: "Federico García Lorca y la expresión de lo español", the well-known poet from the 27-generation Dámaso Alonso expresses that "Spain is differents": "Salió España más agria y más suya, más cerrada, más trágica, más obsesionante que las otras naciones" (ALONSO 1952, 271). "El color de lo nacional impregna hasta sus últimas partículas [...] Terrible intensidad de lo peculiar, violencia casi brutal de su exteriorización: he ahí la presencia de España. Es ése el genio arrebatado de lo español, que algunas veces estalla produciendo extraños seres contorsionados, visionarios" (ALONSO 1952, 271 s.), "verdaderos estallidos de sustancia hispánica" in that one can find the expression of "ese sentido estricto de cerrada peculiar expresión autóctona" (ALONSO 1952, 272). Therefore, there is a sort of reader who is unable to understand this literature: those readers who look towards Europe: "España y su gente son un 'sí' y un 'no' contundentes y gigantescos que no admiten componendas europeas" (CERNUDA 1938, 19).

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the Mediterranean dimension and its being included as part of the constituent elements of the collective consciousness could underline precisely the dimension of dialogue and undermine the temptation of closeness. Obviously, the necessary condition for it is to realize that the Mediterranean Sea has, for some time, been - at least at the intellectual level - a space of exchange. It is obvious, too, that probably over the last few decades, this element has partially disappeared and that we have found around the Mediterranean hermetically closed borders: the Iron Curtain had an effect on this area, creating a wall that included the Mediterranean coastlines. Today, the conflict in the Israel-Palestinian area and some fundamentalist attitudes are building new walls for worlds between which or for which dialogue is already impossible. On the sea lies a divided island with borders that fortunately have become very uncommon in some parts of Europe. We cannot really affirm that the Mediterranean area is a paradise of dialogue and exchange. Throughout history it has been the stage for numerous wars and destruction. Thus we cannot assume the simple legend of a friendly, open, peaceful Mediterranean. It should not be forgotten, however, that the Mediterranean area has been the stage for encounters that have been decisive for the history of civilization. I would like to point out two of them. It is in the Mediterranean area that the Roman Empire met the Hellenistic culture; a joint cultural phenomenon encompassing a huge area, the consequence of which was the reception of various aspects of Greek culture and in which for example, the Library of Alexandria was a catalyst. This cultural basis includes myths and tales related not only to the small Greek world but involving many other places in the Mediterranean: Troy is the scene for the epic history 'par excellence' in the Ancient world, a history transmitted under the perspective of the winners, but with respect for the great Trojan characters. The difficult travel to Troy, including the history of Iphigenia, and the long return of one of the heroes of Troy, Ulysses, present the Mediterranean as a mythical sea in which persons become heroes. 1 The second heroic city will be Thebes with the history of Oedipus and Antigone. This is the enormous area in which these roots of European Culture are located. But it is not only literary history that underlines the centrality of this world whose myths and characters were to be diffused all over Europe. The

1 In other interpretations of the Odyssey, Ulysses did not remain in Ithaca but starts again and again to travel in the Mediterranean. He died when trying to leave the Mediterranean at the columns of Hercules. See the story told by Ulysses himself in Dante's Divina Commedia.

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Roman Empire, eclectic in cultural (and religious) affairs and incredibly efficient in administrative affairs was to assume this mythical and heroic Mediterranean heritage giving to it the diffusion corresponding with the political and administrative borders of the Empire. Against the Hellenic predominance, a very significant change will be introduced into Trojan history: Vergil's Aeneis makes winners from losers and connects the Roman Empire with the Trojan heroes. 1 Under these signs, a remote town in Asia becomes a reference point for the history of European peoples. The encounter of the Roman Empire with Hellenistic culture happened in the Mediterranean. And here another decisive encounter was to be realized: the first generations of Christian intellectuals would come to learn of this Hellenistic-Roman heritage and receive it. The locations of the most important debates in the first centuries of the Christian world would be in Antioch and Alexandria 2 and Hippone: the European world 3 — for which the Christian element seems to be important — will be configured in Asia and Africa, around the Mediterranean Sea. Openness has characterized the attitude of the Christian intellectuals to the legacy they knew perfectly because it was their own legacy. 4 Against the fundamentalism of some, 5 the Church, in the end, has accepted this legacy, entered into a dialogue with it, in a process of reception that, of course, like all reception processes, has included selections and reinterpretations. In decisive moments for cultural history, the Mediterranean area has been an open space in which the intellectuals have written about vital questions, have established — often distant - debates, and have developed 1

For the popularity of the Aeneis during centuries, see BANUS 2000a. These two cities were the scenes of one of the greatest debates of the first centuries of our era: the debate on the single or multiple meaning of biblical text and, when you come down to it, of all text. And the result of this debate was, in my opinion, of immense importance for European culture, which lives from the conviction that a text offers more then only one meaning, that reading is a never-ending adventure of discovering ever-new connotations and meanings. 3 It is well known that Edgar Morin has defined European identity precisely with the closeness to a dialoguing character (see MORIN 1987. Clearer in MORIN 1988). It seems that this view is a little bit "Euro-centric" and too modern, and that the arrogance that has characterized so many Europeans for so many centuries (and which, by the way, is not rooted in the common story, which rather presents humility) has often thwarted true dialogue. Europe, as WittalDiierkop has studied very convincingly, in modern times "definiert sich (...) in Abwehr konstruierter außereuropäischer Bedrohungen als Schutzdefinition" (WITTAL-DÜERKOP 207). More important examples of the dialoguing character we can find in the quoted times and in the quoted area which is not exclusively European. Morin's opinion becomes at that way to one example more of the temptation that Europe, opposing its vocation to go outside of itself, is ail wrapped up with itself. 2

4 5

See BANUS 2000b. For instance, the very important Tertullian in the last years.

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positions that have been later decisive for the world. Openness has prevailed over closeness. This could be — if we want to end with some pathos — the "Mediterranean vocation." Its lack has produced national images marked by closeness more than by openness.

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1989. "La douceur du foyer. La lírica en 1957 como ejemplo de transmisión de normas sociales", in: Rainer Warning (ed.): Estética de la recepción, pp. 251-275. Madrid. Jenkins, Brian,-Spyros A. Sofos. 1996. "Introduction", in: Brian Jenkins-Spyros A. Sofos: Nation & Identity in Contemporary Europe. London-New York. -Spyros A. Sofos. 1996a. "Conclusion", in: in: Brian Jenkins-Spyros A. — Sofos: Nation & Identity in Contemporary Europe, pp. 285-286. LondonNew York. Juderías, Julián. 1967. La leyenda negra: estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero, Madrid, 15th ed. Juretschke, Hans. 1975. "La recepción de la cultura y ciencia alemana en España durante la época romántica." Estudios románticos, pp. 63-120. Valladolid. — 1989. "El problema de los orígenes del romanticismo español." Historia de España. Vol. 35. Pp. 3-209. Dir. José María Jover. Madrid. Leerssen, Joop T. 1999. Nationaal denken in Europa: een cultuurhistorische schets, Amsterdam. Lope, Hans-Joachim. 1985. "Der Reiz des Fremden." In: Klaus von See (ed.): Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft. Vol. 16, pp. 619-648. Wiesbaden. Machado, Antonio. 1993. Poesías completas, Madrid, 17th ed. Mahrholz, Werner. 1931. Literaturgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft. Leipzig. Mancini, Guido. 1961. Storia de la letteratura spagnola. Milano. Maragall, Joan. 1960. Obres completes. Barcelona. Mayer, Hans. 1970. "Literaturwissenschaft in Deutschland." In: Fischer Lexikon Literatur. Ed. W.H. Friederich y W. Killy. Vol. 2.1. p.317f. FrankfurtHamburg. Menendez Pelayo, Marcelino. 1903. Antología de poetas líricos castellanos. Vol. 11. Madrid. Menendez Pidal, Ramón. 1910. "El poema del Cid por Ramón Menéndez Pidal." In: La Lectura 10. pp. 261-282. 1913. "Introducción." In: Ramón Menéndez Pidal (ed.): Poema de Mio Cid. — pp. 7-114. Madrid. 1964. "La épica medieval en España y en Francia." In: Ramón Menéndez — Pidal: En tomo al poema del Cid. Barcelona - Buenos Aires. Mérimé, Ernest. 1922. Précis d'histoire de la littérature espagnole. Paris. Miro, Gabriel. 1928. Figuras de la Pasión del Señor, Obras Completas de Gabriel Miró. vol. XVI. Madrid. — 1949. Obras completas, Madrid. Müller - Seidel, Walter. 1969. "Wertung und Wissenschaft im Umgang mit Literatur." Der Deutschunterricht. 21, pp. 5-40. Nora, Pierre. 1986. Les lieux de la mémoire. La nation. Paris. Pageaux, Daniel-Henri. 1983. "L'imagerie culturelle: De la littérature comparée à l'anthropologie culturelle." In: Synthesis 10. Peers, Edgar Allison. 1972. Historia del movimiento romántico español. 2nd ed. Madrid. Perez-Solorzano, Nieves -Christopher Longman. 1998. "European Cultural Identity: Unity in Diversity or Family of Cultures?", in: Enrique BanusBeatriz Elío (eds.): Actas del IV Congreso "Cultura Europea ". Pp. 117-126. Pamplona. Petersen, Julius. 1930. "Die literarischen Generationen", in Emil Ermatinger (ed.): Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft. Berlin. Petriconi, Helmut. 1926. Die spanische Literatur der Gegenwart seit 1870. Wiesbaden. Ramos, Vicente. 1970. El mundo de Gabriel Miró. Madrid 2 n d ed.

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Rasmussen, Jens Rahbek. 1995. "The Danish Monarchy as a Composite State", in: Nils Arne S0rensen: European Identities. Cultural Diversity and Integration in Europe since 1700. Odense. Rio, Angel del. 1948. Historia de la literatura española. New York (quoted by the ed. Barcelona 1982). Sal azar, Gonzalo de. 1998. "Multiculturalism, Statehood and Territory: Integration versus Conflict", en: Enrique Banús-Beatriz Elio (eds.): Actas del IV Congreso "Cultura Europea". pp. 763-771. Pamplona. Salinas, Pedro. 1941. Literatura española del siglo XX. México. — 1958. "El romanticismo y el siglo x x " (1952). In: Pedro Salinas: Ensayos de literatura hispánica. Madrid . Schlegel, Friedrich. 1815. Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Vol. 6. Ed. Hans Eichner. MünchenPaderborn-Wien: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1961 [original: Geschichten der alten und neuen Litteratur. Vorlesungen gehalten in Wien im Jahre 1812. Wien: K. Schaumburg, 1815]. — ÍH05.Vorlesungen über Universalgeschichte. Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel Ausgabe. Vol. 14. Ed. Jean-Jacques Anstett. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 1960 [original: lectures in Cologne, 1805-1806]. Schmidt, Bernhard. 1975. Spanien im Urteil spanischer Autoren: kritische Untersuchungen zum sogenannten Spanienproblem; 1609-1936. Berlin. Schmidt, Siegfried J. 1990. Fundamentos de la ciencia empírica de la literatura. Madrid. Skiljan, Dubravko. 1998. "Language of identity and language of distinction", in: Enrique Banus-Beatriz Elio (eds.): Actas del TV Congreso "Cultura Europea". pp. 825-829. Pamplona. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London. Sorensen, Nils Arne. 1995. "European Identities: An Introduction", in: Nils Arne S0rensen: European Identities. Cultural Diversity and Integration in Europe since 1700. Odensee. Spiering, M. 1996. "National Identity and European Unity", in: Michael Wintle (ed.): Culture and Identity in Europe. Perceptions of Divergence and Unity in Past and Present, pp. 98-132. Aldershot et al. Strath, Bo. 1995. "Scandinavian Identity. A mythical Reality", in: Nils Arne S0rensen: European Identities. Cultural Diversity and Integration in Europe since 1700. pp. 37-57. Odense. Szalo, Csaba. 1998. "European identity, nationalism and the dynamics of identity construction", in: Csaba Szaló (ed.): On European Identity, Nationalism, Culture & History", pp. 245-258. Brno. UNESCO 1982 (ed.): Conferencia Mundial sobre las Políticas Culturales. Informe Final, Paris. Valbuena, Angel. 1968. Historia de la literatura española. Barcelona 8th ed. Vails, Ferran, I Taberner. 1960. "La coneixen$a de l'ànima catalana", in: Joan Maragall, Obres completes. Vol. 1. Barcelona. Valverde, José María. 1969. Breve historia de la literatura española. Madrid. Wardropper, Bruce W. (edt.) 1965: Critical essays on the theatre of Calderón, New York. Wehrli, Max. 1969. Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft. 2nd ed. Bern-München. Weidenfeld, Werner. 1985. "Europa - aber wo liegt es?", in: Werner Weidenfeld (ed.): Die Identität Europas, pp. 13-41. München-Wien. Wenturis, Nikolaus. 1998. "A Europe without Identity? Ethnicity, Nation-State and EU-Integration", in: Enrique Banus-Beatriz Elio (eds.): Actas del IV Congreso "Cultura Europea". pp. 181-200. Pamplona.

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Wittschier, Heinz Willi. 1982. Geschichte der spanischen Literatur vom Kubakrieg bis zu Francos Tod (1898-1975). Rheinfelden. Wolf, Ferdinand Joseph. 1831. "Historia de la literatura española, escrita en Alemán por Bouterwek, traducida al Castellano y adicionada por D. José Gómez de la Cortina y D. Nicolás Hugalde y Mollinedo. Imprenta de D. Eusebio Aguado, 1829. 4. Tomo I. XI y 276 Pag.." In: Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur 55 (1831). pp. 243-264; 56 (1831). pp. 239-266. Madrid.

Katica Kulavkova University of St.Cyril and Methodius, Skopje Macedonia

THE MEDITERRANEAN CHRONOTOPOS AND ITS DIFFERENTIA SPECIFICA In the light of imagology and its interdisciplinary and comparative methodology, an examination of the Mediterranean chronotopos is one of the several ways in which the Mediterranean can be interpreted. It involves an examination of the Mediterranean trans-historical matrix — past, present and future — through which the possible metaphysics and primordial ontological existence of the term Mediterranean 1 can be explored. The imagological examination represents only a part of the "Mediterraneology" — a wider nascent interdisciplinary area that has as its subject of interest the historical, civilizational and cultural tradition of the Mediterranean.2 We attempt to render the name of this complex comparison-oriented discipline without ignoring the extant development of scientific and research projects, studies and acknowledged institutes of interpretation and actualization of the Mediterranean as "space and history" (Fernand Braudel, L'Espace et l'histoire, Paris 1985), as "peoples and heritage" (Braudel, La Méditerranée, 1985), as a type of "breviar" (Predrag Matvejevic, 1990), as a "cultural sphere" (Blaze Koneski, 1980), as a geo-poetical cultural context and tradition (MASA Bulletin, 1999), as a narrative and metafiction in development, as myth and history, as factographic material and construction of the imaginary, as a cultural memory in shape of oral and textual practice. In such a theoretical, imagological and hermeneutical context, it seems more appropriate to speak of a Mediterranean chronotopos (chronos-andtopos), than of a region, a geo-politically recognizable space or of a cultural and traditional complex. Applied in an essay that attempts to make a hermeneutic contribution to the perception of the Mediterranean, the term of 1 Imagology is defined as a sub-discipline, interdisciplinary culturological complex, especially convenient for defining literary images of the "Other" (man, people, culture, space, time), and in a wider range, for applying comparative methodology in different realms of science and culture.

2

Rephrasing N.A. Miskin's term "Roman historical tradition" differentiated from Roman history, where the prior leans on immediate historical resources and artworks, while the later uses indirect sources as well.

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chronotopos unifies several aspects of the amorphous Mediterranean phenomenon. It simultaneously affirms a number of visions and methodological Mediterranean perspectives: mythic-poetic, historiographic, comparative (inter-textual), rhetorical, semiotical, geneological and culturological, which accord the interdisciplinary character of the imagology. Chronotopos is a synthetic category applicable in interpretation of the historical modifications of a particular historical, mythic and literary phenomenon, as well in its modeling and classification. Mikhail Bakhtin defines the chronotopos (time-space) as a category rendered from the domain of the exact sciences (physics), as "an essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically inbuilt in literature" (1989, 194), and thus makes it valid for examining poetical, aesthetical and literary-theoretical problems (artifacts, genres, characters, literary models and conventions). Nowadays, the term of chronotopos can be applied also in the domain of culturology, its theory, methodology and interpretation (Culturology, 1997). The imagological syntax of the Mediterranean chronotopos, in whose epicenter lies the idea of the so-called Mare N o s t r u m , 1 and all that which gravitates toward this topos (its geology, roads, mercantilism, shipbuilding, sailing, adventurism, the flora and the fauna, the climate, the landscapes, the olives, the fish, the sea fruits, the sea monsters, the "divine" sea salt praised in Homer's Iliad, the veranda, the serenade, the birth of the civilization and its paraphernalia — writing and money, maps, the building of the City, democracy, the agoras, the fair or the carnival, the theatre, the conquest of the world, vanished and dead peoples and languages, the archetype of light and Sun, lunar "pre-history" and its symbols, the nostalgia for "sea exit" and for the "view of the sea"), articulates and constitutes itself in the constellation of continuous resemantization and conflictuous semiosis. The multi-layered, problematic and paradoxical construction of the Mediterranean world/universe looms through these models constituting the Mediterranean chronotopos. These models alone, generate different types of chronotopoi, either deployed through history, or set in a parallel fashion or antithetically in the same period, and thus create the basis for an historical and theoretical (logical, philosophical, aesthetical) typology of the Mediterranean chronotopos. Therefore, the Mediterranean chronotopos may be specified and interpreted partially in differentiated variants: a sea chronotopos, an island chronotopos, a light-house chronotopos, a chronotopos of a sail-boat/galley/ship, a chronotopos of sheepfold, a

For more on Mediterranean terminology, see P. Matvejevic, 1990: The Great Sea, messogaios, talassa, pontos, Middle Earth Sea, Inner Sea, White Sea, Green Sea, Hind Sea, Great Water, Mare Magnum.

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chronotopos of a town, a chronotopos of a library, a chronotopos of a Zigurath, a chronotopos of an agora. Perceived historically, the Mediterranean chronotopos is incoherent, its semiosis hypersensitive and fluid, its references dispersed over a wide and heterogeneous plane, which makes it difficult to decipher some eternal, suprahistorical identity of the Mediterranean defined via its constitutive differentia specifica. The Mediterranean geographical term includes various ethnical, religious and cultural communities in various ages: therefore, the Mediterranean is not a civilizational entity with evident, easily separable and dominant specifics, stable and common archetypal structures, ontological and ahistorical principles, but also includes numerous internal differences and antinomies. The Mediterranean identity has a proteic character; it is marked by historical transformations and is full of disputable areas, tendencies toward isolation and self-alienation. The identity of the Mediterranean can be characterized as schismatic rather than coherent and self-conscious. The identity of the Mediterranean is in process of articulation and re-encoding, especially when major interventions of historical prominence take place. That which can be delimited as a loccus communi of the Mediterranean chronotopos includes a series of cultural and civilizational meta-theses and inversions, rather than some idealized and linear transfer of cultural traditions. The mere recollection of the diversity of names for the Mediterranean Sea in different ages and languages signifies the polyglossy, multifocal and polyvalent image of the Mediterranean chronotopos, and through it — of the World. The description and the interpretation of the Mediterranean leads to the realization that, historically, the projection of the Mediterranean does not evolve in direction of establishing a dominant, re-evaluating Mediterraneocentrism, but in direction of emphasizing the structure and the role of the racial, religious, linguistic and cultural Mediterranean polycentrism. From historical perspective, the Mediterranean has always been composed of several significant and heterogeneous sub-regions and imperial constellations, which point out to the real differences and the tendency toward disintegration of the Mediterranean area, to the difficulties in constituting a coherent Mediterranean cultural system. Steady processes of integration, disintegration and reintegration of the great Empires (in Antiquity and the Medieval and Modern Ages) take place: the fall of Macedonia of Antiquity, which is a paradigm of integration of (a part of) the Mediterranean with the Near, Middle and Far East slates, i.e., with the North African states; the division of the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western (the Orthodox Byzantium against the Latin Catholic

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Rome 1 ; the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20 century; the formation of the patriarchate in Constantinopolis and on the Island of Atos (Hieros Oros) versus the Vatican; the establishment of asceticism, the shism, and the underground cave-churches of the Orthodox tradition; the formation of new states upon national, religious, and linguistic principles; the revision of state borders; shifts of centers of power — barbaric, nomadic, Arab, Slavic and Turkish invasions, the Crusades; the administration of Christianity to heathens; the administration of Islam to Christians; the assimilation, exodus, diasporas; the dissolution of the image of the Mediterranean in two parts: This and The Other Mediterranean (Braudel); the Slavic, Balkan and Oriental fragmentalization, versus integration of Western Europe; the differentiation of letters (pictographic, hieroglyphic, wedge-shaped, linear A and B, syllabic, the alphabet); and the ethical evaluation of the coastal people and the inlanders/Balkan people, with elements of discrimination. The Mediterranean chronotopos signifies not only a geographical but also a supranational and suprareligious phenomenon. It is a mobile, changeable assemblage of civilizational heterogeny, polyglossy, racial, multinational and religious identities, with (sometimes discrete, sometimes apparent) tendency toward intermittent multiple hybridizations: for example, the formation of the "Asian" aesthetical model (Asianism, a Hellenistic type of "mannerism," as Gustav Rene Hock suggests!) of the Hellenistic culture and the Alexandrianism in the period of ascent of Macedonia of Antiquity; the orientalization of the Spanish culture; the administration of the Islam to the Slavic population on the Balkan peninsula; the hybridization of the French nation with the ethnical implements of the ex-colonies Algeria and Tunisia; the administration of Slavic culture to non-Slavic tribes; the administration of Christianity to pagan and politheistic ethnicities; the administration of Islam to Slavic peoples on the borders of the Ottoman Empire; the administration of Hellenism on the borders of the Byzantine Empire; the administration of Latinism in Central and Western Europe in the Roman Empire; the process of "occidentalization" of the West European Mediterranean area as a part of the tendency toward formation of Euro-centric imagology and epistemology.. ?

In the year 395 the schism of the Great Roman Empire takes place, between the Western (Roman, Latin-European context) and the Eastern (Constantinopolis or Byzantion, Vizantia). After the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the Ottoman Empire was founded (Istanbul, Stambol). Occidentalization is a "western style of dominance, restructuring and governing the Orient." (Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York, Pantheon,1978, 3).

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The Mediterranean chronotopos is characterized by the "superposing" (Fernand Braudel, 1995) and "postposing" of the new religious, political and cultural constellations upon the older and the inherited ones, which steadily creates an illusion of continuity and of existence of a system of Mediterranean culture and tradition. The following are only few illustrations of the establishment of the Mediterranean cultural continuum through cultural and civilizational superpositions: the Civilizations of Antiquity establish themselves upon inherited autochthonous, primitive and so-called "barbaric" civilizational aggregates; Orthodox Christianity is built upon the structures of the Hellenic and pagan polytheism; Roman culture is superposed upon the Hellenic; the Byzantine culture is set as a superposition over the Late Antique and Hellenistic culture; the Early Byzantine literature is a part of a larger whole; the Early Medieval culture from the Atlantic to Mesopotamy.... Ernst Robert Curtius shows that "in its profane poetry, the Christian Hellenism of the Roman Orient retains the language, the form and the images of the old pagan world" (1956, 13). The same is evident in the example of superposition of the Greek alphabet upon the Hebrew (aleph/alpha, beth/beta, gimel/gamma, daleth/delta.). The fact that Constantinopolis was called "the second Rome," and that Moscow has been called new or "third" Rome; the fact that Moscow has been called "new Constantinopolis," and that Constantinopolis was called for a period of time "new Jerusalem;" and even the fact that the present-day Macedonian city of Ohrid is popularly called "Slavic Jerusalem," reflect an attempt, via renaming, the "ontological essence" (Uspenskij, 77), the sacredness and the theocracy of that, whose name is transferred in another form. It is indicative of an endeavor to sustain a cosmological model of reading the text of history in the very historical practice. These are symptoms of a transfer of the previous cultural models to newly created ones (the Antique culture makes a transit into the Roman, the Roman into the Byzantine, the Byzantine into the Slavic, etc.). Jerusalem (the Holy City), later on Constantinopolis, is posited against Rome and signifies "two different perspectives — the Divine and the Human, — which correspond to the two comprehensions of the kingdom: as a Divine Kingdom (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit), and as an earthly kingdom (the Christian Empire)" (Uspenskij, 94). After the fall of Byzantium, Moscow integrates these two antagonistic conceptions of the city: Moscow is simultaneously a spiritual-religious and an earthly centerItopos. It reflects both the Roman and the Constantinopolic (Byzantine) perspective.1 The modes of superposition of

Uspenskij presents also exemptions to this cosmological model of the semantic projection of the ontological essence through history: the Bulgarian town of Trnovo was named "new Constantinopolis" when Constantinopolis had been besieged by the Crusaders. This is a pattern of the historical model of interpretation and comprehension of the time cycles,and it corresponds to the concept known as translatio imperii (Uspenskij, 103).

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cultural systems, traditions and values nowadays can be read as a continuum and cultural evolution based on the principle of mixture, inter-breeding and hybridization. From this perspective, the Mediterranean chronotopos is inclusive, quotational and dialogical. It can be examined both as transsemiotical and/or civilizational intertext. Still, the Mediterranean chronotopos shows features of exclusion, demonization, aversion toward the different, for the Other, for the neighbor, xenophobia, a syndrome of contra-posing, of antigony and ambivalence. Within the framework of the Mediterranean cultural system, significant dissolutions of the dominant religious, philosophical, political and cultural formations and systems materialize, and along with them appear far-reaching differentiations, interruptions and fissures, all of which introduce discontinuous rhythm. In other words, they influence not only the palimpsest (intertextual), but also the schismatic character of the Mediterranean. Texts of ancient civilizations are deleted from the "text," resulting in a cult of orality and rhetorics being replaced by a cult of scripture, textuality and poetics. There also occurs a transfer from an oral to textual model of cultural memory and imagination (transfer from Socratism to Platonism, and with it an inauguration of parallel cultural and literary systems and traditions, oral/folklore/popular vs. written/erudite/elite). There occurs a differentiation between the civilized world and the primitive world, of the civilized people from the barbaric, of the Christians from the heathens, and of the monotheists from the polytheists. The scriptures of existent religions are obliterated and discarded. In their place are inserted new, contrasting writings and texts upon the same Mediterranean parchment and pagina. Natural apocalyptic disasters also influenced the existent constellations, and briskly and shockingly revised the Mediterranean chronotopos. The establishment of Islam; the differentiation of Judaism and the Hebrew religion; the split of Christianity into Catholic and Orthodox; the division of the Byzantine Empire into a Western and an Eastern part, the introduction of an East-West discourse as a precondition to the Eurocentrism (and probably as a distant omen of the division of the world into a Western and Eastern part, which plays the role of a pretext to the contemporary "globalization" taken as a new mode of domination, imperialization and hierarchization of universal span); the discrepancy between the cosmopolitism (from the epoch of Hellenism and Alexandrianism) and the multiculturalism of the great empires (Antique Macedonia, Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire), on one side, and on the other: — the ethnocentrical philosophies, conceptualized and legalized mainly in the 19th and 20 th centuries; the acceptance of the "metaphysics of light," or

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the aesthetics of luminosity and the philosophy of intelligible light in the Medieval Period, as "an echo of the Late Antique Platonism, which was absorbed in the Christian culture"... 1 The image of the Mediterranean can be observed from at least two perspectives: one is the perspective of continuity, the other of discontinuity. These perspectives of continuity and discontinuity, reflected in the concept of post-posing, hybridization and adaptation on the one hand, and in the concept of conflictuous differentiations, fragmentations, secularizations, chronotopical inversions and antinomies, on the other hand, are the constitutive principle of the semiotics of the Mediterranean cultural system (e.g., the language of the culture and the Mediterranean inter-text). These are two sides of a single Object. The bipolar and antinomical image of the Mediterranean should be supplemented with some forms of transfer of mythologization and mystification, in the shape of symbiosis of reality, legend and myth. 2 We are going to introduce only one of the many such alternative perspectives of the Mediterranean chronotopos: the tale of the "paradise island" Atlantis, whose literary tradition was followed by Plato in a critical manner (Timeus, Critias), although it was preceded by a long, though fragmented mythic and oral tradition ever since 600 BC Egypt. The literary myth of Atlantis (P. Brunei, 1988, 197-207) includes one of the overall planes of the imagology of the Mediterranean chronotopos, and that is the mystery, the conflict between memory and mnémotechnique, contra-oblivion and lethargy (the principle of Mnemosine vis-à-vis the principle of Lethe), the travesty of the M e d i t e r r a n e a n geo-space, the legendary apocalyptic disasters, the disappearance of islands, peoples, civilizations and languages, and the hope that, sooner or later, their remnant/trace/sign/text would reappear, as there were traces found of Sumer, Troy, Knosos, the Alexandrian light-house... The conflict in the relation reality-legend, i.e., history-myth, reflects the epistemology of the Mediterranean chronotopos, where methodological opening and supplemetary description interact harmoniously (along the cosmological cognitive principle of Uspenskij) with the hermeneutic historiographic-mythological. The mythologized narratives of Sumer and Troy in the oral, epic and tragic literary tradition, shed light on a certain neurotic point of the Mediterranean chronotopos: the trauma ensuing a loss of cosmic dimensions, the experienced anxiety of the subconscious warning and threat to be deleted from the map or the book of the visible, the 1 After 13 c., the Christian West adopts the benefits of the Arabic optics; thus the basis of the metaphysics of light was set on scientific foundations. (Rossario Asunto, 1975, 60) ^ The Mediterranean mythological assemblage includes literary myths of the Golden Age, the Apocalypse, Apollo and the mythical sun, Cain and Abel, Chronos, Saturn, Dedalus, Don Juan, the Eternal Return, the power of Helen, The Beautiful of Troy, the Troian War, Toth, Hermes and Mercury as divinities of the letters and the books, Ishtar, the Labyrinth, Narcissus, Satan, Ulis.

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book of reality, and to be written in the "book" of the invisible and unreal. In the literary myth/legends of Atlantis, up until the present marked by enigma and hypotheses, there lies imprinted the archetype of the split and the conflict of the world into Eastern and Western, whose connotations manifest conceptually and in terms of values throughout history, as the semiosis of the South and the North acquires a new semantic value, in a whole gradated scale of qualities and references, also notable in the contemporary world (e.g., Balkanization vs. Europeanization). The modification of the valueconnotations depends strongly on the observance point and the mode of perception and focalization (external or internal, centralized or multifocal), so that it comes to a radical turn of the systems of values, whereby the categories East and West (Orientalization vs. Occidentalization), or the division between the (poor) South and the (rich) North become a travesty. The process of introducing new semantic content and revision of the values throughout history implies a principle of imbalanced binary pairs and oppositions. The disturbed semantical balance in the image of the Mediterranean, of the Orient, the Occident, of the Balkans, Europe, America, leads, for example, to understanding of the new term of "balkanization" as of a disquietude, to be terrified of "apocalyptic devastation" (M. Todorova, 2001, 48); it brings to the West observing the Orient "from distance and from height" (Edward Said). With the aid of such an imagological stereotype, the conflict between the civilized, democratic world and the barbaric, non-democratic (Balkan) world is reintroduced, in order to actualize, in an easier manner and with a quasihumanistic pretext, the plans for continuation also of reality in direction of fragmentalization and militarization of the Balkans, and of the discourse of the balkanized Balkan (Western Balkan vs. the Eastern!). In the discourse of the Mediterranean, the area escapes being characterized in terms of degradation and deformation. This is contrary to the imagology of the Balkans, where the term "balkanization" signifies a process that is quite unlike that of the integration and re-integration of "globalization." The term refers to the national fragmentation of ex-geographical and political units into new ones, which results in the creation of problematic states. Paradoxically, the term balkanization did not emerge as the direct result of an actual jolt of disintegration. Since when the term actually began to be used, toward the end of the First World War and during the two Balkan Wars, "only one Balkan nation, Albania, was adjoined to the existent Balkan map" (M. Todorova). In reality, the process to which the term referred had begun during the 19 th century, as part and parcel of the long dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The manifestation of the phenomenon '"balkanization" promotes the tragic and bloody theatre of changes of borders, and sustains the dreams of "Great" States

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on the Balkans (the idea of Greater Serbia, Greater Albania, and, if needed, of Greater Macedonia). Today, the notion of a Greater Albania has gained the most support. The price for this has been the "ethnic cleansing" of the nonAlbanian population from Kosovo, of the Slavic Macedonian population from the Republic of Macedonia, 1 especially from the western and northern part of the state; the recycling the Macedonian exodus; the creation of a periphery to one of the "centers" of Europe, and of the Mediterranean as well; and in its extreme — a brutal division of the world into a (few) powerful, and (numerous) powerless states, into developed and undeveloped, rich and poor, the dominance of a single hyper-power (the USA) and the weakening of the European Union. Balkanization in the context of the Mediterranean discourse is in opposition to a potential mediterreanization, which would be able to reestablish the lost balance. The discourse of balkanization is an import from the highly developed world, and not an immanent feature of the Balkan states, which, as much as they belong to the Balkans, they belong more and gravitate toward the Mediterranean and toward the discourse of the dialogical and communicative peoples and cultures. In its chronotopos, the Mediterranean includes states and peoples with double and triple geo-political and cultural background (Mediterranean, Near East and Hebrew; Mediterranean, Balkan and Hellenistic; Mediterranean, Central European and Slavic; Mediterranean, Western Europe and frankophonic). Finally, the Mediterranean borders throughout history have been formally changed, and probably will change in the future, but essentially they circumscribe the area around the Mediterranean Sea and the seas that constitute this trough (Ionic, Aegean, Adriatic, Black Sea...), which primarily follows the logos of modern nomadism, of intercultural dialogism, communicativeness, hybridization, the dionisian worldview, and humanism. The Mediterranean, Oriental or Balkan stereotype not always stems, nor corresponds analogically to historical praxis, or anthropological and civilizational semiosis. Frequently, it has been imposed by a tendency or intention from exterior sources and their influential discourse of power and position. Here we are already entering the domain of the discourse of imagological strategy. Under conditions of powerful production of constructed, conducted, controlled and instrumentalized "authentic" stories and "truths" (TV channels of the type of CNN, BBC, e.g., Internet, e-media), the contemporary globalizing concept of the world has an almost supernatural power to create value-charged images of events, peoples and sub-regions of the Mediterranean, to create its own profitable imagology of the Orient, the

1 More on the origin and gravitation of Macedonia toward the Mediterranean cultural sphere in my essay: "The Mediterranean Cultural Sphere As An Origin of the Macedonian Literature", MASA: 1998,237-258.

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Balkans, or whichever part of the world. In this context, it is symptomatic to notice that in the theoretical discourse of the Mediterranean, the direct opposite of the Mediterreanism has not been found, and the term mediterreanization has not been yet formed. There appears an epistemological skepticism about the possibility of mediterraneanizing something that is genuinely something different and non-Mediterranean. Mediterreanism appears to be an inherent and exclusive, inseparable feature of the Mediterranean topos. Is it possible to mediterreanize Northern Europe, America or the Far East? Is it possible to initiate a process of de-mediterreanization? What is the meaning of actualizing the term Mediterranean. Is there an imagological strategy which re-semanticizes the Mediterranean semiosis in the new europeanizing and globalizing discourses? The absence of the qualificative attribution "mediterreanization" implies an absence of its imagined antipode: neither does it oppose some older or inherited phenomenon, which would oppose "mediterreanization," nor does some new phenomenon produce its direct binary semantic opposite. The Orientalism and the Balkanism stem from and compose the image of the Mediterranean chronotopos, and not its direct negation or reproduction. There is a difference between Orientalism and Balkanism. Each one of them developed upon specific sociological and cultural models, and is largely independent from the hypotext of the imaginary Mediterreanism. The Mediterranean chronotopos signifies above all a particular geographical, supranational and supra-religious phenomenon, fluctuating, changeable, complex assemblage of civilizational heterogeny, polyglossy, racial multinational and religious identities, with sometimes discrete, sometimes apparent tendency toward periodical multiple hybridization and assimilation. The term "Mediterranean" has a value-free connotation, and is relatively resistant to negative connotations and ideologisms. Thus, it neither acquires an exclusive value-positive connotation, nor does it lose it. Unlike the global Mediterranean chronotopos, separate regional aggregates of the Mediterranean, which were fragmented in the geo-political, and were distinguished in racial, cultural and linguistic terms (the Near East, the Balkans, the Magreb, the Mediterranean Western Europe — Italy, France, Spain, Portugal) from the perspective of values have been differentiated differently in different times. The contemporary negative connotation of the Orient, juxtaposed to the European West, for example, is an inversion of the value system of the previous ages.

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To support this viewpoint, we are going to present only a few examples from various ages and regions (particular chronotopoi): creation of the "Asian" model of aesthetics, of the Hellenistic culture and the Alexandrianism in the age of the rise of the Macedonia of Antiquity and of the orientalization of the Spanish culture; the administration of Islam to the Slavic population on the Balkan peninsula; the hybridization of the French nation by incorporating ethnicities from the former colonies Algeria and Tunisia; the administration of Slavic culture to non-Slavic tribes; the process of administration of Christianity to pagan and polytheistic ethnicities; the process of administration of Islam to the Slavic peoples on the borders of the Ottoman Empire; the process of administration of Hellenic culture on the borders of the Byzantine Empire; the process of administration of Latin culture to the populations of Central and Western Europe in the Western Roman Empire; the process of 'occidentalization' of the Mediterranean West European area as a part of the tendency to form an europocentric imagology and epistemology. History presupposes semiotical attribution of sense and semantization of the past, transformation of the non-sign into a sign (semiosis, process of semantization), of the events into a story and discourse; it is a kind of reflected time (Uspenskij, 1996, 21). History needs deciphering and reconstruction where "the evolution of the language of history would take place. History is a game of the present and the past" (Uspenskij, 19). From the perspective of cultural semiosis, the text of the historical events (res gestae) alters in the "process of communication between the socius and the individual," the reading and the perception from one to another socio-cultural context, individual and collective reader, and in that process creates the story or the narrative text about the events in the past (historia rerurn gestarum). The imagological conceptualization of the Mediterranean chronotopos consequently needs actualization of two opposite, yet complementary hermeneutic viewpoints, identified as historical and cosmological method of interpretation. The historical method means temporality, chronology, sequence, empiricism, human and scientific discourse, while the cosmological method leans on the mythic, sacred, religious, structural-semiotic and abstract principle of worldview. The historical and the cosmological (mythic) images of the Mediterranean chronotopos follow at least two lines, one of the Church, the other of the Empire; one religious, the other profane and political. These are lines that are not mutually exclusive, but influence each other semiotically; they actualize and revise each other. In this context, at least two

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hermeneutic epistemes/paradigms of examining and interpreting the Mediterranean cultural tradition can be held: in one case, the totality and the geneology of historical events would be followed, and in the second, the primordeal ontological Mediterranean text, the Mediterranean myth, the eternal Mediterranean chronos and topos (the proto-text) would be projected and reactualized. The Mediterranean chronotopos can be a subject to multiple interpretations, which generates a plural and polyvalent image of the Mediterranean: historical and mythic, earthly and sacred, as a unity and as fragments, postposing and antipode, inclusive and exclusive, semiotic and culturological. This imagological approach does not discard nor deny the idea of existence of differentia specifica of the Mediterranean chronotopos, and it relativizes it without making it an absolute, while regarding the sociohistorical and cultural constellations and transfigurations in this important region, not without a reason, related to the notion of the center or the navel of the world. History shows that it is specifically this center that moves, slides, and alters its immanent semiosis and cultural semantics subsequently. For different reasons, the Mediterranean has been able to maintain its resistance to the establishment of a hierarchical and mono-centric, mediterraneo-centric civilizational system. The semantics of the term Mediterranean expands and is supplemented with new signifieds and references, with new, modified inter-relations together with their referent-points, with the communicational assemblages and sociocultural practice. The centrifugal image of the Mediterranean persists through history, and stores a particular encoded semiotical minimum of ontological immanency, despite the numerous geo-political and formational transfigurations, despite the many fragmentations and revisions. That minimal semiotical storage seems to filter the temporal and impermanent historical changes, and retains the archetypal, mythic or cosmological semiosis of the Mediterranean, reflected in the permanence of the need to sacralize and ontologize the Mediterranean chronotopos. And thus it happens that the discourse of the past, the present and the future (the text of "the Seen") and the discourse of the atemporal and atopical ("the not-Seen") succeed each other either subsequently (chronologically), or in opposite order (logical analogies), and to form a single complex epistemology of the Mediterranean chronotopos.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Averincev, Sergej Sergejevic 1982. The Poetics of the Early Byzantine Literature. Belgrade: SKZ, (Moscow: Science, 1977). Averincev, S.S. 1996. "The Languages of Russian Culture."7>;e Rhetorics and the Origins of the European Literary Tradition. Moscow. Assuntoi, Rosario, 1975 The Medieval Theory of the Beautiful. Belgrade: SKZ. (Die Theorie des Schönen im Mittelalter, Köln: Verlag M. Du Mont Schauberg, 1963). Bakhtin, Mihail, 1989. On the Novel: Types of Time and Chronotopos in the Novel. Essays on Historical Poetics. Belgrade. Braudel, Fernand, 1995: The Mediterranean. Belgrade: Center of Geopoetics. Brunei, Pierre, 1988. (dir. by), Dictionnaire de MYTHES LITTERAIRES, Paris: Editions du Rocher. Curtius, Ernst Robert 1956. La Littérature Européenne et le Moyen-âge Latin, I-II, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France. Grassi, Ernesto, 1962. The Antique Theory of the Beautiful. Belgrade: SKZ, 1974, Ernesto Grassi, Die Theorie des Schönen in der Antike, Köln, Verlag M. Du Mont Schauberg. Huizinga, Johan 1991. The Medieval Fall. Belgrade: Matica Srpska, (Johan Huizinga, Herbst des Mittelalters, 1961, by Alfred Kröner Verlag in Stuttgart). Jelavic, Barbara 1999. The History of the Balkans (18., 19., 20. c.). Skopje: List. Koneski, Blaze 1980. "Macedonian Poetry in the Mediterranean Sphere." Skopje: Nova Makedonija, May 18. 20 c. SaintS. Ja. Levit L.A. Mostova. 1997. (Dictionary): Culturology: Petersburg: Univerzitetskaja kniga. Macedonian Literature and Culture in the Context of the Mediterranean Cultural Sphere. 1998. Skopje: MASA, (ed. Milan Gjurcinov). Matvejevic, Predrag 1990. Mediterranean Brevijar. Zagreb: GZH. Maskin, N.A. History of Ancient Rome. 1995. Skopje: Zumpres. Ostrogorski, Georgije. 1969. Byzantine History. Belgrade: Prosveta (1 ed. 1959). Plato. Timeus, Critias. 1992. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1978. New York: Pantheon, 3. Todorova, Marija. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: UP. Uspenskii, Boris A. 1996. Historical Semiotics. Cultural Semiotics," in: "The Collected Works" Vol.1. Moscow: "Languages of Russian Culture."

Mladen Andic & Stipe Grgas University of Zadar, Bosnia MEDIEVAL BOSNIA AND THE TRANS-ADRIATIC TRAFFIC IN IMAGES AND GOODS

In its different guises, the issue of the "Other" has become a shibboleth for dominant theoretical paradigms within a number of disciplines. Within intercultural hermeneutics or the field of colonial encounters that may serve as the framework for the following considerations; the process of "othering" examines the way identity construction takes place. In many cases, the mechanism of othering is described on such an abstract level that there is very little room left for the delineation of concrete historical contours. In this chapter we shall examine a specific site of this process and place it within a historical period infrequently used in the interpretation of this theoretical paradigm. We shall use empirical data to draw the contours of a zone of historical encounter and we shail offer suggestions that pertain not only to past events, but may also have a bearing on present circumstances in our part of the world. In a recent exchange of views with Uppender Mehan published in Comparative Literature, David Townsend makes a comment that contextualises our analysis: "... the cultural synthesis that looms large in modern representations of European medieval culture occludes sites of difference, contestation, and productivity implicit in the documents central to our understanding of that culture. Medievalists are increasingly occupied with recovering such plurality and conflict" (Mehan and Townsend, 2). We hope to make a contribution to this recovery by delineating "difference, contestation and productivity" within a historical space usually left out from representations of the medieval world. *

We return to the autumn of 1451 to begin our story when Broglio di Tartaglia, a member of the court of Sigismund of Malatesta, arrived in

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Dubrovnik as his master's condottiere to fight against the Duke of St. Saba. We suppose that he already had some ideas and images of Bosnia, the home country of his adversaries.1 Later he wrote a work known nowadays as the Cronaca Malatestian\ in it, the Riminian condottiere evinced, through certain details we can glean from his account, a general familiarity with Bosnia which must have been enhanced by a sojourn in its immediate neighbourhood. We draw the contours of this generalised knowledge by contrasting it with the subjective reconstruction of events in which Broglio was a participant. Broglio wrote that emissaries of a certain Bosnian Duke named "Arzego" (another title for the Duke of St. Saba) went to Florence from Bosnia to sell silver, an item not usually listed amongst the goods sold there. Moreover, Broglio's familiarity with the economic and political circumstances of the time is attested to by the fact that he clearly understood how the Bosnian nobleman, subject of the King of Bosnia, could at the same time be "subdito e ricomandato dal Gran Turco." It is difficult to deduce conclusions from the sparse evidence of one condottiere's general representations of Bosnia regarding ties between Bosnia and the territory under the jurisdiction of the Malatesta family. The fact that a subject of this family, a certain Roberto della Coltre from Rimini (characterised as "spiculativo e intendente al'arte della lana") sought to fulfill his ambitions on the eastern Adriatic coast a short time before Broglio had made his appearance there, makes it reasonable to conjecture that the condottiere's knowledge of this territory was not unusual or isolated. This does not, of course, mean that a generalised representation of Bosnia existed in the XlVth and XVth centuries. The image shared by a spectrum of Riminians during the XVth century of a land of abundant silver, with a busy market in textiles and close ties to the Turks, cannot be ascribed to the population at large nor stretched out over a longer period of time. However, the construction and reception of images inferred from a local source constitutes the most difficult segment of the total system of connections between different territories to envision. As far as the system of connections between the western and eastern Adriatic coasts is concerned, there is no scarcity of research in this area. Ferdo Gestrin (1971) has compiled a bibliography covering the history of relations between the two Adriatic coasts from the Middle Ages to 1971. An informative survey of these connections, ' In a geographical sense, medieval Bosnia only partially coincides with the country which we today know as Bosnia and Herzegovina while its culture and civilisation can be defined as a society "on the outer edge" of the medieval European West. See: Sziics, 1975; Malcolm, 1999; An£ic, 2001.

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particularly pertaining to economic relations between Bosnia and Italy after 1971, has been written by Desanka KovaCevic-Kojic (1984). Tomislav Raukar's work (1980-81; 1982) should be mentioned in this context because he has discussed the role of the Dalmatian municipalities in the life of the Adriatic area during the period under consideration. Founded primarily on economic and political factors, this system of interconnections incorporated Bosnia, as one of its most important if distant links in a chain of places interlocked by the central presence of the sea. Cities located on the coasts of both sides of the Adriatic fulfilled various functions. On the one hand, as large consumer centers, they were points of mediation in which changes in the mode of transportation frequently brought about changes of ownership. Owing to their political status, these cities were centers for exchanging information. This is particularly relevant for the eastern Adriatic coast whose hinterland was not as urbanised as the Italian shore. All in all, because of the conditions of the time, the reception of global images and the construction of stereotypes at both ends of the chain are a worthwhile subject of historical analysis. However, a huge obstacle faces the researcher who tries to investigate these relationships in their entirety, because of the scarcity of source material inside Bosnia. The Turkish conquest and extended Ottoman rule succeeded in almost completely eradicating the remnants of the medieval world. Faced with this problem, the historian is forced to reconstruct the idea of medieval Bosnia on the basis of reports and descriptions from the neighbouring regions, primarily from the records of the Dalmatian urban centers. Of course, representations produced in such a mediated manner are impaired and partial. This explains why it is difficult to discuss, for example, the image of the Italian coast and of a distant place such as Rimini, as seen by Bosnians during the XlVth and XVth centuries. As an initial step, we must consider contacts between inhabitants of Bosnia and the Malatesta princedom. Only in such a manner can we draw conclusions about how Rimini and its surrounding region on the western Adriatic coast perceived Bosnia and, on the other hand, what was the significance of Italy to Bosnia. Up to the last decades of the XlVth century, contact with Bosnia was established by way of the oblique itinerary through the cities located on the central part of the eastern Adriatic shore, such as Zadar, Sibenik, Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik and Kotor. From the notarial deeds preserved in these municipalities it can be concluded that the hinterland of the eastern Adriatic coast at that time was going through the last phases of what historians have called a "commercial revolution" (Pounds, 407 sq.). During this period, the

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economies of the Balkan regions that gravitated economically towards the Adriatic basin were capable of making commercial use of raw material. All of these cities gathered in, in addition to workers, various goods from Bosnia such as meat, leather, hides, cheese, wax, honey, low quality wool and coarse textiles destined to be exported to the Italian shore. Markets in the hinterland of the Dalmatian cities sought foodstuffs the eastern Adriatic coast did not produce in quantity, such as wine, oil, quality textiles and certain luxury goods. For the most part, these products had to be imported from the Italian coast. The intermediate role played by the Dalmatian cities and the lack of documentation in Bosnia itself impedes the precise investigation of these exchanges. In most cases, the sources which we have illuminate the intermediate activity of the Dalmatian merchants. What remains unclear is the nature and the quantity of the merchandise which was traded on the Bosnian market. In addition, we have few indications as to how goods were brought from Bosnia and shipped to the opposite shore. The reconstruction of a particular historical case will shed light upon these transactions; to that end, we shall describe the mishaps that befell a group of merchants from Dubrovnik in the year 1335. The case concerns the plundering of a Dubrovnik ship carrying the cargo of three merchants and sailing from Drijeva 1 by a band of pirates from the infamous port of Omic. In their written complaint to the Venetian duke in Dubrovnik they made an complete list of the goods taken from them during this encounter. However, the list is somewhat confusing because it contains both products which were being exported from Bosnia and those which were being imported into that region. The division of the ship's cargo — if one uses the measure of whether it originated in Bosnia (A), Italy (B) or elsewhere (C) — can be systematised in the following manner: A: 672 librae of cheese and 106 more pieces of cheese of unknown weight; 230 librae of wax; 130 librae of wool; 972 different kinds of leather; 6 coarse woolen overcoats; 2 bales and 13 yards of blue and white cloth; 4 uncias and 3,5 librae of silver, etc.

1 Drijeva (Narentum) was a large emporium (mercatum) located at the mouth of the Neretva river as it flows into the Adriatic sea. This was the only medieval Bosnian export-import harbour. See Toéid, 1988.

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B: 1 bale and 30 yards of purple cambric; 27 yards of silk; 2 librae of silk from Apulia; 1 cambric covering sheet and 1 veil with gold embroidery. C: 82 belts, 6 of which were said to have come from Durres in Albania; 12 caps; 2 bales and 11 yards of various kinds of yarn; an iron helmet full of tiny hardware; 6 swords; 3 bronze rings and a smaller qauntity of wheet, wine and smaller wares.1 A perusal of this catalogue of plundered goods reveals something about the circulation of goods through the Adriatic region during the XlVth century. Were the Italian textiles (in group B) bought in Drijeva or were being shipped from there towards Dubrovnik as a surplus that could not have been sold? Were the goods from group C derived from some center on the eastern Adriatic shore (the belts from Durres) or were they products of craftsmen in the hinterland? These are possibilities to be reckoned with. It ought to be remarked here that the nature of trading routes was much more complex than can be initially surmised according to the sales records preserved in the archives. The list of stolen goods corroborates the fact that the traffic was neither one-directional nor unilateral. It is difficult to be precise about the extent to which the inhabitants of regions were already or soon to come under the jurisdiction of the Malatesta participated in these trading transactions. Suffice it to say that in all of the above mentioned cities are found inhabitants settled there for varying periods of time but originating from Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Cesena and other places in the interior of the Malatesta dukedom. How business transactions brought them into contact with Bosnia can be illustrated through the story of the brothers John and Mark, sons of the magistrate Tura from Pesaro, who resided for a period of time in Split, Zadar and then in Pag. While residing in Split, John transported wine to the emporium in Drijeva while his brother bought labourers, the "serves" brought from elsewhere in Bosnia. 2 Contacts were not restricted to a mere trading of merchandise. Circulation of information was enhanced by the fact that Dalmatian merchants paid frequent calls to the neighbouring shore. Natives of Dubrovnik were the lr

The Historical Archive in Dubrovnik, Diversa Cancellariae 11, fol, 27vo-28vo, June 7, 1335. For information concerning the two brothers we refer the reader to the document published in Rismondo, 51, dated February 5. 1369. Relevant information can also be found in the unpublished document from State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, volume 7/1, fol. 22vo, dated January 31, 1369. Concerning the importation of wines from Rimini into Dalmatia and Sclavonia which exported altre merci, we refer to Battaglini, 227. 2

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most numerous and the most frequent sojourners on that shore. In 1374, the Hungarian-Croatian King Ludovik intervened at the court of Galeatto Malatesta and requested him to provide the Dubrovnik merchants with safe passage and secure residence within the territory under his jurisdiction. 1 Within the framework of our discussion, it should be stressed that Dubrovnik was the most important point in the network of relations Bosnia established with the outside world. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Dubrovnik and Split were places where people had the most exhaustive knowledge of Bosnia. In like manner they were well aware of the market conditions on the other side of the Adriatic and were very shrewd when it came to purchasing products from competitive suppliers. Knowledge about conditions on the neighbouring Italian coast often meant a familiarity with the wider state of the market. An excellent example of this broader knowledge has been provided by the chronicler of the first half of the XlVth century, Miha Madije from Split, who dedicated a large part of his writing to the struggles betweeen the Guelfs and the Gibelins. 2 His portrayal of these confrontations presupposes a more thorough familiarity with the region than would be necessary to someone whose activities in the region were restricted to purely economic matters. However, it is impossible to establish whether such information ever spread outside the confines of the Dalmatian city — Split in this case — and to what extent it reached the hinterland. If so, did it have an effect on the representations of trans-Adriatic places in the minds of those receiving this information? However, considering the network of contacts and ties which we have considered, it is reasonable that some of the information circulating within the Dalmatian cities was transmitted to the inhabitants of Bosnia by merchants, emissaries or travelers. The establishment of a Franciscan vicary in Bosnia in 1340 opened up the most significant channel of communication with Italy. A campaign of building monasteries got under way throughout the land and monks from all over Europe took up residence in these newly established institutions. During the early phases of this development, Italian clerics made the greatest contribution and their presence was most strongly felt. This may be deduced from the fact that of the first three vicars, two were Italians (Martin from Asti and Francis from Florence). The activities of these Franciscan communities would prove to be one of the essential factors contributing to the continuity of 1 Document published in Codex Diplomatics XV, 87, dated December 1, 1374. ^The chronicle compiled by Miha Madije, where we find the relevant data for these contentions, was first published by Lucius.

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ties between Bosnia and Italy. Among these activities were pilgrimages to Asissi regularly attended by monks of the Bosnian vicary. 1 The extent of the Franciscan influence in the dissemination of information can be assessed in the way in which these communities accommodated themselves to the structures of Bosnian society. The Franciscans initially established close relationships with the feudal lords who permitted the building of monasteries on some of their large estates. They also established relationships with the rudimentary city settlements which grew up in the vicinity of the courts. Taking these facts into account, we can surmise the high level of information about the circumstances on the other side of the Adriatic, even if we restrict our assessment to a narrow segment of the population. Mention should also be made of the few Bosnian merchants who set sail across the Adriatic in the XlVth century. The case of a certain "Bertinus Duchi .... mercator Bosne" who in 1327, after his own business affairs, represented the archbishop of Split in certain financial transactions in the city of Bologna, indicates that these individuals have to be taken into account when describing the interconnections between the two shores. 2 However, this is not to imply that trans-Adriatic voyages by Bosnian merchants were frequent. On the contrary, it seems that they were rare. To take but one instance, the possibility of enforcing the payment of debts in a city such as Ancona on the other side of the Adriatic was seldom stated in the contracts regarding debt made between Bosnian merchants and their Dalmatian business partners. 3 Apparently, the probability of a Bosnian debtor sojourning on the Italian shore was not likely enough to be registered in an instrument regulating financial liability. Nevertheless, regardless of the infrequent voyages undertaken by merchants from Bosnia, it was from their ranks that propagators of the "heretic" Bosnian sect were originally recruited. 4 Through representatives of this social group, contacts with supporters of the dualistic teaching in Italy were maintained; through their channels, neophytes made their way into 'informative account of the Franciscan presence in medieval Bosnia has been written by Semren, while more thorough data about vicars and the first missionaries can be found in Mandic. Descriptions of the pilgrimage to Assissi can be found in the unpublished document from State Archives in Zadar, Archives of Split, volume 6/1, fol.16, dated May 10, 1367. ^'Document registering Bertinus' transaction is published in Codex Diplomaticus, IX, 360, dated September 24, 1327. Such an instance is registered in a document published in Codex Diplomaticus, X, 410-11, dated September 7, 1338. 4 The problem of the Bosnian "heresy" has received ample scholarly attention and has been investigated within the broader European context in Lambert. The standard work which presents a detailed history of the Bosnian "heresy" is still Sanjek.

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Bosnia for instruction in the new creed. This mechanism was described by Jacob Bech from the town of Chieri in Lombardia in the statement he made when summoned by the Inquisition. His account deserves to be quoted in greater length: In 1378 he had been asked by Iocerium de Palata and Petrum Patritii from Chieri and a stranger from Sclavonia whose name he does not know whether he wants to be of their sect and belief and in such a manner save his soul. Otherwise he will be damned. He responded that he wanted to hear about their doctrine and if it proved better than the teachings of the Roman church he would do whatever was demanded of him .... Then Jacob stated that ten years had passed since Petrum Patritii had directed him to Sclavonia where he would have wholly and perfectly learned their doctrine from teaching masters living in a placed called Bosnia which place is ruled by some lord who calls himself the Ban of Bosnia who is himself subordinate to the king of Rascia. At that time Petrus had given him ten ducats for the journey and he made it to Tane, but failed to cross the sea because of inclement weather and so returned to Chieri. Asked whether he knew others from Chieri who had departed for the aforesaid place to be taught in the doctrine, he gave an affirmative answer and listed the following: forty years ago Moretus Rabellator de Balbis from Chieri had been there. Iohannes Narro and Granomus Bencius had been there around 1377. Petrus Patritii had been there around 1377, while his brother Iacobinus was there around 1372. Berardus Rascherius was there around 1380. Asked how he knew these things he replied that they had been divulged to him by the said men themselves, excepting Berardo, when they instructed him and others in Chieri. 1 Here are at least two points that merit our attention. Jacob's statement reveals the sense of the otherness of Bosnia, not only as a geographically distant place, but also as a site of religious difference. Furthermore, his knowledge of its complex political situation can only be explained by the fact that some of Jacob's sources had been to Bosnia. To be more precise, Petrus Patritii was in Bosnia exactly at the time when the Bosnian Ban had proclaimed himself king and had taken upon himself the title of king of Rascia, Bosnia and the Littoral (Rex Rascia, Bossnae et Maritimae).2 Mladen Ancic has given an exhaustive account of this event (1997).

'The record of the investigation conducted against Jacob Bech was published by Amati 50-53. 2 An exhaustive account of the act of Tvrtko's coronation can be found in Ancic, 1997, 192 sq.

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Public opinion at the time saw merchants as the agents who had spread the "heresy". A Dominican monk named Anselmo from Alessandria, writing his Tractatus de heretics around 1270 was of the opinion that the "heresy" had been brought to the eastern Adriatic shore from Constantinople by merchants. His older contemporary Thomas the Archdeacon from Split accused two goldsmiths and merchants from Zadar, the brothers Aristod and Mathew Zorobabel, for having transported the "heresy" to Bosnia from the coastal city of Split (Sanjek 51). Diplomatic sources reveal that a century later, in 1369, Pope Urban V sent a warning to the Archbishops of Split and Dubrovnik admonishing them to halt transactions and traffic with merchants. The social and economic circumstances of medieval Bosnia, paricularly the existence of a distinct "heretical" sect, played an enormous role in the construction of stereotypes of Bosnia as the land of the "infidels." The construction of this stereotype was in large part supported by widespread trade in Bosnian "serves" whose demeaning social status was justified by the fact that they were "heretics." This traffic in workers peaked during the XlVth century and during the first decades of the XVth century, after which it virtually ceased. 1 This migratory flow was the basic reason for the appearance of a relatively large number of Bosnian "heretics" on the Apennines peninsula. Without addressing the nature of these stereotypical representations, we can describe the framework within which the stereotype of the Bosnian "infidel" was created. In most cases, the output from Bosnia was in raw materials whose place of origin was of no significance to the ultimate buyer. During the turbulence brought to the Apennines peninsula in the 14th century, Bosnia stood out by the aforesaid "heretic"dimension. Taking into consideration the fact that in this period, Italy was positioned at the very center of routes crisscrossing the known world, it comes as no surprise that familiarity with Bosnia was restricted to a narrow circle of people who maintained connections with it. For others including those who had only sporadic contacts with it, Bosnia was the "heretic" designation; this remained the essential feature to identify this foreign land. Three examples will illustrate how the construction of stereotypes about Bosnia depended on the frequency and quality of contacts that outsiders had with the region. In the statement made by Jacob Bech, he spoke of the locus Bosnia which, according to him, was under the jurisdiction of the Bosnian Ban (viceroy), who himself was subject to regi Rassene. This was ' For an extensive review of works concerning this topic up to the first half of the 80s we refer the reader to Budak. On the abolition of the slave trade in Dubrovnik see Krekic.

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the way things stood at the time. Such a precise knowledge of the circumstances in Bosnia was, without a doubt, the result of first hand information. To take another example, the chronicler from Padua, Galeazzo Gataro, although better informed, nevertheless confused the CroatianDalmatian Viceroy with the Bosnian one, confirming that despite his frequent contacts with the eastern Adriatic hinterland, he lacked a clear picture of conditions within the region (Muratori 76-7). Finally, we draw attention to the most interesting case, as far as our argument is concerned, which shows how the Rimini canon and sub-collector of papal tithes on the eastern Adriatic coast, Michaell de Sancto Arcangello, perceived Bosnia. Finding himself on mission in September 1394 in Split, Michaell forgave the local archbishop a part of his debt because of the setbacks the Split diocese had suffered in the wake of the recent "civil war in Hungary" {propter diuisionem regni Ungarie). In addition, the papal emissary also took into account "the plunderings and destruction ... suffered by these regions at the hands of the Bosnian infidels who have attacked and are attacking them (derobationes et destructions .... quas iose partes passe sunt maxime ab infidelibus Bosnienssibus, qui eosdem inuaserunt et inuadunt)1. No matter whether these are Michaell's own words or whether they were suggested to him by his host, the essential point is that the Rimini canon was ready to characterize the Bosnians as "infidels" during a period when the Bosnian king was making great efforts to represent himself in a totally different light as a fervent Catholic ruler. After proclaiming himself King of Rascia (Serbia) and elevating Bosnia to the status of a Kingdom, the Bosnian King Tvrtko took advantage of the first conflicts with the Turks, including the battle on Kosovo where Sultan Murat lost his life, to begin presenting himself as "the shield of Christianity" (see Mihaljcic). After having conquered the Dalmatian cities and a part of Croatia, the Bosnian king claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Hungarian-Croatian King Louis the Great, seen as the prototypical "Catholic" ruler of the XlVth century. These efforts to play a more active role on the European political scene were registered in the neighboring regions. Thusly, Stjepan Frankopan, a Croatian lord, sought to persuade his brother-in-law Franjo Carrara, the overthrown regent of Padua, to seek Tvrtko's aid against his enemy, the Milanese duke, because the latter had sold weapons to the Turks during the battle of Kosovo (Muratori 392-94). However, few of the gains made by Tvrtko were to be inherited by his successors since more and more effort had to be expended on simply surviving in the face of evergrowing Turkish incursions. 1

Codex Diplomaticus, XVII/1981, 617-18, November 8, 1394.

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In their trans-Adriatic contacts during the XVth century, the Bosnian kings primarily sought a confirmation of the legitimacy of their rule and constantly pleaded for aid in battling "infidels" and "the enemies of the cross." Roles had been exchanged. Former "infidels" became staunch defenders of established beliefs. The threat of a third party — the Turkish presence — undermined habitual oppositions and the very process of othering. It is in this light that we ought to understand Tvrtko II's desire expressed in 1422 to have Venice mediate "with the Malatesta lords in order he would get as a wife a woman from that house" (apud dominos de Malestis, quod haberet in coniugem dominam de ipso domo). It can be surmised that the king himself or someone at the court had come up with such an idea and had transmitted it through the Archbishop of Split to Venice (see Iorga 133). The entire episode is of interest to our account because it gives us the opportunity to conjecture about the image of Italy that existed in Bosnian ruling circles. After coming to the throne in 1420, the Bosnian King found himself in a situation that demanded a careful balancing act among the Christian powers of Venice, the Roman Emperor, the Hungarian-Croatian King Sigismund of Luxemburg and the Pope, on one side, and the Turks on the other (Zivkovic). According to the King's judgement, a course of action that would have contributed to the balance would be a "political marriage" formulated as his "wish to have a Catholic wife". His choice of a Malatesta woman and his seeking the mediation of Venice showed that he was familiar with the existing relations within the triangle formed by the Papal see, the Malatesta ruling family, and Venice. Negotiations relating to this marriage got under way but were abandoned, never heard of again after October 1422. However, the behavior of the Bosnian rulers was insufficient to modify the existent image of Bosnia. Their everyday political decisions were dictated by pragmatical goals and depended upon the balance of a very complicated system of internal and foreign interests. During a period when the Bosnian kings had not yet decided to openly confront the "Great Turk," it was impossible to maintain an image of Bosnia as the shield of the Catholic world. The only thing that filtered down through the labyrinths of an intriguefilled and feudally-parcelled Italy was the firm associative link between Bosnia and the "Great Turk". Developments outside the political arena of the Balkans during the XVth century engendered new elements which contributed to the construction of a richer and more detailed image of Bosnia than the one inherited from the XlVth century. At the turn of the century, the western half of the Balkans

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consisting of Bosnia and Serbia became one of the most important exporters of European silver, producing at least 1/5 of the entire known (?) output of this mineral (Cirkovic 1981). Most of the silver was exported to Italy through the ports on the eastern Dalmatian coast. Regardless of the fact of ist importance, silver was not the only item for which Bosnia was known at the time. A rare business ledger from the XVth century belonging to the Caboga brothers from Dubrovnik shows that during the thirties of the XVth century, wax from Bosnia was sold at the great fairs of Pesaro, Rimini, and Fano. Bosnian product found more frequently on the Dalmatian shore were now reaching Italian destinations. The variety of goods designated by that label was quite large, from luxury silver utensils to wool cloth worn by the urban poor. (Sunjic 303-342) Our reconstruction of the images of the other on both sides of the Adriatic during this time has relied mainly on written sources. However, we need to draw attention to the role of oral communication in societies where the significance of the written word was far from what it is in our contemporary circumstances. If we read the court records of the time, such as Jacob Bech's statement, we can intuit the weight given to this mode of transmitting information. The arena where these socially relevant transactions were staged were large fairs, taverns, hostelries and similar gathering places. Although the content of what was orally transmitted from the hinterland to the cities of the Dalmatian coast, and from there to the western Italian shores, will remain a mystery, we can claim with certainty that this manner of disseminating information was helped by large migratory movements. The steady growth in the traffic of raw materials and goods characteristic for the eastern Adriatic hinterland, the development of mining, the growth in capital, and the expansion of local markets eventually transformed the structure of the whole society. Constant incursions by Turkish forces were an additional destabilizing factor. These processes instigated a movement of resettlement with the result that in certain areas on the Italian coast, up to 15% of their population were Slavs. (Gestrin). The Bosnian contingent within this Slav population must have been quite high and symmetrically distributed in accordance with their former places of residence. This does not mean that there were no Bosnians in the Malatesta Dukedom, but rather that their number must have been proportionately small. We can confirm this with the fact that of the numerous Slavs serving in various functions in Fano, only two of them came from Bosnia (Gestrin, 1968).

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The processes and events which have been described above contributed to establishing a thick network of connections between the two Adriatic shores. Let us again go to a historical document which shows the concrete contours of these connections. A contract drawn up in Dubrovnik in 1429 listed the places in which one of the parties could enforce payment of the debt. It projects through its stipulations the unity of the Adriatic space. The debtor was a citizen of Split but when the contract was drawn up he was "habitator civitatis Barulli" who would be obliged to pay his debt in "Ragusii, Catari, Spaleti, Tragurii, Narenti, Jadre, Sebenici, Segnie, Antibari, Dulcinii, Allesi, Scutari, Baruli, Trani, Manfredonie, Anchone, Fermi, Pensauri, Arimini, Venetiis, Ferrarie, Padue, et in omnibis aliis locis et partibus Dalmatie, Croacie, Albanie, Zente, Sclavonie, Bosine, regni Sicilie, marchie Anconitane, Romandiole"(Voje 166). Looking at this list and locating these towns on a map of the Adriatic, we see before us an encounter zone alive with intercultural transactions. To return to the initial scene of our story: We can now argue with certainty that when the condottiere Broglio di Tartaglia put his foot on Dubrovnik's soil, he already had a store of images and information about the land to which he had been sent. Our discussion has attempted to delineate some of the contours of this knowledge. Even though Bosnia is named as a site within the transAdriatic network, we can argue tnat it stood outside as an "Other" to the core coastal region. This notion of a place distant and threatening contributed to its identity and sense of centrality. Medieval Bosnia, living on the periphery and sandwiched between two powerful socio-political structures, exemplified strategies of negotiating the broader context in which it was geographically located. Therefore, the 1429 document gestures to the unity of Adriatic space but it also registers certain rifts, the margin against which that unity strained and which ultimately contained it. We have tried to show how stereotypical representations function within a specific time frame and within a restricted geographical space. We have also pointed out how they function within political-economic processes and how they can influence weighty affairs of state. Our excursions into political history were made in order to illustrate how representations are liable to manipulation and how political agents make attempts to transform and refashion them in accord with political interests. As was stated in the introduction, our premise rests on a belief that an exclusive focus on represenations as cultural and psychological categories fails to recognise to what extent they are implicated in the circulation of goods and services. To

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put it in another way, we have sought to show how representations have a complex relationship to the transactions of material culture and how an investigation of these interconnections can yield worthwhile insights into the past and perhaps make us wary about too facile interpretations of the present.

References Amati, Giorgio. 1865. Processus contra Valdenes in Lombardia superiori anno 1387, Archivio Storico Italiano. III. Ancic, Mladen. 1997. Putanja klatna. Ugarsko-hrvatsko kraljevstvo i Bosna u XIV. Stoljecu. Zadar-Mostar. — 2001. Na rubu Zapada. Tri stoljeca srednjovjekovne bosanske povijesti. Zagreb. Battaglini, Francesco. 1976. Memorie istoriche di Rimino e de' suoi signori. Rimini (Ristampa delle edizioni originali - 1789). Budak, Neven. 1984. "Pregled literature i objavljenih izvora o problemu serva i famula u srednjovjekovnim drustvima na istocnom Jadranu", Radovi Instituía za hrvatsku povijest. 17. Codex Diplomatìcus regni Croaciae, Dalmatiae et Sclavoniae. 1902-1990. I-XVIII, Ed. Tadija Smiciklas et al., Zagreb. Cirkovic, Sima. 1981. "The Production of Gold, Silver, and Copper in the Central Parts of the Balkans from the 13th to the 16th Century", in: Precious Metals in the Age of Expansion. Stuttgart. Gestrin, Ferdo. 1971. "Le ralazioni economiche tra le due sponde adriatiche tra Quattro e Cinquecento", in: Atti del Congresso internazionale sulle relazioni fra le due Sponde adriatiche (15-18 ottobre 1971). S.a. — 1968. "Slavi negli organi amministrativi dei Malatesta a Fabo nella prima meta del secolo XV", Studia Picena 36. Iorga, Nicola. 1899. Notes et extraits pour servir a 1'historie des croisades au XV-e siecle. Paris. Kovacevic-Kojic, Desanka. 1984. "Ekonomske veze i kulturni utjecaji izmedu bosanske drzave i talijanskih gradova u XIV i XV vijeku", Godisnjak drus tva historie ara Bosne i Hercegovine. XXXV. Krekic, Barlsa. 1997. L'abolition de l'esclavage à Dubrovnik (Raguse) au XVe siècle - mythe ou réalité?, in: Idem. Dubrovnic: a Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300-1600. London: Variorum Reprints. Lambert, Malcolm. 1998. The Cathars. London: Blackwell Publishers. Lucius, Iohannes. 1666. De regno Dalmatiae et Croatie libri sex. Amstelodami. Mandic, Dominik. 1964. Franjevacka Bosna. Rome. Mehan, Uppinder and David Townsend. 2001. "'Nation' and the Gaze of the Other in Eighth Century Northumbria". Comparative Literature 51/1. 1-26. Mihaljcic, Rade. 1984. Lazar Hrebeljanovic, storija, Kult, Predanje. Belgrade. Muratori, L., Raccolta degli storici ilatiani. Citta di Castelo M. DCCCXII, Galezzo, Bartolomeo e Andrea Gatari, Cronaca Carrarese. Pounds, Norman John Greville. 1994. An Economic History of Europe. Longman 1994 2 .

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Raukar, Tomislav. 1980-81. "Komunalna drustva u Dalmaciji u XIV stoljecu", Historijski zbornik. XXXIII-XXXIV. — 1982. "Komunalna drustva u Dalmaciji u XV i u prvoj polovici XVI stoljeca", Historijski zbornik. XXXV. Rismondo, Vladimir. 1954. "Pomorski Split druge polovine XIV st. Notarske imbrevijature", Izdanja Muzeja grada Splita. 5. Semren, Marko. 1987. Il Francescanismo vissuto nelle regioni croate di Bosnia ed Erzegovina. Romae. Sziics, Jenò. 1983. "The Three Historical Regions of Europe", Acta historica Academiae scientiarum Hungaricae. 29. pp. 3-4. Sanjek, Franjo. 1975. Bosansko-humski krstjani i katarsko-dualisticki pokret u srednjem vijeku. Zagreb. Sunjic, Marko. 1996. Bosna i Venecija (odnosi u XIV. i XV. St.). Sarajevo. Tosic, Duro. 1987. Trg Drijeva u srednjem vijeku. Sarajevo. Voje, Ignacij. 1976. Kreditna trgovina u srednjovjekovnom Dubrovniku, Sarajevo. Zi vkovic, Pavo. 1981. Tvrtko II Tvrtkovic. Sarajevo.

Lily Hamourtziadou University of Keele, U.K. THE PEOPLE'S MYTHS: THE CASE OF THE BOSNIAN NATIONS

The most recent, radical critics of concepts of nations and nationalism, the post-modernists, see the relationship between past and present as something complex and problematic. While believing nations to be modern, the products of modern cultural conditions, they see elements of an ethnic past being used by nationalists, in an attempt to answer present needs; thus, "the present creates the past in its own image." 1 In contrast to the "geological" explanation, this "gastronomical" paradigm regards nations as "cultural artifacts," and nationalists as "image makers." They put forward the idea that nations are in some sense "invented," insisting on "the imagined quality of the national community and the fictive nature of unifying myths." 2 This is a view even modernists such as Benedict Anderson have put forward, in order to unmask the nation and reveal the power games of nationalism and nationalists. As Anthony Smith explains: Specifically nationalist instruments of elite manipulation are symbolic: they involve the creation of a culture-ideology of community, through a series of emotive symbols and myths, communicated by print and the media. But in fact it is ultimately a specious community, one that parades as a collective cure for the modern disease of alienation between states and society, and operates through historical fictions and literary tropes.-*

Nationalism can, according to this view, be deconstructed into its component images and fictions; the nation is turned into a "narrative," a "discourse," a "text" to be interpreted.

'smith., Myths and Memories of the Nation, 1999, p. 180. Ibid„ p. 165. 3 Ibid., p. 165 2

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The weight, again, falls on the shoulders of political and intellectual elites, as they are considered to be the driving force behind and executives of those "fictions." This paper focuses on and discusses those fictions or myths that are said to be at the heart of the nation's belief system concerning their birth, character and mission. How do we decide that something falls within the genre of "myth"? How do we decide to categorize this, but not that, as "myth"? Why not use the term "history" instead? "We can perhaps say," writes Joanna Overing, "that the use of the term "myth" is more a judgmental than a definitional or propositional procedure: its attribution requires a judgment having to do with standards of knowledge and its organization."1 For the Greeks, from whom we inherited the concept, "myth" was a category of fictitious discourse. Muthos was understood as a form of narrative opposed to the reasoned discourse of logos. As such, it was defined as a discourse opposed to truth and to the rational, making myth a fiction, and branding it "absurd" as well. According to Vernant, 2 a fundamental characteristic of myth is its capacity to give pleasure and to involve the emotional participation of an audience — and also to convince them — whereas the purpose of logos was to establish the truth based on a logical, critical and detached intelligence alone. The mythical is a world of illusions: myths are fictitious stories about the past. 3 But not only about the past: More contemporary 'myths' are put forward by authors of books and articles on post-communist Yugoslavia, seen as legitimate tools in the hands and minds of Serbs. This paper will be divided in two sections: section A, entitled "Past Myths," briefly deals with narratives referring to the past (though articulated both in the past and in the present), while section B, "Present Myths," addresses narratives referring to the present, or at least to a not-too-distant past. Three issues will be addressed: what these narratives are about, what their function is, and to what extent they reflect the reality of which they claim to speak.

1

Overing, "The Role of Myth: An Anthropological Perspective, or: the Reality of the Really Made-Up," in Hosking & Schopflin, Myths and Nationhood, 1997, p. 1. 2 Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, 1990, pp. 206-207. •^Overing, in Hosking & Schopflin 1997, p. 4.

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Ever-present in the discussion is, of course, the problem of defining "myth." In several definitions we are going to look at, the terms "emotion," "fiction," "falsehood," "project" and "exaggeration" seem to appear. As far as modern myths are concerned, and in particular in the case of Yugoslavia, even the term "conspiracy theory" has made its appearance in various texts. Finally, and in terms of their relation to reality, what makes these stories so convincing? Why were these stories held to be true by the people for generations and why are they still relevant? Both sections involve the concept of "invention." If nations are in some sense "invented," are enemies invented too?

Section A: Past Myths. In the late twentieth century, the prevailing academic attitude towards national narratives is skeptical: we treat nations as constructions based on and fed by myths. What those myths are essentially about is differences: in selfperception and identity, and in the perception of others. They cover many areas, such as temporal origins, location, ancestry, a heroic age, decline and regeneration of the nation. 1 Schopflin provides a similar taxonomy when he writes of myths of territory, of redemption and suffering, of unjust treatment, myths of election, of military valor, of ethnogenesis and antiquity, and myths of kinship and shared descent. 2 Attributes associated with myths are the use of symbols to stir emotions, a selective representation of "facts" and the tendency to idealize events and personalities. Myths address deep psychic needs that have to be satisfied for society to hold together; they are not supposed to be rendered valid by correspondence to an independent, objective, factual reality: they are partial and normative. Yet myths have been instrumental in a variety of ways. They have, first of all, been instruments of self-definition, attributing special qualities to the group. They also serve to simplify complexity (and as a result are not strictly accurate), helping communities make sense of events and situations. Myths play a role in the maintenance of memory; myths can also be used by elites to elicit a large emotional response, or to preserve their own power.

J

A. Smith 1999. G. Schopflin, 'The Functions of Myth and the Taxonomy of Myths', in G. Hosking & G. Schopflin (ed), Myths and Nationhood, 1997.

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Those narratives that Schopflin calls "myths" are the narratives that nations call their "history." They are what Anthony Smith calls "ethnohistories." Their truth and accuracy, or the presumption of their truth and accuracy, are vital for the nations in question, for these stories are used to make all sorts of claims. Schopflin misses the point of those stories, for it is precisely because they are believed as true historical accounts (against all conflicting accounts given by their "rivals") that they are so powerful in drawing such clear boundaries, convincing, mobilizing and providing nations with justifications both for their beliefs and for their actions. A brief look at some national narratives that are customarily — even routinely — described as myths can, firstly, aid assessment of the use of the term, and, secondly, provide the grounds for comparison with some (more controversial) modern-day "myths."

The myth of ethnogenesis (temporal origins, ancestry, kinship and descent). "Every ethnic collectivity will have one or possibly more than one myth of ethnogenesis and antiquity. Myths of this kind fairly obviously answer the question of where we are from in our collective existence." 1 They do more than that: they explain not only who our ancestors were, but also what kind of people they were. The two seem to be inextricably linked. All three nations making up post-Communist Yugoslavia claim both filiation and an ideological "fit" with the presumed ancestors: the Serbs presume a kinship and cultural affinity with the first "Serb" ancestors (claiming that the Croats and Muslims, while having the same kinship, became separate ethnic groups through the adoption of a different culture); the Croats similarly presume filiation and cultural affinity with the first "Croat" ancestors (claiming that the Serbs and Muslims became separate, impure groups through the adoption of different cultures); the Muslims maintain they are not "converts," but a distinct ethnic group with their own distinct ancestors, members of the medieval Bosnian Church (persecuted as "heretics" by the Roman Catholic Church), with whom they presume both filiation and cultural affinity.

ilbid., p. 34.

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The Muslim story is certainly dubious, for the Islamicisation of Bosnia seems to have taken many generations, as the Ottoman defters (tax registers recording property ownership, which categorized people by their religion) clearly indicate. Moreover, some owners are specifically described as "new Muslim," while others have a Muslim name and are listed as "son of...," with the father bearing a Christian name. 1 What is maintained by all, however, is not only linearity, but also the noble and heroic nature of their presumed ancestors, one that they have naturally inherited, together with the traditions and wider ideology

Myths of Election. According to Schopflin, these myths state that the nation in question has been entrusted, by God or by History, to perform some special mission, some particular function, because it is endowed with unique virtues. The Christian origins of this are very evident. In the modern world, the religious motif has been transmuted into something secular, like the particular virtue of civility or literacy or capacity of modernity or simply being more "European" than anyone else. This myth then legitimates an assumption of moral and cultural superiority to all competitors and rivals and requires them to recognize one's unique moral worth. 2 Such beliefs are usually found within the context of a "Golden Age," when the nation had reached its potential and expressed its true glorious self. Examples of this myth are found in Serbian and Bosnian Muslim narratives. The myth of Heavenly Serbia is the dominant Serbian national myth, bringing together the religion and politics. According to this myth, the Serbian nation has adopted, through Saint Sava, "evangelic justice": long ago, at the battle of Kosovo, they are said to have chosen the "Heavenly Kingdom," moral purity over military victory. That was when they lost. When they won against the Ottomans, the myth was of a holy people who pushed the Muslims out of Europe. "Self-sacrifice," "forbearance," "forgiveness" and "tolerance" are some of the "divine-humane" or "Christ-like" characteristic of the Serbian national soul, in the words of Bishop Atanasije Jetvic. 3 1

Malcolm, Bosnia; A short history, 1994, pp. 52-53. ^Schopflin 1997, p. 31. 3 Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia, 1999, p. 23.

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Moreover, the Serbs have never done anything wrong. This is very much due to their nature: they are essentially good and therefore incapable of doing wrong (morally speaking). They were not only the ones to push the Ottomans out of Europe, but they were also the ones that fought the Germans in the Second World War — the only Yugoslav nation to have done so. The Muslim story also speaks of a special people with a mission. The mission is the "Islamization of society." As it was articulated by the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, Islam is not just a religion, but a demand for the conjunction of faith and knowledge, morals and politics, ideas and interests; Islamic order is a unity of religion and law, an integrated way of life. The authority of the Koran as law must be restored, for there cannot be a Muslim identity separate from Islam.1 If the "true nature" of Serbs is holy, tolerant, noble and so on, so is the Muslim. The Muslim character is said to be very much in keeping with the teachings of the Koran, as it has always been, ever since the Serbs came to the Balkans. It was, as they believe, the Ottomans who understood them, as fellow Muslims. What was foreign occupation to the Christian Serbs and Croats was liberation to the Bosnian Muslims. Hence, their 'heroic ages' did not coincide.

Myths of suffering and unjust treatment — or who have our enemies been? These myths, claims Schopflin, should be understood as myths of powerlessness and compensation for that powerlessness: They make a virtue of fatalism and passivity, claim a special moral superiority for having suffered...and thereby demand recognition for certain claims in the present. 2 The most important element of these myths, however, is not the "suffering nation" as such, though this is of great importance as well. What is even more important here is who has made the nation suffer; who has slaughtered our people; who has denied us our freedom. In other words, the crucial thing in these myths of unjust treatment and suffering is the "enemy" identification. 1 Izetbegovic, Islamic Declaration, in Allcock, Milivojevic & Horton 1998, pp. 129-130. Hosking & Schopflin, 1997, pp. 29-30.

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So it is important not only that the Serbs have suffered, it is important also that the Muslims and Croats (among others) have been their enemies, killing them and trying to drive them away for centuries. Just as it is important to the Muslims that they have suffered in the hands of the more powerful Serbs and Croats. As it is all-important to the Croats that their chief rivals and enemies (after the Ottomans) have always been the Serbs. Indeed, their victimization ranges from (in the case of the Serbs) being killed and oppressed by the Ottomans and Muslims, threatened, cheated and slaughtered by the Croats during the Second World War, when like the Muslims they sided with the foreign enemies against them, as well as antagonized by them in the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." The Croat version also tells of their constant rivalry with the Serbs, who somehow always seemed to come up on top, and who always seemed to be ready to kill them too. As for the Muslims, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire marked the start of their persecution by both Serbs and Croats. The enemies are identified — and what makes it worse is that these enemies (who have repeatedly oppressed, killed us, etc.) are living "right here with us, still trying to gain control over us, our ancestral land, still ready to kill us." They were not foreign occupiers that once upon a time made our nation suffer: they are still here living in "our country, our city, and village, even neighborhood." The ready identification, coupled with the fact that these are "repeated offenders" makes myths of suffering very powerful and effective in instilling feelings of mistrust and fear in the hearts of people. Not surprisingly, a degree of narcissism is involved in the national narratives of all the nations. "We" have never wronged anyone (that did not deserve it, at least), while they are evil people who slaughter innocent people (us). It is beliefs like this one that provide, more than anything else, the mythical element. For they are not simply exaggerations, or idealizations, or moving concepts; they are simply false and also irrational. Moreover, they are dangerous. As far as their factual basis is concerned, those myths reflect to some extent a lived reality. Yet it is also the case that there are several selfcontradictions in them, as in the myths of ethnogenesis, as well as untruths, mainly regarding some of their alleged differences (language, for example). In such cases, the "facts" are made to fit the stories. Moreover, the narratives are very selective, and so a variety of other facts is totally excluded — such as bad acts of one's own nation, including killings, oppression, collaboration with foreign invaders and so on.

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Myths help those who believe them to identify their lands, their allies and their enemies in an unproblematic sort of way. Yet the term "myth" is still problematic. For regardless of the inaccuracies of the various mythical elements, inventions and constructions, and the number of very selected and slightly distorted "memories" we have seen, these narratives are not simply falsehoods. Nor are they fictions. The stories, however selective, describe largely true events and situations. The tales of suffering are true: they have suffered, been dominated, killed, etc. Moreover, the nations are entitled to tell stories of suffering in the hands of their tormentors without being branded "manipulators," "liars" or just plain "evil." This applies to all three nations: the Serbian, the Croatian and the Muslim. If the Serbian stories are labeled "evil," that is largely due to the fact that they are considered mythical, in the fictional sense. In other words, lies. It seems that the "evil" status comes as a direct and necessary result of the "mythical" one. Yet the fights between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims are not fictional; they actually happened and are recorded and narrated by all sides involved. The stories vary, naturally, for they are ethnocentric, but there is no good reason to believe that their accounts are full of lies. We know from various sources that hundreds of thousands of people were killed in several wars between them, probably in less-than-clean ways. Massacres are never clean and tidy, and they are never kind and gentle (and they are definitely not texts). To say so or to write so is no different for a Serb, for a Croat or for a Muslim than it is for any other member of a nation whose members were massacred. It is certainly not evil. A story-as-lived-experience view would allow for the works and beliefs to serve as explanations, as narratives of causes of real experiences. Instrumental they might be, but they are also representational. A better term for those narratives might be istoriai, for the Greek word istoria means both history and story. The term combines the historical with the fictional, describing those narratives in a way that does justice both to their inaccuracies and inventions, and to their truths.

Section B: Present Myths. Nationalism posits one's own ethnic group and its interests as values above any other consideration. It is the objective of national political parties to defend and promote the "national interest," and in the multinational republic

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of Bosnia-Herzegovina the political parties did exactly that. In BosniaHerzegovina, the voters chose the party that represented their nation: the Serbs voted for the Serbian Democratic Party, the Croats voted for the Croat Democratic Community, and the Muslims voted for the Party of Democratic Action. They saw their own "national party" as the one promoting their interests. More importantly, they saw the other "national parties" as not promoting their interests, but as actually hostile parties, promoting interests that were against their own. Why was that? Christopher Bennett writes: In the same way that Nazi Germany alleged that the German minorities of Czechoslovakia and Poland were being persecuted by their Czech and Polish governments, Serbia alleged that Serbs in Croatia and BosniaHercegovina were victims of Croat and Muslim oppression. However, in both instances the plight of the respective minorities was simply a pretext for intervention.

This makes two claims: firstly, that some sort of "myth" was involved (or what Schopflin called "conspiracy theory"), and, secondly, that the function of this "myth" was to serve as an excuse for Serbian intervention. "As early as 1987," Bennett maintains, "the Serbian media were already on a war-footing, spewing out a barrage of ethnic hatred." 2 The "ethnic hatred" line was, in fact, the national parties' line in Bosnia. Not only did the parties build on the existing divisions along ethnic lines, promoting the interests of "their own" (and becoming very popular among "their own" for that reason), but they did so stressing how dangerous the other nations are, basing their claims on hostility shown throughout an 100-year period. Here it is important to point out that this activity of creating enemies where they do not exist (for political purposes, to justify intervention and so on) is described only in relation to the Serbian nation. I have yet to come across a text that describes Croatian and Muslim "enemy creations;" as far as authors writing on the collapse of Yugoslavia are concerned, only Serbs create enemies, while Croats and Muslims have real enemies: the Serbs. This is not a line I will be following. I will, instead, look at the narratives about the "Other," the enemy, in all camps. All three nations had such narratives, and all three use them for similar purposes. Moreover, all three of them had enemies. ^Bennett, 1995, p. 243; also Judah, 1997. Ibid„ p. 10.

2

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"Nationalism is a collectivist ideology," writes Vojin Dimitrijevic. 1 Is it also a collective illusion? The kind of stories we examined in the previous section suggest that nations do have some illusions about who they are, how they came into being as ethnic groups and nations, etc. This was the main criterion providing justification for the use of the term "myth" to describe them, i.e., the inventions, the fictions involved. The conclusion of the previous section was that those narratives can perhaps be called myths (although they are totally unlike myths such as that of the twelve gods of Olympus or that of Zeus impregnating mortal virgins by coming down in the form of rain), but with reservations. An alternative term was suggested, as being more appropriate. Can enemy stories be called myths? Are the enemies they speak of invented? Or are they real? And, if so, what have the people involved done to merit such a name, to contribute to their enemy status and to, thus, shape the nationalism of other nations (of whom they are enemies)? The collapse of communism, which had been concerned with or troubled by the rise of Croatian and Muslim nationalisms, witnessed another rise of Serbian nationalism. The Croatian terrorism and uprisings, as well as the rise and creation of the Muslim nation (not to mention the rapidly expanding Albanian population of the autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo), created the perfect setting for another rise of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s. Moreover, when Yugoslavia was collapsing and the republics were declaring themselves to be new independent states (with international recognition), the Serbs, who were scattered through the territory of the former state, became a national minority, believing themselves to be dominated by non-Serbs. 2 Dimitrijevic rightly observes that. In those new states, where Serbs form a considerable part of the population (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina), the reduction to a national minority was experienced as humiliating degradation, especially if it was accompanied by triumphant nationalism of the government. This was one of the causes (but certainly not the only one) of the tragic events in former Yugoslavia. 3

1 Dimitrijevic, "The Post-Communist Apotheosis of the Nation-State and the Old and New Minorities," in Nationalism and Minorities, Institute of Social Sciences & University of Essex, 1995, p. 40. 2 I n the Serbian republic they comprised two thirds of the population, but they lived in considerable numbers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro, and in smaller numbers in Macedonia and Slovenia. Dimitrijevic, in Nationalism and Minorities, p. 42.

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So the humiliation of being a national minority, coupled with the belief that they were a national minority in a hostile state, proved too much for the Serbs. But this was not the beginning of the story. The bad feeling and antagonism that existed between the three nations for centuries manifested itself on every possible occasion. Focusing on this century, the nations concerned fought against each other whenever they got a chance to, even when one might perhaps have expected them to unite (against a foreign invader). Yet even on those occasions, when a foreign power was about to attack, the real enemy was seen as being inside Yugoslavia, and so alliances were formed by the different parties with the foreign enemy so as to fight with them against the "domestic" enemies. This was done during both World Wars. Against such a background of hostility and betrayal, the Yugoslav region has come to be characterized by a paradox: uncertainty means certainty. What this means is that when a breakdown, such as the collapse of the state, or a change occurs and a climate of uncertainty as to what is happening next is created, people tend to become convinced the worst will happen, as it has done so before almost without exception. So the uncertainty of the future (or even present) gives way to a certainty that is based on past experiences. In other words, when there is uncertainty, people, based on past experiences, become certain that terrible things await them. However, it must be stressed here that the past is not enough when it comes to enemies. Showing the existence of enemies in the past is not enough to create a conviction of present hostility, fear and insecurity. Those past enemies must be shown to be enemies still — this is an absolute necessity. Dijana Vukomanovic writes: The question which became dominant was that of who was to blame for the past. The Serbian elite chose the easier way: faced with the past it started discovering external enemies -other nations. A search was mounted for a universal enemy who would be accused of all mistakes. The history of mutual inter-ethnic conflicts provided abundant arguments for finding the enemy in members of neighboring nations/national minorities.1

^Vukomanovic, "The Serbian National Interest in the Vicious Circle of Ethno-Nationalism," in Nationalism and Minorities, p. 68.

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Yet this is not enough; a past enemy has to be shown to be a present enemy as well. In addition to that, it is very significant if a 'threatened' nation is also in a situation of uncertainty, insecurity and vulnerability. Dijana Vukomanovic continues: The Croatian people were accused of genocide against the Serbs, committed during World War II. That provided a fertile ground for the emergence of two paranoias, the Croatian one manifested in contesting i.e., suppressing the number of Serbs killed and the Serbian manifested in fear of a relapse of the Croatian crime. Thus, the Serbs developed a "socialpathological fear of an independent Croatian state," while the Croats started to look upon the Serbian people in Croatia as a "factor interfering with the Croatian national entity." 1

They were both right. Their new identities, like the ones before, were formed in the process of confrontation with other nations. Their enemy narratives were formed in much the same way. Altogether, we see in all three nations a largely defensive nationalism. While not much more needs to be said about the enemies of the Croats and the Muslims, a little more needs to be said about the enemies of the Serbs. After the Second World War, during which they have had to fight against the foreign powers, the Croat Ustashas and the Muslims, they found themselves in a rather unsatisfactory peace. Their control over territory was much reduced by the Communist Party, while the power of their enemies was gradually being increased. The Ustasha movement flourished abroad, with incidents of violence also within the territory of Yugoslavia, and the Croatian Spring was a sure indication that the brotherhood and unity idea was a myth. The Croats never ceased to identify with their nationality and showed they were as keen to be "brothers" with the rest as the Serbs. The debates and conflict over the Serbo-Croat language shows just how determined they were to prove themselves to be totally unlike the rest in everything, even to the point of seeing differences where they did not truly exist. The Muslims, old enemies of the Serbs, managed to gain recognition as a separate nation within Yugoslavia. In addition to that, they kept multiplying, becoming by the late 1980s the largest nation in Bosnia. Their national leader, Alija Izetbegovic, stressed the Islamic character of his nation and threatened (because to the Serbs that was a threat) with the Islamization of society. For the Serbs, however, another domination by Muslims was not an option. ' ibid., pp. 70-71. Quotations taken from an interview given by Prof. Jovan Raskovic, President of the Serbian Democratic Party to Start, No. 555, Zagreb, April 28, 1990, pp. 17-21.

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The Albanian domination of Kosovo, however, was already under way. The Kosovo Albanians, due to their high birthrate, saw their number double between 1961 (40%) and 1981 (77.5%). By the end of the 1980s, they had reached 85%, moving up to 90% in the 1990s.1 Constitutional amendments in 1968 allowed Kosovo to fly the Albanian flag, and in 1974, Kosovo became an autonomous province within the Serbian Republic, with a predominantly Albanian leadership. Under the 1974 Constitution, Kosovo's educational system was placed under Albanian control and some textbooks were used that originated in Albania. The Serb authorities viewed this system with deep suspicion and as a primary vehicle of Albanian secessionism. 2 Moreover, the territory the Serbs stood to lose was the heartland of the medieval Serbian kingdom (the one that the coming of the Ottoman Muslims had put an end to). Many of the greatest monuments of the Serbian Orthodox Church are located there. The Kosovo Albanians, like the Bosnian Muslims, had also fought alongside the Italians and the Germans during the Second World War. During this period, the Serbs suffered harsh treatment from the embittered Kosovo Albanians, who now put pressure on them to leave. The Albanian SS Division Skanderbeg was created, indiscriminately killing Serbs and Montenegrins and helping to expel up to 10,000 Slav families from Kosovo. New Albanian colonists arrived from the poorer regions of northern Albania. 3 The Kosovo Albanians, like the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats, showed themselves to be politically unreliable and a threat to the stability and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. The above-mentioned nations clearly proved themselves to be nations hostile to each other, as well as hostile to Serbia. With Tito's death and the collapse of Yugoslavia, the enmity that had never really disappeared but had been present and at work throughout the period of communism, the threat became more real in that now the threatening and hostile parties had the chance to make their threats come true. And, much as expected, claims of separation and independence started coming from all directions, except the Serbian, with Serbian populations "trapped" in and i

Poulton & Farouki, Muslim Identity and the Balkan State, 1997, p. 150. Ibid., p. 162. 3 Ibid„ p. 147. 2

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victimized by new hostile states. The warnings had been correct, the tales of hostility accurate, but, mainly, the other nations proved themselves to have merited the label "enemy" fully. Stories of Serbian oppression in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, of unjust treatment by non-Serbs (including actual -and possibly further- loss of control and territory — as in Kosovo and Vojvodina), that had dominated Serbian nationalist thinking in times of peace, were replaced by stories of violence and crimes committed against Serbs in the aforementioned areas. While the term "genocide" was misused, the persecution of Serbs in Croatia and Kosovo was a reality. And the fear the prospect of total domination, and possible Islamization (after Bosnian independence), instilled in the hearts of Serbs must have been just as real. It made the "national choice" the only choice. We would be telling an incomplete story if we gave the so-called myths as the cause, or a particular politician. It is not even a combination of the two that makes a complete and satisfactory account. Several pieces need to be put into place to complete the puzzle. We need not identify a particular factor alone with "the cause." 1 We may instead suggest that by adding a missing explanatory factor the entire story constitutes "the cause." The story or narrative account that follows is one of the causes, contributing factors, and can, as a whole, be seen as "the cause." It breaks down like this: C-ec-E C is the less immediate cause or explanation, and it stands for an insecure situation in which acts of aggression are committed and each side threatens the other. The effect e is the feelings and narratives of animosity, mistrust and fear, feelings and narratives that reflect C. Effect e then becomes or serves as cause c, that is, the narratives as lived experience of the people and as parts of the rhetoric of elites serve as more immediate causes of E. What E stands for is aggression, or conflict, or war. E can then become the new C. As a result we find that the stories are both the effect of a wider cause, and the cause of a wider effect which can then become the new wider cause: the stories are both effects and causes of C, which is both their cause and effect. It is a dynamic two-way relation. 'Suganami, On the Causes

of War,

1996.

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This whole account of causes, this storytelling that traces a sequence, can be seen as "the cause." The important thing in this design is the placement of the stories. My understanding of them is primarily as effect e of C. For it is C that causes the animosity and the stories of bad treatment. The main reason why those narratives were as convincing as they were was because they reflected a lived reality. We become each other's enemies through our aggressive acts, our threats, and our obvious attempts to undermine each other. We are seen as enemies when we show ourselves to be dangerous. It is a mistake to assume that no wrongdoing ever takes place, and it is a mistake to dismiss as "nationalistic propaganda" stories of people that recount their suffering in the hands of their tormentors. The stories we tell about others, the stories that tell of past and present enemies, tend to, if not offer a terribly accurate narration, identify those enemies correctly and give accounts of atrocities committed by the enemy1 with a fairly good degree of truth. That is at least true for the nations of Yugoslavia. The images of the "Other," as found in narratives, are due to a wider unsafe or threatening situation, as we saw earlier, in which the "Other" is actively involved. The stories of all three nations concerning their enemy "Other" are rendered intelligible by the dangerous reality they have been living in for centuries. The acts of aggression perpetrated, as well as the threatening statistics coupled with the rising power of the Muslims, not only created but also strengthened those narratives. Moreover, all three nations were justified in constructing such narratives and using them to identify their enemies, when the threat was so real and the violence so open. "Justified" here is not used to mean, "morally justified;" it is not a moral statement. Neither does it imply that the actors in question were justified in taking action against their enemies, whatever form that took. What it refers to is justified beliefs, or beliefs that are supported by the data received or perceived. The Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims were justified in believing each other's nations to be hostile to their own.

Again, it must be stressed, however, that what is missing from those stories is the atrocities that we committed. That is, the part that tells of us as enemies. Also see Hamourtziadou, 1999, and Hamourtziadou & Gokay, 2000, for Greek and Turkish "enemy stories" and narratives.

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The term "myth" then is totally inappropriate, as far as these "enemy stories" are concerned, for it fails to do justice to the truths those istoriai contain. It is also not a very good term to describe the ethnohistories of the three nations, their istoriai about their past, as the fictive element is then stressed a little too strongly. It is certainly the case that stories about the past contain exaggerations, fictions, idealizations, possibly some false memories (or at least memories greatly guided and assisted by the present), and their accuracy and facts can be suspicious (there is always some degree of doubt involved in stories of a distant past), so "myth" could be used with some justification, though it is not the best term. Its use, incorrectly, puts stories of ethnogenesis, descent, ancestry and other historical accounts of nations at the same level as myths of Hercules and the Cyclops. There has to be some distinction between the two, I believe, so it is wrong to use the same term for both. What is, however, beyond doubt, a myth is that of election. Most people, writes Richard Rorty, simply do not think of themselves as, first and foremost, a human being. Instead, they think of themselves as being a certain good sort of human being — a sort defined by explicit opposition to a particularly bad sort. 1 What is greatly suspicious is not the stories they tell about their enemies, but the stories they tell about themselves, their self-characterization. Always in relation to the outsiders, they believe themselves to be a group of special, chosen people, who always suffer and never do wrong, for it is not in their nature to do so. The others, on the other hand, are naturally bad, wrong the rest and commit atrocities. A distinction must be made here: that the others (whoever they may be — Serbs, Croats or Muslims) commit atrocities, betray, or try to oppress, is not necessarily a myth. That they are naturally bad is. That we (whether we are Serbs, Croats or Muslims) never do wrong, commit atrocities and so on is also a myth, and it is based on the myth that we are naturally good, "heavenly," "holy" and other wonderful epithets. The above myths are very dangerous, as was hinted earlier, because they do more than give confidence and self-esteem to nations: they provide justifications for eliminating "inferior," "worthless," and "bad" people, judged as being so mainly due to their "inferior" or "evil" nature. And they are judged by the "superior," "good," "holy" people who do not do wrong, even when ' Rorty, "Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality," Politike Ljudskih Circle, 3-4 1995, 1-2 1996, p. 50.

Prava,

Belgrade

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they kill the "worthless" group. These myths provide powerful justifications for "rightly" killing and victimizing other groups of people. They reflect narcissism, a kind of collective illusion, which leads nations to believe that they are essentially and morally different from their enemies. That the past is used to justify the present is evident in the Bosnian case. Their differences are forever being pointed out, guiding their loyalties, identifying their rivals, nurturing this form of ethnic identification and keeping the groups separate. The people of Yugoslavia have nurtured and expanded on that past, adding to its strength through their decisions and actions over the centuries. The present not only contributes to the memory of the past, but also creates its own narratives. Present conditions are reflected by narratives found in the nationalist ideologies we looked at, narratives that often lead to conflict or war. It is, however, the present reality that gives rise to those narratives — the enemy stories — the wider cause of conflict.

Conclusion "Ethnonational groups that have been traumatized by repeated suffering at the hands of other groups seem to have little capacity to grieve for the hurts of other peoples, or to take responsibility for the new victims created by their own warlike actions," writes John Mack. 1 Victims kill other victims through never-ending repeated cycles, bolstered by stories of atrocities committed by the others in the past, and by "heroic" stories and myths committed by themselves in defense of their own nation and its (superior) values. In the process, the victims of the past themselves, as well as the dead, become symbols. Their graves become testimony to the nation's sacrifice, bravery and suffering. Nationalism is not just a symbol-loaded doctrine, though, but a more basic and wider way of talking, thinking and acting. It involves perceptions of others and of oneself, beliefs regarding their differences and special character, based on which they justify their actions and those of others. As far as their beliefs and perceptions of their enemies are concerned, they usually gain a

' Mack J.E., "The Psychodynamics of Victimization among National Groups in Conflict," in I.V. Volkan, D. Julius & J. Montville (eds), The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1990, p. 125.

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fairly accurate understanding of who they are in relation to them. A s far as their self-perceptions are concerned, however, their beliefs tend to spring out of myths. It is those beliefs, combined with the perceived hostility on the part of the "other," that lead to violent acts. Thus perceived and experienced conflict gives rise to nationalism, which can then lead to further conflict, as it helps create mythical and non-mythical narratives that attempt to describe and explain that conflict. As it happens, the explanation that each nation gives is one that fits within a context of existing narratives that unite the group and boost its self-image. Those explanations that we find in national narratives, that form the core of nationalism, reflect a lived experience and also serve as a base for action. In other words, they are both the result and the generator of conflict.

Bibliography Allcock J.B. Milivojevic M. & Horton J. (eds) 1998. Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO. Anzulovic B. 1999. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide, Hurst & Co Ltd. Bennett C., 1995. Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences, London: Hurst & Co. Burfoglu N.K. (edtj, 2000. The Image of the Turk in Europe from the Declaration of the Republic in 1923 to the 1990s, Istanbul: the Isis Press. Dimitrijevic B., 1995.'The Post-Communist Apotheosis of the Nation-State and the Old and New Minorities', in Nationalism and Minorities, Institute of Social Sciences & University of Essex. Hamourtziadou L. 1999. 'Greek Myths, or The Boy Who Wanted to See Turks', Internationale Schulbuchforschung, 21, Hannover, pp. 369-385. Hamourtziadou L. & Gokay B. 2000. 'Angels and Demons -Constructions and Representations of the Enemy in Greece and Turkey', in The Image of the Turk in Europe from the Declaration of the Republic in 1923 to the 1990s. Hosking G. & Schopflin G. (eds) 1997. Myths and Nationhood, Hurst & Co Ltd. Judah T. 1997. The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Yale University Press. Mack J.E. 1990. 'The Psychodynamics of Victimization among National Groups in Conflict', in Volkan, Julius & Montville (eds). Malcolm N. 1996. Bosnia; A Short History, Papermac, Macmillan. Overing J. 1997. 'The Role of Myth: An Anthropological Perspective, or "The Reality of the Really Made-Up" ', in Hosking & Schopflin (eds).

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Poulton H. & Farouki S. (eds) 1997. Muslim

MYTHS Identity

91 and the Balkan

State,

London: C. Hurst. Rorty R. 1996. 'Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality',

Politike

Ljudskih Prava, Belgrade Circle, 3-4, 1995, 1-2. Smith A. 1999. Myths and Memories

of the Nation, Oxford University Press.

Start, 1990. No. 555, Zagreb, April 28. Suganami H. 1996. On the Causes of War, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vernant J.P. 1990. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, New York: Zone. Volkan I.V. Julius D. & Montville J. (eds), \990.The International

Relationships,

Psycho dynamics

of

Lexington, MA: DC Heath.

Vukomanovic 1995.'The Serbian Nationality in the Vicious Circle of EthnoNationalism', in Nationalism & University of Essex.

and Minorities, Institute of Social Sciences

Mustafa Soykut Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey A PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF "OTHERNESS IN POLITICAL HISTORY: The Italian Case and the Ottoman Empire (15th- 18th Centuries)

A retrospective look at Turkish-European relations from the 15th century to the present day presents a recurrent pattern to the political historian, characterised by defining oneself through the definition of the "other". In other words, definition of oneself through defining the "other" inevitably raises in the mind of the historian questions about the objectivity of the knowledge of oneself as well as questions about the objectivity of the knowledge of the "other". The views Europeans — and those of the Mediterranean peoples in particular — held about Muslims and Turks have the nature of defining oneself through the alien political paradigms and structures of the "perceived" and the "defined other". In the case of the interactions between the Italian states and the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and the 18th centuries, the Ottomans were represented as enemies of the nobility (due to the dev§irme or conversion system), and as people of barbarity, due to their ruthlessly efficient state and military apparata. This image generated anti-Islamic animosity and antagonism, especially since such unity was lacking among the European states. For the Italians the political structure of the "other," the tyrannical oneheaded structure of the Ottoman Empire, was by no means the only factor contributing to the definition of "otherness" in early modern Europe. The Muslim Ottoman armies that expanded from the late 14th century to the middle of the seventeenth century were perceived by Europeans as well as Ottomans themselves as the new banner-holders of Islam after the heyday of Arab power. They shattered the medieval dream of universitas Christiana as a political entity. It was almost the only factor of unity in a Europe, divided by East-West antagonism in Christianity and the refusal of Byzantium of the doctrine of primatu papo (superiority and seniority of the Church of Rome among other churches). The secession of the Protestant states from the Church

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further shattered the millennium-old dream that Europe was held together under the auspices of the Holy Mother Church. However, the use of the alien political paradigm of the Ottoman Empire and its despotic character remained a constant in the antagonism between the Occident and the Orient, while other cultural and civilisational paradigms underwent change towards the end of the 17th century. In the age of Enlightenment, the Islamic world took the form of "romanticisation of the other". This chapter studies the role of the Ottoman Empire and the notion of "otherness" created around it by Italian statesmen in the light of unpublished manuscripts 2 , in an era when the Catholic Church was in a process of re-defining itself during the Renaissance and the transition to the counter-Reformation era, when Europe was attempting to regain its lost supremacy by creating the "otherness" image of the Ottoman Empire. Thinking about the Mediterranean in relation to the Ottomans without Italy is impossible. From the weakening of the Byzantine Empire until the alternative routes to the Mediterranean trade were discovered in the late 15 th century, maritime city states such as Genoa, Venice, Amalfi and Pisa dominated the trade routes of the Middle Ages. Later, Venice controlled much of the Mediterranean trade in the Early Modern Age. Second, Italy was the seat of the Papacy, and therefore the centre of much of the religious and temporal debate and policies of the Catholic world. There were contacts between the Italian states and the Turks as early as the first crusades. However, one of the first accounts of Turkey comes from Marco Polo in his famous book Milione written in the late 13 th century, some decades after the conquest of Constantinople in the fourth Crusade in 1204: In Turcomanie è tre generazione di genti. L'una gente sono turcomanni e adorano Malcometto; e sono semplice genti e ànno sozzo linguaggio. E' stanno i-montagne e 'n valle e vivono di bestiame; e ànno cavagli e muli grandi e di grandi valore. E gli altri sono gli armini e greci che dimorano in ville e in castella, e viveno di mercanzia e d'arti. E quivi si fanno li sovrani tappeti del mondo ed i più begli; fannovisi lavori [i] di seta e di tutti colori. Altre cose v'à che non vi conto. Elli sono al Tartero del Levante. In Turkomania there are three kinds of people. One is the Turkmens and they adore Malcometo [Mohammed]; they are simple people and have rough language. They dwell on the mountains and the valleys and live on animals; Petra Kappert, "From Romanticisation to Colonial Dominance: Historical Changes in European Perception of the Middle East", in The Next Threat. Western Perceptions of Islam, eds. J. Hippler and A. Lueg, (London: 1995). ^ The manuscripts of Monsignor Marcello Marchesi and Angelo Petricca da Sonnino have been published for the first time by the present author. See Mustafa Soykut, Image of the "Turk" in Italy. A History of the "Other" in Early Modern Europe:1453-1683. (Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz Verlag, 2001).

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they have horses and big mules of great worth. The others are the Armenians and the Greeks who dwell in villas and castles and live on commerce and arts. Here are produced the most valuable and beautiful carpets of the world, and every colour of silk is worked. There are other things, which I will not mention. They are subdued to the Tartars of the Levant. 1

The Venetians were established in the former Byzantine lands due to the close ties between Venice and Constantinople. Venice as well as a much of the Adriatic was part of the Byzantine (or rather The Eastern Roman) Empire in the Middle Ages. With the weakening of the Byzantine Empire, Venice not only received its independence from Constantinople, but also developed a political and an economic system of its own independent from the Byzantine system. The first fall and sack of Constantinople by the Latin and the Frank alliance in the Fourth Crusade in the year 1204 was justified by the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo, for economic reasons. The legitimisation of the sack of a Christian city arose from the perceived "otherness" of the Byzantine state as opposed to the Venetian Republic. First of all, it was the perceived heresy of the Byzantine Eastern rite and the lack of recognition of primatu papo — that is the primacy of the ancient bishopric of Rome — now established as the seat of the Papacy. According to the Catholics, the Byzantines deviated from the true path by failing to recognise the true precepts of the Holy Mother Church, the Roman Church. The second reason was the perceived political paradigm of ccesaro-papism of the Byzantines. There have been endless debates about the so-called ccesaro-papism in the Byzantine Empire, namely the unification of the religious power and the temporal one in the hands of the Emperor as a result of the "orientalisation" of the Byzantine Empire that adopted a more Persian concept of a state, as opposed to the separation of the religious and the temporal powers in the West. Western Christendom was represented by the duality of the Pope and the Emperor. These thoughts about the political structure of the Byzantine Empire were adopted by Italians and continued in their perception of the Empire of the Ottoman Turks, since the Ottoman Sultan also represented both absolute temporal and religious power.

Marco Polo, Milione, ed. Giorgio R. Cardona and Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, (Milano: Adelphi Edizioni S.P.A., 1975), pp. 27-28. What Marco Polo means by "them being subdued to the Tatars of the Levant" is the reference to the Mongol invasion of Anatolia in the thirteenth century. The linguist Cardona says that the Mongols were called in Medieval Italy "Tatars of the Levant" (referring to the successors of Hulegu, the Ilkhanids of Persia) and "the Tatars of the Occident" (referring to the Mongols governed by Yo9i, the first son of Qingis, and subsequently by Batu). See Marco Polo, op. cit, p.731. See also Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey, (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., INC., 1968.)

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For the man of Renaissance, the Turkish state was a despotic one, inimical to the nobility and therefore, devoid of the backbone needed to govern the country. It was ruled by slaves before whom aristocratic envoys had to bow down, a scandal on its own. Finally, it was ruled by and representing by the fanatical "sect" of Islam that oppressed its own people as well as the Christians and did not recognise the "true saviour" Jesus Christ.1 Ironically, one of the first propagators of a crusade against the Ottomans was a Byzantine clergyman who had later on converted to Catholicism, Cardinal Bessarion of Trebisond (b. 1403 ? — d.18 Nov.1472). He came to Italy for the Council of Florence-Ferrara which was finalised in 1439. The main aim of the Council was the centuries-old dream of unifying the Eastern and the Western Churches, due to Byzantine plans to establish an alliance with the West that would give Byzantium protection against the everexpanding Ottoman armies in Anatolia. Although an agreement was reached between the representatives of the Churches in Ferrara-Florence, the unification was not ratified by the clergy in Constantinople, thus preventing the unification to take effect. Oddly enough, Bessarion later embraced the Catholic faith and barely lost the election to becoming a Pope by eight votes against fifteen from the cardinals in 1455. One of the arguments that was used against the election of Bessarion as Pope was the fact that he still had a beard, even if he had converted to Catholicism, and insisted on wearing his Greek habit, which 2

raised doubts about the sincerity of his conversion. Bessarion's two main objectives in life were "to organise a crusade to the end of saving Constantinople and Anatolia from the Turkish conquest; to defend as much as possible, the treasures of the Greek culture which fell into the hands of the infidels". 3 Although Bessarion's first ideal never came true, he collected many Greek manuscripts which ended up in the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, thus making a great contribution to humanist studies and the revival of the learning of the ancient Greek language and culture in Renaissance Italy. 4 * Kenneth M. Setton, Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom, n.p., American Philosophical Society, 1992. On the Christian perceptions of Islam there exists an ample literature. See the bibliography section . 2 Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571). Vol.II., (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1978), p. 162; Marino Zorzi, "Cenni sulla vita e sulla figura di Bessarione" in Bessarione e l'Umanesimo, ed. Gianfranco Fiaccadori, (Napoli: Vivarium, 1994), p.2. 3 Platania, Gaetano, "L'Europa orientale e l'unione delle chiese" in Bessarione e l'Umanesimo, ed. Gianfranco Fiaccadori, (Napoli: Vivarium, 1994), p.249. 4

According to an inventory in 1473, his books numbered 1024 in the Venetian library. Marino Zorzi, op. cit. p.8.

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Bessarion's most important work was his letter calling for war against the Turks that he wrote to another clergyman of the same name, Bessarion the monk, on the occasion of the conquest of Negroponte (Eubea) in Greece by the Turks in 1470. He was proposing in his letter a strategy that became a model used in the succeeding two centuries by the propagators of crusades against the Turks. Starting with Bessarion in the 1470s, followed by Lazzaro Soranzo in 15982, by Marcello Marchesi 3 in the following years, by Angelo Petricca da Sonnino4 in 1640 and by Friar Paul de Lagny 5 in 1679, on the eve of the second siege of Vienna until 1683, a long line of political strategists who were men of the Curia followed his example. Bessarion wrote in 1470: "Let us not wait that the Turk attacks Italy. Believe me that he looks and aspires to this, and is mobilising and working to this end, with all [his] forces and industry. I will say it, and I will say it explicitly 'O God, what a grief', he will fulfil his dream". 6 His argument consisted in the need to attack the Ottomans with an all-Christian, or at least, all-Italian alliance, without waiting for their attack first, to defeat the Ottomans once for all. The justification for such a strategy was the supposition that every time the Ottomans attacked first, they won. In other words, the proposal was to convert the military confrontation with the Turks from a defensive one into an offensive war. However, Bessarion himself was conscious of the fact that the disunity among the Italian rulers prevented them from making a decisive attack: "Some say 'what do we have to do with the Greeks or the Bulgarians

The copy of his letter to the monk Bessarion that the present author studied is included in the book of Scipione Ammirato, Orazioni del Signor Scipione Ammirato a diversi principi intorno ai preparimenti che s'avrebbono a farsi contra la potenza del Turco. Aggiuntioni nel fine le lettere & orazioni di Monsignor Bessarione Cardinal Niceno scritte a Principi d'Italia, (Fiorenza: Per Filippo Giunti, 1598.) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Ferraioli. IV. 1794). It must be presumed that there are various copies of the letters that he wrote to Bessarion the m o n k and the orations dedicated to the rulers of Italy to promote a crusade against the T u r k s . T h e y were written originally either in Latin or in Greek, since there are minor variations in the Italian text, which might indicate a translation into Italian f r o m another language. ^ Soranzo, Lazaro, L'Othomanno, Vittorio Baldini-Stampatore C a m e r a l e , Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, Stampatore Camerale, 1598. ^ Monsignor Marcello Marchesi, Five Treatises on "The war against the Turk". (17 t h century): 1) Alla Santità di nostro Signore Papa Paolo Quinto Beatissimo Padre, 2) Alla Maestà del Re Catholico Filippo III. Sacra Cattolica Maestà, 3) All'Illustrissimo et Eccellentissimo Signore Duca di Lerma, 4) Alla Maestà del Re d'Ungheria Mathia ll. Sacra Maestà, 5) Del detto quinto trattato proemio, divisione, et ordine, (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Barb. Lat. 5366.) 4 Angelo Petricca D a Sonnino, Trattato del modo facile d'espugnare il Turco, e discacciarlo dalli molti Regni che possiede in Europa. Composto dal padre Maestro Angelo Petricca da Sonnino Min: Conven: già Vicario Patriarcale di Constantinopoli, Commissario gnle in Oriente, e Prefetto de Missionarij dì Valacchia, et Moldavia. Dedicated to Cardinal Antonio Barberino. IO Maggio 1640., (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Barb. lat. 5151.) D a Lagni, Fra Paolo, Memoriale difrà Paolo da Lagni cappuccino al pontefice Innocenzo XI nel quale si dimostra la necessità de' Prìncipi Cristiani di prevenire il Turco col dichiarargli la uerra, 1679, (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Vat. lat. 6926) Scipione Ammirato, op. cit., p.3.

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or with the Dalmatians, or with the Hungarians. Let them go to hell, what is it to us? We are fine and let the others lose ( ) It is the job of the Venetians. It serves them right. It would be better, if they were afflicted by more harms.'" 1 Bessarion is one of the first of the Italian humanists to identify the ancient Greeks and the Romans with Christendom and civilisation per se, and to identify the Turks with the enemies of the ancient Greeks, the Persians. Using antiquity as a legitimising factor to apply lessons of the past to the present, a strategy so characteristic of the Renaissance civilisation, was also used by Bessarion in his aforementioned work. He is speaking from the mouth of the Athenian orator Demosthenes (fourth century B.C.), placing the Turks in the position of Philip II of Macedonia, the Italians in the position of the Athenians, and himself as Demosthenes. 2 A contemporary of Bessarion was Pope Pius II (Enea Silio Piccolomini), another very important humanist of his time, who composed among other works the renowned Epistula ad Mahumetem (Letter to Muhammad), which he wrote to Sultan Mehmed II in the form of an epistolary oration, but never sent. The letter was meant to invite him to become Christian so that the conqueror of second Rome (i.e. Mehmed) would rule the world together with the head of Rome (i.e. Pius himself). In a famous work, Pius described the alien, uncivilised origin of the Turks as follows: De la origine de Turchi, di sua discendenza, de'l vivere, vestire, e de costumi suoi. Io veggio molti ne l'età nostra nò pure Autori, ò Poeti, ma Historici anchora a essere inuolti in questo errore, che li Turchi sieno detti da'l nome de Teucri. Credo che di quindi si muovano, perche li Turchi posseggono Troia, che già fu habitatione Teucri, ma quelli trassero sua origine di Creta e d'Italia. La gete de Turchi è scytica e Barbara: de la cui origine, e progresso, beche paia esser fuori di proponimèto, nodimeno io no istimo essere in tutto alieno, hora che ne tèpi nostri questa gente ha pigliato cotanto d'accrescimeto, che tenedo l'Asia, e la Grecia hà ispavetato Latini, e Christiani. Questa narratioe manifesterà anchora le cose de la Thracia, di cui è principiato il nostro ragionare. Turchi, come dice il Philosopho Ethico, hebbero li paterni seggi oltra i moti Pyrenei à l'oceano settètrionale, gète crudele, ignominiosa, et in tutte maniere di lussuria ardete, magia quelle cose, che altri abhorriscono, come carne di giumèti, de lupi, d'avoltoi, ne ostiensi da le scociature de parti immaturi.

1 Scipione Ammirato, op. cit., pp.4-5. Persuasione del Reverendissimo Bessarione, Cardinale Niceno, agli Illustrissimi et Incliti Principi d'Italia. Dalla autorità di Demostene in Scipione Ammirato, op. cit. 2

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Of the origin, descent, life, dress and customs of the Turks. I warn m a n y at our age- not writers or poets- but rather historians w h o are still involved with the error of thinking the T u r k s to be the Teucres. I believe, therefore, that they p r e s u m e [this], f o r the T u r k s p o s s e s s T r o y , which w a s the habitation of the Teucres, h o w e v e r , those [Teucres] traced their origin back to Crete and Italy. T h e Turkish p e o p l e are Scythic 1 and barbarian: w h o s e origin and progress — although it [their progress] seems out of every proportion — I p r e s u m e not to b e completely alien, now that in o u r t i m e s t h e s e p e o p l e h a v e c o n q u e r e d w i t h s u c h a v i g o u r t h a t , d o m i n a t i n g A s i a and G r e e c e , they h a v e d i s p e r s e d t h e L a t i n s and t h e Christians. T h i s narration will f u r t h e r shed light o n the affairs of T h r a c e , f r o m w h e r e our r e a s o n i n g c o m m e n c e d . T h e T u r k s , as t h e p h i l o s o p h e r Ethico says, had their fatherland b e y o n d the Pyrenean M o u n t a i n s [sic!] on the Nordic Ocean. T h e y are cruel and ignoble people, and being ardent in every manner of luxury, they eat those things that others would abhor, such as the meat of wild animals, w o l v e s and vultures, and neither would they abstain themselves f r o m the excretions of the i m m a t u r e parts of the body. A n o t h e r i m p o r t a n t p r o p a g a t o r of a c r u s a d e a g a i n s t t h e O t t o m a n s a r o s e f r o m a m o n g t h e l i n e of b e l l i c o s e o r a t o r s w h o p r e p a r e d t h e p o l i t i c a l m i l i e u f o r t h e c r u s a d e a g a i n s t t h e s i e g e of V i e n n a b y t h e O t t o m a n s in 1 6 8 3 . M a r c h e s i w a s b o r n in V a r z i , a p r o v i n c e of t h e n o r t h e r n I t a l i a n c i t y o f P a v i a . H e w a s t h e b i s h o p of S e n j in C r o a t i a a n d h e l d t h e o f f i c e of " s c r i b e of t h e a r c h i v e of C u r i a R o m a n a " . H e w a s s a c e r d o t a l d o c t o r i n utroque canonical law) and was the "prothonotary apostolic"

jure

(in both civil

and

and apostolic secretary.

M a r c h e s i died on 1 A u g u s t 1613.4 T h e s e c o n d letter in a m a n u s c r i p t written b y M a r c h e s i t o t h e K i n g of S p a i n F e r d i n a n d III, s t a t e s t h a t M a r c h e s i

was

i

The word scytico ("scitico" in contemporary spelling) or Scyta (scita) apart from denoting the ancient people of Asia, the Scythians (of Iranian stock), was also synonymous with "barbarian". See G. Alessio and C. Battisti, Dizionario Etimologico Italiano, Vol. V, (Firenze: Barbèra Editore, 1975), p. 3403-3404. ^ Pio II. (Enea Silvio Piccolomini), La Discritione de l'Asia et Europa di Papa Pio II, (Vinegia: Appresso Vicenzo Vaugris a '1 segno d'Erasimo, 1544), pp. 187 V-188 R. The Discritione de l'Asia et Europa dì Papa Pio II, which was published in Venice in 1544, is most probably the unfinished work of Pius II on the description of the world known in his times, See R. Aubenas and R. Ricard, Storia della chiesa dalle origini fino ai giorni nostri. XV La Chiesa e il Rinascimento, (Torino: Editrice S. A. I. E., 1963), p. 69.) which he must have written sometime between the 1453 and 1461. In his book there is the narrative of the conquest of Constantinople, but one understands that Trebisond had not yet fallen (1461). ^ Prothonotary apostolic is "a member of the highest college of prelates in the Roman Curia, and also of the honorary prelates on whom the Pope has conferred this title and its special privileges. In later antiquity there were in Rome seven regional notaries, who, on the further development of the papal administration and the accompanying increase of the notaries, remained the supreme palace notaries of the papal chancery (notarti apostolici or protonotarii). In the Middle Ages, the prothonotaries were very high papal officials, and were often raised directly from this office to the cardinalate. Sixtus V (1585-90) increased their number to twelve. Their importance gradually diminished, and at the time of the French Revolution the office had almost entirely disappeared. On 8 February, 1838, Gregory XVI re-established the college of real prothonotaries with seven members called "protonotarii de numero participantium", because they shared in the revenues." The Catholic Encyclopedia, "prothonotary apostolic" in http://www .newadvent.org/cathen/12503a.htm. 4

C. Eubel, ed., Hierarchia Catholica Medii et Recentioris Aevi, vol. IV, (Regensburg: Sumptibus et Typis Librariae Regensbergianae Monasterii: 1935), p. 309.

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present at the battles of Keresztes (Kerestis) in 1596 and at that of Kanizsa 0Canisia) in 1601. He wrote many details about the particulars of these battles to Ferdinand III. Among them is his nominal appointment as bishop (probably the nominal bishopric of Senj in Dalmatia) and his nomination as the counsellor (probably that of the Emperor). 1 In the manuscript, Marchesi expresses his discontent with the peace signed between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans in 1606. His aim is to promote a general war against the Ottomans. His manuscript to Pope Paul V (16 May 1605 — 28 January 1621) is the work of an experienced military strategist clergyman as well as a top ranking clergyman of the Holy See. The manuscript's date is unknown; however, considering the dates, it must have been composed between 1606, after the peace signed between the Austrians and the Ottomans ( Z i g v a t o r u k Muahedesi), and his death in 1613. The manuscript not only provides the reader with an image of the Turks in military, cultural and religious matters, but it also gives a self-view of Christendom from the point of view of the Catholic world. Europe and its armies are depicted as incompetent and unprofessional, its aristocracy is vain, idle and ineffective against the Turks, and lost within the daily pleasures of life. He says: (1 R) Grandi non è dubbio et maravigliose sono state le risolutioni e gli sforzi, fatti in diversi tempi da Prencipi christiani, per terra et per Mare per la guerra contra Turchi, ma non meno maravigliosa è stata sempre l'infelicità degli eventi essendo i Turchi alfine prevalsi sempre, et havendo acquistato in così poco tempo un così grande Imperio. „No doubt the efforts by Christian princes on the land and on the sea against the Turks at different times have been astonishing. But no less amazing is the sad outcome of the events, the Turks in the end always gaining the upper hand and having acquired in such a short time such a great empire."2

He continues: (1 V)Primieramente alcuni heretici hanno negato esser lecito a christiani di far guerra, tampoco à Turchi; anzi Luthero pazzamente predicò benche poi si ritrattò, non solo non dover noi far guerra à Turchi, ma ne anco resistenza, per non opporsi alla Divina volontà , perche Iddio per mezzo loro ci flagilla. First of all, some heretics have denied the Christians the legitimacy of waging war, not to mention war against the Turks. Furthermore, Luther madly preached by saying, not only not to wage war against the Turks, but even not to show resistance in order not to oppose the Divine Will, for God through them castigates us.3 1 Monsignor Marcello Marchesi, op. cit., pp,15R-22V.

2

Marchesi, op.cit., 1R. ^ Marchesi, op.cit., IV.

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What is meant here is the initial proposition of Luther that waging war against the Turks was sin, as it would have been opposing the divine will. For Luther thought that the Turks were a divine punishment from God for the sins committed by Christendom. Luther modified his proposition after the first siege of Vienna by Siileyman the Magnificent in 1529 and invited the German princes to fight the Turk. Thus Marchesi puts forward the idea that Christianity as a religion is not opposed to war per se, if the war is a "just war". The same idea was put forward — quite ironically in favour of the Muslims this time — by the present Pope John Paul II in the case of Bosnia; namely, that such a war to save the oppressed is a "just war". Marchesi is totally dissatisfied with the European nobility and speaks of them in a contemptuous manner. According to him, the nobility is lost in the pleasures of court life, paying no attention to the real concerns such as the military. Furthermore he thinks "no army has much discipline - if any at all and has little modesty, sobriety and obedience, and little tolerance of fatigue and discomfort, as well as, little hope of rewards, is to be seen." 1 In fact, compared to Angelo Petricca da Sonnino , Marchesi emphasizes much more the cultural and the religious aspects of the failure against the Turks. Although both Marchesi and Petricca represent the point of view of the Catholic Church, Petricca's manuscript should be read within the context of military and political rhetoric on the "Turkish question". Although Marchesi is also utterly concerned with the military aspects, as he himself was on the battle-field in the war of Hungary, the letter written to Pope Paul V presents the reader with a self-portrait of Christendom as perceived by a leading member of the Catholic Church of the early seventeenth century, where religion alone was no longer the only factor determining the politics of the day, in a period of declining importance of the Papacy as a result of religious fragmentation in Europe. It is precisely in this period that the Catholic Church seized the opportunity of the old rhetoric of the crusade or a "just war" against the infidel Turks, to direct the attention away from the religious fragmentation of the Thirty Years War and to subdue Christian heretics in the spirit of Counter-Reformation. Marchesi pictures the European aristocrats as licentious and indulgent people whose negligence of military matters has resulted in Europe being plagued by the Turks. The author views with equal contempt the jurists and the intellectuals who are an obstacle in gaining victory over the Turks. It is 1

Marchesi, op.cit., 2V.

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they who are responsible f o r engaging excessively in intellectual debates that are nothing but a loss of time. H e thinks that "jurisprudence has grown into too many constitutions and commentaries, and into too many tricks against the intention of our Legislator Christ: w h o handed over the morals and ceremonials, but no judgements". A s he also praises the codification of the existing laws of E m p e r o r Justinian (527-565), along with an antipathy towards intellectuals, one senses the craving for authoritarian rule in Marchesi. He says: Onde fra christiani la maggior parte degli huomini attende cose otrose, à giuochi, à passatempi, à varij artifitij di mano, gran parte non necessarij, ne giovevoli al publico, ne al privato, spendendo in quilli il tempo, et le facoltà ( ) Dì più fra christiani una gran parte attende à scienze et à lettere inutili, o anco dannose, come fra l'altre alla profissione legale, giuditiaria ( ) tirando seco costoro l'infinita turba dei litiganti, come quilli che in gran parte dill'origine et immortalità dille liti sono gli autori e gli artefici. Oltre alla divisione dei Regni, et dei stati Christiani con le discordie, che per ciò sono fra loro. Quali benche talvolta s'uniscano per quest'impresa contra Turchi, non di meno per i fini, et interessi diversi che tra loro sono, facilmente ritornano alla disunione. Senza che molti Prencipi, et Potentati, et nationi unir tampoco non si possono ne tra loro, ne con gli altri; per la varietà dille religioni, et sette, etiandio tra loro repugnanti, nille quali vivono. Oltre che per il celibato, et per la monogamia, che la Christiana legge induce, si priva la Republica di quel più numero di gente, che si generarla. Among the Christians the majority of the people occupy their time with vain things, games, time-killers and various handicrafts, a great deal of which are unnecessary and unreasonable both in public and in private, spending in them their time and their fortunes such as in unnecessary devices ( ) moreover, the majority of Christians get occupied with useless, or even harmful sciences and letters, whereas among other things they get occupied with the legal and judicial profession ( ) [These very persons] attract infinite excitement of the debaters, who to a great extent originally are the actors and the designers in non-ending debates. Apart from the division of kingdoms and Christian states due to discords among themselves, although they unite against the Turks for this undertaking, nonetheless, easily do they return to disunion due to the diversity of aims and interests among themselves. Not to mention many princes and lords, and nations which cannot even unite neither among themselves nor with others, due to the variety of religions and sects in which they live which appal each other. Furthermore, celibacy and monogamy that Christian law induces, deprives the Republic of the number of people that it would generate. 2

1 Marchesi, op.cit., 8V. ^ Marchesi, op.cit., 2R-3V.

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On the contrary, Marchesi gives an over-simplified stereotyped view of the Ottoman Empire, which he implicitly admires and sets as an efficient model for Europe itself: Andando, dicono, fra Turchi le cose al contrario. Però che hanno una sola religione, un solo Prencipe, et una sola forma di governo, et per esser tra loro pochi celibi, et più per la poligamia abondano di gente, ne hanno tanti artisti, et operaij di cose inutili, et soverchie. Ne mettono tanta cura, ne tanto studio nille fabriche, nilla supellettile, nille pompe, nil mangiare et bere. Ne hanno studiosi di lettere, ne Causidici, ne professori simili. Onde sono tra loro pochissime liti e brevissime. Ma universalmente si danno alla militia, et in questa impiegano il tempo, et le spese. Those who went [to Turkey] say things to be the contrary among the Turks. Since they have a sole religion, a sole prince and a sole government, and since there are few celibates among them and more so due to polygamy, do they abound in number of people. Neither do they have artists or doers of superabundantly useless things, nor do they care excessively about the study of industries and vain things or about pomp or eating and drinking. They do not have scholars of letters or advocates or similar professors. Even if they have, debates among them are very few and short. However, they dedicate themselves universally to the art of war and they engage their time and money in it.1

Marchesi associates the civilised world with the Romans, while the Turks are compared with the Huns, the Parthians and the Saracens. He criticises the Romans for having been incapable of adapting their military strategy to the "chaotic" and "undisciplined" manner of fighting of the barbarians. 2 A common theme of the writers of the Renaissance carried into later centuries was to compare the civilised world (i.e. Europe) with the Greeks and Romans, and the Arabs (after the 8 t h century) and the Ottoman Turks after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the „barbarians" of antiquity such as the Persians. Marchesi tries to persuade the reader that an offensive war against the Turk is the only solution to saving Europe from the barbarians. He not only offers military and tactical suggestions on how to defeat the Ottomans, but also presents a valuable image of the European aristocracy and its lack of interest in taking action against their principal enemy. It is curious that sources of the time lead one to conclude that, behind the rhetoric of the "barbarian Turks" lay enmities among the Christian rulers that surpassed the infidel threat. In this respect, the Marchesi manuscript is not only a source of 1 2

Marchesi, op.cit., 3R-3V Marchesi, op.cit., 10R-10V.

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self-criticism, but is also representative of the changing milieu of seventeenth century Europe, where religious wars coupled with the ever-present Ottoman threat marked the political agenda. In fact, about two decades after Marchesi, Petricca da Sonnino, as representative of the Propaganda Fide emphasised the same points in somewhat different political jargon. Our second figure representing pontifical policies in the 17th century vis-à-vis the Turks is Angelo Petricca da Sonnino. Information about him comes mainly from the office that he held as "vicar apostolic" in Istanbul, that is, the representative of Propaganda Fide in the Ottoman Empire. di Propaganda La Fide, "The Congregation for the Congregatione Propagation of Faith" was the institution of the Pontificate to bring all the Catholic missions of the world under the centralised authority of Rome. The reasons for the establishment of the Congregazione di Propaganda Fide were twofold: first, to function as an agent of anti-reformation, and second, to counterbalance the authority of the other Catholic monarchs (i.e. Spain and Portugal) over the Catholic missions throughout the world. It was founded by Pope Gregory XV (1621-1623) in 1622, under the name of the „Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith," and became one of the most efficient institutions of the Holy See as all the Catholic missions in the Ottoman Empire, apart Albania and the Greek islands, came under its jurisdiction. 1 The "vicar apostolic" (vicario apostolico) as he was called, was directly responsible to the Pope. His task was to counterbalance the influence that local monarchs had upon the missionaries under their protection. The Congregation was founded on the idea that it was more advantageous to engage in missionary activities in Europe than in the peripheral Americas. Its aim was to reach a rapprochement of the Catholic peoples with the Protestant and the Orthodox faiths, and to protect Maronites and Armenians in the Ottoman territories.2 More specifically, the purpose of the Propaganda Fide in the Ottoman lands was to convert to Catholicism the Armenian and Orthodox Ottomans as well as those of other eastern rites. In this way, the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church would be extended in lands where the authority of the Pope was not recognised, forcing Christian heretics to accept the principle of primatu papo, as well as gaining allies within the Ottoman state in case of an eventual war. Petricca da Sonnino, who belonged

' Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans. The Church and the Ottoman Empire. 1453-1923, (Bristol: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p.88. ^ Giovanna Motta, "Presenza ottomana tra Mediterraneo e centro-Europa: contrasti e reciproche influenze" in L'Europa centro-orientale e il pericolo turco tra sei e settecento. Atti del convegno internazionale (Viterbo, 23-25 Novembre 1998), ed. Gaetano Platania, (Viterbo: Sette Città, 2000), pp. 21-22.

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t o t h e F r a n c i s c a n o r d e r t h a t w a s i n f l u e n t i a l in t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e , l i v e d in I s t a n b u l b e t w e e n 1 6 3 6 a n d 1 6 3 9 . C h a r l e s A . F r a z e e r e f e r s t o his m e m o i r s of 1 6 3 9 , in w h i c h P e t r i c c a " c l a i m e d that [sultan] M u r a d I V [ 1 6 1 2 - 1 6 4 0 ] h a d lost control over the a r m e d forces and that the opportunity w a s open f o r a united Christian Europe to push the Turks back into Asia". r e f e r e n c e t o t h e c o l l e c t i o n of relazioni

T h i s is p r o b a b l y a

w r i t t e n d u r i n g h i s s t a y in I s t a n b u l t h a t

b e c a m e t h e t r e a t i s e t h a t is o u r s u b j e c t . T h e t r e a t i s e , e n t i t l e d Trattato facile Europa

d'espugnare

il Turco,

e discacciarlo

dalli molti

Regni

del

che possiede

modo in

( T r e a t i s e o n t h e e a s y w a y of d e f e a t i n g t h e T u r k , a n d of e x p e l l i n g h i m

f r o m m a n y k i n g d o m s t h a t h e p o s s e s s e s in E u r o p e ) w a s p r e s e n t e d t o C a r d i n a l A n t o n i o B a r b e r i n o 2 , a n i m p o r t a n t p a t r o n of t h e i d e a of c r u s a d e , in 1640. 3 It is b a s e d o n f o u r m a i n a r g u m e n t s : f i r s t , h e m a k e s t h e s i m p l i s t i c a r g u m e n t t h a t t h e O t t o m a n s d e m o l i s h e d m o s t of t h e c a s t l e s in p l a c e s t h e y conquered, so that the w a y to Istanbul was open, and a Christian army on the march would not meet m u c h resistance f r o m the Ottomans. T h e second point t h a t P e t r i c c a s t r o n g l y e m p h a s i z e s is t h a t C h r i s t i a n p e o p l e s of t h e O t t o m a n E m p i r e a r e a p o t e n t i a l ally: in a w a r b e t w e e n t h e C h r i s t i a n s a n d O t t o m a n s , " t h e f a t h e r s w o u l d j o i n u p w i t h t h e c o n v e r t e d s o n s s e r v i n g in t h e T u r k i s h army4. H e says: Il secondo ponto degno dì consideratione per quest'istess'effetto, è che 'l stato Turchesco hà molti Christiani, come hò detto di sopra, e benche siano scismatici cioè disobedienti al Sommo pontefice Romano, fò sapere, come hò esperimentato, che questo scisma, e questa differenza si reduce in questi tempi solo ne Prelati Greci, perche il popolo hora fatto rozzo, et ignorante, che non sà discernere queste questioni de Primatu Papo, vedendo solo una Croce nell'Insegne degl'Esserciti, e sapendo che sono Esser citi radunati sotto il nome di Christo correrebbono ad unirsi con loro ( ) The second point that deserves consideration to the same effect is that the Turkish state has many Christians as I have mentioned above, and although they are schismatic — that is to say disobedient to the High Roman Pontificate — according to my experience, this schism and this difference is limited in our times solely to the Geek prelates. Since people are now made uncouth and ignorant, as they are unable to discern these 1 Frazee, op. cit., p.97. The memoir mentioned is: G. B. Cervellini, ed., 'Relazioni da Costantinopoli del Vicario Patriarcale Angelo Petricca, 1636-39', Bessarione, XXVIII (1912). Cardinal Antonio Barberino belonged to the influential Barberini Family in Rome, who had himself as a youth written a treatise of war against the Turks, 'i Angelo Petricca da Sonnino, Trattato del modo facile d'espugnare il Turco, e discacciarlo dalli molti Regni che possiede in Europa. Composto dal padre Maestro Angelo Petricca da Sonnino Min: Conven: già Vicario Patriarcale di Constantinopoli, Commissario gnle in Oriente, e Prefetto de Missionary di Valacchia, et Moldavia. Dedicated to Cardinal Antonio Barberino. 10 Maggio 1640., (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Barb. lat. 5151.) ^ Da Sonnino, op. cit., 5V.

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questions of Primatu Papo, by seeing only a cross on the banners of the armies, knowing that they are armies gathered under the name of Christ, they would run to unite with them.'

The third point is the consolidation of the Christian presence once the Ottoman lands are conquered. Petricca suggests a rebuilding of castles (?) in the lands recovered from the Turks for the purpose of consolidation. He suggests that the Christians of the conquered lands should not be harmed, and the people be treated as brothers, unlike the past, when the Latins conquest of Byzantine lands (such as the sacking of Constantinople in 1204) contributed to the antagonism between Byzantium and the West. He recalls the famous saying in Constantinople: "we prefer to see Turkish turbans in the city, rather than Latin hats!". He says: Alcuni potrebbono dire, e chi accorderebbe poi gli Prencipi Christiani, quando havessero espugnato il Turco? S'azzuffarebbono fra di loro, e non vi saria mai pace, et io rispondo, chi accordò gli Francesi, e Venetiani, quando pigliarono Constantinopoli, e l'Imperio de Greci, come l'Historie dicono, pur si legge, che con somma pace, li Francesi restarono Sig." di Constantinopoli, e di Terra ferma con concedere il Patriarcato à Venetiani con l'Isole dellArcipelago, et altre Provincie e durò l'Imperio de Francesi in Constantinopoli da 60 anni in circa: così potrebbono fare anco per l'avenire, sono tanti gli Regni, ch'occupa il Turco in Europa ( ) Some would ask, "who would then bring agreement among the Christian princes once the Turk is defeated?". "They would fight among each other and there would never be peace." I would respond, who brought agreement between the French and the Venetians when they took Constantinople and the empire of the Greeks, as history speaks. With utmost peace the French remained the lords of Constantinople, and gave the patriarchate of the terra ferma to the Venetians with the islands and other provinces. The empire of the French in Constantinople lasted around sixty years. In the future, many kingdoms occupied by the Turk in Europe could do like this.2

The fourth and most crucial point, and the main gist of the treatise, is Petricca's invitation to the Christian rulers of Europe to go to war against the Turks. He considers the failure to do so the greatest strategic and political mistake. The only way to defeat the Sultan is to attack him from all sides, by land and by sea simultaneously, in order to divide his forces and to prevent him from leading his soldiers into battle in person.3 The most crucial aspect of this move would be the unity of Christian princes. He cites the Fourth Crusade as an example, when the French and Venetians overcame their

1 Da Sonnino, op. cit., 5R-5V. Da Sonnino, op.cit., 8 V-9 R 3 Da Sonnino, op. cit., 9R-9V.

2

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differences and joined to conquer Constantinople, ironically another Christian country. There is a strong reference to the ongoing Thirty Years War. Petricca suggests the fighting Christian princes should make a truce, if not peace, and use the truce to attack the Turks.1 Considering Petricca's work, one is left with two conclusions: either Petricca was ignorant of strategic and military facts concerning the Ottoman Empire, and over-optimistic about the political ones, or the treatise must be considered in another light, namely, that of the political milieu in which the Holy See found itself in the midst of the Thirty Years War, during which almost half of Europe was lost to the Protestants. The years following Petricca's work mark the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and the consolidation of the Protestant states, as well as the reinsertion of France into the European political system. It should be remembered that France was a state with a Catholic majority, but rarely in agreement with the Holy See; a state that did not hesitate to ally itself with Protestant Sweden to counter-balance the Catholic German presence in Europe. Under such conditions, the political language presented by Petricca reflects the policy of Pope Urban VIII, who tried in vain to settle the enmities between France and Spain in order to ally them against the Protestants in the Thirty Years War. According to Eamon Duffy, "The failure of the Pope to achieve peace between the Catholic parties to the Thirty Years War was an eloquent - and for the Papacy an ominous indicator of the increasingly marginal place of religious considerations in determining the politics of Europe" 2 . Likewise, the effort of Petricca to unite the Christian rulers against the Ottoman infidels, while it proved to be a failure during the Thirty Years War, was an example for the future. Petricca's intention was to divert attention from the ongoing war in Europe to the Ottomans in an effort to create a different war front. This would have served a triple function: of ending enmities between the Christians, defeating and conquering the Ottoman lands and its riches; and finally, reasserting the unifying and supreme ancient role of the Mother Church in an era where Europe was moving toward a new political system that did not concern itself as much with religious unity if it did not suit its interests. In other words, whereas religion previously meant unity under Christendom against the infidels, it began now take on a more nationalist colour. The religious differences between the European states began to stem directly from political rivalries, rather than from mere theological questions. ^ Da Sonnino, op. cit., 11R. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners. A History of the Popes., p. 184.

(Yale University Press, 1997),

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The perceived otherness and hostility towards the Ottomans gradually declined after the retreat of the Ottoman military presence from Europe following the second siege of Vienna in 1683. It was a milestone for the Italians and Europeans in general to consider Ottoman culture and territory within its own socio-cultural structure, independent of the centuries-old repetitive and bellicose literature. Our next subject, the Venetian ambassador Giambattista Dona, is one of the pioneers of modern orientalism and Turcology in Italy and in Europe. Dona was a prominent political character and ambassador, but his book on the culture and literature of the Turks remained a secret for centuries, hidden in the Veneto librari. As an attempt to discover the cultural heritage of the Turks it is the first example of its kind by a European. Dona was posted as ambassador to Constantinople on May 19, 1680. In 1683, he was recalled to Venice for exceeding his authority as an ambassador and was suspected of having made secret agreements with the Ottomans. Later, his innocence was proven. Dona read his relazione on his mission to Constantinople in the Venetian senate on August 20,1684. His relazione was the last one before the peace of Karlowitz.1 Dona enjoyed close relations with the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pa§a from 1682 onward, for it was in the latter's interest to keep up close relations with Venice in preparation for his plan to attack the Habsburgs by "bestowing gifts upon Dona". 2 Peace between Venice and the Ottomans had lasted for more than a decade, and was not disturbed up to the second siege of Vienna that was to come the following year.3 Delia Letteratura de' Turchi of Giambattista Dona had a great, though ephemeral success. After centuries of publicity of the now monotonous themes of the wickedness, barbarity, and ferocity of the Turks, this book was received with a sigh of relief. However, the literary patrimony of a nation believed unable to express itself as a valid and autonomous civilisation still remained unknown. 4 Giambattista Dona was neither a man of letters nor a philologist by profession. He admitted to have learned some Turkish in Venice before going to his bailaggio in Istanbul; but he had neither his linguistic skills nor the time to complete a work like the Delia Letteratura de' Turchi were adequate. ' Nicolò Barozzi and Guglielmo Berchet, Le Relazioni degli stati europei lette al Senato dagli Ambasciatori Veneziani nel Secolo Decimosettimo. Turchia., Volume unico-Parte I., (Venezia: Prem. Stabil. Tip. di P. Naratovich Edit., 1871), p. 7. 2 Kenneth M. Setton, Venice, op. cit., p. 257. 3 4

ibid. Paolo Preto, Venezia e i Turchi, (Firenze: G. C. Sansoni Editore, 1975), p. 345.

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D o n à was a politician by profession. In Venice, he was a m e m b e r (savio) of the council of Venice. He was appointed ambassador in 1680, was recalled to V e n i c e in 1684, and was then incarcerated because of his alleged secret agreements that m a d e Venice pay exhorbitant reparations f o r the damages caused to the O t t o m a n s by the M o r l a c c h i , q u a s i - V e n e t i a n subjects of Dalmatia, in 1682. A f t e r his innocence was proven, his membership to the council was returned to him. He died in 1700, at the age of seventy-six. This is the historical background in which D o n à ' s book should be read. His book should be read as a pioneer work attempting to eradicate the negative and uncouth i m a g e of the Turk. A l t h o u g h D o n à was the first Venetian ambassador to learn rudimentary Turkish his knowledge of the language was certainly insufficient for such an undertaking. However, Donà made use of an excellent translator, having Turkish literary works translated into Italian. Gian Rinaldo Carli, an Italian of Dalmatian origin f r o m Koper w h o had spent years in the Ottoman lands, was the translator of the Venetian embassy. The preface to his book was written by Carli and Donà's son, Pietro Donà 2 : Del vasto Imperio de' Turchi, che si estende in una gran parte dell'Asia, Africa & Europa, molti descrissero i Paesi, le Nazioni, e i Costumi, non meno che il Governo Politico della gran Corte de ' Monarchi Ottomani. E la curiosità degli scrittori Francesi, superando con minuta diligenza gl'Italiani, e i Tedeschi, descrisse tutte le Sette delle loro Religioni, le cerimonie tanto sacre, quanto profane, le differenze de i Vestimenti, sì delle Donne come degl'Uomini, gli ordini, e le carriche tanto civili, quanto militari, e le varie, e differenti insegne di tutte le loro dignità, che per la maggior parte consistono nella varia, e differente forma delle loro Berette, e de ' loro Turbanti. Ma degli studi, e della Letteratura de ' Turchi, nessuna, ò lieve notizia fin qui s'è divulgata in Europa; Anzi è corsa universale opinione, in vero erronea, che la Nazione Turchesca fofie affatto ignara delle buone, e belle Lettere, incapace della Rettorica, e della Poesia, e come lontana da gli studi delle Leggi, della Medicina, della Filosofia, delle Mattematiche, così fosse solamente dedita all'uso dell'Armi. E come che la disciplina militare , e l'arte della guerra sono state quelole cose, neele quali i Turchi si sono resi eccellenti, e terribili, occupando colle loro vittorie tanti Regni, e tante Provincie a i Principi Cristiani, e d'altre Sette loro confinanti ( ) Non essendosi dunque nessuno preso cura d'indagare gli Studi, e la Letteratura de' Turchi, GIO: BATTISTA DONADO, Senatore di eminente giudizio, di soda letteratura, e di paragonata eloquenza, che nella cospicua Carrica di Bailo per la Sereniss. República di Venezia à * Nicolò Barozzi and Guglielmo Berchet, op. cit., p. 292. For a detailed account of Donà and his work see Mustafa Soykut, "The Development of the Image 'Turk' in Italy through Delia Letteratura de' Turchi of Giambattista Donà", in Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, (Malta: The Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta, 1999). Gian Rinaldo Carli descendent of a prominent Koper family and came to the Ottoman Empire right after the fall of Candia and stayed there for at least fifty years. See http://www.zrs-kp.si/Zaloznistvo/acta/pov5013.htm.

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Costantinopoli, hà dato tutti i segni dì somma prudenza, d'invincibil costanza, e di zelo inarrivabile verso la sua Patria, trà l'altre recondite notizie, che più d'ogn'altro Soggetto con sagacissima diligenza hà ricavate dell'Imperio Turchesco, insigne si è la presente Relazione delle Scienze de' Turchi; la quale avendo egli scritto à Monsignor Abbate suo Fratello, io conoscendo quanto fosse mal fatto, che stasse sepolta in mani private, ho supplicato l'Eccellenza Sua à non invidiare alla curiosità de' Letterati sì rara, & importante notizia, che per sua benignissima concessione, ora dopo haver nobilitati i miei Torchi, pascerà la studiosa curiosità del tuo ingegno erudito, ò Lettore. Vivi felice. Of the vast empire of the Turks, which extends itself to a major part of Asia, Africa and Europe, many described the countries, the nations and the traditions, not to mention the political government of the great court of the Ottoman monarchs. It is the curiosity of the French writers 1 who have surpassed the Italians and the Germans with minute diligence, that described all the sects of their religions, very sacred ceremonies, as well as the profane ones, the differences of dress of women as well as men, the civil laws and offices as well as the military ones, and the various and diverse emblems of their dignitaries, which to a major extent consist of the various and different forms of their caps and turbans. However, of the study of the literature of the Turks, no or very little news until now has been disclosed in Europe. Moreover, the universal, or rather, the erroneous idea was diffused that the Turkish Nation were indeed ignorant of the good and fine letters, incapable of rhetoric, of poetry and were remote from the study of law, medicine, philosophy and mathematics and that it were solely devoted to the use of arms. Since military discipline and the art of war have been the areas where the Turks have made themselves excellent and terrible, they occupied, thanks to their victories, many kingdoms and provinces of Christian princes and of other neighbouring sects of theirs. 2 Therefore, within a range of a hundred and fifty years, six eminent authors undertook to teach the Christian princes the way to beat them in war and really to expel them from Europe. These were Gilenio Busbeqio 3 and Francesco Savaro, the lord of Breves [Bresse in France?], both of them ambassadors, the former, that of the Emperor [Cesare], the latter, that of the King of France [Re Christianissimo] to the Porte. One wrote in Latin on the strategy of resisting and waging war against the Turk, the other one wrote a book in the French language on the secure means of destroying the Ottoman monarchy. Subsequently, the same matter was cleverly treated by the lord of Nue in the French language, and by Lazzaro Soranzo 4 in Italian

Probably the first name that comes to one's mind is the famous Frenchman Guillaume Postel (born in 1510), or Guglielmo Postello (as he was called in Venice), whose figure is inseparable from Venice. The manuscripts that he got hold of in his travels in the Orient are today in the San Marco Library of Venice. Postel, whose first travel commenced in the year 1536, stayed also in Istanbul, looking for books in Chaldean. See Marion Leathers Kuntz, "L'Orientalismo di Guglielmo Postello e Venezia", in Venezia e l'Oriente, ed. Lionello Lanciotti, (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1987.) The allusion here is to the Shiites. ^ O. G. de Busbeq, The Turkish Letters, ed. E. Forster, (Oxford: 1968.) See also Zweder von Martels, "Impressions of the Ottoman Empire in the Writings of Augerius Busbequius (1520/11591)", Journal of Mediterranean Studies, (Malta), Vol. 5, No: 2, (1995), pp. 209-221. 4 See: Lazzaro Soranzo, op. cit. It is alluded to the same Lazzaro Soranzo and his work mentioned earlier in the article.

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in the book Imperio Ottomano [The Ottoman Empire] and by Achille Tarducci in the discourse entitled II Turco vincibile in Ungaria con mediocri aiuti di Germania [The vincible Turk in Hungary with moderate aid of Germany]. Lastly the learned Giobbo Ludolfo [Hiob Ludolf, 1624-1704], counselor of the Holy Imperial Majesty, in the book that he wrote, De bello contra Turcas feliciter conficiendo [How to successfully conduct the war against the Turks], teaches with extremely fine politics, the means of really extinguishing the Turkish Religion in Europe and of conserving and maintaining the kingdoms and provinces in obedience which have been taken away from the barbarians with the last victories. Therefore, not being there anyone who took care of researching on the study and the literature of the Turks, the senator of eminent judgement, of firm letters and of notable eloquence, Giovanni Battista Donado, in the conspicuous office of bailo in Constantinople for the Serenissima Republic of Venice, gave all the signs of extreme prudence, of invincible perseverance and that of unreachable zeal towards his country, who more than anyone else was able to grasp secret notices with shrewd diligence from the Turkish Empire: the illustrious relazione on the sciences of the Turks, which he wrote to his Monsignor brother the Abbot. I — knowing what a pity it would have been that, it stayed buried in private hands — have implored His Excellency [Donà's brother] not to envy such rare curiosity of the men of letters and important knowledge. As a result of his benign concession, which gave honour to my printers, the learned curiosity of your erudite intelligence will be nourished, O Reader. May you live happily.1 In spite of Donà's sincere efforts to comprehend the Turkish culture, the old prejudices are still felt. Sappia però lei, Sig. Mio Fratello, che, non ostante le suddette notitie, non si deve credere esser li Turchi al possesso delle bell'Arti, e scienze in universale; massime essendo privi delle Stampe, e violentati ad una forzata violenza. Ma tuttavia concorrono ben sodi riflessi ad acconsentirle non mezana cognitione delle lettere, e della intelligenza, massime di termini positivi. However, you my brother signore, should know that, in spite of the above information, one should not think all the Turks to be in possession of arts and sciences, since most of them are deprived of publications and are compelled to a forced ignorance. However, there are various concrete reflections to permit the not-mediocre cognition of letters and that of intelligence, most of which are in positive terms.2

Giovanni Battista Donado, Della Letteratura de' Turchi, (Venetia: Per Andrea Poletti, 1688), preface. The translation of the passages from the book Della letterature de' Turchi of Donà and the page numbers are taken from the copy found in the Biblioteca Universitaria of Padua, and due to printing inadequacies of the time, there may occur - as it sometime does - shifts in page numbers or minuscule differences in the text, when compared with other copies of the book even when printed by the same publisher. ^ Donado, op. cit., pp.5-6.

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Donà also broke new ground in the linguistic and philological study of Turkish letters: ( ) La necessità d'insegnare l'Alcorano per instrution di loro stessi, & altri riflessi, molto bene facilitano il non acconsentire all'universale errore, che siano totalmente ignoranti. Per intender però meglio di questa verità, si deve considerare, che la Lingua Turca è come nell'Italia la Provinciale, nella quale cadauno parla con le forme, e con la pronuncia, & accento del paese. Ma questa si rende adornata dalla Persiana, si come noi facciamo con la Toscana.( ) Che nello stesso modo pur anco si ritrova l'Arabo trà Turchi, si come il Latino trà noi; poiché sendo l'Alcorano scritto nella suddetta lingua, si rende l'Araba necessaria a loro, come alli nostri la lingua, in cui si ritrova la Sacra Scrittura. The necessity of teaching the Qur'an [Alcorano] for the purpose of their own instruction as well as for other aspects, very easily facilitate not to allow the universal error that they are totally ignorant. To be able to understand this truth better, however, one should consider that the Turkish language is, like it is in provincial Italy, where every person speaks with the forms, the pronunciation and the accent of his own locality. However it [Turkish] becomes embellished by Persian, as we do with the Tuscan language.( ) Likewise, also Arabic is present among the Turks, like Latin among us. Since the Qur'an is written in the mentioned language, Arabic becomes necessary for them, like it would to us the language in which the Holy Scriptures are written.1 Ma per corroborations maggiore di ciò, si vede li Sultani, che sono stati pro tempore, hanno eretto varie scuole, molti Collegi, e Letture, con ordini pure di grado di Dottorato, per qualificar gli huomini alle Giudicature, e massime quelli, che applicano alle Moschee, e a regolar le coscienze in carica di Parrocchi, ò d'altri, massime per abilitarli alle Concioni, & alli Pulpiti, ne ' quali frequentano, massime nelle Feste, con Prediche al Popolo; inculcando nel persuadere le Virtù morali, detestando livitij, & a riverire, & adorare la suprema Deità: To strengthen this matter further, it is witnessed that the sultans have from time to time, erected various schools, many colleges and lecture houses, also at the level of doctorate to qualify the men at the judiciary, and especially those serving at mosques and to regulate the consciences of the priests in charge, or others, especially to train them for the pulpit on which they climb particularly at feasts, preaching to the people where they inculcate to persuade the moral virtues, to detest vices and to revere and adore the supreme Deity. 2

1 Donado, op. cit., pp.6-7. ^ Donado, op. cit., pp.11-12.

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Dona tries to show that the Turks had all the elements of a civilised nation, yet he cannot resist making the following remark to show that Europeans had a share in civilising the Turks: Havendo fatto raccogliere le cose prenarrate, io mi suppongo, che haverà Lei dalle stesse notitia, e e cognitione bastante, che la Turca Natione non sia più sepolta in quella brutale rozezza di prima, & che pur anco questo Imperio, ad vso delli Conquistatori, nel dilattare il dominio, e nel introdursi nelle più belle provincie, è andato conquistando pur anco delle doti, e delle bell'arti, che godevano li paesi da essi di tempo occupati. Having had the aforementioned things collected, I suppose that you will have from the reading of these notes, sufficient cognition that the Turkish Nation is no more buried in that brutal roughness, as it was before. Also this empire, as it is in the habit of the conquerors, in expanding its dominion and in introducing itself into the most beautiful provinces, conquered also gifts and fine arts, which the lands gradually conquered by it enjoyed. 1

This passage is also a harbinger of the fact that the image of the Turk in Venice began to undergo a change after the failure of the siege of Vienna in 1683. Donà's ideas reappear in his official relazione presented to the Venetian Senate after his return from Constantinople. Donà is convinced of the presence of erudition among the Turks, but their erudition is not for its culture for its own sake. Rather, all the medreses, schools, reading of books, the building of universities are seen as an effort of the sultans to keep their subjects under control. As Donà's relazione to the Venetian Senate claims that these cultural facilities were instituted by the sultans "to keep the people in peace and order thanks to the judiciary, therefore it was convenient to back up erudition and study, and to tolerate the diffusion of a mediocre cultivation of the mind". 2 However, Donà continues, this natural faculty of the soul which craves for knowledge will allow the Turk to discover that the Prophet of their religion was fraud, destined to perish as a result of his lies. Donà adds that the Turks really do not have a religion, although from the exterior they profess the Muslim religion, and that they confound their laws which are badly written. 3 The selesction of books on the letters and sciences of the Ottomans cited in Donà's work suggests that his choice is not the result of a meticulous research, but is rather a dilettante's bricolage one of the earliest attempts in the study of Turcology. "Donà and his circle realize at the end of * Donado, op. cit., p.135. 2 Nicolò Barozzi and Guglielmo Berchet, op. cit., p. 295-296. 3

ibid. p. 297.

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the (seventeenth) century a cultural operation of great scale, suggesting for the first time to the Venetian public opinion a new and an original way of approaching the Turkish civilisation, for the first time studied within its autonomous values, which the West still has to discover."1 To conclude, the sui generis structure of the Ottoman Empire, characterised by the multi-national structure of that state, presented Italian statesmen and intelligentsia with an "other" that was not what the postRenaissance Italian city-state stood for, nor what the Papacy stood for, considering its theocratic structure, Modern minds and their Renaissance predecessors like to think of the Ottoman state as a theocratic entity, but it was not nor could it have been given the nature of the multi-national empires. The political structure of the Italian states until the Risorgimento in the 19 th century, and in present day Italy, represents a regionalist approach. Unlike Italy, the Ottoman Turks had much in common with their Byzantine Greek predecessors, who were probably much less foreign to the Ottoman statebuilders than the Byzantines were to the Latins. The Ottomans had much in common with the multi-national empire of the Habsburgs. It is only after 1683 that it became evident to Europeans that the Turks no longer had the will or the military capacity to undertake the conquest of all of Europe. It was still the perception of the Italians on the eve of 1683 that there would be an imminent attack of the Turks on Rome. The international politics of the Ottomans were partly determined after 1683 by their internal weaknesses. The new European balance of power and the relative stability of the Westphalian system achieved after 1648 and decades of Protestant-Catholic clash was coupled with the consolidation of power of the old nation states such as France and England. Furthermore the extension of European sovereignty to the newly conquered colonies outside Europe gradually opened an era when the European questions were now fought on a larger scale. This prepared the ground for the more romantic Enlightenment image of the Turk, and made a tangible change in the European attitude towards the Turkish question. The "Turk" in the Age of Enlightenment continued to be the antithesis of the European civilisation. It is no coincidence that Orientalism in the modern sense emerged to inform the European perception of the Orient in this period. In fact, the Ottoman question was never again an issue of a "total crusade of Christendom" after the beginning of the eighteenth century. It returned to the European agenda briefly on the eve of World War I, but with a different political jargon — no longer ' Preto, Paolo, Venezia e i Turchi, (Firenze: G. C. Sansoni Editore, 1975), p. 351.

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as a "crusade" but as the "sick man of Europe," giving rise once again to the revival the old refrain of the "civilised world" against the "despots."

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Pedani, Maria Pia. 1996. Relazioni di Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato. Volume XIV Costantinopoli Relazioni Inedite (1512-1789). Padova: Aldo Ausilio Editore in Padova. — 1994. In Nome del Gran Signore. Inviati Ottomani a Venezia dalla Caduta di Costantinopoli alla Guerra di Candia. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Venezie. XXX. Venezia: Deputazione Editrice. Pertusi, Agostino. 1990. "Le Profezie sulla presa di Costantinopoli (1204) nel cronista veneziano Marco (c. 1292) e le loro fonti bizantine (PseudoCostantino Magno, Pseudo-Daniele, Pseudo-Leone il Saggio)", in Saggi Veneto-Bizantini, (edit.) Giovanni Battista Parente, Firenze: n.p. Pirovano, Carlo (edit.) 1985. Venezia e I Turchi. Milano: Electa Editrice. Piva, Edoardo. 1903. "L'Opposizione diplomatica di Venezia alle mire di Sisto IV su Pesaro e ai tentativi di una crociata contro i Turchi. 1480-1481." in Nuovo Archivio Veneto. Venezia: n.p. Piumini, Roberto. 1987. Lo Stralisco. Torino: Einaudi Tascabili. Platania, Gaetano. 1997. "L'Europa orientale e l'unione delle chiese" in Bessarione e l'Umanesimo, ed. Gianfranco Fiaccadori, Napoli: Vivarium. (edit.) 2000. L'Europa centro-orientale e il pericolo turco tra sei e — settecento. Atti del convegno internazionale (Viterbo, 23-25 Novembre 1998). Viterbo: Sette Città. — 1992. Venimus, Vidimus et Deus vicit. Dai Sobieski ai Wettin. La diplomazia pontifica nella Polonia di fine seicento. Cosenza: Edizioni Periferia. — 1998. "Innocent XI Odescalchi et l'esprit de 'croisade'" in XVIIe Siècle. La Reconquête Catolique en Europe Centrale, n.p., Société d'Etude du XVII e Siècle, Avril-Juin. 1998. "Diplomazia e guerra turca nel XVII secolo. La politica diplomatica — polacca e la 'lunga guerra turca' (1673-1683)" in I Turchi, il Mediterraneo e l'Europa, (edit.) Giovanna Motta, Milano: Franco Angeli s.r.l. — 1997. "Santa Sede e sussidi per la guerra contro il turco nella seconda metà del XVII secolo" in II Buon Senso o la Ragione. L'Università degli Studi della Tuscia. Viterbo: Sette Città. Preto, Paolo. 1975. Venezia e I Turchi. Firenze: G. C. Sansoni Editore. — "La Guerra segreta: spionaggio, sabotaggi, attentati", in Venezia e la Difesa del Levante da Lepanto a Candia 1570-1670. Venezia: Comune di Venezia-Assessorato alla Cultura, Arsenale Editrice, n.d. — 1994. I Servizi Segreti di Venezia. Milano: Il Saggiatore. Ramberti, Benedetto (1503-1546). 1541. Delle cose de Turchi libri tre : delli quali si descrive nel primo il viaggio da Venetia à Costantinopoli, con gli nomi de luoghi antichi et moderni : nel secondo la porta, cioè lacorte de Soltan Soleymano, signor de Turchi : nel terzo & ultimo il modo del reggere il stato et imperio suo. In Vinegia : in casa di maestro Bernardin Milanese. Rice, Eugene F. Jr. and Graton Anthony. 1994. The Foundations of Early Modem Europe. 1460-1559. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Romanin, S. 1856-57. Storia Documentata dì Venezia, tomo V&VI, Venezia: Tipografia di Pietro Naratovich. Ronchey, Silvia. 1994. "Bessarione poeta e l'ultima corte di Bisanzio" in Bessarione e l'Umanesimo, (edit.) Gianfranco Fiaccadori, Napoli: Vivarium. Rossi, Ettore. 1937. "La leggenda turco-bizantina del Pomo Rosso", in Studii Bizantini e Neoellenici. vol.V, n.p. — 1953. Elenco dei Manoscritti Turchi della Biblioteca Vaticana. Citta' del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

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Sagredo, Agostino and Berchet, Federico. 1860. Fondaco dei Turchi in Venezia. Milano: Stabilimento di Giuseppe Civelli. Sahas, Daniel J. 1995."'Holosphyros?' A Byzantine Perception of 'The God of Muhammed'", in Christian-Muslim, Encounters, (eds.) Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Zaidan Haddad, n.p., University Press of Florida. §akiroglu, Mahmut. 1988. "Venedik Cumhuriyeti'nin Istanbul'daki Temsilcileri: Balyoslar. £ali§malari ve Etkinlikleri", in Tarih ve Toplum. Sayi 58, 10, Istanbul: n.p. Scaraffia, Lucetta. 1993. Rinnegati. Per una Storia dell'Identità Occidentale. RomaBari: Laterza. Schwoebel, R. 1967. The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk (1453-1517). Nieuwkoop: n.p. Setton, Kenneth M. 1992. Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom, n.p., American Philosophical Society. — 1991. Venice, Austria and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. — 1978. The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571). Vol.IL, The Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. — and Henry R. (eds.) 1966. Great Problems in European Civilisation. N.J.: Prentice Hall Inc.: Englewood Cliffs. Setton K.M. 1962. "Lutheranism and the Turkish Peril" in Balkan Studies. Nr. 3, n.p. Sevim, Mustafa (edit.) 1996. GravUrlerle Tiirkiye ve Istanbul 1. Ankara: T.C. Kultiir Bakanhgi Yayimlar Dairesi Ba§kanhgi. Sforza, Giovanni. 1897. "Francesco Sansovino e le sue opere storiche", in Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, ser. II, t.XLVII, Torino: n.p. Slomp, Jan. 1995. "Calvin and the Turks", in Christian-Muslim Encounters, (eds.) Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Zaidan Haddad , n.p., University Press of Florida. Southern, R. W. 1962. Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages, n.p., Harvard University Press. Soykut, Mustafa. 2001. Image of the "Turk" in Italy. A History of the "Other" in Early Modern Europe:1453-1683. Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz Verlag. — 1999. "The Development of the Image 'Turk' in Italy through Delia Leteratura de' Turchi of Giambattista Donà", in Journal of Mediterranean Studies. Volume 9, Number 2, Malta: The Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta. Stefani, F. 1873. "Emilio Maria Manolesso e la sua Historia Nova", in Archivio Veneto. Venezia: Tipografia del commercio di Marco Visentini. Stephens, John. 1990. The Italian Renaissance. The Origins of Intellectual and Artistic Change Before the Reformation. New York: Longman. Tamari, Shmuel. 1980. "A Venetian Approach to Islam in the Early 17th Century", in Studi Veneziani. N.S. (IV), Venezia: Giardini Editori. Timur, Taner. 1986. Osmanli Kimligi. Istanbul: Hil Yayin. Tolan, John Victor (edit.) 1996. Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam. New York-London: Garland Publishing Inc. Turan, §erafettin. 1990. TUrkiye-ìtalya ìli§kileri. Seguklular'dan Bizans'in sona erigine. Istanbul: Metis Yayinlan. Ursu, I. 1910. "Uno sconosciuto storico veneziano del secolo XVI (Donato da Lezze)", in Nuovo Archivio Veneto-Periodico storico trimestrale della R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria. Venezia: n.p.

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Alexander Kitroeff Haverford College, NY, USA GREEK IMAGES OF THE OTTOMANS & TURKS (late 19th - early 20th Centuries)

"Moscof-Selim" is the title of a short story by the Greek author Georgios Vizyenos in which a Greek narrator treats a Turk from Thrace with great sympathy. The Greek character identifies with Selim and endorses the Turk's ambiguity with regard to national identity: Selim, frustrated with the state of affairs of the Ottoman Empire had become pro-Russian. Vizyenos was aware that some people in Greece would consider his sympathy for the Turk and his antipathy towards clear-cut identities as a heresy. Late nineteenthcentury Greece was caught in the grip of the pursuit of a greater Greece, "the Great Idea," at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Yet even though Vizyenos chose not to publish the story, it appeared in serialized form in the Athens daily Hestia in 1895 by which time Vizyenos had been committed to an asylum, where he died a year later. The editors of the newspaper obviously did not share Vizyenos' fear of a rabidly nationalist public opinion in Athens. The author conveyed those fears in the preface of the story where he addresses "Selim" directly: "I don't doubt that the fanatics of your race will curse the memory of a "believer" because he opened the sanctuary of his heart to the unholy eyes of an infidel. I fear the fanatics of my own race will reproach a Greek author because he did not conceal your virtue, or did not substitute a Christian hero in his account." He tells Selim "as a simple chronicler, I valued in you, not the inexorable enemy of my nation, but simply the man." (Wyatt, 1988: 187) More closely attuned to Athenian public opinion and current affairs, the editors of the Hestia guessed right that there would not be any sharp or hostile reaction to the appearance of Vizyenos' story and his treatment of Selim. Was this public acceptance of a sympathetic description of a fictional Turk an isolated incident or was it part of a more general state of mind in late nineteenth-centuiy Greece?

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Ever since the emergence of Greek nationalism, the Ottomans have figured as the "other" and as the enemy (Hamourtziadou & Gokay, 2000) and this has certainly been true of the twentieth century as evidenced by history textbooks. (Millas, 1991) Has this been a constant trend since the early nineteenth century? A cursory glance at the record of historical events in the late nineteenth century suggests that those years witnessed a nationalist upsurge in Greece that was common in other parts of the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s. Indeed, in Greece's case the situation culminated in the GrecoTurkish war of 1897. To be sure, recent scholarship has shown conclusively that a small nationalist group, the "Ethniki Etaireia" engineered the 1897 war. Nevertheless, mainstream politicians were less enamored of militant nationalist projects and they envisioned the pursuit of the "Great Idea" by more moderate means than those supported by the nationalist associations that appeared in the 1890s. This era of Greek "moderation" with regard to the "Great Idea" became evident after the uprising in Ottoman-controlled Crete 1866-69. It was deepened by the administrations of Charilaos Trikoupis in the 1880s and early 1890s, and followed — somewhat less enthusiastically — by Prime Minister Theodoros Deliyannis in the 1890s. What was the correlation between Greek nationalism's moderate turn and Greek images of the Turks? The earlier, more militant phase of Greek nationalism entailed, not surprisingly, the projection of negative images of the "barbaric" Turk. What happened in the late nineteenth century? While national stereotypes are often portrayed as static typologies of traits, this paper suggests that a more useful approach regards public attitudes towards significant national others as both dynamic and dialectical. I argue here that pubic attitudes towards Ottomans and Turks during the critical period of 18691908 are linked to changing visions of the Greek national project and to changing definitions of Greek nationhood. In other words, attitudes towards the Ottomans were contingent on the goals of the "Great Idea" and the ways the Greeks defined themselves as a nation. When, those changed, the images of "the other" changed accordingly. Perceptions are socially rooted; they are not autonomous, immutable categories. In this case, as we will see, the "ancient" or "traditional" Greco-Turkish enmity was overcome. This article examines the Greek images of the Ottomans and Turks (the sources use the term interchangeably) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by addressing, first, the changes in the Greek national perspective and then examining, in turn, certain clusters of views expressed by Greeks. The clusters are divided into three broad categories: images produced in the

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sphere of political discourse, views of the Turks expressed by Greeks in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish war of 1897 and, finally images generated from the domain of popular culture. This historical phase of Greek relations with the Ottomans was brought to an end by the Young Turk revolution of 1908.

Changes in Greek Nationalism. There were fundamental shifts in the ways Greekness was defined after 1870. First, the earlier cultural and religious definitions of Greekness were slowly replaced by a more political and secular understanding of Greek identity. Religious definitions began receding after Greece's anti-Ottoman alliance with Russia during the Crimean wars ended in defeat. There were more and more commentators and politicians in Greece who were defining Greekness politically. Politicians and intellectuals began describing the "Great Idea" as a project of political rather than religious liberation and as a movement that was parallel to the movement of other nationalities in Europe. Significantly, a constitutional assembly in Athens in the early 1860s demonstrated the growing influence of European liberal political discourse among the Greek elite. In the 1880s, the basis of Greek claims on Ottoman Macedonia changed. Where in the past those claims were based on objective, cultural criteria, language, religion, heritage, now a new more moderate nationalist leadership in Athens produced criteria that relied on the local population's expressed views and choices. The "Greekness" of a particular area of Macedonia, for example, was measured by the allegiance of the local inhabitants to Greece. Second, Greek nationalist leaders rejected earlier militant pursuits of the "Great Idea" in favor of more moderate means of pursuing the nationalist agenda, which itself was more restrained in terms of its territorial claims. Instead of war, the achievement of progress and civilization and, beginning in the 1880s, the achievement of a western European type of modernization became the major pre-requisites for Greece's realization of the "Great Idea." Charilaos Trikoupis, the political leader who dominated the Greek political scene during the 1880s through the early 1890s spearheaded the modernization project. The plan was to impress the Great Powers and persuade them that Greece was a responsible regional power deserving of their diplomatic support. By the same token, Greece hoped to persuade the Powers that it could replace the Ottoman Empire's role as the buffer to Russia's attempts to secure a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean.

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These two sets of changes in the way the Greeks defined themselves and their nationalist agenda brought radical changes in the ways they described the Ottomans. The earlier, predominantly religious definitions of Greekness had given rise to images of the Ottomans as Muslim oppressors. Before the Greeks acknowledged they had to work towards achieving progress and civilization they had complacently viewed themselves as "civilized" on the basis of their Classical Greek heritage. Therefore, most Greek writers considered Islam as a primitive oriental religion and depicted the "Asiatic Turks" in negative terms such as "barbarians." (Apostolopoulos, 1885:7-8). A geography book published as late as 1860 included a description of the Seljuks as "wild beasts" (Koulouri, 1988:185). New Images of the Ottomans. There were changes already taking place in the 1860s. Historian Konstantinos Paparigopoulos, whose multi-volume "History of the Greek Nation" became a standard reference work beginning in the 1860s, steadfastly refused to cast the Ottomans in a negative light. In contrast to the more conventional descriptions of the Ottoman phase of Greek history that made use of terms such as "slavery" and "oppression," Paparigopoulos consistently adopted the term "Ottoman rule." When he described the arrival of the Seljuk Turks on Byzantium's eastern borders, Paparigopoulos did not talk about "barbarians of the steppe" or "barbarians" as other Greek authors did. (Paparigopoulos, Vol. 6 1957 [reprint]: 240) When he dealt with the events surrounding the Greek revolution of 1821, Paparigopoulos steered away from the lurid descriptions of Ottoman savagery that were common at the time. (Paparigopoulos, Vol. 8 1957 [reprint]: 385-386) Paparigopoulos anticipated the views of politicians and commentators whose work would appear after 1870 and whose views on Greekness, the Greek national project and of the Ottomans would be more positive than the earlier generation of observers. They were helped by a change in the overall nationalist climate in Greece after 1869. It was then that a three-year antiOttoman uprising on Crete collapsed, partially due to Greece's inability to help the rebels. The Great Powers had exercised pressure on Athens to desist from actively aiding the struggle. That moment became the spark that ignited a spate of introspection among Greek leaders and prompted them to spurn militancy and, led by Prime Minister Alexandras Koumoundouros, to embrace the pursuit of progress and civilization as a means for achieving the "Great Idea." This paved the way for new images of the Ottomans to emerge from Greek political speeches and texts.

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A group of political observers considered the Ottoman Empire as an Empire in decline, but they believed the causes were unrelated to the Ottomans themselves. Rather, they believed that the Empire was in decline because of the operation of inexorable laws of history. The decline had nothing to do with the cultural characteristics of its rulers or its people. In a parliamentary speech delivered in 1869, deputy Valasopoulos explained that "the reasons for Turkey's decline... are related to the laws of nature; Turkey cannot be the exception to the rule, it had to succumb to the passing of time. It is not the fault of the customs in Turkey, or the laws or the fault of the religion... Turkey has transformed itself," Valasopoulos continued referring to the Tanzimat reforms, "changing customs and laws while religion weakened." Perhaps, Valasopoulos speculated, it was the "abruptness of the innovations that caused a sudden decline. There was by no means unanimity among political observers. For example author and journalist Theodoros A. Paschidis, a nationalist activist, believed the Ottomans could realize their potential for modernization only if they acknowledged their cultural similarities with the Greeks and allowed the Greeks to lead them forward. Paschidis, suggesting a set of affinities between the Greeks and the Turks, wrote: "we Greeks never proclaimed an uncompromising and destructive war against the race of the Turks because we considered them as a part of the oriental nations that adopted Hellenic (Ancient Greek) principles... and we also never denied them their political rights." (Paschidis, 1880: 39) Until the Turks would consciously defer to Greek leadership, Paschidis considered them backward because of their embrace of Islam and the customs it generated, such as keeping concubines, that made them immoral: "only the transplantation of Christian freedoms and institutions" could civilize and transform Muslims" Paschidis wrote. (Paschidis, 1880: 42) Even from his nationalistic vantage point Paschidis reflects a small part of the overall changes that were more obvious in other writers. He is not condemning the Turks themselves as "barbarians," rather he attributes their backwardness to the "defects" of their religion.

Images in School Textbooks. The ways the Ottomans were portrayed in school textbooks, especially those dealing with the geography and ethnography of the Balkans, were very important in creating a new image of the Ottomans. Written by intellectuals who combined the skills of ethnologist, geographer and historian, these

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textbooks appeared with increasing frequency after 1870. These textbooks are a useful yardstick in measuring Greek views of the Ottomans: books had to be approved by the government before being used in schools. Their purpose was to identify the "national lands" within and outside the Greek borders as well as to characterize the neighboring peoples in terms of their history, cultural traits and their level of civilization. Almost without exception, these textbooks reflected contemporary nationalist views and were an essential tool in formulating Greek nationalism, much in the same way that the nationalism among the Southern Slavs relied on the textbooks that Charles Jelavich has studied. (Jelavich, 1990) Georgios Kremos, author of several books on geography that were approved by the government for use in schools, agreed with the views of Valasopoulos and others about the causes of the Ottoman Empire's decline. Kremos also believed in the inexorability of the decline of Empires. He saw parallels between the decline of the Byzantine Empire and of the Ottoman Empire. In 1890 he wrote that the size of the Ottoman Empire under Abdul Hamit was approximately that of the size of Byzantium during the reign of its last emperor Konstantinos Paleologos. This was an odd parallelism, considering the widely different ways Greek nationalists considered those two empires. (Kremos, 1890: 743-744) Adopting a slightly different approach, another group of Greek observers considered the Ottoman Empire as being unable to respond to the challenges of modernization, but they did acknowledge positive aspects of Turkish culture. For example, A.I. Antoniades, author of a geography textbook for schools published in 1888 described the Turks as having a "serious character" and being "strong and large physically" as well as being "good fighters." Antoniades also praised the Ottomans' aptitude in the fine arts and in architecture. (Koulouri, 1988:339) Such descriptions were extremely rare in Greeks works before 1870. Nonetheless, when Antoniades turned to the potential of the Ottomans for achieving progress and civilization (itself a concern that is indicative of contemporary priorities in Athens) he was ambivalent. He stated, "the language of the Turks, a dialect of the Turkestan language, lacks the expressions needed to describe technical and scientific terms and concepts, and is in general a language that is poor and coarse... and the Turks themselves are ill-suited for any intellectual development." Yet Antoniades conceded in the same breath that the Ottomans had made efforts to organize public education "in order to spread useful and scientific knowledge, and in 1846 they established a university in Constantinople." (Ibid.)

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Greek attitudes toward the Turkish language changed in the 1890s. In an article published in 1898,1. Marinakis suggested that demotic Turkish, the language of Turkish poetry, was able to convey the refinements and coloring that poetic verse entailed. Demotic Turkish, Marinakis wrote, "possesses syntactical forms most suitable in conveying thoughts and feelings" (Marinakis, 1898). It is significant that this article appeared in the Athens newspaper "Ta Olympia," which supported Greece's modernization and Europeanization. It had begun publication around the time the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, in 1896. Many Greek observers hailed the Games as a sign of Greece's acceptance by the European Powers.

Greco-Ottomanism. Greek sources have recorded the growing number of voices in Athens that favored collaboration between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, but this phenomenon has been generally regarded as a political maneuver. Yet this was one of several expressions of more positive evaluations of the Ottomans and Turks. Moreover, there is a correlation between the pro-Ottoman voices and those calling for moderation on the nationalist front and, domestically, for modernization and Europeanization. In other words, seen in terms of a broader pattern and process, "Greco-Ottomanism" represented something deeper than political tactics: an important aspect of late-nineteenth-century Greek attitudes. Many Greek observers and politicians gravitated around the view that the Greeks should form an alliance with the Ottomans. This was a consequence of the rise of anti-Slavism. The "Greco-Ottoman" tendency was connected to an increasingly secular understanding of Greek identity. Secularist national thought was closely related to the rise of Greek anti-Slavism in the 1870s. This arose as a reaction to the emergence of Bulgarian nationalism that was Church-oriented. The Bulgarian use of Orthodoxy as a vehicle in the construction and promotion of Bulgarian identity in the Ottoman domains in the Balkans weakened the case of those in Athens who advocated a religiously colored Greek identity. Fear of the Bulgarians and their Russian patrons haunted Greek national discourse. The old Orthodox-based allegiance to Russia all but disappeared as Moscow was seen as orchestrating a Pan-Slavist take over of the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. Political commentators and, a little later, school textbooks engaged in an anti-Slavism that dominated Greek nationalist thinking for several decades.

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Those circumstances permitted some Greek observers and politicians to consider building a close relationship between the Greeks and the Ottomans. The Slavs, not the Ottomans, were the main adversary. A geography textbook for schools published in Athens in 1866 described the Bulgarians as "the most fearsome enemies of the Greeks" (Koulouri, 1988: 326). One of the earliest expressions of "Greco-Ottomanism" is a letter written to the authorities in Izmir by a Greek native of the city, the writer Ikesios Latris who had moved to Greece. Latris called for the "amicable concord of Greeks and Ottomans, two peoples who were neighbors, who were related and who shared common experiences." Latris called for the widening of the Tanzimat reforms, their adoption by Greece and, in the long term, the emergence of a "GrecoOttoman" of "Ottoman Greek" state (Skopetea, 1988: 313). Echoing Latris' vision of a potential Greco-Turkish fusion, an editorialist in Athens described the Ottoman Greeks who were serving in senior positions in the Sultan's administration as Christians but who were "Turks with the full meaning of the word" (Skopetea, 1988: 316). The "Greco-Ottoman" position had an important advocate in Epaminondas Deligeorgis (1829-1879), one of Greece's major political figures in the 1860s and 1870s. Deligeorgis favored Europeanization and modernization, and he was also an outspoken anti-Slavist. He saw a future, modernized Greece being in a position to impress the Powers and be named "the only inheritor of elderly Turkey" (Panellinion June 29, 1854). This view of Greece as the Ottoman Empire's "inheritor," launched by Deligeorgis, became widespread in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many Greek observers realized that the so-called Eastern Question was an obstacle to Greece's territorial claims because the Powers did not wish to weaken the Ottomans whom they considered as a buffer to Russian plans in the Eastern Mediterranean. Very simply, one way the Greeks addressed those fears was by promoting Greece as a capable and stable force in the region that would play the same role the Ottomans did. By extension, if Greece was to become the Empire's "inheritor" it could be described as in decline but not as a fundamentally barbarian or backward state. Deligeorgis took things a step further, fearing that Slav incursions in the Balkans would disrupt the imagined hand over of the region from the Ottomans over to the Greeks. He proposed for a Greco-Turkish rapprochement in 1873 and during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, Deligeorgis was outspoken in opposing Greece's involvement on Russia's side. (Efimeris ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis, Oct. 30, 1876) Others joined him. For example,

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Odysseas Ialemos, an influential journalist had already called for collaboration between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s. (Yannoulopoulos, 1999: 60) Greco-Ottomanism was clearly gaining ground in the 1870s. Author Anastasios Vizantios, a sharp critic of public affairs, was one of several commentators who reacted against this trend. In his articles, he deplored "Greco-Ottomanism" and appeared very concerned about its potential to dominate the political scene. After Greece emerged from the Berlin Conference of 1878 with minimal gains, Vizantios blamed the Greek government's moderate attitude. Self-defeating moderation was the unfortunate outcome of the policy of "Turco-Greek civilization," which he scorned, describing it as a child born out of wedlock that "expressed Turkish ideas in Greek language." (Vizantios, 1893: 212)

Greek-Ottoman Diplomatic

Relations.

Vizantios' perception was only partially correct. It was not "GrecoOttomanism" that influenced the Berlin Conference, but the Conference's outcome that influenced "Greco-Ottomanism." The Conference demonstrated that the Great Powers intended to oversee the resolution of the Eastern Question in a more direct manner. The Berlin Treaty settled several territorial issues in the Balkans and it was clear that any other change in the regional status quo would pass through the hands of the Powers. This new, more assertive role by the Powers brought an end to the "Greco-Ottoman" movement (it would re-appear in the 1900s) because most observers in Athens saw that the Empire was no longer in a position to play an influential role in determining its own future. The conviction that the Great Powers would be the arbitrators of the Eastern Question altered Greek attitudes toward the Ottomans. They were now less of a factor and therefore less important in terms of the type of alliance Deligeorgis had envisioned. In place of the proposed alliance, Greek modernizers began advocating the need for cordial diplomatic relations between Athens and the Ottoman Porte. The writings of commentator and author Emanouil Roidis (18351904), a supporter of the drive toward modernization and Europeanization and a regular contributor to the Athens newspaper Ora, conveyed the sense that the Empire was vulnerable to the Great Powers and powerless to react. Each January, Roidis published an account of the major domestic and international

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events of the past year. Writing in 1885, he made a rare reference to the Empire's affairs, and suggested that its future was bound up with the worldwide distribution of colonies that concerned the western Powers. Alarmingly for the Greeks, he added, Britain's global concerns had permitted the Austrians to make inroads in the Balkans, and it was now Vienna that posed the greatest threat to the Empire's integrity while London's attention was focused elsewhere. Under those circumstances, he added with some irony, the preservation of the Empire had greater support in Greece than anywhere else. (Roidis, 1885) Athens' fears of Austrian claims in the Balkans, coupled with the even greater concerns over the rise of Bulgarian nationalism paved the way for "Greco-Ottomanism" to be replaced by close Greco-Ottoman diplomatic relations. Prime minister Trikoupis, the champion of modernization who was in power for most of the 1880s and the early 1890s, pursued close relations with the Porte. In line with Greek nationalism's moderate turn after the 1870s, Greco-Ottoman diplomatic relations had entered a cordial phase. The two sides signed several bilateral agreements on the rights and the status of the Greeks in the Empire and the Greek government even awarded the Sultan with a medal. This thaw in diplomatic relations resonated broadly, and Greeks who supported the idea of a Balkan Federation to replace the Ottoman Empire suggested that this could include Turks. (Todorov, 1995: 86) Trikoupis maintained the policy of cordial relations between Athens and Istanbul even during moments of crisis. For example, when Joachim III, Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople resigned in 1883 after a clash with the Porte, Greek minister for foreign affairs Alexandras Kontostavlos told the parliament in Athens that the government did not intend to intervene in what it considered an internal Ottoman affair. He went as far to add that the government was looking forward to improving Greco-Turkish relations even further in the near future. (Efimeris ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis, Feb. 23, 1884. On another occasion, when a Greek uprising broke out on the Ottomancontrolled island of Crete in 1889, Trikoupis met with representatives of the leaders and reprimanded them for their political opportunism and for endangering Greco-Ottoman relations. Trikoupis was consistent in maintaining good relations between Athens and the Porte, in part in order to offset the Austrian and Bulgarian threats but also because he saw the realization of the "Great Idea" through modernization rather than through militant means.

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Trikoupis and his supporters maintained this attitude toward the Ottomans through 1895 when he eventually relinquished power, even though the nationalism that spread throughout the Near East thanks to Sultan Abdul Hamit's policies was also felt in Athens. The pro-Trikoupist press treated news of Armenian massacres cautiously, attributing them not to the Ottoman army but to irregular groups of Bashi-bazouks. But growing unrest on Crete, protests over Abdul Hamit's policies, the emergence of nationalist associations and Trikoupis' replacement by Theodoros Deliyannis, who was rhetorically in favor of a more robust Greek stance, all served to bring the closeness of Greek-Ottoman relations to an end.

The Greco-Turkish War of 1897. The political end of Trikoupis in 1895 (followed by his death the next year) was accompanied by a revival of the old, culturally defined nationalism espoused not so much in parliament as within the nationalist associations that emerged. If only indirectly, because of support for yet another uprising in Crete and because of the nature of the nationalist ideas in circulation, the Ottomans became the enemy for a large portion of Greek public opinion, but this development culminated and dissolved with the Greco-Turkish war of 1897. The Greco-Turkish war of 1897 was a short-lived incident that did not represent a surge of anti-Turkish sentiment in Greece. Indeed, ironically, its aftermath served to bolster the image of the Ottomans in Athens. The war began when a Greek nationalist association, the "Ethniki Etaireia," sent guerillas into Ottoman Macedonia as a gesture of solidarity with the Greeks of Crete who had taken up arms against the Ottomans. Greece sent its army in support of the guerillas but it was pushed back a long way into Greek territory by the Ottoman army. An allied-brokered peace saved Greece from the embarrassing prospect of seeing the Ottomans march on Athens. The nationalist offensive on Macedonia was essentially an attempt to counter the influence of "Slav" nationalists who were considered a far greater enemy by Greek nationalists than the Ottomans. Both major nationalist organizations in Athens, the "Ethniki Etaireia" and the "Etaireia O Hellenismos" that were active in the 1890s focused their attention primarily on the "Slav danger" to Greece's claims on Macedonia Greece's defeat in 1897 delivered a serious blow to the militant and cultural nationalists and helped restore the moderate and more civic-oriented politically defined nationalist outlook that had prevailed

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during the Trikoupis era. The more positive attitudes towards the Ottomans reappeared. Most commentators placed responsibility for the war squarely on the shoulders of the "Ethniki Etaireia" but they also implied that Greece had been defeated by a more efficiently run army, and that only meant that Greece should redouble its efforts to modernize as swiftly as possible. A.N. Vernardakis was in a minority when he chose not to blame the "Ethniki Etaireia," but he also was reluctant to say anything negative about the Ottomans. His view was that they had been pushed to attack Greece by the Great Powers. (Vernardakis, 1898). Vlassis Gavriilides, the editor of the influential daily the Akropolis, saw the post-1897 era not only as one in which modernization became the nation's focus, but also as a time in which cheap patriotism had become a laughing stock (Yannoulopoulos, 1999: 182). Gavriilides embodied the pro-European and modernizationist outlook in latenineteenth-century Greece. His newspaper, the Akropolis distanced itself from the nationalists. Interestingly, when claims of Abdul Hamit's "Armenian massacres" appeared, the Akropolis adopted a cautious attitude, blaming them on irregular Bashi-bazouks rather than on Ottoman troops. Finally, military officers and other observers who published accounts of the 1897 war portrayed the Turks as an opponent who deserved great respect. One author considered the technical preparation and organization of the Ottoman forces as being far superior to that of the Greeks (Spiliotopoulos, 1987: 356). The post-1897 conditions in Greece soon led to the re-emergence of a "Greco-Ottoman" movement, spearheaded by nationalist intellectuals Athanasios Souliotis-Nikolaidis and Ion Dragoumis. Souliotis, an army officer, was sent to Istanbul in order to explore the possibility of coordinating Greek and Ottoman policies in Macedonia. He formed the "Organosis Konstantinoupoleos," an association of Istanbul Greeks that worked toward establishing ties between all peoples of the Empire. Both Souliotis and Dragoumis, a diplomat, envisioned in the long-term a "hellenized" Ottoman Empire. It was a vaguely stated vision at the core of which was a form of fusion between Greeks and Turks. Souliotis' preference was for a formula that evoked the European principle of nationalities and anticipated a multi-ethnic multi-national entity. Dragoumis' vision was more culturally and spiritually defined but much less developed politically and included contradictory elements. (Augustinos, 1977 128-129) A large part of the Greek elite in the city supported this new version of Greco-Ottomanism. Long before these plans came close to being discussed more thoroughly, the Young Turk revolution of 1908 put Greek-Turkish relations, and Greek images of the Turks on a completely different footing.

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Popular Culture. This article is concerned mainly with the ways Greek political discourse reflected images of the Ottomans and Turks, but it is worth considering, briefly, the parallel expressions of such images in the sphere of popular culture. The separate investigation of images derived from popular culture is necessary because this is the area in which neighboring peoples share affinities and, very often, mutually positive attitudes. Significantly, Maria Todorova notes that the Balkan peoples related to the legacy of Ottoman rule unevenly, but were much more open about it in the sphere of everyday life, in arts and entertainment, rather than politics. (Todorova, 1997:180) Following Todorova, we should note that the images of the Turks in Greek political writing, discussed above, does not acknowledge or concede that there could be parallels between modern Greek and Ottoman political developments. The idea that post-independence Greek political life could entail elements that could be described as an "Ottoman legacy" would be out of the question. Perhaps that is why there is so little commentary on the Tanzimat reforms by Greek authors. The idea that the Ottomans were trying to revitalize their political life by adopting European models may have suggested uncomfortable parallels between Greece and the Empire. Beyond politics and in the realm of popular culture, the Ottoman legacy in Greece was much more readily accepted. Leading painters such as Nikiforos Litras (1832-1904) and Nikolaos Gizis (1842- 1900), both of whom studied in France, produced works with oriental motifs. Musical touring groups based in the Ottoman Empire performed in Athens and Piraeus. Commentators writing in the Greek press welcomed these shows, acknowledging that oriental music touched their innermost feelings. (Hadjipantazis, 1984: 29) By far the most interesting phenomenon of Greco-Turkish cultural fusion in this era is the "hellenization" of the Karagoz shadow theater and its hero's emergence as Karagiozis. This type of entertainment remained popular after the 1821 in the lands included in the modern Greek state, but it was prohibited in the late 1850s, apparently because of its coarse and vulgar language rather than in Turkishness. Nonetheless, Karagoz resurfaced in the 1880s in a more hellenized form. This "oriental" shadow theater was apparently much more popular than an alternative, western European form of puppet theater that managed to replace Karagoz as the crowd favorite for only a

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couple of decades. Most significantly, the popularity of Karagiozis survived the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, and in fact most players shifted to a classbased rather than an ethnic based depiction of the main characters. The appearance of the so-called "café-aman" or "café-santour" in the mid-1870s in Athens provides another indication that Athenians were willing to recognize their "oriental roots." These establishments were the lower class answer to the middle class "café-chantant" which was modeled on French song and entertainment. These lower class establishments featured Greek singers from "Smyrna, Constantinople and Armenia" and oriental instruments and dances accompanied their songs. Compared to the café-chantant, the décor and atmosphere of the café-aman was coarse, rowdy and sometimes dangerous (Skaltsa, 1983: 588-90). The smoking of the nargileh (water pipe) was considered an "oriental item" but it survived in even the most westernized cafes in Athens through the early twentieth century (Skaltsa, 1983: 506-07). What can we learn from Greek images of the Turks between 1870 and the Young Turk Revolution of 1908? Any conclusions may have some relevancy for perceptions of each other between neighboring peoples in general, but such conclusions are also colored by the specific historical relationship of those peoples as ruled and ruler, respectively, before Greece gained its independence in the early nineteenth century. The most important conclusion that can have a more general application is that negative stereotypes can be overturned when certain conditions change. In this case, we have the enmity between Greek and Turk generated by the rise of nationalism in the Balkans in the early nineteenth century. This adversarial relationship, and the negative images of the other it implied, was radically transformed in the late nineteenth century. By that time, Greece had experienced state and nation-building and, by the 1870s had begun looking westward as a means of enhancing its national goals. The sense that Greece had some catching up to do in order to become fully modernized and Europeanized eliminated the older triumphalist self-definitions that had used Ancient Greek civilization and heritage or Christianity to paint a picture of Greeks as superior to uncivilized, barbarian and heathen Turks. This new image of the Ottomans and Turks had its limits, though. First, it represented only one of several political and intellectual tendencies in late-nineteenth-century Greece, albeit a dominant one until the very beginning of the twentieth century. Second, it stopped short of acknowledging the prior closeness of Greek and Turk in the political and social spheres. We saw that

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on the level of popular culture, the positive image of the Ottomans and Turks encompassed an acceptance of the legacy of G r e e c e ' s Ottoman past. T h e popularity of the shadow theater was one of several instances in which this was true. N o such legacy of common origins was acknowledged on a political level, however, because of the specific historical relationship of ruler and ruled between those peoples. C l e a r l y , if such a r e l a t i o n s h i p exists in the c o m m o n past of neighboring peoples, stereotypes can be overcome, but c o m m o n experiences may remain unacknowledged.

Bibliography Apostolopoulos, Th. N. 1885. Geographia

tis Hellados

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Athens: Konstantinidis. Augustinos, Gerasimos 1977. Consciousness

and History: Nationalist

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Greek Society 1897-1914 Boulder: East European Quarterly. Efimerida ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis [Journal of Parliamentary Debates] Athens: Ethniko Typographio. Hadjipantazis, Theodoros 1984. E Esvole tou Karagiozi stin Athina tou 1890 [Karagiozis' Invasion in the Athens of the 1890s] Athens: Stigmi. Harmoutziadou, Lily & Gokay, Biilent 2000. "Angels and Demons - Constructions and and Representations of the Enemy Image in Greece and Turkey" in Nedret Kuran Bur^oglu Ed. The Image of the Turk in Europe from the Declaration of the Republic in 1923 to the 1990s Ustanbul: Isis Press pp. 397-411 Jelavich, Charles 1990. South Slav Nationalisms

Ttextbooks and Yugoslav Union

before 1914 Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Koulouri, Christina 1988. Historia kai Geographia

sta HellenikaScholia

(1834-

1914) [History and Geography in the Greek Schools (1830-1914)] Athens: IAEN. Kremos, Georgios 1890. Neotati Geniki Historia [Modern Genral History] Athens: Vlastos. Marinakis, I. 1898. "E Demodes ton Tourkon Poieses" [Greek Demotic Poetry] Ta Olympia Aug. 23 r d . Millas, Hercules 1991. "History Textbooks in Greece and Turkey" in

History

Workshop Journal Vol. 31 Spring, pp. 21-33. Paschidis, Thomas A. 1880. Oi Anatolikoi

Laoi os pros ton Helleismon

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Eastern Peoples in Relation to Hellenism] Athens: Ethniki Anexartisia.

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Paparigopoulos, Konstantinos 1957. [reprint] Istoria

tou Hellenikou

Ethnous

[History of the Greek Nation] 8 Volumes Athens: Fanos. Roidis, Emmanouil 1885. "Epitheorisis tou Etous 1884" [Review of the Year 1884] Ora Jan. 1 s t . Skaltsa, Matoula 1983. Kenoneke Zoe ke Dimosii Hori Kinonekoti sten Athena

Sinathreseon

tou 19ou eona [Social Life and Public Places of Social

Gatherings in Nineteenth Century Athens] Thessaloniki Skopetea, Elli 1988. To Protypo Vasilio kai e Megali Idea [The Modern Kingdom and the Megali Idea] Athens: Polytypo. Spiliotopoulos, Antonios Th. Istoria tou Helleno-Tourkikou

Polemou [History of

the Greco-Turkish War] Athens: Tsagaris. Todorov, Varban 1995. Greek Federalism During the Nineteenth century Boulder: East European Quarterly. Todorova, Maria 1977. Imagining

the Balkans New York: Oxford University

Press. Veremis Thanos & Boura Katerina eds., 1984. Athanasios Organosis

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Souliotis-Nikolaidis: Souliotis-Nikolaidis:

Constantinople Organization] Athens: Dodoni. Vernardakis, A.N. 1898. Ta Meta ten Katastrophen E, ti Estoihisen o Polemos [On the Aftermath of the Katastrophe or What the War Cost] Athens. Vizantios, Anastasios 1893. Erga [Works] Trieste: Austrian Lloyd. Wyatt, William F. Jr. 1988. My Mother's

Sin and Other Stories by

Georgios

Vizyenos Hanover: University Press of New England. Yannoulopoulos, Yannis 1999. "E Evgenis mas Tiflosis" Exoteriki Politiki kai "Ethnika Themata"

["Our Noble Blindness" Foreign Policy and "National

Issues"] Athens: Vivliorama.

Hercules Millas University of Athens, Greece THE 'OTHER' AND NATION BUILDING THE TESTIMONY OF GREEK AND TURKISH NOVELS

The Greek and the Turkish nation states and their citizens who identify as Greeks and Turks exhibit a series of recurring behaviors towards the 'Other' that may be designated as 'nationalistic'. 1 The image of the 'Other" portrayed in Greek and Turkish discourses reveals the manner in which national identity is created, developed and reproduced as well as the framework within which bilateral relations are carried on. Nationalism functions as a binary system where 'we' and the 'Other' are permanently present and interdependent. In this essay, I shall present the various manifestations of the 'Other' as he/she is portrayed in the literary texts of the two countries and comment on the phenomenon with respect to prospects for bilateral relations. The appearance of Greek and Turkish novels was in step forward in the search for national identity and nation building. The first Greek novel circulated in 1834, five years after the establishment of the Greek national state; the first Turkish novel appeared in 1872, three decades before the dawn of the Young Turk movement and fifty years before the establishment of the Turkish national state. 2 The first consequence of this incongruity is apparent in the way the 'Other' is portrayed in the literary texts of the two communities. In the first Greek novels, 'Turks' are presented as a nation with shared negative characteristics, as the historical enemy, and as a source of a threat.3 In the first Turcophone novels, however, the Greeks do not appear as 1 A behavior can be named differently: national, ethnic, 'Greek' or 'Turkish', regional, patriotic, chauvinistic, racist, etc. Here the term 'nationalistic' does not carry a pejorative meaning but refers to a specific national (group) identity and trend, which are in fact, the main topic of this article. 2 Leandros by P. Soutsos and Taa$uk-i Tal'at ve Fitnat by §emsettin Sami are considered the first Greek and Turkish novels respectively. See: H. Millas: 2000 and 2001, where about five hundred novels of about one hundred and fifty Greek and Turkish writers are presented and analyzed. 3 Only forty years before, the image of the 'Turk' in grecophone literature was not negative as can be readily noticed m the politically oriented poems (and other writings) of Rigas Velestinlis and other Greek intellectuals (Millas: 1994, pp. 87-122, 257-294). After 1834 literary authors such as I. Pitsipios, Gr. Palaiologos, St. Ksenos, D. Vikelas, A. Papadiamantis portray a negative Turk who is in confrontation with 'us'. This tendency persists in the 20 t h century, too.

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the 'Other'. Before national identity becomes a major problem in Ottoman society, the Turcophone novel does not make an issue of the Greeks. Whenever Greeks appear, they are not identified as member of a nation but only as individuals or as citizens of the Ottoman state. Sometimes they have positive or neutral ethnic characteristics, but they are definitely not portrayed as having negative stereotypes. The appearance of Young Turks marks the end of this school of writers. The 'Ottomanists' stopped publishing their works after about 1912 and a new generation of authors appeared. 1 From then on, nationalism existed not only as an ideology and as a political movement, but also as a rhetoric that ran across all texts: textbooks, historiography, literature, newspapers, etc. This nationalist discourse legitimized all military and/or political actions against the 'Other'. In the era of the nationist state, the 'Other' in Greek and Turkish texts was almost identical, but as a mirror image: an enemy, a source of various political problems (a threat to 'our' freedom), very different from 'us,' and having a negative character (dishonest, violent, etc.). The political situation and the wars between the two countries (the war of 1897, the Balkan Wars of 1912-1914, the Greek-Turkish clash of 19191922) are not sufficient to fully explain this negative image of the 'Other'. Literary texts did not portray the actual environment of the writers but sketched the 'Other' in accordance with a nationalist ideology and a constructed past, irrespective of personal experience. A comparison of the image of the 'Other' in the memoirs and novels of three Turkish authors is revealing. In their memoirs where real events are narrated, the Greeks are almost all 'normal' and have positive personalities, whereas in the novels, written by the same authors and in the same period, they are almost without exception extremely negative. 2 This negative image is in harmony with the images of the 'Other' encountered in textbooks and historiography (Millas: 2001 and: 1991).

1 Some Turkish novelists who did not exhibit a negative 'Other' are §emsettin Sami, Ahmet Mithat, Halit Ziya, Recaizade Ekrem. Some well known nationalist writers who portrayed a negative 'Other' are Omer Seyfettin, Halide Edip, Yakup Kadri, Samim Kocagoz, Tank Bugra, Peyami Safa, Atilla Ilhan. 2 See Millas: 1996. Considering the totality of their published works, the three writers, O. Seyfettin, H. Edip and Yakup Kadri, in their memoirs portrayed 17 very positive Greeks with only 3 negative ones, whereas in their novels they portrayed a total of 69 very negative Greeks with only 3 positive ones.

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During periods of improved bilateral relations and a more relaxed international milieu, the image of the 'Other' also improved, yet still preserved the main nationalist traits. The 'Other' is 'a friend', he/she 'likes us', 'he/she is honest'. However, a closer inspection reveals that this positive 'Other' has actually lost his ethnic identity, is now assimilated, and has become one of 'us': he thinks, feels and behaves like 'us'. I call these characters 'naively positive' because naivete characterizes the concept of an 'Other' who no longer exists. An example of a naively positive Turkish hero in Greek literature is Moskof Selim in the 1895 novelette of the same name, written by G. Viziinos. Selim is presented as a 'mature and balanced' person who declares that the Turks should leave Anatolia to the Greeks and go back East to Asia from whence they came. Naively positive Greeks appear often in Turkish novels too, such as in the work of Kemal Tahir, Halikarnas Balik§isi and others. These Greek heroes welcome the Turkish conquerors; they fight against the Christians on the side of the Turks and accept their 'superiority' and 'magnanimity.' 1 This naively positive 'Other' is especially evident when the 'Other' is a woman. Women play a special role in nationalistic discourse. They do not participate directly in inter-ethnic fights but rather "watch" the men; therefore they are perceived as judges and as the criteria for the righteous side. Their preference counts. They normally fall in love with 'us' and prefer 'our men' to their own. In the novels of the two countries — in real life, of course, the case is different — in the two hundred cases of love affairs between Greeks and Turks, it is always the women of the 'Other' who prefer to unite with 'our men'. Cases to the contrary, according to my findings, do not exist. 2 Among the reasons for the sensitivity with respect to our/their women may be the fact that wars were traditionally marked by the enslavement of the women of the 'Other' as trophies, followed by becoming the ' w i f e ' of the winner. Symbolically, the marriage of 'our woman' to the 'Other' is a sign of a defeat. Whatever the reason, the role assigned to women in nationalist rhetoric is directly associated with the definition of national identity, revealing this identity more that any other parameter. 1 This naively positive image of the 'Other' is so disturbing to the 'Other' that passages which contain such heroes are normally censured when these texts are translated into the language of the 'Other'. 2 ^ See: Millas: 1999. Actually the two cases where 'our' women get in sexual relation with the 'Other' man confirm the rule: in both cases the authors have openly acknowledged that the 'Other' was among their recent ancestors (Millas: 2000, pp. 204).

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In other words, among the Greeks and Turks, the image of the 'Other' is concurrent with nation building. Actually, all the phenomena referred above serve as examples of this. The 'Other' is portrayed either negatively (an enemy, an invader, a potential danger) or, as a product of wishful thinking, as a 'domesticated Other', as a 'naively positive Other'. Public consensus was proclaimed as necessary vis-a- vis the dangerous 'Other'. One can see easily how nationalistic discourse advances a rhetoric based on xenophobia and on an imagined historical rival. The Greeks see 'expansionist' Turks, and the Turks see Greeks who consistently follow the 'Great Idea,' that is, the dream of establishing a new Byzantium. The Greeks feel proud that they had a successful revolution (1821-1829) against a Turkish rule that had lasted for hundreds of years (called Tourkokratia), and the Turks have the same feeling about defeating the Greeks in 1919-1922 and establishing their own nation state. Both share ill feelings about the dark years of occupation. Thus the 'Other' is a protagonist in national history and in 'our' heroic past. The role of the 'Other' in national rhetoric is not contingent but intrinsic. Benedict Anderson defines a nation as a 'political community imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign' (Anderson, p. 15). What do "limited" and "sovereign" mean? By "limited" is meant that other nations lie beyond the national boundaries. Sovereignty, and other sacred principles such as 'liberty' and 'independence,' meant the subduing of the imaginary rivals, the enemy, and 'our' dominance over 'them'. The 'Other', the one beyond our living space, is a sine qua non of every nation. Each sovereign nation state is by nature related to a real or constructed 'Other'. The heroic past of the ancestors starts with a history in which 'we' and the 'Other' coexist, but with considerable tension. Nationalism is characterized by an imagined past which has to include some 'Other'. One nation's Unknown Soldier is related to the Unknown Soldier of the 'Other'. A binary relation is unavoidable. Almost all Greek and Turkish novels are based on the presupposition that readers share with the author an understanding of a common past: the pride, the agony and the regrets that are the minimum consensus binding the members of nations together. The common feelings which insure the identity of a community are the same sentiments that link the author to his readers. These national sentiments permeate the population and all social manifestations of the modern nation state. This conforms with our expectations. However, in this age of nation states, the question is whether there is a tendency in the opposite direction against the mainstream of the

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nationalist paradigm. The study of Greek and Turkish novels shows that such examples do exist even though they are not abundant. However, caution is needed when 'anti-nationalism' is on the agenda. Ottoman authors and a Greek poet belonging to a pre-nationalist period have already been mentioned. These phenomena have historical significance, since we now are in a new era where such old practices belong to the sphere of nostalgia. The question of what is meant by 'anti-nationalist' attitude is an important one. The adjective national/nationalistic bears (at least) two different meanings: a) a modern ideology, a new historical and social identity associated with territorial (and other) limits, with sovereignty, with a state, with a language; in short, a belief willingly shared, a social consensus related to a (diachronic) community, and b) the above, plus aggression, expansionism, xenophobia, etc. The first is a historical category expressed mainly as an identity, the second is a contingent political program. However, violence per se is not what characterizes nationalism; it is only one of its conjectural manifestations. The first can be called 'consensual nationalism' and is the ideology that forms modern nations. The second may be called 'contingent nationalism' and may take various forms depending on conditions: sometimes peace seeking and other times choosing policies of controversy. The first is rather enduring, the second more open to variations. When a nation changes governments, political visions and 'programs', it changes its 'contingent nationalism' but its 'consensual nationalism' is not impeded. With this difference in mind, almost all Greek novels after 1834 and all Turkish novels after 1910 are marked by a group identity characterized as 'Greek' or 'Turkish'. They bear the stamp of consensual nationalism. The 'Other' in these texts is distinct: different from 'us', mostly negative or naively positive . In most cases a silence reveals an uneasiness with respect to the 'Other', especially about 'our' violent acts against the 'Other' and the rights of the 'Other' that have been violated by 'us'. Silence coexists with absence of empathy. Also 'we,' in contrast to the 'Other,' are praised either blatantly or indirectly. Historical events are manipulated selectively and interpreted by a double standard.

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Contingently, most of the authors of these novels followed different political programs and used different phraseology while remaining within the national paradigm and consensual nationalism. For example, after the reforms of 1908 that promulgated the equality of all national/religious groups within the Ottoman State, Halide Edip, author of Yeni Turan (1912), presented her only positive Greek character, a 'loyal' minister. In Greece, G. Viziinos presents his positive (even if some are 'naively positive') Turks during the years 1883-1895, during a relatively peaceful period before the the Balkan Wars. This change was promising and showed that literature could contribute to a better political atmosphere. There are a limited number of cases where literary texts oppose national confrontations and initiate an anti-nationalistic discourse. The authors of such texts are the vanguard of an effort to transcend the nationalist paradigm altogether. Based again on the evidence from novels produced in the two countries, these writers can be classified as follows: a) Adherents of ecumenical (universal) religions. The representatives of this group are very rare because the adherents of a religion traditionally do not prefer modern literature and the novel in particular to express their views. In Turkish literature the novels of Samiha Ayverdi (1906-1993), and in the Greek case, the writings of Ph. Kontoglou (1895-1965), may be mentioned as examples of this category (Millas: 2000, pp. 108, 311). b) Adherents of internationalist Marxism or socialism. There are many writers who identify t as internationalist and a relatively smaller number who really are. In the Greek case, Dido Sotiriou, Kosmas Politis and in the Turkish case, Nazim Hikmet and Orhan Kemal may be mentioned. These writers present class identity and class struggle as more important than the ethnic ideals and perceptions. c) Humanists and cosmopolitan liberals. Some are advocates of old humanist ideals, others show an understanding of recent developments such as the European Union. In Turkey Resat Nuri Guntekin, Sevgi Soysal, Demir Ozlii and in Greece Rea Galanaki and Nikos Themelis may be mentioned. d) There are writers that cannot be readily classified. Especially in Turkey, the authors from minority groups (Armenians, Greeks, Jews) exhibit an anti-nationalistic discourse. Sait Faik (1906-1954), a Turkish writer, should be mentioned separately, not only for his unique anti-nationalist and

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humanist approach, but also for its complex origins of his inspiration. He is influenced by humanism, Marxism, by the traditional pantheistic Turkish religious/philosophical school of Tasavvuf (Sufism) and by his personal preferences. It is not easy to distinguish the many self-declared and pretentious humanists and Marxists who simply reproduce a nationalist paradigm. Their attitude and approach with respect to the 'Other' can prove to be decisive. The real anti-nationalists not only refrain from characterizing the 'Other' negatively, they do not even notice an 'Other'. For them, human beings are not identified ethnically, but rather according to their fraternal behavior and their humanism. In conclusion, the general trend with respect to the image of the 'Other' is that the more writers come in contact with the 'Other,' the more realistic the image of the 'Other' is. The imagined 'Other' is mostly a negative stereotype. Studies on Greek novels with respect to the image of the 'Turk' reveal that Greek writers who actually met and lived with the Turks portray a much more realistic picture of the 'Other' relative to the authors who sketch an imaginary 'Other' (see: Demirozii:1999, Millas: 2000). Some Greek writers who lived in Asia Minor within the Ottoman lands are I. Venezis, Str. Mirivilis, N. Politis, M. Iordanidou. These authors wrote about more recent times (1890-1950). Writers who lived only on Greek territory, such as M. Karagatsis, Th. Kastanakis, P. Prevelakis, distanced themselves from Turks and wrote about imagined Turks and 'old times' (16 th to early 19th century). Their literary characters drawn from 'life' and heroes inspired by concrete personalities are much more balanced and portray complex realistic characters. The positive Greeks encountered in Turkish literature exhibit the same traits and have two basic origins: a) memoirs, where mostly 'real' characters are portrayed, or b) literary texts based on actual experience and on real encounter with the 'Other', as it is the case of Sait Faik and his heroes. Based on the assumption that the case of Greeks and Turks is not an isolated one, it can be asserted that contingent as well as consensual nationalism can be transcended by efforts on three axes: A) Developing a paradigm or a world-view that will constitute a substitute for the present-day nationalist paradigm. Authors who did not associate themselves with nationalism where attached to such a 'different philosophy'. A vision such as the 'European Union', or an even more inclusive one such that new 'Others' are not created in the periphery may constitute an example.

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B) A less ambitious project m a y be to increase the communication between all parties with direct visits and with all kinds of cultural, economic and other relations of N G O s , helping in substituting the imagined ' O t h e r ' with a more realistic one. C) Finally, the i m m e d i a t e step m a y be to bring to the level of awareness the idea that the presence of the ' O t h e r ' within the nationalist discourse is a source of tension and that this situation is not our only alternative.

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict 1999. Imagined 1990.

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Verso, London-New York,

Demirözü, Damla. 'H Eixôva TOV TovpKov arqu revid University of Athens, (in Greek).

TOV '30', (Dissertation).

Millas, Hercules 1991. 'History Textbooks in Greece and Turkey', History Workshop, No, 31, Autumn. — 1994. Yunan Ulusunun Dogu$u, Istanbul: Iletigim . —

1996. 'The Image of Greeks in Turkish Literature: Fiction and Memoirs', in Oil on Fire? Textbooks, Ethnic Stereotypes and Violence in South-Eastern Europe, pp. 79-87. Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996.

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1999. 'Les Romans, Les Femmes et Les Relations Greeco-Turques', pp. 4664 Genèse / Olu$um, No. 60-61, May/August, (in French and Turkish).

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2000 Türk Romani ve 'Öteki' - Ulusal Kimlikte Sabanci Üniversitesi Yayinlan.

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(in Greek).

Avi Rubin Harvard University, Cambridge, USA EAST, WEST, OTTOMANS AND ZIONISTS INTERNALIZED ORIENTALISM AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY1

This paper explores perspectives of two members of the Ottoman-Arab elite, Rafiq Tamimi and Muhammad Bahjat, who were commissioned during World War I to survey the conditions of the province of Beirut and submit a report to the governor of Beirut. Their findings were recorded in an official essay, Wilayat Bairut (two volumes), published in both Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, in 1917 (vol.1) and 1918 (vol.2). The two young men wrote the first volume after a two-month journey in Palestine and the second a year later, following a tour of Lebanon. Their perceptions and visions are inscribed in the texts. Wilayat Bairut (or, Beirut Vilayet-i in its Ottoman Turkish version) has been a valued source for the social and political history of late Ottoman Palestine. Nevertheless, drawing on Wilayat Bairut is usually aimed at producing raw data regarding the region. Moreover, its reading was done in a purely positivist fashion, as though the text was a transparent representation of a certain historical reality. 2 Although the book is a cultural product expressing the perceptions of its authors, it was not used systematically as a source for discourse analysis or for the reconstruction of worldviews. By using Wilayat Bairut as a window to its authors' worldviews, I explore the manner in which Bahjat and Tamimi viewed the Zionist settlers. As will be demonstrated below, Wilayat Bairut suggests a certain perception of the Zionists by Ottoman-Arabs that is different from the conventional nationalism-oriented one in the context of the early encounter between Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine. In spite of the fact that by *The paper is based on the author's Masters thesis, submitted to the Departmen of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The author is grateful to Dr. Iris Agmon who had guided him through the process of deciphering Bahjat and Tamimi's texts. 2 For example, see: Khalidi 1997: 2136, Seikaly 1995, Yazbak 1998.

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1916 the conflict between Jews and Arabs was taking the form of a major crisis in Palestine, it was not the main perspective from which these two members of the Ottoman-Arab elite described the Zionists. Rather, the Zionists were portrayed in much more positive fashion than the Muslim groups encountered by the two men. I suggest that Bahjat and Tamimi's version of internalized orientalism and their concern for the well-being of the country was the reason for this surprising depiction. The experience of Bahjat and Tamimi in the province of Beirut during the summer of 1916 is discussed here as a small-scale historical episode that contributes to our understanding of the wider unit of observation, namely, the Ottoman-Arab elite in the last phase of the Empire. Indeed, the worldviews of the two protagonists help us to problematize patterns of thought, description and explanation prevailing in the cognitive world of these two individuals and in the world of historical writing on their period.

The Authors and the Text. Muhammad Bahjat was born in Aleppo to an Arab father and a Turkish mother from Istanbul. His father served in the Ottoman legal system. As a result, the family was required to move from Aleppo to Salonika, where young Muhammad completed his high school studies. Like many other young men from the Ottoman-local elites he continued his studies in Istanbul, where he read law and became a jurist. Istanbul greatly impressed him and he developed a deep interest in Turkish literature. The atmosphere of a Turkish cultural renaissance that prevailed in the imperial city during the first decade of the twentieth century brought him closer to his Turkish origins. Consequently, he began to write and publish Turkish poetry and prose. Subsequent to the Young Turks revolution, Bahjat underwent a radical metamorphosis when he abandoned his legal career in favor of education. In his early twenties he moved to Beirut where he taught philosophy and Turkish literature, and studied European languages. When the Great War broke out Bahjat moved to Damascus where he served as a teacher, but after a short while he returned to Beirut as a vice headmaster of the Sultanic school. At that point, when he was twenty five years old, he set out for the province of Beirut (Bahjat and Tamimi: 2-3).

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Muhammad Rafiq al-Tamimi was born in Nablus to an Ottoman-Arab elite family. After completing primary school, the very young Rafiq was sent by his family to Istanbul to complete high school. During the last year of his studies, the Ministry of Education sent him (together with other promising pupils) to study in Paris. He learned French and history at the Sorbonne. During this last phase of his studies he founded, together with six other students, the Arab association al-Fatat. After completing his studies, Tamimi retuned to Istanbul and was appointed a teacher of history and geography at the Sultanic school in Beirut. Two years later he moved to Damascus, where he administered a club of the Committee of Union and Progress for two months. Thereafter he began to teach in Izmir and then moved back to Damascus. After a short while he returned to Beirut, where he was appointed headmaster of the School of Commerce at the age of twenty four (Bahjat and Tamimi:2, Darwaza 1984:147-148). During his summer vacation of 1916, two years after the outbreak of the Great War, he embarked together with Muhammad Bahjat on the first of the two journeys which resulted in their book Wilayat Bairut. The province of Beirut was a gloomy place in the summer of 1916; most of its inhabitants had to struggle just to survive. Beginning from the second half of 1915, the population experienced the dreadful results of the Ottoman government's decision to join the Great War alongside Germany and Austria. An embargo initiated by the Entente upon the shores of Greater Syria and the need to allocate enormous resources to the army and the Arab Revolt in the Hijaz resulted in mass starvation throughout the province, claiming the lives of 500,000 people between the years 1914-1918. The government was neither able to secure a regular supply of wheat nor to handle side effects such as corruption of local officials and speculators who made every effort to take advantage of the hardship (Schatkowski Schilcher 1992: 229-235; Tauber 1993: 37). However, in spite of the privation, the people of the province also witnessed intensive development even during the War under the initiative of Cemal Pasa, the commander of the Fourth army and governor of the Arab provinces. Cemal believed that by improving infrastructure and initiating building projects, he would be able to create a sense of belonging among the Arabs (Kayah 1998). In July 1915 a new governor was appointed to the Province of Beirut, 'Azmi Bey, formerly the commander of the Istanbul police and the governor of Tripoli. 'Azmi Bey, who had a reputation of a devoted and decent administrator, tried to improve the welfare of the people of Beirut by commencing extensive public works in spite of the difficult circumstances (al-

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Hakim 1991:221-222). His decision to initiate an expedition with the goal of studying the conditions in the province one year after his arrival in Beirut was an expression to his devotion to professionalism. We do not know the specific context in which the two young educators were chosen to execute their mission; however, it seems that they were the perfect candidates for the job. Regardless of their young age they had impressive records. They were educated, open minded and intelligent men, with proven skills in their careers and studies. Their experience in literary and academic writing made certain that the report would be written competently. There was even some advantage to their young age given the need to face the physical hardships linked to a journey during the hot months of July and August, and a spirit of adventurousness would serve them well. In addition, they had a deep feeling of belonging to the country they were about to explore, and a sense of accountability and involvement that motivated them to complete the mission. Wilayat Bairut was edited according to the guidelines of the Ottoman administrative system. It focused on certain domiciles and included descriptions of various aspects of the lives of the local population: lifestyles, social stratification, cultural characteristics, economic data, historical background of various communities and conversations with local people. It is not always possible to trace the original author of a specific passage. In the introduction of the book there is an explicit designation of each author's specialty, whereas all the other chapters appear as a seamless composition. A comparison of the parts that can be attributed to Bahjat or Tamimi reveals an interesting resemblence between them, enabling the reader to consider the text as a unitary representation of their views on important issues of the day.

Ottoman and Arab Attitudes to Zionism. By and large, the attitude of the Ottoman authorities to Zionism was hostile. The Ottoman government had been aware of the Zionist political goals regarding Palestine since the 1890's. The Zionist agenda did not apply to the Ottoman objective of strengthening the common grounds of the Ottoman polity and fighting the proto-nationalist trends that were beginning to appear throughout the Empire. The fact that most of the Jewish settlers were subjects of Russia, the traditional enemy of the Ottomans, did not help the Zionists gain sympathy from the government. In the 1880's Russia was beginning to perceive itself as a natural representative of its subjects in the Ottoman Empire and as champion of their rights. Consequently, in 1882 the

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Ottoman government banned Rumanian, Bulgarian and Russian Jews from settling in Palestine. At the same time, it did not refuse to absorb Jews from elsewhere in the Ottoman lands providing that they would register as Ottoman citizens and obey Ottoman law (Farhi 1975:191, Kushnir 1989:61). The 1908 revolution did not fundamentally change the attitude of the government towards Zionism. It was one among other nationalist trends that undermined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) policy of centralization and Ottomanization, while trying at the same time to implement the liberal ideas of the constitution (Kayali 1997:75). However, most of the Ottoman Jews perceived themselves as an integral part of Ottoman society and many identified with the CUP and its goals (Farhi 1975:197-202). The population of Palestine was 720,000 in 1914, while the total Jewish population numbered 60,000. Only 10-12,000 individuals among them were part of the Zionist venture and they lived in more than 40 agricultural settlements that had been established since 1878 (McCarthy 1990:10-24). In the early stage of Zionist activity in Palestine, disputes arose among Zionist settlers and Arab peasants over issues of territories; however, at this point, the conflict was dictated by economic rather than ideological issues (Shafir 1989:188-201). During the period in which Bahjat and Tamimi traveled in Palestine, Arab opposition to the Zionist presence was explicit and widespread. Following the 1908 revolution and the abolition of censorship, Arab newspapers reflected a growing concern about Zionist activities and their potential implications for the Arab population of Palestine. Contemporary newspapers throughout the Arab-speaking world contained hundreds of articles dealing with the 'Zionist problem' (Khalidi 1997:119-143). Arab opposition, as reflected in newspapers and discussions in the Ottoman parliament, was motivated by various reasons. Many among the Ottoman-Arab elite objected to Zionism on the basis of Ottoman loyalism, perceiving Zionism as a separatist movement and as a manifestation of the encroaching Russian and German influence in Palestine. Moreover, the settlers were blamed for their attitudes alienating them from their Arab neighbors and for being disloyal to the state (Mandel:226, Khalidi 1997:142). From 1910 onwards, more and more Arabs defined themselves as Palestinians while perceiving Zionism as a direct threat to the Arabs of Palestine. By 1914 a clear Arab awareness of the political aims of the Zionists, namely, founding a Jewish state in Palestine, was noticeable. The fear of dispossession was the most salient element in the Arab opposition towards Zionism, and many began to regard the Zionist movement as another

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manifestation of European colonialism. Thus, the extensive land acquisitions conducted by Zionist organizations were perceived by Arabs as a means of gaining economic and political control over local resources in the context of colonialism. By 1914, Arab intellectuals had become quite familiar with the Zionist political discourse and its historical incentives. 1 Educated Arabs, like Bahjat and Tamimi, had easy access to Zionist ideological discourse and the manner in which Arabs were represented in it. As explained by Zachary Lockman, in the early stage of Zionist activity Palestine was represented in the Zionist discourse as 'empty', that is, its Arab population was perceived as nonexistent. However, as it became apparent that ignoring the presence of a vast Arab population was unrealistic at best, the strategy of representation was modified and became more sophisticated. The Arab presence was no longer denied but rather characterized as essentially irrelevant to the history and destiny of the country. The future Jewish domination over Palestine was legitimized by constructing an essentialist historical paradigm in which the linkage between Jews and the Holy Land was distinguished as organic and metaphysical, based on the assumption that the Jews are a nation that returned to its homeland after being in exile for 2000 years. By the same token, Arab affinity to Palestine was represented as extraneous on the grounds that it was not a 'real' nation (Lockman 1996:26-31).

Jews and Muslims in Wilayat Bairut. Wilayat Bairut reveals an ambivalent attitude towards the Zionists. Nowhere in their account did Bahjat and Tamimi try to de-legitimize the Zionist cause. Although they expressed feelings of estrangement concerning the Jewish settlers, they did not conceal their admiration and enthusiasm for the European lifestyle of the Zionists. The account of their visit to the Zionist settlement of Petah-Tikva demonstrates this complexity. Following a vivid description of the beautiful landscape on the way to the settlement, they cited the words of their Arab carter:

Ruhi al-Khalidi, for instance, who was the representative of the District of Jerusalem to the Ottoman parliament from 1908 to 1912 demonstrated extensive knowledge of the Zionist movement - its history, ideas and symbols. Al-Khalidi was conscious of the role of European anti-Semitism as an incentive to Zionism and he was familiar with its internal ideological disputes (Muslih 1988:83).

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All these lands belonged to Muslims, but they were not cultivated in this manner then. Now they belong to the Jews and look how fine-looking they became [...] the Jews will buy these lands little by little [and then] will drive the Muslims out as they have done before [Bahjat and Tamimi:197].

The travelers' reaction to his words was: "A great cry for help came out from the carter's words. He talked without realizing how he broke our hearts" [ibid].

The above passage contains two elements typical to Bahjat and Tamimi's writing: respect for the Zionists offset by somewhat vague concern about the implications of their settlements on the lives of the indigenous Arabs. Yet the former element was the dominant one in their narrative. Bahjat and Tamimi's veneration to the Zionist lifestyle outweighted their anxieties. Moreover, even when they expressed their concerns as to the peril introduced by the Zionists, it did not reflect the intensity of the conflict between Arabs and Jews at the time. More than anything, Bahjat and Tamimi saw in Petah Tikva an ideal incarnation of Europe within a depressing oriental reality. The two young men portrayed Petah Tikva as an idyllic place where people were living blissful, harmonious lives (Bahjat and Tamimi:200). They described a typical day in the life of a local elite, who spent his leisure time writing letters to acquaintances throughout the world, reading Jewish and European newspapers, and engaging in intellectual activities with his family members: "thus, he lives an enlightened life, as in the most progressive countries of the world"(ibid:208). Nevertheless, the admiration expressed by the travelers for the reality of Petah-Tikva was interspersed with feelings of alienation: Even if one will stay in length in this green and fine township with its marvelous smells, he will not be able to merge with the Ashkenazim [European Jews]. There is nothing more salient in Petah-Tikva than its remoteness from us [...] (Bahjat and Tamimi:215).

The sympathetic tone that dominated the descriptions of the Zionists is evident especially when comparing it to the authors' representations of the Nabulsi Muslim elite of which Tamimi himself was part. The wealthy among the Muslims of Palestine was the social group that was most severely and emotionally criticized.1 Under the title of "The Wickedness and Rapacity of The authors divided Nabulsi society into three social groups: the notables (khawas), the mass {'awam) and the Jabaliin (namely, the people whose origins were from Gaza). The notables were defined primarily by their wealth. Bahjat and Tamimi did identify the 'nouveau tiche' among the notable families; Nonetheless, overall, they referred to (and regarded) the elite as a monolithic group. For a historical discussion of the social composition of the Ottoman-Arab elite of Palestine, see: Manna 1992.

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Nablus' Notables" the authors critically illustrated a state of affairs in which the elite exploited the Muslim peasants economically by applying cruel terms in money lending, a conduct which resulted, in their view, in the virtual enslavement of the peasants (Bahjat and Tamimi: 104-105). Bahjat and Tamimi discussed the greediness of the Nabulsi notables at length, but what made the two young men extremely furious was what they believed to be the notables' cultural degeneration. In other words, Bahjat and Tamimi perceived Nabulsi society as a symbol of cultural ignorance. This is evident, for instance, from a portrayal of the many young members of the elite who left the town to study in Istanbul and European capitals, a portrayal that could have been part of Tamimi's own biography, had it been written. 1 These young men did not wish to return to their hometown, according to Bahjat and Tamimi, because they were exposed to the "meaning of life" during their time outside Nablus: „For after they return to their homes they do not like it. For instance, it is not easy for them to take-off their boots and sit on the mattresses. They cannot stand the unbearable Eastern habits. They do not admire the heavy dishes of their families nor the idle conversations of their relatives. [...] it is unlikely that they will meet a friend in Nablus whose intellectual condition has progressed even slightly. In our opinion, for these reasons the youngsters are forced to run away from their houses with their low ceilings and fusty walls and from the dark alleys which look like burrows. They [feel they] must keep away from the empty gazes..." (Bahjat and Tamimi, 124).

For the two travelers, the main fault of the Nabulsi elite was its reluctance to go through the same process of enlightenment which Bahjat and Tamimi had experienced; namely, to become completely Western. Even when they identified some Western-like practices, they blamed the Nabulsis for adopting an external and shallow Western façade without truly understanding its essential meaning. „We may summarize the conventional manner in which Nabulsi residences are furnished as follows: 'the dwellings of Nablus are fond of imitating the West'. Yet, we have to admit that they are not capable of imitating the West by any means because it is evident from a glance that the people of Nablus only pretend when they furnish their houses ..." (ibid: 110-111).

Many families of the Ottoman-Arab elite of Palestine used to send their sons to study in Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul and European cities in order to increase their chances of being accepted into the Ottoman bureaucracy. So did the Tamimi family. See: Yazbak 1997:79.

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Bahjat and Tamimi's negative picture of Nabulsi society and especially the elite is a problematical illustration of the social reality of Nablus at the time. Sentences such as "the Nabulsis adhere to their religion to such a degree that it is possible to define them as zealots, and the reason is that their fathers did the same," reflect the authors' tendency to construct an essentialist picture of the Arab elite (Bahjat and Tamimi: 131).1 The elite was not the only group whose representation was painted in disapproving tones. The Muslims of Palestine on the whole seemed to anger Bahjat and Tamimi. Usually when they discussed the villagers, the authors referred to them as simply 'Muslims' and loaded their representation with Orientalist stereotypes. The villagers of Salfit, for instance, were derided by Bahjat and Tamimi for being religious fatalists, an attribute that was manifested by the manner in which the villagers coped with illness. In fact, judging from Bahjat and Tamimi's own description, it seems that the Salfitis did the best they could in dealing with medical conditions in a situation of distress and deprivation caused by the war. However, the authors chose to ignore these circumstances in order to construct a description that emphasized the classical Oriental attribute of fatalism resulted from religious beliefs (ibid: 97). Mendacity, another Orientalist trait, was invoked by Bahjat and Tamimi to describe the entire district of Nablus. The authors rated the Muslim inhabitants of the Nablus district by an essentialist tendency for lying; the people of Jenin were crowned as the most mendacious of all. The authors treated the mendacity issue with complete seriousness, and even referred to historical reasons for the phenomenon (ibid: 94). Most of the Arab places treated by Bahjat and Tamimi were described as degenerate in every possible way. The point to be emphasized here is that the authors attributed this situation to a defective cultural essence, rather than to objective circumstances. It is clear that Bahjat and Tamimi linked the religiosity of the Muslims to conventional Eastern traits according to the Orientalist paradigm, including religious zealotry, greediness and mendacity. It never occurred to them that applying cultural generalizations to a large population was a problematic mode of description and analysis. Their belief in the linkage between the Islamic religion and the cultural decay of the Muslims is evident in the description of Tul-Karem's Muslims: Beshara Doumani's authoritative research on Jabal Nablus in the 18 th and 19 th centuries offers a completely different picture, one of a dynamic society that exhibited an impressive ability to adapt itself to changing circumstances and in which terms like 'modernity' and 'tradition' were constantly redefined. See: Doumani 1995:236-240.

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„We take notice that most of the town's inhabitants, except for those who are not Muslims, are the people of the rosaries — they introduce a deep religiosity... a deep darkness of the mind... selfishness... [they are] zealots and greedy [individuals] who achieve things by hypocrisy, deceit, corruption and forgery...." (Bahjat and Tamimi: 185)

Bahjat and Tamimi despised what they perceived of as the Eastern way of life and beliefs of the villagers and blamed them for not taking responsibility as the Zionists did. However, when it came to a discussion of the villagers' economic interaction with the elite, the travelers described them as innocent victims of the notables' greed. In this regard, Bahjat and Tamimi expressed sympathy for the villagers who were trampled on by the notables, who also served as government officials. However, the only reason for Bahjat and Tamimi's interest in the misery of the villagers seems to have stemmed from their effort to prove the wickedness of the elite. This is evident in the description of the feudal-like relationship between the landowners and the villagers of Nazareth: „... this aristocratic situation reminds us of the early Emirs of the Muqata'at. The strength and status of the villagers in the face of the authority of the former is lower than zero. Those rich men wear ganabiz made of silk and 'aqalat and qafiat. They ride their luxurious horses ... and the villagers bow down to them submissively and fearfully. ... after the rich men accomplish their business, they wear the official uniforms of jacket and trousers and mingle with the senior officials. When they sit in their chambers in arrogance, one get the impression that every one and each of those families can tell you of his ability to shake Nazareth. [However, ] there is no doubt that they lack any knowledge or virtue..." (Bahjat and Tamimim: 387-388).

The cultural dichotomy of East/West which dictated Bahjat and Tamimi's interpretations was also a ruling principle in their judgment of the religious Jews of Palestine who were not part of the Zionist movement. The religious Jewish community was also described along the same negative stereotypical lines as the Muslim community (Bahjat and Tamimi: 357). However, the religious Zionist villagers were depicted by Bahjat and Tamimi in a much more positive fashion than their Muslim counterparts. The only negative thing Bahjat and Tamimi were willing to write about the religious Zionists was that they were plain people and that their houses were dirty. Yet "they are the most progressive villagers in our places in an unconceivable way" (Bahjat and Tamimi: 209). A comparison between the Zionist elite and its Ottoman-Arab counterpart as well as between the Muslim religious villagers and their Zionist counterparts reveals the social-cultural model that governed Bahjat and Tamimi's interpretations. They divided both the Zionist

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and the Arab communities into social classes. The Muslim upper classes were characterized as pathetic imitators of the West whereas the Zionist elite represented 'the real thing'; namely, they were genuinely Western. The Muslim lower classes were depicted as wretched while the filthy houses of the Zionist lower classes symbolized their cultural inferiority in comparison with the Zionist upper class. Nonetheless, Bahjat and Tamimi represented the Zionist lower class in a much more positive fashion than the Muslim one because the Zionists were still part of the culture that symbolized 'the West'. In other words, two identical social models dominated the interpretations of Bahjat and Tamimi yet they were different in terms of quality. One was taken to the negative (Eastern) extreme while the other to the positive (Western) extreme based on essentialist generalizations and Orientalist constructions. To a large extent, Bahjat and Tamimi perceived the Zionist villages as a reverse mirror image of the Muslim villages. The Zionist settlement of Rosh-Pina in Northern Palestine was a neighbor to the Muslim village of Ja'une. Bahjat and Tamimi compared the two villages: „A comparison of this village [Ja'une] with the Jewish settlement demonstrates the fact that the latter is more organized and civilized. I say with certainty that whoever approaches Ja'une immediately encounters the smell of the stables; the ground is covered with filth and decay ... there is neither a pretty road, or a garden, or trees, there is nothing nice in this Muslim village. The Muslims inhabit their dusty hovels. They are sick and sleep in the middle of the dampness and mire However, in Jewish Ja'une [Rosh-Pina], people wake up in clean airy houses; the climate is good in the surrounding gardens. There is a healthy bunch of people there who acknowledge the importance of health and knowledge I told the people of Ja'une: don't you see these Jews? How diligent and happy they are. Don't you wish to be like them and live happily as well? Than a Muslim answered my question: 'we have paradise'. I did not reply with words, but my eyes did with indescribable pain, and I have no idea whether he understood the meaning of my tears (Bahjat and Tamimi: 346).

The authors tended to apply the adjective 'Muslim' even when it was not necessary, as a means of emphasizing what they thought was the culturalreligious cause for the degeneration that prevailed in the Muslim towns. The ending of the above passage demonstrates the authors' tendency to blame the Muslims' cultural perceptions and especially their Oriental fatalism as the main reason for their predicament. Bahjat and Tamimi were aware of the reasons why the Zionists were far better off than their Arab neighbors reasons such as the massive financial support they received from European Jewish philanthropists and the impact of many years of foreign legal protection ('capitulations'). Yet, they attributed the relative well-being of the

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Zionists to their Western nature that motivated activism, in contrast to the Eastern one that encouraged passivity and fatalism. The pain following their encounter with the villager from Ja'une may be attributed to the frustration felt by an enlightened person who comes across one who is ignorant and hence unable to acknowledge his predicament or make the right choice. Our frustrated travelers did not even try to explain to the Muslim villager how his beliefs conspired to undermine his well-being. Rather, Bahjat and Tamimi perceived themselves as representatives of a totally different world from their fellow Arabs. In this respect, they felt closer to the Zionists, who were perceived by them as enlightened. The two young men were well acquainted with the history and ideology of the Zionist movement and provided a detailed account of the early stages of Zionist settlement. In their description of the relationships between the first settlers and their Jewish patron, Baron Edmund de Rothschild, the settlers are represented as exploitive, lazy and useless while the Baron is described as an innocent idealistic person whose good intentions were abused by the settlers' irresponsible and corrupt conduct (Bahjat and Tamimi: 31-33). The point to emphasize here is that Bahjat and Tamimi's criticism of the role of the Baron as a Zionist patron was not directed at his decision to support the Zionist project, but rather at the irresponsible manner in which the early settlers utilized his capital. What enraged Bahjat and Tamimi in this regard was not the fact that the Zionists claimed possession over Palestine, but their economic behavior; this is evident in their description of the settlers of Metula, one of the first settlements: „ It is impossible to find [among the settlers] even one person who fulfilled his obligations vis-à-vis the Baron. The expenses of this great Jew result in nothing except for an intentional and pleasurable debauchery of the Rothschild money. The stupidity of the Jews of Metula and their laziness is remarkable." (Bahjat and Tamimi: 337).

In their discussion of Zionism, the authors rarely de-legitimized the Zionist cause, but rather criticized severely the manner in which the early settlers implemented their goals. A similar lack of criticism regarding Jewish political goals is evident in Bahjat and Tamimi's account of their visit to a Zionist national library in Haifa. They were extremely impressed and wrote a detailed description of its contents. They concluded the report by stating that the library makes the "great Jewish [political] goals very clear" (Bahjat and Tamimi: 203). As in other discussigons about Zionism, Bahjat and Tamimi's position was uncritical.

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Cultural Dichotomies and Their Alternatives. Nationalism has been the dominant prism through which scholars have viewed the encounter between Arabs and Jews in the early twentieth century. Indeed, the teleological convention of national 'awakening' has governed Israeli, Arab and Turkish histories of late Ottoman Palestine as a general rule (Reinkowski 1999). A deep sense of nationalist conflict apparently did prevail in 1916. However, Bahjat and Tamimi's perception of the Zionist settlers raises the question as to whether historians have failed to recognize other frameworks for interpreting this crucial period in which the conflict first took shape. Have we listened sufficiently to voices that expressed more subtle insights of their „Others," rather than the clear-cut ideological discourses usually associated with the period's thinkers? Was the concept of the Other in the context of the early encounter between Arabs and Jews a function of the nationalist impetus per sel Wilayat Bairut may not be a typical manifestation of a contemporary worldview, but there is also no reason to believe it was the expression of two marginalized individuals. The story of Bahjat and Tamimi may be construed as an example of the phsnomenon of adopting Orientalist modes of representation by those identified according to the Orientalist syntax as "Easterners". 1 Bahjat and Tamimi were well acquainted with European discourses about the East. As is evident from the bibliography of Wilayat Bairut, they relied heavily on European scholarship published in German, French and English and adopted the essentialist dichotomy of East/West together with its entire set of conventions, images and stereotypes. Unlike many Ottoman travelers to Europe who developed a philosophy of embracing 'positive' (i.e., material) aspects of 'the West' while rejecting 'negative' (i.e., moral) ones 2 , for Bahjat and Tamimi, only a total and genuine internalization of Western culture would salvage the region from its degenerate Eastern nature. Additionally, a syncretism of East and West was unacceptable since it was little more than a travesty that would lead nowhere. For instance, Bahjat and Tamimi scoffed at the wealthy women of Nablus for applying both Eastern and Western methods of coloring their hair (Bahjat and Tamimi: 123). The two young men had truly succumbed to the belief that 'The West' was a superior cultural entity in toto, and this belief dictated the manner in which they represented the realities of the province of Beirut. Gabriel Piterberg demonstrated how Egyptian historians adopted Orientalist axioms in representing the histoiy of the Middle East (Piterberg 1995). Paitha Chateijee pointed at the manner in which Orientalist dichotomies shaped the Indian nationalist ideology (Chaterjee 2

See: Findley 1998.

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Yet, this belief is only a partial explanation for the manner in which they represented the Zionists as well as the other groups they encountered. By the same token, they applied an Orientalist mode of representation in order to promote a certain goal that was entirely local, namely, improvement of the socio-economic and cultural conditions of their Ottoman-Arab homeland. Along side their fundamental faith in the West, Bahjat and Tamimi employed Orientalist discourse to pass harsh judgment on phenomena that they perceived as intolerable in the province and in the Ottoman State. Their deep frustration at their homeland's poor condition is expressed on almost every page of the book. Thus, Orientalist axioms and imageries were articulated by the two travellers in their effort to convince the reader of the necessity to improve the state of affairs in their mother country in every possible respect. From this perspective, the conflict between Arabs and Jews was not the main prism through which they represented the Zionists, but rather the welfare of the country, which they cared for so much. Moreover, it seems that Bahjat and Tamimi adopted the Zionists as an'ideal type,' both to emphasize the pitiable conditions of the country and at the same time to give proof of their vision that an alternative was indeed feasible. The few times Bahjat and Tamimi expressed some sort of nationalist feelings when describing their experiences with Zionists were dictated by the Ottoman point of view. Their writing does not leave much reason to doubt their loyalty to the Ottoman State (less than two years before its demise). Their admiration of the 'European' nature of Petah-Tikva and the frustration caused by the miserable conditions of the province did not weaken their Ottoman patriotism, not even in 1916. While wandering through the clean streets of Petah-Tikva they found themselves in a painful situation. They witnessed a resident looking at a calendar and telling his peers that it was the anniversary of the Young Turk revolution. The two Ottomans were looking for an indication of the important date, but found nothing that bore a resemblance to the "red flag" of the Ottoman colors. Their reaction was quite emotional: We bowed our heads and our eyes were filled with tears. Was this place ours? After a short while the Jewish mayor arrived and begun discussing his nationalism, the nationalism of the residents and their national commitments. We nodded and expressed ourselves (isn't that natural)? [Bahjat and Tamimi:201].

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One could argue that Bahjat and Tamimi's explicit commitment to the Ottoman flag was meant to flatter the Ottoman authorities since the report was an official project initiated by the Ottoman governor. However, such a guess would be less reasonable in the face of the explicit and severe criticism towards the Ottoman authorities expressed in the book. 1 We should bear in mind that both Bahjat and Tamimi were engaged in some sort of protonationalist activities, Tamimi, through his involvement in al-Fatatx and Bahjat, through his cultural interest in Turkish literature. Nevertheless, these interests did not prevent the two young men from deeply identifying themselves with the Ottoman State, which was completely ignored, from their point of view, by the Zionist settlers. Thus, their affinity to their Ottoman political and cultural home co-existed in their consciousness with their attachment to "the West", and to some primeval sorts of Arab and Turkish nationalism. Contrary to the conventional model of cultural opposites accepted in modernization theory, it would seem that for them, there was no contradiction. 2 As mentioned above, Bahjat and Tamimi regarded Salfit as a symbol of cultural ignorance and neglect because its residents lacked any attachment to Ottoman nationalist symbols: "the Salfitis are ignorant in everything which are connected to the sacred national things, such as the flag and the motherland" (Bahjat and Tamimi:95). They also mentioned, as an indication to the poor cultural situation of the village, that no one in Salfit could speak Turkish. Another indication of the prevailing ignorance was in Acre, where not more than one percent of the population spoke Turkish. This situation, among others, rendered Acre a "thick darkness" in their opinion (ibid:279). * *

*

The dichotomous conception of East/West as two opposed cultural essences is apparently a cultural construction as old as modernity itself. It acquired the status of a fact of nature over many generations. The set of ideas behind the notion of 'the West' magnetized many among the members of The authors found a way to condemn the manner in which the constitutional principles were implemented under the leadership of the CUP, by citing Muslim villagers who states that "the constitutional jendarmery was far worse than the one active in the autocracy of Abdul Hamid the 2 nd ". Abdul Hamit was perceived by the CUP as a symbol of tyranny, evilness and corruption (Bahjat and Tamimi: 105). 2 Hasan Kayali illustrated a similar picture regarding the Ottoman Turks: " Like Arabs, Turks (including Unionist Turks) carried multiple layers of identities." (Kayali:210) Rashid Khalidi pointed at the same phenomenon among members of the Ottoman-Arab elite at that era. See: Khalidi 1997:65.

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Ottoman-local elites at the turn of the twentieth century. Some wrote about their experiences in terms of an encounter between two dichotomous cultures (Abu-Lughod 1963:138-143). Yet, nearly everyone unconsciously challenged the essentialist nature of this dichotomy by their very ability to feel at home in many cultural settings and even by the ease with which they appropriated European discourses. Bahjat and Tamimi are a case in point. The two Ottoman modernists interpreted their surroundings through the dichotomous models of tradition/modernity, imitation/origin and East/West and located themselves in the part of the equation that meant modernity, Enlightenment and 'the West'. The potency of the nineteenth century discourse of Orientalism is manifested in their writing very powerfully. However, although they rejected any syncretism between what they conceived of as two cultural poles, they actually introduced a far more flexible picture of cultural identities. The gap between Bahjat and Tamimi's rigid dichotomous model and the naturalness with which they appropriated modernist discourses and felt that modernity in its Anglo-French version was their home, and the manner in which they channeled the Orientalist mode of representation to serve an utterly local objective, is one more indication of the invented nature of the East/West paradigm. — The authors divided Nabulsi society into three social groups: the notables (khawas), the mass ('awam) and the Jabaliin (namely, the people whose origins were from Gaza). The notables were defined primarily by their wealth. Bahjat and Tamimi did identify the 'nouveau riche' among the notable families; Nonetheless, overall, they referred to (and regarded) the elite as a monolithic group. For a historical discussion of the social composition of the Ottoman-Arab elite of Palestine, see: Manna 1992. — Many families of the Ottoman-Arab elite of Palestine used to send their sons to study in Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul and European cities in order to increase their chances of being accepted into the Ottoman bureaucracy. So did the Tamimi family. See: Yazbak 1997:79. — Beshara Doumani's authoritative research on Jabal Nablus in the 18 and 19 th centuries offers a completely different picture, one of a dynamic society that exhibited an impressive ability to adapt itself to changing circumstances and in which terms like 'modernity' and 'tradition' were constantly redefined. See: Doumani 1995:236-240. th

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— Gabriel Piterberg demonstrated how Egyptian historians adopted Orientalist axioms in representing the history of the, these expose a unique local perception of modernity which contained both a rigid dichotomy and its alternatives.

Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim. 1963. Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters. Princeton: Princeton UP. Bahjat, Muhammad, and Rafiq al-Tamimi. 1987 [1917]. Wilayat Bairut: al-Qism alJanubi. Beirut: Matba'at al-Iqbal. [Arabic]. — 1987 [1918]. Wilayat Bairut: al-Qism al-Shimali. Beirut: Matba'at alIqbal. [Arabic]. Chatterjee, Partha. 1992. "Their Own Words? An Essay for Edward Said." Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Ed. Michael Sprinker. Oxford UK, Cambridge UK: Blackwell. Darwaza, Muhammad Izzat. 1984. Mudhakkirat wa Tasjilat. Damascus. [Arabic], Doumani, Beshara. 1995. Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: California UP. Findley, Carter V. 1998. "An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Midhat Meets Madame Gulnar: 1889." The American Historical Review 103.1. al-Hakim, Yusuf. 1991. Bairut wa-Lubnan fi 'Ahd al-Uthman. Beirut: Dar al-Nahar lil-Nashr. [Arabic], Farhi, David. 1975. "Documents on the Attitude of the Ottoman Government towards the Jewish Settlement in Palestine after the Revolution of the Young Turks (1908-1909)." Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period. Ed. Moshe Ma'oz. Jerusalem: Magnes. Kayali, Hasan. 1997. Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Californis UP. Khalidi, Rashid. 1997. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New-York: Columbia UP. Kushnir, David. 1989. "Minhal ha-Mehozot be Eretz Israel al-pi ha-Shenatonim ha-Othmaniyim" [The Administration of the Provinces in Palestine according to the Ottoman Yearbooks]. Katedra 88. [Hebrew]. Lockman, Zachary. 1996. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948. Berkeley: California UP. Mandel, Neville J. 1976. The Arabs and Zionism before World War I. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: California UP. Manna, Adel. 1992. "Continuity and Change in the Socio-Political Elite in Palestine during the Late Ottoman Period." The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical Experience. Ed. Thomas Philipp. Stuttgart: F.Steiner. McCarthy, Justin. 1990. The Population of Palestine: Population Histoy and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate. New York: Columbia UP. Muslih, Muhammad Y. 1988. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia UP.

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Piterberg, Gabriel. 1995. "Ha Urna U-Mesaprea: Historiografía Le'umit ve Orientalism" [The Nation and its Narrators: National Historiography and Orientalism], Theory and Criticism 6. [Hebrew]. Reinkowski, Mauras. 1999. "Late Ottoman Rule Over Palestine: its Evaluation in Arab, Turkish and Israeli Histories, 1970-90." Middle Eastern Studies 35.1. Seikali, May. 1995. Haifa: Transformation of a Palestinian Arab Society 19181939. London, New York: Tauris. Schatkowski-Schlicher, Linda. 1992. "The Famine of 1915-1918 in Greater Syria." Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective. Ed. John P. Spangolo. Oxford: Ithaca Press. Shafir, Gershon. 1989. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 1882-1914. Cambridge, NewYork, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge UP. Tauber, Eliezer. 1993. The Arab Movements in World War I. London, Portland: Frank Cass. Yazbak, Mahmoud. 1997. "Nabulsi Ulama in the Late Ottoman Period, 18641914." International Journal of Middle East Studies 29. — 1998. Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914: Muslim Town in Transition. Leiden, New York: Brill.+

Georgios Terzis European Centre for Common Ground, Brussels, Belgium THE 'OTHER'/ 'TURK' IN THE GREEK NATIONAL MEDIA: THE CONSTRUCTION OF "OPPOSITIONAL METAPHORS"

1. Introduction. 1.1. Media and Ethnic Conflict in the Global Context. As the world enters an era of dramatic technological change in the 21 st century, its effect on the everyday lives and experiences of people is becoming more important (Collini, 2000: 11-2). Human communication follows this global pace of change in commerce, travel, telecommunications (National Geographic, 1999; Barber, 1996). Furthermore, the world has entered an era of mass migration. Eurostat confirms that the population of the fifteen EU member states grew by just under a million in 1999, but only a quarter of this figure was due to births outnumbering deaths. The vast majority of the increase — 717,000 — came from net migration (Watson, 2000: 8). Meanwhile, a report from the UN's population department claims that Europe ( 375 million inhabitants in 1999) will need 75 million immigrant workers by 2025 to support its rapidly aging population. In this uncertain and increasingly complex world where the only constant is change, many ethnic groups and their leaders around the world have turned to ethnicity as the answer to their dilemmas of identity. Unfortunately, the revival of national and regional identities has sparked new tensions that were suppressed during the Cold War in the name of ideological solidarity. New local ethnic conflicts start almost every month, while the predictions for the future are not auspicious. Today, only half the states around the world have a single ethnic group that comprises even 75 percent of the population (The Washington Post, December 21-27, 1992). There are already 233 politically active regional groups in 93 countries, representing fully one-sixth of humanity, engaged in a political or military struggle from which more than 20 million refugees are currently in flight (Manoff, 1998: 11).

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The causes of this eruption of ethnic conflict are numerous. Structural factors,' including economic, social, and political issues relating to wealth distribution and inter-ethnic relations, 'facilitating factors,' including the degree of politicization and ethnic consciousness, and 'triggering factors,' including sharp economic shocks, inter-group tension and the collapse of central authority are generally given as the main causes of ethnic conflicts (Costy et al, 1998: 12). Although the media cannot be blamed — at least not directly — for the creation of structural factors, they surely play a central role in the creation of the facilitating factors and triggering factors that lead to violent conflict. Although ethnic and national media cannot be blamed for the creation of ethnic/national conflicts, one could easily argue that they play an important role in their conduct. Daniel Goldhagen (1996: 9) pointed out the historical role that the media had for the German nation in shaping the 'Other' (Jews) into an evil figure that had to be exterminated. Expanding on the connection between mass media and extermination, Cees Hamelink argues that the national/ethnic propagandists through the media 'suggest to their audiences that "the others" pose fundamental threats to security and well-being of the society and that the only effective means of escaping this threat is the elimination of this great danger' (1997: 32).

1.2 Media and Ethnic Conflict in the Greek-Turkish Context If one considers that 73 percent of the Greek people feel that Turks are not to be trusted, although 70 percent of the Greeks have never actually met a Turk, and at the same time, 95 percent of Turkish people feel that Greeks are not to be trusted, although 93 percent have never met a Greek, it becomes obvious that stereotypes and prejudices fill the knowledge gap between 'opposing parties' and thus serve to further strengthen it (PLAR & ICAP, 1997: 45, Kruks, 1998: 34). These beliefs are social constructs that need social institutions for their dissemination: institutions such as religious communities, schools, families, and — last but not least — the mass media (Hamelink, 1997: 31). Researcher Rosa Tsagarrousianou illustrates how the Greek mass media has played a significant role in the process of reproducing and reinforcing ethnocentric and nationalist discourse, just as it has sustained 'official' representations of Greece as a nation under threat from its neighbors

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(Tsagarrousianou, 1997). These representations have been crucial in the formation and maintenance of public attitudes regarding ethno-religious minorities within Greece, as well as ethnic and religious groups in neighboring countries. In this respect, the media reinforce the ideology and perceptions ingrained in the peoples of Greece through the dissemination of national myths via the institutions of education, family, and religion. The frequent use of stereotypes and negative 'dehumanizing' images of the 'Other' by Greek media contributes to the creation of an environment amenable to conflict (Lenkova, 1998). Provocation by the Greek media against the neighboring states is also frequent. The most recent serious incident took place in November 1997, when Turkish and Greek businessmen held the 'Ataturk-Venizelos Meeting' in Greece to discuss possibilities of improving relations between the two countries through economic cooperation. By viewing statements made during the meeting as an offence to the Greek public, the local newspapers incited mobs to attack the meeting place, with the result that Turkish businessmen were injured. The overpowering ability of the highly competitive Greek and Turkish medias to perpetuate and reinforce tension and conflict became evident in the case of the Imia/Kardak Aegean islets crisis of 1996: A Greek local politician placed a Greek flag on the islet — a mere deserted rock — which was promptly removed by Turkish journalists. This incident was broadcast immediately all over Turkey and Greece. Consequently, the media in both countries launched a giant 'media-circus' of escalating threats and hard-line positions, bringing the two countries to a naval confrontation and the brink of a war, defused at the last minute by the USA (Dimitras, 1998: 65). Greek or Turkish media would not have been able to 'create' a war had there not been the political will for one. However, they played a major role in 'manufacturing consent' (Herman et al, 1988) and in legitimizing the claims and nationalist positions of the governments in both countries. If there had been the political will and a war had taken place, public opinion in both countries would have been more than willing to support it. Furthermore, both the Greek and the Turkish governments remained under pressure from what was already on the media agenda. Thus, negotiated solutions became more difficult as a result of hard-line positions previously expressed in the media and adopting a conciliatory approach involved a loss of face (Kunczik, 1997:

86).

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2. The Coverage of the Greek-Turkish Relations in the Greek Press. Nationalist and racist attitudes and the media have been analyzed in depth by various theorists (Bonnafous, 1991; Cambell, 1995; Hartmann at al., 1974; Jager et al., 1993; Van Dijk, 1991, 1997; Wilson et al., 1985) and a literature review will not be the focus of this paper. Further, the quantification of the content of the Greek national press devoted to neighboring countries or ethnic minorities and their problems, and ethnic violence compared with other issues of the media agenda, will not be my central concern. My analysis will concentrate on the way perceptions about the Turkish 'Other' are negotiated and reproduced in the media text of the Greek national press. In order to analyze the media text as suggested by Van Dijk (1991: 6), it is first necessary to establish what is being written in the Greek press about the ethnic relations with Greece's neighbor, Turkey, and the ethnic groups from this neighboring country who live in Greece. [1], This analysis yields an account of the contents of discourse, paying special attention to how content is formulated according to style, rhetoric, and argumentative or narrative structures and conversational strategies. Then, in conjunction with results of other research about socially shared ethnic prejudices, hypotheses are formulated about the content and structures of these prejudices, and how these relate to structures of text. (Ozgiineg et al., 2000; Terzis, 2001) Thus, in my textual analysis, I am searching for the relationship between those prejudices and the media text. And since a prejudice always forms an oppositional relation with the 'Other', my analysis is searching for those oppositional metaphors that the media text is constructing. With this in mind, I embarked on an analysis of the media coverage of Greece's 'Other' neighboring country, Turkey, in order to find how these oppositional metaphors/constructions are represented in the Greek national press. 2.1 The Oppositional Metaphors. The analysis revealed the following metaphors: [2]

2.1.1 'Us' with the Great Old Civilization, vs. 'Them' with their Historical Backwardness. 'Turkey is a country which is very far from being called a "state of law" ... a state which does not remind us of the Ottoman Empire but still

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dreams of it. A state which does not even deserve to be classified as underdeveloped' (El. 28/5). In a reader's letter (El. 2/10): 'The Turks even today behave according to primitive instincts, like a few centuries ago ... when masses of their blood-lust conquerors knocked on the gates of Europe ... And how does the civilized West react to those barbarian Asiatics who disobey international laws and agreements?' Finally: 'Who are these barbarians who still dare threaten us, insult us, while we are dancing gifte telli and kar§ilama [Oriental dances] As you can guess, we are speaking about our bad neighbors — the Turks ... No matter how much Turks are attacked today and what inferiority complex they suffer because of their Mongol origins, they can do nothing to change things ... The Turks anthropologically and linguistically are completely foreign to European models, that is, to the Greek or the Latin in the Southern and Eastern part of Europe, and the Celtic one in the Central and Western part of Europe ... The uncivilized barbaric Turks cannot become friends' (Ap. 1/6).

2.1.2 'Our' Sacred National Symbols Vs. 'Their' Nationalistic Exaltation. The law passed in Turkey concerning the obligatory decoration of public buildings with flags [which is a permanent reality in Greece!], was treated ironically by the whole Greek press. 'Flag-mania in Turkey' is the headline of Ta Nea (26/10). 'Exaltation with the half moon' is the headline of Eleftheros Typos (26/10). At the same time, a theme of the Greek press throughout the study was the 'sacredness' of the national symbol of the Greek flag: raising the Greek flag on Imia/Kardak islet during the dispute over the sovereignty of this islet with Turkey; how can Greek students be allowed burn the Greek flag in universities' protests, and so on. Another theme was the use of sacred national myths against the 'historical enemy,' especially in times of perceived national crisis. 'Molon Lave, [ancient Greek for: come if you dare and seize our weapons] dirty Turks. We are waiting for you. The people and the army are ready to produce new Thermopyles [where ancient Greeks fought heroically against the Persians and uttered the Molon Lave]' (Ad.T. 2/1).

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2.1.3 'Us', the Modern Civilized Society Vs. 'Them', the Uncivilized Oriental Savages. This metaphor is depicted in the media text through three different mechanisms:

a. Double Standards in Human Rights Reporting of the Two Countries. News on human rights violations in Turkey ischaracteristically covered in full by the Greek press. 'Slap in the face' (K. 1/11) was the title on a story about the resignation of Bakir Canclar, Turkey's lawyer on the European Commission for Human Rights. 'Her lawyer "buries" Turkey ... desperate from the [lack of] prospects for human rights improvement' (Eth. 1/11). Amnesty International's report published on World Children Rights Day exposes Turkey (Ad.T. 20/11), 'slaps Turkey in the face' (Ap. 21/11) and is 'a report., on rapes, electrocutions and beatings [since] Turkey tortures even minors' (K. 21/11). Apogevmatini (6/10) reports in its editorial: 'Turkey is a huge hell, its system is an uncontrolled monster', the Turkish state 'a substitute for darkness and death', and 'Ankara ... is built on a hill in the depths of East, controlled by masses of soldiers and Islamists'. On the other hand, that same month, Amnesty International published a report on the injustice of mass trials in Greece. The Greek media completely ignoredthis report.

b. Demonizing the 'Other'. A strategy of the propagandistic press worldwide is to demonize the enemy by attributing to him the image of a historically detested person (see recent examples of Saddam and Milosevic). The Greek press follows suit. There are instances where a parallel was drawn between the political leadership in Turkey and Hitler's regime. 'Like Hitler, Ecevit believes in a peculiar socialism which is not internationalist but is permeated by profound racist and nationalist elements' (A.T. 21/8). 'Turkey functions like Hitler in the 1930s towards Central and Eastern Europe, with a structural expansionism; appeasement strengthens this aggressiveness' (El. 24/8).

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c. Extreme Nationalists Presented as the Average Representative of the 'Other'. An issue covered extensively during the study period was the news that the extremist Turkish nationalistic group, Gray Wolves, was responsible for the forest fires in Rhodes and other Greek islands. The revelation was made by Sedat Bucak, the deputy of the Right Path Turkish party, and was related to the action of the 'extreme right wing para-state Abdullah Catli' (N. 28/11). Front-page headlines were the reaction in the Greek press: 'Turks Burn our Forests' (N. & Ap. 28/11).

2.1.4 'Us' Vs. 'Their' Minority who Represents The Enemy. The suspicions about every manifestation of political behavior on the part of the Turkish/Muslim minority in Thrace are expressed in the coverage of the visit of the Turkish ambassador and a representative of the British embassy to Thrace, where that minority has lived for centuries. . The use of the word 'Turkish' instead of 'Muslim' minority, is for the Greek press equal to treason, 'What are they up to in Thrace? ... Turkish and Western allies are up to something in Thrace, but at the moment it may not be quite clear if and how extensively they will move against Greece ... The representatives [my emphasis] of the slaughters in Constantinople, Pontos and Asia Minor have spoken of violations of human rights in Greece, whereas [in Turkey] not even murderers are punished ... Turkish "officials" of the minority who presented themselves to the British diplomat are obviously of the same kind as those who executed Solomos and Isaak in cold blood in Cyprus and were so-called ministers' (Ad.T. 14/10).

2.1.5 Sports Coverage: Reflecting and Exaggerating the Binary Oppositions of Us Vs. Them, (Winners and Losers). During the field study, there were neagtive images of Turkey even in the otherwise non-political sports pages. The main topic was a row in the basketball game between the Greek team Aris and the Turkish Besiktas in Thessaloniki, Greece. The articles covered the story in a biased way, calling, without any evidence, the fight as 'a planned provocation by the Turks,' continuing the already loaded climate that began with the first game in Turkey.

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At the same time, the presence of a Greek banner stating 'Constantinople is the capital of Greece' was treated like 'the answer' of Greek fans to a similar Turkish banner at the first game in Istanbul (E.T. 12/12). There were many related titles: 'Provocation. Greek-Turkish beating with American interference', because the Turkish player who began the fight was an American. (N. 12/12); 'Aei sihtir' ['fuck you' in Turkish] (Ad.T. 12/12); 'Warm incident with American interference' (Eth. 12/12); 'Turkish provocation in the Alexandreio [the sports arena]' (Eth. 12/12); 'Gray Wolves in Alexandreio' (Ap. 12/12); 'They played a political game on our backs' (N. 13/12); 'Turkish provocation. Hooliganism will not be tolerated' (E.T. 13/12).

2.1.6 The Oppositional Perceptions of the Self and the Other by the 'Significant Others'. a. The Foreign Press. To underscore the image of a state in complete disarray, its institutions and democratic principles destroyed, the Greek press often quotes complete articles from the foreign press: 'The New York Times: "Here is Ankara's parastate'" (E.T. 11/12), 'The Times: "Para-state elements and mafia types act with the seal of the Turkish state'" (N. 11/12). Needless to say, the Greek national media never quoted the foreign press when articles appeared about the Turkish economy, culture, and so on.

b. International Organizations. Concerning the aspirations of Turkey to join the EU, the national Greek press is extremely negative. "'We' in the civilized club of EU countries vs. 'Them' in the barbaric Muslim East" was the main metaphor: 'The political-military establishment may have put on a European cloak, but this country still conceals within it deep remnants of authoritarianism which pass "by the grace of God" to all forms of power ... The Turkish state has not as yet shown the necessary respect towards its citizens, so that it can be included in the society of the dignified countries.' (N. 19/7); 'The goodness of democracy is unknown to our neighboring country in the sense that it is understood by us. Since 1923, the Turks have been enjoying a democracy of tanks, a democracy under the guardianship of the military' (Ap. 20/7); 'Turkey

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has to cover a long distance before it reaches the level of democracy of the European countries, particularly if it wants to press on with its entry into the EU'. (E.T. 20/7); meanwhile, Bishop Chrysostomos of the Greek island of Zakynthos wrote in a letter to the Greek press: 'The Turks have nothing to do with Europe, they are not Europeans' (El. 2/10). The right-wing press went a step further and edged closer to racism: '[W]e cannot accept a free movement — as will inevitably be the case — of Asiatic and semi-barbarian populations, even if it is in the form of cheap workforce from Anatolia to the Greek islands and the Greek interiot. It will result in a gradual change of the native population, to the extent that the other peoples will be informed about Greece from school or from historical books' (A.T. 15/7). The image of a neighboring Turkey concealed in an 'Islamic shell' that is a far cry from the model of a 'civilized' European state is constantly presented by the Greek press: 'Turkey is in a transition period between the evolution to an Islamic state and the imposition of a military dictatorship aimed at the return of an Ataturk order. Both alternatives lead to regimes which have no place in a democratic civilization' (El. 9/2).

2.1.7 With 'Us' or with 'Them': Resistance to Rapproachement and the Labeling of Traitors. An editorial in Ethnos (14/11) states that there is 'a need for weapons ... when there is a direct threat from Turkey and her claims against the sovereign rights of the country are permanent and repetitive ... The expression, especially from left-wing forces, of a general disagreement with the armament program without a comprehensive alternative proposition on how to counter Turkish aggressiveness is, if nothing else, unprecedented populism' (N. 19/11). There were some reports on a friendlier note about rapprochement and self restraint: 'Greece-Turkey one embrace' (Ad.T. 16/4, referring to the exchange of visits between Turkish and Greek students); 'A country which is thirsty for change. Besides all its evils, we shouldn't lose sight of this encouraging side of Turkey' (N. 15/4).

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Further, the Turkish-Hellenic Business Council had some optimistic coverage. A section of the press saw the prospect of economic cooperation between the two countries positively. 'Make business not war. A message of hope' (El. 15/12); 'A business bridge in Greek-Turkish relations. The first positive step' (E.T. 15/12); 'Greece-Turkey: business brings us closer' (K. 8/12). On the other hand, a large section of the press treated the meeting with suspicion and skepticism. Ethnos (12/12) wrote: 'Turkey throws out economic nets'. On the same page: 'They steal tourists from us with ridiculously low prices ... They want to sell water to our islands'. For most of the Greek press, economic cooperation between Greeks and Turkish was inconceivable, since the latter were interested only in their financial domination. Characteristic of such skepticism was Mihalis Dountas' article (N. 16/12) 'invest and make peace, but Ankara unshaken lays claims to Greek sovereignty. That simple'. There were also reactions by some politicians: 'The organizers of the Forum were called "neo-collaborationists" and the Greek participants in the GreekTurkish Business Meeting in Zappeio "naive" by the MPs Papathemelis, Badouvas, and Stathopoulos' (El. 12/12). A win-win situation was an impossible situation between Greece and Turkey for the Greek media. With the 'historical enemy' only a win-lose situation can exist! Resistance to rapprochement and the labeling of traitors took place when the Greek Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos uttered the statement, heretical by Greek standards, that 'if Turkey has no place in the European history, Greece doesn't have one either'. These words resounded in the Greek media as giving open support to Turkey, and thus were treason. Mr. Pangalos's further statement that 'I am on the alert when one practices politics on the basis of religion ... Islam is not a foreign body to Europe, but a known component of its cultural physiognomy. Islam belongs to the future of Europe, a future that will be shared with the Muslims...' (El. 5/4) provoked an immediate negative reaction. The Minister was called a janissary [A Christian convert to Islam who served as a soldier under the Ottoman Sultans] (E.T. 7/3) who 'assimilated Muslims with the Orthodox and the Jews of Europe. He ignores the fact that Islam means harsh intolerance, aggressiveness and an intellectual yoke ... Concerning the "European history" of the Turks and their cohabitation with the Greeks, Mr. Pangalos's arguments are tragic. The presence of the Turks in Europe is connected to a long subjugation of other peoples by means of theft, torture, blood, rape, kidnapping, death ....' (E.T. 21/3).

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The conservative Greek papers were especially vocal: 'The origin of the Turks is clearly Asian. Their remote ancestors were the horrible Huns, whose invasions destroyed Asia and Europe, so much so that their name goes down in history as the symbol of abysmal barbarism and disaster ... Concerning "the crowning" [statement] of our Minister, we will not even comment on the association of the two countries, of which one [Greece] stood as the infinite source of a splendid civilization and the teacher of Europe, while the other [Turkey] was throughout time and across the continents a slaughterer, a vandal' (B. 6/4). In another incident, a shared concert of Greek and Turkish singers on the UN Green line in Cyprus, also triggered the label of a traitor. 'The musical solution [sic] is not always a panacea ... There used to be music in German concentration camps while they executed women and children' (Ad.T. 17/5); 'The only answer is contempt for this annoying, dull, ridiculous, and provocative action, amidst the ignorance of apolitical constructs of the starsystem' (Ad.T. 17/5); 'An entire people is tormented with the ... profound nonsense of an unfortunate, innocent and history-ignorant young man [the singer], who decided to unite the two peoples of Greece and of Turkey ... But, for God's sake, don't let the Rouvases [the name of the Greek singer in plural] do "politics". The occupation of half of Cyprus by the barbarian Attila is too serious a matter for any "wagtail"!' (Ap. 20/5). In July 1997, the Madrid Agreement renouncing the use of violence between the Greek and Turkish governments was signed. While the progovernment press was positively disposed towards the agreement, the proopposition papers openly showed their dissatisfaction. 'She [Turkey] is a country basically Asiatic, Muslim, with an anti-democratic regime, with serious problems, with the large Kurdish minority, economically underdeveloped, aggressive if we are to judge from the invasion of Cyprus and the routine war operations inside Iraq. By means of the Madrid Agreement, that country secured a ticket to the European Union' (E.T. 13/7). Finally, the suspicion against rapprochement extends even into the field of sports. Some papers covered the friendship between Olympic medalist weight lifters Leonidis and Suleymanoglu as 'an example of friendship and reconciliation' (El. 12/12). But even here an article showed great 'skeptism' towards the rapprochement of the two athletes, stating that 'Suleymanoglu continued the scoffing and the pocket propaganda ... backing Constantinople's candidacy for the 2004 Olympiad over Athens. (Ad.T. 13/12).

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2.2 Epilogue: The Rare Exceptions that Illuminate (Negative) 'Rule'. On the other hand, a few articles were not so negative about the rapprochement efforts. One on Turkish universities, with the title 'The Other Turkey' ran contrary to the general negative stereotype of the Turkish people: 'On the one hand, Turkey gives the image of the country with guns, violence, and human rights violations; on the other, there is a Turkey that resists and fights for freedom of speech ... and has ultra-modern universities of which every European country would be jealous'. After a discussion with four professors, the reporter wrote that 'since our governments do not intend to make a large effort for peace between us, the citizens of these countries should do something' (El. 5/11). Furthermore, there were also positive comments on the Greek singer Rouvas' initiative to further peace and cooperation through the joint concert in Cyprus. 'I admit that I don't understand all this noise about the concert that he will be giving in Cyprus, in the neutral zone, together with his Turkish colleague. I don't understand why it is nationally inadmissible, disloyal and dangerous ...for Greek and Turkish Cypriots to meet and sing together ... How can we discuss and call for the union of Cyprus into one independent state when we refuse what is fundamental - a shared manifestation? Are we to believe that a concert undermines the national front? Or that the condition for its realization should have been the condemning of Turkish barbarism?' (El. 17/5). There were other dissenting voices that tried to contradict the usual stereotypes: 'They dream of a better future, without state terrorism, racism and misery. Greek media usually do not dare to cover these other Turks, who contradict the stereotypes we have learnt at school' (El. 2/2). Along the same lines: 'How is it the Turks are all the same, without the slightest difference between rulers and ruled, religious and non-religious; all of them are uncivilized, stupid, fanatical Mohammedans, fundamentalists, slayers of Greeks (ellinofagoi), blood-thirsty Orientals who have just come out of their caves and are incapable of developing art after so many centuries of history ... Yes, there are barbaric Turks. Yes, there are fundamentalist Turks. But there are also others who appreciate their cultural heritage as a constitutive element of their life and an aspect of their history ... Oh, yes, it is evident that their sudden internationalism imitates completely our vigorous internationalism, our cultural and religious tolerance, our openness of the spirit, like those who

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led us to demonstrate massively against the height of the minaret of Komotini, and those from Ioannina who presented the civilized proposition that the mosque of their city be covered with immense paintings with a 'national content, and those "super-Greeks" who despoiled the Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki (K. 27/6). Kostantinos Papagiorgis, in an article entitled 'The Underground School' (Ap. 8/12) shatters the myth of the existence of Greek underground schools during the Ottoman period, arguing that 'it was a fundamental myth that nourished the Greek irredentist Great Idea'. The article was written on the occasion of the circulation of the new 200-drachma bill, which bears an image referring to that myth. An article by Boukalas (K. 20/7) reveals how the 'barbarian image' of Turkey is perceived and accepted by the Greeks: 'Before we even began to be taught history, at least the state-made version of our history, we are seized by the unshakable conviction that our eternal national enemy is the Turks, despite the even fresher evils inflicted [on our nation] by the Germans and the Italians'.

2. Conclusions. The reason for this 'incriminating behavior' on the part of the media through the (re)production of 'oppositional metaphors' and hate speech can be found at every stage of the media production cycle (McNair, 1998: 14). These include the lack of a professional culture (such as the absence ofa journalistic code of ethics, the poor training of personnel and the lack of laws governing the media, or the inability to enforce them, organizational constraints such as deadline pressures that do not allow in-depth or balanced reporting, technical constraints and possibilities such as the lack of equipment, limited and/or biased newsgathering techniques, political pressures such as censorship, traitor labeling, intimidation, lobbying, regulation, the interlocking interests of the media, the politicians and the business sector, economic pressures such as poor market conditions, fierce unregulated commercialization, market forces that promote sensationalist journalism, source tactics and strategies such as the intimidation of the journalists by the government sources, public relations/conflict spin doctors, and so on. (Adapted from Ozgune§ et al.,

2000).

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As suggested by Sofos and Tsagarrousianou (1993), because of these representations and oppositional metaphors, the Other/Turk is seen by the Greek press as the aggregate of internal and external opposition, which takes the form of an imaginary 'enemy'. This symbolic exclusion of the constitutive outsider 'Other' and the internal 'enemy/dissident' in the Greek national press allows the the Greek nation to be represented as a pure, moral, and internally uniform entity, while the 'Other' is considered as a threat whose dissident voices are the 'traitors'. But cultural autonomy and preservation of national identity in today's changing world does not mean fanatic nationalism and closing down of all the channels of communication. On the contrary, Fanon argues, "the consciousness of self is not the closing of a door to communication. Philosophic thought teaches us, on the contrary, that [communication] is the guarantee" (Quoted in Hamelink, 1983). As Hamelink (1988) states: 'Society is like an ecosystem that needs variety to maintain itself. When one 'species' is exterminated or suppressed, others will multiply too fast at the expense of others. Thus, diversity will decrease, the complexity of the system will diminish and it wills all become less defensible against erosion'. The oppositional representations of the Other/Turk and the lack of pluralism within the Greek national media suppress the emergence of new social/civil movements such as peace and rapprochement movements, do not allow concepts of citizenship other than the ethnic one to develop, and thus restrict any sense of peaceful coexistence of the people of the Mediterranean region.

Notes: 1

The data (media monitoring) were collected by the Greek Helsinki Monitor Project, funded by the EU, the Council of Europe, among others. (www.greekhelsinki.gr). The articles were published during the same period with the participating observation (Sept. 96- August 97). The monitoring includes almost all the major national Greek newspapers. Namely: Guide to media initials: Ad.T. = Adesmeftos Typos (Right); Ap. = Apogevmatini (Right); E.T. = Eleftheros Typos (Right); El. = Eleftherotypia (Center-Left); Eth. = Ethnos (Center); Ex. =Exousia (Center-Left); N. = Ta Nea (Center); V. = To Vima (Center); K. = Kathimerini (Center)

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2

The recent earthquakes in both Greece and Turkey; their mutual assistance to one another as a consequence; Greece's support of Turkey's EU candidacy; and, the rapprochement efforts by both countries' Foreign Ministers, Mr. Papandreou and Mr. Cem respectively, resulted in a unique historical change which minimized national extremist tendencies. The role of the media in the rapprochement process has been important and will become even more critical in the future. I nevertheless argue that this witnessed change is unique in the relations of the two nations, and the way these have been reported in the two countries' media -given the exceptional circumstances described. My main objective in this chapter, through my use of media text between 1996-1997, has been to investigate a broader set of tendencies rather than the particularities of the present political change which could instead be investigated as a separate research project dealing with the role of the media during conflict transformation.

Bibliography. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso Editions and New Left Books. Barber, B. 1995. Jihad Vs. McWorld. New York: Ballantine Books. Bierhoff, J. 1993. In Search of a Mediterranean Media Research Agenda. An exploration of the field. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on Regional Media in Europe and the Role of Journalists. Chania, Crete, 1-3 October. Bonnafous, S. 1991. L'immigration prise aux mots. Paris: Editions Kime. Cambell, J. K. 1964. Honour, family and patronage: A study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community. Oxford: Clarendon. Collini, S. 2000. Is this the end of the world as we know it? The Guardian Weekly, January 6-12. Costy, A. & Gilbert, S. 1998. Conflict Prevention and the European Union: Mapping the Actors, Instruments, and Institutions. London: International Alert. Dimitras, P. E. 1998. The Apotheosis of Hate Speech: The Near success of (Greek and Turkish) Media in Launching War, in Lenkova, M. (eds.), "Hate Speech" in the Balkans. Vienna: The International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights. Drozdiak, W. 1999. British Press Chases the 'Huns' Again and Germans Feel the Pain, International Herald Tribune. July 17-18. Eyal, J. 1992. Managing the Balkans, RUSI & Brassey's Defense Yearbook 1992. London: Brassey's. Goldhagen, D. 1996. Hitler's Willing Executioners. New York: Longman. Hamelink, C. 1983. Cultural Autonomy in Global Communications, Longman: New York. — 1988. The relationship between cultural identity and modes of communication, Communication Yearbook. 12. — 1997. Media, Ethnic Conflict and Culpability, in Servaes, J. & Lie, R. (eds.) Media in Transition. Leuven/Amersfoort: Acco.

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1999. ICTs and Social Development. The global policy context. Discussion Paper, Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Hartmann, P. & Husband, C. 1974. Racism and the mass media. London: DavisPoynter. Herman, E. & Chomsky, N. 1998. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books. Huntington, S. 1997. The Clash of Civilization and the Remarking of World Order. London, Touchstone Books. Jager, S. & Link, J. 1993. Die vierte Gewalt. Rassismus und die Medien. Duisburg: DISS. Kruks, S. 1998. "We" instead of "us" and "them", in Bromley, M. & Sonnenberg, U. (eds.) Reporting ethnic minorities and ethnic conflict, beyond good and evil. Maastricht, Netherlands: European Journalism Centre. Kunczik M. 1997. Images of Nations and International Public Relations, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kurop, M. C. 1998. Greece and Turkey, Can they Mend Fences? Foreign Affairs Vol. 77, no. 1. Lenkova, M. 1998. "Hate Speech" in the Balkans. Vienna: The International Helsinki Federation of Human Rights. Malek, A. & Wiegand, K. 1997. News Media & Foreign Relations. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. Manoff, R. Role Plays. 1998. Track Two. Vol. 7, no. 4, December. McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McCraw-Hill. Morley, D. 1992. Electronic communities and domestic rituals, in M. Skovmand and K. C. Schroder (ed.) Media Cultures, Reappraising Transnational Media. London: Routledge. Murphy, P. and Cassy J. 2000. Media giants in $350bn tie-up, The Guardian Weekly. January 13-19. National Geographic. 1999. Millennium in Maps, August. Northon-Taylor, R. 2000. Croats jailed for ethnic slaughter, The Guardian Weekly. January 20-26. Özgüne§, N. & Terzis. 2000. G. Constrains and Remedies for Journalists Reporting Conflict: the case of Greece and Turkey, Journalism Studies. Vol. 1(3). PIAR of Turkey and ICAP of Greece. 1997. Perceptions From the Two Shores of the Aegean, Private View. Vol. 1, no. 3. Promfret, J. 1999. Tibetans Struggle for Identity, International Herald Tribune. July 22. Seib, P. 1997. Headline Diplomacy, How News Coverage Affects Foreign Policy. London: Praeger. Sofos, S. & Tsagarrousianou R. 1993. The Politics of Identity: Nationalism in Contemporary Greece, in Amodia J. (eds.) The Resurgence of Nationalist Movements in Europe. Bradford, West Yorkshire: Bradford Occasional Papers. Terzis G. 2001. Mediation of National Identities by National Media: A Bifocal Approach in the Case of Greece.{ Unpublished Ph D thesis), Katholieke Universiteit Brüssel, Belgium. The Economist. Oct 16 1999, Except us. The Guardian Weekly.2000. pp. 2, 5, 25, 26 (January 6-12). Tsagarrousianou, R. 1997. Mass Communication and Nationalism: The politics of Belonging and Exclusion in Contemporary Greece, Res Publica. Vol. 39, no. 2.

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Van Dijk, T. 1991. Racism and the Press. London and New York: Routledge. 1997. Racismo y analysis critico de los medios. Barcelona: Paidos. — Vidal, J. 2000. The World@war, The Guardian Weekly.p.2, Feb. 3-9. Watson, R. 2000. Birth Rate drops to Record low, The Bulletin. January 13, Brussels, 2000. Wilder, W. 1989. Communication and cultural identity in context: an anthropologist's overview, Media Development. 2. Williams, I. 1997. The Other Balkan Conflict, War Report. September. Wilson, C.C. & Gutierrez, F. 1985. Minorities and the Media. Beverly Hills, CA, London: Sage.

Gill inan£ Barkay

Eastern Mediterranean University, Gazimagosa, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus REPRESENTATION OF "OTHER/S" IN THE "VIRTUAL WORLD": www.other.gov/cyprus "People increasingly rely on Internet and web-based information despite evidence that it is potentially biased'n Andrew J. Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger ** "To proceed with a civil dialogue we needed to call each other what each wanted to be called"2 Melissa Kogut

Introduction For nearly half a century, a dispute of monumental proportions has thrust the small, 3,572 square-mile Mediterranean island of Cyprus into world headlines. It remains one of a few conflicts that have remained unresolved since the end of the Cold War. The two main parties to this discord are the communities of the island (Greek and Turkish Cypriots). They have been unable to forge a permanent peace between themselves. One of the main reasons for this is the intense historical memory of each side, and the conviction that history has done it an injustice. In other words, it is not the "fact" of an objective written history per se, but rather how the subjective elements of that history are accentuated by each side to justify its own present position in the international arena.3 This paper looks at how the parties to the dispute justify their positions through a particular "representation of the other or others." Given the chance for research that every technological advance

Perceptions of Internet Information Credibility", ,/& MC Quarterly, Vol. 77, No3, Autumn 2000, p.515 o ^''Talking with the Enemy", Boston Sunday Globe, 28 January, 2000, Interview with Melissa Kogut, she is the executive director of Mass NARAL, sate affiliate of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action. 3 Clement Dodd, "A Historical Overview," Cyprus, The Need for New Perspectives, ed. Clement Dodd, The Ethen Press, 1999, p.l.

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offers, 1 I have utilized the opportunities Internet provides and, accordingly, began investigating the above theme in the "virtual world." In doing so, I focused on the official web sites of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Within the scope of this investigation, I double-clicked on the subheading the "Cyprus Issue," which exists on both of the websites. Thus, I examine the extent to which the official representation of other/s, which appears on the World Wide Web, reflects the current demands of the parties within the framework of the "Cyprus Issue." This study does not, however, construct a theoretical framework within which the formulation of the political demands and the representation of "other/s" in a process of a dispute settlement/conflict resolution can be examined. Even so, I still anticipate that it will in any case provide comparative data that can be used in further interdisciplinary analyses dealing with one or more of these concepts.

Other/s2. If nationalism is an ideology of the first person plural that tells us who we are, then it is also an ideology of the third person plural. There can be no us without them? Nations, their identities and nationalism all require the existence of "the other." The other and the imaging of "the otherness" is an important part of national identity formation. National identities are social constructions and are constantly being transformed. 4 They are continually being renewed, reinterpreted and renegotiated according to changing circumstances and interests.5 As the social, political and economic conditions of the nation change, the national identity is redefined in ways that make it relevant under a new set of circumstances and which respond better to the material, symbolic or affective needs of its members. 6 As the identity changes

1 Guido H Stempell III. and Robert K. Stewart, "The Internet Provides Both Oppurtunities and Challanges for Mass Communication Researches", J& MC Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 541-547 2 Pillie Petersoo, "Nationalism and Dialectic with the other, positive and negative others in Estonia," The Electronic Review of World Politics, Vol I, No I, May 2000. I owe special thanks to Petersoo for publishing her article in the web (it was truly a nice coincidence concerning to the content of my study). I have benefited from the writings of several authors, which I was unable to reach, on the subject of the possible various others and their role in the identity formation, from her study. 3 M. Billing, Banal Nationalism, SAGE Publications, 1995, p. 78/ Petersoo p. 1. 4 Petersoo, p. 6. 5 A. D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, Polity Press, 1995, p. 155/ Petersoo p.

2 6

A. Triandofyllidou, "National Identity and the other", Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, July 1998, p. 608/ Petersoo p. 2.

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overtime, consequently "each age and society recreates its others."1 Therefore, the relationship between the nation and the other should be studied dynamically. As the identity of a nation may be defined and based on a cluster of several different characteristics such as language, religion, culture, history, each of them may require a different "other." The identity formation should not be seen as a strict monogamous dialectical affair between one nation and one "significant other" but as a complex interplay between the nation and the "various others."2 Parties to the Cyprus Issue also experience this complex process with "various others." Although within the scope of this study these others will be examined concerning their role in the justification of present positions rather than their role in the identity formation, it would be helpful to scan the nationalism literature to see how the diverse typologies of the "various others" have been sketched by different authors during the last decade. For example, Sampson has differentiated between "real others," "imagined others," "historical others" and "generalized others." 3 Triandafyllidou distinguishes between two main types, external and internal significant others, and creates further subtypes within these two types. 4 Duara writes about "internal historical others" and "hidden others"5 while Hobsbawn writes about "present aliens," "past aliens" and "purely national aliens."6 Patersoo creates a different typology resulting in four broad types of others: "positive internal other," "negative internal other," "positive external other" and "negative external other."7 Who have been the "others" presented in the official web pages of the parties of the "Cyprus Issue"? For the Republic of Cyprus, they have been the following: Turkey/Turks/Turkish troops (T), Turkish Cypriots (TC), "TRNC"("TRNC"), Greece/Greeks (G) and for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, they have been: Greece/Greeks (G), Greek Cypriots (GC), Greek Cypriot Administration (GCA), Turkey/Turks (T), Greek/Greek 1 Edward Said, Oriantalism, Petersoo p. 5.

Western Conceptions

of Orient, Penguin Books, 1978, p. 332/

2

Petersoo, p. 7. E.E. Sampson, Celebrating the Other: A Dialogic Wheatsheaf, 1993, p. 106/ Petersoo p. 6. •3 J

Account of Human Nature,

Harvester

Triandofyllidou p. 603/ Petersoo p. 6. P. Duara, " Historicising National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When," Becoming National: A Reader, edt .by G. Eley & R.G.Suny, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 103/ Petersoo, p. 6. ° E. J Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 174 / Petersoo, p. 6. 7 Petersoo p. 7. 5

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Cypriots (GGC). Although there are a few more others represented in the both official web sites, such as the EU, the UN, the US and the Maronites, the "others" that will be focused on in this study are considered according to the extent to which they are used on their respective the websites of both parties to the issue. In the following two sections, I begin by illustrating the representations of "the others" and then continue by pointing out the reflections of these representations in the content of the political demands of the parties to the dispute. The first stop on our academic surfing is the official web site of the Republic of Cyprus, www.pio.gov.cy.

Turkish troops/ Turkey (T). -

The Turkish army invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974. The invading forces landed off the northern coast of the island around Kyrenia. By the time a ceasefire was agreed three days later, Turkish troops held 3% of the territory of Cyprus. Five thousand Greek Cypriots had fled their homes. Two unproductive conferences in Geneva followed, the first between Britain, Greece and Turkey and the second with the attendance of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot representatives. Throughout this time Turkish troops steadily expanded their area of control. On 14 August (1960), despite the fact that talks were still being held in Geneva and just as agreement was about to be reached, the Turkish army mounted a second full-scale offensive, thereby belying Turkey's original pretext that it was invading in order to restore constitutional order, in view of the fact that constitutional order had already been restored. By the end of offensive, Turkey increased its hold to include the booming tourist resort Famagusta and the rich citrus-growing area of Morphou. All in all 37 % of the area of Cyprus came under Turkish military occupation, an area Turkey still holds today, despite the international condemnation. The advance halted on a line which was almost precisely the one proposed by Turkey as a demarcation of partition in 1965. This line has come to be known as the Atilla line named after the military codename "Atilla" which Turkey gave to the invasion operation, thereby identifying it with the chieftain of Huns as "the scourge of God." As a result, 200.000 Greek Cypriots were made refugees in their own country and 70% of the economic potential of Cyprus came under military occupation. Moreover, thousands of people, including civilians were killed or ill treated by the Turkish invaders. There are still 1619 Greek Cypriots missing as a result of the Turkish invasion, many of whom were held in Turkish custody. Following the invasion the Turkish government embarked on a policy of bringing in large numbers of Anatolian settlers into the occupied areas, while at the same time systematically expelling the legal Greek Cypriot inhabitants from their homes.

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35.000 Turkish soldiers, armed with the latest weapons and supported by land and sea, are stationed in the occupied area, making it, according to the UN Secretary General "one of the most militarised regions of the world." Over 90,000 Turks have been brought over from Turkey to c o l o n i s e the occupied area thus changing the demography of the island and controlling the political situation. The "Atilla line" (operation Atilla was the code name Turkey gave to the invasion of Cyprus) artificially divides the island and its people and prevents Cypriots from moving freely throughout their country. Since the Turkish invasion of 1974 and occupation of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, Turkey has maintained a policy of bringing in thousands of Anatolian colonists to settle in the occupied area, thus changing the demographic character of the island. Occupation, colonisation and expulsion of the local Greek population are all part of Turkey's long-standing expansionist policy. Turkey's aim is to cede and assimilate the part of Cyprus it occupies and ultimately annex it. Some 200,000 people, making up one third of the entire population of the island, fleeing from the Turkish invading forces, streamed into the government -controlled area, homeless and destitute. The European Commission of Human Rights of the Council of Europe in its report adopted on 10 July 1976 found Turkey responsible for the eviction of the Greek Cypriots from their homes, for its refusal to allow their return to their homes and for the looting and deprivation of their possessions. The tragic humanitarian problem of the missing persons of Cyprus is a direct consequence of the Turkish invasion. Like modern day Penelopes, wives and mothers of the missing have been waiting for news of their loved ones, often living a life in a state of limbo. Both military personnel as well as civilians, including women and children, were captured by the invading Turkish armed forces during July and August of 1974 or disappeared after the cessation of hostilities in the areas under the control of the Turkish army. The destruction of Cyprus' 9,000-year-old civilisation constitutes one of the tragic and unfortunately irreversible consequences of the Turkish invasion and occupation of the island. Ever since the Turkish invasion and occupation of 37% of the Cyprus's territory, archaeological sites, religious treasures and many private collections situated in the occupied area, were left at the mercy of the invaders. Unfortunately, UNESCO's 1970 convention "on the means for prohibiting and preventing the illegal importation and transport of ownership of cultural property" has been treated contemptuously by Turkey, who continues its s y s t e m a t i c destruction of Cyprus's cultural heritage. British journalist J. Fielding had ascertained as early as 1976, after a visit to the occupied area that "The vandalism and desecration are so methodical and so widespread that they amount to institutionalised obliteration of everything sacred to a Greek" ("The Rape of Northern Cyprus," The Guardian 6.5.1976).

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This is further corroborated by both the arbitrary replacement of ancient Greek place names with Turkish ones that are entirely unrelated to the history of the land, as well as the settlement in the occupied area of over 80,000 Turks from the mainland.

Turkish Cypriote - (TC). -

-

-

The population of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, who for 300 years had lived together intermingled throughout the island, was now artificially separated. According to Turkish Cypriot newspapers, over one third of Turkish Cypriots emigrated from the occupied area between 1974-1995 because of the economic, social and moral deprivation which prevails there. As a result, Turkish Cypriots who remain are today outnumbered by the Turkish troops together with the colonists. The dividing line which cuts across the country has created a physical, moral and social barrier between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot Communities. Previously the two communities had lived together harmoniously for more than 300 years. The Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities of Cyprus have proved that they can live peacefully together, as they have done so for centuries. As for the Turkish Cypriots, they are becoming a minority. Unemployment and unbearable living conditions has forced them to leave the island. It is estimated that since 1974, at least a third of the Turkish Cypriot community has emigrated. With the importation of over 90,000 settlers from Turkey and an Additional 35,000 strong Turkish army, Turkish Cypriots are now outnumbered. Demographic analysis and examination of statistical data on arrivals and departures of Turkish Cypriots as well as Turks from Turkey clearly show widespread emigration of the indigenous Turkish Cypriots, who are systematically replaced by an even greater number of mainland Turkish colonists. According to statistical evidence, press reports and statements by Turkish Cypriot politicians, Turkish Cypriots are forced to emigrate as a result of unemployment, economic, social and moral degradation and pressures from Turkish colonists who are given undue privileges. It is estimated that between 48,000-50,000 Turkish Cypriots emigrated between 1974-1995, a figure which represents about a third of all Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots themselves have become a minority in the occupied area, victims of the colonisation policy of their leadership. The presence of colonists in the occupied part of the Republic of Cyprus is in direct violation of the European Convention of Human Rights. This policy has been condemned in various resolutions of the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and other international organisations. It is also against the wishes of the Turkish Cypriots themselves

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"TRNC" - the Unrecognized other - ("TRNC").

-

-

On 15 November 1983, part of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus which had been occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion, unilaterally declared itself independent. The "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," as it called itself, is an unrecognised and illegal entity. It owes its existence to the military and economic support it receives from Turkey, the aggressor in Cyprus. It was condemned by the UN Security Council (Resolution 541 and 550), which declared it legally invalid, called for its immediate withdrawal and urged all states not to recognise it. No country in the world except Turkey has recognised it. The illegal regime in the occupied area is deliberately and methodically trying to eradicate every trace of a 9,000- year-old cultural and historical heritage. Over the years, the regime set up in the occupied area gradually erased all evidence of Christian or Hellenic civilisation.

Greece/Greeks- (G). -

-

There is no doubt that the massive presence of Turkish military forces in the occupied part of Cyprus creates serious anxieties and mistrust amongst the Greek Cypriot Community regarding Turkish intensions. It also imposes on the Government of the Republic the need to increase the defensive capabilities of the country by purchasing arms. Further it makes it necessary to request military help from Greece and to include Cyprus in the Greek defensive plans. Following the invasion (1974), the junta that was in power in Greece at the time collapsed and Mr. Constantine Karamanlis was recalled from self-imposed exile in Paris to form a new government. British journalist J. Fielding had ascertained as early as 1976, after a visit to the occupied area that "The vandalism and desecration are so methodical and so widespread that they amount to institutionalised obliteration of everything sacred to a Greek" ("The Rape of Northern Cyprus," The Guardian 6.5.1976)

Current Demands. The Cyprus issue is an international problem of invasion and continuing occupation of a member-state of the UN by another. This is the essential and the official point of view of the Greek-Cypriots. In the scope of this perception of the issue, Greek Cypriot demands appear to be as follows: -

All mainland Turkish troops should leave Cyprus. (T) All mainland Turks who have settled in Turkish-occupied Cyprus should leave. (T)

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All Greek Cypriote who lived in the north until 1974 and were forced to return to their former homes in the north and take possession of their properties under conditions of safety. (T) The division of the island should be ended and a unified state should be reconstituted embracing both communities and exercising sovereign control over the whole of the territory. (T), (TC), (TRNC) All Cypriote, whatever their ethnic character and heritage should be able to enjoy the whole range of universally acknowledged human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of movement, settlement and property ownership over the island. (T), (TC) The state and people of Cyprus must receive credible international guarantees for security against external aggression; such guarantees should exclude any unilateral right of intervention by a particular country, especially Turkey. (T), (G) A new constitutional order should be established in Cyprus in which Turkish Cypriots, along with Greek Cypriote, should participate in the government, parliament, civil service and other organs of the state that would exercise sovereign authority and control over all Cypriots and all the territory. However, the Turkish Cypriot community should not have such constitutional powers as to be able, if it so chose, to frustrate the will of the Greek Cypriot majority on matters that concerned the security, economic development, social welfare and European Union accession of Cyprus as a whole. 1 (TC) The island's future accession to EU could act as a catalyst. The prospect of accession to the EU offers a unique opportunity to solve the political problem of the island. The accession of Cyprus will foremost benefit the Turkish - if the island has been united — as, due to their relatively low standard of living, most of the EU's structural assistance to Cyprus will be targeted in their direction. A wide net of European institutions applying the EU's principles would foster security, safeguard the cultural, religious and national heritage of the totality of Cypriots and create a common interest in the viability of the Federation.2 (TC), (G) The second stop on our academic surfing is the official web site of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; www.pubinfo.gov.nc.tr. It must be stated that because of their ostracism from the real world, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus finds itself resorting to the unlimited opportunities offered by the virtual world (compared to the official web-site of the Republic of Cyprus, the official web page of the TRNC has more subheadings, photo illustrations, bibliographic references, etc. to double-click on).

1 Zenon Stravinides, "Greek Cypriot Perception," Cyprus, A need for New Perspectives, 61. ^ www.mfa.gov.gr

pp. 59-

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Greece/Greeks - (G).

-

For the Turkish Cypriot people to agree to becoming a member of the EU, of which Turkey is not a full member, while Greece has created and perpetuated the Cyprus question since 1963 will mean the destruction of the balance between the two motherlands over Cyprus. In July 1974, a Greek-sponsored coup backed by thousands of Greek troops overthrew the Greek Cypriot administration of Archbishop Makarios to realize the annexation of the island by Greece. On July 19,1974, Archbishop Makarios addressed the UN Security Council, and told the world that Greece was occupying Cyprus and both Greek and Turkish Cypriots were in grave danger. In addition to the 103 villages that the Turkish Cypriots lost in 1963, Greek and Greek Cypriot troops occupied 33 more Turkish Cypriot villages. The supporters of the coup killed more than 2,000 Greek Cypriots and the leader of the Greek Cypriot Communist Party, Mr. Papayoannu, later said that 4,000 of his members were on a list of people due to be lined up and shot. In the 28 th June 2000 issue of the Greek Newspaper Kathimerini's English edition, a large place was devoted to a piece of news entitled "Council of Europe Finds Racism in Greece." The full text of the news is as follows: "Minorities in Greece are subjected to racism, discrimination and intolerance by society, despite recent positive developments taken by the State to combat racism.

Greek Cypriots-(GC). Today the Greek Cypriots speak of the tranquil days of the past, and give a general picture of the two communities living in social harmony, cultural and religious tolerance and interdependence between the two communities. However it must be remembered that although Greeks and Turks have cohabited in Cyprus for such a long period of time, the two communities never merged to create one nation. They have never initiated a togetherness that could develop into unity, but prefer to live their separate lives even in mixed villages this was the case. There were separate schools, shops and so on. With the aim of Hellenizing Cyprus and ultimately uniting with Greece (i.e., achieving Enosis) in line with the notorious Akritas plan, the Greek Cypriots launched in December 1963 their cold-blooded and ruthless attacks. As the result of ethnic cleansing campaigns of Greek Cypriots, hundreds of Turkish Cypriots were murdered, injured or maimed, went missing or became refugees in their own homeland. A Greek Cypriot priest, in total ignorance of his religious duties, hunted down Turkish Cypriots. This picture was published in the Zurichher Zeitung in 1967

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Children and their mother were brutally murdered in the bath by Greek Cypriots in the Kumsal quarter of Nicosia. This picture was first published in the Daily Scetch on 30 December 1963. As a result of the embargoes applied by the Greek Cypriots, our people were deprived of food, our babies were left without milk and our patients were deprived of medicine. In order to escape from the Greek Cypriot barbarism, thousands of Turkish Cypriots had to seek refuge in the Happy Valley at the British Sovereign Base at Episkopi. In the May 25 t h , 2001 issue of the Greek Cypriot daily "Cyprus Mail," large coverage was devoted to the case of nine Turkish Cypriots who were beaten and tortured at the hands of Greek Cypriot police, and also the case of a young Iranian man who too was severely tortured and beaten by six or seven Greek Cypriot police officers.

The Greek Cypriot Administration - (GCA). The Greek Cypriot administration in no way represents the whole of Cyprus or the Turkish Cypriot people. The Greek Cypriot side, in order to remove the internal and external balance established by the 1960 Agreements, destroyed the partnership, by force of arms, in 1963. Since then, there has not been a joint administration in Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities have lived under their own democratically elected separate administrations. It is an undisputable fact that the G r e e k Cypriot administration has never exercised sovereignty over the whole of Cyprus or the Turkish Cypriot people. From the very beginning, the TRNC government and its people opposed the unilateral, unlawful and ill-intentioned application made by the Greek Cypriot administration for full membership to the EU. There exists an undemocratic and unlawful application which is contrary to the 1960 Agreements leading to the independence of Cyprus, as well as the principles of the UN negotiating process. A report published in the Irish Times on April 10, 1999 highlights the suspicious relationship between Serbia and the Greek Cypriot Administration. The report underlined the well-known fact that Southern Cyprus is being used as a station of black money laundering and for other misconduct. The peace and stability of the island and of the Eastern Mediterranean region, however, is being threatened instead of preparing a ground to such a solution because of the Greek Cypriot side's continuing heavy rearmament, its joint defense doctrine with Greece, entailing the establishment of air and sea bases in the South for the armed forces of that country and its decision to acquire offensive missile systems.

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Greece-Greek Cypriots/Greek-Greek Cypriot side - (GGC).

-

When the Peace Operation started (1974), the Greek Cypriots and Greek soldiers in the island carried out massacres in the areas which were not reached by the Turkish military units. The positions and the actions of the two sides during the period which follow the adoption of Resolution No. 649 (1990) are in stark contrast to each other: the Greek Cypriots and Greeks pay lip service to this resolution but do nothing to promote its implementation by working towards an "outline for an overall agreement." A meeting is held in Athens on May 4, 1995 between the Greek Government and the Greek Cypriot National Council headed by Mr. Galcos Clerides. The meeting once again reflects the true objectives of the Greek-Greek Cypriot camp. Immediately after this meeting, Mr. Clerides expounds the foundation of Greek- Greek Cypriot policy on the Cyprus question. The ongoing massive military build-up in South Cyprus coupled with the defense pact between Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration and the war mongering by the Greek and Greek Cypriot political and military leaders, are the main pillars of the recent strategy of the Greek- Greek Cypriot camp. On 31 May 2000 the Greek Cypriot "CyBC" television organised a live round-table discussion program at the Ledra Palaca Hotel, in the UN buffer zone. The event was attended by Turkish and Greek Cypriot reporters as well as reporters from Turkey and Greece together with the UN Secretary General's former Deputy Special Envoy for Cyprus, Mr. Gustave Feissel. During the course of the program, the TRNC's state radio and television channel -the BRT representative - extended a cordial invitation to the Greek and Greek Cypriot participants and to Gustave Feissel, informing them that the Turkish Cypriot side was also planning to organise a similar event at the Ledra palace. The invitation was made with the intention of creating an atmosphere for the continuation of contacts at the media level with the hope that it would help promote rapprochement. The invitation was positively received and accepted by all parties, however, it was later understood that this another feign by the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo. Invitations for the BRT program dated 7 June 2000 were sent to all those who had attended the previous program. However, just as it occurred in the past the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo displayed their true colors by not attending the program...This was the repetition of the Greek-Greek Cypriot ploys to make it look as if they are the ones in favour of attending "bicommunal" events, whilst in reality, they are the ones who leave the platform every time.

Turkey/Turks- (T). -

The settlement of Turks in Cyprus gave the Orthodox Christians living on the island the peaceful environment they longed for centuries. The Cypriots got the chance to live freely for the first time in history under the protection of the Turkish Laws.

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"Turkey's intervention in Cyprus in Line with the Guarantor power under the Zurich and London Agreement is Legal. The actual culprits are the Greek Officers against whom legal action has been launched" (Athen's Court of Appeal's decision dated 21 March 1979, ref. No. 2658/79) "Having seen that no results were obtained from the diplomatic initiatives, Turkey dispatched a military unit to Cyprus on 20 July 1974. With this Turkey intended to restore the constitutional order" (Soviet Novoti News Agency-Simeniri, 29.2.1984) " Turkey is a far-sighted country. During the period when Cyprus was under the British Rule, I had also believed in the independence of demands of Greek Cypriots. But later the Greek Cypriots realized all sorts of bloody acts for uniting Cyprus with Greece (ENOSIS). Had Turkey not sent troops to the island in 1974 there might have been not a single Turkish Cypriot living on the island" (From a speech of a British journalist with Greek and Greek Cypriot journalist, Gunes Newspaper, 14.2.1983)." Had the Turkish military intervention in 1974 not occurred, there would have been no Turkish Cypriots on the island" (Lord Newall, Member of the British House of Commons). Ever since Turkey's Peace Operation of 1974, the Turkish Cypriots have been living in peace and harmony in their own state. The Turkish contingent was embraced with great enthusiasm by the Turkish Cypriot people who saw them as their only safeguard. Turkey used its legitimate rights and intervened in Cyprus in order to protect the lives of the Turkish Cypriots, similar to NATO who intervened to protect the lives of the people in Kosova. The sovereignty, security and political equality of the Turkish Cypriot people should be guaranteed and the effective and physical guarantee of Turkey will continue without any change. Long live TRNC, Long live Turkey-TRNC brotherhood

Current Demands. On the Turkish Cypriot side, the problem is seen differently and priorities differ. 1 The official perception of the issue is that the root cause of the Cyprus question is the Greek Cypriot aims for the union with Greece, Enosis. Turkish Cypriots believe that the Greek Cypriots have not given up their objective of Hellenizing the whole island and they still seek integration with Greece both directly and through EU. Following are the Turkish Cypriots demands 2 for a just and lasting solution:

1 Clement H. Dodd, "Turkey and the Cyprus Question", Turkey's New World. By Alan Makovsky and Sabri Sayari, Washington Institute For Near East Policy, 2000, p.155. fy www .pubi nfo. gov, nr.tr

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Negotiations between the two sides should take place not between the "two equal communities on an equal footing," but between the TRNC and the Greek Cypriot State in Southern Cyprus. 1 (GCA), (GC) The Greek Cypriot side should give up their megali idea of Hellenizing the island by creating a Greek Cypriot state in the whole island. (GC), (GCA) The Turkish Cypriot rights of self-determination and sovereignty should be preserved and the settlement to be reached should be put to the separate referendum of the two peoples. (GC) Any union with the South should be formed on the basis of a confederation. (GC) The sovereignty, security and political equality of the Turkish people should be guaranteed and the effective and physical guarantee of Turkey will continue without change. (T),(G),(GGC) The bizonality, which reflects the existence of two separate peoples on the island, should be maintained as a basic principle in a political settlement. (GCA),(GC),(GGC) In accordance with international agreements, Cyprus can only become a member of the EU subsequent to a solution and only if Turkey is a member. So the application by the Greek Cypriot side to the EU, aiming to destroy the legal rights and benefits of the Turkish Cypriot people, is totally illegal. (GCA), (GGC), (T)

In the light of the above parameters, it is apparent that the official representations of others in the web pages of the parties of the Cyprus Issue and the current demands of the parties display a parallelism. In other words, aside from the socio-cultural factors that have been instrumental in the formation process of the representations of others, political factors also play an important role in this process. My concluding remark appears to be a question, concerning the further objective of this research project, which is planned to encounter "Multicultural Dialogue, Coherence and Accountability in the Region by respecting and embracing the Diversity of Cultures of the Mediterranean World": Can the "virtual world" serve as a "preliminary peace platform" in the process of the conflict resolution/dispute settlement of the Cyprus Issue, for the benefit of the parties, who long for but can not find a just and a lasting solution/settlement in the "real world"?

1 Necati Munir Ertegun, "The Turkish Cypriot Outlook", Cyprus, Perspectives, pp. 98-113.

the Need For

New

Nida Bikmen & Diane Sunar

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA / Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey REPRESENTING THE ETHNIC "OTHER": STEREOTYPES OF ETHNIC GROUPS IN TURKEY

Introduction. Turkish society is a rich mosaic of ethnic and religious groups. Although the majority is said to be ethnic Turks of the Sunni Muslim faith, the fact that there are more than 40 ethnic groups currently living in Turkey (Andrews, 1989) makes it harder for investigators of Turkish national identity to draw the boundaries of the "ingroup". This socially constructed nature of ethnic and national identities has long been discussed and is beyond the scope of this chapter. Our purpose in this essay is to present some data on how a sample of a young and relatively elite section of the "ethnic Turkish" population in Istanbul view members of eight ethnic groups living in metropolitan Turkey.* The data presented in this chapter are taken from a more comprehensive study measuring the strength of national and religious identities, the social distance of the participants from members of each group, their contact with different group members, as well as stereotypes. For the purposes of this book, only findings related to stereotyping is discussed in this chapter. When stereotypes first began to be studied, they were defined as incorrect and illogical generalizations that are rigidly resistant to new information (Lippman, 1922). A more recent definition is "sets of beliefs about the characteristics of groups of people that serve to mark those groups out as distinct entities" (Haslam, 1997, p. 119). Initial research focused on the consensual nature of social stereotypes held by the society at large (e.g. Katz & Braly, 1933). Later, under the influence of the cognitive approach on the field of social psychology in general, and on research on intergroup relations in particular (Fiske, 2000), the focus of interest moved more to individual*

Originally, attitudes toward ten groups were investigated, however, because Assyrians and Georgians were not known to more than half of the sample, their data are not presented.

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based information processing accounts of stereotypes. This tradition conceptualizes stereotypes as inevitable shortcuts that help individuals compensate for their limited cognitive processing capacity by forming anticipations regarding categories of people and events, since there is not enough time or energy to deal with every member of a group individually (Brown, 1965). Thus, stereotypes need not be incorrect or illogical by definition. In the last decade, however, this cognitive approach has been attacked by proponents of more societal approaches for its neglect of cultural and ideological influences on stereotype formation (Spears et al., 1997; Fiske, 2000; Haslam, 1997). Although these critics do not reject the important contribution of the cognitive tradition, they claim that perception is socially structured, and that stereotypes, which are formed within a particular meaning system defined by cultural, social and ideological factors, serve social as well as cognitive functions. Furthermore, individuals' group memberships and status in the society they live in affect the stereotyping process. As formulated in Tajfel's Social Identity Theory and Turner's Self Categorization Theory, as people perceive themselves to be members of certain groups, they want to increase their distinctiveness by overemphasizing intergroup differences and intragroup similarities (Tajfel, 1982; Turner, 1982). In accordance with these theories, Bourhis et al. (1997) argued that "stereotypes are fundamentally oriented to and driven by the stereotyping group's collective definition of itself and its place in the order of things" (p. 294). Because people want to be similar to the members of the ingroup, and different from outgroup members, they seek for agreement with ingroup members and more readily adopt their views and attitudes. So defined, studying how these shared beliefs are formed and communicated to group members becomes an important task in stereotype research. Moscovici's (1984) theory of Social Representations has been seen as an appropriate framework for studying stereotypes, for it argues that perception occurs in a specific and consensual meaning system accessible to most members of a given society, and that the task of social psychology should be to study those meaning systems. Thus, a growing number of researchers of social stereotyping focus on the formation of shared beliefs in different social contexts and the effect of individuals' group memberships (Haslam, 1997). Chryssochoou (2000), for example, examined the representation of the superordinate group "Europe" among two European Union countries' citizens (French and Greeks) by studying the stereotype of the "European person" in each setting. She found that the representation of the "European" varied in the two contexts depending on how the people of each country perceived their own national group.

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203

The present study adopted a similar approach in attempting to explore the stereotypes of ethnic groups held by Turkish university students living in metropolitan Istanbul. In line with Social Identity theory (Tajfel, 1982), we expected participants to attribute more negative traits to groups they see as "outgroups", and more desirable traits to groups they perceive as "ingroups". We also expected that the groups perceived as outgroups and ingroups would vary according to the relative importance attributed to two different dimension of social identity, namely "being Turkish" (national identity) and "being Muslim" (religious identity). As mentioned previously, there are nearly 40 ethnic groups in Turkey but not every one of them is recognized by the society at large (Andrews, 1989). Most are assimilated into the dominant culture, or live in small, very closed communities so that they are not known by ordinary urban people. The eight groups which were investigated in this study are those that are best known in urban settings, and they have relatively well recognized ethnic identities. The groups were Turks, Kurds, Circassians, the Laz, Gypsies, Armenians, Jews, and Greeks. The first five of these groups are Muslim. Circassians and the Laz do not usually claim a separate and strong ethnic identity, and they are not considered as such by the general public except for the ridiculing of the Laz by common jokes. Gypsies were originally Christian but a considerable number among them are converted Muslims. Nevertheless, they are not considered by the general public to have a strong religious attachment (Andrews, 1989). Turkish ethnic policy has been the melting of all ethnic groups into a single Turkish Identity (Robbins, 1996) rather than promoting multiculturalism. The "Turkish (national) identity," as constructed by the republican elite (see Guvenc, 1997, and Keyder, 1993, for accounts of the construction of Turkish identity), was intended to encompass all citizens who would define themselves as Turks, including all ethnic groups. Despite this inclusiveness, the image of the non-Muslim minorities as collaborators with external enemies led to some discriminatory governmental policies in the period between the 1930s and 1960s (see Aktar, 1996; Karabatak, 1996; Koker, 1997, for more information). To a very large extent, Circassians, Georgians and the Laz have been assimilated into the dominant culture, and are considered by the general public as Turks. The Kurds, Gypsies, and the non-Muslim groups have emphasized their traditional ethnic identities in addition to their Turkish Identity (Andrews,

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1989). The Kurds, a Muslim ethnic group, have only recently obtained recognition of the right to speak their own language and practice their customs. Thus, we predicted that Circassians and the Laz would be perceived as part of the ingroup and thus have a stereotype similar to that of Turks, which would consist of mostly desirable traits. On the other hand, nonMuslim groups, Kurds and Gypsies were expected to be perceived as outgroups and accordingly evaluated less favorably.

Method. Participants: A total of 285 students taking an introductory psychology course in Bogazigi University participated in the study. Among them, 40 were from the target ethnic groups and 2 were not Turkish citizens; their data were excluded from the analyses. In addition, 5 questionnaires were discarded because of inconsistent responses. The remaining 240 subjects (149 female, 91 male) were between the ages 17 and 25, and their mean age was 19.8. Over 80% described themselves as middle or upper middle class, and most of the rest rated themselves as lower middle class or upper class.

Instruments National and Religious Identities were assessed by four questions about the importance respondents attributed to their Turkish and Muslim Identities. The questions were: "How important is being Turkish/Muslim for you?" and "How proud are you of being Turkish/Muslim?". Responses were on a 7-point scale from "extremely" to "not at all". The correlation coefficient between the two questions measuring Turkish Identity was .90, and between the two questions measuring Muslim Identity was .91. The means were calculated for each pair of questions and, these means constituted the measures of Turkish and Muslim Identities. Ethnic stereotypes were assessed by a modified version of the Katz & Braly (1933) Adjective Checklist. Respondents were provided with a list of 64 adjectives and asked to select 6 that they believed best described each target ethnic group. They were not limited to the adjectives in the list but were free to add others if they were felt to be more descriptive of the group. Respondents also rated the adjectives on the list as to how desirable they believed each trait to be on a 5-point scale ranging from very desirable to not desirable at all. For each adjective a mean desirability score was calculated.

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Results. Means for Turkish and Muslim Identities were 4.32 and 3.90, respectively, on a 7-point scale. The two types of identity were highly correlated (r = .679, p < .001). A mean stereotype desirability score for each group was calculated by averaging the desirability scores of the traits assigned by each participant to that group, and then averaging these means across the whole sample. Table 1 presents the mean desirability scores of each group's stereotype and Table 2 presents the correlations between mean stereotype desirability and social identities. Table 1 Mean Desirability Scores of the Groups' Stereotypes (n=240) Mean Desirability Score Std. Dev. Circassian

3.81

.865

Laz

3.52

1.119

Turk

3.27

.986

Jew

3.09

.965

Greek

3.03

1.031

Gypsy

2.76

.957

Armenian

2.74

1.233

Kind

2.43

.961

Range of the scores: 1: definitely not desirable; 2: not desirable; 3: neither desirable nor undesirable; 4: desirable; 5: very desirable Table 2 Pearson Correlations between Mean Stereotype Desirability Scores of Each Group and Social Identities (n=240) Turkish

Identity

Muslim

Identity

Circassian

.387**

.259**

Laz

.250**

202**

Turk

.686**

.563**

Jew

.054

.017

Greek

-.118

-.110

Gypsy

-.148*

-.204**

Armenian

-.076

-.193**

Kurd

-.164*

-.068

**: significant at .01 level *: significant at .05 level

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Table 3 Ten adjectives most frequently assigned to the ethnic groups (n=240) with the percentages and mean desirability scores of each trait

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