Turkey and the Politics of National Identity: Social, Economic and Cultural Transformation 9780755608294, 9781780765396

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In Memoriam Gaffar Okkan (d. 24 January, 2001) Hrant Dink (d. 19 January, 2007)

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PR EFACE BL ACK TUR K S, WHITE TUR KS AND MOUNTAIN TUR K S Shane Brennan

My first visit to Turkey was in May 2000. Early one Sunday morning I arrived at the port of Çeşme from nearby Chios with the intention of retracing on foot an ancient route across the landmass. A restored kervansaray fringing the sea set me to visualising similar resting places dotted across the Anatolian interior and reaching as far as other seas. At the same time, having spent the previous year living in Athens, I was a little anxious about how I would be received as a foreigner. Some Greek friends were sure that in the darkness of the countryside I would be set upon and never seen again. But it wasn’t like how I had imagined it, or how it had been portrayed to me, at all. A brand new motorway with gleaming petrol stations acting as way stations rolled quietly from the sleepy port to the city of Izmir, a modern, outwardlooking metropolis built upon thousands of years of history. Here and throughout my journey across the country, the greater number of the people I encountered were curious and friendly and nearly always keen to assist as they could.

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Moving eastwards, Izmir, with its face to the West and modern infrastructure, came to feel increasingly exceptional. Much of the Anatolian countryside was poor and under developed. There was the sense that little might have changed since Ottoman times. In village after village men idled in packed tea houses while women in headscarves using their bare hands seemed to do most of the agricultural work. School buildings in these villages were rudimentary, run down and customarily marked by a flagpole and a bust of Atatürk. Nonetheless, in places there were signs of progression and prosperity. On the Konya plain vast tracts of fertile land were under the plough and on the outskirts of the city itself new industrial parks flourished. A recently built shopping mall dominated the commercial district, reflecting the wealth in the hinterland. Konya was to be one of the centres of economic growth in the 2000s, one of the so-called ‘Anatolian Tigers’, regional centres that began to develop small-scale industries in the wake of the economic reforms introduced by Prime Minister Turgut Özal in the 1980s.1 Since the coming to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2002, these have benefited from year-on-year growth in domestic consumer demand and, with policy being to open borders and promote regional trade, their output has increasingly found ready markets abroad.2 Signs of dizzy success were apparent to me on subsequent visits to the country in the forms of new roads for new cars, and of shopping malls, getting bigger and more ubiquitous. These were the outward signs of the new middle class that began to emerge and grow through the decade.3 A recurring question for me on visits to Turkey in this time was how this economic transformation was affecting the way people saw themselves in the world around them. Living in Ireland, the late Celtic Tiger, I had witnessed how the country had been catapulted from the ranks of the weakest EU economies to the strongest and seen how this process had been the catalyst for a variety of other transformations, not least in the self-image of the country. On the face of it the case of Turkey was more complex. Notwithstanding the rich diversity of cultures present in Anatolia, under the republic a single national identity, based on Turkish ethnicity, was forged: ‘one language, one

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flag, one nation’. I wondered in particular whether this construct was adapting to the fast-changing economic, social and political circumstances, or coming apart under the pressure of these same forces. As an index, a very non-scientific one, I refer myself back to two experiences from my first journey in the country in 2000–01. Both took place in the east, the first between Hınıs and Horasan, a rugged agricultural hinterland far from the Tiger hubs of the interior, the second in the city of Diyarbakır. Thirty kilometres or so from Horasan Bridge, where branches of the River Aras meet and flow on into Armenia, I was stopped outside a Jandarma station and questioned about what I was doing. This was not unusual and the service personnel were always courteous and hospitable. We sat in the sun for a while waiting for the officer in charge, who was invariably called upon in this event. When he arrived and following a scan of my various travel documents and an order for tea, he asked me bluntly who the greatest leader of the twentieth century was. After brief reflection I replied that it was Stalin. There were guffaws amongst the junior officers present and disbelief in the face of the komutan. He informed me that leadership experiments carried out in America had shown that the greatest leader of the century was Atatürk. I offered no defence of my choice and, aside from a look of surprise, did not challenge his. A stubborn silence followed as we sipped and finished our tea. While today such reverence for Atatürk might still be commonplace in barracks, where defence of his revolution ranks with protecting the country’s borders, or in the staunchly secular parts of the major western cities, it would be harder to find elsewhere in the country. For me the most remarkable change to have taken place here in the past decade and a half is the quiet fading from public consciousness of what was once a monolithic, almost sacred, figure. Although the statues and busts of Atatürk are still ubiquitous, they feel increasingly marginal in today’s Turkey as, moreover, do the staunchly secularist and Westernizing visions which they represent. Turkey now looks as much to the East as it does to the West, and it sees itself as a central player rather than as an adjunct to geopolitical entities such as the EU and NATO. To a considerable degree, a soft

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Islamic outlook and a degree of nostalgia for Ottoman imperialism have come to supplant Kemalism. At least in the sense that the latter was no more than a copy of Western ideals and culture, void of any real organic content, this could not be said to be a bad thing. The move away from the traditional, rigid state ideology has, furthermore, opened up a space for a more inclusive concept of identity, even if currently there is little political will for the pursuit of such an ideal among the major parties. The second personal experience touches on the Kurdish question, arguably the most pressing issue facing the Republic of Turkey as it moves on into the new century. Kurds form the biggest minority group in Turkey (some 20 million people) and indeed are the largest ethnic group in the Middle East without their own homeland. The armed struggle for independence within the borders of Turkey waged by the PKK since the 1980s has, to date, cost some 40,000 lives, and at the same time has been a massive drain on Ankara’s resources. A resolution to the problem was an early target of the AKP government, for it lay squarely in the path of its grassroot policies: at home, the economic development of poorer regions, of which the Kurdish dominated southeast was one, abroad, ‘zero-problems’ with neighbours, a strategy that would appear somewhat incongruous and could even be unworkable without peace at home. However, the government’s task was frustrated by the military, which did not welcome civil interference in what it saw as its sphere and had its own view about how the question should be managed and resolved. The reality of the former situation was regularly brought home to me by experiences on the road in the southeast, that of the latter, strikingly, by an incident that took place in Diyarbakır in January 2001. I was in the city to try to get permission to go through Şırnak, a province which, like much of the southeast at that time, was under Emergency Rule. Although I had been given permission to travel by the civil authority in Cizre, on three occasions I was turned back at an army checkpoint beyond the town. The senior official at the governorate in Diyarbakır to whom I was sent by the kaymakam in Cizre was sympathetic and brought it about that I would be issued with a press card. In the week that I was waiting for the card, the chief of police was killed. The manager of my hotel told

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me what happened one morning when I came down for breakfast. The previous evening the chief had left the security headquarters with his protection detail at some time after 5 p.m. Shortly after exiting the complex the convoy was ambushed. The chief, Gaffar Okkan, was shot several times in the head and five of his bodyguards were killed. Later the media reported that it was a local Islamist terror organization that had carried out the attack. But as one commentator put it, the group in question had neither the brains nor the capacity to conduct such an audacious assassination. Locally at least, many, including the manager of my hotel, believed that it was elements within the military that had carried out the operation, concerned that Okkan was seeking to make them more accountable for their intelligence-gathering activities in the city; these, it appeared, often involved suspects being picked up and interrogated, after which they might never be seen or heard of again.4 Such events today have the feel of belonging to a different era, though high profile political killings in the country are still not unheard of. In the southeast the state of emergency has long since been lifted and a democratisation process – however fragile this may seem at times – is underway. Notably, whereas in 2001 public use of the Kurdish language was banned, and the ban rigidly enforced, springing from the ‘Kurdish opening’ in 2009 there are universities today which teach the language, a Kurdish language television station is on air and society-wide there is a steady revitalisation of Kurdish cultural roots and identity. The public excavation of mass graves at Diyarbakır – pointedly in the former military headquarters in the citadel – and at sites about the region, may help towards healing the scars of the conflict years. Regardless of what may unfold in the near future at the heart of Turkish politics, the advances in cultural rights especially cannot easily be halted, and the time when Kurds were denied their own identity and officially labelled ‘mountain Turks’ is now surely gone forever.5 The reduced role of the military establishment in Turkey’s public life, a common thread in the two transformations touched upon above, has arguably been the most important change in the country’s political character since the foundation of the republic in 1923. Seeing itself as the guardian of Atatürk’s secular revolution, in modern times the

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military has staged two coups, in 1960 and 1980, and twice forced governments from office, in 1971 and 1997, as well as executing the country’s first democratically elected leader, Adnan Menderes, in 1961. It has furthermore been linked to the so-called ‘deep state’, a shadowy organisation which has committed numerous murders and acts of terrorism, invariably against targets it regarded as somehow posing a threat to the integrity of the Turkish nation. The army’s most recent open intervention in the political process came during the elections for the president in 2007, in the form of a warning to the AKP not to have its candidate (Abdullah Gül) stand for the post.6 But by this stage, although it didn’t yet realise it, the ground had been cut from under the old guard and its vast nationwide network of officials. With their material lives measurably improved in the short time since the AKP’s ascension in 2002, the public at large was not minded to remain silent; if formerly the actions of the army were not perceived by ordinary citizens as having a real impact on their daily lives, now individual prosperity was at stake. In the snap general election called by Erdoğan for July 2007 the AKP was returned to power with an increased share of the vote, and in August, Gül became president. The resounding electoral rebuttal in the general election signalled the beginning of the end for the army as the core institution of state. In a real sense, this was an exemplary democratic triumph. Erdoğan successfully ended the oligarchic status quo and consolidated his own role as the first citizen of the state by deploying the democratic force he had cultivated through a judicious mix of neoliberal economics and conservative morality. While the bedrock of his support lay in the countless villages of Anatolia, he also drew into his sphere many in the cities, willing if not happy to put aside their ideological misgivings for the prospect of greater prosperity. It is evident that consideration of the momentous changes that have occurred in Turkey since the turn of the millennium needs to have Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as central to it. Many credit him with being the force behind the extraordinary economic transformation of the country since the nadir of 2001 when the IMF was obliged to step in with a rescue plan; with reforms to the legal system that have enhanced transparency and accountability and brought the

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country closer in line with international norms, and with curbing the influence of the army.7 Yet in recent years Erdoğan’s leadership style has come under growing criticism within (and outside) the country. Many suspect him of being an autocrat, of aspiring to lord over a reconstituted Ottoman Empire. In this regard his guilt is said to lie in the fact that he is a democratic leader but, among other failings, his leadership style does not accommodate alternative views within society. In this charge there seems to me to be some truth, if also some blinkeredness, for Erdoğan could in fact be described as an outstanding democrat in the Classical mould – this as opposed to the notional modern democrat who, outwardly at least, embraces the spirit of the term (demos – people, kratos – power). Since early in his political career he has shown himself to have an instinctive grasp of how to use the less-advantaged majority to wage war against the elite. As for those who developed democracy in the ancient Greek world, the origin of and impetus for the system resided in the perpetual struggle of one privileged group to overcome another. The outstanding leader in Classical Athens, Pericles (c.495–429 bce), triumphed over his opponents and maintained an almost unbroken role at the helm of the democracy for over 30 years by bringing the majority to his side. This he did by introducing pay for public service and by maintaining a large navy, a major employer, thus enabling many more citizens to benefit from the wealth of empire and to participate in government through the direct democratic system (citizens themselves voted on motions rather than having elected representatives do so). Whereas hitherto the poor in the main could not afford to attend assembly and court sessions, which were the domain of the aristocracy, now they were incentivised to do so. These newly enfranchised voters were overwhelmingly staunch supporters of Pericles, even overlooking occasional charges of corruption (in 430 bce Pericles was removed from office for misuse of public funds, but very soon after he was re-elected). It is interesting to note that the parallel between the leaders extends to a number of other areas, including a penchant for expensive building projects – in Pericles’ case, the Parthenon and similar monuments, in Erdoğan’s, dams, bridges and mosques – and

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a strong belief by both men that they presided over a polity that others would wish to emulate. Pericles’ famous boast that Athens was the ‘school of Hellas’, where others came to learn, is mirrored in the neo-Ottomanist bent of the Erdoğan government, which has always seen itself (as have many in the West) as a paradigm for the Middle Eastern states disarrayed around it.8 A further key element in understanding Erdoğan as a politician is his confrontational mindset. Doubtless this is partly a personal trait, but conceivably too it is in some part a result of his having been a target of the secular establishment in his early political career. Jailed in 1997 for reciting an Islamic poem, he lost his job as the elected mayor of Istanbul and was banned from politics. ‘In this country, there is a segregation of Black Turks and White Turks’, he once told supporters. ‘Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black Turks’. In light of these dominant leadership traits, then, there were no real grounds to expect that Erdoğan’s curtailing of the army – ironically, a massive undemocratic weight at the heart of Turkey’s polity – would result in a corresponding growth in civic freedom and activity, nor that an unfettered hand in dealing with the Kurdish question would lead to anything like self-determination for the Kurds. Since 2010, in fact, thousands have been jailed pending trial for alleged links to the outlawed PKK, and Turkey now holds the unenviable status of having more journalists in prison than any other country in the world.9 The ongoing Ergenekon investigation, which started in 2007 as a laudable, democratic step in bringing elements within the military to account, increasingly seems like a means for the AKP to silence its opponents. Indeed Erdoğan seems to make it a matter of personal pride to hunt to ground any public voice that opposes his own or questions his judgement about what is best for the people. This is the background to the spontaneous anti-government protests which broke out in Istanbul in May 2013. Most, though by no means all, of these protesters were of a tradition which sees itself connected (not exclusively by way of Atatürk’s vision) to a European lifestyle and culture, and which sees no choice for itself other than resisting the ever more pro-religious leaning and authoritarian style of the leader. In a sense the ‘Gezi movement’ laid bare the underlying chasm in

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Turkey’s society, namely, the absence of a concept of identity such as could hold firmly together, if not unite, the varied histories, traditions and aspirations which are a legacy of Anatolia’s long and rich past. Typically, in the face of the protests Erdoğan turned to his core supporters, convening mass rallies in Istanbul and Ankara and challenging his opposers to fight him at the ballot box. In the absence of any credible opposition, Erdoğan, whether as prime minister, president, or in some other as yet unimagined role, looks set to continue into the foreseeable future as the first citizen of the state. Whether he will be remembered by history as a progressive or a repressive ruler will depend in large part on the degree to which he can see his way to a more inclusive vision of government. In this regard he could note what Pericles had to say on the subject: ‘Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people’ (Thucydides 2.37.1, trans. Warner).10 The chapters in this edited volume explore through a wide lens the background to some of the most important changes that have taken place in Turkey since 2000. Under the central theme of identity, a range of perspectives is offered on the historical and contemporary shaping of Turkey’s self-image. In pursuit of a sort of order we have grouped the chapters under four broad headings (‘Politics’, ‘Society’, ‘Culture’, ‘Past and Present’), though it will be apparent that the boundaries between these are fluid and that several of the chapters could have been placed under more than one heading. The book, which is the first in a new series on Turkey from I.B.Tauris and the British Institute at Ankara, has its origins in a conference organised by Marc Herzog and myself at Exeter in 2010, Perspectives from Turkey in the New Millennium. Several of the writers in this volume were participants, while others we invited to contribute, believing their voices important in relation to our central theme. We believe that the picture that emerges from their analyses helps toward a better understanding of Turkey as it continues to change and to seek its own direction in the world. Mardin, 2014

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Notes 1. Other regional economic centres include Kayseri, Bursa, Gaziantep and Denizli. For their locations, see the map in this volume. On the economic reforms of the 1980s, see the Introduction. 2. GDP per worker and industrial output per worker grew by an average of 3.5 per cent over the decade 2000–10. The Middle East has been a main destination for products, but Turkey has also expanded into Africa, opening a number of new embassies to facilitate growth. In 2001, its exports to African countries amounted to just $1.5 million while by 2011, according to Turkish Foreign Ministry data, this had jumped to $10.3 billion. 3. An AKP television advert aired prior to the 2011 election charted the rise in incomes since the party’s accession in 2002 with a prediction that average real incomes would be $25,000 by 2020. That may well turn out to be the case, though some observers now foresee serious economic challenges ahead. The huge shopping malls are stocked predominantly with goods from abroad, creating a substantial outflow of cash that is not being replaced with the same quantity of sales of Turkish goods abroad, in spite of the best efforts of the Anatolian Tigers. In the wake of the Gezi Park events of 2013, with tourism adversely affected and talk among activists of consumer spending boycotts, internal political instability has become a further impediment to economic growth. 4. The fact that some 30,000 people lined the streets of Diyarbakır to see Okkan off was testimony to his standing in the city. In an interview prior to his death he had said: ‘I established a direct, one-to-one relationship with the people. I talk with everybody. The cordiality of the grocer, for example, is invaluable to me. I have proven to be credible. If, as mystery murders continue, you fail to apprehend the perpetrators you cannot be credible. I have educated my officers. I explained to them that people need affection and respect. I trust my 5,000-strong force ... we serve the people. I was told to come to Diyarbakır and protect the lives, honour and property of the people living here. And I have done my duty’. 5. Cihan Tuğal has remarked that ‘repression of the Kurdish language and culture has been more savage in Turkey than in Syria, Iraq or Iran’ (Cihan Tuğal, ‘Democratic janissaries: Turkey’s role in the Arab Spring’, New Left Review 76/10 (2012), pp. 5–24). On labelling, it is somewhat ironic that the term ‘Kurdistan’, which was coined by Seljuk Turks, became taboo under Kemalism. 6. Immediately following the first round of the presidential election on 27 April, the Office of the Chief of the General Staff put out a statement on its website: ‘it must not be forgotten that the Turkish Armed Forces do take

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sides in this debate (about secularism) and are the sure and certain defenders of secularism ... (T)hey will make their position and stance perfectly clear as needs be. Let nobody have any doubt about this’. Not a few would argue that giving Erdoğan credit for the first two is unfair. It was the nous and perseverance of Kemal Derviş, a World Bank economist who was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs in the wake of the 2001 meltdown, which laid the ground for the growth in the 2000s, while Abdullah Gül, prime minister and foreign minister in the reforming period that marked the AKP’s first years in power, was a key figure in driving democratic change. ‘School of Hellas’, Thucydides 2.41. On Pericles see Plutarch’s Life of Pericles. In the eight weeks that followed the outbreak of protests against Erdoğan in May 2013, the Turkish Journalists Union (Türkiye Gazeteciler Cemiyet) reported that at least 75 journalists had been sacked, forced to take leave or had resigned from their posts. The translation of this passage is controversial. Warner probably sought to reflect the circumstance of the state being under the control of the people.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Mardin Artuklu University and the British Institute at Ankara, our respective employers, for affording us the time needed to edit this book. We are very grateful as well to Stratim and its Director, Suat Kınıklıoğlu, for the funding provided for a conference on the theme of identity in contemporary Turkey at Exeter in 2010. In the course of putting the book together numerous people assisted us. We would like to thank all of them, especially Christine Allison, Stephen Mitchell, Jill Child, Didem Pekün, Rysbek and Elvira Alimov, Mel Abi, Leonidas Karakatsanis and Catherine Owen. Special thanks to Maria Marsh at I.B.Tauris for her patience and encouragement, and to our families for all their support.

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LIST OF FIGURES AND ILLUSTR ATIONS

1.1 1.2 1.3

Infra- and supra-identities during the Ottoman Empire Infra- and supra-identities during the Turkish Republic An overall view of the shift towards Türkiyeli in the evolution of Turkish political thought

6.1

Ankara-based trekking groups on Facebook in 2012

8.1

Book cover: Hovsep Vartanyan, Akabi Hikayesi (Istanbul, 1851) Book cover: Yanko Milyopoulos, Pneumatiki Trofi: Gida-yi Ruh (Istanbul, 1890) Book cover: Yeremya Çelebi Kömürciyan, Hikaye-i Faris ve Viyena (Istanbul, 1871) Book cover: Hovsep Kurbanyan, İki Kapı Yoldaşları Yahut Hakk ü Adaletin Zuhuru, (Istanbul, 1885) Üstad: Judeo-Turkish Newspaper published in Izmir

8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

10.1 Ankara University Logo (sun disc) 10.2 Sihhiye Hatti monument 10.3 Ankara city symbol 10.4 Ankara Kocatepe mosque 10.5 Taşköprü poster for 17th International Festival of Culture and Garlic 10.6 Poster for the 1st International Commagene Symposium of Culture, Art and Tourism, June 2010

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27 28 34 151 201 202 203 204 205 250 251 252 253 255 257

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11.1 Number of archaeological excavations in Turkey by period between 1999–2009 11.2 Number of Byzantine and Turkish/Islamic excavations in Turkey between 1999–2009 11.3 Number of surveys by period between 1999–2009 11.4 Number of Byzantine and Turkish/Islamic surveys between 1999–2010

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TR ANSLITER ATION

Some letters of the Turkish alphabet do not occur in English or are pronounced in a different manner. The following is a rough guide: c ç g ğ ı j ö ş ü

like j as in ‘jam’ or ‘jungle’ like tch as in ‘catch’ hard g, as in ‘garden’ known as ‘soft g’, prolongs pronounciation of the preceding vowel as in ‘neighbor’ as i in ‘bird’ or ‘dozen’ as s in ‘pleasure’ as ö in ‘döner kebap’ like sh as in ‘ship’ as ü in the French ‘tu’

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Turkey and its neighbours. Map by editors. ShaneBrennan_01_prelims.indd xxiv

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INTRODUCTION Marc Herzog

If one were to set the Turkey of today alongside the country as it was at the beginning of the 2000s, the two would in many aspects seem nearly identical, but would be hard to recognize in many others. By any measure the opening years of the twenty-first century have been a period of momentous transformation for Turkey. Economically, the country has developed into an international powerhouse, now ranked in the top 20 economies in the world, whereas only a decade earlier it was suffering the worst economic crisis in its republican history. The domestic scene has been marked by the emerging political dominance and increasing authoritarianism of the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) which has governed Turkey since 2002. From an outsider’s perspective Turkey’s emergence as a key actor in many of its surrounding regions has perhaps been one of the most visible changes. Many pundits have proclaimed the country to be a type of model for the wider Muslim world. The increasingly global reach of Turkey’s cultural output has complemented these significant and sometimes contradictory processes and opened up its own society to a diversity of different outlooks and perspectives. However, while the previous decade has seen the space for social, cultural and political expression expand, the traditional power structures of the Turkish state have also sought to constrain this process, as can be seen, for instance, by the large number of journalists currently in judicial custody.1 The widespread protests that erupted across the country in the summer of 2013 and which were broadly against the increasing authoritarianism of

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the current government were another sign of this struggle. This book seeks to focus on major changes of the last decade and to examine their significance in terms of how they have influenced Turkey’s identity and self-image. These developments seem even more significant when considered against the larger historical time frame since the foundation of the Turkish Republic. As we will see, they have contributed to a process of chipping away at and replacing old characterizations that were previously instrumental in how Turks perceived themselves and their country, as well as how they were seen by the outside world.

National identity and self-image National self-images are largely dependent on the dominant narratives of national culture and identity that surround them. These narratives of culture and identity that bring the nation to life as a multidimensional entity aim to function as super-containers, which can create a sense of collective belonging akin to a ‘community of cultural sameness’.2 They aim to satisfy basic human needs of belonging to a greater whole by providing ‘myths of ancestry, kinship, permanence and home’.3 It is ironic that in the twenty-first century, hailed or feared as the age of borderless globalization, the institution of the sovereign nation state remains one of the basic building blocks of social or political identity throughout the world. The Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, is a good example. In weaving together a mix of memories, myths, traditions and symbols, narratives of national identity in Turkey have to a significant degree been socially constructed. Benedict Anderson famously referred to nations as ‘imagined communities’ requiring the development of shared forms of reality to create a horizontal sense of unity and cohesion amongst its citizenry.4 However, for a nation-state to acquire an identity and a culture, its reality as a living entity needs to be experienced, negotiated and shared on a daily basis, touching all levels of society. Michael Billig has argued that contemporary social life is permeated every day with numerous encounters involving banal images, labels and texts that maintain the currency of national identity.5 A potent reminder of this in Turkish everyday life can be seen in the omnipresent display of national symbols and imagery: from

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the flags hanging from apartment balconies and shop windows to the images and proverbs of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk that can be found in most public buildings and many other places. Narratives of national identity offer shelter and inclusion within a larger communal enterprise, both timeless in terms of its ancient foundations and enduring into the distant future. However, despite the ageless nature with which national identities are portrayed, they actually evolve continuously by adapting themselves to the tastes and trends of the contemporary age. Like a kaleidoscope full of glittery particles, national identities and self-images are never eternally fixed despite the seeming solidity with which they may be portrayed at any one point in time. They are dynamic entities, always shifting and in motion, fiercely contested and open to a multiplicity of continuous interpretations from different actors and groups in society. The narratives underlying national identities and self-images can be deepened to incorporate different historical periods and stretched to accommodate and emphasize almost any amount of contemporary themes and concerns. Roxanne Lynn Doty, an international relations scholar, reflects on this reality in commenting that ‘national identity is never a finished product; it is always in the process of being constructed and reconstructed’.6 Diverse narratives of national identity may exist alongside each other within a single context. In the Turkish case, the political theorist Tanıl Bora distinguishes between five major discourses of existing nationalism.7 Just as with its many contemporary counterparts, national identity in Turkey comprises a vast landscape of images, markers and myths that are constantly claimed by rival ideological or political projects. Throughout this volume, this theme will be taken up and examined from different perspectives in relation to changes and developments in Turkey’s recent history and especially in the last decade. The politics behind the selection of different symbols and narratives for national and regional self-images, which Stephen Mitchell discusses in his chapter, provides a case in point. In the case of Ankara the alternation of representative symbols for the city reveals the interplay between different historical interpretations for Turkey’s capital as well as the country itself. As argued in Mitchell’s chapter, a frank and

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engaged examination of these ancient pasts can uncover constructive perspectives that can inform the making of a national identity that is both inclusive and built on respect for cultural diversity.

National identity in Turkey At first glance, it seems that the ideational pillars upon which the character of Turkey’s national identity rest have remained fairly stable over time. During the late period of the Ottoman Empire, Ziya Gökalp, one of the most influential Turkish sociologists of the twentieth century, became the most eminent proponent of a nationalistic conception of identity as a way of binding together the Muslim populations of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. He formulated the foundation of this new identity as consisting of a triangular overlap of Turkish ethnicity (Türkleşmek), Islamic moral ethos (Islamlaşmak) and modernization (muasırlaşmak). In this formulation, Western-centric modernization rather than direct Europeanization (Avrupalilaşmak) was emphasized in contrast to an earlier triangular conceptualization by Hüseyinzade Ali, one of Gökalp’s colleagues, which focused more on the latter. This interplay of Islam, Turkism and modernity with a pro-European flavour has continued to represent an essential part of contemporary Turkey’s self-image and national identity. It is helpful to look at the wider historical context within which this proposed conception arose. Gökalp’s three-sided synthesis was developed during an epoch which was dominated by the narratives of imperial decline and collapse, the seeming encroachment by Western imperial powers, internal rebellion and the coming to power of a new Westward-oriented elite, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which unseated Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1909. Shaken by the ongoing wars and crises, the CUP, or the Young Turks as they became known, felt an urgent need to foster a common identity that would mobilize popular support for the establishment of a new political community which could ensure the Ottoman Empire’s sovereignty and independence in the face of external pressures. Alternative conceptions of a common identity were also swirling around within the shrinking boundaries of the Ottoman Empire in its last three decades. These

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were variously based on Islamist, pan-Turkist and Ottomanist ideologies; one interesting alternative, Anadoluculuk, which never went beyond a small circle of nationalist intellectuals, conceived of a future common identity that was primarily based on Anatolian geography, culture and history.8 The project of creating a common national solidarity was still more pressing in the post-Ottoman context, once the fledgling Turkish Republic had been established. The end of the independence struggle left the country firmly in the hands of Mustafa Kemal, who became increasingly institutionalized as the father of the young nation-state and of the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Yet the experience of being occupied by four different Western powers after 1918 left a traumatic imprint. The victors of the Independence war felt that only a viable and thoroughly modern nation-state could hold off future foreign invasions and serve to protect the interests of the new Turkish Republic. The Italian statesman Massimo d’Azeglio commented upon this universal need of the sovereign nation-state to craft a suitable mantle of identity with which to capture the loyalty of its new citizens in stating, ‘we have made Italy, now we must make Italians’. Similarly, Mustafa Kemal declared that ‘nations who cannot find their national identity are prey to other nations’, a remark echoing the character of the period after the Independence war. Thus, the creation of a national identity for the young republic as a top-down project undertaken by the state went in tandem with an extensive and ambitious programme of national development and socio-cultural modernization. The latter was seen as essential to attain ‘the contemporary level of civilization’ as the slogans of the Republican People’s Party put it.9 The reforms included the introduction of a new republican constitution, the abolition of the Islamic caliphate, the replacement of the old Ottoman script with the Latin alphabet and the replacing of traditional forms of dress with modern European ones. The last included banning the wearing of the turban as well as the fez, the symbol of the Ottoman citizen, to be replaced by Western-style hats. The creation of a new national identity also entailed conceiving of a new historical foundation for the young nation-state that would allow it to divorce itself from the Ottoman Empire and its catastrophic collapse. For this

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reason, a link to a more distant and untroubled past was unearthed, locating the early origins of the Turkish people in the Hittite and Sumerian empires of the Bronze Age. As part of this endeavour to establish an alternative historical foundation the Turkish government sponsored large archaeological projects relating to that period in the 1920s and 1930s. In her chapter on archaeology in Turkey, Burcu Erciyas takes note of its current state in the country and looks at how the physical legacy of Turkey’s past is dealt with to suit different imaginations of its history, development and identity. The Kemalist order officially organized its concept of citizenship along the basis of civic nationalism in the sense that anyone born within the territory of the Turkish state should be recognized as an equal citizen. It attempted to further fashion a working platform out of it that would be practical for the majority of the country’s inhabitants. So within the ‘six arrows’ outlook that was adopted as expressing the core values of Kemalist thought during the 1930s, a strong emphasis on secularism, nationalism and modernization stood out.10 In an attempt to make a clean break from the Ottoman past, questions relating to Muslim identity and values were excluded from this outlook. Kemalism sought not only to separate the influence of religion from the structures of the state and society but also to control and regulate it in order to render it a tool of governmental power. This laicist arrangement was doubtlessly genuine in many of its secularist aspects and contributed much to the introduction of secular thought into Turkish society. Nevertheless, this new arrangement also masked a strong, implicit bias towards ethnoreligious homogeneity within the supposedly civic nature of Turkish citizenship. This resulted in the identity of one particular ethnic community, that of the Turks, being privileged above that of all others as the main identity group. One of the most well known slogans of Kemalist nationalism is Ne mutlu Türküm diyene (‘Happy is the one who says “I am a Turk” ’). The ability to call oneself a Turk, however, seemed to depend on people’s ability to meet the criteria of Turkish ethnicity, the Sunni-Hanefi community and staunch attachment to the modern, secularist mindset of the Kemalist regime. Alternative conceptions of identity that lay

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beyond these parameters, such as those held by so-called ‘minority’ groups like the Kurdish, Alevi or non-Muslim religious communities, were denied and hindered. The stipulations of the 1923 Lausanne treaty reinforced this state of affairs by refusing to accept that there were Muslim minority groups in Turkey. This focus extended as well to restricting oral and written culture to the new Turkish language. So the focus on Muslim identity, Turkish ethnicity and the project of accommodating society, state and culture to visions of modernity and modernization as evoked by Gökalp was vital in constituting the selfimage of the Turkish nation-state and its people. Nevertheless, the image of what Turkey is and could or should be has continuously changed and expanded throughout its republican history. These changes have given rise to contradictory interpretations of Turkish national identity and the country’s self-image. The past decade has seen the increasing polarization of these different views but it has also witnessed, more than ever before, the emergence of alternative viewpoints and opinions within this debate. Despite pressures directed from both the state and society to contain this development, recent history has experienced a progressive pluralization of societal identities emerging in mainstream society, which has challenged the legitimacy of accepted and dominant narratives. As veteran journalists of Turkish domestic politics Hugh and Nicole Pope say, ‘Turkey is talking in many new voices’.11 These processes have ensured that the exact nature of Turkey’s self-image remains essentially contested and is constantly changing. This shifting character has marked the struggle to determine what Turkey’s self-image is and should be as much as it underlines the changing nature of power relations between state and society. Of course, the changes and developments over the past two decades cannot be compared to the drama of the republic’s founding in 1923, but they have certainly been significant in altering Turkey’s self-image as a national entity amongst its populace as well as the outside world.

Turkey in the past decade In the sphere of domestic and foreign politics, the past decade has seen momentous transformations in Turkey. Not only has the AKP been

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in power since 2002, but its two consecutive re-elections were also accompanied with a higher vote-share each time, an unprecedented hat trick in the history of Turkish party politics. Turkey’s party politics have been significantly altered by this evolution and have increasingly adopted the format of a dominant party system such as Italy during the rule of Democrazia Christiana, although the latter was in power for almost 50 years. This recent development seems more remarkable when placed against the context of the 1990s, when the political instability that dominated the domestic scene saw five relatively shortlived governments, of which the majority were coalition or minority governments. The increasing predominance of civilian electoral politics in Turkey’s public sphere, coupled with the gradual opening of its economy, has been accompanied by wider socio-political developments at the domestic level that have affected the country’s self-image, specifically in relation to its Kemalist legacy. Especially during the AKP’s first term in power, a real sense of optimism in public opinion seemed to accompany preparations for the start of the EU accession process in October 2005. In relation to this, the government embarked on a spirited campaign of political liberalization with the seeming aim of addressing many of the shortcomings of Turkey’s democratic system. This early period is still seen as ‘the golden age of reforms’.12 The optimism that it produced created the impression that it could be possible to tackle the task of reformulating the terms on which citizenship is based in order to take account of the diversity and multicultural nature of contemporary society. As remarked, although Turkish citizenship was notionally based on civic nationalism, in fact it strongly favoured a particular segment of society at the expense of the numerous other existing ‘minority’ groups. Changing this to a more multicultural conception of political citizenship would entail adopting a more pluralist approach. One proposal of this sort that has been mooted is based on the concept of Türkiyeli (‘being of Turkey’), which based itself on a territorial basis and stressed everyone’s inclusion irrespective of ethnic or religious affiliation. A governmental human rights advisory board released a report in 2004 which attracted much controversy, promoting the use of this concept to create a truly inclusive national identity that all people could share. In his chapter, Baskın Oran, a former member of the Human Rights Advisory

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Committee (HRAC) for the Turkish Prime Minister’s office and one of the main authors of the report, illustrates the history of this term in the past decade and outlines its possibilities of becoming a template upon which Turkey’s narrative of national identity can be based. However, since the latter part of its second term in office after the 2007 elections, the AKP government has also adopted an increasingly authoritarian form of governance. It increasingly alienated its erstwhile commitment to the democratic reform of Turkish politics, and the precarious current situation for freedom of the press and freedom of expression is often cited in support of this. This has extended to the realm of social media on the internet as both Twitter and Youtube have been intermittently blocked by government. These developments seem somewhat similar to those of the late 1950s, when the immensely popular government of Adnan Menderes gradually became more authoritarian in order to safeguard its hold on power. In this sense, the Ergenekon investigation – supposedly aimed at uncovering a secret ‘deep state’ network of conspirators among the ranks of the Turkish armed forces, the bureaucracy and the intelligence realm – came to be seen by many as a politicized process partly serving the government as a strategy to imprison or intimidate its critics. This growing authoritarianism, linked to an aim to replace the current parliamentary system with a strong presidential one, surely spells trouble for Turkey’s efforts of further democratic consolidation. During June 2013, mass protests took place in almost 80 cities across the country, bringing over two and a half million people onto the streets within the space of three weeks.13 During this period, almost 8,000 people were injured and at least four killed.14 At the beginning the demonstrations were mostly focused on a controversial redevelopment plan for Istanbul’s city centre by the government that would have seen one of the city’s few remaining green spaces, Gezi Park, levelled to make way for a shopping mall.15 However, they quickly transformed into a much broader outlet of widespread frustration, anxiety and anger felt by significant segments of the public against the AKP’s increasingly autocratic manner of governance. They can be seen as the largest eruption of public anger since the 1970s. Although it has yet to be seen how the Gezi protest movement will affect the nature of Turkey’s politics, it is probable that it will influence

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the important if now somewhat stalled project of the parliament to establish a new constitution to replace that authored by the last military government in the 1980s. Constitutions are supposed to provide a sense of foundational clarity and direction to the political character of a country by outlining the basic principles by which the state is to be governed. In this respect, they can be seen as a vital blueprint of a country’s character, form and democratic identity. The overall nature of the 1982 constitution was intended ‘to protect the state and its authority against its citizens rather than protecting individuals against the encroachments of the state authority’.16 In his chapter, William Hale analyzes and dissects the tortuous path that the project to shape a civilian constitution, and to find a common consensus on how to fill it, has taken in recent years. A successful end result of this process, according to him, would significantly strengthen the country’s democratic identity. The past decade has also witnessed significant changes in Turkey’s image on the global stage as it developed into an increasingly important multi-regional actor in the international system. The common consensus among observers of the country seems to be that its economic trading strength, the popularity of its cultural products across various regions and its diplomatic capacity, provided it with a form of soft power that has been instrumental in its rise as a dynamic multi-regional actor. This role and stature as an international actor has evolved dramatically from the isolationist stance pursued by the early republic in the 1920s when its focus was inward and concentrated on the development of the country’s infrastructure. In particular, the decade up until the outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 saw improvements in relations with most of the surrounding countries. Notably, the uprisings across the Middle East which flared in 2011 emphasized Turkey’s new stature internationally, with Prime Minister Erdoğan frequently cited as the most popular statesman in regional opinion polls.17 However, developments since then also seem to have made the region less stable, with turmoil in Syria and Egypt potentially challenging the newfound Turkish claim to being a stabilizing, multi-regional player. In this regard, Sevilay Aksoy examines the claim that Turkey has shifted its foreign policy orientation from one that privileged realpolitik and security issues in its surrounding neighbourhoods, to one

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that has actively adopted a broader normative identity, incorporating the promotion of democracy, human rights and good governance. Turkey’s economic landscape has also changed dramatically. If the famous ‘sick man on the Bosphorus’ stereotype was still used to define the sluggish and unstable character of Turkey’s economy in 2002, it is evident at a glance how much that facet of its identity has been overhauled in the past decade. From the 1980s onwards, notably under the premiership of Turgut Özal, the economy underwent large-scale neoliberal reforms and began to shift towards a private market economy open to international investment and trade. However, this process was unstable and marginalized large segments of the population, although it also generated quite a few ‘winners’, such as the Anatolian business class, which came to be known as the ‘Anatolian Tigers’. During the 1980s and 1990s the economy suffered from periodic crises. High inflation rates of 60–80 per cent on average and stark budget deficits were common features, with the severe economic crisis of 2002 causing the country’s gross national product to contract by 6 per cent. Indeed, the old currency depreciated so much that at one point one dollar equated to 1,500,000 Lira. Reforms implemented after the 2002 meltdown changed this picture. In 2010, the economy was the sixteenth largest in the world in terms of GDP and has grown at an average of 6–7 per cent per year since 2003. Inflation has been reduced to a single digit figure and total export values rose from $28bn in 2000 to more than $115bn in 2011 as domestic manufacturers began to expand into new export markets.18 Tourism has also become an important source of income, generating approximately $23bn in 2011, with 31 million people coming to visit the country.19 Although the global economic crisis that struck in 2008 has moderated Turkey’s future outlook, its quick recovery seemed to suggest that its economy was on sound footing. This was reflected by the decision of the international ratings agency Fitch to bestow an investment-grade status upon Turkey in November 2012, signalling that there was broad confidence with the development of the national economy. The rapid economic development and growth in the 2000s has served as an important source of self-confidence for Turkey’s population, especially vis-à-vis the outside world. Nonetheless, a number of

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problems with the economy remain, such as Turkey’s dependence on foreign capital as investment funding, the high current account deficit, the shortage of domestic savings, a rising inflation rate (currently around 10 per cent) and the wider danger of a renewed global economic recession. The growing authoritarianism of Turkey’s government, elite infighting within the AKP and the graft accusations against high-level politicians which emerged in late 2013, have all exacerbated these factors whilst previously high growth rates have also dropped. Moreover, the country’s economic growth needs to be distributed more equally among society and channeled into needed socio-economic development, especially in the country’s poorest provinces in the east.

Turkey’s society and who speaks for it The economic transformation of the country since the 1980s has gone hand-in-hand with other significant long-term socio-economic developments that, together, have had a profound effect on the way Turkish society has evolved. One that stands out is rapid urbanization. Once seen as a land where most people lived in the countryside rather than the cities, large-scale rural-urban migration in the last few decades has upended this demographic balance. Indeed, according to UN estimates, by 2015 three quarters of the population will live in urban areas.20 In the space of the last 65 years Istanbul, Turkey’s economic and cultural heart, saw its own population grow from barely one million to approximately 14 million. During the past century, the city has been involved in a never-ending process of expansion, change and redefinition. While it saw the multicultural composition of its population fade during this period, especially as new migrants arrived, a sense of multicultural diversity has remained alive as a strong part of its identity. Meanwhile, Istanbul’s remarkable re-emergence as a global city of business and tourism since the 1980s has also been a source of rapid internal socio-economic transformations and tensions. In his chapter, Paul Osterlund looks at the recent development of the city and how current economic and political interests are transforming its historical identity and character. As mentioned earlier, the recent protests in the summer of 2013 originated in the public opposition to the levelling of

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a park in Istanbul’s centre and were also related to the speed and force of the urban changes that the city has witnessed in recent decades. The large-scale migration and urbanization that has been seen in the past 50 years across Turkey coincided with other socio-economic phenomena such as higher literacy, increased social mobility and exposure to mass media. Together they have begun to redefine expectations and aspirations within Turkish society. External forces such as those of cultural and economic globalization have also been influential agents in this process. As a result of this, the space and opportunity for social and cultural expression has increasingly widened while alternative identities and lifestyle choices at both the collective and individual level have also become more visible. For instance, issues relating to alternative gender identity and sexual orientation, formerly a taboo issue, have steadily gained more and more public prominence in the past decade. In this respect, Umut Beşpınar’s chapter examines how movements in this area, such as those representing and campaigning for lesbian, gay and transgender communities, have organized and mobilized in the past decade. Turkey’s self-image has traditionally been constructed in line with conservative norms, stressing patriarchal values and overt heterosexuality. This excluded and stigmatized any open formulations of alternative gender identity or sexual orientation and rejected the acceptance of lesbian, gay and transsexual communities as ordinary elements of mainstream society. A prominent example of this was seen in 2009 when the State Minister for Women and Family Affairs, S. Aliye Kavaf, described homosexuality as a ‘biological disorder’ or ‘illness’.21 Discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay and transsexual communities remains common. Nevertheless, despite heavy socio-cultural and political opposition, this theme has gained increasing visibility since the 1990s. In the past decade, gay pride marches have started to be held, although this has been limited to Istanbul so far. Furthermore, in 2005, ‘Kaos Gl’ became the first LGBT organization in the country to gain legal recognition as an official NGO. This increasing presence has also been reflected in the greater media coverage of this subject. While this is a notable example of the social pluralism which one can see emerging today in everyday urban life, it should be understood

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at the same time that this development is still quite limited and faces strong resistance. Nevertheless, as Bill Park remarks, in an ‘increasingly noisy Turkish domestic social and political marketplace’ a growing range of mindsets, lifestyles, identities and choices must now compete more and more for attention.22 In his chapter, Jak Den Exter examines how the structural changes that Turkey’s society and economy underwent in the past few decades have led to the emergence of a new, urban middle class with greater freedom for individual self-realization than ever before. Looking at the growing phenomenon of trekking in Turkey, he argues that this is one of a range of new activities, like salsa dancing or yoga, that have recently appeared. According to him, greater access to communication media and technology like the internet and mobile phones have also been important factors in this process. As seen, the historical development of the mainstream discourse on national identity implicitly privileged Turkic ethnicity, Sunni Islam and a broad secular outlook. Alternative ethno-religious identities and ‘minority’ groups were regularly oppressed and still suffer from widespread discrimination nowadays. However, the last ten years have also seen significant movement in breaking down this former taboo topic, especially in the case of the Kurdish people. This can be seen in the advances that have been made on the tortuous path towards legitimating a Kurdish sense of identity. Most notably, Kurdish is now taught in schools and universities.23 The legitimate use of the language, whether seen on road signs, spoken within official bureaucracy or sung in music, has gradually become an established fact on the ground within Turkish society as well as the state. In this regard, the reforms that were put into legislation and implemented in the past decade have gone some way towards normalizing Kurdish identity. The widespread impression during the first AKP term was that the government was intent on tackling the Kurdish issue through a broad range of proposed socio-political reforms rather than the military methods of the past. Indeed, these efforts went further towards normalizing Kurdish identity than ever before. Nevertheless, they did not go far enough by far and, up until late 2012, there was a feeling that the window of opportunity that opened itself up in the first half of the decade to arrive at a just and comprehensive settlement

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of the Kurdish issue had all but closed. This can be seen by the increasing regularity of fighting between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces over the past six years with over 700 people killed in a 14-month period up to September 2012 alone.24 Kurdish politicians and political activists have to confront the regular risk of arrest and the last decade has seen the constitutional dissolution of two pro-Kurdish parties. As of Spring 2013, a new series of peace talks have been underway between the Turkish government, the PKK and Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader who has been imprisoned since 2001. Many Turkish and foreign commentators have cautiously welcomed the tone of these talks and pointed to them as the most promising development in recent years. Yet some are sceptical and consider that the development owes itself more to the prime minister’s electoral agenda than any genuine drive for a solution. Doubtless time will tell. Although the focus on the Kurdish issue has clearly attracted most attention, the plight of other ‘minority’ communities has also been increasingly highlighted as a result of growing public awareness of Turkey’s ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. The murder of TurkishArmenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, and the killings of several Christians, specifically that of three Protestants in Malatya in 2007, generated a lot of national and international attention regarding this subject.25 The government has undertaken small yet positive steps to assist religious minorities, for instance returning confiscated property to Greek Orthodox communities and others as well as the reinstitution of several Greek Orthodox churches for religious services. Moreover, the 2011 national elections marked the first time that a Christian, Erol Dora, a Syriac from Mardin, was voted into parliament since the introduction of multi-party elections in 1946.26 While these individual acts have done much to garner positive media attention and stimulate debate, the reform drive to arrive at extending full and equal citizenship to all of Turkey’s inhabitants urgently needs to be restarted. As part of the focus on the country’s minority groups, Christine Allison examines the case of Turkey’s Yezidis, a distinct ethno-religious group living in the southeast, as well as regions of the Caucasus, whose religion contains elements of Zoroastrianism and Islamic Sufi doctrine.

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The representation and reception of alternative narratives of identity does not only occur through political debates, government policies and the loud campaigning of civil society movements; crucially, the role of cultural representation through music, literature and film also play an essential role in circulating these themes within mainstream society. For instance, the 2011 film Zenne Dancer grappled with the acceptance of homosexuality in mainstream society. Likewise, in the literary world, writers such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Şafak have raised issues of alternative identities through their work and therefore contributed to highlighting these topics for debate, discussion and re-interpretation to both national and international audiences. Donna Landry looks at representations of queerness and queer identity in contemporary Turkish fiction by focusing on the writings of three authors and how their literary works have challenged stereotypical images and imaginings of historical and contemporary society in Turkey. Likewise, Laurent Mignon examines the work of Jewish, Greek and Armenian writers during the late Ottoman period and highlights them as examples of how the literary contribution from ‘minority’ communities was excluded in the historiography of Turkish literature. He also details how these works are helping to inform the debate regarding a multicultural conception of Turkish identity and heritage, as well as the role and history of minorities in this. As one can see from these insights, discussing issues of national identity and self-image in relation to a country’s contemporary changes and developments is a complex and multifaceted exercise. In that sense this volume presents a diverse panorama covering a variety of fields including politics, history and society. Each contribution attempts to grapple with a different dimension and aspect in which Turkish society or the state has changed in recent decades and how this has interacted with narratives of national identity and self-image. It has become evident that the ability to determine and impose what national identity is or should be in contemporary Turkey has become more difficult than ever before. The increasingly diverse character of Turkey’s society and its media has meant that no single narrative on identity can escape challenges or counter-narratives. This concerns not just national identity but, as was seen, also a subset of social, political and civil identities that are being vigorously negotiated in society. Although there are multiple

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sources of pressures from both society and state that try to regain this status quo, the level of public debate on issues of identity is much more open and vibrant than ever before. The protests that flared up across Turkey in the summer of 2013 are a testament to the growing strength of civil society as well as the wide spectrum of voices and actors within it. The emergence of the public space in which critical conversations and debates on society and politics can take place is closely connected to the changes at both international and domestic level that have affected the Turkish state and society in recent decades. It is certain that this space is likely to remain noisy, contested and conflictual, especially in a climate of growing censorship. However, it also carries the possibility that more inclusive and multicultural understandings of Turkish identity recognizing the social and cultural diversity of Turkey’s past, present and future will in time gain weight and be strengthened.

Notes 1. The 2012 report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP), an international organization that focuses on press freedom, stated that the number of jailed journalists in Turkey surpasses that of Iran, Eritrea and China – CPJ, Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis (CJP: New York, 2012), p. 6. 2. D. Brown, Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural, and Multicultural Politics (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 22. 3. Brown, Contemporary Nationalism, p. 22. 4. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 3rd edn (London: Verso, 2006). 5. M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995). 6. Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Sovereignty and the nation: Constructing the boundaries of national identity’, in T.J. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds), State Sovereignty as Social Constructs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 123. 7. These five major discourses have been termed ‘official Atatürk nationalism’, ‘Kemalist Ulusçuluk’, liberal neo-nationalism, pan-Turkish radical nationalism and Islamist nationalism; see T. Bora, ‘Nationalist discourses in Turkey’, in A. Kadıoğlu and E. Fuat Keyman (eds), Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011). 8. S.A. Sofos and U. Özkirimli, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (London: Hurst, 2008), p. 134. 9. A. Kadioğlu, ‘The paradox of Turkish nationalism and the construction of official identity’, Middle Eastern Studies 32/2 (1996), pp. 177–93.

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10. The six arrows represented comprised the fundamental principles of Kemalism (republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, statism and reformism) as adopted by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 1936. For more information see Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd edn (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004), pp. 181–82. 11. H. Pope and N. Pope, Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey, 4th edn (New York: Overlook Press, 2011), p. 5. 12. P. Kubicek, ‘Political conditionality and European Union’s cultivation of democracy in Turkey’, Democratization 18/4 (2011), p. 914. 13. Hürriyet Daily News, ‘2.5 million people attended Gezi protests across Turkey: Interior Ministry’, 23 June 2013, http://www.hurriyetdailynews. com/25-million-people-attended-gezi-protests-across-turkey-interior-ministry-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=49292&NewsCatID=341. 14. Radikal‚ ‘Gezi’nin bilançosu: 4 ölü, 8000 yaralı’, Radikal, 28 June 2013 http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezinin_bilancosu_4_olu_8000_ yarali-1139528. 15. I. Turan, Encounters with the Third Kind: Turkey’s New Political Forces are Met by Old Politics (Washington: GMFUS, 2013), p. 1. 16. E. Özbudun and Ö.F. Gençkaya, Democratization and the Politics of ConstitutionMaking in Turkey (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), p. 21. 17. M. Akgün and S.S. Gündoğar, The Perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2011 (Istanbul: TESEV, 2012), p. 19. 18. Türkstat, ‘Foreign Trade Statistics’, Foreign Trade (2011), available at http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/VeriBilgi.do?tb_id=12&ust_id=4 (accessed 23 September 2012). 19. Türkstat, ‘Tourism Statistics, II Quarter 2012’ (2012), available at www. turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenlerido?id=10865 (accessed 14 November 2012). 20. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision and World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision (United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs, 2011), available at http://esa.un.org/wpp/ and http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/FINAL-FINAL_REPORT%20WUP2011_ Annextables_01Aug2012_Final.pdf. 21. Hürriyet Sunday Supplement, ‘ “Homosexuality is a Disease” says Turkish Minister’, Hürriyet Daily News, 7 March 2010, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=8216homosexuality-is-a-disease8217-says-minister2010–03–07. 22. B. Park, Modern Turkey: People, State and Foreign Policy in a Globalized World (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 208.

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23. The introduction of Kurdish as a study topic at Mardin Artuklu University and several others in the southeastern region is an example. 24. International Crisis Group, Turkey: The PKK and a Kurdish Settlement (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2012), p. 35. 25. Hrant Dink was a renowned Turkish-Armenian journalist and the editor of Argos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper. A catholic priest, Andrea Santoro, was murdered in Samsun in 2006. A year later, three Christian missionaries and employees of a religious publishing house were brutally murdered in the eastern city of Malatya. 26. Erol Dora is currently a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP); see S. Cagaptay, ‘Turkey’s First Christian’, Hürriyet Daily News, 24 July 2011, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ turkeys-first-christian.aspx?pageID=438&n=turkey8217s-8216firstchristian8217–2011–07–24.

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CHAPTER 1 EXPLOR ING TUR KISHNESS: ‘TUR KISH’ AND TÜR K İ YEL İ Baskın Oran

On 1 October 2004, the Human Rights Advisory Commission (HRAC),1 a human rights body of which I was a member, and which was appointed by the Turkish Prime Minister’s Office, published ‘The Report on Minority Rights and Cultural Rights’. Produced by one of the 13 subcommittees of the HRAC, it was approved in the Commission’s plenary by 24 votes for, seven against and two abstentions. Shortened in the media to ‘Minority Report’, it was prepared in accordance with paragraphs a, b and d of Art. 5 of the HRAC Regulation, titled ‘Duties of the Commission’. These paragraphs task the Commission to ‘provide advice, submit recommendations and reports, express opinion and recommend adoption of administrative measures’. The report caused a furore in Turkey. There were all sorts of attacks on it. For example, one member of the Commission seized and tore up the papers held by the Chairman of HRAC during the press conference. The attacks included all sorts of threats and insults. Some trade union leaders issued death threats. One member of the parliament took the floor and spoke off the agenda: ‘People looking for minorities by producing this report should ask their mothers who their fathers are’.

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I must provide an explanation here for readers not familiar with Turkish politics. I do not know what this statement amounts to in their respective countries, but one cannot imagine a worse insult in Turkey, and this person was finally acquitted at the Court of Cassation on grounds of ‘freedom of expression’. I would also like to add that we took legal action against some of these death threats and harsh insults – 14 legal actions in total. We lost on all counts in all cases, always on grounds of ‘freedom of expression’, against which we have now gone to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.2 As to the report itself, the public prosecutor instigated legal action against it. He requested a five-year imprisonment sentence for myself as the author of the report and for Professor Ibrahim Kaboğlu as the Chairman of HRAC who put the report to the vote. The indictment was based on two pieces of legislation, ‘Insult against the Judiciary’ (Art. 301/2) and ‘Inciting hate and enmity among the public’ (Art. 216/2). It might create some perplexity for the foreign reader but I must add the following two things: the first charge (under Art. 301/2) emanated from the fact that I had repeated word for word a section of an academic paper of mine published in the Review of the Constitutional Court; Art. 216/2, from which the second charge emanated, was promulgated in 2002 to punish hate speech against disadvantaged groups. To cut very short a long story, the case ended with acquittal in the Court of First Instance. The public prosecutor of this court then appealed to the Court of Cassation; however, Penal Chamber No. 8 of this Court approved the acquittal. Then the public prosecutor of the Court of Cassation placed an appeal against this with the Plenary of the Penal Chambers. That body finally and decisively approved, on 29 April 2008, the acquittal concerning Art. 216 of the Turkish Penal Code. As the permission of the Minister of Justice was necessary to continue the trial concerning allegations about Art. 301, the court asked for this permission. Although Professor Kaboğlu and I declared willingness to be tried, the Minister refused to grant this permission and the trial was concluded in March 2009.3 In this brief chapter, I first reproduce an expanded version of the part of the 2004 report that has attracted the harshest reactions: the concept of Türkiyeli. I then summarize, and respond to, the main

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objections that were levelled against this concept. Finally, I conclude by looking at the use and place of the concept Türkiyeli in Turkey’s recent past (see Figure 1.3 for the place of the term Türkiyeli in the evolution of Turkish political thought).

The concept of Türkiyeli in the Minority Report Foundations of the situation in Turkey It is clear that the question of minorities is considered from a very narrow viewpoint in Turkey. The fundamental reasons for this are summarized below. Instead of keeping track with international developments concerning minority concepts and law, Turkey is stuck with 1923 and the Treaty of Lausanne. This peace treaty was signed in Switzerland in 1923 by Turkey and the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania and the Serb-Croatian-Slovene state. Concluded after the War of Independence in Anatolia, it annulled the Treaty of Sèvres from 20 August 1919 and established national borders for several of the signatories, including Turkey. The Treaty of Lausanne also formulated the position of the Turkish Republic on the issue of minorities. It framed some of the non-Muslim communities in Turkey, namely those of the Jewish, Armenian or Greek Orthodox faith, as ‘minorities’, but smaller non-Muslim communities such as the Syriacs, Nestorians and Chaldeans were not taken into consideration by the treaty. And neither was the distinction of ‘minority’ given to Muslim communities such as the Laz, Kurds or Alevis. Turkey moreover interprets the Treaty of Lausanne in an incorrect or deficient manner as some significant stipulations of the treaty have frequently been ignored altogether. There is a widespread assumption that recognizing the different identity of a minority and granting minority rights to it are the same. However, the former implies an objective situation whereby one formally culturally recognizes the different minority groups as they exist, whereas the latter is a matter of discretion for the state. In the context of the diversity of different identity groups, Turkey also assumes that ‘internal self-determination’, which can be seen as

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political democracy and equal representation within the sovereign nation-state, is the same as ‘external self-determination’, which means fragmentation and possible secession of various regions. Consequently the recognition of different identities rather than a homogenized national one, and extending specific rights to them, is commonly held within Turkey to be tantamount to the disintegration of the state. Turkey assumes that, with respect to the concept of nation, oneness and unity are the same. However, the former gradually destroys the latter. It does so by insisting that the multicultural diversity of identities within Turkey be undermined in order to give way to a picture of an ethnically and culturally uniform, homogeneous and monolinguistic population. In this context, in speaking of the Turks as a nation, Turkey does not seem to realize or acknowledge that the term ‘Turkish’ also denotes a particular/dominant ethnic group that occludes other identities present in the country. The above situation stems from two particular points. The first, a theoretical one, is outlined in the next section, the second point, a historical-political one, is looked at in the last section, on the historical foundation of the term Türkiyeli.

The theoretical point: the relationship between the supraidentity and infra-identities in the Republic of Turkey As the successor of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey inherited the various ethnic, religious and social identities of that Empire. However, while what we can term the supra-identity in the empire (the identity assigned by the state to its citizens) was ‘Ottoman’, it emerged as ‘Turk’ in the Republic of Turkey. In this sense, a supra-identity can be seen as the one that is associated with membership of a particular country or other political body or territory. Infra-identities, on the other hand, are those of a secondary and specific nature existing underneath and contained within the supra-identity. In the case of the use of ‘Turk’ by the Republic of Turkey, then, one of the infra-identities reversed its hierarchical position and declared itself the supra-identity. This supra-identity tends to define the citizen in reference to ethnicity and even to religion. For example, ‘our kinsfolk abroad’, a

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Figure 1.1 A breakdown of infra- and supra-identities during the Ottoman Empire where ‘Ottoman’ became a super-category to collect the diversity of different ethno-religious configurations within the empire

term sometimes used by Turkish nationalists, means people of ethnic Turkish origin. In addition, one must also be a ‘Muslim’ in order to be considered a ‘Turk’, because Turkey’s non-Muslim citizens are not referred to as ‘Turks’. In Turkey, nobody uses ‘Turk’ when talking about, say, a Greek or Jewish citizen, because these are non-Muslim citizens. Regrettable examples of this occurring in state practices abound and I refer to them specifically in the next section, ‘Objections to Türkiyeli’. This situation therefore alienated the other infra-identities that do not consider themselves as belonging to the Turkish race but rather as having a distinct identity, and it created problems for ‘national unity’. If one had chosen the supra-identity of Türkiyeli (‘being from Turkey’) this would likely not have happened. It would have equally embraced all infraidentities without involving ethnic or religious aspects. This is because Türkiyeli is fully based on a territorial conception of nationality and citizenship, jus soli, and thus completely excludes any involvement of ‘blood’ or religious or ethnic kinship and group membership, jus sanguinis. The definition of citizenship in the 1982 Constitution (written by the military) is much narrower than the one in the 1924 Constitution

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Figure 1.2 During the Turkish Republic, the specific infra-identity of ‘Turk’ was elevated as the main category to define all others

of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The latter had used the term ‘people of Turkey’. This definition recalls the supra-identity that we mentioned as Türkiyeli. This supra-identity embraces all infra-identities living on this territory without exception and ensures that the concepts of ‘nationality’ (being of a particular ethnic origin) and ‘citizenship’ (the legal bond between the individual and the state) are taken as separate and independent concepts.

Objections to Türkiyeli The situation should become clearer if I summarize the objections to the term Türkiyeli made right after the publication of the report which I mentioned at the start of the chapter. Firstly, however, a quick summary of the concept of Türkiyeli. The principal idea behind it as a possible supra-identity is to present an inclusive and plural umbrella identity that is, in so far as it can be, ethnically and religiously neutral; by the same token it can also acknowledge the ethnically and religiously heterogeneous nature of identities that actually exist in Turkey. Thus Türkiyeli is a territorially-based term that seeks to avoid any ethnic or religious conceptions.

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The following then is a summation of the main objections to the term Türkiyeli that were presented: 1. ‘Turkish is not the name of an ethnic group; it is an identifier of a nation’. The prosecutor who took the legal action used this argument, but it only reflects a certain type of wishful thinking. I summarize here what I said in the Counter-Indictment:4 The Office of the Public Prosecutor claims that in Turkey the term ‘Turk’ is not used in the racial context. But if one opens the 24-volume Meydan Larousse Dictionary and Encyclopedia, the largest dictionary ever published in Turkey, under the term ‘Türk’, the first sentence says: ‘A person of Turkish race’. (Volume 19, page 471.) But I don’t think I am going to leave it at that. If the term ‘Turk’ is not the name of an ethnic group, then the Public Prosecutor’s Office must answer the following four questions: a) What does ‘Domestic foreigners (Turkish citizens)’ mean? This term is used in the ‘Regulation for Protection Against Sabotages’ dated 28 December 1988, as it listed which categories were most likely to carry out acts of sabotage. If this did not mean non-Muslim citizens, then what did it mean? Didn’t the Office of the Prosecutor claim that the term ‘Turk’ was used for citizenship only? b) What does ‘of Turkish origin and of Turkish citizenry’ mean? This term is used to describe the characteristics of the Deputy Principal to be assigned by the Education Ministry to a foreign or minority private school, as listed in Article 24/2 of the Law Number 625 still in force now. Once you say ‘of Turkish citizenry’ why do you repeat it by saying ‘of Turkish origin’? Did not the indictment claim that the term ‘Turk’ was used for citizenry only? c) What does ‘Turkish citizen with foreign nationality’ mean? This term was used in a decision dated 17 April 1996 of the Istanbul Second Administrative Court. Whom did the court mean when it used this term? It was our Greek Orthodox citizens. Didn’t the indictment claim that the term ‘Turk’ was used to indicate citizenship only? Has anybody in this courtroom or

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in the whole of Turkey heard of a more odd ‘legal’ term than this? A person is either a foreigner or a citizen. d) What does ‘Foreigners are not permitted to acquire immovable property in Turkey’ mean? This sentence is from the Plenary of Chambers of the Court of Cassation dated 8 May 1974. Whom did the Court of Cassation have in mind while using it? It used it for the administrators of the Balıklı Greek Orthodox Hospital Foundation established by our Greek Orthodox citizens. Didn’t the indictment claim that the term ‘Turk’ is used to indicate citizenship only? 2. ‘There will be no difference whether we use Türk (Turkish) or Türkiyeli’. On the contrary, a furore broke out because there will be a lot of change. The term Türkiyeli is an indicator that the monist structure that took root in the 1930s at the early stages of the republic (One Nation, One Flag, One State, One Language, One Doctrine, One Leader) will now have to change. Türkiyeli is the symbol of a pluralist outlook that would embrace all infra-identities in Turkey. 3. ‘The root of Türkiyeli is “Turk”; therefore it does not solve any problem’. Yet, it was not the Turks but the Venetians who had named the Ottoman Empire as ‘Turchia’ in the fourteenth century and therefore helped establish this definition in Western languages. Some countries or peoples sometimes derive their names from outside. For example, the name ‘Turk’ had originally been given by the Chinese. Within the text of the 1920 Sèvres Treaty, the peace treaty signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Entente powers after World War I and annulled by and replaced with the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, the terms ‘Ottoman Empire’ and ‘Turkey’ were used 308 and 20 times respectively. The terms were used interchangeably. 4. ‘This term is artificial. It cannot be translated into other languages’. Is it that strange that Türkiyeli is not translated into other foreign languages when we do not use it at home? (I will return to this more

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specifically under the following subtitle ‘The term Türkiyeli has a long history’.) This shows as well that we do not know much about international affairs or about such terms as supra-identity and infra-identity. Türkiyeli is a term that is used just like the term ‘British’ – the supraidentity of the people who live in Great Britain. We can say that the term Turkish, on the other hand, corresponds to ‘English’, an identity that is subordinated within the larger identification category of ‘British’. Now let us look at this from a French language perspective. Why should one not use the term proposed by Professor Efrasiyap Gemalmaz – ‘Turquien, Turquienne’?5 In fact, one can point to many other examples around the world. Türkiyeli is also the same as, among others, Spanish, French, Iraqi, Syrian, Swiss and Chinese. None of these supra-identities has any relation to the infra-identities in their respective countries. There is no ‘Spanish’ infra-identity in Spain. In China, 92 per cent of the population is ethnically ‘Han’; China is just the name of the country. Likewise, there is no Frank infra-identity in France; the original name of this country, Francia, comes from the Franks, a Germanic confederation that invaded it in the fifth century. 5. ‘This term will lead to the disintegration of our country’. This is the most heated point of objection. Yet, the truth is just the opposite, for what divides Turkey is the use of the term ‘Turkish’. This term alienates all citizens who either do not belong to the ethnic Turkish identity, in objective terms, or do not want to adopt this Turkish ethnic identity as a subjective identity. What would you do if a Kurd or a non-Muslim says, ‘I am not a Turk’? However, the same person can easily say ‘I am a Türkiyeli Kurd’ or ‘Türkiyeli Armenian’. This objection stems from the view that the nation should be built on jus sanguinis (blood basis), with a very strong emphasis on Muslim religion as well, especially of the Sunni branch. This religious emphasis stems from the Ottoman millet system dating from 1454 in which the ‘Millet-i Hakime’ (Dominant Community; all Muslims) was glorified as opposed to the ‘Millet-i Mahkume’ (Dominated Communities; all non-Muslims). The blood principle of jus sanguinis is markedly divisive in a country with a multi-ethnic, multilingual and multireligious composition such as Turkey. What would be a uniting principle is the

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territorial principle, the one of jus soli, by which equal citizenship is extended to anyone born within the territory of the related state. 6. ‘We cannot give up on the superiority of Turkishness’. This is actually the more important issue. This candid confession is the underlying source of most of the objections previously named. The use of ‘Turkish’ as a supra-identity means that the strongest of the infra-identities becomes the supra-identity as well. Those who do not want to give up their privileges form a very significant segment among those who abhor the term Türkiyeli.

The term Türkiyeli has a long history The term Türkiyeli has a history of antagonism in Turkey, even if its use nowadays is less controversial than it used to be. While the term has been in use since the 1960s to identify the citizens of Turkey who went to work in Europe as Gastarbeiter, or to identify those who went to Northern Cyprus to distinguish them from Cypriot Turks, its history goes much further back. It was actually in use before the republic was established. Here is a short, chronological history of the term. As far as I was able to establish, it was first used in the Mekatib-i Hususiye Talimatnamesi (Private Schools’ Regulation) dated August 1915. This document mentioned the term in three different articles. Article 1 defined private schools as ‘schools financed by individuals and by Türkiyeli communities [meaning: non-Muslim communities], associations, and companies’. Article 3 said that schools opened by Türkiyeli communities could only operate in quarters and villages inhabited by populations belonging to these communities. Article 8 said that schools to be opened by Türkiyeli non-Muslims could not employ a foreign director or teacher unless they obtained official permission from the Ministry of Education.6 The term was then used during the War of Independence (1919–22) by M. Kemal Atatürk. During the Ankara movement that emerged when Greeks occupied Anatolia in May 1919, he refrained from using the term ‘Turkish’ as he did not want to alienate the Circassians, and in particular, the Kurds, during the difficult moments of the war.

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Instead of ‘Turkish state’, for instance, he used ‘the state of Turkey’, and instead of ‘Turkish nation’ he used ‘the nation of Turkey’. When the amendment of the 1921 Constitution was under discussion in July 1923, he mentioned Türkiyeli in four different articles of the draft text in his own handwriting.7 Article 12: ‘Freedom of movement for the Türkiyelis ...’; Article 13: ‘Every Türkiyeli is entitled to public and private education’; Article 14: ‘Compulsory education and training for the Türkiyelis ...’; Article 15: ‘All Türkiyelis can establish all types of companies within the law’. Atatürk, however, would change this approach after the end of the national liberation movement and the establishment of the republic (29 October 1923). For instance, he had used the term ‘the people of Turkey’ 54 times before October 1923, but he used it only twice thereafter, preferring ‘Turkish people’ instead.8 The term was used widely during debates in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which was founded in April 1920. To cite some of the speeches in this early period: - On 5 November 1921 Yusuf Kemal Bey (parliament representative for Kastamonu) said: ‘Türkiyeli means having Turkish citizenship’. Emin Şükrü Bey (Bursa Bolu representative) said: ‘We propose that the term “Ottoman” on Art. 8 be replaced by the term “Every Türkiyeli”’. Hüseyin Avni Bey (Erzurum) remarked: ‘How do we call the nation of France? Fransalı [from France]. When we say Türkiyeli this includes every community. Anybody who has Turkish citizenship is Türkiyeli’. - On 21 June 1922 Musa Kazım Bey (assembly chairman) said: ‘The Türkiyelis are thankful to those who have given support for the recognition of the lawful rights of Turkey’. - On 2 December 1922 when Hüseyin Avni Bey declared: ‘Here, at this chair, only Turks and Kurds can have a word to say’, protests erupted with shouts of ‘All Türkiyelis!, All Türkiyelis!’. Türkiyeli was also used frequently in the proceedings of the ‘Heyeti Mahsusalar’ (Special Commissions), which were established on 20 September 1923, just before the republic was declared on 29 October 1923, to discuss the discharge of military officers following the long

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period of war (both World War I and the subsequent Turkish Independence War) and to confine retirement pensions to a smaller number of people. In these proceedings, the term Türkiyeli was profusely used to describe the people who presently lived within the boundaries of Turkey, which were drawn by the Lausanne Treaty of July 1923. As the Defence Minister, Kazim (Özalp) Paşa, said: ‘Of course we want to devote this [privilege] to the people who are within our boundaries, to those who are Türkiyeli’.9 After this the term fell into obscurity because with the Constitution of 1924 a nation state under the control of the Turkish ethnic element was born. Notwithstanding the overt emphasis on civic nationalism in Turkey, it was the ethnic category of Turk that became the super-container for all of the country’s various ethnoreligious communities, although the provisions of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne also recognized specific non-Muslim ‘minority’ identities. The first time the term re-emerged after this, as far as I was able to establish, was when the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP), a Marxist organization, was founded under the relatively democratic conditions brought about by the 1961 Constitution. The young Kurds of Turkey used the term between 1967–69, and the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, used Türkiyeli on several occasions, which may be one of the reasons why Turkish nationalists abhor the term. The

Figure 1.3 An overall view of the shift towards Türkiyeli in the evolution of Turkish political thought

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term was reintroduced by the Minority Report under discussion here in October 2004.

Conclusion Many people now use the term ‘Türk’ as the name of the nation. However, at the same time, more and more people also admit that this is actually an ethnic identifier and notice that such a use is inappropriate in a country which is unable to continue living peacefully together under the current arrangements which uphold the supremacy of one dominant group, the Turks: the term ‘Turkish’ is divisive. Instead, the term Türkiyeli, which has a territorial meaning and embraces all citizens equally, should be used as a unifier concept and super-container of all identities. It is a very welcome development that, from around 2010, this term has become more widely accepted in general media usage within Turkey. In the main those who resist the term Türkiyeli object to the dethroning of the Turkish element to the level of all citizens. Their only aim is to maintain the hegemony of the ethnic Turkish element – just as they want to maintain all monist values of the 1930s. However, at a time when Kurdish awareness has become irreversible, maintaining Turkey’s unity could depend on the extent to which the views and perspectives represented by the term Türkiyeli become established. One can only hope that it is not too late to introduce it within broader society in the country. While the older generation of Kurds of Turkey used to consider themselves a part of Turkey – they definitely considered themselves Türkiyeli – the younger generation, the young Kurds (between the ages of 15 and 25), no longer define themselves in the same way as their fathers did. This younger generation increasingly no longer thinks that it belongs to Turkey at all. The reason is fairly simple: the all-inclusiveness of the term Türkiyeli has been discarded by politicians who continue to consider state violence as the only means to counter the PKK. The same mistake continues to be repeated by other echelons of the state bureaucracy and by the judiciary in particular. As a matter of fact, the President of the Court of Cassation, Nazım Kaynak, declared at the opening of the new judicial year on

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6 September 2011: ‘The word Turk is not used in the ethnic sense; it encompasses all the individuals living in this country’. Two days after this speech, on 8th September, a judicial decision was made public: on 7 December 2009, a policeman named Serkan Akbulut was sentenced to life imprisonment. He received this sentence for killing a certain Emrah Gezer in a music hall, firing 15 bullets. However, his sentence was later reduced to 16 years and eight months for ‘heavy provocation’. The victim had sung a song in Kurdish: ‘Agir Ketye Dilemin’ (A Fire Fell in My Heart) ...

Notes 1. On the HRAC, see the following articles by the then HRAC Chairman Prof. Ibrahim Kaboğlu: 1) ‘Quelques remarques préliminaires à propos d’une institution nationale des droits de l’homme (Cas de Turquie)’, Revue trimestrielle des droits de l’homme 68 (1 October 2006), pp.1057–69; 2) ‘Le Conseil des Droits de l’Homme devant le Tribunal Pénal’, Revue de Science criminelle (July–September 2006), pp. 521–35; 3) ‘Liberté de pensée et d’expression en Turquie’, Cahiers de la Recherche sur les Droits Fondamentaux 8 (2010). 2. Concerning these attacks, insults and the story of the Report, see B. Oran, Türkiye’de Azınlıklar (Minorities in Turkey), 5th edn (Istanbul: Iletişim Publications, 2008), pp. 191–204 (in Turkish). 3. For all stages of this case and the defence (‘Counter Indictment’) which I presented at the court, see B. Oran, ‘The Minority Report Affair in Turkey’, Regent Journal of International Law 5/1 (2007), pp. 2–93. For a report on the Minister’s refusal to grant permission for a trial under Art. 301, see Bianet, 5 March 2009. 4. For the full background and detail see the ‘counter-indictment’ document at http://www.baskinoran.com/belge/CounterIndictment.pdf. 5. The point made by Prof. E. Gemalmaz is striking: ‘Why can we perfectly well say “Erzurumluluk” (Erzurumness, being from Erzurum, a town in Turkey) but we cannot say “Türkiyelilik” (Turkeyness, being from Turkey)?’; E. Gemalmaz, ‘Ögrenme ve uygulama dilleri’, 2010, Inci Gemalmaz’ın Sayfası, http://incigemalmaz.tripod.com/yazilar/diller.pdf. 6. Faik Reşit (Unat), Maarif Düsturu (Education Legislation), Vols I–II (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1927), p. 312. 7. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ilk Anayasa Taslağı (First Draft of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey) (Istanbul: Boyut Publishing Group, October 1998).

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8. For detailed statistics, see B. Oran, Atatürk Milliyetçiliği: resmî ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Kemalist nationalism: a non-official study), 5th edn (Ankara: Bilgi Publications, 1997), pp. 209–11, fn 343a. 9. Cemil Koçak, Belgelerle Heyeti Mahsusalar (Special Commissions in Documents) (Istanbul: Iletişim Publications, 2005), p. 25.

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CHAPTER 2 DEVELOPING THE DEMOCR ATIC IDENTIT Y: TUR KEY’S SEARCH FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION William Hale

For the last half-century, studying constitutions has been an unfashionable way of examining political systems, since it can be a misleading guide to how a country’s politics actually work. Political behaviour, it is argued, is only partially determined by constitutional rules. Nonetheless, possessing a democratic constitution – provided it is properly enforced – can be said to be a vital condition for any state or society that aspires to a democratic identity. In so far as constitutions enshrine specific regime characteristics determining the legal basis for social and political affairs, they can be said to provide a formal blueprint of a political system or a legalistic reflection of the self-image that country would like to have. In the Turkish case, ‘bringing the constitution back in’ has recently become an important priority, due to its crucial role in the drive to establish a more democratic polity. Having a new constitution would not make Turkey a model democracy overnight, but it would lay the essential foundations for such a transition. To explain and illustrate this argument, this chapter starts by

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outlining the current process of constitution making in Turkey. This is followed by an outline of the most critical features of the constitutional debate, and the chapter concludes with a summary of current expectations, when the eventual outcome is still quite uncertain. On 10 May 2012, Turkey’s slow and sometimes halting progress towards the establishment of a more liberal democracy, and a more democratic political identity, passed an important milestone when a special Constitutional Conciliation Commission, consisting of three Deputies from each of the four political parties represented in parliament and headed by the Speaker, Cemil Çiçek, began the long task of drafting the new constitution. There was widespread agreement that Turkey needed a new document – or at least, wholesale revision of the present one. This had been introduced in 1982 by the then military rulers, who attempted to end the tide of extremist terrorism which preceded the coup d’état of 1980 by composing a constitution with draconian restrictions on civil liberties. This was accepted in a referendum of dubious legitimacy. Hence, the idea of writing a new constitution was endorsed in principle by all the parliamentary parties and (according to a poll conducted in April 2011) almost 70 per cent of the Turkish public, with only 22 per cent opposing it.1 Clearly, producing a new constitution had become a high political priority. This initiative followed several years of missed opportunities and forgotten promises. A plan for a new constitution had been launched by the then Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) as early as 1991. Between 2001 and 2010, originally under strong prompting from the European Union, which Turkey hoped to join, no less than 63 of the 177 articles of the 1982 constitution were amended, with one annulled and two provisional articles added.2 As an alternative to piecemeal amendments, in June 2007 the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) asked a committee of constitutional law professors, headed by Professor Ergun Özbudun, to prepare the draft of a new constitution (hereafter referred to as ‘the 2007 draft’), and included a pledge to enact a new document in its manifesto for the July 2007 general elections. The committee presented its draft in September 2007, but the government then shelved the idea, probably due to the crisis caused in 2008 by the Constitutional Court’s veto of a constitutional

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amendment lifting the ban on the wearing of Islamic headscarves by women university students, and the subsequent attempt by the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation to have the AKP closed down by the Constitutional Court.3 Having enacted another important package of constitutional reforms in 2010, in its 2011 election manifesto the AKP again promised to bring in a new constitution. Similar proposals came from the three other parties that won seats in parliament. The establishment of Speaker Çiçek’s Commission was a result of this pledge. Before the process of constitution-writing could begin, a fierce argument had to be settled as to how it should be enacted. Of Turkey’s three previous constitutions since the foundation of the republic, the last two, passed in 1961 and 1982, had both been the work of military governments which appointed a Constituent Assembly (Kurucu Meclis) to prepare the text. The first republican constitution had been enacted by the Grand National Assembly, Turkey’s unicameral parliament, in 1924.4 Reflecting the views of the statist elite with which it was identified, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and likeminded bodies initially proposed that a new constitution could only be drawn up by another special ‘constitutional convention’. Against this the AKP argued that this could and should be done by parliament, in which it was likely to have a majority. The logic behind the second argument (apart from the precedent of 1924) was that, under Article 175 of the 1982 constitution, individual articles could be amended by either a two-thirds majority of the whole Assembly, or a three-fifths majority followed by approval in a national referendum.5 If parliament was entitled to rewrite some of the articles, then it was surely entitled to rewrite all of them – in effect, to issue a new constitution – provided it followed the existing rules for amendment. On this basis, the AKP won the argument, and in September 2011 the CHP agreed to the parliamentary route, by joining Speaker Çiçek’s Commission.6 While there was virtually universal agreement that Turkey needed a more democratic constitution than that of 1982, as the serious debate was beginning Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan threw an additional and far more controversial proposal onto the agenda by urging that Turkey should move over to a presidential rather than parliamentary system of

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government. This would fundamentally alter the tradition that, since the establishment of multi-party politics, the prime minister has been the real wielder of power, limiting the powers of the president. Exactly what was on offer was not quite clear, however. Would it, for instance, mean the adoption of a US-style presidency, with the president acting as the head of the government as well as being head of state? Or would there be a move to a French-style ‘semi-presidential’ system, in which the prime minister is the head of the government, with the president head of state but with enhanced powers? Apparently, while Tayyip Erdoğan favoured the first idea, his party preferred the second. Against this, those who opposed either change argued that under the 1982 constitution the president already had too much power. Since it was widely expected that Erdoğan would himself seek election as president when the term of incumbent President Abdullah Gül ended in 2014, the opposition feared that he would seek to prolong his power for another five years – or even ten years if he were re-elected – by becoming an all-powerful president.7 Additionally, there was a serious risk that, within a presidential system, a full separation of powers could lead to governmental deadlock, especially if the president and the parliamentary majority were of opposite parties. Even in the USA, where parties are relatively loose coalitions, such confrontations are not uncommon: in Turkey, given fierce partisanship and relatively disciplined, top-heavy parties, the risk seemed acute. Judging by historical precedent, it also seemed doubtful that parliament would voluntarily give up a large share of its power to the president, since two previous prime ministers, Turgut Özal and Süleyman Demirel, had both floated the idea in the past, to no effect. Even more strikingly, in the parliamentary debates on the 1924 constitution, the Constitutional Commission8 that prepared the draft document proposed that the president be given the right to dissolve the assembly and call new elections before the expiry of its four-year term, that he be elected for seven (rather than four) years and that he should have the right to veto legislation unless his veto were overruled by a two-thirds majority in parliament.9 All these proposals had been rejected. Given that none of these powers had been given to Atatürk, the virtually unchallengeable national hero, it seemed

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hardly likely that they, or something similar, would be granted to Tayyip Erdoğan. The idea was opposed by all the opposition parties, and the AKP had fewer than the minimum of 330 seats required to pass a constitutional amendment by itself (with some AKP deputies apparently unenthusiastic). Hence, it also seemed quite unlikely that the ‘presidential’ plan – whatever it was – could be pushed through parliament. According to polling data, an overwhelming majority of the public who expressed an opinion opposed a move to a presidential system.10 There was also the possibility that President Gül could seek re-election for a second term of five years, without seeking to extend his powers.11 Tayyip Erdoğan evidently sensed this opposition, saying that the proposal was merely being put forward for public discussion, that the final word would rest with the people and that he had never said it was a sine qua non for the new constitution.12 Hence, although the idea provoked heated debate, it seemed unlikely to become much more than a trial balloon.

The text of the current constitution of 1982 Despite the various problematic aspects of the debates concerning the redrafting of the constitution, such as their shortcomings on important points of detail as seen above, two general criticisms of the 1982 constitution could be made. The first was that it was far too long and detailed, and that substantial parts could simply be deleted. Thus, the 2007 draft proposed elimination of 20 articles, most of which were supposed to protect the interests of particular interest groups, such as farmers, ‘youth’, artists, tradesmen and artisans, or promote particular activities, such as sports and cooperatives – all admirable objectives, it may be argued, but inappropriate for inclusion in the constitution, which should be primarily concerned with establishing the rules governing the functioning of state institutions and the rights of the citizen. Other arguably unnecessary articles affected detailed administrative arrangements. Second, the authors of the 1982 constitution attempted to enforce a particular ideological viewpoint, that of state-centred Kemalist nationalism and social solidarism, as an official ideology, in a way quite inappropriate in the pluralist democracy that

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Turkey had now sought to become. Thus, Atatürk’s name is mentioned twice in the preamble, and in six other articles, while the phrase ‘the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation’ occurs 14 times. A commitment to the ‘nationalism of Atatürk’ is mentioned in the unalterable Article 2, Article 42 requires that education shall be conducted ‘in the direction of Atatürk’s principles and reforms’, and Article 58 requires the application of the same principle in ‘the training and development of youth’. Whether the authors of the new constitution will wish to retain any of these commitments is uncertain, but it can reasonably be argued that they properly belong to a party manifesto, not a constitutional document.13 A more crucial criticism of the 1982 constitution was that, in spite of the amendments which had been enacted over the last 11 years, it was still far too restrictive of civil liberties – in effect, that while democratic constitutions are supposed to protect the rights of the citizen against an otherwise all-powerful state, this one sought to protect the interests of the state against the rights of the citizen. This was evident from the very beginning of the text, a preamble running to no less than eight paragraphs. Among other things, this proclaimed that [N]o protection shall be afforded to an activity contrary to Turkish national interests, the principle of the indivisibility of the existence of Turkey with its state and territory, Turkish historical and moral values, or the nationalism, principles and reforms and modernism of Atatürk ... Admittedly, the preambles to constitutions of other countries frequently contain similarly vague and high-flown rhetoric, but these do not have legal force (for instance, the constitution of the Republic of Ireland proclaims that it is issued ‘in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity’). The difference in the Turkish case was that under Article 176 ‘[t]he Preamble ... shall form an integral part of the Constitution’. An amendment passed in 2001 had inserted the word ‘activity’ in place of the previous ‘opinion or idea’, but it could be argued that that the expression of an opinion or idea was an ‘activity’ which a zealous judge or future legislature might decide was contrary to the

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vague principles, like ‘Turkish ... moral values’, which were to be given constitutional protection. On these grounds, the 2007 draft proposed a completely new version of the preamble, recognizing that the constitution rested on human rights and the rule of law, while acknowledging ‘its attachment to the aim of the founder of the republic Kemal Atatürk of [attaining] the level of modern civilisation and the ideal of eternal peace’, and eliminating the previous provision of Article 176.14 Plunging into the text of the constitution, the first four articles of the 1982 constitution were also the source of fierce arguments. These proclaimed that the Turkish state is a republic, a ‘democratic, secular and social state’, ‘loyal to the nationalism of Atatürk and based on the fundamental tenets set forth in the Preamble’. ‘[W]ith its territory and nation, [it] is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish’.15 More crucially, Article 4 declared that the first three articles ‘shall not be amended, nor shall their amendment be proposed’. It is arguable that unalterable clauses are in principle undemocratic and contradict the basis of a polity’s democratic identity, since constitutions must be subject to alteration to meet changing circumstances. On these grounds, the 2007 draft proposed the withdrawal of Article 4. The provision of Article 2 that Turkey is, among other things a ‘secular’ state was also the cause of a highly controversial decision by the Constitutional Court in June 2008, when it struck down a constitutional amendment duly passed by parliament by a more than two-thirds majority, which would have allowed female university students to wear Islamic headscarves in class. Although Article 148 of the 1982 constitution clearly stated that the Court could not annul constitutional amendments except on procedural grounds, the judges claimed that this could not apply to an amendment allegedly infringing one of the unalterable articles.16 Following alterations to the composition of the Constitutional Court as part of the 2010 package of constitutional reforms, the AKP was apparently prepared to agree with the CHP that the unalterable articles should remain: nonetheless, some of their members suggested that some of the wording should be revised – such as, for instance changing the phrase ‘the language of the state’ to ‘the official language of the state’ (a proposal included in the 2007 draft).17

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The theme of civil rights and liberties The strongest overall criticism of the 1982 constitution was that it was far too restrictive of civil liberties, in particular freedoms of speech, communication and association. Admittedly, constitutional theory generally accepts that these freedoms cannot be absolute, since some restrictions have to be placed on them to make democratic government workable. Thus, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) stipulates that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of expression’ together with the ‘freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas’ but that The exercise of these freedoms may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, [or] for the protection of the reputation or rights of others ...18 Under Article 11 of the Convention, the right to ‘peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others’ is subject to similar restrictions, except that the aim of protecting territorial integrity is omitted.19 In practice, legislators and judges are usually given some discretion to decide exactly what is ‘necessary in a democratic society’, subject to the right of citizens of countries signatory to the ECHR who have accepted this procedure to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights claiming infringement of the Convention by domestic courts. These countries include Turkey, which in 2010 had over 15,200 cases pending against it – more than any other country except Russia.20 This dismal statistic underlined the urgency of removing the constitutional restrictions of legitimate rights. These were mostly contained in Part 2 of the 1982 constitution, headed ‘Fundamental Rights and Duties’, which ran to 29 articles. Of these, Article 14 had been heavily amended in 2001, but still contained the provision that none of the rights and freedoms embodied in the Constitution shall be exercised with the aim of violating the indivisible

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integrity of the state with its territory and nation, and endangering the existence of the democratic and secular order of the Turkish Republic ... Besides this dangerously vague and catch-all overall restriction, other articles affecting individual privacy, ‘inviolability of the domicile’ and ‘freedom of communication’ could be restricted by court order on the grounds of ‘national security, public order, prevention of crime commitment, protection of public health and public morals, or protection of the rights of others’.21 While these restrictions effectively repeated those contained in Article 10 of the ECHR, Article 26, affecting ‘Freedom of Expression and the Dissemination of Thought’ stipulated that this could be restricted according to the same conditions, but also with the aim of ‘protecting ... the basic characteristics of the Republic and safeguarding the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation’. Article 27 (‘Freedom of Science and the Arts’) stated that ‘the right to disseminate should not be exercised for the purpose of changing the provisions of Articles 1, 2 and 3 of the Constitution’, raising the possibility that anyone who suggested this – as many academic and other commentators had done – could be prosecuted. Article 28, affecting ‘Freedom of the Press’, was even more stringent, since it provided that Anyone who writes or prints any news or articles which threaten the internal or external authority of the state or the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation ... and anyone who prints or transmits such news or articles to others for the above purposes shall be held responsible under the law relevant to these offences. The same article added that ‘periodical and non-periodical publications’ under investigation could be seized by court order. As an illustration of the urgent need to reform this article, and parts of statute law dependent on it, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported in April 2011 that 57 journalists were

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imprisoned in Turkey, with another 700–1,000 on trial facing charges which could result in imprisonment. Most of those behind bars had been convicted under the Law for the Struggle against Terrorism (Terörle Mücadele Kanunu) of 1991, or articles on the Penal Code affecting those alleged to have published propaganda in favour of terrorist organizations.22 While actively participating in terrorist attacks could rightly be considered a serious crime, criminalizing the publication of news alleged to favour terrorism was casting the net far too wide, it was argued. Hence, the 2007 draft proposed that freedom of communication could only be limited in broad accordance with the conditions stated in Article 10 of the ECHR, with the exclusion of ‘territorial integrity’ and the addition of the protection of state secrets, the independence and neutrality of the judiciary and the prevention of incitement to war or the promotion of ‘any kind of discrimination, hostility, rancour or hatred’.23

Minority rights and the Kurdish issue While these clauses affected the general rights of citizens, certain issues inevitably stirred up the most heated controversy in Turkey. As the 1982 constitution’s repeated insistence on the prevention of any alleged threat to the ‘indivisible integrity of the state’ demonstrated, the demand for minority rights by the Kurds was the most critical of these. On this score, it has to be said that while the rights of individual citizens are quite specifically stated in international human rights documents, the rights of collectivities – in particular, ethnic minorities – are not. It will be noticed for instance, that the ECHR says nothing directly about this – in fact, Article 10 actually allows state authorities to restrict the freedom of expression ‘in the interests of ... territorial integrity’. Within the European Union, practice varies widely, with some countries such as Britain and Spain giving regions inhabited by ethnic minorities varying degrees of autonomy, whereas others, like France or Greece, reject this. A ‘Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities’ was drawn up by the Council of Europe in 1994, but this admits at the outset that its members could not even reach agreement on the definition of a ‘national minority’.24

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The Convention contained no commitment to regional devolution or federalism, limiting itself to the statement that a pluralist and genuinely democratic society should not only respect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of each person belonging to a national minority, but also create appropriate conditions enabling them to express, preserve and develop this identity ...25 On these grounds, the signatory states to the Framework Convention (which do not include Turkey or France)26 undertake to allow the use of minority languages in the media and to permit teaching of such languages in the education system,27 but there does not appear to be any obligation to go beyond these limited cultural rights. In its manifesto for the 2011 elections, the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) proposed that Turkey be divided into 20–25 autonomous regions, each to be governed by a regional assembly, which would have responsibility for all areas of government except for foreign affairs, finance and defence.28 There seemed to be no chance that the other parties represented in parliament would agree to anything like this degree of devolution, which went further than that applied, for instance, in Britain in the cases of Scotland and Wales, let alone the limited rights contained in the Framework Convention. Instead, the AKP proposed that the existing local authorities should be strengthened and their revenues increased, but this would be done within a strictly unitary republic. In 2011, the CHP’s new leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu suggested that local authorities should be given more administrative and financial authority, but in its official documents the party still opposed this.29 Hence, officially recognizing the Kurdish identity and allowing some language rights in education was the furthest the mainstream parties were prepared to go. In terms of allowing for a Kurdish communal identity, debate centred around Article 66 of the 1982 constitution, the first sentence of which declared that ‘[e]veryone bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship is a Turk’ – effectively denying the possibility of any other kind of ethnic identity. In place of this, the 2007 draft proposed

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that this provision be altered by replacing ‘Turk’ with ‘Turkish citizen’ or with the clause ‘may be called a Turk without regard to differences of religion or race’. Such a formulation would apparently be accepted by both the AKP and CHP.30 On the second score, the main constitutional obstacle to reform was Article 42 of the 1982 document, part of which stipulated that ‘[n]o language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institution of training or education’. While the exact meaning of this is not quite clear, what it meant in practice was that, while private universities and foreign schools or those established by the non-Muslim minorities of Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne, could use European languages (counting Armenian as such), no lessons in state schools could be taught in or about Kurdish. On the other hand, alongside the establishment of radio and TV broadcasting in Kurdish by both state and private channels, during 2011 the Higher Education Board (YÖK) accepted the start of Kurdish language courses at several state universities in the Kurdish-inhabited provinces of southeast Anatolia.31 As in the case of other ethnic minority rights, international agreements dealing with this issue were far from specific, and international practice varied substantially.32 Predictably, the BDP demanded the recognition of ‘education in one’s mother tongue’ as a right at all levels of education, although it recognized that it could be taught alongside Turkish, the official language of the state. Although their stance was not quite clear, it appeared that the AKP and CHP would be prepared to allow Kurdish-language courses as an elective course in regional schools (albeit not as the medium of instruction for the curriculum as a whole), with Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu even prepared to say that ‘speaking one’s mother tongue and learning in that language is a human right. The resources for language education need to be provided’.33 Meanwhile, the 2007 draft constitution was more circumspect, proposing that ‘the language of education and teaching is Turkish. The principles for education and teaching in languages other than Turkish are specified by law in accordance with the needs of a democratic society’ (without saying what these were).34 By contrast, in June 2012 Prime Minister Erdoğan specifically proposed that Kurdish could be taught as an elective course in state schools.35 Whether this could be done without

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altering Article 42 was a matter of dispute, although the AKP apparently favoured removing it from the constitution.36 Arguments over Kurdish language courses were not the only aspect of educational policy that came into the constitutional debate. Following the 2008 annulment of the constitutional amendment lifting the ban on the wearing of headscarves by women university students, the heat was taken out of the argument in October 2010 when the Higher Education Board instructed university authorities not to apply the ban. In practice, some professors continued to exclude women students from class if they were wearing headscarves, but in doing this they were defying the Board, and it is questionable whether altering the constitution would have made any difference to the actual situation. Nevertheless, it was likely that AKP members would again press for new versions of Articles 10 and 42 of the 1982 constitution, affecting equal rights for all citizens and the right to education, so as to prevent any re-imposition of the ban.

The question of religion Religious instruction in schools has been another topic of fierce debate in Turkey, as in several other countries, such as France. Under a much-criticized clause in Article 24 of the constitution, ‘[i]nstruction in religious culture and moral education shall be compulsory in the curricula of primary and secondary schools’. This provision had been introduced in 1982 by the then military regime in the belief that it would prevent the minds of the young being filled with Marxist or other dangerous ideologies, but it was strongly criticized by ardent Kemalists (who might otherwise be sympathetic to the military) as an unacceptable infringement of state secularism. Although no specific religion was mentioned, it was also argued that these lessons amounted to instruction in Sunni Islam, thus alienating those attached to the Alevi sect – effectively, the Turkish version of Shi‘ism – as well as Turkey’s small band of declared atheists or agnostics (Christians and Jews have their own schools). Accordingly, the 2007 draft proposed a new version of Article 24, declaring that the state would respect the right to demand education ‘according to the religious and philosophical

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beliefs’ of the parents (a proposal which was reportedly endorsed by the AKP)37 and that it would be provided only on request. Alternatively, religious education could be provided as the norm, with parents allowed to ‘opt out’ on behalf of their children.38 It was uncertain which, if any, of the formulations would be adopted by the political parties in parliament: at the very least, they might accept the rewriting of the syllabus of the classes in ‘religion and morals’ to include information on Aleviism as well as other religions. As a paradoxical feature of Turkish secularism, Article 136 of the 1982 constitution defined the role and status of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Işleri Başkanlığı). This had been set up in 1924 to succeed the Ottoman office of the Sheikh ul-Islam, and is attached to the prime minister’s office. Effectively, the Directorate acts as the instrument for the state’s control over Sunni Islam, since it supervises the work of religious functionaries in Sunni mosques, who are paid for by the state as civil servants. This led to the call, supported by some Islamist opinion, that in the new constitution, it should be separated from the state and given independent status as a vakıf – that is, a religious or charitable foundation. Alevi adherents were also likely to complain that, while they paid taxes like other citizens, they had no official representation in the Directorate, which was run purely for the benefit of Sunni congregations. On this basis, some Alevis urged that the Directorate be abolished, although others demanded that they be represented in it, with a claim on its resources. Although this debate was likely to continue, it seemed improbable that the new constitution would do much to alter the status of the institution, given that 80 per cent of the public was reported to be satisfied with the status quo. Accordingly, the 2007 draft proposed little alteration of Article 136, except excluding the promotion of ‘national solidarity and integrity’ as one of its aims.39

The issue of party closures Another serious cause of criticism of the 1982 constitution was the ease with which political parties could be closed down by the courts on the alleged grounds that they conflicted with principles such as state

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secularism or the preservation of territorial integrity. Under Article 68, the ‘statutes and programmes, as well as the activities’ of political parties may not conflict with ‘the independence of the state, its indivisible integrity with its territory and nation’ or (among other things) the ‘principles of the democratic and secular republic’. Article 69 goes on to give the Constitutional Court the power to close down a party if it decides that it ‘has become a centre for the execution of such activities’. It is pointed out that the closure of political parties is not unknown in the established European democracies, but since World War II this has only happened in three cases – two in Germany and one in Spain. In the Turkish case, however, no less than 19 parties have been closed down by the Court since 1982.40 It has done so by casting the net of conditions stated in the constitution as widely as possible: thus for instance, in 1992 the former Socialist Party was closed due to its statement that there was a ‘Kurdish nation’ as distinct from a ‘Turkish nation’, while in 1994 the Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP) was similarly closed down for defending the right of self-determination for the ‘Kurdish people’ and providing services in Kurdish.41 It could be argued that these closures were not only contrary to the basic principles of liberal democracy, but were also completely pointless, since closed parties simply re-established themselves under another name. The BDP, for instance, was the successor to the Democratic Society Party, closed in 2009, and this was just the latest of a string of previous examples. On these grounds it was urged that the Turkish law and constitution be brought into line with the recommendations of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (better known as the ‘Venice Commission’). These maintain that party closures can only be justified ‘in the case of parties which advocate the use of violence or use violence as a political means to overthrow the democratic constitutional order’, adding that this provision ‘should be used with utmost restraint’.42 Since the AKP had itself narrowly escaped being closed down by the Constitutional Court for allegedly infringing secularism, it included a change to Article 69 in the package of constitutional amendments enacted in 2010. Paradoxically, however, some members of the party, plus the parliamentary group of the BDP – both of whom

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had been the victims, or near-victims, of this article – failed to support the amendment in the final vote in parliament, so that it received only 327 votes, or three short of the minimum number required.43 It seemed almost certain, however, that the AKP and other parties would return to the charge, and that new versions of Articles 68 and 69 would be included in the expected constitutional draft.

The judiciary Clearly, part of the perceived need to alter these and similar provisions in the 1982 constitution derived from the persistent tendency of the higher reaches of the judiciary to interpret the document, and the laws dependent on it, in the most restrictive possible way, especially on the issues of Kurdish nationalism and the upholding of secularism. As one critic puts it, ‘the self-declared mission of the courts in Turkey ... is to protect the state and its official discourse rather than the individual and his/her rights and liberties’.44 Ideally, the judiciary should be both independent and impartial. The first objective is reasonably easy to attain, given effective institutional arrangements, but the second cannot be assured except by a cultural commitment to impartiality by the judges themselves. In the case of the US Supreme Court, for instance, there can be no doubt about its institutional independence, but individual judges can be openly identified as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ on critical issues, and presidents are often assumed to appoint them on this basis. In the Turkish case, until constitutional amendments were passed in 2010, the system of appointments was entirely internal, so that the judiciary was certainly independent, but it was anything but impartial, as its decision in the headscarf case in 2008 and several similar cases clearly indicated.45 The constitutional amendments of 2010 brought Turkey into line with most European democracies, in that the composition of the Constitutional Court, and appointments to the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (which in turn makes appointments to the higher courts) were altered so as to allow some appointments to be made by the president and the judiciary as a whole rather than just the senior judges.46 Given the AKP’s strong support for the amendments, it could

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be expected that these arrangements would not be altered in the draft of the new constitution. Another important provision affecting the role of the judiciary in protecting human rights (or, in the Turkish case, failing to do so) was contained in an amendment to Article 90 of the 1982 constitution passed in 2004, which declared that International agreements duly put into effect bear the force of law ... In the case of a conflict between international agreements in the area of fundamental rights and freedoms duly put into effect and the domestic laws due to differences in provisions on the same matter, the provisions of international agreements shall prevail. In principle, this Article should have ensured that domestic courts gave precedence to the provisions of the ECHR in judging cases affecting human rights, thus significantly reducing the number of cases pending against Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights. That it failed to do so was a good measure of the highly restrictive and pro-state attitudes of the judiciary, who appeared to ignore its provisions. In response, the 2007 draft proposed changing the wording of what was now draft Article 68 to say simply that ‘the laws shall not be in conflict with international agreements in the area of fundamental rights and freedoms duly put into effect’. Whatever formula were adopted, it was clear its successor would need to be less open to misinterpretation than the previous Article 90.

Conclusion Needless to say, the issues previously outlined do not exhaust the list of probable or possible changes brought about by the new constitution, if it is actually achieved. Democratizing Turkey’s politics and political identity will depend not just on altering the constitutional rules, but also making changes to the large number of statute laws that are shaped by them. Particularly crucial will be changes to the law on judicial procedure, so as to end the practice of holding criminal suspects on remand for years at a time even though their cases

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have not been heard, as well as the laws affecting press freedom and alleged support for terrorist organizations. While constitutional and other changes since 2002 had substantially reduced the independent power of the military in Turkish politics, more effective civilian control over the actions of the armed forces and parliamentary control over military expenditures were needed.47 Changing the mindsets of police officers, public prosecutors and judges so that they protect the rights and interests of the citizens, rather than purely those of the state, will require a radical cultural transformation which will not come overnight, or at the stroke of the legislator’s pen. A new constitution would just be a preliminary step, albeit an essential one. With the start of the process, there were naturally many who wondered whether it would or could be completed. On 9 July 2012, it was reported that the Reconciliation Commission had completed one quarter of the text of the new draft constitution, which was expected to have around 100 Articles. The aim was to complete the draft by the end of the year: after a period of further public discussion, the draft would be submitted to parliament in 2013. Nonetheless, many critics queried whether the ruling party, or the other parties in parliament, really wanted a new constitution, suggesting that they were only interested in putting on a show of democratization. Prime Minister Erdoğan persistently spurned this accusation, saying in May 2012 that his party would never be the first to withdraw from the process, although he accused the opposition of dragging their feet. In response, the CHP denied this, claiming that it was the AKP, not the CHP, which might prove reluctant.48 For the opposition, a frequently expressed fear was that the government would ram through its own version of the constitution, ignoring other parties and interests. This fear seemed exaggerated, however, since it ignored the parliamentary arithmetic. With 326 seats, one of them occupied by the non-voting Speaker, the AKP was five seats short of the minimum required to pass any constitutional clauses, never mind the need to have the new document accepted in a referendum. Given this, a more real worry was that parliament might be deadlocked on some essential clauses, unable to produce the required minimum of 330 votes for any of the conflicting proposals.

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In principle, Speaker Çiçek’s Commission was committed to reaching a consensus of all the parties represented in parliament, but this seemed unlikely given the huge gulf which, for instance, separated the BDP and the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP), especially on the Kurdish question. In March 2012, Tayyip Erdoğan had admitted that parties had ‘red lines’ on which they would not compromise, but explained that ‘[i]f the four parties can’t come to a consensus, then we’ll see what those who can compromise can do together as a Plan B’.49 This would probably largely depend on agreement between the AKP and CHP, with the additional expectation that, since the parliamentary vote on constitutional amendments must be by secret ballot, the necessary number of votes might be attained by backbench defections even if the party leaders disagreed. In 2013, the Çiçek Commission continued its meetings, but fell far short of reaching its target of an agreed draft to a new constitution: in fact, by early June 2013 it was reported to have agreed on only 50 of the 174 articles of the document.50 In the meantime, however, the political scene was significantly altered by two unexpected developments. At the end of the previous month, the violent tactics adopted by the police in breaking up a peaceful demonstration to prevent destruction of the Gezi Park, one of central Istanbul’s few public green spaces, sparked off a wave of protests in Istanbul and other cities, and damaged the government’s standing both in Turkey and abroad. Criticism was increased by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s harsh rhetoric against the protests. Paradoxically, in November 2012 the government had also begun an indirect dialogue with the leaders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) resulting in an end – hopefully permanent – to their campaign of terrorist attacks. In this, deputies of the BDP acted as essential interlocutors. Given the effective failure of the Çiçek Commission to complete its work, it was suggested that the limited raft of proposals on which it could agree might be submitted to parliament, with a following referendum, leaving the project of an entirely new constitution in abeyance. Alternatively, the AKP could submit its own draft, hoping to pick up enough support from the opposition benches to carry its proposal over the 330-vote threshold.

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The apparent cooperation with the BDP raised the possibility that this could come from the pro-Kurdish deputies, provided the AKP could come sufficiently close to meeting their demands for wider ethnic rights. However, it was reported that the BDP would probably not support Tayyip Erdoğan’s plan for a presidential system, increasing the chances that this proposal would fall by the wayside.51 Even if it went through, there was the real possibility that when the presidential elections came due in August 2014, Abdullah Gül might run against him – in which case Gül would apparently stand a good chance of winning.52 If this happened, then Erdoğan might alter the AKP’s internal party rules, so as to allow him and fellow-AKP deputies to run for a fourth term, thus permitting him to continue as Prime Minister for as long as the parliament would support him. Losing the presidential race would nevertheless be a severe loss of face, raising the distinct possibility that when general elections became obligatory in June 2015 (if not before) the AKP would lose its majority, unless it could change its leadership in the meantime. Clearly, the government itself, as well as the proposed constitution, are in for a bumpy ride. At the end of the process, the constitution might well fall short of the hopes of the idealists, with messy compromises, or remaining undemocratic restrictions. Turks could however console themselves with the thought that no such documents are ever likely to be perfect, but in democracies they can at least be changed again as circumstances allow. In short, constitution making is an evolving story, not a static one. Clearly, achieving a democratic identity was not going to be a straightforward process, with a fairly wide margin of doubt and argument as to what it actually entailed.

Notes 1. Metropoll, Türkiye Siyasal Durum Araştırması Nisan 2011 (Ankara: Metropoll), p. 15. Similarly, a poll, also conducted by Metropoll, in February–March 2012 among 1,174 voters in Istanbul, found 66.4 per cent support for the idea: Metropoll, Istanbullu Seçmenlerin Gündemdeki Konulara Bakışı, ŞubatMart 2012 (Ankara: Metropoll).

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2. See E. Özbudun and S. Yazıcı, Democratization Reforms in Turkey (1993– 2004) (Istanbul: TESEV, 2004) pp. 15–41; E. Özbudun and Ö.F. Gençkaya, Democratization and the Politics of Constitution-Making in Turkey (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2009) pp. 43–71; W. Hale and E. Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: the Case of the AKP (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), ch. 5. 3. Hale and Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey, pp. 66–67, 71–75. 4. For the English texts of the 1924 and 1961 constitutions, and the debates which preceded them, see S. Kili, Turkish Constitutional Developments and Assembly Debates on the Constitutions of 1924 and 1961 (Istanbul: Robert College Research Center, 1961) pp. 30–145, 163–204. For the official English text of the 1982 constitution, with amendments up to 2010, see the website www. byegm.gov.tr. The new constitution commission’s website is https://yenianayasa.tbmm.gov.tr. 5. 1982 Constitution, Article 176. In the first case, the president of the republic is entitled to call a referendum, but this is not a requirement: in fact, this has only happened once, in 2007. 6. F.D. Zibak, ‘Parties get to work on new constitution, PM wants it done by first half of 2012’, Today’s Zaman, 29 September 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-258316-parties-get-to-work-on-new-constitution-pm-wantsit-done-by-first-half-of-2012.html. For the arguments on this issue, see Ergun Özbudun, The Constitutional System of Turkey, 1876 to the Present (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), ch. 9; Z. Arslan, Turkey’s Bid for the New Constitution (Ankara: Foundation for Political, Economic [SETA]), SETA Policy Brief No. 1, November 2007, p. 3. 7. For debates on this issue, see for example M. Yetkin, ‘Erdoğan, Türkiye’nin ilk Başkanı mı Olacak?’ Radikal, 8 May 2012, http://www.radikal.com.tr/yazarlar/murat_yetkin/erdogan_turkiyenin_ilk_baskani_mi_olacak-1087302; A. Ayasun, ‘AK Party plans for semi-presidential system stir further debate’, Today’s Zaman, 17 May 2012, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-280693-akparty-plans-for-semi-presidential-system-stir-further-debate.html; Hürriyet Daily News, ‘Turkish PM joins debate on presidential system’, 8 May 2012, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-joins-debate-on-presidentialsystem.aspx?pageID=238&nID=20217&NewsCatID=338. 8. In the language of the day, Kanun-i Esasi Encümeni. 9. See E. Özbudun, 1924 Anayasası (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2012) pp. 37–41, 44–45, and Kili, Turkish Constitutional Developments, pp. 41–48.

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10. According to a poll carried out by A & G Araştırma in February 2011, 56 per cent of respondents opposed the idea, with 16 per cent supporting it, and the remainder not expressing an opinion: reported in E. Can, ‘Başkanın silueti’, Radikal, 9 May 2012, http://www.radikal.com.tr/yazarlar/eyup_can/ baskanin_silueti-1087407. 11. Hürriyet Daily News, ‘President Gül can run for re-election, spokesman says, July 2012’, 15 June 2012, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-gulcan-run-for-re-election-spokesman-says.aspx?pageID=238&nid=26644. Abdullah Gül had been elected president in August 2007 under the then constitutional rules, which stipulated that the president be elected by parliament, and serve for a single seven-year term. Under a constitutional amendment passed by referendum in October 2007 this arrangement was altered to direct election by the voters, with a maximum of two five-year terms. Subsequently, the Constitutional Court decided that President Gül would be entitled to run for a second term of five years when his first term expired in 2014. 12. Quoted in Radikal, ‘ “Başkanlık” tartışmasına yargıdan ilk yorum’, 8 May 2012, http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/baskanlik_tartismasina_yargidan_ ilk_yorum-1087561. 13. See Özbudun, Constitutional System, ch. 3. 14. 2007 draft, preamble and Article 136. 15. 1982 constitution, Articles 1–3. 16. Hale and Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey, pp. 72–74; on earlier judgements by the Constitutional Court on this issue, see Zühtü Arslan, ‘Reluctantly sailing towards political liberalism: the political role of the judiciary in Turkey’, in Terence C. Halliday, Lucien Karpik and Malcolm M. Feeley (eds), Fighting for Political Freedom: Comparative Studies of the Legal Complex and Political Liberalism (Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 2007) pp. 231–35. 17. E. Yavuz, ‘How AK Party, CHP approach the introduction of a new constitution’, Today’s Zaman, 23 May 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=244809. 18. Council of Europe, European Convention on Human Rights, as amended by Protocols Nos 11 and 13 (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Treaty Series, No. 5, 2010) Article 10. 19. Council of Europe, European Convention on Human Rights, Article 11. 20. European Court of Human Rights, Annual Report 2010 (Strasbourg: Registry of the European Court of Human Rights, 2011) p. 146. 21. 1982 constitution, Articles 20–22 and 33–34.

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22. Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Representative on Freedom of the Media, Press Release of 4 April 2011, and Annex (Vienna: OSCE, April 2011), from www.osce.org/fom/76374. 23. 2007 draft, Article 26. 24. Council of Europe, Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, European Treaty Series No. 157, 1995), Explanatory Report, para. 12. For a broader discussion of these points, see Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘What rights should minorities have?’, in Georgina Ashworth (ed.), World Minorities (Sunbury: Quartermaine House and Minority Rights Group, 1977). 25. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, preamble. 26. Additionally, Belgium, Greece, Iceland and Luxembourg have signed but not ratified the Framework Convention. 27. Council of Europe, Framework Convention, Articles 9 and 14. 28. Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, Emek, Demokrasi ve Özgürlük Bloğu Seçim Beyannamesi 2011 (Ankara: Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, 2011), section 1.1. 29. Today’s Zaman, ‘CHP leader pledges autonomy for local governments in Hakkari rally’, 23 May 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-244803chp-leader-pledges-autonomy-for-local-governments-in-hakkari-rally. html. 30. E. Yavuz, ‘How AK Party, CHP approach the introduction of a new constitution’, Article 35 in the 2007 draft. The second formulation would be close to that of the original constitution of 1924, Article 88 of which declared that ‘[t]he people of Turkey, regardless of religion or race, are Turks as regards citizenship’, although this had stirred up heated debate in parliament at the time: see Kili, Constitutional Developments, pp. 59–60, 170. 31. Today’s Zaman, ‘YÖK allows Tunceli University to teach Kurdish-language classes’, 22 December 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-266483yok-allows-tunceli-university-to-teach-kurdish-language-classes.html. 32. For instance, the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1992 requires signatory states to make education in minority languages at different levels available in the whole or part of the school programme, or as a minimum to allow ‘teaching of the relevant regional or minority languages’ as part of the curriculum (but, by implication, not the medium of instruction for other subjects): Council of Europe, European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, European Treaty Series No. 148, 1992), Article 8/1. For the contrasting practices in, e.g., Wales on the one hand, and Brittany on the other, see Welsh Assembly Government, Welsh-medium Education Strategy (Cardiff:

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34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

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Welsh Assembly Government, Information document No. 083/2010) and Lois Kuter, Breton – A Endangered Language (n.p.: International Committee for the Defense of the Breton Language, 2004), from www.breizh.net/icdbl/ saozg/endangered.htm. Quoted, H. Khoshinaw, ‘Kurdish opposition leader calls for recognizing Kurdish language’, Rudaw in English, 13 July 2011, from www.rudaw.net/ english/news/turkey/3819.html. 2007 draft, Article 45. M. B. Öztürk, ‘Official or optional Turkish’, Today’s Zaman, 13 June 2012, http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action? newsId=283566. L. Köker, ‘AK Party’s approach to the right to education: a new democratization move?’, Today’s Zaman, 15 July 2012, http://www.todayszaman.com/ newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=788796A5ABD7820E373BA8 D2EA6AD520?pageNo=8&category=109&dt=0&newsId=286620&column istId=0. Köker, ‘AK Party’s approach’. 2007 draft, Article 24, ‘Alternatif 1’ and ‘Alternatif 2’. See A. I. Güzel, ‘Yeni Anayasa’da Diyanet’in Statüsü’, Anayasa2013 (Istanbul: 2011), http://www.anayasa2011.com/?p=10162; David Shankland, The Alevis in Turkey: the Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 161–64. E. Özbudun, ‘European Criteria for Party Closure’, Today’s Zaman, 4 May 2008, http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action? load=detay&link=140834 – cites a total of 18 closures since 1982: since then, the closure of the former pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in 2009 will have lifted that total to 19. Arslan, ‘Reluctantly Sailing’, p. 237. European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Guidelines on Prohibition and Dissolution of Political Parties and Analogous Measures adopted by the Venice Commission at its 41st Plenary Session (Venice, 10–11 December 1999) (CDL-INF [2000] 1) Articles 3 and 5. Hürriyet Daily News, ‘Turkish Parliament passes six articles in second round of reform debate’, 4 May 2010, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ turkish-parliament-passes-six-articles-in-second-round-of-reform-debate. aspx?pageID=438&n=akp-passes-six-articles-without-resistance-2010–05–04. Arslan, ‘Reluctantly sailing’, p. 220. See Özbudun, Constitutional System, ch. 6, and M. Sancar and E.Ü. Atılgan, Adalet Biraz Es Geçiliyor, Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Hakimler ve Savcılar (Istanbul: TESEV, 2009).

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46. The Articles affected were numbers 146, 147, 149 and 159: for the details, see Özbudun, Constitutional System, ch. 6. 47. See, in particular, Y. Gürsoy, ‘The impact of EU-driven reforms on the political autonomy of the Turkish military’, South European Society and Politics 16/2 (2011); M. Heper, ‘Civil-mililtary relations in Turkey: towards a liberal model?’ and E. Aydınlı, ‘Ergenekon, new pacts and the decline of the Turkish “inner state”’, both in Turkish Studies 12/2 (2011). 48. E. Bayrak, ‘PM: We want to draft constitution of 2023 not 1961, 1982’, 28 May 2012, http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById. action?newsId=281747. 49. Today’s Zaman, ‘Government has Plan B if work on constitution gets stalled’, Today’s Zaman, 28 March 2012, http://www.todayszaman.com/news275690-.html. 50. Today’s Zaman, ‘Opposition parties tell Çiçek Reconciliation Commission should keep working on new constitution’, 9 June 2013, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-320418-opposition-parties-tell-cicek-reconciliationcommission-should-keep-working-on-new-constitution.html. 51. Hürriyet Daily News, ‘No problem in PKK pullout’, 23 May 2013, http:// www.hurriyetdailynews.com/no-problem-in-pkk-pullout-bdp.aspx?pageID =238&nID=47430&NewsCatID=338. 52. For instance, in a poll conducted by Metropoll (see note 1) in April 2013, Gül came well ahead of Erdoğan in the popularity stakes. As many as 26 per cent of the AKP supporters in the survey said they did not support a switch to a presidential system. Although it was still the leading party, the AKP’s popularity rating had also declined to 36.3 per cent, from 51.8 per cent in December 2011, with a significant increase in the ‘don’t knows’. Ö. Sencan, Türkiye’nin Nabzı, Nısan 2013, “Yeni Çözüm Süreci” (Ankara: Metropoll, 2013) pp. 7, 38, 43.

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CHAPTER 3 TUR KEY: A R ISING NOR M ATIVE POWER? Sevilay Aksoy

Turkish foreign policy behaviour has been increasingly characterized by a multiregional and international activism in the post-Cold War period, and especially after the election into government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). Yet it is not just the greater involvement of Ankara in the conflicts and opportunities of its neighbourhood that attracts attention. Particularly for those accustomed to seeing a largely predictable country, which historically and institutionally anchored itself on many fronts to the West, those instances of foreign policy behaviour that deviate from that of Washington and/or European capitals have provoked several questions, if not concern, in recent years. On two critical issues, for example, Ankara did not act in line with the wishes of (some of) its Western allies and refused to be part of US-led collective action. One of those concerned US military requests in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War while the other relates to the imposition of international sanctions on Iran for its nuclear programme. On both occasions Turkey said ‘no’, preferring to get involved in the issues concerned in a relatively independent manner. When these ‘nos’ are considered along with some other oft-cited examples, such

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as the pre-Arab Spring economic and political rapprochement with Syria and Iran, the increasing sympathy shown by Ankara towards the Palestinian cause and its opposition to the isolation policy pursued by the international community towards the Hamas government, Turkey is argued to be in the course of changing its foreign policy orientation from the West to the Middle East. And given the fact that most of those ‘deviant’ instances took place under the AKP government, a government with roots in political Islam, the case for identity-based shift seems to be bolstered. On the other hand, the AKP government has continuously refuted such a description and the associated criticisms, arguing that Ankara, while still retaining its traditional objective of maintaining and deepening its institutionalized links with the West, now has a multiregional perspective, which is both principled (normative) and interest-based. It is certainly possible to find evidence supportive of either side’s claim. While Ankara’s increasing involvement in its neighbourhood and beyond is not simply confined to the Muslim-majority countries and has included, for instance, improved relations with Russia, Latin America and several African countries (Muslim and non-Muslim alike), it is also the case that the government’s embracing and sympathetic rhetoric and behaviour towards the Middle East is quite unprecedented in republican history. However, it is not the intention here to offer an overall review of the AKP government’s foreign policy so as to suggest which claim has firmer foundations. Rather, this chapter has the narrower objective of looking more closely into the normative nature of recent Turkish foreign policy. The normative aspect warrants consideration because not only does the government – and especially its foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu – repeatedly refer to it, but also the actual foreign policy behaviour, including the cases previously mentioned, has involved ideas and tools associated with so-called ‘soft power’; for instance, emphasis on multilateralism, diplomacy, international institutions, legitimacy, justice, economic interdependence and increased cultural ties. Accomplishing common security through regional political and economic partnerships and playing an active third party role in the resolution of regional conflicts have steadily become the foreign policy priorities since 2002, replacing the security-conscious stance

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that Ankara deployed towards its neighbourhood during the 1990s and even before that. There has indeed been a palpable shift in the language and tools used by the current government towards the same geography and beyond. Although the limits and durability of that new normative stance are currently being severely tested, with the re-emergence of Cold War-type politics following the violent response of some of the governments in the Middle East to the popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring and the complex interplay of that response with increasing sectarianism and great powers’ involvement in the region, the normative dimension constitutes the most distinctive characteristic of recent Turkish foreign policy. This chapter, in line with some of the academic work on normative foreign policy, argues that for a foreign policy to be depicted as normative it has to meet the criteria of having normative objectives, means and impact.1 In other words, not only do deeds need to match words but they are also together expected to make a positive impact on the issue in question. Not surprisingly, however, very few, if any, states can pass this stringent test even though they may have the best of intentions, being affected by a number of factors located in the domestic and international contexts. According to Nathalie Tocci, a leading scholar in this area, the configuration of internal political interests, available foreign policy means and the repercussions of a foreign policy act at various levels of analysis all play a role on the normative content and impact of a foreign policy.2 This chapter, generally benefiting from the theoretical framework put forward by Tocci, seeks to identify the objectives, tools and impact of recent Turkish foreign policy with a focus on the illustrative yet challenging case study of the Arab Spring. The final section attempts to give a preliminary answer to the question of to what extent the oft-claimed principled/normative basis underlies current Turkish foreign policy and can be considered as constituting its new orientation or identity.

Normative foreign policy goals, means and impact The conventional approach in International Relations, emanating from the realist-idealist divide, is to juxtapose the so-called realist

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foreign policy, which is conducted with a view to maximizing power and material interests, against the idealist, or normative, foreign policy that is pursued to protect and promote the norms of international law and ethics. The considerations of power and prudence characterize the former while a logic of appropriateness based on the dictates of international legal and ethical norms underlie the latter.3 Different types of goals are said to motivate and shape realist and normative foreign policies. Nathalie Tocci, following Arnold Wolfers’ famous classification, distinguishes between ‘possession’ and ‘milieu’ goals, identifying the goals of a normative foreign policy with the latter.4 According to Wolfers, possession goals belonging to the domain of Realpolitik are mainly self-regarding goals, which ‘[aim] at the enhancement or the preservation of one or more of the things to which [a nation] attaches value ... [such] as a stretch of territory, membership in the Security Council of the United Nations, or tariff preferences’.5 Milieu goals, on the other hand, are ‘other-regarding’ in that ‘[n]ations pursuing them are out not to defend or increase possessions they hold to the exclusion of others, but aim instead at shaping conditions beyond their national boundaries’.6 However, the two need not always be juxtaposed. Milieu goals often help create the circumstances for the realization of common interests of nations, while the aspiration for certain types of possession goals, such as a seat at the Security Council of the United Nations, may in turn equip a state with the necessary capacity to serve higher ideals associated with milieu goals.7 The latter ideals are generally identified with efforts to promote international law or establish international organizations that fundamentally aim at improving or strengthening the societal base of the environment in which nation states co-exist.8 On the other hand, as noted by Tocci and others, rules and principles that underlie international law and international institutions are hardly independent of power, and generally reflect the ideational and non-ideational preferences of the most powerful actors of the international community. In other words, they are ‘the product[s] of international power relations and not a magic formula that perfectly objectivises and universalises norms’.9 Yet, an emphasis on internationally agreed norms and institutions, according to Tocci, ‘diminishes the risks of imposing one’s chosen definition of

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norms on others through the sheer exercise of power, as well as of acting inconsistently and selectively in world affairs’.10 In discussion of normative foreign policy, the nature of the instruments deployed also needs to be examined. In order to talk about the practice of a normative foreign policy at a particular time and space, normative instruments need to accompany normative goals leaving a normative impact. However, it is difficult to see what makes a foreign policy instrument normative as this debate involves the assessment of their particular nature, their implementation and the power relations underlining them. As Tocci notes, it is the existence of such questions that make it very difficult to determine the ‘normativity’ of instruments by looking at either their nature (military or not) or how they are used (coercive or not). Sometimes military sanctions can be the most appropriate means, both legally and morally, to tackle a violating state, while a particular power-political context may render meaningless an otherwise normative instrument such as dialogue or persuasion.11 Instead, Tocci’s suggestion is to regard only legal foreign policy means as normative. And legality as such refers both to the compliance with domestic legal standards of democracy, transparency and accountability and to acting multilaterally and with UN authorization and more generally respecting international law. Though international legal means have serious problems of their own (for example, the enforcement issue), Tocci still regards them as normative since they ‘assert the primacy of right over might’.12 The final dimension of a normative foreign policy concerns its results. Although many associate only objectives and instruments with normative foreign policy, intended normative results of relevant policy actions matter equally if not more. Tocci defines normative impact as ‘one where a traceable path can be drawn between an international player’s direct or indirect actions and inactions (or series of actions) on the one hand and the effective building and entrenchment of an international rule-bound environment on the other’.13 To the extent that one can observe specific institutional, policy or legal changes within a third country and trace those to the particular policy actions of a state, then a normative foreign policy can be said to be effective as well as in operation. However, as pointed out by Tocci, changes in a

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third country are rarely the consequence of actions of a single country. They are usually produced by a combination of internal and external dynamics interwoven in complex ways. Hence the need for ‘a detailed analysis of the interaction between policy on the one hand and the political opportunity structure underpinning the situation within a receiving party on the other’.14 Normative goals of Turkish foreign policy: Davutoğlu’s principles, democracy promotion and the Arab Spring The architect of the present Turkish foreign policy, Ahmet Davutoğlu, a professor of International Relations, had analyzed the historical background, nature, strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures of Turkish foreign policy in his book, Strategic Depth (2007), prior to his entry into politics. Significantly, he concerned himself with the normative question of a ‘new vision’ for Turkey’s foreign policy in the new millennium.15 Many believe that Strategic Depth underpins the intellectual basis of the current foreign policy. Indeed there is considerable consistency between Davutoğlu’s views before and after his entry into government. And those views, also expressed in the book, revolve around two main themes: geopolitics and historical and cultural depth. On the one hand, the depth of the geopolitical analysis in the book leaves no doubt that Davutoğlu is first and foremost a realist student of foreign policy, very much concerned with the power, security and prosperity of his country. The categorization of states into weak (passive) and strong (active) states that are respectively peripheral, regional and global powers; his aspiration to elevate Turkey’s status from being a peripheral power of the West to one that is able to shape and influence the international agenda as well as that of its regional neighbourhood; and the detailed analysis of the balance of power politics in the Middle East all point to Davutoğlu’s realist side. And the government’s rhetoric prior to and after the appointment of Davutoğlu as Foreign Minister in 2009 (and he had been an official foreign policy advisor to the government since 2002) are replete with statements to the same effect, all prioritizing – or at least emphasizing – national interest in traditional power terms. However, this is only one side of

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the picture, which is complemented and made more complicated by the inclusion and implementation of his views on Turkey’s historical and cultural depth. Davutoğlu’s critiques of past Turkish foreign policy behaviour often single out the failures to fully exploit the complex but extremely rich geopolitical potential that the country possesses. In order to have a proper grasp of the size of that failure, he argues, one just needs to remember that during the imperial (Ottoman) period Turkey used to be the centre of the geopolitical layers (primarily the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans) surrounding it, connected to all through commerce, culture, travel and immigration as well as wars. This period lasted for as long as six centuries.16 According to him, Turkey literally lost touch with or largely ignored its geocultural and geoeconomic depth once it became a member of the Western bloc after World War II. In this respect Davutoğlu is more critical of the manner of Turkey’s integration into the West than of its inclusion in principle. He argues that Turkey did not become a member of the Western family with an equal say and influence but rather turned into a pliant state that unquestioningly acknowledged the threat definitions and resultant policies of the West no matter how much those distanced and alienated Ankara from its historical neighbourhood. And all the while Turkey’s future was kept hostage to a vague and bleak prospect of fully acceding to the EU.17 The end of the Cold War, however, changed the whole geopolitical landscape, reshuffling the global threat perceptions and strategies, creating geopolitical vacuums and posing both risks and opportunities for Turkish foreign policy makers.18 One great opportunity, he argues, concerns Turkey’s assuming new roles in its neighbourhood by re-interpreting its geography and history and once again becoming an influential actor in the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans. If Ankara can make the best of that opportunity and take the right steps, then, he argues, it can rid itself of its peripheral status and have a chance of becoming a global as well as regional power.19 Among such steps he includes leaving the bad old habit of formulating foreign policy from the perspective of securitized domestic issues such as the ethnic separatist PKK problem. According to Davutoğlu,

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this problem has long prevented Ankara from realizing that Turkey, together with its neighbours to the south and to the north, form interconnected and interdependent economic, cultural and energy geographies with a great potential for regional integration. People on each side of the borders should have increasing freedom of movement rather than be separated by electronic wires or difficult visa regimes. It is only by facilitating and encouraging greater movement of people, goods, capital and services through its borders that Ankara can hope to establish complex interdependencies with its neighbourhood that will benefit all.20 Instead of the zero-sum perspective of the realists, which regards any gain of the other as a loss for the self, Davutoğlu and the government have continuously supported the view that for peace and development to be sustainable they need to be attained in a manner benefiting all.21 This last point, based on the principle of winwin, is crucial as it refines Davutoğlu’s realist vision and turns it into a semi-realist one by imbuing it with liberal features. In Davutoğlu’s analysis of the international system and Turkey’s status and role in it, the elements of historical and cultural depth stand out as means of achieving power with a view to not simply defending national interests but also realizing greater order and justice at regional and international levels. A sense of historical responsibility is said to emanate from such depth, burdening Turkey with a mission to resolve its ongoing disputes with some of its neighbours and to tackle at least the most urgent issues of its neighbourhood, especially the Middle East. Accordingly, ‘zero-problems’ with neighbours and conflict-resolution with active diplomacy have become the guiding mottos of the new foreign policy. Davutoğlu and the other members of the government have expressed on different occasions their desire to help create security communities around and including Turkey with institutional bases akin to those of the EU.22 Considering that the regions (the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasus) primarily targeted by the active diplomacy are renowned for their Realpolitik environment and history, the goal of setting up security communities where states come to perceive one another as friends to cooperate with rather than as enemies to fight against is surely a very positive one, if quite challenging and ambitious to realize.

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In a speech at Chatham House, Ahmet Davutoğlu delineated the basic contours of the AKP government’s perspectives on international order and justice, differentiating between political, economic and cultural dimensions of a new global order.23 With regard to the political dimension, the areas that received the most emphasis were: the need for a reform of the UN with a view to making it more representative and inclusive; multilateralism; engagement; and a participatory and result-oriented global order. In May 2011, Ankara hosted the UN Conference for Less Developed Countries where Davutoğlu appealed for a loud call against the injustices of the international economic system, claiming that Turkey would be the voice of international conscience seeking to reduce the number of ‘less developed states’ and help realize a sustainable and equitable economic model.24 Considering that the call for ‘participation’, ‘inclusion’, ‘equity’ and ‘multilateralism’ points to the speaker’s feeling of their absence and the prevalence of their opposites – ‘single-handed governance’, ‘exclusion’, ‘unfairness’ and ‘unilateralism’ – it seems that Ankara is not happy with the structures of the current political and economic institutions of global society, which indeed were all designed in the aftermath of World War II and have not been radically reformed since then. In Strategic Depth Davutoğlu had similarly spoken about the need for a new global distribution of power and underlined that unless reformed accordingly and rendered more representative the international governance structures would remain ineffective in tackling the challenging problems of a new era.25 Then he had also been concerned with the future restructuring of the West’s main collective security institution, NATO, being wary that with the collapse of the communist threat the institution’s search for a new threat definition could impose dangerous missions on its only Muslim member, Turkey, alienating it further from its Middle Eastern neighbourhood.26 The unease of Ankara with the re-orientation of the NATO mission in response to the 11 September attacks in the US can be considered an extension of a broader unease with the ‘torn country’ status attached to Turkey by Huntington. In his book, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington described a ‘torn country’ as a state with a symptomatic identity crisis, with its elites longing to

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make the country a member of another civilization (the West) while the society and the recipient civilization (the EU) are at odds with that objective.27 Davutoğlu regards that argument as a ‘dangerous trap’, having the potential to trigger and aggravate cultural conflicts. In order to avoid the latter both within itself and at the regional and international levels, he insists that Turkey should develop an ‘inclusionary and comprehensive civilizational identity’ embracing all the cultures it has historically embodied. Thus Turkey should not be lulled into the false and empty debate of East and West in forming its self-image. Only then, he believes, can peaceful multicultural and multi-religious coexistence be realized within Turkey and beyond, with Turkey leading and inspiring others.28 What other responsibilities does Ankara feel it has to itself and others? Does the promotion and protection of democracy and human rights, for instance, have any place in the new foreign policy? Considering that this objective is considered synonymous with normative foreign policy by many, and that the popular uprisings that started to sweep across the Middle East from 2011 onwards are essentially protests against the anti-democratic nature of the political regimes, this is a very apt and timely question. Policies aiming at the promotion of democracy abroad are often considered part of the agenda of the liberal democratic states and justified with a view to creating ‘peace zones’. According to the thesis of ‘democratic peace’, democratic states are considerably less prone to violent conflict than non-democratic states and they rarely go to war against each other. This is in contrast to the record of violent conflicts between authoritarian states, and between authoritarian states and democracies. Given that non-violence is regarded to be in the long-term interest of all peoples, liberals favour the enlargement of the borders of ‘peace zones’ by transforming authoritarian states into liberal democracies in one way or another.29 Turkey’s stance vis-à-vis all that is closely related to the process of its EU membership and its inner political dynamics. Turkey may not have started its journey with the then EEC back in the early 1960s exclusively with a view to consolidating its young democracy, but even then it knew that the European club to which it was seeking entry consisted of only liberal democracies. This also

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applies to Turkey’s accession to the Council of Europe, the guardian of democracy and human rights in Europe, as soon as it was established in the aftermath of World War II. Turkey, in order to realize its long-standing European vocation and under the circumstances of the Cold War, became, respectively, associate and full member of both institutions. Turkey therefore opted for being on the side of democracies a comparatively long time ago, notwithstanding that it endured multiple shocks to its democracy due to almost periodic military interruptions; for this it received warnings and criticisms from abroad, and was even subjected to political and economic sanctions by Europe. As Turkey persisted with its European vocation, it was subjected to greater scrutiny of its democracy and human rights record. The stringent political and economic criteria for membership, developed for the applicant states by Brussels at the end of the Cold War, constituted an effective check list for Ankara, empowering the pro-democracy political and civilian opposition and disciplining successive governments to make the required reforms. The EU gave a green light to accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005 on the grounds that it had satisfactorily met Brussels’ conditions – proof of the country’s relatively consolidated democracy and improved human rights record, as well as a more stable economic outlook. Although all is not perfect either with the Turkish polity and economy or with the pace of accession negotiations, there is no doubt that Turkey, along with Israel, possesses the most democratic form of government in its neighbourhood today, and seems to have acquired irreversible qualities in this regard. Historically, Turkish foreign policy did not include among its objectives the active promotion of democracy and human rights beyond its borders. This is not surprising, since for most of the republic’s history Ankara has been preoccupied with its own affairs, struggling to consolidate its own democracy under internal and external pressure. Put differently, Ankara was not fit to promote democracy and tell others to put their houses in order while its own house was not. Also, as a developing economy, it prioritized its economic interests while dealing with authoritarian governments such as Saddam’s Iraq or Khomeini’s Iran. However, this situation changed somewhat in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, when the US came forward

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with the so-called ‘Greater Middle East Initiative’ (GMEI), a project allegedly aimed at democratizing the authoritarian regimes of the region by various means so as to tackle the root causes of terrorism and organized crime.30 Although the nature and extent of the AKP government’s participation in GMEI is a matter of controversy, the government’s discourse increasingly involved themes promoted by that project. In his historic speeches at the Islamic Conference Organization (ICO) (2003) and the international conference of the Union of the NGOs of the Islamic World (2005), Abdullah Gül, initially as prime minister and then as foreign minister, gave blunt messages to the Muslim world, advising them to become involved in soul-searching and start reforming themselves in line with the universal values of democracy and human rights, while stressing that those are humanistic values which are also shared by Islam. He highlighted Turkey’s experience with modernity, democratization and Islam,31 while clarifying, then and later with the unfolding of the so-called Arab Spring, that it is more appropriate to offer that experience as a source of inspiration and support rather than as a role model to impose.32 The latter point, combined with Gül’s subtle warning to the same audience that failure to modernize and democratize would continue to trigger foreign interventions,33 suggests that the recent Turkish position on the issue is a little more complex than otherwise assumed. On the one hand, it can be deduced from Gül’s public remarks that Ankara’s analysis of the Muslim geographies is critical, not one of praise or appeasement, as it desires those countries to have democratic and pluralist forms of governments, and reach higher levels of economic development. However, desire or aspiration is one thing, turning it into a foreign policy goal is another. Had the Bush administration not come forward with GMEI in the context of a dubious war while deploying a rhetoric (‘axis of evil’) which threatened to widen the theatre of war, it is doubtful that the AKP government would have preferred to share its views so loudly on the state of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world in the pre-Arab Spring period. Moreover, Davutoğlu did not consider the promotion of democracy as one of the primary goals of his ministry,34 and this continued to be

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the case until the outbreak of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world from 2011. The so-called Arab Spring, where popular risings sought to overthrow illegitimate and corrupt regimes and replace them with representative and relatively more egalitarian ones, seems to have caught everyone by surprise, calling into question the long-standing theories and assumptions (and the resultant policies formulated) about the region. What quickly became obvious to the policy circles, particularly in the Western capitals, including Ankara, is that the pursuit of strategic national interests by maintaining friendly relations with unrepresentative leaders is now a thing of the past, especially in those states where the uprisings have already toppled the leader (Tunisia, Libya – and Egypt, if that hasn’t been reversed) or threaten to do so (Syria). After a brief hesitation and realization that the protests were not ephemeral and had the potential to change the status quo, Ankara lent increasing rhetorical support to the protesters in Tunis and Cairo, applauding and embracing their cause while rejecting the speculation that the uprisings were another ploy of the West. Davutoğlu interpreted the developments as the normalization of the region after a century during which authoritarian regimes had been bolstered within the context of the Cold War and the Islamophobia of the West. He was confident that the young generation was constructing a new identity and common fate by effectively using technology and other transnational channels, and that this new wave of democratization would result in political moderation rather than radicalization.35 Davutoğlu also stressed that Turkey’s new objective was to be the leader of that unfolding democratic transformation, in the sense of facilitator not imposer, and that any further delay was likely to result in more serious public turmoil, with the potential to disrupt, among others, Ankara’s ultimate objective of regional integration.36 However, Ankara pursued a nuanced, case-by-case strategy, declaring its choice in favour of democratization in principle in every uprising, but toning down or delaying its public statements calling on the leader to give up power in Libya and Syria, where the conflicts, unlike in Tunisia and Cairo, assumed violent and international character and where Turkey had also until then made significant political

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and economic investments. The Libyan and Syrian cases posed serious normative dilemmas for Ankara in that their resolution brought to the agenda the use of military instruments, the involvement of ex-imperial powers and ethnic and sectarian tensions (Syria). This threatened to cause regional polarization, further loss of civilian life, increased hostilities among local factions and the consequent dismemberment of these countries. Therefore, while declaring its support for more representative regimes once the uprisings erupted in these two states, the AKP government behaved prudently on the issue of humanitarian intervention. It clearly differentiated between the relatively peaceful transitions to democracy and the violent ones, perceiving the latter to embody risks associated with unintended consequences for the accomplishment of order and justice in the contexts concerned. If state as a bureaucratic entity refers to order, and democracy to justice, Davutoğlu clarified that Ankara supported the accomplishment of justice without the disruption of order; the legitimate demands of people had to be fulfilled while ensuring the continuity of state and public order.37 It seems that the 2003 Iraq War and its violent and chaotic aftermath in particular strengthened the belief of Turkish policy-makers that while an unjust order was not sustainable in the long term, seeking justice at the expense of order and human life was equally a very dangerous, if not futile, aim. However, particularly in the Syrian case, as the toll on human lives and refugees as a result of state violence reached unacceptable numbers, Ankara started to openly advocate regime change once it had lost its belief that the transition to democracy could be possible under the Assad rule. How this could be accomplished remained an open and difficult question.

Normative foreign policy means The period of AKP rule has turned out to be internationally eventful, with many developments taking place in Turkey’s near neighbourhood. These have presented opportunities as well as challenges for the realization of Ankara’s unique array of possession and milieu goals. Some of them, including the Iraq War, the re-emergence of PKK terrorism and the Gaza flotilla crisis, have directly concerned Turkey, with the

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rest – the international isolation of Syria, Iran and Hamas; the military conflict between Georgia and Russia; Israel’s 2006 and 2008–09 attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip respectively; Iran’s nuclear programme; the Arab Spring – holding significant implications for Turkey and beyond. However, the common feature of all, with the exception of the first phase of the Arab Spring (i.e. Tunisia and Egypt), was their coercive nature, with many of them being military conflicts – or at least including a coercive element like economic sanctions; furthermore, they all took place in geographies with a long-standing Realpolitik history, which has produced chronic security dilemmas. Thus, it can be argued that unless Ankara’s policy had come to involve ambitious milieu goals such as the creation of a peaceful neighbourhood interwoven with economic interdependencies and ultimately its transformation into security communities, Ankara would have preferred to continue its policy of relative disengagement from the Middle East and the Caucasus, while being content with the selective extension of its support to the coercive policies of the West and maintaining the sui generis relationship with Israel set up in the late 1990s. The government has identified the instruments associated with so-called soft power as the most appropriate tools to realize its foreign policy goals. In this regard, diplomacy of all kinds, preventive, post-conflict, public, private, bilateral as well as multilateral, was prioritized, while coercive tactics, military or otherwise, were relegated to a secondary status, being regarded as measures of last resort. To that end the foreign ministry advocated the use of all diplomatic roles, including mainly political dialogue and mediation (when asked for). Emphasis was also placed on the positive deployment of economic and cultural instruments such as trade, investment, student exchanges, civil society meetings, economic and technical aid, cultural contacts and humanitarian aid, among others. Davutoğlu ascribed special importance to those instruments for the role they were likely to play in overcoming the psychological barriers that existed especially between Turkey and the Arab states, whom he regards as essential for the construction of a shared vision for the region.38 A case-by-case examination of the conflicts above mentioned with a view to discovering the specific rationale and extent of Ankara’s

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involvement in them is beyond the scope of this chapter. Each deserves a separate analysis on its own. Here only some general remarks are made about the Arab Spring, while the consequences of Turkey’s actions (impact) are dealt with in the following section.

The Arab Spring The policy instruments deployed by the AKP government in response to the unfolding popular uprisings in the Middle East have varied from case to case since each has come to embody different characteristics, the degree of violence being a significant differentiation marker. The relatively peaceful nature of the Tunisian and Egyptian cases has not ensured smooth transitions to democracy. However, the absence of any significant armed opposition and the relative constraint exercised by the regular army towards the protesters prevented those protests from turning into an issue of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the eyes of the international community. In both cases, the crowds, especially those in Egypt, expected the AKP government, deemed to be a successful model in showing the compatibility of Islam with modernity and democracy, to embrace their cause and to put pressure on their authoritarian regimes to enable or hasten the transition to democracy.39 That expectation alone suggests that Ankara has come to enjoy some kind of moral authority over the general populace in many Middle Eastern states. This is not just because of Turkey’s alleged role as a model but also due to the relative moral stance it displayed during the recent history of the region, including especially the 2003 Iraq War and the 2008–09 Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. Apart from Erdoğan’s direct appeal to Mubarak to step down, broadcast live in Tahrir Square, Ankara lent its support to the protesters in the form of several ministerial statements, high level official visits, civil society meetings, hosting delegations of political party groups and other academic and social activities, these all being soft power instruments. No doubt Turkey’s own experience with democratization, Islam, secularism and economic modernization offers a powerful illustrative effect in itself. As part of this, what Turkey has done and is (and is not) doing, for instance in relation to the preparation of a civilian and democratic

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constitution and restructuring civilian-military relations, is also being closely followed. However, as the recent so-called Gezi protests and the government’s not-so-democratic response reveal, Turkey is still a long way from pluralist and deliberative democracy. The increasingly authoritarian nature of the majoritarian democracy that prevails in Ankara holds the potential to seriously endanger and call into question the moral authority and the consequent demonstration effect enjoyed by the government in the region. As to the cases involving violent transitions to democracy, Turkey, though delineating some principles as to the objectives, could not easily decide what instruments were more appropriate or fit for the purpose, either changing its position in line with the decisions of the international community (Libya) or acting in tandem with regional and non-regional actors and institutions (Syria). On the choice of policy instruments, three main concerns seemed to guide the decisionmakers in Ankara: the fulfilment of national interest, international legitimacy and international legality. In both Libya and Syria, where the course of events followed an increasingly violent route, Turkey was as much concerned with protecting its own political and economic investments as with seeking to prevent the further loss of civilian lives and bringing the conflicts to an end. In Libya alone there was around $30 billion worth of Turkish investment (particularly in the construction sector), with 25,000 Turkish workers on the ground.40 Thus, when talk of imposing no-fly zones was in the air during the initial phase of the conflict, Ankara voiced its strong opposition to any military intervention, fearing that it would take a heavy toll on its material and human investment as well as Libyan lives. In addition to these concerns, Ankara, drawing inferences from the 2003 occupation of Iraq and being suspicious of the real motivations of the interventionist Western powers, underlined that any outside intervention had to have a clear legal mandate and approval from within Libya and the region.41 In that sense, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 imposing a no-fly zone in Libya and authorizing its military enforcement seemed to have met almost all Ankara’s concerns concerning legality and legitimacy. Furthermore, prior to the convening of the UNSC the Arab League had taken a decision supporting

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the imposition of a no-fly zone and asking the UN to take responsibility; the Gulf Cooperation Council had adopted a position similar to that of the League; and, more importantly, the opposition forces in Libya had asked for international help.42 Under these circumstances, Turkey, although still having second thoughts regarding any military action’s effectiveness and favouring conflict resolution through political dialogue between the opposition groups and the Qaddafi government, gave in and supported the subsequent NATO intervention. However, in line with its circumspect position, similar to Germany’s,43 Ankara confined its involvement in that operation to humanitarian missions and the enforcement of an arms embargo and no-fly zone without getting involved in the air attacks on ground targets. Before and during the NATO operation, Ankara kept in touch with both the opposition and the government in Libya with a view to effecting a cease-fire and putting forward a road map for transition to a representative government.44 However, once it became clear to Ankara that the Qaddafi regime was not going to give up power and instead would continue to resist while committing ever-increasing violations of human rights,45 Turkey, like several other NATO states, treated the rebels’ Transitional National Council based in Benghazi as the legitimate representative of Libya and extended financial support to it.46 Among all the uprisings that erupted in the Middle East in 2011, the Syrian case has turned out to be the most troubling for Turkey, the region and the international community. On the one hand, the violent response of Damascus to the initially peaceful demonstrations, and the rapid increase in the number of the dead, injured, imprisoned and tortured, have rendered the Assad regime an appropriate target for humanitarian intervention. From a theoretical and logical point of view, Syria seemed to be a better candidate for intervention than Libya where, just before NATO’s intervention, the related numbers for human casualties were significantly fewer and the threat posed by the Qaddafi forces was more in words than deeds. However, the pivotal role of Syria in the complex regional balance of power and the repercussions of that between the great powers at the international level have prevented the conflict from being seen solely in humanitarian terms. A complex array of Realpolitik issues have rather occupied

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the minds of actors in their thinking on how to tackle the Syrian crisis: the sectarian nature of the Assad regime and the likely impact of its replacement by a largely Sunni government on the regional Sunni-Shi‘a divide and the Arab-Israeli conflict; the Iranian nuclear crisis; the likely spread of the conflict to Lebanon and its impact on Hezbollah; the likely transnational repercussions of a failed Syrian state on the Kurdish problem; and the complex linkages of these and other issues with the strategic and economic interests of the US, the European states, Russia and China. With so many interested regional and non-regional actors, often having notably different political agendas, obtaining a broad consensus on the resolution of the Syrian crisis was probably doomed to failure from the start. The AKP government, having made its most significant political investment in Syria in terms of its policy of ‘zero problems with neighbours’, has been one of the most disappointed actors. Within as short a time as a few months, the politics of building trust between the two countries that marked the last decade was replaced by the politics of suspicion and mistrust. In line with the developments within Syria, and acting in tandem with the US, the EU and the Arab League, Ankara steadily revised the instruments that it perceived appropriate to influence the behaviour of Damascus. Assuming that the more than half a decade-old rapport between two countries and especially friendly personal relations between Erdoğan and Assad would somehow empower and render Turkey’s advice influential, Ankara initially relied on private diplomacy, refraining from isolating Damascus through public shaming and sanctions. Through special envoys and phone diplomacy, the government called on Assad to cease violence, end martial law, free the arrested protesters and start reforming the political system with a view to making it more democratic and transparent.47 However, those messages turned public and came to be loudly expressed by Erdoğan as the number of human casualties rose and the messages concerning political reform fell on deaf ears in Damascus. Ankara became even more anxious when Syrian refugees started to pour across the Turkish border in tens of thousands. However, unlike the refugee crisis with Iraq two decades earlier, Turkey hosted the new tide more willingly and professionally, at least in its initial stages.

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With little financial support coming from the international community, Ankara, faced with mounting refugee numbers, contemplated the creation of a safe zone inside Syrian territory, which would also be used to prevent the PKK from using northern Syria as a new military base against Turkey. However, that idea, finding no real support from Turkey’s Western and regional allies, has not materialized. With the civilian casualty rate rapidly increasing in Syria, Ankara ended its policy of bilaterally talking to Assad at the end of summer 2011 and gave full support to the Arab League initiatives. After many decades of remaining largely passive, the Arab League assumed a leading role on the issue, which in turn was facilitated by the Western powers’ reluctance to intervene militarily. Those initiatives, including brokering a peace plan, suspending Syria’s membership to the League, threatening Damascus with economic sanctions and sending observers to monitor the violence, were all strongly supported by Turkey. The more Damascus played for time and acted ingenuously, the more Ankara adopted an isolationist approach, seeking along with other members of the region and Western powers to force Assad out of power through economic sanctions and political pressure. The sanctions package announced by Ankara in the ninth month of the crisis specifically targeted the regime, seeking to deprive the ruling cadre and its business clientele of financial, political and military support.48 However, neither those nor the other sanctions imposed by the EU and the US, which fell short of the threat of the use of force, proved to be influential in the short term, forcing the Arab League, Turkey and the like-minded Western powers to coordinate their efforts and seek different routes of international legitimacy, to no avail. The UN route proved to be inconclusive when three draft resolutions calling for Assad to relinquish power and facilitate a Syrian-led political transition were shot down by the vetoes of Russia and China. The vetoes once again confirmed that unless China, and especially Russia, a political and military supporter of the Assad regime, can be persuaded to behave otherwise, the UNSC, deemed to be the route for international legality, cannot produce any mandate on the issue. In the meantime, and apart from extending support to collective sanctions, Ankara also hosted – or at least did not obstruct the

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meetings of – the Syrian opposition groups in Turkey. In response to the criticism that such behaviour effectively constitutes interference in the internal affairs of Syria, Davutoğlu responded that Turkish territory was open to any group with civil ends, including Assad supporters, and that they hoped that such meetings would eventually contribute to the development of viable opposition groups. In addition, the top cadres of the Syrian Free Army (SFA), including military personnel who had defected from the Syrian army, were granted refuge in Turkey, while Damascus and its regional allies blamed Ankara for allowing Turkish territory to be used to smuggle arms into Syria and for directing attacks. However, Ankara did not amend its pro-Syrian opposition policy even after one of its fighter jets was shot down by the Syrian military and one of its border towns came under Syrian mortar attack, killing several Turkish civilians. Over the three years following the eruption of internal violence in Syria, Turkey has found itself to have exhausted all soft-power instruments to resolve the conflict, yet remains reluctant, with good reason, to take unilateral recourse to military power.

Normative impact Examining the normative impact of Turkey’s policy towards the Arab Spring is not a simple task as one needs a longer time span to make a sounder assessment. The results of the AKP government’s declared foreign policy objectives seem to be long term in nature, and the period of a decade can be considered quite short to assess the milieu goals in question. As a matter of fact, one of the distinguishing characteristics of normative foreign policy vis-à-vis Realpolitik is its emphasis on the long term, since the ‘milieu goals’ that it seeks to promote often involve, among other things, learning processes and time- and labourconsuming services as well as material resources. Given those caveats, only some tentative general remarks can be made about the observable results and linkage between these and the AKP government’s actions (or inactions). The post-Arab Spring developments, as previously mentioned, have revealed to the Turkish government the risks of embarking upon

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integration projects with authoritarian regimes. Although forging close ties with the regional governments sat well with Turkey’s economic interests in the short term, it was not clear how Ankara would be able to realize its ambitious objective of creating a security community with the regimes that did not share its democratic credentials and increasingly lacked internal and external legitimacy. After all, security communities depend for their construction and endurance on shared identity and norms as well as common economy and security interests.49 Perhaps it was through the establishment of complex interdependencies with its neighbourhood that Turkey had hoped to contribute to the empowerment of a private sector and hence a middle class that would prove to be increasingly independent of the state and lead the way in asserting the widening of the democratic space. However, regardless of its true intention in this respect, Ankara was forced to delay, if not forgo, its vision of integration with its southern neighbours following the popular uprisings. High-level political dialogue with Damascus, as well as the envisaged regional free trade area, was shelved following the Syrian crisis. Given the complex nature of the crisis and its regional and international aspects, it is not possible to pinpoint a Turkish impact. Had Assad responded positively to Ankara’s private diplomacy at the beginning of the crisis and taken substantive reforms, then tracing a link between Turkish policy and the change in Syrian behaviour might have been possible. However, that did not materialize and the regional and international efforts with which Turkey aligned itself have not yet succeeded in bringing about the intended outcome of ceasing violence. Like its partners, Turkey faces numerous normative challenges. Each of the currently debated options of undertaking a limited military intervention (basically confined to opening humanitarian corridors), arming the rebels or exercising restraint in the sense of continuing to pressure with diplomatic and economic sanctions has the potential to bring about (very dangerous) unintended as well as intended consequences. This is partly because, as mentioned previously, the actors involved do not act just with humanitarian and democracy-related concerns; some of them may even have no such concerns at all. Turkey, in coordinating with the members of the Arab League, some of whom are motivated mostly, if not solely, by sectarian thoughts, is surely treading a fine

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line. Dismemberment of the Syrian state along sectarian lines following apparently well-intended collective action, regardless of whether it carries a legal stamp, might be the worst outcome for Turkey and the region in the long term. On the other hand, some internal and external observers have argued that the AKP government, having lost its impartiality vis-à-vis Syria, has not only endangered Turkey’s security and economic interests but also lost its potential political leverage on the Assad regime. While that may indeed be the case, Davutoğlu responded that Ankara has been investing in a future democratic Syria by extending support to the anti-Assad groups. However, for already stated reasons the feasibility of that remains not only questionable, but it may also be that Ankara may have unintentionally contributed to prolonging the violence in Syria, which inevitably delays democracyrelated issues to an uncertain future. Although ‘no justice without order’ has been the motto of Davutoğlu since the beginning of the Arab Spring, it seems that the AKP government failed to act in line with it in the Syrian case. Assessing the impact of Turkey’s behaviour in Libya is similarly complicated as it acted as part of a collective action there. Furthermore, this assessment would need to be linked to the perception of the overall success of NATO’s intervention in Libya and its aftermath. For those wanting to get rid of the Libyan leader Qaddafi, as they held him solely responsible for the violations of human rights and the absence of democracy, NATO stands as having accomplished an important mission. On the other hand, critics of that intervention raise several concerns. These include the large number of civilian casualties suffered during the operations; the human rights violations committed by the local opposition forces; the further polarization of Libyan society; and the weakness and fragility of the transitional government which was recognized early and supported by the majority of the states participating in the intervention. As stated, Turkey was a reluctant partner in the Libya operation and confined its role largely to defensive and humanitarian tasks, actively working for a cease fire out of a mix of material and normative concerns. Thus, the impact of Turkish behaviour is only partly subject to praise or blame depending on the adopted perspective, and requires a longer timespan to make a sounder

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analysis. However, the purely humanitarian acts of Ankara, such as the treatment of injured Libyan civilians in Turkish hospitals, can in any case be argued to have produced concrete normative results in the short term. As for the impact of Turkish policies on the relatively peaceful transitions to democracy in Tunisia and Egypt, one can cautiously point to the illustrative effect of the so-called Turkish model, which is similar in idea to the ‘contagion’ effect of the EU vis-à-vis its neighbourhood through the power of attraction. To what extent the ‘Turkish model’, as some argue, has inspired the uprisings in the region and will influence the transitions to democracy is a matter of controversy. The AKP government has already expressed its intent to provide, if demanded, the necessary ideational and technical support to political parties and civil society groups in these democratizing states. However, given the ideological plurality of those parties and groups, the meaning of the Turkish model or experience is ambiguous and may differ for each. As that experience, involving the encounter of Islam with democracy, modernity, secularism and free market economy, has gone through several episodes, particular policies of different Turkish governments found appealing by one particular group may irritate another. Or among the policies of a particular era some may be subjected to more critical scrutiny than others. However, in any case, what is in question is the ability to draw conclusions and lessons from Turkey’s experience, not to emulate it, and different groups vying for influence in their societies will do this in their own fashion while being also affected by a host of other internal and external circumstances and actors.

Conclusion Turkey, based on the tentative analysis above, can be described as a rising regional power with normative aspirations. The essence of those aspirations, which finds meaning in expressions such as zero conflict with neighbours, has been Ankara’s desire to break the cycle of selffulfilling prophecies in its neighbourhood and beyond. In the literature on International Relations, a self-fulfilling prophecy is associated with Realpolitik and refers to the realization of circumstances predicted by

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realists such as incessant competition for power, selfish pursuit of interests, zero-sum logic and lack of cooperation, while states generally ignore the fact that their own acts repeated over time induce such circumstances. Critics of realism argue that conflict persists in international politics not because of the alleged evil nature of the human being or the inherent logic of anarchy, but because actors make it happen so by choosing to behave in a competitive rather than cooperative way. Competitiveness and the associated zero-sum logic are learned behaviours in Turkey’s neighbourhood, and especially the Middle East. And as such they are less amenable to change. Ankara has gone through different stages while seeking to overcome them. In the preArab Spring period, the emphasis was on policies based on the win-win formula that involves the promotion of material and ideational interests by emphasizing the ‘common’ rather than the ‘self’. Primarily through increased economic transactions, and a number of normative instruments, Turkey sought to create a secure and prosperous neighbourhood that would render itself more secure in many respects and help turn itself into an influential actor in global as well as regional affairs. It is in that sense that Ankara has generally perceived a positive association between its possession goals and milieu goals. Contradicting the realist point of view, the latter have not been regarded as obstacles to but rather as serving the former. Ankara might have also hoped that a less conflictual neighbourhood would ease its accession to the EU. After all, the relatively long-standing isolation of Iran, Iraq and Syria from international society and Turkey’s conflictual relations with each had been cited as reasons to keep Turkey outside the EU in the 1990s and as a buffer between Europe and the Middle East. Davutoğlu strongly dismisses that peripheral role ascribed to Turkey. Before the Arab Spring he apparently sought to prove, through cooperative and multilateral policies, that Ankara could assist the (re)integration of its Eastern neighbourhood into international society as well as, by doing so, possibly removing an unofficial but serious obstacle to Turkey’s accession to the EU. In principle the Arab Spring should not negatively affect Turkey’s normative aspirations. As far as it stands for the ideals of legitimacy, liberty and justice, Ankara should reposition, and has actually

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repositioned, itself with ‘peoples’ instead of regimes, having realized that its milieu goals can be more firmly achieved with democratic and legitimate governments in its near neighbourhood. Turkey now regards change as a precondition for regional stability. However, the management of that change is surely critical for its normative vision, which has been inevitably postponed to an unknown future because of the uncertainties relating to the different manifestations of the Arab Spring. And some of those uncertainties, along with those pertaining to the Iranian nuclear crisis, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the rising regional sectarian divide, are prone to incite Cold War-like hostilities and polarizations in the region. Preventing the perpetuation of zero-sum scenarios may be beyond Ankara’s will and capabilities as long as the other powerful actors of the region and international community continue to see the region in Realpolitik terms, as exemplified in the persistently non-transparent attitude of Iran as to its nuclear programme and the colossal arms sale by the US to the (Sunni) Gulf States in an effort to arm them against (Shi‘a) Iran. Under such circumstances whether and to what extent Turkey can persist in accomplishing its milieu goals by relying on its soft power and avoid returning to its security-conscious past depends, among other things, on finding regional and international partners who are or can be persuaded of the worth and necessity of adopting measures that are geared towards building trust rather than suspicion in the region. In any case, with a view to making its claim to a normative identity more credible and sustainable, Turkey needs to accomplish one major task: further consolidating its democracy in the sense of making it more pluralistic and accountable, and showing greater respect for the exercise of human rights, not just civil and political but also socioeconomic and cultural. Since the government regards the Turkish model as a source of inspiration for others, and thus as a soft power asset of its foreign policy, it is well advised to develop policies with a view to preventing the further polarization of its own society along ideological lines, respecting freedom of expression and assembly, engaging with civil society in a more dialogical manner, pursuing environmentally sustainable development policies and resolving the Kurdish issue on the basis of democracy and respect for human rights. Only then can

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Ankara not only increase Turkey’s attractiveness but also remove the fault lines that contradict and thus weaken its normative discourse on foreign policy. Put differently, for a country embarking on the ambitious course of establishing security communities in its neighbourhood, it needs to have that kind of community within its borders in the first place.

Notes 1. Nathalie Tocci, ‘Profiling normative foreign policy: The European Union and its global partners’, CEPS Working Document, No. 279, December 2007, pp. 2–3. 2. Tocci, ‘Profiling normative foreign policy’, pp. 10–13. 3. See for instance Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 3–17. 4. Tocci, ‘Profiling normative foreign policy’, p. 4. 5. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), pp. 73–74. 6. Ibid., p. 74. 7. Ibid., pp. 74–77. 8. Ibid., p. 74. 9. Tocci, ‘Profiling normative foreign policy’, p. 5. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 12. Ibid., p. 6. 13. Ibid., p. 7. 14. Ibid. 15. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye’nin Uluslararası Konumu (Istanbul: Küre Yayinları, 2007). 16. Ibid., pp. 119–149. 17. Ibid., pp. 69–75, 423. 18. Ibid., pp. 109–115. 19. Ibid., pp. 115–18. 20. Ibid., pp. 396–417. 21. See, for instance, the speeches made by Prime Minister Erdoğan at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit, ‘Silahlardan arındırılmış bir dünya daha güvenli’ (A world stripped of nuclear weapons is more secure?), Yeni Şafak, 13 April 2010, http://yenisafak.com.tr/politika-haber/silahlardan-arindirilmis-bir-dunyadaha-guvenli-14.04.2010–251871, and at the Second Black Sea Energy and

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22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

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Economy Forum, ‘Başbakan Erdoğan: Önümüzde bir 2030 projeksiyonu var’ (Prime Minister Erdoğan: We have a projection for 2030), Milliyet, 29 September 2010, http://www.milliyet.com.tr/Ekonomi/SonDakika.aspx?aType=SonDakik a&ArticleID=1295314&Date=29.09.2010&Kategori=ekonomi&b=Basbaka n%20Erdoğan:%20Onumuzde%20bir%202030%20projeksiyonu%20var. See, for example, the interview by Owen Matthews with Davutoğlu, ‘Risky diplomacy’, Newsweek, 28 November 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/ id/224704. ‘The role of transatlantic relations in the New World Order’, speech given by Davutoğlu at Chatham House on 8 July 2010, transcription available at http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/16966_080710davutoglu.pdf. ‘Eşitsizliğe karşı gür bir ses çıkacak’ (There will be a loud voice against inequality), Yeni Şafak, 8 May 2011, http://www.yenisafak.com.tr/politikahaber/esitsizlige-karsi-gur-bir-ses-cikacak-08.05.2011–318144. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, pp. 74–79. Ibid., pp. 232–38. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Free Press, 2002), pp. 138–39, 144–49. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, pp. 136–37. See, e.g., Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and foreign policy’, in Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (eds), Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 49–70. The broad principles of the project, which were made public in June 2004 at the G8 Sea Island Summit, are available at http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/ summit/2004seaisland/partnership.html. Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the 108th Congress, First Session, Vol. 149, part 19, 24 October 2003 to 4 November 2003, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 2003, pp. 26126–27. ‘BOP için silahlı müdahale yok’ (No military intervention for GMEI), Yeni Şafak, 6 March 2006, http://yenisafak.com.tr/arsiv/2006/Mart/06/ p03.html. ‘Cumhurbaşkanı Gül Tunus TV’sine konuştu’ (President Gül talks to Tunisian TV), Milliyet, 14 March 2012, http://siyaset.milliyet. com.tr/cumhurbaskani-gul-tunus-tv-sine-konustu/siyaset/siyasetdetay/14.03.2012/1515234/default.htm. ‘Islam dünyasına “sivil” reform çağrısı’ (Call to the Muslim world for ‘civil’ reform), Yeni Şafak, 2 May 2005. See Ahmet Davutoğlu, ‘Istikrarlı komşuluk Türkiye’ye prestij ve barış getiriyor’ (Good neighbourliness brings Turkey prestige and peace), Zaman, 1 January 2010.

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35. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, ‘Davutoğlu müdahaleye karşı ama ...’ (Davutoğlu is against intervention, but ...), Milliyet, 3 March 2011. 36. ‘Davutoğlu’ndan, Liderler Zirvesi’nde değişim dersi’ (Davutoğlu lectures for change at the Leaders’ Summit), Yeni Safak, 14 March 2011, http://yenisafak.com.tr/politika-haber/davutoglundan-liderler-zirvesinde-degisimdersi-17.03.2011–308258. 37. Ahmet Davutoğlu, ‘We in Turkey and the Middle East have replaced humiliation with dignity’, The Guardian, 15 March 2011, http://www.guardian. co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/15/middle-east-dignity-common-destiny. 38. Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik, pp. 144–47. 39. Joe Parkinson, ‘Turkey’s Erdoğan backs Egypt protests, carefully’, Wall Street Journal, 1 February 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2011/02/01/ t u rke y s-Erdo ğ a n-b a c k s- eg y pt-pr ote st s- c a r e f u l-not-to -wieldknife/?KEYWORDS=turkey. 40. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, ‘Ankara Kaddafi’yi gözden çıkardı’ (Ankara sacrificed Qaddafi), Milliyet, 19 March 2011; Güngör Uras, ‘Libya’da “ne olur ise olsun” diyemeyiz’ (We cannot say ‘whatever happens’ so be it in Libya), Milliyet, 22 March 2011. 41. ‘Libya’ya dış müdahaleyi doğru bulmuyoruz’ (We do not consider right a foreign intervention in Libya), Yeni Şafak, 2 March 2011, http://www. yenisafak.com.tr/politika-haber/libyaya-dis-mudahaleyi-dogru-bulmuyoruz-05.03.2011–306157; ‘Erdoğan: NATO’s Libya move must not be for its wealth’, Today’s Zaman, 22 March 2011, http://www.todayszaman.com/ newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=238854. 42. See ‘UN security council resolution 1973 (2011) on Libya – full text’, The Guardian, 17 March 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/ un-security-council-resolution. 43. Simon Tisdall, ‘Germany blocks plans for Libya no-fly zone’, The Guardian, 15 March 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/15/germanyblocks-libya-no-fly-zone. 44. Seumas Milne, ‘Turkey offers to broker Libya ceasefire as rebels advance on Sirte’, The Guardian, 27 March 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ mar/27/libya-turkey-mediators-prime-minister. 45. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, ‘Ankara Kaddafi’yi gözden çıkardı’ (Ankara sacrificed Qaddafi), Milliyet, 19 March 2011. 46. David Smith, ‘Muammer Gaddafi: rebels tell leader he can stay in Libya’, The Guardian, 3 July 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/03/ libya-gaddafi-rebels-deal. 47. See, e.g., ‘Ankara sonunda Suriye için devrede’ (Ankara steps in for Syria at last), Milliyet, 27 April 2011, http://dunya.milliyet.com.tr/ankara-sonunda-suriye-

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icin-devrede/dunya/dunyadetay/27.04.2011/1382762/default.htm; Mustafa Karaalioğlu, ‘Üç dosya ... Mübarek, Kaddafi, Esad!’ (Three files ... Mubarak, Qaddafi, Assad!), Star, 6 May 2011; Fadwa al-Hatem, ‘Turkey won’t let Syria become another Iraq’, The Guardian, 10 August 2011. 48. Ian Black, ‘Turkey imposes sanctions on Syria’, The Guardian, 30 November 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/turkey-imposes-sanctionson-syria. 49. Louise Fawcett, ‘Alliances, cooperation and regionalism in the Middle East’, in Louise Fawcett (ed.), International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 189–92.

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CHAPTER 4 LIVING WITH L ABELS: NEW IDENTITIES AND THE YEZIDIS OF TUR KEY Christine Allison

Huge changes have taken place in Turkey over the past two decades, and various factors are responsible. We may cite external political factors, such as the end of the Soviet Union and the Gulf Wars, the internal, such as the rise of the AKP and the institutionalization of the Kurdish movement, and also the social: the children of those who lived through World War I are now old and their descendants seek to make sense of traumatic memories which they have not themselves lived but which have impacted on their family lives. I leave it to others to focus on the precise reasons for recent changes in Turkey and will concentrate instead on the impact of these changes on the evolutions of identity of a specific and rather exceptional group, namely the Yezidis, a Kurmanji-speaking religious minority which has suffered many tribulations due to their being known as ‘heretics’ or worse, ‘devilworshippers’, for hundreds of years. The arrival of the modern nation state in the Middle East brought new evolutions to traditional identities. Under the Ottoman Millet system, membership of the different groups and the relationship between them had been clearly defined in law according to religious

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criteria, but the new nation states of the twentieth century sought to foster new kinds of citizenship and identity. Turkey was a leader in this respect; the academic institutions of the state were co-opted into the construction of Turkishness as national identity in a very coherent fashion as early as the 1920s and 1930s; the study of history, linguistics and folklore all reflected this, as of course did the school curriculum.1 Challenges to this model of nationality were viewed as challenges to the sovereignty of the state, and refinements to the model were used to underpin measures to control or punish dissident parts of the population. This highly coherent and robust Turkish model of identity provided inspiration to the nation-builders of neighbouring states;2 it also determined the discourse of the dissident movements within Turkey, notably the Kurdish movement whose ideologies share the same foundational ideas of what nation and state actually are. But the passing of time has brought social and political change, and despite repeated attempts to restore Kemalist ideology, notably through the coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980, this rigid model has (perhaps inevitably) now given way to open discussion of diversity in Turkey. The ethnically homogenous nation has been replaced in many circles by the notion of a ‘mosaic’ of groups, of ‘geographic kinship’;3 widespread attempts to recover the memory of Ottoman times and the hidden histories of the twentieth century are in progress. Labels imposed by outsiders have long been an issue that the Yezidis have had to contend with through turbulent times. The twentieth century may have brought new ethnicized labels in the place of the old religiously motivated ones, but dealing with these terms has been a process of delicate negotiation for Yezidis. The question of how far they have internalized such definitions is not straightforward. Their symbolic value in political discourse far outweighs the small number of those who actually live year-round in Turkey, which has been estimated at only 400–450.4 The great majority of Turkey’s Yezidis left to become guest-workers in Germany in the 1970s; although the younger generation has a strong political profile in the Kurdish movement there, the religious discourse is largely guided by influential Iraqi Yezidis who migrated there in the early 1990s.5 The diaspora environment and the new communications media have made communication

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with Yezidis and Kurds elsewhere an everyday reality. Yezidis based in Europe who visit their family homes in Eastern Turkey play an important financial and social role. At the same time political changes within Turkey, the opening of discussion of the massacres of the past and the acknowledgement of the diversity of communities in Eastern Anatolia have opened up a space for Turkey’s Yezidi community to be more visible and thus to perform their identity in new ways. In this chapter I discuss present articulations of Yezidi identity with reference to three specific themes – the move towards an ‘ethnic’ identity (which is fairly typical of the groups in the region and seems to have been imposed on the Yezidis from outside), the politicization of origins, in particular the discourse in Turkey surrounding Kurds and Zoroastrianism, and the new representations of Yezidism, which comprise a process of modernization influenced both by Yezidis elsewhere and by the ways other minority groups in Turkey are represented and perceived. I come to the subject from an ethnographic perspective and will consider identity not as a given but as something which is ‘performed’, through specific events or everyday behaviours.6

The Yezidis Although research is ongoing on exactly when Yezidism began to be seen as ‘other’ by Muslims,7 it is safe to say that they have not considered themselves Muslims for hundreds of years. Their religion seems to be truly syncretistic, by which I mean that it has a coherent but flexible structure capable of incorporating elements from elsewhere, and that it is capable of substantial evolution and adaptation to fit its environment. Within its beliefs and practices Iranian, Muslim, Christian and even Gnostic elements can be distinguished; its distinctiveness probably lies in the impact made by the arrival of the ‘Adawiyya order led by Sheikh ‘Adi b. Musafir in the twelfth century on practitioners of an Iranian cult, similar to Zoroastrianism and probably Mithraic, in the hills near Mosul.8 Yezidis live in Northern Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus, and their diaspora extends throughout the former Soviet Union, Western Europe (especially Germany) and the USA. Most still live in Northern Iraq. Though many lived in Eastern Anatolia in

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Ottoman times, few remain in Turkey now and neither Ottoman nor Republican census figures are clear on population numbers.9 Those of Kars, Van and Doğubayazit emigrated en masse into Transcaucasia during World War I, joining those who had come during the RussoTurkish wars. Other clans went south at this time into Iraq. Of those who remained, many centred around Batman, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Dersim (Tunceli), Siirt, Hakkari, Van and Viranşehir areas, though most of those went to Germany as guest workers in the 1970s and 1980s.10 Contemporary Yezidi narratives recount that they were once widespread across Kurdistan and that they have been subject to numerous persecutions; historical sources bear this out. Not long after the time of Sheikh ‘Adi they must have constituted a significant threat to local government; their excessive adoration of Sheikh Adi’s grand-nephew, Hasan, is noted by al-Kutubi.11 Sheikh Hasan was executed in 1254 by the Atabeg of Mosul, Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ and the bones of Sheikh ‘Adi burned. Al-Maqrīzī cites many instances of neglect and violation of Islamic laws by Yezidis, which provoked another burning of the Lalesh shrine in 1415 by ‘Izz al-Dīn al Hulwānī, a Shāfi‘ī theologian, with the military support of the Kurds of the Sindi tribe and the lord of Hişn Kayfā.12 There are some brief instances of Yezidi rule over larger areas which included non-Yezidis. The Emirs of Jezīra b. Omar (known in Kurdish as Cezîrê Botan) were probably Yezidi in the fourteenth century.13 In 1516, the Yezidi Sheikh ‘Izz al-Dīn had himself named emir of the Kurds. However, after his death he left no heirs and the title reverted to the family of his rival Qasim Beg.14 In 1534, the Yezidi Hussein Beg ruled briefly over the Soran tribes of Erbil, inflicting persecution on his Shi‘i subjects. He was soon supplanted and put to death in Istanbul.15 In 1649, the Dasini Mirza Beg was briefly appointed governor of Mosul but was executed after travelling to Istanbul to seek re-appointment upon the replacement of the Grand Vizier.16 Historical sources show that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Yezidism remained widespread and influential. Sheref Khan Bitlisi’s Sheref-name of 1597 cites seven of the Kurdish tribes as being at least partly Yezidi, including the Boti around Jezira,17and the

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Daseni around Sheikhan (now in Iraq); he asserts that the Yezidis of Syria were from Hakkari and came to Syria with Saladin’s army.18 The Dunbeli lived to the west of Lake Urmiya and the Mahmudi southeast of Van;19 the nomadic Khaliti lived east of Batman and the Basian near Silvan.20 In his description of his travels of 1655–56, Evliya Çelebi also counts Yezidi tribes, especially the Rojkî, among the supporters of Abdal Khan Bitlisi, whose rebellion he chronicles.21 The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a long decline in Yezidi influence. The nineteenth century saw several government attempts to control Yezidis through making them pay taxes, imposing military service and occasionally forcing conversion on them.22 The power vacuums produced by the fall of the semi-autonomous Kurdish emirates (such as Botan) allowed the Kurdish Naqshbandi and Qaderi sheikhs to extend their political influence.23 A climate of more frequent persecution of religious minorities ensued though some Kurdish tribal confederations contained substantial Yezidi sections until the early twentieth century.24 Under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP – ‘Young Turks’) policies of social engineering, Yezidis were viewed as potentially a ‘loyal’ people who, in common with other Kurds, might be moulded into good citizens – provided they professed a strong and reliable Islam.25

Yezidi identities before the nation state Although the Ottoman archives are beginning to reveal more about how the state viewed the Yezidis,26 the lack of a written Yezidi tradition means that we know little of how they viewed themselves, beyond their encounters with Western travellers, which were often marked by mutual incomprehension,27 and documents designed to interact with the state on specific points, such as the 1872 petition, which summarizes Yezidi belief and practice with a view to claiming exemption from military service.28 Traditional Yezidism is a religion of orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy – one is a good Yezidi not by believing certain tenets which everyone needs to know (cf. the shahada or the Christian catechism) but by living life in a certain approved way; thus Yezidism is performed by members of the community in the routines

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of their daily lives, especially their interactions with each other, as well as in obviously religious activities such as prayer, supplication and thanksgiving. Two features of the religion are very noticeable in all the communities – a belief in seven Holy Beings (often called ‘angels’) who have been reincarnated in human form and from whom the religious families are descended; and a preoccupation with purity manifested in many ways, from taboos concerning food and dress to a caste system. Endogamy – within caste and, for some religious lineages, within certain clans – is practised; in the past mixing with outsiders was frowned upon and literacy was taboo. Apart from these two general characteristics of Yezidism, there is considerable variation in practice and ritual, which is only to be expected in the absence of an organized medrese-type system for the dissemination of ‘correct’ practice. The Yezidi Mir (Emir) was resident in Be‘dre in Iraq and though Qewwals or singers were sent out yearly to perform sacred texts, preach and collect alms, this practice could easily be interrupted by conflicts and could not have been enough to enforce a high degree of orthodoxy. Most Yezidis relied on the judgements of local men of religion. Traditional Yezidism imposed strict rules on the community, although it must be noted that the system of religious and temporal authority provided mechanisms for negotiating with these rules.29 Much of this would have been done at local level. Although Orientalist writers such as Layard and Badger have portrayed the Yezidism of Northern Iraq (Sheikhan and Sinjar) as the norm, various writers have noted significant differences in the caste system,30 the practice of ritual and the distribution of shrines. For example, the shrines known as stêr which are an important focus of religious life for Yezidis in the Caucasus (originally of course from Turkey),31 are unknown in Iraq, where the shrines are located outside the home.32 The Yezidi population of Turkey has so far been under-researched and much remains to be written about their religious life.33 Because of the caste system and the rules on endogamy, the dividing line between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ is much less fuzzy for Yezidis than for many communities. It is not a proselytizing religion; the fact that one is a Yezidi, and one’s caste, are determined by birth. As Fuccaro pointed out the Yezidis are not the ‘isolated community’

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of some Orientalist writings – they have always interacted socially, politically and economically with neighbours – but passage of people across the divide between Yezidis and their Others, through marriage or abduction – has traditionally been seen as transgressive.34 Besides being markers of Yezidi identity in themselves,35 the social rules and taboos which operated in all Yezidi communities clearly provided a means for the men of religion, members of the sheikh and pîr castes, to exert control over the lay members. The teaching that Yezidis were not descended from Adam and Eve like the rest of humanity but from Adam alone was prevalent enough to be noted by the nineteenth century Orientalists. In most variants of the story, Adam and Eve quarrel and each deposits their seed alone in a jar. At the end of nine months, these were opened; Eve’s contained insects but Adam’s contained a beautiful baby boy, Shehid ibn Jerr (Shehid son of the Jar), from whom Yezidis alone are descended. This story was memorably described as ‘patchy and puerile’ by its nineteenth-century publisher.36 The ‘defensive othering’ of outsiders through such narratives, alongside the social rules of remaining in community and not mixing with others in school, the army and bonds of marriages, is clearly a strategy for community reinforcement to manage possible threats from outside. I would distinguish this management of threat through the performance of Yezidism, which was led by the religious castes, from the normal attempts by secular tribal leaders to protect their members and secure group interest in the uncertain environment of the late Ottoman Empire. The latter tactics, although very important, were similar to those of Muslim tribal leaders and not especially linked to Yezidi identity. In nineteenth-century Iraq at least, living outside the community for an extended period, like marrying out, risked ostracism.37 Now of course, Yezidis are more likely to live in towns with those of other faiths than in exclusively Yezidi communities, and the traditional ‘Yezidi life’ with all its aspects permeated by religious practice is no longer practical. What Cowan calls ‘bounded performances’38 of Yezidism, such as weddings, funerals and festivals (such as the Parading of the Peacock or Yezidi New Year) have become the way to

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express identity. Nevertheless, smaller social activities and interactions with other Yezidis remain an important arena for the performance of identity. In the Caucasus and Iraq, and (with some variations) in Turkey, there are several figures who play special roles in one’s life, with whom one interacts in specific, traditionally prescribed ways (sheikh, pîr, murabbi (preceptor), bira or xwişka axiretê (brother or sister of the hereafter)).39 Placing oneself amid this array of social relations is an important ongoing activity – it is noticeable that when Yezidis meet, they spend a great deal of time explaining which clan and caste they belong to and providing each other with information about siblings, descent and so on.40 This is not just the functional need to know where one is, because the rules of marriage and descent are complex; the very enunciation itself is a performance and a construction of identity. In this enunciation, Yezidis may and do exercise agency in keeping to or deviating from prescribed modes of behaviour, and the nuances of this are noticed. Despite the paucity of sources on this point, it is unlikely that these relationships are a twentieth-century innovation; they must have also been part of pre-modern Yezidism. These markers of identity and the loyalty networks which underpinned them remain very important but have been joined by the constructs of a number of hegemonic forces – the Turkish nation state, the counter-hegemony of the Kurdish movement and the discourses of Yezidis elsewhere. I will move on to discuss three areas of the discourse which have seen significant change in Turkey, directly related to the political climate: the notion of ethnicity, the discourse of origins, specifically Zoroastrianism, and the ‘new’ modernized Yezidi identity as part of the ‘mosaic’ of Anatolian peoples.

Ethnicity Scholars of identity in the Middle East41 trace a trajectory from traditional constructions based around local and family identities towards a ‘modern’ (or at least modernist) national identity expressed in terms of common ethnicity and origins. This transition can be observed taking place over the twentieth century, in parallel with the nation-building endeavours of the states in the region. Thus it is not particularly

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startling that the Yezidis also display this, though for most Yezidis (i.e. those outside the Soviet Union) it happened relatively late, due to lack of access to formal education and media. One might well question how far this identity based on modernist notions of ethnicity is a bargaining tool for interfacing with outsiders, and how far it actually counts within the community. Since the Yezidis are much more internationally connected than previously, it is necessary to outline briefly how these discourses unfolded among the communities outside Turkey, specifically in Iraq and also in Armenia. Iraqi Yezidi clergy, bolstered by their status as holders of the holy shrine of Lalesh, and to a lesser extent Yezidis from Armenia have since the 1990s played an important role in the life of the diaspora in Germany, interacting in many contexts with their co-religionists from Turkey. It was the development of Kurdish nationalism over the twentieth century which drove the changes in perception of the Yezidis within their respective states and their relationship with their governments; for much of the century, identity politics turned on the question of whether the Yezidis were Kurds or not. In Iraq under the British Mandate, Yezidis were as likely to have trade and political alliances with non-Kurds as with Kurds and there were strong differences in outlook between those who lived and pastured animals on Mount Sinjar and those who practised settled farming in the villages of Sheikhan, around the Mir’s (Emir’s) home in Ba‘dre.42 However, a more ethnicized identity was developed (by non-Yezidis) during the ‘Arabization’ initiatives undertaken by the Ba’ath government in the 1970s and 1980s. Vigorous attempts were made by the regime to identify the Yezidis as ‘Arabs’ – indeed, as descendants of the ‘Ummayads’ – rather than ‘Kurds’. At least one member of the Mir’s family championed this43 and many benefited from the financial advantages of publicly espousing Arab identity. At the same time, various Kurdish political parties counted Yezidis among their adherents. By the time of my own fieldwork in 1992, in the newly-created Kurdish autonomous zone,44 official Kurdish ideology claimed that Yezidis were the ‘original’ Kurds and my friends and acquaintances looked on those who had accepted ‘Arab’ identity as no better than jash or collaborators. But at that time, the Yezidi communities were divided, with

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some in government-held territory and others in the Kurdish zone. Both the Mir’s family and lesser folk spread themselves broadly and judiciously across political divides. Yezidi networks which straddled the border between government and Kurdish-held zones were active in smuggling goods across it. After 2003, came further developments: the poverty-stricken communities of Sinjar came under more direct Kurdish influence. Many Sinjari Yezidis wanted to move into the Kurdish zone but this was effectively blocked by the Kurdish government, who sought to maintain a substantial Kurdish population to strengthen its claim to Sinjar. Kurdish forces have undertaken the protection of the Sinjari Yezidis since a spate of village bombings in 2007, but many Sinjaris remain unhappy and question their Kurdish identity. Given all this, we can see that this type of ‘essential’ Yezidi identity (Yezidi = Kurd/Arab) is so fluid and responsive to political change that it means little in itself. Such ideas of ethnicity are often driven by non-Yezidis and may not affect the performance and sentiment of Yezidism within the community very much. Even in 1992, old men would explain quietly to me that despite the fact that we were all Kurds now, most of the ferman or persecutions of Yezidis had come not from Arabs but from Kurds. Thus we may wonder whether the performance of this ethnic identity is merely a way of managing relations with outsiders. However, the paradigm presented by the Yezidis of Armenia suggests that this may be too simplistic and that the ethnic identity can indeed be deeply felt.45 Here there is no pressure for Yezidis to redefine themselves as belonging to the ethnicity of the nation state; the context is one of resurgence of nationalisms in the post-Soviet environment, and the huge growth of the Kurdish movement in adjacent Turkey. The Soviet Union, foregrounding ‘nationality’ rather than religious creed as a marker of communities,46 had considered Yezidis to be Kurds alongside the Muslim Kurds already in Armenia; after 1926, the Soviet census figures no longer distinguished them. However, during the upsurge of Armenian nationalism of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was strongly linked to the Karabagh conflict, Kurdish Muslims were perceived as suspect, having much

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in common with Azeri Turkish Muslims. Almost all of them left Armenia, whilst among the Yezidis a schism grew up, between those who considered themselves to be of Kurdish nationality (who usually supported the PKK) and those who saw Kurdishness as implying an Islamic identity and who wished to claim Yezidis as a separate ethnie (calling their language not Kurmanji but ‘Ezdîkî’). Although the peak of tension between the two sides occurred in the early 1990s, there is still a tendency for those on the ‘Ezdîkî’ (i.e. not-Kurd) side to construct a narrative foregrounding the role of Kurds in massacres of Yezidis, whereas those on the ‘Kurd’ side, who feel a strong solidarity with PKK (or, sometimes, with Iraqi Kurdish discourses), are faced with the difficulty of acknowledging that their Kurdish ‘brothers’ were indeed often responsible for persecutions.47 It seems to be these vivid communal memories of violence suffered which underpin the bitterness of the schism.48 This acrimony, coupled with the harsh financial climate which has seen many Yezidis emigrate,49 makes many elders fear for the survival of the community. Thus the Armenian example shows perhaps more clearly than the Iraqi that the modern, ethnically defined national identity is more than a tool to interface with outsiders and touches on a deep communal trauma. One wonders how such feelings of trauma would have evolved if these Yezidis had survived in Turkey until now, maintaining social and political relationships with Muslim Kurdish neighbours. In Turkey, the political climate was different again and so were the politics of Yezidi ethnicity. There were no widespread propaganda initiatives aiming to prove that Yezidis were Turks, and no policies reminiscent of Iraq’s Arabization, apart from those aimed at Kurdish speakers in general. It would not have been possible to suggest at official levels a non-Kurdish ‘Ezdîkî’-type identity until the more widespread acceptance of diversity in Turkey, a development which can be roughly dated to the early 1990s, the period of Turgut Özal’s presidency and the legalization of Kurdish language.50 This period heralded the advent of current multiculturalist agendas, especially in the Kurdish-controlled municipalities of the southeast. Politicized Yezidis from Turkey, especially those in Germany, have generally aligned themselves with the PKK, or the BDP and its predecessors, which has sometimes brought

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them into conflict with Yezidis from Iraq on questions such as origins. (In the late 1990s, Yezidis from Iraq living in Hannover advocated a Sumerian origin for the Yezidis, mainly as a response to PKK doctrine that they were Zoroastrians.) If we bear in mind the current and highly politicized controversy in Turkey on whether Zazaki speakers are Kurds or not, it is interesting to note that opponents of the Kurdish movement on the government side do not attempt to counter this perception of Kurdishness by asserting a non-Kurdish ethnic identity for Yezidis. Rather, they focus on another issue – that of origins, specifically Zoroastrian ones.

Origins and Zoroastrianism The search for origins, though understandable in the context of nineteenth-century European philology and the Orientalist roots of scholarship on the region, has been something of a plague on Yezidi studies. It diverted attention from understanding the richness of Yezidi syncretism and a religiosity which differed strongly from ‘religions of the Book’. Moreover, from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century it paved the way for an increasingly arid contestation between scholars defining the Yezidis in terms of essentialist definitions taken from Sufi Islam, Iranian religions and others. This impasse was broken in the 1990s when real fieldwork, questioning the Yezidis about their religious feelings, was begun. Nevertheless the political situation in the region demands accounts of origins as essentialist statements of identity. As we have seen, broad theorizing on the Yezidis’ identity originated with outsiders; the Yezidis’ own accounts, so well adapted to their social environment, served them well for centuries. With the spread of notions of modernity, such myths as that of Adam, Eve and Shehid ibn Jerr were perceived as ‘primitive’ by the Yezidis, even as they had been by the Orientalists.51 Over the last 30 years or so, a literate generation of Yezidis has gained access to earlier Orientalist writings, using these as a basis to construct their own accounts, especially when faced with unwelcome hypotheses made by outside political forces.

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To outside observers it is clear that there are Iranian elements in Yezidism and Zoroastrianism has long been a strong contender among the theories of Yezidi origin. This notion was voiced by George Percy Badger in 1852.52 Later, in more than one article of their periodicals Hawar (The Call) and Roja Nû (New Day) Kamuran and Celadet Bedir Khan, scions of Bedir Khan Beg of Jezire Botan and pioneers in Kurdish nationalist ideology, made an explicit connection between Yezidism, Zoroastrianism and, crucially, the Kurdish people. In both 1935 and 1944, they wrote (to a Kurdish public)53 that Yezidism has its origins in Zoroastrianism, and that the Zoroastrian way of righteousness has been preserved by the Kurds in general (though they have now embraced Islam). Most interestingly of all, in a Hawar article running in instalments from 1932–33, they cite an otherwise unknown variant of the Yezidi myth of descent from Adam and apply it to the Kurds at large, saying that ‘Sechit’, the child of the Jar, married a Houri, and the whole Kurdish nation was descended from them.54 An additional benefit of Zoroastrianism, from the nationalist point of view, is its non-Islamic nature and consequent lack of association with Arabs, and indeed with Turks. Abdullah Öcalan chose it as the favoured Yezidi origin in PKK discourse in the 1990s and its place among Turkey’s Kurds remains important now. Gökçen, whose fieldwork was done among Yezidis from Viranşehir, cites the importance of Zoroastrianism as a subject of discussion, noting Yezidi explanations of how Zoroastrianism in Mesopotamia changed to modern Yezidism after the time of Sheikh ‘Adi.55 The depiction of the Yezidis as archetypal or ‘original’ (esli) Kurds, as noted above, has not only been used in Iraqi Kurdistan. Interviews on Yezidi identity carried out in Germany in the early 2000s show young Yezidis, mostly from families originating in Turkey, constructing links between Yezidism and Kurdishness.56 Reports in the Turkish media show how these long-established discursive links between Yezidis, Kurds and Zoroastrians are playing out in the current political climate. The AKP sometimes represents the Kurdish movement as being less than reliably Islamic and ‘Zoroastrian’ is one of the adjectives used; this is sometimes linked with Yezidism. Such rhetoric may be used at the highest levels, for

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example, in a speech of 20 October 2012 in Elaziğ, Prime Minister Erdoğan said: My dear Kurdish brother, react strongly against this terrorist organization so that they do not thrive in the region. The place of these terrorists is clearly defined. They are Zoroastrians. They talk about Yezidism. They perform this type of religious ritual. Our attitude is that even if they are Yezidis, if they are not involved in any terrorist activity we approach them in a humane manner.57 Here, being Yezidi is represented as potentially suspect in itself. Another example of this link between Yezidis, Kurds and Zoroastrianism is the negative reporting (on the ‘SonDevir’ website) of a congress in Diyarbakir in 2012, attended by a number of Yezidi dignitaries from Iraq including the Mîr, reported under the headline ‘PKK, Kurds and Yezidis worship Zarathustra’ which not only notes the supposed Zoroastrian tendencies of the Kurdish movement but also rebukes Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk, who delivered an apology to the Yezidis on behalf of the Kurds for the massacres of the past, for his slanders against Muslims.58

The new public face of Yezidism There are certain trends that have come with modernity and are noticeable in all Yezidi communities. As previously noted, the traditional ‘Yezidi life’ has been replaced by founded performances of identity. The rules on endogamy remain supported by many but are placing the community under increasing stress. A second noticeable trait is the ‘modernizing’ of the religion, by collecting and editing the sacred texts and subjecting them to the scrutiny of a younger, literate generation whose tradition of learning is vastly different from their elders. The gaze of outsiders is a factor here; as Ackermann said of the German diaspora, far from remaining hidden, Yezidism now has to present itself openly and make itself understood by the German public.59 Kreyenbroek also records the difficulties between the generations in Germany, as elders try to

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present the religion in a form their children and grandchildren, accustomed to notions such as scripture and catechism, can understand.60 Growing up in Armenia in the decades after World War II, Tosinê Reşît describes how Yezidis first referred to themselves as ‘sun-worshippers’, then ‘idol-worshippers’ and finally (following contact with Kurds from the homeland) ‘Zoroastrians’.61 In Iraq, as Eszter Spät notes, there are attempts to bowdlerize religious traditions lest they seem ‘ridiculous’ or ‘unscientific’ to outsiders.62 Besides these general trends affecting the presentation of Yezidism internationally, there are some factors specific to Turkey. Yezidis are being assigned their place among the peoples of Anatolia whose memory is being recuperated. The cultural pluralism of the area is underlined by both AKP policy (for instance, in the founding of Mardin Artuklu University, which has a policy of teaching all local languages) and the ‘dissident’ Kurdish municipal authorities, most famously Diyarbakir and Sur. Not only do Yezidi characters feature in the literary work of writers such as Yaşar Kemal and Mehmet Uzun, but the community is included in initiatives from NGOs such as Anadolu Kültür63 and in the policy making of the Kurdish municipal authorities. The meeting referred to above, at which Ahmet Türk made a formal apology for wrongs done to the Yezidi community, formed part of a wider strategy of reconciliation and interaction between communities in Eastern Anatolia which has consolidated since the 1990s. The municipality of Sur in the Diyarbakir area has developed a project for a ‘Street of Culture’ which would feature a mosque, a synagogue, Chaldean and Armenian churches, an Alevi house and a Yezidi house. The Mayor, Abdullah Demirbaş, described it thus: The aim of this Project is to create an awareness of different beliefs and to promote coexistence, which is the reason that they can all be found on the same street together ... Our motto is multilingualism and multiculturalism. For this purpose, we sometimes bring people from different beliefs together. The goal is to develop awareness of coexistence between local beliefs.64 Whatever one’s opinions of the AKP or the Kurdish movement’s ulterior motives in promoting inclusivity and diversity, it is undeniable

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that the cultural climate for the Yezidis has changed enormously since the 1990s. Of course the notion of a ‘Yezidi house’ is no longer new; in Germany, the house at Oldenburg was opened in the late 1990s and there are also houses in Hannover and Celle, where Yezidis meet for debates, cultural events and classes.65 However, this whole trend marks a huge change from traditional Yezidism, which, unlike Alevism for instance, had neither the cem (regular religious meeting) nor designated places of common regular worship. As we have seen, worship was centred around local shrines, with the home also an important site of ritual for the Yezidis of the North, now in the Caucasus. Yezidis have only recently needed such places, and one wonders how much the tiny number of Yezidis will actually use this one. The existence of the house shows not only how the religion needs to adapt, but more importantly, like the scripturalizing of the oral sacred texts, it demonstrates that Yezidism now needs to fit a certain mould, to possess certain attributes that other religions have and which are felt to be necessary.

Conclusion The Yezidis offer a symbolism that may be exploited by more powerful outsiders in different ways. In the context of current politics in Turkey we can observe that this is playing out in different ways. For conservative religious forces they may be represented as an unreliable, possibly sinister element; for the variety of groups promoting diversity in Anatolia they are part of the region’s mosaic, to be celebrated in specific and formulaic ways, and a voice from the past which must be heard in the discourse on reconciliation. For the Kurdish movement in Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish establishment they offer an alternative ancient history in Mesopotamia, a past separate from Islamic and Turkic elements with links to the religion of Iranian empire. But the Yezidis of Turkey are now an irrevocably transnational community and the future lies in the diaspora. Their most urgent concerns revolve around preventing the community from fragmenting through exogamy or the disillusion of a younger generation which has little information on their parents’ beliefs or on their lives in the

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homeland, but which is still touched by the communal trauma of violence and persecution. In Germany, not only must they ‘label’ themselves in a way which is comprehensible to a public which all too often sees media stories about Yezidi crime and honour killings, but they must reform their religious practice in a way which makes sense to young people educated in the German system. The debates on Zoroastrianism and Sheikh ‘Adi are not only a way of engaging in a wider Kurdish politics but are also part of a huge process in which the community is engaged: that of working towards reform of the religion, of deciding whose authority can be accepted, what knowledge and practice can safely be put aside and what should be retained for the future. It is this process which will ultimately decide whether Turkey’s Yezidis will become merely a folkloric trace, visible only through visiting ‘heritage’ sites such as the Culture House in Sur, or a living transnational force.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a paper given at the 12th EASA Biennial Conference, held in Nanterre, France, in July 2012, on the theme ‘Uncertainty and Disquiet’. Parts of the history section have been published in my chapter ‘The Yezidis’, in E.C.D. Hunter (ed.), Religious Minorities of the Modern Middle East: A Complete Survey of Non-Muslim Communities (London: I.B.Tauris, forthcoming). Sincere thanks to Dr Eftihia Voutira, Prof. Dimitra Gefou-Madianou, Dr Yavuz Aykan, Baran Koral Eren and Dr Esra Danacioğlu.

Notes 1. I. Başgöz, ‘Folklore and Nationalism in Turkey’, Journal of the Folklore Institute 9/2&3 (August–December 1972), pp. 162–76; E. Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: analyse d’une historiographie nationaliste, 1931–1993 (Paris: Editions CNRS, 1997); G. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); A. Öztürkmen, ‘Individuals and institutions in the early history of Turkish folklore, 1840–1950’, Journal of Folklore Research (1992), pp. 177–92; A. Öztürkmen, ‘Folklore on trial: Pertev Naili Boratav and the denationalization of Turkish folklore’, Journal of Folklore Research (2005), pp. 185–216.

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2. C. Houston, Kurdistan: Crafting of National Selves (Oxford: Berg, 2008), pp. 97–138. 3. A. Iğsız, ‘Polyphony and geographic kinship in Anatolia’, in E. Özyürek (ed.), The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), pp. 162–87. See further Chapter 1 in this volume. 4. A. Gökçen, ‘Notes from the field: Yezidism: a new voice and an evolving culture in every setting’, trans C. Tee, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37/3 (2010), pp. 405–27, p. 408. 5. The Yezidi organization in Oldenburg, which has its own community centre and publishes Dengȇ Ȇzidiyan (‘Voice of the Yezidis’), was founded by a Yezidi from Turkey, Telim Tolan, but its publications show a strong contribution from such influential figures as Pir Khidir Suleyman from Iraq. Khalil Jindy Rashow was similarly influential in the Organization of Yezidis Outside the Homeland, based in Hannover. 6. J.K. Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 7. Y. Aykan, ‘Les acteurs de la justice à Amid et dans la province du Diyarbekir d’après les sicil provinciaux du 18e siècle’, PhD thesis (EHESS, Paris 2012) brings forward new sources to examine the exact status of the Yezidis as viewed by Ottoman jurists in the pre-modern period, which sheds much new light on how they were perceived. 8. P.G. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1995). Sheikh ‘Adi’s tomb at Lalesh some 30 miles east of Mosul is the holiest place in Yezidism. Whether one views him as founder or reformer of the religion has now become a political question, much debated in the Yezidi community. 9. Gökçen, ‘Notes from the field’, p. 407. 10. See ibid., p. 408 for further details. 11. Al-Kutubī and Ibn Ṱaymiyya are both cited by Kreyenbroek, Yezidism: pp. 31–32. 12. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, pp. 34–35. Kreyenbroek bases his translation of this passage from the al-Sulūk li-Ma’rifa Duwal al-Mulūk on Frank 1911, pp. 87–91. 13. J.S. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1993), pp. 44–45. 14. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds, p. 47. Qasim Beg had enjoyed the support of the Ottoman sultan Selim but Sheikh ‘Izz al-Dīn clearly outmanoeuvred him by ingratiating himself with the Ottoman governor of Aleppo installed after Selim’s recapture of the city from Egyptian control. 15. Ibid., p. 48.

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16. Ibid., p. 49. 17. F.B. Charmoy (ed. and trans.), Chéref-Nameh ou Fastes de la Nation Kourde; par Chéref-oudīne, Prince de Bidlīs, dans l’Iïâlet d’Erzeroûme, 4 vols (St Petersburg, 1868, 1870, 1873, 1875), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 28, 42. 18. Ibid., vol. 2, part 1, pp. 66–69. 19. Ibid., vol. 2, part 1, pp. 158–77. 20. Ibid., vol. 1, part 2, p. 28; vol. 2, part 1, p. 116. 21. R. Dankoff, Evliya Çelebi in Bitlis: The Relevant Section of the Seyahatname, edited with Translation, Commentary and Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1990), p. 175. The longest list of Yezidi tribes fighting for the Khan is given as: Khalitî, Chekvanî, Bapirî, Jûlovî, Temanî, Mervanî, Beddî, Tatekî, Gevarî, Gevashî, Bezikî, Mudikî, Kanekhî (ibid., p. 207). 22. S. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1999), pp. 69–75. 23. M. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: the Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed, 1992). 24. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds, pp. 108–45. 25. F. Dündar, ‘L’ingénierie ethnique du comité Union et Progrès et la Turcisation de l’Anatolie 1913–1918’, PhD thesis (EHESS, Paris 2012), pp. 366–403. 26. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains; Aykan, ‘Les acteurs de la justice à Amid’; Gökçen, Osmanli ve Ingiliz Arsiv Belgelerinde Yezidiler. 27. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, pp. 1–20. 28. See ibid., pp. 6–7 for a translation. 29. See F.C. Allison, The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), pp. 144–50 for the myth of Derwêşê ‘Evdi, a narrative of Yezidi petitioning with successive levels of the hierarchy. It is still possible, in such issues as marriage, for Yezidi authorities to meet in conclave to make decisions on such matters as marriage. For example in the 1990s, a pîr who did not have a marriage partner of suitable age available to him (due to the rules of intermarriage applying to his clan) was given permission to marry outside his clan, though within caste. (I am grateful to P.G. Kreyenbroek for this information.) 30. N. Fuccaro, The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq (London: I.B.Tauris, 1999); Gökçen, ‘Notes from the field’. 31. The stêr was a sort of altar made up of coverlets, each given to a religious family upon the decease of a community member. On (or behind) these were kept sacred or valuable objects, and they were a focus of ritual (E. Amy de la Bretèque, ‘La Passion du tragique: paroles mélodisées chez les Yézidis d’Arménie’, PhD thesis (Universite Paris-Ouest La Défense, 2010), pp. 261–66).

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32. B. Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis: the History of a Community, Culture and Religion (London: I.B.Tauris, 2010), pp. 146–80. 33. Gökçen, ‘Notes from the field’. The research carried out by Gökçen and Danacioğlu was a welcome exception; see ibid., and Osmanli ve Ingiliz Arsiv Belgelerinde Yezidiler (The Yezidis, according to Ottoman and British Documents) (Istanbul: Bilgi University Publishing House, 2012). 34. Fuccaro, The Other Kurds. 35. Cf. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism, p. 147: ‘The frequent references to various taboos in the literature suggests that such prohibitions were considered by Yezidis and researchers alike to be conspicuous markers of Yezidi identity. Many modern Yezidis seem to regard them mainly in this light, rather than as sacred institutions against which it is sinful to offend.’ 36. Siouffi 1882, p. 252, cited ibid., p. 22. As Kreyenbroek notes, the expression used is ‘... ses lacunes et la puerilité de certains de ses details’. 37. Ibid., p. 7. 38. Cowan, Dance and the Body Politic, p. 18. 39. For more on these roles see Kreyenbroek, Yezidism and K. Omarkhali, ‘On the structure of the Yezidi clan and tribal system and its terminology among the Yezidis of the Caucasus’, Journal of Kurdish Studies VI (2008), pp. 104–19. 40. Ibid. 41. R. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); J. Dakhlia, L’oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective à l’épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: La Decouverte, 1990); A. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). 42. Fuccaro, The Other Kurds, pp. 96, 135–44. 43. However, others disagreed – e.g. Prince Mu’awiyah in Germany whose book To Us Spoke Zarathustra was published in several languages in 1983 (Emir Muawwiyah Chol, To Us Spoke Zarathustra (Paris, 1983)). 44. Allison, The Yezidi Oral Tradition. 45. There were probably some 40,000–50,000 Kurdish speakers in the Caucasus for most of the Soviet period (D. Müller, ‘The Kurds and the Kurdish language in Soviet Azerbaijan according to the All-Union Census of December 17, 1926 (A contribution to the history of the so-called “Red Kurdistan”)’, Journal of Kurdish Studies 3 (2000), pp. 61–84. The 1959 census listed 59,000 ‘Kurds’ in the USSR, with 26,000 in Armenia. See K.M. Chatoev, Kurdy Sovetskoj Armenii. Istoricheskij Ocherk (1920–1940) (The Kurds of Soviet Armenia: A Historical Outline) (Erevan: Akademija Nauk Armjanskoj

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SSR, 1965); T.F. Aristova, Kurdy Zakavkaz’ya (The Kurds of the Caucasus) (Moscow, 1966). However, the issue of religion was not disregarded. For the travails of those attempting to define the terms of the 1926 Soviet census, see F. Hirsch Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 108–23. Confessional group and mother tongue (itself not easy to define) were seen as important elements of nationality (both natsional’nost’ and narodnost’) at this point. I have heard several articulations of this but it was explained in detail to me by a respected pîr in St Petersburg, 2006. Those belonging to the ‘Ezdîkî’ camp (to use a convenient shorthand) would claim that long-felt and legitimate Yezidi claims to a separate identity had been repressed by the Soviet system; those claiming ‘Kurdish’ origin would say that the situation was a product of the political climate of the Karabagh war (J. Flint, The Kurds of Azerbaijan and Armenia (London: Kurdish Human Rights Project, 1998)). The community became bitterly divided in the early 1990s and reports of human rights abuses mostly concern violence committed in this period. There are two notorious events – the murder of Yezidi ‘pro-Kurd’ paediatrician Seid Iboyan (G. Lennox, Fire, Snow and Honey: Voices from Kurdistan (Rushcutters Bay, NSW: Halstead, 2001)) and the celebration, in which Yezidis participated, of the capture of the (still disputed) Lachin corridor, after the ethnic cleansing of its partly Kurdish population. The situation is now much calmer, though tensions persist, especially on matters such as schooling. In 2008, I was told that schoolbooks in ‘Ezdîkî’ designed by senior members of the ‘Ezdîkî’ side of the community had been rejected by the schools in the Aparan district, who continued to use Soviet-era learning materials in Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Radio programming remains divided between broadcasts in ‘Ezdîkî’ and Kurdish (Kurmanji). The practical strategies for managing economic uncertainty – families spreading themselves between the ancestral farms and work elsewhere, emigration, networks of business and of crime – these are common throughout Armenia and Georgia. Also, it seems that since the fall of the Soviet Union gender roles have become particularly important, especially the ‘protection’ of girls by limiting their education and movements. This is construed by the Armenian state as evidence of the Yezidis’ general lack of development, but we do see a very similar dynamic elsewhere, especially, for example, in the way the Turkish state speaks of Kurdish migrant women (D. Koğacioğlu, ‘The tradition effect: framing honor crimes in Turkey’, Differences 15/2 (2004), pp. 118–51).

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50. D. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd edn (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004), pp. 431–32. 51. E. Spät, ‘Changes in the oral tradition of the Yezidis of Iraqi Kurdistan’, Journal of Kurdish Studies 5 (2005), pp. 73–83. 52. Rev. George Percy Badger, Yezeedees, The Nestorian and their Rituals: X, Vol. 1 (London, 1852), pp. 112–13; 115; 125–26. 53. Hawar was bilingual, Kurdish and French; Roja Nû was in Kurdish but its sister paper, Le Jour Nouveau, was Francophone. Articles in different languages were aimed at different reading publics; variants in emphasis and content can be discerned. An article disagreeing with the Zoroastrian origin, almost certainly by Roger Lescot, appeared in both Roja Nû and Le Jour Nouveau. However the articles supporting a Zoroastrian origin carry the by-line of Kamuran Bedir Khan: see F.C. Allison, ‘Representations of Yezidism and Zoroastrianism in the Kurdish newspapers Hawar and Roja Nû’’, in F.C. Allison, A. Joisten-Pruschke and A. Wendtland (eds), From Daena to Din: Religion, Kultur und Sprache in der iranischen Welt: Festschrift für Philip Kreyenbroek zum 60. Geburtstag (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009) pp. 285–92, p. 289. Not surprisingly, the account of Zoroastrianism given in these articles omits those features likely to be most repugnant to Muslims, such as the exposure of the dead and the reverential treatment of fire. 54. Ibid., pp. 288–89; ‘Notice sur la Bible Noire’, Hawar 14, 31 December 1932, pp. 7–8, 23 January 1933, pp. 7–8, and 15 February 1933, pp. 9–10. 55. A. Gökçen, ‘Notes from the field’, p. 418. 56. P.G. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism in Europe: Different Generations Speak about their Religion (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), p. 45. 57. ‘Sevgili Kürt kardeşim bu terör örgütüne tepkini koy ki bölgede abad olmasın. Bu teröristlerin yeri belli. Bunlar zerdüşt. Bunlar Yezidilikten bahsediyorlar. Bu tür ayinleri yapıyorlar. Biz Yezidi de olsa teröre bulaşmamışsa onlara insanca yaklaşan bir zihniyeti taşıyoruz’. http://www.imc-tv.com/ haber-ezidilikle-ilgili-sozlere-tepki-5060.html. 58. http://www.sondevir.com/gundem/98413/pkk-kurt-halkini-zerdust-ve-yezidi-yetistiriyor.html. 59. A. Ackermann, ‘Diaspora, cyberspace and Yezidism: the use of the internet among Yezidis in Germany’, Journal of Kurdish Studies 6 (2008), pp. 54–83, p. 55. 60. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism in Europe, pp. 139–40. 61. T. Reşit, Êzîdiyatî: Oleke hê jî ne naskirî (Yezidism: A Religion Still Unknown) (Stockholm, 2004), p. 7. 62. Spät, ‘Changes in the oral tradition of the Yezidis’, p. 77.

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63. Anadolu Kültür is a multi-stakeholder NGO. Since 2002 it has worked on sharing culture and artistic production in the towns of Eastern Turkey aiming at ‘fostering mutual understanding through arts and culture’ (http:// www.anadolukultur.org/en/hakkimizda.asp). 64. ‘A struggle for multiculturalism: A conversation with the mayor of Sur municipality in Turkey by Ayten Turan’, posted 5 July 2011 on the Encompassing Crescent website, http://encompassingcrescent.com/2011/07/a-struggle-formulticulturalism-a-conversation-with-the-mayor-of-sur-municipality-inturkey-by-ayten-turan/. See also http://aknews.com/en/aknews/1/319734/. 65. Ackermann, ‘Diaspora, cyberspace and Yezidism’, p. 54.

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CHAPTER 5 WOMEN AND GENDER Fatma Umut Beşpınar

Introduction This chapter discusses the transformation of gender movements in Turkey in the last decades. It approaches the general theme of the book by looking at the changes in women’s and other gender movements, and considering the impact of these transformations on the cultural and social climate of Turkey. Furthermore, it addresses how these transformations shape the self-image of society and people’s perceptions of gender issues. Besides the literature review, I also conducted interviews with representatives and/or members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), groups and initiatives related to gender issues, in Ankara, Turkey, in 2012, in order to understand their positions in more detail. Let me start by underlining my conceptual choice: I use ‘gender movements’ to show that this chapter does not only include women movements, but also LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) and other gender-related movements, which fight against traditional gender roles and identities, such as traditional manhood in Turkish society. I believe that to examine women’s movements separately, isolated from other gender movements, leads to certain insufficiencies, especially in the analysis of their common agenda-oriented actions. Another reason

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for my preference lies in attempting to explain the new ways of doing politics in the Turkish civil arena. These gender movements differ in many ways from conventional women’s movements of previous decades. Although I do not argue for a total break from them, I argue that these new ways of doing politics within women’s and gender movements are directly related to new forms of identities, constructions of these identities and development of commitments to social movements and civil politics. Even the shift of focus from women’s movements to all gender movements reflects the social and cultural transformation of Turkish society in the last decade. There is a long history in Turkey of women’s movements based on concerns for injustices and inequalities for women. The equal status of women, including their public presence, education, employment and suffrage rights, was one of the hallmarks of Turkish modernization.1 Although there have been different waves of women’s issues, women have actively struggled for their rights and interests since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Especially after the 1990s, women’s issues have been reconfigured by a number of national and international actors with varying agendas and new forms of doing politics.2 There are two main differences distinguishing present movements from ones in previous decades: first, new groups, initiatives and NGOs addressing gender issues have emerged with a very visible presence in the Turkish social arena. Although there are differences in terms of the priorities of these movements and initiatives, there are also certain commonalities which make it possible for them to act together on a common agenda. Recently this diverse common agenda extended from widely-publicized cases of violence against women and LGBT, to public debates on the omission of ‘women’ from the name of the Ministry for Family and Social Policies in 2011 and the Prime Minister’s public speeches on abortion in 2012. Secondly, the construction of public space, the forms of doing politics and political involvements, commitments and identities have changed in the last decades. The involvement of the new social and political actors is not the only reason for this transformation; neoliberal reconstruction of public space and political fields has been another initiator of change.

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Examining gender movements in Turkey in the last decades gives us an insight into Turkish society, reflecting its perceptions, values, policies and political debates. Although this chapter does not aim to picture the overall characteristics and dynamics of Turkish society related to women’s and gender issues, it does give general clues about the social and political background and the changing socio-political fields of Turkey. The principal questions guiding it are as follows: what are the main components of gender issues in the last decades? What changes in the themes debated and the discourse used have occurred since the 1990s? How has the way of doing politics, particularly on gender-related issues, changed in recent times in Turkey? After first presenting an overview of women’s participation in education, employment and politics, I examine key trends and actors in women’s and gender movements in Turkey, and then discuss gender themes and issues in the public eye since the 2000s. I underline the changing ways of doing politics and the socio-political implications of these changes.

A brief overview of women in Turkey According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2012, Turkey is ranked 124th among 135 countries worldwide. This ranking is based on four indices, namely, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and life span and political empowerment. Turkey is ranked 129th in economic participation and opportunity, 108th in educational attainment, 62nd in health and life span and 98th in political empowerment. According to the 2011 Address-Based Population Registration System (ABPRS) conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute, the rate of female labour force participation is 28.8 per cent.3 Sixty-six per cent of women who are not in the labour force list their occupation as ‘housewife’. Another piece of research conducted by the Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, the 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey,4 shows that 31 per cent of women who are not in the labour force cite the responsibility for taking care of children as the main reason they are not employed. The second most common reason given is their involvement in housework

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(22 per cent). One-fifth of women indicate that they are not participating in the labour force due to the lack of permission from their husbands or other family members. According to the 2011 ABPRS, 35.5 per cent of women in the labour market are unpaid family workers. The percentage of workers in non-agricultural jobs to those in agricultural production is 57.8 to 42.2 per cent. This compares to only 18.7 per cent of employed men working in agriculture.5 The poverty rate is 19 per cent for women.6 The rate of female illiteracy is 9.9 per cent.7 One-fifth of births in rural areas take place at home without the benefit of professional medical help. The representation of women in local administration levels, which can be regarded as the first step for participation in political life, is very limited. Only 0.9 per cent of mayors, 4.2 per cent of city councillors and 3.3 per cent of provincial assembly members are women. The average age of women at first marriage is 23.2.8 The highest fertility rate is seen among the 25–29 age group. The fertility rate between ages 15–19 is 6.5 per cent in rural areas and 3.1 per cent in urban areas.9 The rate of marriage to close relatives, 20.9 per cent, shows sharp differences between regions. Women’s educational level makes a difference in the prevalence of domestic violence: 52.2 per cent of women who have not completed primary school face physical violence, while 25 per cent of women who are high school graduates or of higher educational level also confront domestic violence. According to the findings of the Turkey Values Atlas 2012, 76 per cent of the overall population agrees with the statement that ‘men should be the head of the household’. It is worth noting that 71 per cent of women also have the same opinion. 64 per cent of the participants and 59 per cent of the women say ‘women should obey their husbands’. Thirty-two per cent of respondents overall believe ‘some women deserve beating’, while interestingly, 29 per cent of the women concur.10

Different stages and actors of gender movements Historically, the women’s movement has occupied an important place in Turkish political life. Turkey has a long, progressive history of

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women’s activism starting from the late Ottoman period.11 Coşar and Onbaşı12 highlight the analyses of Sirman13 and Yaraman14 on the classification of women’s movements. Sirman analyzes the transformation of women’s movements by underlining three stages; Yaraman develops another classification to examine the same period of time. Sirman delineates three distinct stages, or periods, in the development of the woman’s movement: the pre-Republican period when woman of upper social classes worked through charity-based organizations; the years between 1923 and 1980 when the movement was under the direct influence of the nation-building process; and finally the modern period starting from the late 1980s with feminist activists establishing independent agendas and platforms. Yaraman, however, bases her stages on women’s demands, claiming that women at first demanded equality with men without making any concessions for or acknowledging differences, while after the 1980s they have demanded equal rights despite their differences. Although Sirman and Yaraman adopt different perspectives, their analyses of the women’s movement in the post-1980s are similar. According to both approaches, autonomy from the state and focus on sexual equality with total acknowledgment of male/female differences denote the post-1980s period. A great number of new women’s organizations have emerged since 1980. These have their own agendas and are autonomous from the state, with the result that women’s movements have greater social influence and effectiveness.15 Diner and Toktaş argue that the rise of the Kurdish movement and Islamist politics in this decade is the reason behind the change in the relationship between the Turkish state and feminism in the 1990s.16 As Arat argues, what separates the 1980s from previous periods is the challenge to the notion that ‘Women’s rights are granted and protected by the state for the common good’, a challenge which had been heretofore a taboo.17 The feminist movement revitalized itself with an increased self-confidence and a growing social impact through grassroots movements, feminist journals, consciousness-raising meetings conducted in homes and public campaigns in the 1980s.18 Domestic violence and amendment of the inegalitarian clauses of the Civil Code were the main issues uniting women from different political persuasions. Three

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events show women’s power and capacity to organize in the 1980s. The Women’s Solidarity March against Domestic Violence, the first feminist rally, was held in 1987. It was organized to underline the failure of the state to tackle the issue.19 Women’s signatures were collected for a petition that urged the government to implement the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). A petition bearing 7,000 signatures was turned over to the Turkish Parliament. The First Women’s Congress in 1989, with 800 participants, was another significant event providing a public forum to discuss women’s issues and problems.20 Besides, socialist women started publishing a magazine called Sosyalist Feminist Kaktüs (Socialist Feminist Cactus) in 1988. This magazine provided a platform for discussion among feminist circles until the last issue in 1990. The Women’s Library and Information Centre and the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation are important institutions which were founded in 1990 through feminist initiatives in Istanbul. The Purple Roof is a particularly significant achievement for feminist activists since it was set up to provide the first autonomous shelter (i.e., not funded and/or managed by the state) for victims of domestic violence. Although women’s movements after the 1980s were different from those of previous decades in terms of their agenda and their relations with the state, the first ten-year period served as a preparatory stage to increase consciousness on certain issues, to recognize one another and their collective power and to gain organizational capacity for women’s movements of the future, which changed significantly after the 1990s. I believe that the post-1990s period deserves to be considered as a new phase in the development of women’s movements. After the 1990s, the increasing focus on civil society in the political arena has resulted in the transformation of agency, identity, commitment and ways of doing politics for these movements. Instead of small feminist groups and platforms acting independently from each other, actively organized feminists have become important social and political actors on women’s issues. Local and global identities intertwine with different understandings of feminism. Kemalist, Islamist, Kurdish, socialist, liberal and radical feminists have organized around their

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ideological standpoints. New actors, who were not visible in earlier periods, are demanding their rights.21 The 1990s witnessed the widening of the feminist movement in Turkey mainly by way of the addition of women from Kurdish and Islamist movements. As a result, feminism has become more diversified in Turkey. Furthermore, the variety of women’s organizations combining different understandings of feminism and women’s advocacy with their ideological persuasions has led to their greater influence in society. Demands are made and evaluated through the lenses of their particular ideological perspective. In this way, different socio-political segments have developed links with feminist organizations espousing their particular ideological viewpoint. As Güneş Ayata and Tütüncü argue, by allying themselves with political parties and other political actors, feminist movements are better able to create gender sensitivity and promote action in society.22 On the other hand, this diversity within the feminist movement has resulted in fragmentation and polarization, particularly on certain issues such as the headscarf debate.23 While there are certain practices of solidarity between secular feminists and Islamist women, the polarization between different positions has become more obvious. Diner and Toktaş argue that the emergence of new actors in the feminist arena,24 namely Kurdish and Islamist feminists, has led to further polarization and fragmentation within the movement, since they create a space where nationalist, secular and religious ideologies, practices and identities are discussed and challenged. For some feminists, this diversity and multivocality deserves to be celebrated. In a study based on interviews with a range of feminist groups from the 1990s, namely, Saturday Mothers,25 Islamist women who are active in or close to the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, a pro-Islamist conservative right wing party), secular women from the Association for the Promotion of Contemporary Life (Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği), women from the Association for the Support of Women Candidates (KA.DER), Arat concludes that despite their different ideologies, these organizations have certain commonalities. Their political activism meant ‘a challenge to the statist, transcendental understanding of state-society relations and an affirmation of an interest-oriented liberal ideology’.26 Arat thus celebrates the

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pluralism provided by these diverse movements as being a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberal democracy. Although the multivocality within feminist ranks can be regarded as a sign of the maturation of democracy, their polarization on certain ‘sensitive’ issues results in socio-political polarization. However, these diverse agents with different ideological priorities and agendas have started to communicate, acknowledge and sometimes understand one another. Arat underlines the congruence between secular feminists and Islamist women, although there are serious differences between these two groups.27 For her, the support given by the journal Pazartesi28 to Islamist women can be regarded as evidence of the interaction between them. Scholars examine diverse women’s organizations to understand differences and similarities between them. Esim and Cindoğlu conducted such a study to compare feminist groups of different ideologies.29 Based on their extensive research, they categorized women’s organizations in 1990s Turkey into three groups according to their agenda: namely Kemalist, feminist and Islamist.30 They used Moser’s categorization of practical versus strategic needs31 in order to examine these non-governmental organizations. They argue that Kemalist and feminist women’s organizations deal with women’s strategic/practical needs, while Islamic women’s organizations mainly deal with women’s practical gender needs. These three types of organizations likewise have diverse development agendas. While Kemalist women’s organizations have development strategies based on emancipation and gender equity, Islamist women’s organizations have welfarist development strategies. Feminist women’s organizations have development strategies based on gender equity and empowerment. Similarly, Coşar and Yeğenoğlu examine women’s rights organizations (WROs) from different ideologies.32 Their work is significant in reflecting the various aspects of women’s rights organizations. Based on their research on six different WROs, namely Capital City Women’s Platform (Başkent Kadın Platformu), the Association for the Support of Women Candidates (KA.DER), the Association of Republican Women (Cumhuriyet Kadınları Derneği), the Union of Women Workers (Emekçi Kadınlar Derneği), the Foundation for

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Women’s Solidarity (Kadın Dayanışma Vakfı) and The Flying Broom (Uçan Süpürge), they argue that there are certain differences such as their approaches to general political issues, the Kurdish question and the EU accession process, but they also share similar problems in their ‘functioning’ and ‘way of doing politics’. They emphasize that although the movement has reached a mature state in terms of quantitative and qualitative capacity, WROs have certain limitations such as ‘institutionalization-producing hierarchical politics’, ‘internalization of managerial style in politics through project-based activism’, ‘the assumption of universally shared womanhood’, ‘the lack of common reference points among WROs regarding certain key concepts such as politics, democracy, and the state-civil social relationship’, and finally ‘their attribution of a pejorative meaning to politics’. These limitations are said to block the development of a feminist political alternative. Having briefly reviewed features of the women’s movement since the 1990s, I would now like to discuss some other relevant actors in the field. Another reason why the post-1990s period is the beginning of a new era in feminist movements in Turkey is the emergence of different state institutions in the arena. One of these is the Directorate General on the Status and Problems of Women (DGSPW), established in 1990, within the Office of the Prime Ministry (Başbakanlık). This Directorate has become an important actor in defining, discussing and seeking solutions for women’s issues such as domestic violence. This involvement has resulted in an increase in the dialogue between state agencies and women’s rights organizations.33 The relationship between women’s rights organizations and the Directorate has been influenced by the political climate of Turkey. The ideological standpoints and political priorities of different governments have directly affected the relationship between women’s rights organizations and the DGSPW. The Directorate was renamed as the Directorate General on the Status of Women in 2004. In addition to the national actors, the international and intergovernmental actors and international women’s NGOs have increasingly become important contributors to public discussions related to women’s rights in Turkey. Accession negotiations with the European Union (EU) and the ratification of United Nations’ (UN) Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

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have contributed significantly to the discussions and policies on gender issues in the country. The World Bank and the UN, the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are other institutions providing funding to a multitude of women’s organizations in Turkey. Turkey signed and ratified the CEDAW in 1985 and signed the Additional Protocol to CEDAW in 2000. This period is distinguished not only by the inclusion of new actors and new positions on women’s issues, but also new discourses and new ways of doing politics.34 When we look at how gender movements operate in Turkey, the ‘NGO-ization’ of the public sphere is one of the most significant features shaping gender movements since the 1990s. In the 2000s, the feminist movement was revitalized through the publication of different magazines, namely AMARGI (first published in 2006), Feminist Approaches (Feminist Yaklaşımlar) in 2006 and Feminist Politics (Feminist Politika) in 2009. Women discuss many issues, such as government’s policies, honour crimes, violence against women, the headscarf issue, abortion and women’s everyday life-experiences on the pages of these magazines. Women from different political and social milieu read and discuss the articles in these magazines. Another transformation experienced in Turkey has been the establishment of alternative gender movements. Notable are LGBT organizations, such as KAOS-GL, which was founded in 1994 and became an association in 2005, and Lambdaistanbul, which was founded in 1993 and became a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, together with initiatives questioning ‘traditional patriarchal’ forms of manhood, such as ‘We Are Not Men’ Initiative (BEDI) which was spontaneously developed after the murder of the Italian artist, Pippa Bacca, in 2008 (see endnote 36). Feminist organizations and these LGBT organizations and men’s initiatives have developed solidarity on certain agendas, such as violence against women, hate crimes and conscientious objection to conscription.

Themes and issues of the 2000s I categorize the themes that mark the 2000s through media coverage and public debate, and how these differ from those of previous periods as follows: first, the women’s organizations significant efforts in

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establishing and reinforcing gender equality through constitutional amendments and New Civil (2001) and Penal Codes (2004). Second, different forms of violence against women and LGBTs including rape and murder cases. And finally, the AKP’s (Justice and Development Party) policies related to women and gender issues. The first theme is feminist struggle for elimination of discrimination against women and reinforcement of gender equality in the country through amendments/adaptation of laws. Women’s organizations from different ideological standpoints came together and worked to formulate new policies and laws promoting gender equality. Focus on the provision of gender equality and elimination of discrimination in the Turkish legal system has been spearheaded by women’s organizations, where the Civil Code was reformed and the Penal Code was revised by more than 40 amendments. The improvements of the Civil Code resulted in full legal equality in the family, the rise of the marriage age to 17 for both sexes and gender equality in the matrimonial property regime. The amendment of the Penal Code aimed to establish a progressive law that regards women’s autonomy over their bodies and sexualities rather than the previous understanding that these belonged to their families and society. To this end its targets included a reduction for ‘killings in the name of customary law’, the criminalization of marital rape, sexual offences such as harassment at the workplace and the abolishment of the discrimination between virgins and non-virgins, married and unmarried women in sexual crimes. Another important change is the elimination of traditionally value-loaded concepts such as honour, morality, chastity and decency from law. Although the success of these amendments from a gender perspective is very important, their reflections in the real life practices of women are limited due to social and cultural obstacles. Besides, four of the demands were not accepted: the definition of ‘honour crimes’ as aggravated homicide (not only the so-called customary crimes), the penalization of discrimination based on sexual orientation, the criminalization of virginity testing under all circumstances and the extension of the legal abortion period from 10 to 12 weeks.35 However, the themes favouring gender equality resonated widely through national and international networking and intensive media campaigns.

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Another collective cause of gender movements is opposition to any form of violence. There was an increase in violence against women in the 2000s. Based on the Violence Against Women Report published by the Human Rights Organization on 25 November 2012, 4,190 women were murdered by men between 2005 and 2011. Three thousand and seventy-four women’s rape cases were tried and 3,320 women went to court on the basis of abuse during the same period. The murders of Pippa Bacca (2008), Ahmet Yıldız (2008) and Ayşe Paşalı (2010), and rape cases of N.Ç. (which continued from 2002 to 2012) and Nevin Yıldırım (2012)36 were widely-publicized through campaigns based on the solidarity of different segments of gender movements, including women’s and LGBT organizations and initiatives founded by men questioning traditional manhood. Based on criticism by feminists of the Statute 4320 on preventing violence against women, the Family and Social Policies Ministry started work on a more encompassing law to encounter the difficulties in practice. The Ministry, the ‘Stop the Violence Women’s Platform’ consisting of 237 women organizations and the Men-Women Equal Opportunities Commission of the Turkish National Assembly have conducted numerous meetings. Women research and implementation centres, relevant university circles and feminist lawyers contributed to the discussion with suggestions. Finally on 8 March 2012, the ‘Protection of Family and Prevention of Violence Against Women Statute’ was passed. The law was first drafted as ‘Prevention of All Kinds of Violence Against Women and Hinderance of Domestic Violence; Draft Law for Fighting Against Violence’. Feminists consider that the emphasis on the family in the enacted law rather than on women as in the draft proposal is a step back from its originally intended purpose, since non-married women (fiancees, partners and divorcees) are not included in the law. Furthermore, the right for all (either as subjects or as someone aware of the violence) to report violence has also been taken out. Also, women’s organizations cannot intervene in cases of violence and murder. The final theme I would like to touch upon is the AKP’s discourses and policies on gender issues. The approach by the ruling AKP, which has governed since 2002, towards women and gender can be observed in the references made in the statements by its leader and party

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politicians and the implemented policies. Although it is not possible to distinguish the statements made by party officials and the policies on women/gender issues, let us begin with several of the remarks that were widely discussed in the media and the public. Although AKP’s policies on gender issues mostly overlap with the discourses used by the politicians of this party, there are bold statements at the discursive level. Some of these speeches are mere remarks while most are followed by social policies which are implemented. In fact, remarks serve double purposes in gauging public reaction on certain topics while at the same time affecting and shaping public opinion and practices. Discourses encouraging citizens to have at least three children, discouraging abortion and caesarean-section births and condemning different sexual orientations have became a significant part of the political arena. During the last few years, Prime Minister Erdoğan has, as a cornerstone of his speeches, on many occasions emphasized the necessity of having three children. In his Women’s Day message on 8 March 2008, he indicated that Turkey will have an ‘old’ population if the birth rate remains the same and said ‘I have four children and I want all women to have at least three because children are a blessing’. He warned women not to believe the television propaganda that Turkey’s population is too large. He added: ‘Don’t ruin our unity and togetherness. Let’s not give opportunity to those who want to ruin it ... What do they want to do? They want to root out the Turkish nation. That is what they are doing. Each family should have three kids if you don’t want our population to drop’.37 Erdoğan not only repeats his advice whenever he attends a wedding or meets newly-wed couples in Turkey, but he even advised his Finnish counterpart to this effect (the average number of children per family in Finland in 2012 was 1.8) during a press meeting.38 In the International Family and Social Policies Summit on 3 January 2012, Erdoğan reiterated his call by arguing that: One or two children mean bankruptcy. Three children mean we are not improving but not receding either. So, I repeat, at least three children are necessary in each family, because our

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population risks aging. We are still on the good side, as we do still have a young and dynamic population ... It is extremely dangerous if a family loses its values and therefore we are working on projects to protect these values and carry them through the generations.39 The spokespersons of the ruling party represent this topic as a technical issue and a social responsibility of women in order to prevent the decreasing trend of the fertility rate. Based on this perception, by having three children women will not only realize their national responsibility but also have strong families. Pro-natalist policies were promoted during the early decades of the republic, especially between 1930 and 1960.40 However, the recent pro-natalist discourse is founded on religious references in addition to the nationalistic arguments. Moreover, this same understanding is prevalent on other issues related to women’s reproductive and sexual rights. The prime minister’s speeches on abortion and cesarean-section births is an example of such an approach. The prime minister made a debatable statement while he was giving a closing speech at the Conference of the United Nations Population Fund on 25 May 2012 in which he described abortion as tantamount to murder. He even compared abortion with the Uludere case, where 34 Kurdish civilian villagers/smugglers crossing from Iraq were killed by an airstrike on the south-east border of Turkey in December 2011.41 He also added that he is against caesarean-section births. A few days after his speech, the then Health Minister Akdağ announced that the government aimed to reduce the number of abortions, even for rape cases, and caesarean-section births performed in Turkey. Statements found in the media, specifically the discourse against abortion, were followed by the declaration of the Health Minister indicating that implementation studies for the government’s new approach on abortion are underway. Even though women have the right to have an abortion in the first ten weeks of pregnancy, according to media reports this period is to be reduced to 6–8 weeks in public hospitals42. Moreover, a law was passed on 12 June 2012 prohibiting caesarean-section births without medical necessity.

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AKP’s conservative and interventionist policies on individual rights and freedoms are not limited to women; they extend generally to gender issues and sexuality, and are reflected in the statements of AKP politicians. The best known and most publicized example came from the former Minister of State in charge of Women and Family Affairs, Aliye Kavaf, who said in an interview with the daily Hürriyet’s Sunday supplement that ‘I believe homosexuality is a biological disorder, a disease’. She added: ‘I believe homosexuality is something that needs to be treated’.43 Views such as these have resulted in a widespread public outcry and campaining, where solidarity among different actors of the gender movement, such as feminist organizations, LGBT groups and men’s initiatives, were once again at the forefront. The gender policies of the AKP are not limited to reproductive and sexual rights, they also impinge on women’s labour rights and family policies. Several implementations of gender policies stand out: the government prefers to support the family in protecting children and the elderly while reducing the state’s weight in public care, which is deemed/declared as insufficient. At the same time some forward steps have also been taken. The Labour Law 4857 passed in 2003 contains sections on gender equality ensuring the working conditions of pregnant and nursing women in an effort to increase female labour force participation. Law 5763, enacted on 26 May 2008, seeks to the increase employment of women by paying for a reduction of the social security premium through unemployment insurance. The circular entitled ‘Increasing Female Employment and Ensuring Equality of Opportunity’, dated 25 May 2010, and the Omnibus Bill 6111, dated 25 February 2011, also include some regulations on insurance premiums and time off regarding women. Buğra’s argument at this point is very important. She states: Cash transfers provided to biological or foster parents to take care of children in need of protection, along with transfers made to the disabled, introduced a new form of familialism to the country’s welfare regime. Thus, positing the family as the primary

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unit of care, the new system implicitly but obviously reinforced the position of women as care providers.44 This fact, along with the inadequacy of state child care and services for early childhood development, are obstacles to women’s labour force participation in spite of steps taken to encourage women to work. In general in AKP policies, women are characterized by their fertility and their motherhood as the main family member providing domestic care to sick and elderly family members. The main issues surrounding the lives of women are considered within the framework of ‘family policies’. Women’s reproductive and sexual rights, violence against women and women providing domestic care are not discussed as individual issues but rather within the framework of their family. In other words, women are subjects of the state’s policies only when they are within a family. The omission of ‘Women’ from the title of the ministry mainly dealing with issues on women is another example of the government’s approach prioritizing family over women. The Ministry of State for Women and Family Affairs established in 1991 was restructured in 2011 as one of the main units under the Ministry of Family and Social Policies. By removing ‘women’ from its name, it posited a focus on family. Feminists raised a public outcry, arguing that this renaming shows the government’s approach to women, not as individuals, but only as elements of the family.45

New forms of doing politics Not only in Turkey, but around the world, gender has become one of the most productive issues for social movements, which can consolidate power by being the voice of the disadvantaged at the local level but also globalize their claims to make global solidarity possible. In Walby’s words, gender is a ‘cross-cutting form of difference’.46 Gender movements globally provide a variety of arenas of engagement and have multiple strategies of organization. The construction of public space, the forms of doing politics and political involvements, commitments and identities have all changed in the last decades. The involvement of new social and political actors is not the only reason for

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this transformation; neoliberal construction of public space and political fields serves as another initiator of this transformation. One of the important changes in the 2000s was the blurring of boundaries between informal and formal spheres of doing politics. While the formal spheres lie in the parliament, ministries, governors, district officials and the municipalities, the informal spheres are composed of the NGOs, the local associations, bar associations and grassroots movements. In the 1980s, women’s movements positioned themselves independently from the state. For instance, the Women’s Library and Information Centre and the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation were founded in 1990 in an attempt to be independent from state authority. Distrust of formal and large-scale state organizations has been significant in the activist practices of women’s organizations. However, the informal spheres started to cooperate with formal spheres of politics starting from the 2000s with the change in the governance system. In Turkey, the change towards a civilianization of the governance/ political system by the inclusion of civil society through the involvement of NGOs, professional chambers, private sector organizations and universities has been most noticeable since 1996 and the UN’s Habitat II Conference held in Istanbul, and even more so since 1999, with EU integration.47 Local, national and international cooperation and solidarity practices have been established particularly on issues involving gender. The participation of the women’s movements in the debate for the amendments of the new Penal Code in 2004 is an example of this form of doing politics under the new understanding of governance. In the Constitution and in the new Civil (2001) and Penal (2004) codes, provisions have been adopted regarding gender equality, primarily to appease the EU in Turkey’s accession process. The EU criteria functions in two ways: first, in order to meet EU criteria the government has to accept women’s organizations as legitimate advocates and develop a closer engagement with them; secondly, women’s rights organizations can find channels for making demands according to their interests, empowered by EU-financed projects.48 Accordingly, the boundaries between formal and informal ways of doing politics at the local and national levels have disappeared due to

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the increasingly complementary functioning of these two spheres. In other words, state agencies, ministries and the municipalities do not only cooperate with the private sector organizations, NGOs and the universities, but also with the grassroots movements in Turkey. Civil society has been regarded as a stakeholder by the government authorities and municipal representatives. Miraftab argues that the informal way of doing politics involves various complementary strategies that go hand in hand with formal ways of politics.49 Therefore, this dichotomous understanding of formal and informal politics becomes problematic. I found Miraftab’s distinction of ‘invited’ and ‘invented spaces of activism’50 particulary significant in explaining Turkish gender movements. While women and men by working in NGOs and being related to state agencies and diverse stakeholders are active parts of ‘invited’ spaces, they are also close to the ‘invented’ spaces of activism through different channels of networking. As Miraftab argues, these two spaces are mutually constituted, not exclusive. Sometimes, the same individuals work as academicians, NGO consultants and activists for certain initiatives or different individuals from diverse stakeholders compete with each other to receive grants or to frame issues and/or get together to develop certain common agendas or projects or discuss their implications.51 Therefore, there is a close relationship between different bodies from ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces of activism. Although there are differences in terms of the priorities of these movements there are also certain commonalities which make it possible for them to act together on a common agenda. I believe that Walby’s point on the constitution of identities is significant in understanding the possibility of various coalitions.52 She argues that ‘identities are as much constituted through actions as they are the basis of actions’. Action-based coalitions therefore also function as sources of identities. Different segments of gender movements with different agendas and priorities collaborate with one another on several issues, despite significant differences and competition among them. Gender activists work at building organizational alliances around common concerns. The issue-based campaigns and the

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‘NGO-ization’ of the public sphere are two of the most significant features which have shaped gender movements in Turkey since the 1990s. An organization led by a coalition of women’s NGOs, human rights associations and LGBT groups – the ‘Platform for the Reform of the Turkish Penal Code’ – to reform the Turkish Penal Code from a gender perspective is an example of a successful three-year campaign between 2002 and 2004. Ilkkaracan sees the day-to-day management of the campaign and its financial autonomy from any national or international organization as the main reasons behind the success of the campaign.53 The day-to-day effort was based on intensive usage of daily action alerts; phone calls and faxes to Platform members, MPs and media representatives; daily e-mail and phone briefings to interested journalists; organization of lobbying visits to the parliament; and organization of interviews with TV stations, newspapers and radios. Although different groups from different regions of the country cooperated to carry out this campaign for the common goal, the long-term campaign was based on a working group who met monthly had a transformative power for the participants. As Ercevik Amado underlines, women’s NGOs have thus become aware of issues of discrimination based on sexual orientation.54 The LGBT and women’s organizations joined forces to criminalize the discrimination against sexual orientations in Turkey during these campaigns. Notably, although these organizations were unsuccessful as to their stated goal in this instance, an important real success is that they carry their cooperation over to other issues, such as their common reaction against hate crimes. On the other hand, there is also the risk of establishing only a shortterm, agenda-based cooperation. Various groups work alongside each other, accepting the reality that these alliances are issue-driven and thus, typically, short-lived. Issue-driven approaches and pragmatic strategies to handling issues by deadlines have transformed the way of doing politics. Another risk is the loss of autonomy because of financial support accepted from national or international organizations. The structural problems have been approached through projects conducted by NGOs.55 The fact that NGOs address gender issues prominent

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in the public sphere leads both to the fragmentation of and an intermittent approach towards gender issues through projects. Instead of attempting a large-scale transformation, most activists believe that they should aim for small steps, which are minor but significant contributions to social change in the long term. As Walby argues, the use of modern technologies such as websites and social media makes cooperation between different organizations and cooperation within organizations much easier.56 Throughout the campaigns developed by gender movements, information, ideas and experiences about politics have been exchanged with others through the internet via electronic mail lists, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, books, journals and magazines. The internet enables people to reach out to others who share common interests; at the same time, it overcomes limits of space and time. It not only influences the speed and level of the connection, it also transforms how people connect to each other and how they organize around one issue. The ‘Abortion is a Right. It is the Women’s Decision Platform’ is a recent example of new forms of organizing through internet campaigning. More than 40 women’s organizations and feminist groups joined to form the platform as a watchdog organization to follow/monitor relevant legal and social developments. Street protests, social media, a website,57 videos and brochures were intensively used for their collective cause in 2012. The membership of gender organizations is mainly constituted through circles of potentially interested men and women. The main assumption is that the ones who are similar to ‘us’ can show interest in ‘our’ issues. Sharing documents within the circle through blogs and mailing lists has a ‘transformative’ meaning for all members who follow the discussions. The active participants share comments on issues, or theoretical articles translated mainly from English, or news items illustrating bad experiences with laws or their execution, or drafts of laws and regulations so as to increase members’ awareness and sensitivity. For instance the sharing of theoretical documents on masculinity, translated from English to Turkish, through the BEDI (‘We are not Men’) electronic mailing group was regarded as a significant contribution in raising awareness for most of the BEDI followers.

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Conclusion Turkey is a case where not only a neoliberal, but also a conservative construction of public space has been intensely experienced, particularly since the 2000s. In the 2000s, gender issues have been accommodated under ideological debates on conservatism, Islam, traditionalism, secularism, modernism and Westernization.58 The strategic use of various political discourses, including Westernism, feminism, liberalism and Islamism, dominates the AKP’s discourses and policies related to gender.59 With the continuous tensions of being a modern nation state, where integration into the EU and the international capitalist market economy is sought, and a conservative society, gender issues function as a facet of its ‘traditional basis’ for the AKP period. In addition, gender issues become strategic tools for the government to impart its conservative messages in the political arena. The AKP’s family- and mother-oriented emphasis is also interpreted in this context. Its approach to women’s issues is to protect the family at the expense of women. A strong emphasis on the family, derived from conservative ideology, as the primary source of economic and social solidarity for needy individuals fits well with the neoliberal economic policies which decrease the role of the state in the provision of social services. To give social and political space to these new forms of clientelistic relations creates new forms of discriminatory practices.60 The project-based approach of economic development has also been accepted and become dominant in the development and implementation of social policies. Neoliberal policies and conservative ideology do not only determine the issues and themes of the political arena, but also the new forms of doing politics. Instead of holistic and coherent social policies, certain issues and themes from the realm of gender policies have become publicized. Although there are certain levels of dialogue and cooperation between actors from civil society and different bodies of the AKP, the latter protect a patriarchal and conservative stance which regards women only within the framework of family in these encounters. Although representatives of gender movements have experienced difficulties in defending their positions within the framework provided by the government, they definitely want to be a part of

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the policy development, particularly in significant issues such as the state’s policies on combating domestic violence or providing childcare services. Sometimes the concepts used in the publicity of these cases, such as ‘women’s empowerment’, can be borrowed by those employing a feminist discourse, although the actual feminist meaning/realization of these concepts are almost completely outside of their context. The AKP does not only develop policies based on diverse themes conflicting with each other, it also implements policies on the same theme with inconsistent approaches towards gender issues.61 Gains obtained through revised/renewed Civil and Penal Codes emphasizing women’s autonomy over their bodies and sexualities, and elimination of concepts such as honour, morality from the law are lost within the governing party’s political discourse on gender issues. The AKP’s agenda emphasizes the significance of morality and honour in the social order, and women’s bodies and sexualities as being a part of their families and society. In this regard, policies oscillating from one approach to another, which are thus incoherent and conflicting, can be observed. Gender movements create new political spheres of solidarity among different segments of society by intensively using new forms and tools of organization. Cooperation between different groups with diverse identities and priorities results in a transformation of each part involved in the action. New identities are constituted through actions. The coalition between women’s and the LGBT movements is an example of such a transformative cooperation, as on a bigger scale is the emergence of the Gezi protest movement. The focus on gender movement functions as a more inclusive and strategic approach in working together against gender inequalities and discrimination in society. The increasing social influence and significance of gender movements in society reflects the social and cultural transformation of Turkish society in the last decade. But at the same time, conservative, heteronormative and patriarchal practices and discourses which limit and threaten the rights and lifestyles of certain identity groups are widespread in the social and political arena. It is in this light that we may consider the emergence of the Gezi protest movement in the summer of 2013.

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This seemingly leaderless resistance movement amalgamated people with different gender, ethnic and political identities, and made its mark on the political and social climate of Turkey by showing the importance of the new social movement and identity politics. Overwhelmingly young and educated people ‘occupied’ Gezi Park to show their opposition, using ‘Occupy Gezi’ to underline the similarities between this movement and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest movement. Thereafter, in spite of the political opposition of the government and the brutal force used by the police, it became an umbrella movement for oppositional political positions to the governing political party at the national level and on international platforms. Defending individual freedoms and personal preferences was one of the most widely declared motivations of those who took to the streets throughout Turkey. The ways of doing politics and the organizational dynamics of these protests are particularly significant for this chapter since they are very similar if not parallel to those used by the gender movement as discussed. Indeed, gender movements formed one of the most powerful and influential components of the Gezi protest movement, and this in turn has marked in a very public way the steadily growing influence of gender movements in debates on identity at the micro and macro levels.

Notes 1. Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Emancipated but unliberated? Reflections on the Turkish case’, Feminist Studies 13/2 (1987), pp. 317–38; and ‘Women, Islam and the state’, Middle East Report 173 (1991), pp. 9–14. 2. Fatma Umut Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey: caught between tradition and modernity’, in S. Fatima and M. Ennaji (eds), Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of Change (London: Routledge, 2011). 3. Turkish Statistical Institute, Address-Based Population Registration System (2011) http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=10761 (hereafter ABRS 2011). 4. Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, ‘Turkey Demographic and Health Survey’, (2008) http://www.hips.hacettepe.edu.tr/eng/tdhs08/. 5. ABPRS 2011. 6. ABPRS 2009, available via http://tuikapp.tuik.gov.tr/adnksdagitapp/adnks. zul?dil=2.

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7. ABPRS 2010, available via http://tuikapp.tuik.gov.tr/adnksdagitapp/adnks. zul?dil=2. 8. Ibid. 9. ABPRS 2008, available via http://tuikapp.tuik.gov.tr/adnksdagitapp/adnks. zul?dil=2. 10. World Values Survey – Turkey (2012), available via http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/. 11. See Simten Coşar and Funda Gençoğlu Onbaşı, ‘Women’s movement in Turkey at a crossroads: from women’s rights advocacy to feminism’, South European Society and Politics 13/3 (2008), pp. 325–44, p. 327. 12. Coşar and Onbaşı, ‘Women’s movement in Turkey at a crossroads’. 13. Nükhet Sirman, ‘Feminism in Turkey: a short history’, New Perspectives on Turkey 3/1 (1989), pp. 1–34. 14. Ayşegül Yaraman-Başbuğu, Resmi Tarihten Kadın Tarihine (Istanbul: Bağlam, 2001). 15. Şirin Tekeli, ‘Women in Turkey in the 1980s’, in Şirin Tekeli (ed.), Women in Modern Turkish Society (London: Zed Books, 1995). 16. Cağla Diner and Şule Toktaş, ‘Waves of feminism in Turkey: Kemalist, Islamist and Kurdish women’s movements in an era of globalization’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 12/1 (2010), pp. 41–57. 17. Yeşim Arat, ‘Democracy and women in Turkey: in defense of liberalism’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 6/3 (1999), pp. 370–87, p. 374. 18. Nilüfer Timisi and Ağduk Gevrek Meltem, ‘1980’ler Türkiye’sinde Feminist Hareket: Ankara Çevresi’ (The feminist movement in Turkey in the 1980s: The Ankara Circle), in A. Bora and A. Günal (eds), 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm (Feminism in Turkey in the 1990s) (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2002). 19. Yeşim Arat, ‘Feminists, Islamists, and political change in Turkey’, Political Psychology 19/1 (1998), pp. 117–31. 20. See Yeşim Arat, ‘Toward a democratic society: the Women’s Movement in Turkey in the 1980s’, Women’s Studies International Forum 17/2–3 (1994), pp. 241–48; and ‘Democracy and women in Turkey’; Sirman, ‘Feminism in Turkey’; Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz, ‘The Women’s Movement in Turkey: from Tanzimat towards European Union membership’, Perceptions (2004), pp. 115–34. 21. See Diner and Toktaş, ‘Waves of feminism in Turkey’, p. 56 and Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey’, p. 176. 22. Ayşe Güneş Ayata and Fatma Tütüncü, ‘Party politics of the AKP (2002– 2007) and the predicaments of women at the intersection of the Westernist, Islamist and feminist discourses in Turkey’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35/3 (2008), pp. 363–84, p. 365.

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23. Coşar and Onbaşı, ‘Women’s movement in Turkey at a crossroads’, p. 339. 24. Diner and Toktaş, ‘Waves of feminism in Turkey’. 25. A weekly protest organized by relatives, mostly mothers, of those who disappeared in police custody. 26. Arat, ‘Democracy and women in Turkey’, p. 383. 27. Arat, ‘Feminists, Islamists, and political change in Turkey’. 28. A monthly radical feminist magazine which began publication in 1995. 29. Simel Esim and Dilek Cindoğlu, ‘Women’s organizations in 1990s Turkey: predicaments and prospects’, Middle Eastern Studies 35/1 (1999), pp, 178–88. 30. Esim and Cindoğlu, ‘Women’s organizations in 1990s Turkey’, p. 182. 31. According to Caroline Moser (‘Gender planning in the Third World: meeting practical and strategic gender needs’, World Development 17/2 (1989), p. 1803), ‘strategic’ gender interests provide the means to alleviate the structural constraints on women collectively for an alternative, more genderegalitarian organization of society. ‘Practical’ gender interests function instead as ‘practicable alternatives’, which are means of coping with structural and cultural constraints, but are far from changing these constraints over the long term. 32. Simten Coşar and Metin Yeğenoğlu, ‘New grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey? Gender policy in the age of AKP’, South European Society and Politics 16/4 (2011), pp. 555–73. 33. Nüket Kardam and Yakın Ertürk, ‘Expanding gender accountability? Women’s organizations and the state in Turkey’, International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, Symposium Issue on Grassroots Organizations and Policymaking, 2/1–2 (1999), pp. 167–97. 34. See Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey’. 35. Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR), Turkish Civil and Penal Code Reforms form a Gender Perspective: The Success of Two Nationwide Campaigns (2005), http://www.wwhr.org/category/booklets/30280/turkish-civil-andpenal-code-reforms-from-a-gender-perspective-the-success-of-two-nationwide-campaigns-2005-in-english, p. 15. 36. Pippa Bacca, who was an Italian artist hitchhiking from Milan to Israel in a white wedding dress for peace, was raped and killed in 2008 in Turkey. After her death, there was a pervasive protest not only among feminist groups and other gender initiatives, but also among different groups in society. Turkey’s leading newspaper Hürriyet said ‘We are ashamed’ in the headline of its internet edition. Ayşe Paşalı was raped and killed by her ex-husband in 2010. She had divorced her husband because of continuous violence. Subsequently, she applied to the Family Court for protection because she was receiving death threats from her former husband. Her request was for

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protection according to Law 4320 on the Protection of the Family. The court dismissed the request with the explanation of the lack of bond of marriage. Her case was discussed as a show case and publicized for women murdered as a result of domestic violence. N.Ç. is a young woman who was raped by 26 men when she was 13 years old in Mardin in 2002. Nevin Yildirim, a 26-year-old mother of two living in a small village in southwestern Turkey, killed her rapist in 2012. Her case is discussed in the frameworks of violence and abortion, since she was impregnated by her rapist. She was 29 weeks pregnant and past the legal limit to terminate a pregnancy, which is ten weeks. Ahmet Yıldız, a 26-year-old openly gay male, was shot dead in 2008, a few months after his criminal complaint against his family and his demand for protection due to continuous threats of violence from his family. However, it emerged that his legal complaint had not been investigated. http://www.akparti.org.tr/site/haberler/ak-parti-genel-baskani-ve-basbakanerdogan-8-mart-dunya-kadinlar-gunu-etkin/2768. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/have-at-least-three-children-pmerdogan-tells-finnish-counterpart-.aspx?pageID=238&nid=18811, 19 April 2012. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-erdogan-reiterates-his-callfor-three-children.aspx?pageID=238&nid=38235. Akile Gürsoy, ‘Abortion in Turkey: a matter of state, family or individual decision’, Social Science and Medicine 42/4 (1996), pp. 531–42. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18297760. http://www.haberturk.com/saglik/haber/756723-iste-turkiyenin-kurtajharitasi. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=8216homo sexuality-is-a-disease8217-says-minister-2010–03–07. Ayşe Buğra, ‘The changing welfare regime of Turkey: neoliberalism, cultural conservatism and social solidarity redefined’, in S. Dedeoğlu and A.Y. Elveren (eds), Gender and Society in Turkey: The Impact of Neoliberal Policies, Political Islam and EU Accession (London: I.B.Tauris, 2012), p. 27. See Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Gender Equality in Turkey (Brussels: European Parliament, 2012). Sylvia Walby, ‘From community to coalition: the politics of recognition as the handmaiden of politics of redistribution’, Theory, Culture and Society 18/2–3 (2001), pp. 113–35, p. 116. Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere, ‘Civilianizing Turkish policy: civil society in decision-making and civil-military relations’, in A. Kadhim (ed.), Governance in the Middle East and North Africa: A Handbook (London: Routledge, 2013). Coşar and Onbaşı, ‘Women’s movement in Turkey at a crossroads’, p. 331.

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49. Faranak Miraftab, ‘Feminist praxis, citizenship and informal politics: reflections on South Africa’s anti-eviction campaign’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 8/2 (2006), pp. 194–218. 50. ‘While “invited” spaces are defined as occupied by grassroots actions and their allied non-governmental organizations that are legitimized by donors and government interventions, “invented” spaces are defined as occupied by those collective actions that directly confront the authorities and challenge the status quo’ (Miraftab, ‘Feminist praxis, citizenship and informal politics’, p. 195). 51. Miraftab, ‘Feminist praxis, citizenship and informal politics’. 52. Walby, ‘From community to coalition’. 53. Pınar Ilkkaracan, ‘Reforming the penal code in Turkey: the campaign for the reform of the Turkish penal code from a gender perspective’, in J. Gaventa and R. McGee (eds), Citizen Action and National Policy Reform: Making Change Happen (Claiming Citizenship: Rights, Participation, Accountability) (London: Zed Books, 2010), pp. 195–216. 54. Liz Ercevik Amado, ‘Advocating sexual rights: the campaign for the reform of the Turkish penal code’, in L.A. Duran, N.D. Payne and A. Russo (eds), Building Feminist Movements and Organizations: Global Perspectives (London: Zed, 2007), p. 238. 55. Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey’, p. 181. 56. Walby, ‘From community to coalition’. 57. www.kurtajhaktir.com. 58. Güneş Ayata and Fatma Tütüncü, ‘Party politics of the AKP’; Zana Çitak and Özlem Tür, ‘Women between tradition and change: the justice and development experience in Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies 44 (2008), pp. 455–69; Coşar and Yeğenoğlu, ‘New grounds for Patriarchy in Turkey?’; Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey’; Buğra, ‘The changing welfare regime of Turkey’; Feride Acar and Gülbanu Altunok, ‘The “politics of intimate” at the intersection of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism’, Women’s Studies International Forum (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2012.10.001. 59. Güneş Ayata and Fatma Tütüncü, ‘Party politics of the AKP’. 60. Beşpınar, ‘Women in Turkey’. 61. Ibid.

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CHAPTER 6 TUR KEY ON THE MOVE: MIGR ATION, IDENTIT Y AND THE WOR LD WIDE WEB Jak den Exter

When you do not mind where you are you can never be lost. In the second half of the twentieth century Turkey urbanized rapidly, and not just in the largest cities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. By virtue of having a relatively young and fast growing population, many cities passed the one million mark in the last two decades, with Istanbul and Ankara mushrooming to 14 million and 5 million respectively. In contrast, in the mid-1950s, the number of inhabitants for both of these cities stood at only 1.2 million and 230,000. Why start an article about trekking and lifestyle with figures on demographic developments? I have done so because in my view some of Turkey’s major contemporary identity shifts have been fuelled by the rise of different social groups in not only the biggest cities but also the upcoming provincial ones. During the 1970–80s, most actors involved in this rapid urbanization process sought and found their new lives in what Karpat called ‘town-villages’.1 These were small urban islands in the cities where people from the same region (hemşeri), in

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many cases even from the same village, would settle and live together in what was invariably rudimentary accommodation. These often vast, slum neighbourhoods (gecekondu), formerly characteristic of cities like Istanbul and Ankara, have to a large extent nowadays been replaced by tenement buildings and high-rises. The past two decades have witnessed new phenomena like the mixing of people from all over the country in these urban neighbourhoods in both Turkey’s biggest cities as well as the rapidly growing provincial towns. In the past the classic social reference point was not the city but rather that safe urban island where one lived amongst those of one’s own background. Nowadays, this starting point does not exist to that extent and modern migrants need new forms of security to cope with the challenges of city life. This process has been very beneficial for religious brotherhoods (cemaat) such as the Gülen movement, for instance, who can provide both psychological and practical support to those newcomers.2 During the last two decades, the big cities gave rise to another new social category. This encompassed those who migrated to the city one or two generations earlier but had no viable ties to the countryside left. However, they would still know where they originated from, thus claiming to be, for instance, from Kahramanmaraş (Maraşlı), Kastamonu (Kastamonulu), or Rize (Rizeli). They may be able to give the proper name of ‘their’ village, but have only a few distant memories of visits there in their early childhood, if at all. They no longer receive dried fruit, hazelnuts or tomato purée sent by relatives to the city via bus or truck. At those times an uncle would bring these as he made his rounds all over the country visiting all relatives every autumn to bring everybody their fair share of the harvest, either in kind or money. Through this cycle, stories and gossip would be exchanged that would help one through the long, cold and snowy winter somewhere in central or eastern Anatolia. These links do not exist to that extent anymore. This large social group was mostly born in the cities some 25–45 years ago and is greatly adapted to modern life. They have relatively good education and jobs, not too many responsibilities and form the natural basis of recruitment for all kinds of new identity formations. They have disposable income and time to spare, and are relatively open-minded. Hemşerilik has become a nostalgic notion for

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them and family ties for the unmarried ones are reduced to a small circle including parents, siblings and sometimes a few other relatives. So they have plenty of room for new types of social connection. I would like to look at what happened to some of these people in the last decade. In doing so, I focus on trekking and some related lifestyle and identity elements that have also figured in my own life in Turkey, especially in Ankara, over the last six years. When observing the trekking groups, one should not just consider new lifestyles that have emerged and how this was stimulated due to the increased opportunities open to this new group, such as greater possibilities for travelling, accessing information and forming social ties: thought also needs to be given to the link between these issues and the bigger picture of change and transformation in society and social identities. The mere regular ‘togetherness’ of people trekking on a Sunday who otherwise do not have the possibility of meeting one other opens up awareness of ‘the other’ in society. This common love of nature and trekking may therefore lead to weakening some parts of one’s identity such as the ethnic, regional, nationalist or religious aspects. In turn, this could then foster a more open, global and environmentallyconscious sense of identity. This chapter is based on the research of others as well as my own; mostly however it relies on personal observations and conversations based on numerous journeys across Turkey from 1975 onwards as well as from the period that I lived and worked in the country, especially since 2006 in Ankara. I hope to reveal a glimpse of a new reality by touching upon a series of facts, impressions and processes that are not so much simply anecdotal as indicative of larger processes and developments. Hopefully readers will be challenged to research the developments I draw attention to here more deeply and on a larger scale rather than waiting for me to do so after retirement. In that sense other anthropologically relevant facets in contemporary Turkish society worthy of study could include cultures of heavy metal, salsa dancing or motorcycling. The first two sections of this chapter will focus on the evolution of trekking in Turkey and the anthropological observation of trekking groups from my own experience. The last section will then connect with the issue of contemporary environmental destruction in

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Turkey and preserving the footpaths upon which trekking relies. The central question I would like to pose in relation to trekking groups in Turkey is whether we are observing a phenomenon that is limited to mere leisure or whether trekking groups may become vital actors in societal changes and transformations.

Trekking in Turkey: a short overview In looking at the kaleidoscopic formation of new lifestyles and social identities in Turkey since 2000, one could locate one of the most important ingredients in the vast and fast growing number of trekking groups that emerged especially in the first decade of the new millennium. For those readers not familiar with this subject, let us have a look at the etymology and working definition of ‘trekking’. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the verb derived from the Afrikaans word trek or trekken, meaning to ‘pull’ or ‘travel’, and became a word in the English language in the mid-nineteenth century. It means a long arduous journey, typically on foot. You might say ‘trekking’ is every long walk in nature not involving serious climbing and mountaineering on the one hand or walking on normal streets and roads on the other. According to some sources, ‘trekking’ was launched in Turkey by mountaineers wanting to attract people to their hobby or make a living out of it. The first national organization focusing only on mountaineering, the Mountaineering Federation of Turkey (Türkiye Dağcılık Federasyonu – TDF), was established in 1966, and in 1977 it became a member of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA, www.theuiaa.org). In the 1970s, alpinists started to climb Turkey’s peaks, including the more technical ones. Climbing tours to the most important mountains, Ararat, Kaçkar and Erciyes, started to be organized on a regular basis in the 1980s. The first tourism agencies with a focus on mountaineering and trekking also started around then. The international performance of Turkish mountaineering peaked in 1995 with Nasuh Mahruki reaching the top of Mount Everest. Studies on the socio-economic background of the people taking part in trekking tours and expeditions in Turkey are still scarce and

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fragmented. However, my own mountain experience in Turkey, starting in the late 1980s, showed a decided majority of medical people, doctors and students, among them. This pattern started to shift in the 1990s not only due to the increased participation of those outside the medical professions but also because of the overall drop in social status of medical doctors in the public sphere: doctors no longer figure as part of Turkey’s current high elite and those that are rich nowadays mostly run their own private clinics with little time to focus on trekking. Trekking thus gradually became more of a middle-class hobby and was no longer considered an elitist pursuit. Next to the mountaineers, organized in the TDF, a number of trekking groups were established in the big towns that focused on organizing day tours in the immediate vicinity. In Turkey, regions 100–120 km away are still seen as part of the immediate surroundings. Their number grew rapidly in the last decade due to growing interest, urbanization in the countryside and, often, because of leadership disputes within the existing organizations which lead to the establishment of new ones. In a previous article, I made a first inventory of trekking organizations active on Facebook (FB) in spring 2010.3 Without having the pretension to be complete either in spring 2010 or today, I can state quite certainly that the number of trekking groups, outdoor tourism companies as well as outdoor wear and equipment companies has increased considerably since my survey in 2010. Before going on to list some anthropological observations on the new phenomenon of trekking in Turkey, let me give a short overview focusing on Ankara. Some trekking groups have branches in several locations across Turkey. The most important and active one seems to be Zirve Dağcılık, an organization for mountaineering and trekking. With its base in Izmir, it has branches in all big cities and some of the smaller ones, especially in the western part of the country and in important mountaineering areas like Doğubayazıt, Iğdır, Erzurum and Niğde. It has over 10,000 ‘FB-friends’. Most trekking groups, however, are based in only one city. When looking at the FB representation of trekking groups in Ankara for instance, the picture is confusing. People use the same name for different organizations or do not define where they are based. There are a myriad of different FB accounts, groups

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and pages. In some cases, some trekking groups seem to exist entirely in the virtual environment and not in the real world – except in the mind of their founders.4 The Association for Nature Research, Sports and Rescuing (DASK – Doğa Araştırmaları, Sporları ve Kurtarma Derneği) can serve as an example for the confusing picture that one finds on Facebook. DASK was formed in Ankara in 1989 and has three separate groups on FB, all of which have slightly different names. One of these, DASK ADAM 2012, is just meant to be a platform for participants in the Anatolian Mountain Marathon. Moreover, DASK’s trekking guide sends the invitation for treks via his own FB account, having far more friends than any of the DASK accounts or pages. Furthermore, opening an FB account, group or page is so easy now that many do so without closing accounts that are not used anymore. In addition to that, some groups changed their name, making long-term research quite difficult. Following my research I present an overview of trekking groups based in Ankara and make some notes on numbers and networks. The total number of trekking groups based in Ankara and active on Facebook is about 25. For about 15 of these, the organization of trekking tours is a core business, while at least five are directly related to an outdoor shop or travel agency. Two are directly related to a university. I focused specifically on the 14 biggest Ankara-based trekking groups that are active and had over 500 members or friends on Facebook in 2012.5 To undertake this research I became a member of or befriended all of these groups, and approximately 10 per cent of their members are also FB friends on my own account. The table included in this chapter shows the membership numbers and connections between the groups more specifically. Although a thorough examination of the total number of unique memberships, relations and connections, as well as a network analysis was impossible, we can form a factual basis for some defensible statements on how many people in Ankara are trekkers and in which kinds of networks they operate. Most of these 14 trekking groups have links to each other on FB as friends through their official group accounts. In fact just a few of them are not connected to any or just one of the other groups on FB. Some of the bigger groups, such as ADOG and

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Figure 6.1 Ankara-based trekking groups with more than 500 friends/members on Facebook in 2012

Anatolian Leopard (an outdoor shop), are connected to at least half of the other trekking groups on FB as friends. These interconnections seem to indicate that not only the trekking groups themselves but also their members may have a preference for affiliating themselves to one or more other groups. My own experience also shows that active trekkers generally are part of one to three different trekking groups with which they go trekking. Sometimes a trek will be organized by more than one group. For instance, since 2010, the annual Emre Yatar Memorial climb to Emeklidede Hill is organized by several groups and attended by over 100 people. Regarding the trekking groups for which I had membership numbers for both 2009 and 2012, these managed to triple their number of FB friends. For example, the number of ADOG’s FB friends grew from 1,269 to 5,438 in only two and a half years. The exception to this, DASK, only expanded slightly probably because its trekking guide sends out invitations for treks by email or through his personal FB account. As a result of this preliminary examination, I can estimate that the number of people in Ankara who have participated in trekking events at least once in recent years lies at 5,000–10,000 and that several hundred of these can be seen as active trekkers.

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Anthropological observations on trekking groups, trekkers and trekking in Turkey With trekking and the pursuit of other outdoor sports becoming increasingly popular in Turkey, the selling, importing and making of outdoor equipment has also become lucrative. Some select foreign brands indeed have become very popular. By lowering prices and making ‘in between’ products for both trekking and casual town clothing, they established themselves as part of the clothing, footwear and outdoor brands visible in the everyday life of a city centre. While some specialized shops closed, others became bigger, such as the Decathlon in Ankara’s Kentpark shopping centre. When people start spending serious money on outdoor sportswear, new words might be introduced to justify the expense. A product with a modern English name may suggest a higher value. By using strange new products with strange new names, you also create your own new world by re-making yourself and your new trekking companions in a fashion difficult to understand for outsiders. The easiest way to mark this border between the in- and out-group is by using foreign words or existing words in a new manner with a new meaning. When you want to strengthen the feeling of unity in a new group in which members do not necessarily share that many things, creating a specific jargon can serve as an effective binding force. In my view this is one of the best explanations for the widespread use of newly created and foreign words in most, if not all, trekking groups. Examples include adogçakalın, using the name of the Ankara trekking group ADOG with hoşçakalın, meaning goodbye in Turkish. Other examples are ‘trekking’, ‘polar’ or ‘krampon’. Sometimes foreign words are used in a way that is not necessarily compatible with Turkish phonetics. On the FB page of Zirve Doğa Sporları, one can find ‘trekking’ written as ‘traking’. In the very name of some FB groups ‘Orienteering’ is written as ‘Oryantiring’ and ‘Outdoor’ as ‘Outdor’. These groups use modern equipment as well as modern communication and technology. Mobile phones, internet, social media and GPS seem to be a conditio sine qua non for most of them. While a few trekking groups have attractive websites, most of them rely on an account, page and/or group on Facebook. As Facebook

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usage is very widespread in Turkey, not just among the young but also the older population, it has become the main or even only platform for some groups. This is where they put their photographs and GPS routes, tag participants, read each others comments and, for the sake of continuity, present their new plans by sending a message or creating a Facebook-event for people to join. On the other hand, possible participants subscribe to at least a few trekking groups and decide either by themselves or with some friends which event they will join. The choice is made according to the place, length and difficulty level of the tour or to which tour other people have subscribed. From Ankara alone, every Sunday some 4–8 trekking groups with 10 to 30 participants leave the city for one-day hikes. Their most common destination is the mountainous region of Kızılcahamam, north of Ankara, a trekking Eldorado. Almost every trekking group has a certain core of participants. One out of five attends frequently, say over 20 times a year; two out of five may attend on a regular basis. Others attend only once and may decide not to return or change groups because the specific group may have been too young or old, too fast or not fast enough. Most groups and trekking guides are not in it for the money and charge participants about $20 for a one-day trek. This money is used for the guide and the organization, the hire of a mini-bus as well as for some type of charity. As with everything in Turkey, most tours start and end with a pause at a small restaurant for a tea, a soup or a meal. Sometimes the walk is combined with a barbecue of ‘sucuk’, a typical sausage full of cumin. Some of the groups organize relatively large gatherings like a yearly evening of food and drink in which the usual sturdy trekking outfits are exchanged for fine and elegant evening dress. Special tree-planting days are also organized in or around the town to create an eternal memory of the trekking group. It is a Turkish hobby, and not the worst one, to create at least the beginning of a forest and to highlight the name and year of the benefactor at several very prominent spots. To travel 60 miles with an old bus to a village to plant a few trees may seem a bit strange but it shows a positive, eco-friendly spirit and could strengthen the greening of the environment. However, the chances of the small saplings surviving in the harsh Central Anatolian climate are quite low.

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Some groups seek to imbue their outdoor pursuits with wider meaning. An example of this could be travelling somewhere to walk for a few hours, climb a hilltop and unfurl a large banner stating ‘May this world see no Hiroshima again’ to commemorate the dropping of the atom bomb. This particular event did not make me feel part of it, since in hiking, I mainly want to meet friends, do some bird watching and undertake some exercise to help a little in preventing my mind and body from ageing. I do not necessarily want to become caught up in a walk for peace or one against violence or to support ‘the Continuation and Development of the Unity of Man and Nature in this World in which traditional ways of life are rapidly abandoned as a Result of Globalization and Technological Development’ (Alternative Trekking Ankara).6 Another trekking group grandiloquently termed the enjoyment of the natural views, flora and fauna that one encounters during trekking as ‘a step towards stopping the waste of natural environment in the world and to create a future in which Man will be able to live in a way compatible to the environment’. As hinted above, politics intrudes into the world of trekking as well. When observed from the angle of the considerable Turkish dichotomy between Islamists and secularists, one can easily say that trekking is a secularist hobby. On Turkish national days, a lot of Kemalist symbolism is on show and about 5 per cent of trekkers display an Atatürk photograph as their FB profile picture. Some trekking groups also organize Atatürk commemoration treks, as Doğuya Kaçış often do on 10 November, the day on which Atatürk died in 1938. Although some people fast during Ramadan, most trekking participants do not. They drink alcohol and tend to oppose the current governing party (AKP). Many are staunch Kemalists but may not necessarily have a distinct party-political preference. Although it is difficult to determine the exact situation, the general political atmosphere in the trekking groups tends to be left-wing. Some participants are what are called ‘old guns’ (eski tüfek), Marxists of the Turkish Communist Party. Another, far larger group, consists of angry young (wo)men opposing capitalism and imperialism, again without necessarily belonging to a specific group or party. Quite a few of these can be seen as belonging to the ulusalcılık current of left-wing neo-nationalism in society

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which opposes the EU, the US and the PKK and can at times resemble the nationalism of the extreme right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP). However, despite occasional (party-)political discussions, the atmosphere during the treks on Sunday is only rarely politicized. In fact, many trekking participants, regardless of gender, tend to be rather quiet, which may partly stem as much from a desire to prevent gossip about oneself from being spread as from a desire to enjoy nature peacefully. Gossip is an essential part of Turkish society. Both the act of gossiping as well as the fear of being its target are strongly present in society. Those who do not depend too much on their acceptance within the group may openly speak on a large range of subjects including the dangerous ones concerning sexual relations. Others restrict themselves to directly talking with one or two people that they personally know very well. Often this is a person of the same gender with whom one has a ‘kanka’ relationship, a kind of blood-brother- or sisterhood.7 If these relationships fail and the lurid details find their way to the group members and beyond, the consequences can be disastrous and result in someone moving to another trekking group or even another neighbourhood or city. This is relatively mild when considering that similar incidents in society, especially in the countryside, can still provoke murder or pressure someone into committing suicide. When examining the new category of well educated, modern and rather affluent people from urban Turkey who participate in trekking, one realizes quickly that singles outnumber those who are married or in a steady relationship. A high number of the women who go trekking are divorced and single parents. In a country where being a single unmarried parent is still widely seen as socially unacceptable, even in cities, this may not be coincidence. According to one trekking guide, some (newly) divorced people may have been sent to the trekking groups by their family, friends or psychologist. Some of the single women, especially those who decide to stay single after one or two relationship disappointments, start seeing their trekking group as their new family and stay in close touch with other participants during the week. Meeting up for a drink or going to a film together can be part of this new pattern and social media, especially Facebook,

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are the backbone of these midweek contacts. For those who do not want to stay alone, treks can provide the ideal opportunity to find new partners. The gender balance within groups tends to be 50:50 and the pleasant natural surroundings offer plenty of opportunities for more or less romantic contacts during the trek. The higher educational background of many of those involved in trekking has already been mentioned. Some remain in the academic world and may work at one of the about ten universities in Ankara or the over 25 universities in Istanbul. Others have mid-level or high positions in business, the financial world, healthcare or, as far as Ankara is concerned, the state bureaucracy. Most of them have been abroad at least once and are relatively open-minded. Many speak English to a certain degree and are, though being shy, interested in the foreigners – mostly diplomats, university teachers and others who occasionally attend the treks. Some of the trekking groups issue invitations not just in Turkish but also in English. A striking example of the openmindedness of people who trek can be seen in an interview I had with all 20 participants of a particular tour as we returned to the city about a year ago. I asked each one if they would like to try or had tried eating local food in the countries they visited or would visit. Apart from one, all were enthusiastic about sampling other countries’ cuisines. This was in stark contrast to my general experiences with Turkish teachers and students from vocational education and training schools visiting the Netherlands. A vast majority of those were reluctant to try other types of food and preferred to eat in Turkish restaurants. In north-western European countries age is far more an issue than it is in Turkey. This is also reflected in the trekking groups. When one overlooks the young people and rather elderly who drop by once in a while, the general age bracket varies from the early twenties up to 65. The general atmosphere during the treks is relaxed and friendly. Waiting for slower people in the group is not a big problem. Sometimes, a very close group of friends do not interact much with the rest. Mostly, however, interaction occurs between all or almost all people in the group. This involves, for instance, exchanging food with one another or waiting for and helping each other at difficult spots. On the one-day hiking tours, after having had a tea or soup at

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a small roadside lokanta or restaurant next to a gasoline station, the final stop before the walk is often in a small village. On most tours we also walk by a so-called yayla, a high plateau with some houses where farmers take their livestock in the summer. One can often observe the younger trekkers with their state-of-the-art mountaineering clothing and expensive sunglasses staring at villagers undertaking traditional tasks like making the sour-salty yoghurt drink ayran or salça, a purée from tomatoes or peppers. These trekkers seem more ‘tourist’ than my wife and I, both born and raised in rural Holland, were on our first visit to Turkey in 1975. In the exchange of commodities between the ‘back to nature’ trekkers and the keen villager, the key word is organik (organic). The more that people from the city come as ‘tourists’, the more villagers become organik. In the immediate neighbourhood of most cities there are small villages or parks with at least partly open spaces where village breakfasts or brunches are served at weekends. After breakfast or brunch, one of the nearby ‘boutique’ villages might be visited to buy some local produce. Around every large city in Turkey one can find one or more of these ‘boutique’ villages, Şile near Istanbul, for instance, Beypazarı west of Ankara and Şirince near Izmir. It has become a fairly new fashion for district towns to place some type of symbolic image related to a particular local product near their centre to emphasize this new relation between city and countryside. Thus in Ankara-Kazan it is the sugar melon, in Şanlıurfa-Nizip the pistachio and in Adana-Erzin the orange. This can be combined with other new images such as placing big plastic animals and green-lit palm trees on roundabouts or the new hype of organizing ‘First Traditional’s’ (‘Birinci Geleneksel’) all over the country. A First Traditional is an oxymoronic term denoting an event which would like to be traditionally repeated but has not been organized before. This has led to a new cliché in which each region attempts through cultural events of this nature to create its own formulaic brand of local authenticity, which is a poor attempt to counter the loss of the region’s actual local culture. These First Traditionals, often promoted by the government, are rarely followed by a second one, which show that this type of fake nostalgia is a dead-end street.8

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During trekking lunches, on the one hand the latest nutritional health research is discussed in relation to the food that people bring along, and on the other women may offer their trekking mates homemade food like börek with white cheese or sugary and fatty sweets and cakes. A recurring conversation topic during lunch at treks concerns the relation between environmental destruction and people’s individual behaviour. This can start by leaving polluting waste at the lunch site. Waste is generally not treated as a big issue in Turkish society.9 In trekking groups, however, although leaving behind any plastic substance is a mortal sin, any other waste is open to discussion. Some may argue that all organic materials like the remains of fruit can be thrown away, either on the spot or out of sight. Others argue that only those materials pertaining to the actual site should be left behind. So in the Ankara region, where no bananas or oranges grow, only apples or pears should be thrown away. A third group argues that even the smallest remains of our stay should be removed. Most one-day groups, especially those from Istanbul, start their treks 60–70 miles from their town. For the Ankara-based trekkers, as was remarked, the most popular district is the area of Kızılcahamam, which contains the highest point of Ankara province, the 2,200m high Emeklidede Tepesi. This region has some very interesting geological formations, from petrified trees to huge basalt rocks, and boasts a large diversity of flora and fauna. In the truckers restaurant of the Mevlana Petrol station, which offers a superb soup of lentils, tomatoes and many different herbs, one can sometimes find three different trekking groups at the same time. Other destinations for one-day hikes include the hills and woods of Bolu, the Gürleyik Canyon east of Eskişehir or the marble-covered slopes of the Ağsar Castle hills of Ankara-Güdül. A shorter alternative is Lake Eymir, owned by Middle East Technical University, just southeast of Ankara. Almost all trekking groups also offer outdoor sport activities like rafting and canyoning a few times per year. Most people who trek regularly also pursue other health-conscious hobbies related to outdoor sports and nature. This is most often mountaineering, bird watching or photography but can also include others like diving, paragliding or meditation. While many hobbies and pastimes practised by trekkers, like motorcycling and meditation,

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may be quite compatible, others like hunting might not as quite a few can be vegetarian. Many trekking organizations are also involved in organizing cultural activities like trips to nearby cities and tourist places, film evenings and exhibitions. The ‘back to nature’ trend may also be gradually reaching the educational and scientific sectors. It is becoming increasingly common to hear of schools cleaning up valleys in Cappadocia, or universities in Istanbul and Ankara ‘greening’ their campuses and being involved in sustainability research. As Turkey’s first Ecocriticism Conference, held in November 2009 in Kemer, shows, this trend is also gradually extending to the academic humanities.

The fight for the footpaths Modernization and attendant shifts in identity can in some cases lead to a major change in attitudes towards traditional ways of living. For long periods, people in Turkey’s mountain areas led roughly the same lives, used the same pathways for their goats and sheep and had the same worldview. This changed rapidly with the advent of mechanization and urbanization. Following the first big urbanization wave, these mountain regions started to be visited not just by those who left for the cities or went abroad as well as their children, but also by lots of other city-dwellers. As we have seen, a new class of relatively young, well-educated and prosperous people periodically tends to flee from the cities to the countryside for one day or longer. Trekking and other forms of active tourism only started booming in the last 5–10 years after a slow start in the late 1980s. These ‘outsiders’ pursue their physical hobbies on the same paths that were used by preceding generations for mere economic subsistence. Meanwhile, the same villagers who used these paths in their youth to bring their cattle to summer pastures in the mountains have urged the state and local municipality to replace them with roads to make their lives more comfortable.10 Although direct clashes have not yet resulted from this divergence of identities, attitudes and interests, the future of these footpaths could become a struggle between the ‘lazy, old locals’ and the ‘crazy, young city-dwellers’. A potential

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network of thousands of miles is waiting for today’s trekkers, most of which has not been mapped and marked out as routes through the internationally accepted red-white signposts. An even smaller part is being effectively conserved against the onslaught of bulldozers and even asphalting machines. Every year, hundreds of miles of paths are lost due partly to non-usage but mostly due to road construction. This can vary from dirt tracks to asphalted village roads, which is a fairly common way for ruling parties in Turkey to reward villages in return for voting for them. I can illustrate this destruction with a few examples from my own experiences over the period 1990–2002 in leading a 15-day trekking tour almost every year for the Dutch nature travelling organization SNP (‘where asphalt stops our travels start’). It started in the Dumlu district of Erzurum province and finished in the Çamlıhemşin district of Rize, a province in the Eastern Black Sea region. During this time, almost all paths that I used in the lower regions became mud roads and almost all former mud roads were asphalted. The very last valley on the tour itinerary can be examined a little more due to the way that it was utterly destroyed from its almost pristine condition in just a few years. One of the finest trekking routes in Turkey, it comprised an eight-hour descent from the Kavron Pass (3,100m) in the Kaçkar Mountains through the settlement of Sal yaylası. Located on a 2,100m high ridge, this is a great place for camping with spectacular views on those rare days without clouds and especially without the thick Eastern Black Sea fog.11 This was followed by a steep descent of breathtaking beauty from 2,100m to 700m through dense mist-forest. It took four hours and ended in the valley of the Fırtına River near Şenyuva (Çinçiva). The main path was ancient and partly paved with large natural flat stones by the local population of Hemşinli. The devastation of this valley started in the first half of the 1990s when a mud road was brought from a nearby valley in the west to one of the yaylas. This allowed trucks and tractors to bring modern building materials, which immediately started to change the image of the site. Later during the decade, this road was further extended down the valley by five miles. This scarred the valley, but the real damage was done with the construction of a mud road from the Fırtına Valley up to

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the ridge. It made the path needed for the descent unusable. While the steeper parts of these new roads are totally unusable except for fourwheel drives or tractors anyway, irreparable damage was inflicted on the local landscape, history and culture. Along with regional, national and even international protests against the building of a hydroelectric dam in the Fırtına Valley, there were also protests by local youth against the destruction of these paths. These protests, however, will likely fade away, partly due to traditional deference towards the elderly, and will be eventually taken up by outside organizations at the national and international level. However, despite this destruction, trekkers also need to recognize that new roads are at times necessary in mountainous regions to prevent some yaylas and settlements from falling into complete disrepair. These issues first began to be covered in Turkey by the writer Haldun Aydıngün, who detailed and discussed them in his column for the weekly magazine of the republican Cumhuriyet newspaper in the early 1990s. These columns were later collected in a booklet titled Life in Nature and Travelnotes in which Aydingün states that: With the roads that were opened our farmer quickly shifted to motor transport. In a very big part of our country passing through the mountains on the back of a mule or on foot to reach the regional centre finally has come to an end. It must be because of the changing agricultural economy and the internal migration that the number of people that mount the highlands to pasture the cattle has also started to decrease. For these reasons quite a lot of paths in the mountains that were used maybe for centuries have started not to be used any more and disappear. The villagers are going to the places where they used to go in ‘blood and sweat’ in a motorised way or refrain to go there.12 To illustrate this with another example from my own experience, on my first journey in Turkey in 1975, I visited a migrant worker I had met in Holland in his village in the Emirdağ district of Afyon. Accompanied by a donkey, we went up to the slopes of Mount Emirdede to find the pastures full of people from the district centre and the surrounding villages. Then it was still customary for many villagers to go to the

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summer pastures and stay there for a few months in their tents, some of them being big round yurts of the Turcoman ‘topakev’ type. People would come alone by foot or with their sheep, goats, dogs and other animals that would carry tents, food, clothing and all other necessary items. Later, when I visited these places in the 1990s, I would find that this space had fallen into complete disuse despite the presence of a useable dirt road. While the means of reaching these summer pastures had massively improved, almost nobody went there anymore. However, Aydingün, in his writings from the 1990s, held out some hope: I fully believe that in the years in front of us out of this new generation groups of volunteers will start to depict paths in pilot regions. When that happy day comes young human beings will talk with the elderly people in the villages, they will learn the old roads, they will stroll about the fields in order to find the best possibilities. Maybe they will even use satellite photographs taken by NASA.13 GPS technology appeared in the 1990s and has been used to map out trekking-routes, such as those developed by Kate Clow: the Lycian way, St Paul’s Trail and several trekking routes in the Kaçkar Mountains. Notwithstanding this, the construction of new roads, fire corridors and residential areas threaten to destroy footpaths. During personal treks of the entire Lycian way in recent years from Fethiye to Antalya, finding the original route sometimes became very difficult. Kate Clow has a difficult job in publishing all changes on her website to prevent trekkers from losing the tracks. Perhaps this is the reason why the Atlas periodical gives no route information at all in their Atlas of Walking Routes: 50 Dream-pathways (Yürüyüş Rotaları Atlası: 50 Düş Patikası).14 It is possible that in later times people will regret the damage inflicted on Turkey’s footpaths and more attention may be given then to preserving them and perhaps even to opening new paths. International cooperation and funding, especially from the UN and EU, may raise more awareness of this issue. There are already some signals that this is the case especially in those places where local communities have been involved in preservation schemes.15

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Conclusion A first overall conclusion that I hope can be taken from this chapter is that ‘trekking is fun’. However, in reference to the central question that I raised in the introduction of whether the new phenomenon of trekking goes beyond mere leisure and whether trekking groups could become actors for societal change, it is not possible to give a definitive answer on the basis of the material I collected. Nonetheless what we can say is firstly, trekking provides a regular opportunity for a fairly large category of people from relatively influential positions in society to come together. These are intelligent people with time, money and usually good employment who possess a common ecological outlook and consciousness. In that sense, one could look at these trekking groups as a dormant force for societal and even political change, at least in terms of environmental issues in Turkey. Although most participants trek only for leisure and pleasure, the core of most trekking groups consists of people with a certain action potential. In that sense, it is possible that other participants could come to adopt a more active environmental attitude. In a lot of other respects the hardcore trekkers and those with a more distant interest are quite the same. In short you might say that they have a far more open attitude towards what life has to offer than many of their fellow citizens. Their relative openness towards trying out ‘exotic’ food can be seen as a small but in Turkish society quite meaningful example. In terms of the role of social media, would the trekking phenomenon as I described it in this chapter have been possible to the same extent and in the same way without it? From the news media, we know that the use of mobile phones and social media can have a huge effect on the growth of crowds and mobs. In my view, hard-core trekkers mostly rely on the use of (mobile) phone or email for communication between themselves and within their groups. However, social media play an important role for those outside this group who participate in trekking. As was seen, this second group of (potential) trekkers prefers going trekking on an irregular basis and is keen on experimenting with new concepts and activities. It likes the freedom of being able to decide instantly where to go. The characteristics of

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social media make it perfectly suitable to respond to these desires. Social media could also help transform this group not just into a potential ‘sleeping giant’ but one with the potential to react and mobilize very quickly to the ‘wake up call’ of societal and environmental crises. Such indeed is what happened in Summer 2013 at Gezi Park in Istanbul when mass protests started and rapidly spread throughout the country: social media was the means through which people were informed, connected and established solidarity. A study conducted by one of the most respected research institutes in Turkey (KONDA) showed that 69 per cent of the respondents who ‘occupied’ Gezi Park were informed about this resistance movement through social media, Facebook and Twitter (the latter labeled a ‘menace’ by the Prime Minister) in the main. In this period, I observed a considerable number of hikers being very active on social media and on the streets, at least in Istanbul and Ankara. At the same time, many of my hiking companions stayed unexpectedly silent, including most of the leaders of the hiking groups I know. On the longer view, the processes described above could be instrumental in fostering identities going beyond strictly nationalist, ethnic or sectarian conceptions of citizenship, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter could provide the necessary yeast to guarantee the necessary number of people. In this sense, one can hope that the growing environmental awareness in Turkish society, accelerated by the role of social media, will prevent Turkey from reliving the negative experiences of countries like the Netherlands, for example. In the 1960s and 1970s, along with other environmentally-conscious young people, I remember protesting against the megalomaniacal agricultural plans that severely affected the Dutch countryside. In recent years, the government has attempted to undo these mistakes and repair the country’s natural heritage through projects like reopening old canals, restoring natural hedges or small brooks and rivers. Thus our earlier protests may have planted the necessary seeds to institute a shift in public thinking away from environmentally destructive modernization. Hopefully, trekking groups can be more successful in generating a shift towards a more ecological identity and lifestyle in Turkey.

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Notes 1. K.H. Karpat, The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 2. The Gülen movement is an international Islamic fraternity founded in Turkey by the religious scholar Fethullah Gülen. 3. J.D. Exter, ‘Anadolu Keçi Yolları Üzerinde Patikalanan Trekking Hakkında Düşüntülerim’, Kebikeç 29/1 (2010), pp. 105–21. 4. One of the running gags in Turkish society concerns the large number of foundations and other organizations in the country: Every man in Turkey wants to be a leader. Despite being exaggerated, the truth is that the combination of the strong-leader principle and frequent leadership challenges from others can often lead to trekking organizations splitting up. 5. These are: Adam Trekking; ADOG – Ankaralı Doğa Gezginleri; AdventureMania Tr; Anadolu Leoparı; Anatolya; Ankara Doğa Yürüyüşçüleri Platformu; Ankara Trekking Kulübü; DASK Doğa Araştırmaları, Sporları ve Kurtarma Derneği (DASK ADAM 2012); DASK trekkingguide (GK); Dayanışma Trekking; Dört Mevsim Doğa Sporları/ Gezi ve Etkinlik Grubu; Galeri Spor Zirve; Necibo trekking; Orion Trekking; Zirve Doğa Sporları. 6. ‘Dünyada doğal ortamın bozulmasını durdurabilmek, insanın çevreyle uyumlu bir şekilde yaşayabileceği bir gelecek oluşturmak için bir adım atın’. 7. A very close friendship in which one shares almost everything with the other person while knowing that (s)he would never talk about these secrets with others. 8. For the use of symbols in regional festivals see also Chapter 10. 9. Picnic sites offer a vivid example. In a national park, park rangers will at least collect the waste at some point. In free nature, however, one can find the remains of a barbeque meal with plastic strips littering the surroundings for years afterwards. 10. This seems to be a contrast to earlier generations. In the 1990s, in the southeastern Black Sea region I met an old couple riding a mule making their way up a steep path to their yayla. In the short conversation I had with them they said that they were making their last trip up to die and be buried in their beloved place in the mountains. 11. On a clear day from this point it is possible to see the snowcapped mountains of the Caucasus. 12. Haldun Aydıngün, Doğada Yaşam ve Gezi Notları (Istanbul: Yayınevi Yayıncılık, 1992), p. 59. 13. Ibid., p. 61.

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14. Atlas Keşif Kitaplığı, Yürüyüş Rotaları Atlası: 50 Düş Patikası (Istanbul: Özel Koleksiyon, 2009). 15. An example is the Evliya Çelebi Way Project, which has developed routes on horseback following Evliya (1611–c.1685); local communities have been involved in the initiative and have been encouraged to provide support services for travellers: www.evliyacelebiway.com.

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CHAPTER 7 CONTESTATION OF SPACE AND IDENTIT Y IN ISTANBUL: MUSEALIZATION AS AN UR BAN STR ATEGY Paul Osterlund

Istanbul has experienced a series of vast transformations since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. This chapter concerns itself with the period following 1980, when, according to sociologist Çağlar Keyder, the city ‘experienced the shock of rapid integration into transnational markets and witnessed the emergence of a new axis of stratification’.1 Focusing particularly on events from the past decade, the chapter looks at how space and identity are contested as a result of the city’s ever-increasing role as a cultural and financial capital as well as a highly popular tourist destination. Turkey’s largest city has witnessed the construction of skyscrapers, multinational retail and restaurant chain stores, gated communities and shopping malls at a staggering rate in recent years. This has coincided with the rapid redevelopment of urban space, particularly in inner-city quarters occupied by low-income residents. Such redevelopment has often been met with controversy and significant opposition from the public. As such, it has become evident that the phenomenon of musealization has emerged as a tactic employed by the dominant political and financial

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elite to aid in the implementation of such projects. Within that frame, four particular cases of urban transformation that pertain to the last decade will serve as objects of focus in this chapter. These cases articulate how space and identity are contested in the city. Musealization can be defined as the process by which an object becomes detached or removed from its original context, for its exhibition in a museum-like manner and environment. In Istanbul, such a process is often pursued by authorities and other powerful actors in order to justify urban initiatives that are realized without public consent. These initiatives often seek to suppress or extinguish certain identities of varying types, such as the historical and functional identity of a public square, the architectural identity of a building and the ethnic identity of a neighbourhood. The four cases analyzed in this chapter exhibit instances of strategic musealization. The first is a street nowadays popularly known as Fransız Sokağı (French Street), located in a quarter formerly occupied by Greeks and later by Roma and Kurds, which has been redeveloped as a French-themed cultural district. The second case discusses the construction of a shopping mall in a nineteenth-century apartment building on Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, and the third the pedestrianization of Taksim Square, which sits at one end of Istiklal. The latter involves the resurrection of an Ottoman-built military barracks and would see one of the few remaining green spaces in the city lost. Taksim, Arabic for ‘distribution’, is undoubtedly the most significant square in Turkey. The site was originally a water reservoir, built in 1732 by order of Sultan Mahmud I to collect water flowing from the north of Istanbul so it could be distributed throughout the city. It retains a similar distributive function today as a transportation hub, with buses, subways and funiculars taking passengers to numerous areas of Istanbul. The square is the site of the Republic Monument, built in 1928, five years after the republic’s foundation. Throughout the twentieth century Taksim Square has been a functional centre for mass demonstration. The protests that began over the government’s redevelopment plans for the adjacent park (Taksim Gezi Park) at the end of May 2013 have made the area a more visible, crucial and significant space than ever before. The fourth and final case to be analyzed is

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a street art festival which took place in the middle of a demolition area in Tarlabaşı, a rapidly-gentrifying inner-city neighbourhood. Tarlabaşı was formerly a middle-class Greek and Armenian neighbourhood that is currently populated by a diverse population of mostly marginalized groups, including Roma, Kurds, West African refugees and transgender people. The previous cases are crucial for understanding modern methods of urban transformation in Turkey, as they reflect greater themes and trends occurring in the urban sphere throughout the country. These trends frequently involve the confiscation of public space and the redevelopment of low-income quarters, especially centrally-located ones with a high turnover potential, such as Tarlabaşı, located in the heart of Beyoğlu, minutes away from Taksim Square. Such projects seek to aggressively transform spaces and identities of social inclusion, encroach upon public space, and propagate spaces of consumption. Critical changes in the urban landscape of Istanbul began in the years leading up to, and more prominently, following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Formerly home to a robust population of Greeks, Armenians and Jews (who collectively comprised around 50 per cent of Istanbul’s population in the late Ottoman era), the city is now, according to many estimates, over 99 per cent Muslim. In a city with a population of around 15 million, there are now perhaps just 50,000 Armenians, 20,000 Jews and 3,000 Greeks. The bulk of these communities were forced out through a series of policies and events that were aimed at their displacement. The Capital Tax of 1942, which unfairly targeted Turkey’s non-Muslims, resulted in extensive dispossession of wealth and property which in turn led to tens of thousands of non-Muslims leaving the country.2 The Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, a state-led assault on Istanbul’s Greek community, saw the destruction of hundreds of primarily Greek businesses, residences and churches by armed mobs, and prompted another mass exodus. Jews and Armenians were also targeted during the riots.3 Less than a decade later, thousands of Greek citizens who resided in Istanbul were forcibly expelled from the city. These events account for the diminished minority populations of the city, in particular the tiny number of remaining Greeks.

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The multiconfessional identity of the city, especially in the central Beyoğlu area, where the bulk of Jews and Christians resided, was eventually replaced with a heterogeneous population including Roma, Kurds, African migrants, transgender persons and sex workers. The rapid demographic engineering that forced out Istanbul’s religious minorities is re-emerging today by way of a series of initiatives which seek to significantly rearrange the urban landscape of the city without consultation with those most affected. The aforementioned groups are particularly vulnerable to these so-called urban transformation projects, many of which are taking place in Beyoğlu, a district that for centuries was the heart of the non-Muslim community of Istanbul and which has re-emerged in recent times as the city’s most vital cultural, entertainment and transportation centre. Beyoğlu’s increasingly coveted status threatens to alter the character of some of its neighbourhoods which for several decades now have existed as mixed-use areas for marginalized groups such as those previously mentioned. Beyoğlu has always been a district known for its cosmopolitanism and intersecting identities. Founded in the thirteenth century by Genoese traders, the Byzantines referred to the area as ‘Pera’ meaning ‘far away’ in Greek, a reference to its location on the other side of the Golden Horn across from the historic peninsula, and to the fact that the Genoese controlled the area and the trade that took place therein.4 Ottoman Greeks, Jews and Armenians began to move into the district in the fifteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, Beyoğlu had become Istanbul’s financial and cultural heart, as well as its most affluent district and the site of most foreign embassies. Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Istanbul was ignored in favour of the new capital, Ankara, and beginning in the 1950s migrants from the countryside began to move into the district, although the area retained its image as a vibrant cultural and entertainment hub favoured by elites.5 Between 1960 and 1990, however, the financial and service sectors of Beyoğlu experienced decline; this was due to a variety of factors, including the expansion of retail sectors in other areas of the city, which was prompted by increases in income and automobile usage.6 Residential areas in less central districts subsequently became more

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feasible and popular for those who could afford them, and as these residents moved out of Beyoğlu they were replaced by lower-income migrants. This led to an increase in the rate of vacancy and a decrease in real estate value. However, Beyoğlu retained its popularity as a major tourist destination, probably due to its architectural heritage, which ultimately provided the impetus for its revitalization.7 Sociologist Çağlar Keyder points out that Istanbul has been under the governance of the same party (the Welfare Party, and then its successor, the AKP) and leader (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, initially as the city’s mayor then later as prime minster) since 1994. The conservative Welfare Party, which prevailed in local elections that year, exhibited neoliberal tendencies, interests that coincided with a broad group of elites focused on remaking the city as a global city/cultural capital: ‘The new urban coalition – the city government, real estate concerns, the bourgeoisie in its manifold manifestations and the top echelons of civil society, including the media and the city-bolstering foundations funded by businessmen – strived to consolidate the city around their image of gentility.’8 The neoliberalization process, however, began over a decade earlier following Turkey’s military coup of 1980. The military-led interim government facilitated the implementation of an IMF-proposed neoliberal programme, eschewing the import substitution industrialization-based economy of the prior two decades for an export-based model.9 Urban planner Ilhan Tekeli points out that the rapid privatization of the state-owned sector, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade later instilled Istanbul with a significantly upgraded role in the global urban sphere. Istanbul began to regain functions it had lost in the 1920s after the Soviet and Turkish revolutions. These transformations would give Istanbul the status of a global city alongside the megacities of the world, although at the time urban planning circles in Turkey preferred to apply the concept of ‘world city’.10 That ‘world city’ has subsequently expanded at an unprecedented rate. According to a chart provided by the Istanbul Municipality, the city’s population, which was just under three million in 1980, now officially

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stands at about 13.5 million, although the actual count is likely to be higher. Staggering sprawl has been the consequence of the rapid population spike.11 Keyder remarks: Metropolitan Istanbul is already encroaching into its peripheries, in effect adding smaller cities to its urban area in a serial manner. It has become a sprawl without any clear divide to mark its limits. In official configuration the borders of the metropolitan municipality have been expanded to coincide with those of the province; all villages and rural centres have been made into neighbourhoods within the megalopolis. The prospect of endless growth in this same vein is a recipe for creating a geographical monster covering the entire area between the Marmara and the Black Sea coasts and gnawing into the remaining woodlands in the north of the city.12 As the city grows and grows, the contestation of its prized centre (Beyoğlu) intensifies. Political and financial elites are continuously remaking Istanbul, especially its most centrally-located districts as a major financial and ‘cultural’ centre. Malls and banks are continually spreading throughout the city; the centrally-located areas are characterized by residences and spaces of consumption marketed to the middle/upper classes. In the process, public space and low-income neighbourhoods in the centre are being targeted. As described in the following cases, numerous justifications are given for these initiatives. Yet they are evidently meant to cleanse the city of heterogeneous identity and confiscate public space – a particularly prominent technique used toward this end is that of musealization. Within the term lies the implication of a transformative, dislocative or even fatal process. Theodor Adorno, in his essay analyzing the differing positions of the poet Paul Valery and the novelist Marcel Proust regarding the role of the museum in the life (or death) of an artwork, describes such a process, where the distinction between ‘museum’ and ‘mausoleum’ become blurred: The German word, ‘museal’ [‘museumlike’], has unpleasant overtones. It describes objects to which the observer no longer

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has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. They owe their preservation more to historical respect than to the needs of the present. Museum and mausoleum are connected by more than phonetic association. Museums are like the family sepulchres of works of art.13 Embedded in the process of musealization is a transformation based on abstraction which is described as one that is threefold: ‘[1] loss or alteration of function, [2] alteration of context, [3] a new relation between the subject (viewer) and the object, whereby the viewer takes on a posture of admiration’. Professor Anja Barbara Nelle describes how musealization is used in the urban sphere, referring to each element of the three-tiered definition by Sturm: [1] The alteration of function in the urban context signifies a modification or diversification of the uses of urban spaces and is related to changes in the uses situated in buildings ... [2] An alteration of context in the urban sphere rarely includes the relocation of buildings, but describes modifications in characteristics that define the context such as the traffic system (that is, the establishment of pedestrian zones), the facades and street furniture and – interdependent to the built context – the people who use the spaces and the way they do so ... [3] Museality characterized by the ‘posture of admiration’ occurs if there is a pre-dominance of tourists present in the public space.14 In the past decade in Istanbul, techniques of musealization have been applied with respect to these characteristics. The exhibit takes numerous forms: existing residential quarters, historic buildings, public squares. It also involves the construction of a new exhibition, one that often bears either a direct or aesthetic historical legacy. These creations are musealized from their inception, as the intent is to use their exhibition as a vehicle for altering collective memory and/or for the justification of non-consensual urban reconfiguration. Attention will now be directed to the four cases mentioned earlier. These cases all

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took place (within the past decade) or are currently taking place in Beyoğlu. They all involve urban transformation implemented without consent, which frequently involves the suppression of certain identities that are deemed undesirable in favour of a muted, sterile image, one constructed for the ultimate goal of profit, seemingly regardless of the impact on the social fabric and aesthetic quality of the areas in question.

Fransız Sokağı/Cezayir Sokak The Fransız Sokağı project of 2004 sought to refurbish Cezayir Sokak (Algeria Street), a sloping street in Beyoğlu located just behind the famous Galatasaray High School, in order to create a quarter similar to one found in late nineteenth-century Paris. To this end, the steep winding street features numerous French-themed murals on the walls of cafes serving French-themed food and drink; the gas-powered street lamps lining the street were actually sent by Paris City Hall.15 Cultural geographer Amy Mills notes the irony of naming the project ‘French’ Street, given its original name, Algeria Street. Once a Greek neighbourhood, most of the buildings on the street were uninhabited, unable to be maintained by the landlords who took over the buildings following the expulsion of Greeks in 1964.16 It was, however, a mixed neighbourhood which included a Roma and Kurdish population; these residents were intimidated out of their homes by threats of eviction or rent increase, and were never informed about the project in the first place.17 Fransız Sokağı was and is a profitable venture for those involved in its creation, as the street and its cafes are popular, especially among tourists. It is also an exercise in musealization, a near-simulacrum of a street one might find in Paris. However, the cultural and historical reasoning employed seeks to gloss over the forced evictions and drastic transformation of an area from a mixed-used neighbourhood to a zone of consumption enjoyed mainly by tourists. The choice of France as the cultural theme is not surprising, given the vast cultural influence France has had on Turkey. Modern Turkish contains a significant amount of French loanwords (the words for

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train, ticket, truck, waiter, campus, to name a few). Such an influence can indeed be seen throughout Istanbul. There are numerous French high schools in Istanbul, as well as a French university, Galatasary Üniversitesi. The cultural and historic ties make the French theme of the project an attractive choice in Beyoğlu. Nevertheless, the street, with its real Parisian streetlights and constructed Parisian charm, is a textbook case of musealization. As a living, breathing exhibition, it gives the spectator what appears to be a genuine French atmosphere, assuming the spectator doesn’t ask any questions. The genuine streetlights and French artwork adorning the walls of the nineteenth-century buildings imply that ‘this is how it always was’. It seeks to capture what was once a real segment of the urban landscape and sever it from its previous two contexts (a prosperous Greek neighbourhood followed by a mixed enclave of Kurds and Roma). By doing so, it masks the historical reality of that particular landscape, the fact that the Greeks and later on, the Roma, Kurds and other residents of the neighbourhood were forcibly relocated. These identities are to be suppressed so that the quarter can be reclaimed and redeveloped. One particularly effective way of doing so is by decorating the urban fabric with physical elements pertaining to a specific yet separate cultural identity, around which a profitable zone of consumption can be constructed. As Mills points out: ‘... the French Street project deliberately inscribes a French identity onto the urban landscape, even though the history this commercial development claims to “revive” is completely synthetic’.18

The Demirören Mall and the Hüseyin Ağa Camii In May 2011, the Demirören Mall opened on Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul’s main cultural and entertainment artery. The mall was the subject of much controversy. Built via the renovation of the nineteenth-century Sin-Em Han, which formerly housed two cinemas decades prior, its construction exceeded the height of the neighbouring Cercle D’Orient building. The height limit was an initial condition of construction that was circumvented through subsequent legislation. The construction of the mall also significantly damaged the walls and dome of its other neighbour, the sixteenth-century-built Hüseyin Ağa Mosque.

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After a description of the damage to the mosque was published in the Radikal newspaper in November 2011, Demirören publicly declared that it would undertake responsibility for the mosque’s renovation.19 The construction scaffolding is surrounded by walls of old photos and text pertaining to the mosque’s history, as well as historical photos of Istiklal Street and scenes of the surrounding area. In large letters atop the walls it reads: ‘The restoration of the Hüseyin Ağa Mosque is being undertaken by Demirören Holding’.20 The mosque is thereby musealized as a historic building undergoing renovation, dislocated from its (pre-Demirören) status as a functional religious facility where many went to pray. The Hüseyin Ağa Mosque is edified as a historically significant place, literally masking Demirören Holding’s complicity in the extensive damage of what was also an operational place of worship. At first glance the postered walls surrounding the mosque’s perimeter present it as an aging artefact deeply in need of restoration, of which Demirören Holding has graciously agreed to oversee and finance. The viewer is meant to appreciate the historical legacy of the sixteenth-century mosque as well as its on-going renovation, which masks the fact that its musealization was a strategic mechanism to redirect criticism for Demirören Holding’s lack of concern for the mosque as both a place of worship and a vulnerable building, the structural integrity of which they were aware would be compromised if a mall was built next door. In April 2013, the restorations came to a halt. It was announced that Demirören would no longer fund the mosque’s restoration, after TL1 million had been allocated to the project.21 The self-promoting scaffolding still surrounds the area. At present, it is unclear whether, when and if the Hüseyin Ağa Mosque will return to its functional status. The musealization of the mosque was rooted in violence and destruction. However, the same process seeks to conceal that violence and subsequently bury it within the positive context of a restoration project. The unwillingness of the company to see the restoration through reveals its frail attempt to occupy a position of accountability. The Hüseyin Ağa Mosque wasn’t the mall’s only neighbour to experience severe damage during the construction period. The owner of Ağa Lokantası, a restaurant that opened in 1920, rejected requests

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to sell his property, so developers began digging under several sides of the restaurant, eventually forcing the owner to sell out of fear. The remarks of a security guard working at the mall provide insight into how the Demirören building itself is musealized. ‘It’ll take only a year or two for the shopping centre to be as black as the [Cercle d’Orient] building next to it. In fifty years, this will also be a historical building; nobody will even notice the difference’.22 These comments are interesting given photos found near the entrance of the mall, one of which is an old black-and-white photo depicting the late-nineteenth-century Sin-Em Han building (which was also known as the Deveaux Apartments) several decades after its construction. Below is a photo taken from roughly the same perspective, although it depicts the sparkling white Demirören, which is portrayed as an updated, restored, modern, yet faithful-to-the-original version of its former self. The first photo reads ‘Deveaux Apartments, 1890 before the fire’, depicting the building shortly after its construction. The second photo reads ‘Demirören Istiklal, the entire glory of Deveaux lives on’.23 The photo implies that the mall, much like the way in which a museum preserves artefacts or artworks, preserves the original aura and style of the building and acts as its protectorate, ensuring its immortality. The photographs present the mall as part of a historical continuum. It is as much of an invented tradition as is the rebuilding of the British Houses of Parliament in a nineteenth-century Gothic style as described by historian Eric Hobsbawm, where repetition of behaviours, norms and practices (in this case the replication/preservation of an architectural style) is established to demarcate continuity with a certain past. Hobsbawm points out that this continuity is, however, usually fabricated.24 Such is the case with the Demirören mall, although as suggested by the comments of the security guard, in 50 years the brand new and glossy-white mall will have lost its lustre and taken on an aura similar to its predecessor, writing itself into the historical fabric of a building with which it bears no organic and essential similarity. The construction of the huge mall, undertaken without consideration of the neighbouring business owners or consequences on the architectural integrity of neighbouring buildings, articulates

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another identity preference held by the political and financial elite. It portrays their ‘image of gentility’, the shared vision of what the city’s identity should be: a place free to exhibit signs of its physical and architectural heritage, so long as it benefits their interests and functions according to their decisions.

The Topçu Barracks The re-creation (and simultaneous musealization) of urban space is reflected by the Taksim Gezi Park Project. The project, announced by Prime Minister Erdoğan prior to the 2011 elections, seeks, supposedly, to pedestrianize Taksim Square, Istanbul’s most prominent and central public space, by removing bus stands and redirecting traffic to underground tunnels. The project was quickly passed through the official channels and involved no public consultation, this in spite of the fact that it will be publicly funded. The plan also includes the closing of Taksim Gezi Park, a large park located just behind the square and in fact the only green space in the area. The park is slated to be replaced by a reconstruction of the Topçu Barracks, which were built in 1806 but demolished in 1940 during a renovation of the square. This segment of the project was cancelled in January 2013 by the Cultural Assets Preservation Board due to a lack of sufficient archival documentation to reconstruct the building.25 However, in March 2013, the High Council for Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets, which holds final decision-making ability in such matters, opted to reject the cancellation and move forward with the reconstruction.26 The project involves the resurrection of a once significant object from the dustbin of history, by implicitly invoking it with the historical relevance it once possessed. However, the reconstruction seeks to remove the building from function and context, its musealization aiming to inscribe an essential historic character upon a modern consumption space. The aim here is to underline the importance of the barracks while obfuscating the history of the park that took its place. If the project is realized and the barracks are reconstructed, what will be the effects on collective memory in, say, 200 years? Connections between the

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barracks in their functional form and their future symbolic form would have been forged (if only through aesthetic means) and the fact that a park ever existed in that space will be forgotten. The sociologist Şükrü Aslan offers the following comments regarding Taksim Square’s political history in light of this project: ‘Taksim Square is not an ordinary square. The 1977 killings of dozens of people at May Day celebrations there have given a political identity to Taksim Square. To keep alive the political image in the minds of people walking by Taksim is also a requirement for our political confrontation with the past’.27 Taksim Square indeed bears a profound political history and continues to be the most visible, central and popular public space for protests and demonstrations. The proposed rebuilding of the Taksim Barracks and associated pedestrianization seeks to decontextualize the square by drastically altering its spatial reality in an attempt to sever the ties with both its political history and its present use as a space for mass demonstration. This initiative is entangled within a greater scheme of reducing access to public space. According to prominent architects, the project coincides with a plan to construct a new public square, across the Golden Horn below the historic peninsula in Yenikapı. Istanbul’s Department of Environment and Urban Planning approved the plan in October of 2012. Architect Korhan Gümüş offers the following comments on the recently approved project: They are going to tear down Taksim Square [in central Istanbul] and build a closed meeting area away from the [urban] centre and under supervision. Severing the connection between the meeting area and the city was what they had always wanted to do up till now. [Demonstration] meetings take place in squares that open up to the city’s streets. Everyone makes it to the area by walking there. According to this project, however, everyone will arrive in the meeting area via mass transportation and hold their demonstration in a well-controlled area. No one will see it or hear about it.28 The expression of identity is closely linked to the access of public space, since an accessible and central area for organizing protests and

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demonstrations is essential to conveying the presence and interests of particular groups. Taksim Square is the artery by which various groups are able to express their concerns and spread awareness. The square is the starting or finishing point for demonstrations held by groups representing a wide variety of identities and interests. By assembling at the square and continuing down Istiklal Avenue (or vice versa, typically starting at Galatasaray), even small movements are able to gain the attention of thousands of passers-by as well as from the media. Removing pedestrian access from that space and confining it to the other side of the Golden Horn threatens to take away the visibility that such groups are able to attain. The project threatens to suffocate the space’s vitality. Further controversy ensued when Prime Minister Erdoğan announced that the Topçu Barracks construction would include a shopping mall and residential area. This directly contradicted Istanbul Mayor Topbaş’s statement months earlier, when the mayor insisted that a cultural centre and art gallery, not a mall, was in the works. Ironically, in the same speech, Erdoğan rebuked archaeologists and conservationists who have slowed down the massive Marmaray transport project (when complete, this will see an underwater rail line link the European and Anatolian sides of Istanbul). The prime minister criticized those who wish to properly excavate ‘some pottery items’ while ignoring the historical importance of the barracks.29 The irony of such a statement exposes the relationship that the political and financial elite share with the concept of historical preservation. The prime minister apparently considers the Byzantine-era archaeological discoveries unearthed via the Marmaray project construction unimportant. At the same time he seeks to valorize the historical significance of the barracks, although the former represent valid historical artefacts while the latter is an initiative tied up in a pseudo-historical effort to recreate a facility that was demolished decades earlier. The authorities see history as something to be used as a means to further political and economic initiatives, and if history happens to get in the way of a certain project then it can be deemed unimportant on a circumstantial basis. Musealization is a key tactic in valorizing the

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historical significance of an object or building in order to justify the confiscation of public space and/or the proliferation of consumption spaces. In this case it is involved in both, and occurs alongside the rejection of valid historic preservation initiatives. In late May 2013, bulldozers began to uproot trees in Taksim Gezi Park, which prompted several days of protests in the park involving thousands of people. The protests lasted until morning with many demonstrators camping in the park overnight in tents. On the morning of 31 May the remaining protestors were attacked by police, who used tear gas and water cannon, and burned tents. The violence continued throughout the day as demonstrators assembling in Taksim Square and on Istiklal Avenue were met with police attacks. The protests grew over the following days in Istanbul, quickly spreading to many other Turkish cities. While the first days of demonstrations were hardly covered in the mainstream Turkish television media at all, social media was used to great effect to spread the word; this even led to an international dimension with numerous solidarity demonstrations all over the world. These protests were primarily peaceful, comprising a rich diversity of groups who stood together calling for Prime Minister Erdoğan’s resignation, decrying the police violence and demanding not only that the park remain a park but also an end to the privatization of public space and green areas. Following the erection of numerous barricades in the surrounding area, which made it inaccessible to police, the park itself took on the role of an autonomous zone, where protestors installed mobile cafes, clinics and even a library. Volunteers circulated through the park, collecting trash and handing out sandwiches, masks, medical supplies and water. Anyone present during this period can attest to the remarkable generosity, solidarity and creativity pulsing around Gezi Park. The police re-entered the park just over a week later, seizing control and again exhibiting excessive force. Throughout these events, the government utilized aggressive rhetoric and employed a variety of tactics in an attempt to delegitimize the demonstrations. At the time of writing, large-scale protests were continuing to occur regularly in Istanbul, many of which were being harshly repressed by the police. Following the temporary closure of Gezi Park to the public, forums

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began to take place nightly at parks throughout the city, and other creative demonstrations (including groups of people standing silently) were prevalent in Istanbul and throughout the country. Taksim Gezi Park, as the only green space in a dense district, is a vital public asset. It is the only major open space in the area free from the associations of consumption. The massive demonstrations surrounding the uprooting of the park’s trees were an expression of outrage not just against what was seen as organised vandalism but against the assault on the right to peacefully assemble and the right to simply utilize public space. The protests that occurred in Istanbul and throughout the country show that the musealization of the former Topçu Barracks sparked widespread outrage at what many saw as yet another attempt to implement a frivolous project that would fail to benefit public interest. In what may be a recognition of this, a court ruling on 6 June 2013 cancelled the reconstruction of the barracks as well as the greater pedestrianization project.30 It remains to be seen if the prime minister will respect the decision.

Renovation Tarlabaşı A street art festival called ‘Renovation Tarlabaşı’ took place in September 2012. The festival is discussed here in the greater context of the Tarlabaşı neighbourhood itself and the so-called urban renewal project that is currently taking place in the area. Tarlabaşı is a former middle-class Greek and Armenian neighbourhood located in the heart of Istanbul. It became a popular neighbourhood for marginalized groups (primarily Roma, Kurds, African migrants and transgender people) following the Wealth Tax of 1942 and the 6 and 7 September riots of 1955 that forced out the majority of its former community.31 The formerly non-Muslim-owned apartment buildings were legally transferred to a set of newcomer landlords by the state following the expulsion of their former owners. According to Ünsal and Kuyucu, ‘rural migrants mostly benefited from this process either by purchasing the buildings from their official caretakers (kayyum) or by extra-legally appropriating them and retroactively becoming legal “owners” ’. Shortly thereafter, ‘a lucrative rental market emerged in the

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area, where the new owners rented out extra-dwellings, either formally or informally. According to research conducted in the project area, 75 per cent of Tarlabaşı’s inhabitants are tenants, 20 per cent are property owners and the remaining 5 per cent are occupiers’.32 In the late 1980s, Mayor Bedrettin Dalan demolished hundreds of buildings in Tarlabaşı in order to create Tarlabaşı Boulevard, which accelerated the economic and structural decline of the quarter in the 1990s.33 Tarlabaşı is presently the site of an aggressive and controversial gentrification project that seeks to displace its current residents and remake the area into a chic bourgeois enclave complete with modern cafes and office buildings. This project was made possible by Law No. 5366. Law No. 5366, the ‘Law on Renovating, Conserving, and Actively Using Dilapidated Historical and Cultural Immovable Assets’ was passed in 2005 and gives municipalities, in conjunction with TOKI, the government mass housing agency, extensive power to redevelop areas ‘which have been dilapidated and are about to lose their characteristics, create zones of housing, business, culture, tourism, and social facilities in such areas, take measures against risks of natural disasters, renovate, conserve and actively use historical and cultural immovable assets’.34 The law also allows municipalities to expropriate private property from owners if a settlement is not reached: Mutual agreement shall be the fundamental rule in dealing with the evacuation, demolition and expropriation of buildings located in the renovation areas. Where an agreement is not reached, special provincial administrations and municipalities may expropriate the immovable property owned by natural persons or private law legal persons.35 In Tarlabaşı, demolitions began in early 2012. Over a year later, the demolitions have not been succeeded by any sort of new construction, and the section of Tarlabaşı affected resembles something like a war zone, as numerous buildings have been gutted, leaving only the facades, which are left to experience further degradation and filled with rubbish that is not collected by municipality trucks. Recently,

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one of these streets was used as the medium and venue for an art exhibition and festival. This festival, ‘Renovation Tarlabaşı’, was sanctioned by the municipality and backed by a score of corporate donors.36 It took place on Karakurum Sokak, down the street from the Virgin Mary Syriac Church. The facades and interior walls of a dozen or so nineteenthcentury Greek buildings, which had been gutted during the on-going demolitions on Tarlabaşı, were adorned with various paintings and stencils. One particularly troubling stencil was of a recycler and his cart. Recyclers are visible throughout Istanbul, they comprise thousands of men and women who walk the streets pulling a large cart and recycling paper products and glass bottles. They are targeted by the municipalities and often have their carts confiscated. Tarlabaşı was the home to hubs for many of these recyclers, often basement apartments where they sort and categorize their haul. Many of them have been forced out by the recent demolitions.37 Street art, which serves to function as a means to articulate creative and political expression by using the urban landscape as medium, is in this case co-opted by the authorities and used to turn what was once a residential street into a temporary museum exhibit. The buildings, which lost their prior function as occupied housing because of demolition, are further dislocated from their present reality when they are covered with street art. The viewers of the exhibition are separated from the violence and displacement inherent in demolition by the art that renders the devastated facades somehow renewed and reinterpretable as a canvas, perhaps even conveying messages of resistance. Any hope for resistance or criticism, however, is impossible in such a gesture. How subversive can street art be when it involves adorning the walls of buildings brought down by a municipality, in a festival sponsored by the same municipality? The recycler is longed for and memorialized, although the painter (and likely the viewers) fails to remember that it is the demolition of their homes and workplaces that made it possible to paste a stencil of the recycler’s likeness on the wall of a home she may have once occupied. Mere blocks away, on Tarlabaşı Boulevard, several large walls of scaffolding cover a large section of the demolition area. They are

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comprised of large computer-generated images depicting the ‘renewed’ Tarlabaşı, showing a chic, affluent quarter, lined with office buildings and cafes catering to an ostensibly prosperous demographic, the future residents and consumers that are projected to descend upon Tarlabaşı. The streets are tidy and lined with cars and smartly-dressed people in business attire, shuffling between the sparkling brand-new offices and restaurants. The top of one of the walls of scaffolding encourages potential buyers to check out the real estate office directly across the street, where GAP Inşaat, the construction company facilitating the demolitions (a company which is under the umbrella of Çalık Holding, the CEO of which is the son-in-law of Prime Minister Erdoğan)38 exhibits potential investment opportunities for those awaiting to weave themselves into the ‘up and coming’ area. The images on the scaffolding act as perhaps the most evocative symbol of the inevitable displacement that characterizes many of the so-called urban renewal projects taking place in Istanbul today. Istanbul’s transformation to an extent reflects greater themes of urban transformation in Turkey, where major urban centres expand in conjunction with the accumulation of shopping malls, skyscrapers, hotels and other amenities serving the privileged classes. The resulting image of the new, modern, flashy and sterile forms a direct opposition to the continued existence of inner-city quarters characterized by rustic housing occupied by low-income residents, as the latter are systematically etched out of the new model. As Istanbul continues to gain popularity as a tourist destination and grow as a major financial centre, the marketing of heritage, history and identity becomes a paramount consideration. Within this context, Ayfer Bartu’s concluding remarks in a 2001 article are just as relevant a decade later: Globalization is inscribed within particular localities and is reworked within particular social, cultural and historical contexts. Within this framework, heritage and the politics of the past take on a very different meaning, and which past to preserve and market, and whom to market it to, become political questions. Cities, as physical embodiments of histories, become

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crucial sites where different claims to the past are formulated and contested.39 The foreign press constantly uses binaries and clichés when talking or writing about Turkey, and especially its largest city. It is routinely billed as the place where East and West meet, where tradition and modernity clash, where secularism and piety fight it out on the streets. These descriptions are all rather simplistic and imply that the city possesses a neatly torn identity, one that is caught between two opposing forces, in the dead centre between two poles. Turkish politicians often recycle the same binaries, reducing the rich history of the city to a dichotomous narrative. Istanbul, where identity has been contested time and time again prior to and since the foundation of the republic, occupies multiple realities that formulate a web of its complex image. As the city grows in age and in size, it collects and displays the struggles for its most pivotal monuments, avenues and quarters, especially in Beyoğlu. Although the quarter (like Istanbul itself) has fallen in and out of favour over the years, it has now re-emerged as the apple of the eye of the financial and political elites. In recent years, ‘Neo-Ottoman’ has emerged as a popular buzzword for describing both the domestic and foreign policy of the ruling AKP, postulating that the party harbours nostalgia for the Ottoman past and is actively attempting to recreate an imperial setting in the twenty-first century. Is the AKP truly attempting to resurrect a semblance of Ottoman heritage in the city? In the author’s opinion, yes and no. There are certainly numerous instances of the reintroduction of Ottoman themes into the architectural framework of the city. A particularly controversial example is that of Sulukule. Europe’s oldest Roma neighbourhood, located just within the old city walls and inhabited since before the Ottoman conquest and characterized by small one-storey homes, was recently demolished in its entirety. These homes were replaced with ‘luxurious Neo-Ottoman’ style apartment buildings. The Roma residents were given the option to live in TOKI-built flats on the outskirts of the city, but the vast majority moved out within a year due to high rent costs and lack of employment

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opportunities. The expropriation of the quarter’s property was made possible by the aforementioned Law No. 5366.40 While Ottoman nostalgia is certainly alive and well among a significant number of political and financial elites, asserting that the creation of a ‘Neo-Ottoman’ city is among their highest aspirations is an exaggeration. They are simply attempting to create an Istanbul that functions according to the maximization of their benefits and the valorization of their image. Reintroducing Ottoman themes and styles may be helpful as a means to an end, but that it is ultimately based less on heritage and more on political and economic control. Such control is maximized by the cleansing of inner-city districts, transforming quarters occupied by marginalized groups into lucrative real estate opportunities and by encroaching upon public space in order to deny the platform for various groups to assert their presence and express their grievances. Musealization is implemented in Istanbul today quite frequently by authorities, developers and other actors in order to justify nonconsensual projects and decontextualize the urban space on which these projects are taking place. The upper echelon of wealthy and powerful political actors and financiers are rapidly restructuring Istanbul (particularly Beyoğlu), demolishing certain buildings, erecting others and implementing projects that seem to possess two goals: maximizing their own profit margins and suppressing identities seen as undesirable and/or politically problematic. As these manoeuvres have been orchestrated quickly and entirely without consent, musealization as urban strategy has been implemented in order to coat a hazy historical glaze over the proceedings, diverting attention away from the profound violence and permanence of the consequences.

Conclusion One of the most profound changes in Turkey since the republic’s inception has been its rapid urbanization. Especially within the past decade, Turkey has taken on the image of a regional powerhouse with a growing economy. This is no more evident than in Istanbul, where the construction of new high-rise buildings, chain stores, luxury apartment buildings and extravagant shopping malls seems to have no

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limit. Istanbul is known most famously for its historical significance. The city is home to architectural gems spanning the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Beyoğlu, and particularly Tarlabaşı, still display the city’s highest concentration of late nineteenth-/early twentiethcentury architecture. Nevertheless, the layered historic charm of the city is being overshadowed by the glitzy imposition of sparkly-white capitalist modernity. The ancient city looks newer than ever, in spite of the quasi-historical coating that is often applied. As Turkey’s urban population continues to rise, the most centrally-located urban spaces increase in desirability. This increase perpetuates the contestation of these spaces, especially when they are characterized by dilapidated housing stock occupied by low-income tenants. The profit potential is high, the more so when laws such as Law No. 5366 are utilized in order to extract property at rates much lower than the actual property value. This maximizes the return when the area is redeveloped and marketed to wealthy tenants or owners. The city suffers, as poor inner-city residents are pushed to the periphery, creating arcs of poverty on the outskirts while the city centre ceases to be accessible to those unable to pay the new set of rental prices. As David Harvey puts it: ‘The right to the city, as it is now constituted, is too narrowly confined, restricted in most cases to a political and economic elite who are in a position to shape cities more and more after their own desire’.41 Unfortunately, this continues to be the reality in twenty-first century Istanbul, a reality that does not bode well for the city and its inhabitants, especially those in areas such as Tarlabaşı, a quarter characterized by a socially inclusive identity, comprised of numerous groups sharing the same space. Many of these people also shared the common reality of having moved to Tarlabaşı due to the political, social and/or economic circumstances that made it no longer possible to remain in their former country, village or neighbourhood. Current mechanisms of urban transformation in Istanbul and throughout Turkey appear hostile to the possibility of creating or sustaining spaces and identities of social inclusion. On the contrary, they seek to segregate and atomize, forcing those who have already faced significant social and political exclusion to experience additional waves

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of displacement and marginalization. However, the demonstrations that erupted throughout Turkey beginning at the end of May 2013 in part show that a large segment of the public is no longer willing to stand for urban planning projects that are implemented without consultation and are harmful to public interest. At the time of writing, the fate of Gezi Park is unclear. It is also unclear to what extent the power of the ruling party and its top-down style of urban planning will actually be altered by the current unrest. For the sake of the city, one can only hope that these events signify a shift in how social and structural fabric are treated.

Notes 1. Ç. Keyder, ‘Istanbul into the twenty-first century’ in D. Göktürk, L. Sosyal and I. Tureli (eds), Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 26. 2. See Rifat Bali, The ‘Varlık Vergisi’ Affair (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005) for a comprehensive account of the Wealth Tax’s implementation and legacy. 3. See Speros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe (New York: Greekworks, 2005) for a thorough account of the Istanbul Pogrom of 6 and 7 September 1955. 4. Ayfer Bartu, ‘Rethinking heritage politics in a global context: a view from Istanbul’, in N. Al-Sayyad (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism: On Identity Discourse and the Built Environment (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001) pp. 133–34. 5. Ibid., pp. 133–34. 6. Vedia Dokmeci et al., ‘Revitalisation of the main street of a distinguished old neighbourhood in Istanbul’, European Planning Studies 15/1 (2007), pp. 156–57. 7. Ibid., pp. 156–57. 8. Keyder, ‘Istanbul into the twenty-first century’, pp. 27–28. 9. Aylin Özman and Simten Coşar, ‘Reconceptualizing center politics in post1980 Turkey’, in E. Fuat Keyman (ed.), Remaking Turkey: Globalizations, Alternative Modernities, Democracy (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007), p. 205. 10. Ilhan Tekeli, ‘Cities in modern Turkey’ (2009) http://lsecities.net/media/ objects/articles/cities-in-modern-turkey. 11. http://www.ibb.gov.tr/sites/airqualistanbul/documents/eng/istanbul.htm. 12. Keyder, ‘Istanbul into the twenty-first century’, p. 31. 13. Theodor Adorno, ‘Valery Proust Museum’, in Prisms (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996 [1953]), p. 185.

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14. Eva Sturm’s definition as cited in Anja Barbara Nelle, ‘Museality in the urban context: an investigation of museality and musealisation processes in three Spanish-colonial world heritage towns’, Urban Design International 14/3 (2009), pp. 152–71, p. 154. 15. Sara Harowitz, ‘A Slice Of Paris in Istanbul’, 17 June 2011, Cultour Magazine, http://www.schoolvoorjournalistiek.com/europeanculture/?p=3978. 16. Amy Mills, ‘Narratives in city landscapes: cultural identity in Istanbul’, Geographical Review 95/3 (2005), p.454. 17. Ibid., pp. 454–55. 18. Ibid., p. 457. 19. See Tuba Parlak, ‘Renovation ongoing at damaged Ağa Mosque’, Hürriyet Daily News, 12 May 2012, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/renovationongoing-at-damaged-aga-mosque.aspx?pageID=238&nid=20692. 20. Author’s translation from the Turkish. 21. Fatih Yagmur, ‘Ağa Cami Restorasyonu Kaynağa Takıldi’, Radikal, 28 April 2013, http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/aga_camii_restorasyonu_ kaynaga_takildi-1131356. 22. The account of Ağa Lokantası as well as the security guard’s comments are from a detailed account of the mall and the controversy surrounding its construction: Constanze Letsch, ‘Digging deeper – Istiklal Caddesi’s controversial new shopping centre’, 23 May 2011, http://www.tarlabasiistanbul. com/2011/05/istiklal-demiroren/. 23. Author’s translation from Turkish. 24. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: inventing traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–2. 25. See ‘Minister confirms cancellation of Topçu Barracks replica project’, Today’s Zaman, 18 January 2013, http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=304456. 26. See ‘Taksim Barracks Plan Gets Council Approval’, Hürriyet Daily News, 2 March 2013, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/taksim-barracks-plangets-council-approval.aspx?pageID=238&nID=42092&NewsCatID=341. 27. See B. Çuhadar, ‘Experts call for debate before changing Taksim Square’, Hürriyet Daily News, 22 January 2011, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ default.aspx?pageid=438&n=experts-warn-for-public-debate-before-anychange-to-taksim-square-2011–01–20. 28. See V. Nilay, ‘Ministry approves coastal project next to UNESCO Heritage site’, Bianet, 22 October 2012, http://bianet.org/english/humanrights/141605-ministry-approves-coastal-project-next-to-unesco-heritagesite.

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29. I. Üzüm, ‘Plans voiced by PM for mall at new Taksim Barracks draw criticisms’, Hürriyet Daily News, 30 April 2013, http://todayszaman.com/ news-314134-plans-voiced-by-pm-for-mall-at-new-taksim-barracks-drawcriticisms.html. 30. See ‘Court decision cancels Taksim Artillery Barracks project that triggered Gezi protests’, Hürriyet Daily News, 3 July 2013 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/court-decision-cancels-taksim-artillery-barracks-project-thattriggered-gezi-protests.aspx?pageID=238&nID=49972&NewsCatID=341. 31. See N. Mutluer, ‘Disposable masculinities in Istanbul’, in R.L. Jackson and M. Balaji (eds), Global Masculinities and Manhood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) p. 82. 32. T. Kuyucu and Ö. Unsal, ‘Challenging the neoliberal urban regime: regeneration and resistance in Basibuyuk and Tarlabasi’, in Göktürk, Sosyal and Tureli, Orienting Istanbul, p. 57. 33. Ibid., p. 57. 34. http://www.migm.gov.tr/en/Laws/Law5366_DilapidatedHistoricAssets_ 2010–12–31_EN_rev01.pdf. 35. Ibid. 36. See http://www.streetartistanbul.com/2012-renovation-tarlabasi/. 37. See www.tarlabasiistanbul.com for several articles featuring the re-cyclers of Tarlabaşı. 38. C. Letsch and J. Lewis, ‘Turkey: trying to balance urban renewal and residents’ rights’, Eurasianet, 18 July 2011, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/63858. 39. Bartu, ‘Rethinking heritage politics in a global context’, pp. 153–54. 40. See K. Robins, ‘How tell what remains: Sulukule nevermore’, Cultural Politics 7/1 (2011), pp. 5–40, for a thorough account of the destruction of Sulukule. 41. D. Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2006), p. 329.

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CHAPTER 8 MINOR LITER ATUR ES AND THEIR CHALLENGE TO ‘NATIONAL’ LITER ATUR E: THE TUR KISH CASE Laurent Mignon

Some questions are difficult to answer; others even more difficult to ask. Towards the end of ‘Garine’, a short story by the award-winning Armeno-Turkish author Karin Karakaşlı (b.1972), the narrator’s grandmother listens with sadness and resignation to the description of Armenians in Turkish schoolbooks. ‘Is that what they write?’, the elderly woman asks after hearing the following words excerpted from a high-school history manual, read out to her by her grand-daughter: During the first years of World War I, as the Russians advanced in Eastern Anatolia, Armenians had the opportunity to rebel. The Armenian gangs, which had completed their preparations before the war, took side with the Russians. The first rebellion rose in Zeytun (Süleymanlı) on 17 August 1914. Having joined them with their weapons, the Armenian soldiers in Maraş attacked Turkish villages and started to murder civilians. The Armenians who rose in Van in 1915 murdered its Turkish

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population. In view of the situation, the Ottoman government took the decision to deport the Armenian population of Eastern Anatolia to Syria which was not a war-zone (The Deportation Law, 14 May 1915). The aim of the Armenians was to establish a state by taking Cilicia, Maraş, Erzurum, Van, Harput and Diyarbakır. Even today the Armenians have not renounced this aim. In order to achieve their goal, they support terrorist activities against the unity of our country.1 Throughout the short story, the narrator reveals, layer by layer, how he discovered his grandmother’s suppressed Armenian background. While the readers discover the tormented past of the narrator’s grandmother, an orphaned survivor of the genocide, who was then adopted by a Muslim family and whose identity was Turkified, they are also invited to reconsider the official narrative of the events of 1915 that put a brutal end to the millenaries-old presence of Armenians and their culture in large parts of Anatolia. The confusion of identities – the author is a woman, but the narrator a young man; the grandmother whose Armenian Christian background is revealed is a practising Muslim – adds a further layer to this melancholic short story which fundamentally undermines the nationalist discourse in Turkish historiography. Historiography has veiled the past and it is the reader’s role to unveil it. This is true not only in the context of the personal history of the grandmother, but also in the greater context of twentieth century Ottoman and Turkish history. There is no need to say that literary historiography, produced during the republican period, which deals with Turkish-Ottoman literature, represents another important area of revisionist investigation. The exclusion of non-Muslims, mainly of Greek and Armenian Christians of various denominations and of Jews who were the authors of original literary works and literary translations in Turkish, from the historiography of and scholarship on late Ottoman Turkish literature is among the issues that must be explored. Gregory Jusdanis’ Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture is of particular interest in this discussion as it explores the key role of literature and the literary world in the creation of modern Greek national identity.2 Though

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the Greek model cannot be directly transposed to the cultural and political developments in late Ottoman and early republican Turkey, it is noteworthy that the key actors in the debate on ‘national literature’ in Turkey have also played a central role in the shaping of not one but several competing and largely irreconcilable definitions of Turkishness which had as sole common ground the othering of the non-Muslim populations of the remains of the Empire. It was only in the 1990s that scholars both in and outside Turkey started to explore the impact of non-Muslims on the development of Turkish-language literature. This new phenomenon goes in parallel with the recognition through literary prizes of the achievements of contemporary non-Muslim authors. Karin Karakaşlı was the recipient of the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Youth Prize in 1998. Mario Levi was awarded the prestigious Yunus Nadi prize for his novel Istanbul bir Masaldı (Istanbul was a Fairytale) in 1999 and three years later Roni Margulies won the same prize for his poetry collection ‘Saat Farkı’ (Time Difference). However, the discrepancy between the liberal position of the publishing world and the national-conservative discourse which underpins the works of many scholars of Turkish literature in Turkey is still in existence and has led to a remarkable contradiction. By promoting the works of authors from non-Muslim minorities, though without showing any interest in the history of the phenomena, the publishing world proves itself to be the heir of the Ottoman multicultural literary tradition, while national-conservative scholars who are often apologists for Ottoman greatness, ignore this particular dimension of its history in their works, lectures and courses. As a result there has been relatively little academic interest in the history, or rather histories, of the literature produced in Turkish by non-Muslims. The little interest that exists has been characterized by the ghettoization of non-Muslim literatures, its marginalization and its instrumentalization as evidence of Ottoman tolerance towards religious minorities.3 Most literary historians and scholars in Turkey, as well as most foreign Turkologists dealing with pre-republican Turkish literature, seem to have adopted, consciously or not, the definition of Turkishness established after the independence war in 1922 and have imposed it retrospectively on the heterogeneous Ottoman

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literary world. According to this definition, only Muslims, with no regard to their ethnicity and their mother tongue, living within the borders of the newly founded Turkish Republic were considered as members of the Turkish nation. Non-Muslims, that is Christians, mainly Armenians and Greeks, as well as Jews were thus excluded.4 Interestingly for a state that would become the first secular republic in the Islamic world, the religious criterion held the upper hand over ethnic and linguistic criteria. Ethnic differentiation was not used as a selection criterion when establishing the canonical texts of Turkish national literature. Among the major literary and intellectual figures of pre-republican literature, Şemseddin Sâmi (1850–1904), the novelist, playwright and linguist, was Albanian. Ziyâ Gökalp (1876–1924), the father of Turkish nationalism, who also had literary pretensions, was Kurdish on his mother’s side.5 Ahmed Haşim (1884–1933), a neosymbolist poet of the first quarter of the twentieth century, was born in Baghdad and his mother tongue was Arabic. In contradistinction Hovsep Maruş, who published a novel in Turkish, Bir Sefil Zevce (A Miserable Wife, 1868) a few years before Sâmi, whose Taaşşuk-ı Tal’at ve Fıtnat (The Love of Tal’at and Fıtnat, 1871) is recorded as the first Turkish novel by historiography, is mentioned nowhere. Examples could be multiplied. But it would be wrong to argue that the problem is only ideological. Literary scholars who cannot be suspected of chauvinism have ignored non-Muslim literary contributions in their works too, probably because they were not aware of those texts whose existence was silenced by mainstream literary historiography and which had not been transcribed into the new Romanized Turkish script adopted in 1928. The so-called ‘revolution of the letters’ (Harf Inkılabı), the switch from the Ottoman Arabic script to the modern Turkish script, rendered Ottoman Turkish literature inaccessible to people who had not been trained in reading the ‘old letters’. As a result it is not only the works of non-Muslims that have not been transcribed and are consequently marginalized in literary history and scholarship, but also until recently, early women writers and socialist and anarchist literature, as well as alternative genres such as science-fiction and literary works that could be categorized as low brow or popular.

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It is notable that what could perhaps be designated as the ‘ethno-religious’ purification of Turkish literary historiography and scholarship had already started towards the end of the nineteenth century, although it had not been systematic. Bibliographical works are a case in point. Mehmed Süreyya’s (1845–1909) four-volume Sicill-i Osmânî, a work that could best be described as an Ottoman Who’s Who, published between 1890–93, includes an appendix which lists non-Muslim civil servants, some of whom, such as Artin Pasha Dadyan (1830–1901), who authored an Armenian translation of Silvio Pellico’s Le mie prigioni (My Prisons) in 1851, had participated in literary activities.6 Mehmed Süreyya felt the need to rationalize ‘his inclusion of exclusively Muslim names’ in the main text of his dictionary by explaining that apart from rare exceptions in the early period of the Ottoman state, namely in Wallachia, Moldavia, Hungary and Transylvania, there had been no non-Muslim civil servants except for translators ‘whose names are not to be seen in history books in a regular manner’.7 The absence of non-Muslim names, arguably equivalent to the erasure of individual and communal contributions to Ottoman history, is also a significant aspect of Bursalı Mehmed Tahir’s otherwise exhaustive three-volume biographical dictionary Osmanlı Müellifleri (Ottoman Writers, 1914–23).8 However, a few years later, Sadettin Nüzhet Ergun (1901–1946) would mention nonMuslim Turkish poets such as the Jewish poet and lyricist Avram Naon (1878–1947) in Türk Şairleri (1936), a repertory of Turkish poets.9 Scholarship on non-Muslim Turkish literature, in the broadest sense, too was as rare in the final years of the Empire and the early years of the republic as it is today. The father of Turcology in Turkey, Mehmed Fuad Köprülü (1890–1966) published an article on the Armenian minstrels, the Ashug, in the journal of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Istanbul in March 1922, but he focused one-sidedly on the influence of Turkish folk literature on Armenian folk literature.10 In September 1924, M. Cevdet Inançalp (1883–1935) published an article focusing on Armenian, mainly Mekhitarist,11 contributions to Ottoman Turkish intellectual and scientific life but ignored literary publications.12 It is not surprising that during the years when ‘national literature’ was being invented by intellectuals,

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who were published authors and nationalist ideologists, literary activities by Armenians and other non-Muslim ethno-religious groups were either left untold, or reduced to a minor phenomenon lacking originality in the domain of oral literature. As one of the axes of the debate on ‘national literature’ dealt in particular with the problem of ‘authenticity’ and the rejection of Persian and the later post-Tanzimat French influences,13 the idea that Turkish folk-literature, the depository of authentic Turkish values according to Ziyâ Gökalp, had influenced the literary evolution of other Anatolian peoples was rather attractive as it consolidated the nationalist discourse on Turkish cultural superiority in the region. Though to argue that history is written by the victors has become a platitude, it is nonetheless true in the case of Turkish literary history. Hence whoever wishes to study the contributions of Armenians, Greeks and Jews to Turkish literature has to start by deconstructing the official historiography and to go in search for and try to recover what the French philosopher Daniel Bensaïd called, referring to Walter Benjamin’s thesis on history ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’ (On the Concept of History),14 ‘the remains and ruins of history’ in order to uncover what literary history silenced.15 The ‘remains and ruins’ of Turkish literary history are many. Though this chapter focuses on the literary production in Turkish by non-Muslims, there is a point to be made regarding the necessity for a multilingual history of Ottoman literature in the nineteenth century, as exemplified in Johann Strauss’ remarkable article ‘Who Read What in the Ottoman Empire’, which explores the possibility of and opportunities for inter-communitarian and inter-linguistic literary exchanges.16 It is worth keeping in mind that nineteenth-century Istanbul was a cultural centre in which one language, such as Turkish, could be written and printed in four different alphabets, namely the Ottoman-Arabic script, the Armenian script, the Greek script and more rarely the Hebrew script, while a single alphabet, for instance the Arabic script, could be used to print material in the various languages of the Muslim populations of the Empire. The Ottoman capital was also an important centre of Western Armenian, Greek and Ladino literary culture.

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Literary texts published in Turkish by Armenians, Greeks and Jews in the years following the Tanzimat reforms are of two types: publications in communitarian alphabets, i.e. the Armenian, the Greek and the Hebrew (both square and Rashi) scripts, and publications in the Ottoman Arabic script. Armeno-Turkish is, without a doubt, the most significant minority phenomenon of post-Tanzimat OttomanTurkish minority literature. A great number of Armenians, mostly Catholics educated in Mekhitarist institutions and also to a lesser degree Protestants, used Turkish in their literary works, though they continued to use the Armenian alphabet. The first novels in Turkish, namely Hovsep Vartanyan’s Akabi Hikayesi (The Story of Akabi, 1851; see Illustration 8.1; 8.2-4 show other samples) and Boşboğaz Bir Adem Lafazanlık Ile Husûla Gelen Fenalıkların Muhtasar Risalesi (The Misadventures of Bigmouth, 1852), Hovhannes Balıkçıyan’s Karnik Gülünya ve Dikran’ın Dehşetli Vefatları Hikayesi (The Story of the Terrible Deaths of Karnig, Gülünya and Dikran, 1863), Hovsep Maruş’s Bir Sefil Zevce (A Miserable Wife, 1868) and Viçen Tilkiyan’s Gülünya Yahut Kendi Görünmeyerek Herkesi Gören Kız, (Gülünya or the Girl Who Saw Everyone Without Being Seen, 1868), were published in the Armenian alphabet, years before Şemseddin Sâmi’s 1871 Taaşşuk-ı Tal’ât ve Fıtnat.17 Original literary texts in the Greek script, on the other hand, are rather rare. However, there is an impressive bibliography of so-called Karamanlidika, which not only catered for the religious needs of the Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox and also Greek Protestant communities, but also included translations of literary, scientific and philosophical works.18 The novel Temaşa-ı Dünya: Cefakâr ü Cefakeş (The Contemplation of the World: The Tormentor and his Victim, 1870–71) by the ingenious but not always genuine polymath Evangelinos Misailidis (1820–90), was thought to be an original work after it was transcribed into the modern Turkish script and published by Robert Anhegger and Vedat Günyol in 1986. Sula Boz later showed that this rocambolesque Bildungsroman was an adaptation of a little known Greek novel published in Athens in 1839, a detail that Misailidis, by all accounts a very busy man, had not deemed it necessary to mention.19

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Illustration 8.1

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Hovsep Vartanyan, Akabi Hikayesi (Istanbul, 1851). Armeno-Turkish.

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Illustration 8.2 Yanko Milyopoulos, Pneumatiki Trofi: Gida-yi Ruh (Istanbul, 1890). Bilingual, Greek and Ottoman Turkish.

Judeo-Turkish literature is a more peculiar development. Unlike the cases of Armeno-Turkish and Greco-Turkish, i.e. Karamanli, literatures, where native speakers of Turkish, as well as missionary organizations, produced texts in communitarian alphabets, JudeoTurkish literature was the product of a conscious decision of some members of the intelligentsia of the mainly Ladino-speaking Jewish community to express themselves in Turkish, in a complex political and social context marked by endemic poverty in the Jewish community, increasingly militant Christian Judeophobia in Ottoman lands, new opportunities in the Ottoman civil service for Turkish-speaking non-Muslims and later the spread of Enlightenment principles advocated by the newly-founded Alliance Israélite Universelle schools.20 Judeo-Turkish publications consisted of Turkish periodicals which were mostly printed in the Rashi script, a semi-cursive Hebrew typeface traditionally used in Judeo-Spanish publications. Their aim was the promotion of written Turkish among Ottoman Jews. Moise

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Illustration 8.3 Yeremya Çelebi Kömürciyan, Hikaye-i Faris ve Viyena (Istanbul, 1871). Armeno-Turkish.

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Hovsep Kurbanyan, İki Kapı Yoldaşları Yahut Hakk ü Adaletin Zuhuru, (Istanbul, 1885). Armeno-Turkish.

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Franco’s Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de l’empire ottoman and Avram Galante’s (1873–1961) Histoire des Juifs de Turquie record the existence of several such publications, namely Şarkiye (The East, 1867), Zaman (Time, 1872) and Ceride-i Tercüme (The Translation Magazine, 1876) all published in Istanbul. Moiz Fresko’s Üstad (The Professor), which began publication in Izmir in 1889, could be considered the only success story in this context, since unlike its short-lived predecessors, it was published for two years until 1891 (Illustration 8.5).21 Finally, in 1899, Avram Leyon published in the Ottoman capital a short-lived bilingual magazine in the Rashi script entitled Ceride-i Lisan (The Language Magazine). The Turkish pages of the periodical were edited by the poet and lawyer Avram Naon, while Salomon Musacı looked after the Ladino section of the paper.22 These publications very rarely showcased texts that could be characterized as literary since their

Illustration 8.5 Üstad: Judeo-Turkish Newspaper published in Izmir

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major aim was to familiarize their readership with the syntax and the intricacies of written Turkish. In the early years of the twentieth century, non-Muslim authors such as the Jewish poet Isak Ferera (1883–1933) and the Armenian prose poet Garbis Fikri, published their works in the Ottoman-Arabic script, a phenomenon that could arguably be interpreted in the context of the emergence of a common Ottoman Turkish cultural identity. But the phenomenon was not new in itself. Non-Muslims, such as Vasilaki Efendi (d.1854), the Greek author of a Turkish translation of Lucian’s contentious Peri Parasitou named Dalkavuknâme (The Book of the Jester, 1870)23 and Teodor Kasap (1835–1905), the publisher and translator of Molière and of the two Alexandre Dumas, father and son,24 had already contributed literary translations into Ottoman Turkish. As can easily be gathered from the preceding, non-Muslim Turkish literature during the post-Tanzimat period cannot be considered a minor development that deserves no further investigation from literary scholars. Even if one does not subscribe to the nationalist discourse that underpins Turkish literary historiography, it is vital to review methodological arguments which have been used in order to legitimize the exclusion of non-Muslims from the great narrative of Turkish literature. The principal argument for sidelining Turkish literary texts in communitarian alphabets is that the use of these alphabets indicated that they were exclusively addressed to their own communities and would not, or could not have been read by Muslim Turks or members of other Millets. Hence these literatures remained marginal and had no impact on the literary mainstream. The critic Atilla Özkırımlı’s (1942–2005) comments on the Karamanlı novel Temaşa-ı Dünya: Cefakâr ü Cefakeş are representative of this argumentation. In an interview given on 29 June 1986 to Nokta, a left-leaning Turkish weekly, he argued that the narrative language of the work is Turkish, but it was written by a Greek [Rum] from Turkey in the Greek script. The intended reader is not Turkish. Moreover everything is reflected in the context of the adventures of a hero who considers himself as Greek [Yunanlı] and who stresses this emphatically; and from

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his point of view. This is why, [Missailidis’ novel] has no place and no influence in the general picture of the Turkish literature of the time.25 Though there is certainly a point to be made for reading and interpreting literary history in the light of the developments which had ‘no place and no influence in the general picture the Turkish literature of the time’, the argument regarding the alphabet barrier and cultural impermeability is dubious. With the changes that followed the Tanzimat reforms and the granting of citizens’ rights to non-Muslims, the areas of cultural and literary intercourse increased in the various official institutes and offices founded to promote the translation of western, mostly but not only, scientific works into Turkish, in schools open to multi-confessional pupils and students, in the civil service and, of course, in the world of theatre and of publishing where Armenians played a predominant role. In his writings, Ziyâ Gökalp went so far as to argue that the so-called Tanzimat intellectuals had taken most of their knowledge from the Levantines.26 As noted by Roderic Davison, there are strong possibilities that in Gökalp’s view the term ‘Levantine’ incorporated all non-Muslims living in Istanbul.27 Hence there are good reasons to believe that Ottoman bureaucrats, often published writers themselves such as Ibrahim Şinasi and Namık Kemal, who had interaction with non-Muslims, grew at least superficially familiar with the literary interests of their counterparts. Moreover the oral tradition of storytellers in both urban and rural contexts was still quite popular in the nineteenth century. The Austrian Turcologist Andreas Tietze, in an article published in 1991, wondered to what extent ‘the peculiar writing systems’ of the Christian minorities was an obstacle for Muslim Turks. He underlined that written literature too still spread orally, as printed stories, perhaps also novels, were being retold by professional storytellers.28 Obviously the alphabets of the original Turkish texts were of no concern to their audience. The importance of the oral transmission of written literature, at a time when illiteracy was widespread, is confirmed by various sources. In his seminal history of nineteenth-century Turkish literature, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–62) describes how listeners would gather in private

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houses around readers in order to listen to their rendition of Ahmed Midhat Efendi’s novels.29 That such encounters could have an intercommunitarian dimension can be witnessed in the memoirs of the Armenian novelist and short story writer Zabel Yesayan (1878–1942) who remarks that her grandfather, Agop, an acclaimed folk poet, was much appreciated by Muslim Turks. Based on information that she gathered from the ‘elders of Üsküdar’, she writes that ‘[Agop] was so much respected by the Turks that Turkish families sent their sons as apprentices to him. It was being told that he would write down Turkish folk-songs in the Armenian script’.30 The alphabet barrier did not only disappear in the oral context, but some Turkish intellectuals, and by no means minor figures of Turkish literature, chose to jump over it. When skimming through the autobiographical writings of the next generation of Ottoman Turkish writers there is too concrete evidence of cross-alphabetical readings in Turkish. In his absorbing Matbuat Hatıralarım (A Publisher’s Memoirs, 1930– 31), Ahmed Ihsan Tokgöz (1868–1942), the publisher of the renowned Servet-i Fünûn journal and a translator, referring to his school years at the Mekteb-i Mülkiye, the school for civil servants, explains that before properly understanding French, I had been captivated by the newspapers and novels published in Turkish in the Armenian script. I had learnt the Armenian alphabet in a few lessons from Armenian classmates. I fluently read the Manzume-i Efkâr and Ceride-i Şarkiye, which were published in Turkish in Armenian letters. I read most of Xavier the Montépin’s crime novels in the Armenian script.31 A few pages later Tokgöz further reveals that he also contributed articles to an Armeno-Turkish magazine named Cihan (The World), which was published between 1888–90.32 The author of Matbuat Hatıralarım was not an isolated case. In Kırk Yıl (Forty Years, 1936), his voluminous memoirs, Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil (1866–1945), the author of Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love, 1899), one of the peaks of prerepublican novel-writing, who had been a student at a Mekhitarist school in Izmir, describes his awe when he discovered the richness

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of the Armeno-Turkish publishing tradition.33 This was an experience that he did not forget. In a response that he wrote for a survey published about the alphabet reform in Akşam (The Evening) in 1926 he reminded the readers that each community had been writing Turkish in its own alphabet and that the Armenian alphabet was well adapted to represent all Turkish sounds. It is worth mentioning that in the same article he also mentioned the existence of JudeoTurkish,34 which, compared to the substantial Armeno-Turkish and Karamanli printing tradition, remained a minor publishing phenomenon, probably little known by outsiders. A third figure that should be mentioned is Ahmed Midhat Efendi, probably the most influential writer of his time, who spoke highly of the works of Hovsep Vartanyan and Garabed Panosyan, two Armeno-Turkish authors.35 In view of the prominence of and the influence exerted in their own, mainly prerepublican, times by Tokgöz, Uşaklıgil and Ahmed Midhat, it seems obvious that knowledge of the existence and perhaps even familiarity with the writings of non-Muslims in communitarian alphabets must have spread to wider ranges of the admittedly small Ottoman Turkish reading public. The argument about the alphabet barrier is thus far from being as convincing as it may seem to people who are ignorant of the pre-republican literary and publishing world. Anyway, had the alphabet barrier played any role in the decision of literary historians to exclude Armeno-Turkish, Karamanli and Judeo-Turkish authors, poets and translators from their works, they would still have had to engage with Armenians, Greeks and Jews writing in Turkish with the Ottoman-Arabic script. However, this did not happen either. The argument regarding cultural impermeability and the lack of cultural exchanges between the different millets also deserves to be revised. Critics, focusing on Hovsep Vartanyan’s Akabi Hikâyesi (The Story of Akabi, 1851), the only Armeno-Turkish novel whose transliteration in the modern Turkish alphabet has been published, have been struck by the quasi-absence of Muslim characters in the novel.36 Though it might be tempting to interpret this absence as symptomatic of the general state of nineteenth-century Ottoman society, one should refrain from reading the Armeno-Turkish novel simply as a mirror of societal developments. As he was already touching on the very sensitive

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Orthodox–Catholic divide, Hovsep Vartanyan, a representative of the embattled Armeno-Catholic community, might have felt that it was better not to deal with Armeno-Turkish relations in order to avoid possible state interference and censure. When looking at the themes developed by Vartanyan in his novel, among others Westernization and cultural change, outdated traditions and the place of religion in society as well as women’s rights, one could argue that Vartanyan’s novel was indeed a prototype for the later didactic novels published by Muslim Turks. There are eerie resemblances between Hagop Ağa and Rupenig Ağa, the two central male characters of Vartanyan’s novel and the heroes of Ahmed Midhat’s famous novelette, Felatun Bey ile Rakım Efendi (Felatun Bey and Rakım Efendi, 1876).37 There is also concrete evidence that non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire showed interest in Ottoman Turkish literature. One of the arguments put forward by Moiz Fresko in a letter asking for permission to publish El Üstad was Izmir Jews’ ‘overwhelming keenness for Ottoman literature and education’.38 From the above it can easily be gathered that any attempt to write the history of Turkish literature in the nineteenth century which does not take minority literatures into consideration is not only incomplete but also contributes to an inaccurate picture of inter-communitarian relations in the Ottoman Empire which continues to shape current negative perceptions of Armenians, Greeks and Jews in modern Turkey. There is no doubt that a greater consciousness of the existence of those literatures could play a positive role in the transformation of negative stereotypes about ‘treacherous’ and ‘parasitical’ minorities. Though it is important that a new literary historiography should not be instrumentalized to disseminate a more inclusive and pluralistic conception of Turkish identity, it is obvious that such an awareness would be a welcome by-product, a co-lateral benefit, of such an endeavour. From an international perspective, the study of pre-republican non-Muslim Turkish literature, in particular Armeno-Turkish, could also make a noteworthy contribution to the ongoing debate on the concept of ‘minor literature’, developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as an interpretative tool to challenge conventional readings of Kafka’s works, partly based on the latter’s musings on what he

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called ‘kleine Literatur’.39 In Kafka: Pour une littérature mineure (Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, 1975), their groundbreaking work on the topic, Deleuze and Guattari maintain that a ‘minor literature’, defined as the literature of a minority in a major language,40 displays three characteristics: ‘The deterritorialisation of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation’.41 Such a description would fit the Armeno-Turkish novel. However, there are two aspects of the Armeno-Turkish novel which add new dimensions to the debate on minor literature: the alphabet difference – the choice of a communitarian alphabet being an identity marker – and the fact that Armeno-Turkish novelists did not write in a well established narrative tradition but created the first instances of a genre in Turkish that did not exist in the Ottoman Turkish literary tradition – the novel. If a minor literature represents, as argued by Deleuze and Guattari, the ‘revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of what is called great (or established) literature’,42 generic innovation is arguably as revolutionary as it gets. Non-Muslim minor literatures of Ottoman and republican Turkey represent not only a challenge to traditional Turkish literary historiography but also to the Eurocentric focus, at least language-wise, of much of contemporary literary theory, and thus offer an opportunity for the study of a wider range of linguistic, literary and cultural experiences in theoretical reflections on literature.

Notes 1. Karin Karakaşlı, Can Kırıkları (Istanbul: Doğan, 2007), pp. 12–13. 2. Gregory Jusdanis, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 3. For a discussion of the reception and academic criticism of pre-republican literary works in Turkish produced by non-Muslim Ottomans see Laurent Mignon, ‘Bir Varmış Bir Yokmuş: Kanon, Edebiyat Tarihi ve Azınlıklar Üzerine Notlar’ [Once upon a time: notes on canon, literary history and minorities] in Laurent Mignon, Ana Metne Taşınan Dipnotlar (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2009), pp. 121–32.

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4. Hugh Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic (London: Hurst and Co., 1997), p. 94. 5. The question of Ziya Gökalp’s Kurdish origins was already a matter of debate during his lifetime (Jean Deny, ‘Zia Gökalp’, Revue du monde musulman 61 (1925), pp. 1–41, pp. 2–4). 6. Johann Strauss, ‘Who read what in the Ottoman Empire?’, Middle Eastern Literatures 6/1 (2003), pp. 39–76, p. 62. 7. Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani, ed. Nuri Akbayar (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996), p. 1816. 8. Bursalı Mehmed Tahir, Osmanlı Müellifleri (Istanbul, 1914–1923 [1333– 1342]). 9. Sadeddin Nüzhet Ergun, Türk Şairleri (Istanbul, 1936). 10. Mehmed Fuad Köprülüzâde, ‘Türk Edebiyatının Ermeni Edebiyatı Üzerindeki Tesirâtı’, Darülfünûn Edebiyat Fakültesi Mecmuası 1 (1922 [1338]), pp. 1–30. 11. Founded in 1712 by Abbot Mekhitar of Sivas (1676–1749), the Mekhitarists were a Benedictine congregation of the Armenian-Catholic church that contributed greatly to the development of Western-Armenian cultural, religious and intellectual life. 12. M. Cevdet Inançalp, ‘Ermeni Mesâî-i Ilmiyesi: Venedik’te (Sen Lazar) Dervişleri Akademisi’, Müteferrika 10 (1996), pp. 201–10. 13. The Tanzimat era usually refers to a period of modernizing reforms in the Ottoman Empire lasting from 1839 to 1876. While meaningful in the context of political history, the term is too restrictive from the point of view of literary history, where the term post-Tanzimat allows a greater chronological flexibility. 14. Walter Benjamin, Abhandlungen: Gesammelte Schriften I–2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991). 15. Daniel Bensaid, Walter Benjamin: Sentinelle messianique (Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2010), p. 56. 16. Strauss, ‘Who read what in the Ottoman Empire?’ 17. For a discussion of the emergence and the reception of the Armeno-Turkish novel see Laurent Mignon, ‘Lost in transliteration: a few remarks on the Armeno-Turkish novel and Turkish literary historiography’, in Evangelia Balta and Mehmet Ölmez (eds), Between Religion and Language (Istanbul: Eren, 2011), pp. 111–23. 18. Evangelia Balta has published extensively on the topic; see among others, Beyond the Language Frontier: Studies on the Karamanlis and the Karamanlidika Printing (Istanbul: Isis, 2010). 19. Sula Boz, ‘Paleoloğos/Misailidis/Favini: Üç Isim, bir Akrabalık’, Milliyet Sanat Dergisi (July 1990), pp. 36–37.

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20. For an introduction to the history of Judeo-Turkish literature see Laurent Mignon, ‘Avram, Isak and the others: notes on the genesis of Judeo-Turkish literature’, in Balta and Ölmez, Between Religion and Language, pp. 71–83. 21. M. Franco, Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de l’empire ottoman (Paris: A. Durlacher, 1897), pp. 278–79. 22. Avram Galante, Histoire des Juifs de Turquie (Istanbul: Isis, n.d.), p. 93. 23. Johann Strauss, ‘The Millets and the Ottoman language’, Die Welt des Islams 35/2 (1995), pp. 189–249, pp. 215–18. 24. Ibid., pp. 220–32. 25. Engin Ardıç, ‘Seyreyle 19. Yüzyılı’, Nokta 25 (1986), pp. 56–57, available at http://www.idefix.com/kitap/2006turkroman/2006turkroman_romanuzerine1–7.asp. 26. Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London: Harvill, 1950), p. 75. 27. Roderic H. Davison, ‘The Millets as agents of change in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire’, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), pp. 319–37, pp. 322 and 334. 28. Andreas Tietze, ‘Ethnicity and change in Ottoman intellectual life’, Turcica 21–23 (1991), pp. 385–95, pp. 394–95. 29. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Ondokuzuncu Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi (Istanbul: Caglayan Publications, 1997), p. 459. 30. Zabel Yesayan, Silahtarın Bahçeleri, trans. Jülide Değirmenciler (Istanbul, 2006), p. 76. 31. Ihsan Tokgöz, Matbuat Hatırlarım (1888–1914) (Istanbul: Iş Bankası, 2012), p. 35. 32. Ibid., p. 41. 33. Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil, Kırk Yıl (Istanbul: Inkılap, 1987), p. 119. 34. Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil, ‘Latin Harfleri Kabul Etmeli Mi, Etmemeli Mi?’, in Hüseyin Yorulmaz (ed.), Tanzimattan Cumhuriyete Alfabe Tartışmaları (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1995), pp. 206–13. 35. Ahmet Midhat Efendi, Müşahedat (Istanbul, 1891), p. 36. 36. Critics and literary historians have interpreted this fact in various ways. The literary historian Inci Enginün puts a rather cavalier emphasis on the absence of non-Armenian characters in Hovsep Vartanyan’s Akabi Hikayesi (Inci Enginün, Yeni Türk Edebiyatı: Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e, (1839–1923) (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 2006), p. 171, whereas the Turcologist Börte Sagaster rightly sees the one occurrence of Turco-Armenian intercourse in the novel as evidence for private social relations between Turks and Armenians (Börte Sagaster, ‘The role of Turcophone Armenians as literary innovators

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and mediators of culture in the early days of the Ottoman Empire’, in Balta and Ölmez, Between Religion and Language, pp. 101–10, p. 107. Laurent Mignon, ‘Tanzimat Dönemi Romanına Bir Önsöz: Vartan Paşa’nın Akabi Hikayesi’, Hece: Roman Özel Sayısı 65–67 (2002), pp. 538–43. Moiz Fresko, Başbakanlık Arşivi (Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office), IDH 1115/87229 (1888). Franz Kafka, Tagebücher 1909–1912 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008), p. 253. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p. 16. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid.

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CHAPTER 9 QUEER ING IDENTITIES IN OTTOM AN HISTORY AND TUR KISH IDENTIT Y Donna Landry

Any affect may have any ‘object’. Man is, of all the animals, the most voyeuristic. Silvan Tomkins Put a cover on the minaret before you steal it. Turkish proverb Queerness, and an openness to sexual complexity and ambiguous gendering, were characteristic of certain powerful elements of Ottoman society during the early modern period.1 This is something that Turkish Republican society as well as conservative Muslim societies would rather forget. The rise of political and postmodern forms of Islam has thrust women and gender into the spotlight, foregrounding struggles over sexuality and the family. Postmodern Islam has also generated a new interest in the Ottoman past, and in forms of Islamic thinking and culture suppressed by Republican laicism. When there is a recovery of Ottoman or Islamic traditions being undertaken, we may well ask, ‘What or whose Ottoman past? Which history, whose Islam?’ Scholars in Ottoman studies have recently begun queering the

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historical record while a number of Turkish novelists have represented Turkish identities in such a way that a queering of consciousness may take place. How do representations of sexuality in Turkey and in the Ottoman Empire map onto broader currents across the Muslim world? What does recent archival history reveal about past sexualities? You will remember that the project of largely American ‘New Historicism’ was committed to uncovering the repressed of texts, to unravelling Foucauldian genealogies in all their thick descriptiveness. Judith Butler leapt fully formed from Foucault’s multi-volume history of sexuality, claiming that there was no such thing as ‘a sexuality’ or a ‘gender identity’ that existed before its production in discourse, and in the body experienced, performed and analyzed as a material and thus also discursive field.2 This chapter will read into another new work on the history of sexuality within Islamic cultures, in which a certain queering of the historical record takes place, and novelistic representations of subjectivity and embodied experience within Islam, in which a certain queering of consciousness takes place. My historical and literary examples will be principally Turkish, but compared briefly with examples from other Muslim cultures. Turkey has developed its own brands of sexual and gender identity politics and its own forms of political and postmodern Islam. Here I am indebted to Haldun Gülalp, who argues for the ‘postmodern condition’ of Turkish political Islam, which I read as evidence of its having been affected by social movements, including feminism and sexual and ethnic identity struggles.3 Struggles for identity in Turkey nevertheless do share ground with movements elsewhere. What is revealed as ‘the difference of Islam’, I shall argue, across Turkish and other Muslim writing, is that everyday life is often represented as happening within a theological panopticon. Islam appears to be experienced as a particularly intense set of gazes marking what I will call an enfolded subjectivity. And yet this difference from other monotheistic imaginaries is far from an absolute one. There may be common affects represented even where sexual practices and their epistemological grids differ. What one must remain alert to is that

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the very mapping of identity onto sexuality both may and yet may not be happening according to strictly ‘Eastern’ Islamic or so-called Western preconceptions of this process. Just as contemporary Turkey stands poised between the East and the West, so too do debates about contemporary Turkish identity. The gaze of a stranger is what brings the self to consciousness of itself, but also installs the possibility of shame. Fiction by Turkish novelists such as Elif Şafak and Emine Sevgi Özdamar reveals traces of a buried legacy of Eastern alternatives to exclusively Western systems of gendering and sexuality. And yet such writing also establishes common grounds of identity across national, religious and cultural borders, placing Turkey at the heart of a common humanity.

The Age of Beloveds and the History of Sexuality In their groundbreaking book The Age of Beloveds,4 Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı introduce us to the prehistory of modern sexualities today in Turkey and other parts of the former Ottoman Empire, inviting us to explore queer common ground between the early modern East and West. Joseph Massad’s equally groundbreaking, Foucauldian-genealogical, and anti-identitarian work on sexuality in the Arab world, Desiring Arabs,5 offers an important caution not to apply gay versus straight, queer versus heteronormative binaries to situations that are not the Euro-American West. Being open to difference should mean being open to different differences and not only to the same ones with which we might ourselves identify. Two Turkish women writers, Elif Şafak and Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and the British Zanzibarian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, do not set out to represent queer or gay communities as such, yet their work offers ways of engaging with a history of sexuality in which a Western grid of heteronormativity slips, fails to fit the scene. Arguing in a Foucauldian fashion for historical discontinuity, so that the difference of Ottoman early modern court culture from our modern expectations of it can be better understood, Andrews and Kalpaklı also argue that there was more sameness, more shared cultural turf, between East and West during this period than has been

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appreciated, especially by Western scholars. And yet this period also contained glimmerings of sexual modernity, and of the kind of aspirations that mark today’s work towards greater gender and sexual egalitarianism, embracing of queerness and less ideologically mystified histories of sexuality than have previously been produced. East is both East and not East. Istanbul is both in Europe and in Asia. The view from Istanbul looks different from the view from London or Paris or New York. From this viewpoint, the West is both overfamiliar and still strange.6 Because this work is likely to be unfamiliar to anyone outside Ottoman studies, I shall quote Andrews and Kalpaklı at some length in order to summarize their argument succinctly: The history of love, sex, and sexuality in Islam leading up to the time of the Ottomans, is a vast topic, one that we will reduce to two pivotal points among a host of possibilities. The first point involves the striking innovation of Islam in its practical concern for the status and welfare of women. In a tribal social climate where women had rights only by virtue of attachment to a family ... Islam made a huge and often misunderstood difference. Women were granted the right to inherit, and strict formulas guaranteed that right ... Both Islamic law and local custom protected women by reducing their exposure to public life and dangerous contact with non-family members. One result of this is that, in general, by the time we get to the Ottomans, wellborn Muslim women were not supposed to be visibly part of the public scene or public conversation ... The second point ... is that, for most manifestations of Islam, there are unusually clear boundaries between public and private life ... In the broadest view, Islamic legal practice strives to permit behaviours that people are inclined to do anyway, provided that

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the behaviours or their modes of practice are not harmful to the institutions of family and community. ... If we begin with the question, Whom is it appropriate to love? we will find that, in general, the answer for educated Ottoman elites was similar to what we might expect it to be for educated Greeks and Romans in pre-Christian classical times and, to a certain extent, what we would expect, religious rhetoric aside, from Christian European society during the early-modern period. Some people love women, some young men; it is a matter of preference, but ... The Ottomans (also like the Europeans) inherit a long tradition of the spiritualization of love. This is to say (again, in painfully reductive terms) that a line of thought is broadly recognized that concludes that sexual desires or attractions are the physical manifestations of the soul’s yearning for return to a divine unity from which it was separated by birth into the material world. As a result, for those Ottomans who produced and consumed high-culture literature, the love most easily recognizable as a spiritual love was that of an educated man for a younger man.7 Andrews and Kalpaklı conclude that there was, as they put it, an ‘Age of Beloveds’ between the late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, during the height of Ottoman power and splendour. Islam has been misrepresented and misunderstood, as have same-sex love and desire. Ottoman court poetry crystallizes a nexus of prohibited passions, and has either been attacked, ignored or misconstrued. They write lyrically of the intervention they wish to make, both in the interests of a more global understanding of early modern sexuality, and its queerness, and in the interests of a wider sympathetic representation of Ottoman society, which has all too often in the West been vilified and misunderstood: We intend to show that, in Europe and to the east, across the wine-dark sea, in the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire and especially in Istanbul, a period, especially from the late fifteenth century through the first half of the sixteenth, was an age of

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love and beloveds ... We hope to show that this culture of love was, not only aesthetic and artistic, but also political, dynamic, and historical, that love and sexuality did not exist in a sphere divorced from the other concerns of life and livelihood ... In their image, the traditional high-culture love song, the gazel, was rescued from a sterile Persianizing classicism and given new life in Ottoman Turkish ... The public face of this beloved was often that of a beautiful young man. This book attempts, among other things, to introduce this beloved – and his female counterpart – to our readers and to introduce him, not as a stranger representing the deviant lusts of some past or distant Oriental ‘others,’ but as a beloved of his age as familiar in his androgynous charm to the palazzi of Venice and Florence or the great houses of England as he was to the gardens and köşkler (kiosks) of Istanbul.8 These Ottomanist scholars wish to rescue a body of writing from calumny both for itself – its aesthetic value – and for what it might teach us about historical discontinuity. Andrews and Kalpaklı make the surprising claim that our age, compared to their Age of Beloveds, is ‘not as comfortable with same-sex attractions as theirs’.9 Opening ourselves to the resources of the past, so often deliberately suppressed, erased and forgotten, is a first step in undertaking a New Historicist investigation of Islam and sexuality. Ottoman culture may represent a repository of emancipatory difference in its discontinuities from the West, and yet the difference of Ottoman culture from Western modernity has also been much exaggerated, especially within modern republican Turkey itself. Victoria Holbrook, a student of Walter Andrews, was among the first to analyze the complexities of Ottoman court poetry as well as the history of reception that had misrepresented them. Difficulty became a negative rhetorical value as the national came to be authenticated by language and Turkish reformers sought to develop a ‘print language’ for dissemination of nationalist ideals. To be Turkish, or any X-ish, became, among other

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things, to be a native speaker of X language. Insofar as language could be the essence of national identity, an analogy could be found between the political failure of the Ottoman Empire and a failing in the Ottoman language.10 Language, then, would be at the core of constructing modern Turkish identity. Shedding Ottoman imperial institutions, alphabet and supposed obscurantism at one blow, the Turkish language reform severed the nation from its past. As Mahmut Mutman remarks of the changing of the alphabet, the substitution of one form of literacy for another, ‘Does this fast solution not have something to do with the impossibility of accepting the lost object, the impossibility of loving the dead as a living part of me’?11 That there might be a haunting of the Turkish secular republican present by unfinished business with the Ottoman past should not surprise us. An insistence upon transparency, and an avoidance of complexity, difficulty and codedness, have gone hand in hand with the avoidance of a properly historicist recovery of the Ottoman past, and the erasure of homoerotic and homosexual experience from the archive. This wilful historical rupturing of past from present, and of sexual plurality from modern heteronormativity and homophobia, is particularly ironic given the openness of Turkish, both Ottoman and modern Turkish, to genderlessness. The slippage of the signified and the slippage of the beloved are conjoined within the language itself: The Turkish language (like Persian) does not reveal gender and, thus, allows lover and beloved to break free from a host of gendered rules and expectations.12 We might say, then, that one of the enabling features of Turkish, as a language in both its past and present, for a plurality of sexual identifications and affects, one of its openings to queerness in all its multiplicity, is its lack of gendering. The third person singular pronoun is simply ‘O’; the plural ‘Onlar’. O could be female, male, neuter or something else entirely. ‘O’ could also be ‘O’: a little death, entirely appropriate for the intense love of a beloved. Andrews and Kalpaklı

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insist on the value of this ambiguity as both a valuable androgyny – a breaking with dichotomy and with fixed gendering itself – and an even more valuable indeterminacy. The Ottoman court was a highly masculinized space. And yet the very genderlessness of the beloved as a linguistic and aesthetic entity leaves the notion of the beloved open to being occupied by a female feminine as well as a feminized male object of desire. If we seek to find traces specifically of women in the archive, we will have to learn to read between the lines as well as against the grain, and to find in indeterminacy an opening to possibility rather than absence or lack. The Ottoman beloved is most likely to be male but there was a female counterpart, just as there were female poets such as Zeynep Hatun and Mihri Hatun (d. after 1512), recorded in the tezkires, the poet biographies, of 1538 (Seven Paradises of Sehi) and 1546 (by Latifi). Can exceptions override the effectiveness of the rule? Andrews and Kalpaklı insist that they can, and that a strangely modern challenge to homophobia arises within Ottoman poetics: Out of the turmoil of the late Renaissance, out of the violence, the sexual oppressions, the male-centered, ‘phallocratic’ cultures, and the eroticization of power, stumbles the prototype of a very modern beloved and the first inklings of modern thinking about relations between men and women as well as between men and men, women and women. Strange as it may seem, this is something that can, perhaps, be seen with greater clarity in the view from Istanbul, where modern (and European) assumptions about the West are constantly challenged and our vision is neither clouded by overfamiliarity nor obstructed by imaginary boundaries.13 The defamiliarization made possible by attempting to inhabit imaginatively a different time and space, one that had been previously rendered largely through antagonism and a certain (secular Republican or Muslim) puritanism at odds with the Ottoman past, is an enabling move.

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Queering the gaze and shame The Ottoman past, however configured, is past, and while traces may linger, the Turkish Republic is a very different place, and its forms of Islam differ also. Likewise there have been changes since the Republic’s first multi-party elections were held in 1950, and constitutional reforms issued in the ‘second Republic’ of the 1960s. State interventions in gender and sexuality featured in the early years of the Republic, but increasingly, especially visible in writing from the late 1980s to date, a privatizing and postmodernizing of these questions has occurred (for a related argument, see Irzık, ‘Allegorical Lives’).14 It was in 1987 that the Turkish political spectrum was first broadened and democratized by means of the founding of new political parties attempting to ‘put issues like care for the environment and women’s and gay rights on the political agenda’, as Erik J. Zürcher remarks, although the influence of such new social movement ideas was to a great extent then confined to urban elites.15 The focus on identity here – women’s and gay rights – marks a turn towards civil society rather than the state as the ground of subjecthood. This is a turn remarkably parallel to what Esra Özyürek finds happening during the later 1990s within Kemalist circles, where political identities, mirroring postmodern Islamist ones, emerge in newly postmodern and privatized forms.16 It is surely significant that well-known and translated Turkish writers addressing gender identity and sexual practice have done so since the 1980s in ways that share some quite specifically Islamic preoccupations with Muslim writers elsewhere. The view from Istanbul is neither completely familiar to Western readers nor completely foreign, neither entirely Eastern nor Western. And it is a view preoccupied with viewing and gazing, with ‘what do they think of us?’ as well as ‘how do we regard them?’ ‘How do I look?’ reads two ways. The ‘city of the world’s desire’, in Philip Mansel’s telling phrase,17 has been a magnet for imperial aspiration as well as sexual adventuring for centuries. The gaze circulates in Istanbul. The space of the city itself invites visual immersion and the pleasures of visual consumption. Looking, being looked at, and covering – refusing, intercepting and short-circuiting the gaze – are perpetual pastimes.

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Although Istanbul is not entirely Eastern, and territorially lies as much or more in Europe than it does in Asia, the city is also Islamic. In that sense its Eastern and Muslim specificities must be reckoned with in a broader context. Here I want to bring to bear the work of Silvan Tomkins as expounded by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank in Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader,18 as well as the work of Joseph Massad. There are various arguments floating around today, post 9/11, about shame cultures and guilt cultures and differences between East and West, especially when the East means Islam. Ruth Benedict’s ‘infamous book’, as Joseph Massad puts it, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), posited that Japan was a ‘shame’ culture instead of a ‘guilt’ culture.19 Massad reports that, without any citation of Benedict, Raphael Patai in The Arab Mind (1973) argued that ‘while Western societies suffer from guilt because their individuals have a conscience, Arab societies suffer mainly from “shame” ’, with the result that sexuality is both repressed and a point of extreme vulnerability. As Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker in 2004, after exposure of the systematic physical and sexual torture at Abu Ghraib became public knowledge, the view that ‘Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq’.20 Arab sexual conventions are ‘the product of severe repressions’ on the one hand, while sex is ‘a prime mental preoccupation’. According to Massad, Patai claims that ‘masturbation among the Arabs is condemned more severely than in the United States’, while ‘masturbation is far more shameful than visiting prostitutes’.21 We will consider some alternative views of masturbation within Islam in a moment. Joseph Massad’s groundbreaking, Foucauldian-genealogical and anti-identitarian work on Arab sexuality has been very controversial within queer studies.22 Whether or not one agrees with his delineation of the history of sexuality within Islam, Massad’s is an important caution not to apply Western grids of sexual difference to situations elsewhere. To repeat the suggestion I made earlier regarding the salutary importance of Massad’s work, being open to difference should mean being open to different differences and not only to the same ones

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with which we ourselves might identify. Massad argues that there can be a great deal of political harm done even by well-intentioned activists if they fail to respect cultural difference. The violence unleashed against those who are ‘outed’, and whose self-understanding may be quite different from that of the Western activists who seek to champion their sexual rights, should not be ignored or simply wished away. The unleashing of violence supposedly in the service of ‘liberation’, and the rhetorical insistence that Islamic culture is repressed and puritanical in ways that the modern West has ceased to be, represent neo-imperial power at work, whether these lines of force are wielded by well-intentioned human rights activists or by neo-conservative advocates of military intervention: The categories gay and lesbian are not universal at all and can only be universalized by the epistemic, ethical and political violence unleashed on the rest of the world by the very international human rights advocates whose aim is to defend the very people their intervention is creating. In doing so, the human rights advocates are not bringing about the inclusion of the homosexual in a new and redefined human subjectivity, but in fact bringing about her and his exclusion from this redefined subjectivity altogether while simultaneously destroying existing subjectivities organized around other sets of binaries, including sexual ones. While subjectivities in many non-Western contexts do not include heterosexuality and exclude homosexuality, as that very binarism is not part of their ontological structure, what the incitement and intervention of international human rights activism achieves is the replication of the very Euro-American human subjectivity its advocates challenge at home.23 The arguments about an Islamic, pre-modern, puritanical culture of ‘shame’ set against a modern Western culture of guilt replay this dynamic of sameness being imposed upon difference in the name of exposing, in order to do away with, fixed and reified differences. For Silvan Tomkins, whom Sedgwick and Frank praise for his refusal of heterosexist teleology, his infinite openness to possibilities

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of attachment, enjoyment and pleasure rather than prescriptiveness about their necessary form, shame is the founding affect. The infant’s sense of self and separation from not-self is an experience of estrangement, and of a visual alienation/recognition dynamic that Tomkins describes as shame. I need not dwell here on the importance of shame, and for Tomkins, its sisters such as guilt, for rehabilitating discussions of anti-heteronormative desires and removing them from the realm of prescriptive ‘theology’, as Andrews and Kalpaklı put it.24 Tomkins can be put to work to resonant political effect, as has been shown in recent work by Elspeth Probyn and Jonathan Flatley as well as Sedgwick and Frank. Probyn argues that shame ‘gives us a way to rethink the types of oppositions that have become entrenched in popular debate’25 and that the shame entailed by ‘stumbling’ ‘into other people’s history, culture, and beliefs of which we are ignorant’ can be richly productive by igniting above all ‘a desire for connection’.26 For Flatley, Tomkins, read alongside Walter Benjamin, opens new ways of historicizing affect and reigniting interest in the world that can be oppositional as well as antidepressant. ‘My aim’, he writes, ‘besides my desire to argue for the importance of an antidepressive, political, and politicizing melancholia’, is to ‘make a case for the importance of mood and affect to a Marxist concern with the representability of history ... and the possibility for our collective participation in and transformation of our history as it unfolds’.27 What I wish to emphasize in this chapter is the interesting consonance between the visual regime Tomkins identifies and the representations of consciousness within Islam that recur in the work of at least two Turkish women writers, Elif Şafak and Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and the British Zanzibarian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. Tomkins writes the following regarding his theory of shame, characterizing thus what in Lacan’s writing is known as the mirror stage: The innate activator of shame is the incomplete reduction of interest or joy. Hence any barrier to further exploration which partially reduces interest or the smile of enjoyment will activate the lowering of the head and eyes in shame and reduce further exploration or self-exposure powered by excitement or joy. Such

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a barrier might be because one is suddenly looked at by one who is strange, or because one wishes to look at or commune with another person but suddenly cannot because he is strange, or one expected him to be familiar, but he suddenly appears unfamiliar, or one started to smile but found one was smiling at a stranger.28 For Andrews and Kalpaklı, the East in the form of Ottoman Istanbul is always being made strange by the West. Western eyes are constantly looking eastwards, or Looking East, as Gerald MacLean would have it in his study of English writing about the Ottomans from the late sixteenth century to the nineteenth. Especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the view of the East is likely to be an emulative and rivalrous one that MacLean has characterized as ‘imperial envy’.29 The view from Istanbul is rather different when Asia looks West, a challenging gaze ‘neither clouded by overfamiliarity nor obstructed by imaginary boundaries’. But there is also a gaze within, a theologically inflected gaze. And there is the matter of European imperialism, with or without colonization, that goes beyond mere gazing in its inflicting of shame and humiliation.

The unbeloveds Zanzibar in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel appears as a site within which the early modern culture of beloveds has suffered a post-imperial, but not fully postcolonial, sea change. Failure to decolonize runs deep. It is to be found within the interstices of an urban, often violent and debased remnant of the courtly culture Andrews and Kalpaklı describe and analyse: In my first year at school, Abbas, a classmate, had given me a penny every day of the school year to soften me up ... His family was rich and he commanded the services of all the thugs in the class. I was to be seen as his plaything, on his payroll. Sometimes he stared at me all morning, through English, Arithmetic and Nature Study, knowing that the teacher and the other children

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were watching him with knowing smirks. If I looked in his direction, he would slowly wet his lips with his tongue ... 30 A parody of the blazon of Ottoman beloveds is trotted out by schoolboys hungry for pleasure but also power. This is a colonial space where slave trading has gone on for centuries. The power dynamics of the divan map strangely onto this space. The novel’s narrator reports his own fear at being singled out as a potential ‘object’, and his shame and humiliation at receiving publicly these marks of the other’s desire, this tongue that speaks volumes of mastery and superiority and the distinction that both money and desire bestowed can convey. Male-tomale sex dominates Memory of Departure, although the narrator’s own desires are heterosexual, repulsed by the violent degradation of the legacy of beloveds: Nobody had told Imam Musa, but at twelve I also started some serious masturbating. God punished me for every stroke of my hand. In the end I gave up God and stopped listening to lying old scholars who could emphasis a point with one tensely outstretched forefinger while the other searched ... I started to play football instead.31 The call to prayer and Qur’anic study are both implicated in a regime of pederastic pedagogy that dare not speak its name. Within the homosocial arrangements of Zanzibarian society, man/boy sex, even if it consists largely of furtive fumbling in the dark, appears the logical extension of a homoerotic construction of exaggeratedly virile masculinity derived, in however diminished a way, from Islamic conventions compounded by centuries of slavery and colonialism. When the narrator chooses football, he chooses the uncloseted, fresh-air-andadrenaline-rush form of approved masculine homosociality, a choice that is also a link with the West, and with modernity, as opposed to debased tradition. The choice of football prefigures the narrator’s eventual escape into exile in the West. He successfully dodges a sexualized, yet violently unpleasurable, Islam in order to pursue heterosexual and intellectual pleasures apparently not available to him in Zanzibar.

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Exile may have its pains, but confinement in un-decolonized space kills all pleasures.

Pleasure in the panopticon There is neither a shortage of masturbation nor any prohibition on it in Emine Özdamar. Like prostitutes and lesbians, female masturbators are ordinary, part of everyday life. There would seem to be no barrier between practising Islam and the practice of ‘shap shap’. The young narrator of Life Is a Caravanserai – Has Two Doors – I Came in One – I Went Out the Other worries about what her grandmother will think of her regular masturbation with other girls; it is their favourite pastime: I swallowed forty times and told her I lie in bed with three girls and we touch each other. My grandmother said, ‘That’s nothing, when I was as little as you are I used to do shap shap with the girls in the village too’. When she said shap shap she clapped her hands a couple of times and the shap shap sound came out of them. It was very nice to know the name of this box-touching, it was shap shap.32 Religion is no deterrent to bodily sensation or exploration, or to play or pleasure. The socialist realist focus on village and provincial town life is characteristic of the 1950s, but the angle here is a late 1980s/early 1990s one, ironic and oblique rather than romantically populist, highly self-conscious about struggles between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. Born in Malatya in central Anatolia, Özdamar lives in Berlin, writes in German – winning the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1991 for Life Is a Caravanserai – and provides an artful historical window on the Anatolia of decades past. The 1950s were a period of political upheaval, though a muted one in comparison with what will follow after the coups of 1960 and 1980. As Feroz Ahmad observes, also rather ironically, ‘Turkey joined the Western world, led by Washington, after the Second World War. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO cemented the relationship and secured Turkey’s position with Western security arrangements’.33 As late as 1957, Celal Bayar,

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who had become president in 1950 with the election of the Democrat Party, would still assert to voting audiences that ‘Turkey could become “little America” within thirty years’.34 Life Is a Caravanserai’s exploration of female identity shows how the post-Marshall Plan coming to power of the Democrat Party disturbs and transforms certain elements of everyday life and not others. The dominant discourse of the novel appears to be village and Anatolian town continuity, undergirded by Islam, intermittently interrupted by the modern and the foreign. If the ruling discourse in Life Is a Caravanserai, which is set during the 1950s and very early 1960s, is religion – an Islam of the everyday of Anatolian villages and towns – in the 1960s and 1970s novel, Bridge of the Golden Horn, it is politics. If Life Is a Caravanserai (published 1992; English translation 2000) reveals Anatolian Islam as a cornerstone of Turkish identity in the first decade after multi-party elections democratized the Republic, in Bridge of the Golden Horn (published 1998; English translation 2007), leftwing politics and communist hope have come to replace religion. Revolutionary possibilities abound, reflecting the turbulence of the 1960s and early 1970s Turkish left. A world unfolds of many left-identified parties, and many, many fractions and disagreements, but also of utopian insurgency. Kerem Öktem evokes the moment of 1968 in Turkey in terms that shed light upon the revolutionary atmosphere of Özdamar’s novel: Invigorated by the spirit of 1968 in Europe and the protest movements against the Vietnam War in the United States, many followers of the left felt that a global revolution was imminent: it seemed only to be a question of when, and not if, Turkey and the world would become socialist.35 Clutching Lenin’s State and Revolution, the 20-something theatre student narrator, formerly a guest-worker in Germany, interrogates village women in Cappadocia on their behalf: With Lenin’s book in my hand I asked the two peasant women on their donkeys: ‘Do you know what an orgasm is? Orgasm is your right,’ I shouted. The peasant women talked to their

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donkeys, to urge them on. ‘Deeh, deeh,’ and then to me: ‘Tell us, what is this urugazum – deeh, deeh – supposed to be?’ – ‘Do you like your men in bed? Do they play nicely with you?’ The peasant women laughed: ‘We peasants have only one pleasure, our pleasure in bed. And your husband? Does he too give you a sweet taste in bed?’ We laughed, and our bodies shook on the three donkeys on the stony village street ... 36 The everyday is rendered as dynamically as the women urging on their donkeys – a rhythm method for life, as it were, that is hard and sharp and austere. There is little room for sentiment, but plenty for vigorous experience. Metropolitan student revolutionary and village women find a point of identification in imaginary triangulation with absent men. No revolution without women, no communism without female orgasm, no transformation of Turkey without the motor of womenand-donkey-power. The stereotypes of village life are reanimated with a non-verbal command that is also a kick and a pelvic push into the future – ‘forward, comrades!’, ‘deeh-deeh’. The novel offers a certain innocent idealism at work: urban arts students uniting with villagers in a common project of emancipation. Such a vision would be ended by the violence, bloodshed and military coups of the 1970s and 1980. Same-sex desire, like masturbation, is offered as a fact of life, happening everywhere and at anytime, immune to whether its situation is in Europe or Asia, Anatolia or Germany. If the female cousins in the guest-worker lodging-house are not particularly happy, they are not particularly unhappy either, or at least no more unhappy than their hetero-counterparts amongst the guest-worker community. That night, as everyone lay in bed ... the cousin who had bad breath and had been beaten suddenly climbed up on to the bed of her cousin who was beautiful and had beaten. In the darkness they pulled the blanket out of the quilt cover, dropped it on the floor and crawled into the cover as into a sleeping bag, buttoned it up and then – buttoned up in this bag – they kissed each other slurp slurp and made love. And we, the other four, listened without moving.37

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The hierarchy of sexual attractiveness that holds sway in the day may give way to something like mutuality and symbiosis in the night. Beauty may dominate and beat, the lack of beauty and its accompanying anxiety, manifested in halitosis, may be beaten. But in the darkness the violence between the kissing cousins – ‘slurp slurp’ – transmutes into sex, revealing them to be ritual partners in sadomasochistic scenes. The others, the straight girls, listen. They may not move, but they are moved, transfixed, spellbound. For Özdamar, the visual regime is only ambiguously gendered. There is no need to think of oneself continually as ‘she’ where ‘she’ does not exist. However, in Turkish culture, the implied masculinity of God (like the patriarchal masculinity of the iconic founder of the Republic, Atatürk) marks a difference between the female narrators and their sense of an all-seeing eye. That sense of a shadowy allobserving presence is a sense of an all-observing masculine presence – paternal? Avuncular? Masculine priority or superiority is hard to challenge, let alone displace within this, like the other, monotheisms. We had religious instruction, the teacher told us Allah is everywhere, all the time, and can see everyone and everything. I asked him, ‘My teacher, can Allah see me and my mother at the same time right now?’ He laughed and said, ‘Of course, five hundred and twenty-three’ (my school number). ‘Allah can see you and your mother too.’... During this period I began talking to Allah in a room at home. I asked him to make my eyes blind if he could see me at that moment. I said, ‘If you exist, make my eyes blind’. I opened my eyes, and nothing had made me blind. I went to the toilet, I knew that was where the devil lived ... I stayed on the toilet for a long time, and kept telling Allah off. Then I went and sat on the prayer rug and asked Allah’s forgiveness.38 Testing the omniscience of this God is a recurrent preoccupation. The imagined presence of an Absolute Subject produces what I will call an Enfolded Subjectivity. There is a map, there are charts, it is a bounded world, at least potentially. There are compasses to guide

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one, but like multiple GPS instruments or systems on sea-going ships today, they do not necessarily agree with one another. The Quran contains multiple gnomic sententiae, stories, flights of fancy, moments of poetry. To be subjected to the constant gaze of the Absolute Subject is both reassuring and terrifying. Possibilities of shame are endless. Transgression is inevitable. Complete existential loneliness is not an option. Like the Turkish family in Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn – the young female Turkish guest-workers in Berlin gather near an abandoned train station and imagine that their families back in Turkey can hear everything they say there although they are hundreds of miles apart39 – God is always potentially present. But is that a comfort, the comfort of a compass to guide, or an ineluctable regime of tyrannical ritual? The question asked again and again is, does God punish the transgressions that he sees, if indeed he always sees them?

Seeing, being seen, covering, enfolding If as Andrews and Kalpaklı suggest, Ottoman Sunni Islam, at least, is inclined ‘to permit behaviours that people are inclined to do anyway’,40 an interesting paradox presents itself. It would seem that this enfolded self is inclined to take flagrant risks, to test the boundaries of Qur’anic teaching. Feeling eternally observed and never fully alone, like a sheltered child, this imaginary Muslim subject seems bound to attempt to arouse God’s ire in order to get his attention. Hence the Turkish proverb that assumes that people will steal minarets, at least metaphorically, and that discretion is the better part of getting away with it. First put a cover on the minaret before you steal it. Be furtive, or at least modest. Don’t think you can completely fool God or the world. At least make an effort not to outrage. The word for cover – kılıf – is the same as the word for condom, or for a holster or sheath, as for a sword, the word for which is kılıç. I am told that in Arabic kilif means to be madly, passionately in love with someone. Whatever unruly gangs of linguistic association might be hanging out here, something phallic and erotic is implied. Put a condom on the minaret before you steal it.

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Women are the great repository of this lore in both Özdamar and in Elif Şafak. Aunt Sıdıka, a member of the Republican People’s Party, founded by Atatürk, complains in Life Is a Caravanserai about the American-inclined Democrat Party currently in power: ‘The Democrats have buried us under an American heap of debts. People say that if you set out to steal a minaret you should first sew a dress to hide it under. The Democrats stole the minaret but they don’t have a dress to hide it’. She said, ‘Children ... America is about to fuck us all’.41 A certain Republican idiom of Turkish independence unites here with a certain Anatolian Islamic wisdom. There is something shameful in the relation between Turkey and the United States/the West: an identity theft has occurred. The gaze and questions of visibility and private/public vulnerabilities circulate extremely self-consciously in Elif Şafak’s feminist novel The Gaze (published 1999; English translation 2006), which won the Union of Turkish Writers’ Prize in 2000. The narrator of The Gaze, who becomes the fat lady of legend after attempting to rid herself of the taste of semen left behind when as a child she is molested, most strongly experiences this traumatic scene as a scene in which she is seen – overlooked, witnessed – in this shameful, this humiliating, situation. She kills the cat who watched her, tries desperately to erase all trace of the evidence of seeing and being seen. God was timeless. Even during the hours when time naps, he doesn’t sleep, and continues to watch people ... ... She understood that during the day, whether she was inside or outside, she had to be careful about what she did and to keep in mind that she was constantly being watched ... ... The piece of meat must have liked being looked at, because as the child looked at it, it raised its head in a dignified manner ... ... The child felt that somewhere in the depths of this deathly silence, a pair of eyes was watching everything.42 The fat protagonist’s refuge, besides eating, becomes the dwarf B-C. They are a circus act, if you will, a pair of freaks who know the

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estrangement of the gaze. They know what it is like to be regarded with shock, horror, obscene curiosity. But the gaze is also power and pleasure. The boy and the sable stood eye to eye. The boy and the sable looked at their resemblance ... Without taking their eyes off each other, they spun at the same moment and at the same speed in the snowstorm of their hearts. They spun so much that they made the world’s head spin. As they spun they were beside themselves ... And they loved each other. Later, when they emerged from the basket, each would go to the place where his body belonged, but their souls would not part. This, this was their secret. And this moment was their moment. The intimacy of the shaman and the animal.43 The gaze is the pharmakon, both instigator of illness and potential cure. The gaze offers oppression but also the potential for loving fulfilment. The Ottoman past is interleaved within the novel as it is in the everyday lives of today’s Istanbullus in the fiction of Şafak and Orhan Pamuk. For Safak in The Gaze, it is an Ottoman past which is also hybrid, Siberian and Central Asian, in dialogue with Russia. It is a Eurasian past in which there have been moments of shamanic magic that predate Islam, and that might contribute to Sufi philosophy in its modulation of Islam. The sable and the boy who would become a shaman are a figure for the past that was damaged, interrupted by a brutal intrusion of the Russian trader, in this case. From this illegitimate union that was never properly consummated, shaman-style, but forever interrupted and incomplete, come performers in the Ottoman spectacle shows that continue to influence the characters of the present moment, the narrator and B-C. Until now, the only person whose glances didn’t make me uneasy was B-C, and he was the only person I couldn’t take my eyes off of. He was the only person I wanted to be seen by, who I wanted to see even more of me. If you’re as fat as I am, it’s difficult to stay out of sight.44

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Love is a corset. The day will come when, in the least expected place, at the least expected moment, one of the clasps will burst, or its threads will unravel.45 Like Eve Sedgwick, Şafak counts fatness as a form of queerness. Fat women transgress gender norms by exceeding the space properly allotted to women. Their very size poses a threat to the circumscription of feminine propriety. Playing upon while embracing the gaze that holds and enfolds, Şafak’s narrator longs for both being held by a lover’s gaze and tightly hugged, bound, enfolded. ‘My love, this is a Dictionary of Gazes’ he said pointing to the screen. He was like someone who was at last able to introduce the two people he loved most, expecting them to become close friends right away ... ... ‘Look, our lives are based on seeing and being seen ... At first the entries will seem unrelated to each other, but because they all have to do with seeing and being seen, each entry will be secretly linked to another. In this way the Dictionary of Gazes will be like a shaman’s cloak of forty patches and a single thread ...’46 If love is a corset, confining but supporting, the Dictionary of Gazes is a lifework that seeks to recover something of the healing similitudedwelling of the shaman. The cloak of 40 patches and a single thread is a fragile creation. It promises multiplicity plus order and singularity. The Dictionary of Gazes resonates uncannily with Tomkins’s theory of affect, or his shame theory, as he describes it, the effect of the gaze that is so determinably human. The desire to enfold and be enfolded is the desire for love. For Tomkins and for Şafak, for Gurnah and for Özdamar, If you like to be looked at and I like to look at you, we may achieve an enjoyable interpersonal relationship. If you like to talk and I like to listen to you talk, this can be mutually rewarding.

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If you like to feel enclosed within a claustrum and I like to put my arms around you, we can both enjoy a particular kind of embrace.47 Thus Tomkins on the pleasures of enfolding and the claustrum. For the claustrophobic, the all-seeingness of this imagined embrace by the Absolute Subject is horrific. For those who respond with enjoyment to the clutch within the claustrum, and Şafak’s narrator is clearly one of those, the gaze is only hurtful when it is hostile, judging, humiliating. And when she becomes merely material for B-C’s Uber-project, the book of gazes. The book becomes a rival for B-C’s affections, then. She is no longer enfolded by his gaze, or by the corset of love. Her strangeness, her dwarf-loving, her fatness – this is a very Sedgwickian novel – her queerness all fall out, expand, become limitless and non-navigable. Is there a queerness specific to Islam, with its viscerally experienced regime of eternal visibility, divine omniscience, which may or may not translate into divine watchfulness, a kind of theological panopticon? Certainly there is same-sex amorousness in these pages. Beyond this, permutations of gender and sexuality that exceed a hetero/homo dichotomy, that were never produced within such a binary, as Joseph Massad cautions, are common. The shaman and the sable are suggestive of the capaciousness of a Eurasian, as opposed to Euro-American, erotic imaginary. Melancholy incompleteness or lack of fulfilment is also present, promising material for studies of specifically post-Ottoman and Islamic forms of queer melancholia. Having grown up with so many women, it was odd that he had felt so estranged from them all of his life ... ... Now that he had reached middle age, he sometimes wondered if he had ever liked women at all.48 Şafak’s novel The Bastard of Istanbul, her second to be written in English and translated into Turkish, bestselling book in Turkey of 2006 and long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2008, contains such a melancholy

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male figure, Mustafa, who emigrates from Istanbul to Arizona, as Şafak herself once did (she has since returned to Istanbul, now with frequent sojourns in London). This is a novel about reconciliation between past and present, and between Turks and Armenians. Şafak marks the Turkish characters by their historical forgetting, equivalent to the rupture with the Ottoman past that founded the republic. As Andrew Finkel observes, the Ottoman Armenian genocide was an aspect of the new republic’s inheritance so traumatic and shameful that ‘facing the future meant developing collective amnesia’,49 with the result that ‘Turkey’s attitude often seems to be that oblivion, even about one’s own suffering, is the safer course’.50 The Armenian characters, by contrast, are all for remembering, and for making the Turks remember and apologize or otherwise make restitution for the deportations, confiscation of property and genocide that occurred during the last years of the Ottoman regime, in its death throes and bound up with the Great Game of European nation state and imperial rivalries. The feminocentric households that linger on, on both sides, whether in Istanbul or San Francisco, long after the Ottoman past has become but an architectural shadow, still form men who are strangers to themselves as well as to women – the ambiguity of beloveds continues, and violence is always a quick glance, or enfolding gaze, away. Debates about identity share discursive contours even when their proponents may imagine themselves to be at loggerheads. As Meyda Yeğenoğlu observes, taking her cue from Jacques Derrida, ‘European identity needs to be understood as inhabited by its yesterday and tomorrow. This requires the opening of Europe to otherness or responsibility to the other, and a new Europe will emerge precisely in not closing itself off in its own identity but by advancing toward what it is not’.51 So also, Turkish identity needs to be understood as inhabited by its yesterday and tomorrow, its Ottoman past as well as desired future. A new conception of Turkish identity will emerge precisely in the nation’s not closing itself off politically, socially, ethnically or religiously, but by opening itself to otherness and responsibility to the other. Struggles for emancipation in gender and sexuality are grounds for commonality as well as fervent dispute in Europe and America,

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in Turkey, across the Muslim world and beyond. The very shape of these struggles and their persistent imagery tell us something perhaps otherwise elusive about identity formation. One of the signs of the sophistication of Turkey’s postmodernism and engagement with global commodity culture is its interweaving of queer perspectives within the very representation of enfolded subjectivity and panoptical scrutiny, two characteristics of Islamic (and Turkish) identity. Explorations of queer identity in the texts analyzed here, both scholarly and fictional, reveal how, if we wish to contest the antagonism perpetuated by ideologies that proclaim insuperable differences between East and West, we will need to become mindful of these ambiguities as we strive for solidarity in difference. Clearly such debates are of immense importance in Turkish society and struggles for identity today. Working towards a revolutionary politics across any still persisting East–West divide requires questioning our own presumptions, our own certainties about identity and sexuality, opening ourselves to the possibility of different differences, grounded not on identity politics – on rigid notions of being ‘authentically’ Turkish or European or American – but on a different kind of commonalty.

Acknowledgements My thanks to the editors, especially Shane Brennan, for exceptionally helpful advice. My thanks also to Angela McRobbie for permission to reprint from a version of this essay that appeared in Angela McRobbie (ed.), ‘Queer adventures in cultural studies’, special issue of Cultural Studies 25/2 (March 2010), pp. 149–65.

Notes 1. Queerness here is broadly defined as encompassing identities that challenge or refuse heteronormativity. Queerness operates as a critique of ‘straight’ society. The novelist Elif Şafak and the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, for example, count fatness as a form of queerness, as will be analyzed below. Fat women especially are made to feel like violators of gender norms, transgressors of femininity. They are not in their proper place, they exceed the prescribed limits of decorous womanhood. On gender ambiguity and homosexuality in

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2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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a wider-than-Turkish Islamic context, see, for example, Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997); Everett Rowson, ‘The categorization of gender and sexual irregularity in medieval Arab vice lists’, in Kristina Straub and Julia Epstein (eds), Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 50–79; Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi (eds), Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs XXXIX (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008); Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches, Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005). On fascinating conjunctions between gender ambiguity, queer sexualities and popular music in Turkey see Martin Stokes, The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) and The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010). For a trenchant critique of the effectivity of Butler’s focus on performativity and a reassertion of the significance of the real, see Caroline Rooney, Decolonising Gender: Literature and a Poetics of the Real, Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). Haldun Gülalp, ‘Political Islam in Turkey: the rise and fall of the Refah Party’, The Muslim World 89/1 (January 1999), pp. 22–41, p. 24. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005). Joseph A. Massad, Desiring Arabs (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Meltem Ahıska, ‘Occidentalism: the historical fantasy of the modern’, in Sibel Irzık and Güzeldere (eds), ‘Relocating the fault lines: Turkey beyond the East-West divide’, special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly 102/2–3 (Spring/Summer 2003), pp. 351–79. Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, pp. 16–17. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 20. Victoria Rowe Holbrook, The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 22–23. Mahmut Mutman, ‘The nation form’, Third Text 22/1 (January 2008), pp. 5–20, p. 17. Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, p. 21. Ibid., p. 31.

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14. Sibel Irzık, ‘Allegorical lives: the public and the private in the modern Turkish novel’, in Irzık and Güzeldere, ‘Relocating the fault lines’, pp. 551–66. 15. Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd edn (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2004: rpt 2007), p. 285. 16. Esra Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006). 17. Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire 1453–1924 (London: John Murray, 1997). 18. Silvan Tomkins, Shame and its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995). 19. Massad, Desiring Arabs, p. 43. 20. Patai and Hersh quoted ibid., pp. 44–45. 21. Patai quoted ibid., p. 44. 22. See, for example, Valerie Traub, ‘The past is a foreign country? The times and spaces of Islamicate sexuality studies’ and Dina al-Kassim, ‘Epilogue: sexual epistemologies, East in West’, in Babayan and Najmabadi, Islamicate Sexualities, pp. 4–8 and pp. 304–05 respectively. 23. Massad, Desiring Arabs, p. 41. 24. Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, p. 19. 25. Elspeth Probyn, Blush: Faces of Shame (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). 26. Ibid., p. xvi. 27. Jonathan Flatley, Affective Mappinng: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008). 28. Tomkins, Shame and its Sisters, pp. 134–35. 29. Gerald MacLean, Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800 (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 20–23, 189–98. 30. Abdulrazak Gurnah, Memory of Departure (New York: Grove Press, 1987), pp. 24–25. 31. Ibid., p. 22. 32. Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Life Is a Caravanserai – Has Two Doors – I Came in One – I Went Out the Other [1992, 1994], trans. Luise von Flotow (London: Middlesex University Press, 2000), p. 54. 33. Feroz Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity (Oxford: One World, 2003: rpt 2005), p. 167. 34. William Hale, The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 88.

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35. Kerem Öktem, Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989, Global History of the Present Series (London: Zed Books and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2011), p. 47. 36. Emine Sevgi Özdamar, The Bridge of the Golden Horn [1998], trans. Martin Chalmers (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2007), pp. 210–11. 37. Ibid., p. 12. 38. Özdamar, Life Is a Caravanserai, pp. 163–64. 39. Özdamar, Bridge, pp. 17, 21, 25. 40. Andrews and Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, p. 16. 41. Özdamar, Life Is a Caravanserai, p. 131. 42. Elif Şafak, The Gaze [1999], trans. Brendan Freely (London and New York: Marion Boyars, 2006), pp. 210–11, 216–17. 43. Ibid., p. 57. 44. Ibid., p. 230. 45. Ibid., p. 246. 46. Ibid., pp. 90–91. 47. Tomkins, Shame, p. 3. 48. Elif Şafak, The Bastard of Istanbul (New York and London: Viking Penguin, 2007), pp. 45, 292. 49. Andrew Finkel, Turkey: What Everyone Needs To Know (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 182. 50. Ibid. 51. Meyda Yeğenoğlu, Islam, Migrancy, and Hospitality in Europe, Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World (New York and Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 148.

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CHAPTER 10 IDENTIT Y FOR M ATION IN CONTEMPOR ARY TUR KEY: LEGACIES OF A PR E-TUR KISH PAST Stephen Mitchell

The politics of identity from Atatürk to the AK Party Almost a century has passed since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century the Republic of Turkey has developed into a mature state, fusing democratic and authoritarian traditions, highly distinctive in regional and international terms. The founding decades under Atatürk saw nation building conducted in relative isolation, underlined and continued by Turkey’s neutrality in World War II. Integration into international political structures developed slowly during the Cold War years, as Turkey stood on NATO’s front line against the Soviet bloc, but had not yet acquired the networks, know-how or sheer political weight to cut out a place for itself in the world on its own terms. Identity politics were conducted in an overwhelmingly nationalistic mode. Turkey’s survival and success as a modern state seemed to rest directly on its ability to maintain the nationalistic agenda set out by its founder. This insistence on cohesive national unity, to the particular

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disadvantage of ethnic minorities, was a source of strength and weakness at the same time. Emphatic Turkish nationalism reflected the authoritarian powers of the Kemalist state, but was hardly compatible with the dynamic evolution of a Turkish democracy. That evolution has been slow in Turkey. Multi-party elections were only introduced in 1946. Successive military coups between 1960 and 1980 reminded Turkey’s political classes of whatever ideological persuasion that their power was conditional on the support of the army, which acted as the guardian of Atatürk’s revolution. Military and judicial interventions through the 1990s prevented the development of democratic political movements. Since 2001, however, the conditions set for Turkey joining the European Union, and the success of the AKP in building both on Turkey’s democratic institutions and on its own wide popular support base, have marginalized and removed much of the influence of the army and the judiciary, developments that were consolidated constitutionally by the referendum of August 2010. In addition to the political struggles for power that have shaped Turkey’s history since 1980, it has become increasingly clear that its pluralistic, multi-stranded society, with its extraordinarily rich past heritages, the legacy of Ottoman ethnic diversity and the unresolved conflicts of the founding years of the republican revolution, cannot operate on the basis of national totalitarianism indefinitely. The strains have showed in obvious ways: growing demands for Kurdish autonomy; international pressure for Turkey to deal with the historical, but now again contemporary, question of the Armenians; continued tension with Greece, exacerbated above all by the intractable problem of Cyprus; and Turkey’s relationship to the European Union. Turkey’s democratic future, and its status as a substantial world power, will depend on the success with which these challenges can be resolved. The end of the Cold War in the period 1989–90 was the external catalyst for change. Turkey’s position in relation to the former Soviet bloc was redefined with breathtaking rapidity. Istanbul emerged as a dynamic new economic force, the hub of market activity that linked Anatolia and the Near East, the Black Sea region, Russia itself and the countries of eastern Europe, reaching out also towards central Asia and Turkey’s own ethnic roots. The transformation had been fuelled

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not only by the changed global political landscape, but by Turkey’s economic liberalization, which had been kick-started in the late 1980s by Turgut Özal. Since then the trajectory has been stunning, driven by new economic forces and the confidence of a new political class in the country. Turkish entrepreneurs in Istanbul and in the Anatolian centres have become a major regional and international business force. The party politics of republican Turkey have never recovered from the death blow of the 1980 military coup, but the democratic habit has proved stronger than attempts to control or repress it, and after the adventurous political years of the 1990s, a new pattern of government and opposition has emerged, dominated by cultural and religious issues, in particular by disputes about the social role of Islam and, for the moment, by the rise of the AKP. Questions of national identity are now beginning to take different shapes. The former certainties about what it meant to be a Turk no longer correspond to the political reality of Turkey’s emerging form of democracy. While the slogan of the republic, ne mutlu Türküm diyene (Happy is he who says ‘I am a Turk’), remains as ubiquitous as it ever was, it is no longer taboo for a Turkish citizen also to identify as a Kurd, or even as an Armenian. Religious identities are also beginning to be asserted, Christian (at least in the small pockets of residual Christian populations, such as in the Turabdin around Mardin in the south-east) as well as Muslim. Another trend is towards a more emphatic definition of regional identities within the Turkish state. This chapter looks at some examples of identity formation which are beginning to add further differentiation to the former monolith, and in particular it highlights some ways in which the Turkish, or rather the Anatolian, past is being harnessed to forge a nuanced and pluralistic picture of modern Turkishness. It is more or less a starting point in studies of identity to say that it is grounded in memory. Memory, our grasp and understanding of what has already happened or what has been experienced, shapes our perception of the present and gives us a means of placing and defining our position in the world around us. Historical memory is a flexible but highly effective resource in giving us a sense of who we are and why we are important. The other primary tool for creating identities

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is a sharper one: the ability to draw boundaries between ourselves and others, for instance by drawing a line on a map and thus creating a nation state, or by claiming ownership of a resource, which thus becomes ours and not theirs. These are the boundary-making tools which distinguish us, who we are and what we possess, from others. Boundaries, whether understood geographically or metaphorically, serve both to divide us from and to connect us to the environment that surrounds us. So we should think of identity as having two axes: vertical, tapping back into history through memory; and horizontal, defining the boundaries between ourselves and others in the contemporary world. I am concerned with the first axis, the historical perspective accessed through memory. Before embarking on more detail, something must be said about the familiar theoretical complexities of dealing with issues of identity. Identity is a subjective and shifting concept, elusive and hard to define. In particular there is a fundamental distinction to be drawn between an insider’s and an outsider’s view of identity: between what a person considers him- or herself to be, and what others consider that person to be. Thus, also, between what a nation thinks about itself, and the way that its characteristics and identity are construed by other nations. In the case of nations, rather than individuals, there may be substantial political consequences. External characterizations of national or group identities inevitably create stereotypes. They are based on understandings – or more often on misunderstandings – that external observers (who are usually too ill-defined to be called a group themselves) have of another group. This relationship of knowledge is not conducive to producing a nuanced picture: the national identities of groups, as conceived by others, are often reduced to crude and brief characterizations and associations. We are all familiar with this type of identity labelling and stereotyping. It generally leads not to representations but misrepresentations of identity. Such stereotyping is nevertheless important as it tends to create preconceptions even among well-informed outsiders, and underlies much modern international policy making. We need look no further than contemporary European opinion about Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union to find many examples of this.

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However, there is an opposite hazard which is also to be avoided. For some the study of identities has become so cautious and convoluted, and identity claims are so contestable, that virtually nothing can be said that is likely to have any wider political relevance. A pessimistic conclusion might be that we all possess multiple, changing and overlapping identities which simply defy classification and cannot therefore lead to any useful inferences or conclusions. Identity is always elusive. That may be so, but it does not form a reason to downplay the political and social importance of identity formation. In practice, identity politics is always big business in any nation and in any community. Shaping and projecting an identity, even from an insider’s perspective, may be a form of stereotyping too, but it is one that reflects the will and intention of the community.

Historical heritage and the role of archaeology What historical perspectives are available to the citizens of Turkey today to help shape their own image in the modern world? One fundamental and transforming moment in Turkey’s modern history had a critical impact on Turkey’s national memory as a resource for identity formation. This was the law of 1929, central to the Kemalist revolution, to replace the Arabic with the Western Latin script. At one legislative stroke future generations of Turkish citizens, with the exception of a small minority of highly educated academics, lost direct access to the written records of their past. As the old generation which had learned to read in the last 50 years of the Ottoman Empire between 1875 and 1925 died out,1 access to Turkey’s written history up to that point died with them. Ottoman and Seljuk Turkey, to say nothing, of course, of the pre-Turkish cultures, now became known and accessible only through monuments and the visual remains of the material culture; through documents and literary works that had been translated into the modern script; and in a few marginal cases to family traditions.2 The new Turkish Republic was able to work with a cleaner historical slate than revolutionary governments usually enjoy. Modern Turkish historical experience for the majority of the country’s citizens is necessarily shallow. Atatürk and the founding narratives, both mythical

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and historical, of the Turkish revolution and the Turkish Republic are now the beginnings of Turkish history.3 But this is not, of course, the beginning and end of the story of Turkish historical identities. Turkey’s archaeological heritage has always been palpable and accessible for anyone, Turkish or foreign, with eyes to see. Atatürk himself was perfectly aware of this and consciously grasped archaeology as a resource for nation building when, as the anecdote goes, the former school teacher Hamit Zubey Kosay was taken from his desk in the Ministry of Culture and Education, and instructed to dig up the Bronze Age site of Alaca Hüyük in the province of Çorum – a deliberate Turkish counterpart to the worldfamous German excavation at the nearby Hittite capital of Hattuşaş (Bogazköy). The Alaca Höyük excavation produced many spectacular finds, notably the bronze standard mountings which are now among the totemic items in Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilisations.4 The Alaca standards began to be exploited for a new symbolic value, as icons and emblems throughout the capital city Ankara itself. In 1946 the so-called ‘Hittite Sun Disk’ was adopted as the symbol of Ankara University (Illustration 10.1),5 acting as a visual shorthand which expressed a sense that the roots of Turkey’s culture lay not so much in the prehistoric past as such, but in the imperial culture of the Hittites, the first ruling dynasty of Turkey that is known from written documents. Already in the 1930s, a substantial nationalist literature had begun to emerge, speculating among other things that

Illustration 10.1

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Ankara University Logo (sun disc)

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the Hittites, like the Turks themselves, were a people with an origin in Central Asia.6 Another stage in the creation of a Hittite identity for modern Ankara and modern Turkey was the adoption of a different Alaca standard, representing a great antlered stag between two calves, as the model for a sculpture at midway point on the Atatürk Bulvarı, placed on the Sıhhiye roundabout, close to the original buildings of Ankara University and the city’s main hospital (Illustration 10.2). Sometimes known as the Hatti Monument, this marked, in effect, the boundary between the northern, emphatically Turkish quarters of the city, including the Republican government buildings at Ulus, and the bourgeois, Europeanizing southern quarters of the city, which radiated from the commercial centre of Kızılay. The commission for the Sıhhiye roundabout came from Vedat Dalokay, the CHP mayor of Ankara from 1973–77, who was himself one of Turkey’s leading architects. The history of the Sıhhiye monument mirrors the battle for the identity of Ankara which has continued unabated since the 1970s and

Illustration 10.2

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Sihhiye Hatti monument

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is reflected in public buildings. Melih Gökçek, the populist Islamist mayor of Ankara since 1994, has contrived, it appears, to divert so much of the city traffic past the roundabout that the symbolic structure, despite its size, became effectively invisible amid the roar and fumes of vehicles.7 It was during Necmettin Erbakan’s brief period as prime minister in 1996 – his Refah Party formed the first explicitly Islamist government in the history of the Turkish Republic – that the monument was decorously shrouded in drapes so as to negate its implicit secularist message. In the judgement of a young Turkish architectural researcher, these were attempts to render the monument illegible in symbolic terms.8 The controversy has taken a new shape since 2001 with the introduction of a revisionist Islamist symbol to define the city brand of Ankara. This is the not inelegant, but to secularists highly provocative, design of a mosque, whose outline evokes the crescent moon of the Turkish flag, an association reinforced by the stars in the sky above (Illustration 10.3). The mosque’s proportions further recall the largest religious structure in Ankara, the mosque at Kocatepe, which was completed in 1987 to a highly conservative design (Illustration 10.4).9 Indeed the Kocatepe Mosque has not only now provided Ankara with a symbol designed to trump the Hittite Sun Disk and the Hatti monument, but occupies a comparable location to Sıhhiye, dividing proletarian from bourgeois Ankara. The political and social conflict that is being played out in Ankara uses a visual repertoire of symbols drawn from Anatolia’s past, and

Illustration 10.3

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Ankara city symbol

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Ankara Kocatepe mosque

underlines the tension between Turkey’s Islamic and Anatolian identities. In the highly charged context of Turkey’s capital, this emphasizes and focalizes the polarization that is obvious in Turkey’s current politics.

Regional identities Taşköprü The same tools and techniques of representation have been adopted and deployed to create local and regional identities, generally in a less politicized form. The first example of identity formation in one of Turkey’s least prominent regions – the northern province of Kastamonu – offers extraordinary interest to a historian as it demonstrates continuities through an unselfconscious tapping of regional history, which defines the region’s identity in terms that would have been as intelligible in

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antiquity as they are today. Turkey’s past is thus elided into Turkey’s present experience In September 2003, I passed through the small north Anatolian town of Taşköprü (‘Stone-bridge’) in the province of Kastamonu, where posters, in English and Turkish, were still displayed in the restaurants and barbers’ shops advertising their annual festival, the 17th International Festival of Culture and Garlic (Illustration 10.5). The splendid festival poster displays a magnificent, although little-known, ancient monument, a Graeco-Persian rock tomb known as Kale Kapı which overlooks a valley at the nearby village of Donalar/Süleyman Köy.10 This was part of ancient Paphlagonia, one of the more obscure regions of ancient Anatolia, whose history is familiar only to specialized scholars.11 Over the background of the rock tomb the designer has overlaid two further architectural motifs, a row of columns with Corinthian capitals, and a bridge. The latter is precisely the stone bridge, supposedly of thirteenth-century origin but many times restored and rebuilt over the river Gökırmak, which gave Taşköprü its name. The Greek-influenced columns, however, are an intriguing fiction. Taşköprü’s classical antecedent was Roman Pompeiopolis, a city founded by the Roman conqueror Pompey the Great in 63 bce, an archaeological site currently under excavation by a team of German and Turkish archaeologists.12 The discoveries to date have not stretched so far as to produce a wealth of spectacular standing architecture. However, a second Pompeiopolis exists in Turkey, a Mediterranean harbour city close to Mersin, which is widely known for its colonnaded street (sütünlü yol). These have been familiar since they were first illustrated by eighteenth-century European travellers, although the sprawling growth of Mersin has now enveloped the site and led to the destruction of most of the ancient street.13 The Taşköprü poster designer had no hesitation in appropriating the image to provide some substance to the northern city’s classical history. Thus modern Taşköprü has created a historical identity which is grounded in the culture of a forgotten people. The associations with the past are generic and extremely approximate, but in one respect they are tellingly authentic. Beside the classical ruins, the poster for the seventeenth and all the other annual celebrations of Taşköprü’s festival displays

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Taşköprü poster for 17th International Festival of Culture and Garlic

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the region’s most famous product, its garlic. In antiquity Paphlagonia was famous for garlic production – and consumption. The inhabitants were lampooned for smelling of garlic by the Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes in the fifth century bce, and were especially singled out by the second century writer, Lucian of Samosata.14 However, there is one key difference to be drawn between the use of garlic as an identity symbol in the ancient and modern contexts. The Greek writers who mocked the Paphlagonians for their fondness for garlic were imposing an external view of their identity, creating a stereotype that was intended to denigrate them as foolish and uncivilized rustics. The modern inhabitants of Taşköprü, in no doubt about the value and significance of their product, are happy to boast that their garlic is the best in the world. The harvest festival is promoted precisely with the intention of putting their small town on the international map.

Regional identities Modern Adıyaman and ancient Commagene My second regional example also stems from a regional festival, but one whose context is more familiar both inside and beyond Turkey. The provincial capital of Adıyaman and its satellite town Kahta are located in the ancient region of Commagene, on the west bank of the Euphrates (Fırat) river in southeast Turkey. The region is famous for one of the most spectacular monuments of the Near East, the mountainpeak sanctuary of Nemrut Dağı, a deserved magnet for tourism and since 1987 one of Turkey’s few world heritage sites.15 The civic authorities of Kahta and, more recently, the University of Adıyaman, have taken advantage of the spectacular ancient site to generate their own celebration of local identity.16 In June 2010, an academic symposium about ancient Commagene, the I. Uluslararası Kommagene Kültür, Sanat ve Turizm Sempozyomu, was organized in the context of an annual festival held at Kahta, the Kahta Kommagene Festivalı (Illustration 10.6). These events utilized the memory of ancient Commagene to establish the prestige of Adıyaman and Kahta, and their aspiration to international recognition. Greek cities of the later Roman Empire in

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Poster for the 1st International Commagene Symposium of Culture, Art and Tourism, June 2010

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Anatolia did exactly the same thing, when they founded and celebrated local festivals, with athletic contests and musical competitions, but claimed, with imperial permission, the additional title ‘oikoumenikos’ (worldwide), thus transforming their identity from the parochial to something that was internationally recognisable and recognized.17 However, in this case, the identification with the past has a much more important and pervasive significance, with important implications for contemporary identity politics.18 In 2010, the festival proper, which was to have included musical events, folk dancing, communal partying and fireworks, was cancelled at very short notice by the Kaymakam and Belediye Başkanı at Kahta, surely acting on central government instructions, because it was deemed inappropriate to be celebrating during a week when Turkey was officially mourning the deaths of 11 soldiers who had died in a shoot-out with PKK rebels near Şemdimli in Hakkari province on 19 June 2010. The academic symposium, however, ran on schedule between 24 and 27 June, and thus served as the focal point of the week’s events. In fact it is clear that the symposium was already designed to promote regional solidarity and identity to a significant degree, and the political atmosphere created by the incident in Hakkari gave it a greater significance than had originally been anticipated. This proved possible because the educated modern public of Adıyaman is able to draw on some authentic understanding of the region’s history in classical times. Thanks to long inscriptions that have been found on the Commagene sites modern scholarship is unusually well informed about the religious politics and ideology which was developed by the most successful king of ancient Commagene, Antiochus I (69–36 bce). Commagene lay at the frontier between the ancient Iranian world to the East and the Graeco-Roman world, now part of the Roman Empire to the west. Antiochus’ religious policy was to promote and organize elaborate and all-embracing public cults for a mixed pantheon of Iranian and Greek divinities. Politically he courted the friendship of both the Parthian Empire to the East and the Roman Empire to the West. This strategy was blessed by good fortune, which he readily acknowledged and attributed to the benign favour shown by the gods whom his people

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worshipped. Turkish translations of the texts which provide us with this understanding of Commagene were first published in 1998 and at least in summary form now provide a basis for local understanding of Adıyaman’s past.19 They have also, as the 2010 symposium demonstrated, provided a model for contemporary cultural politics based on Adıyaman’s sense of its regional identity within modern Turkey. Antiochus I begins the great inscription as follows: I have come to believe that, for mankind, of all good things piety is both the most secure possession and also the sweetest enjoyment. This judgment became, for me, the cause of fortunate power and its blessed use; and during my whole life I have appeared to all men as one who thought holiness the most secure guardian and the unrivalled delight of my kingdom. By this means I have, contrary to all expectations, escaped great perils, have easily become master of hopeless situations, and in a blessed way have attained to the fullness of a long life. After taking over my father’s dominion, I announced, in the piety of my thought, that the kingdom subject to my throne should be the common dwelling place of all the gods, in that by means of every kind of art I decorated the representations of their form, as the ancient lore of Persians and of Greeks – the fortunate roots of my ancestry – had handed them down to us, and honoured them with sacrifices and festivals, as was the primitive rule and the common custom of all mankind; in addition my own just consideration has further devised still other and especially brilliant honours. And the text concludes with a sacred law, binding his people to observe the cultic regime that he created for Commagene: A noble example of piety, which it is a matter of sacred duty to offer to gods and ancestors, I have set before the eyes of my children and grandchildren, as through many other actions, so too through this work; and I believe that they will emulate this fair example by continually increasing the honours appropriate

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to their line and, like me, in their riper years adding greatly to their personal fame. For those who do so I pray that all the ancestral gods, from Persia and Macedonia and from the native hearth of Commagene, may continue to be gracious to them in all clemency. And whoever, in the long time to come, takes over this reign as king or dynast, may he, if he observes this law and guards my honour, enjoy, through my intercession, the favour of the deified ancestors and all the gods. But if he, in his folly of mind, undertakes measures contrary to the honour of the gods, may he, even without my curse, suffer the full wrath of the gods. The text now resonates in the local politics of Adıyaman. Adıyaman province is something of a Cinderella region in Turkey. It only became a self-governing vilayet, independent of Kahramanmaraş, in 1954. Historically it cannot boast the heroic revolutionary credentials of its neighbours Şanlıurfa (Glorious Urfa), Gaziantep (Veteran Warrior Antep) and Kahramanmaraş (Hero Maraş), which earned their victory titles for their resistance against non-Turkish forces in the Independence War of 1919–21.20 Adıyaman therefore needs to assert its claim to equal status with its more famous neighbours, while at the same time promoting its distinctiveness as a centre of tourism and as a location for effective and dynamic business activity. It also seeks to establish its own ethos. The university, founded and generously funded by the central government on the initiative of the ruling AKP party in 2006, clearly has a role to play as a catalyst both for economic and cultural development and for creating a sense of Adıyaman’s regional identity. One strategy is to hold international conferences. In 2008, a young member of the faculty of religion, Mustafa Çevik, undertook to organize and publish the proceedings of a conference on Lucian of Samosata, the most famous Greek writer of the region, whose works, as it happens, are an important focus for modern scholars working on questions of cultural identity under the Roman Empire. The proceedings of that conference included significant papers by leading European and American scholars, as well as by representatives of the new generation

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of Turkish academics, and were in print within a year.21 Another conference, restricted to Turkish participants, entitled ‘Güneşe Doğru’ (‘Towards the Sun’), was held in 2009 and the proceedings published in time for copies to be presented to participants in the 2010 meeting. This was almost exclusively focused on issues concerning contemporary Adıyaman, although the Classical past finds a place in the form of one excellent scholarly paper by the Turkish ancient historian Muzaffer Demir.22 The 2010 Symposium (1. Uluslararası Kommagene Kültür, Sanat ve Turizm Sempozyomu) had as its main aim the finding of continuities between antiquity and the present day, thus identifying the roots of modern Adıyaman in ancient Commagene. To some extent the exercise, at least in the execution, was spurious, and several papers hardly corresponded to the agenda. A local journalist and writer, Mahmut Arslan, was contemptuous of the way that some contributors freeloaded irrelevant topics.23 He was also highly critical of the team responsible for creating and documenting activity in the Nemrut Dağı National Park, which allegedly involved supplying spurious visitor numbers, thus disguising the fact that attempts to boost tourism in the park and visits to its monuments have not been as successful as they should be. He himself, however, is one of the main local intellectuals who has created a better understanding among his contemporaries of Adıyaman’s past. He has written booklets about Nemrut Dağı, and is also the writer of a theatre piece, which is essentially a declamation of a Turkish translation of the sacred law of Antiochus I, king of Commagene 72–36 bce, which was carved on the bases of the famous Nemrut Dağı sculptures.24 However, in broad terms the project to annex ancient Commagene as a forerunner of modern Adıyaman was not unsuccessful. The personnel that headed the Symposium were an impressive group. The university rector, Professor Dr Mustafa Gündüz, an energetic man in his mid-40s, had been sent here as the university’s founding rector, a political appointment by the AKP and, already in the saddle as a driving force in the city and province, imposed his personality on the whole event, both by working the room in the breaks between sessions and by impressive chairmanship, especially in the concluding

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session when a line-up of largely political speakers was handled with tact and authority.25 Ramazan Sodan, the Vali (provincial governor) of Adıyaman, appeared only for the first morning and made little impression. However, the mayor of Kahta, hailing from a local business background, was always present, and the youthful kaymakam (district governor) of Kahta, Coşkun Açık, an highly educated man of about 30, provided thoughtful and helpful introductions to the speakers in the main historical section, specifically summarizing the speakers’ conclusions and emphasizing their interest for a contemporary audience. A leading light was Nevzat Baykan, an Adıyamanlı by birth, now General Director of the Istanbul Chamber of Culture and a substantial figure in the Istanbul establishment. As a local man who had made an extremely successful career in cultural politics, he was deferred to as a role model by political and academic figures alike. He presented the argument that Adıyaman, on the boundary between west and east within Turkey offered, literally, a rainbow coalition of Kurds, Suryanis, Turks, Cherkessians, Laz and Turkmen peoples, a cultural blend that represented an important example to all of Turkey.26 The final session was addressed by one of Adana’s parliamentary representatives, another Adıyamanlı, Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat. Until recently, when his star has been in eclipse, partly as a result of involvement in corruption scandals, he was a leading light in the AKP. His particular importance as a major political figure in Turkish public life is that he is a Kurd and has played an important role as a go-between in negotiations between the Turkish government and the PKK. This role mapped exactly on to the main conference agenda. Although the advertised subject of the symposium was ancient Commagene, it became clear that the main issues of the conference were directly relevant to modern politics in Adıyaman. The first message was that the people and public figures of Adıyaman must pull together, if the province is to make economic headway, promote and sell its agricultural products, develop its tourism and attractiveness to investors and become a cultural centre. These topics occupied the section of the Symposium devoted to tourism and business. Apart from the academic lectures, this was animated by a passionate speech from a local businessman, whose message was that he was prepared to

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work with anyone and everyone in order to get his sleepy province on the move. The second symposium message was to promote integration and reconciliation within the population of Adıyaman, appealing to and bringing together its diverse population of Turks, Kurds and Arabs, Moslems and Christians – peace and internal harmony being the keys to prosperity. It is increasingly evident from the emerging trends of Turkish state policy that this admirable drive to achieve multicultural cooperation maps closely onto AKP politics.27 It also serves as a strategy to distinguish Adıyaman from the larger and more famous neighbouring provinces, and in particular from Diyarbakır, its eastern neighbour, where Kurdish nationalism, in all its forms, is particularly strong. This message which was explicit in several of the speeches, especially in the final session, was conveyed most eloquently by a local journalist, Mehmet Metiner, whose message was, ‘I am a Kurd, but I do not feel either Kurdish or Turkish. These are not alternatives but are combined, especially in those many of us who were born in this province (of Adıyaman)’. This was clearly and overwhelmingly the main political message that the symposium was designed to formulate. Religious politics played a secondary but not insignificant role. The political allegiance of almost all the major figures at the occasion was AKP. No alcohol was on view throughout the occasion. The Islamic agenda was muted, but deliberately kept in the picture, as in the paper given by Yr. Doc. Dr Fuat Şanci, about ‘The Islamic monuments of Commagene’, a survey of the not very numerous or notable Ottoman mosques of the region. Many of the important mosques of the region are at Besni, a city on the main road between Adıyaman and Gaziantep which has a large Arab minority in its population. Another indication of this Islamic emphasis is the prominence given in local tourist publicity to the burial places (türbeler) of Islamic holy men, although most of these are inconspicuous and unremarkable structures even after restoration.28 However, faith tourism is now one of the big themes of the Turkish tourism industry. This has provided some hope and protection for Christian monuments, but also underlies the well-funded promotion of Turkey’s Islamic architectural heritage. The touristic signs are

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identical to those that point to the rightly famous remains of ancient Commagene: the royal burial tumulus and commemorative columns at Karakuş, the cultic capital of the kingdom of Commagene at Arsameia on the Nymphaeus, the magnificent Roman bridge at Cendere Köprü and Nemrut Dağı itself. Nemrut Dağı has had its own share of religious controversy in recent years. Between 1997 and 2004, when the local provincial government had strong religious leanings, many of the Nemrut Dağı reliefs, including the famous lion horoscope stone, were removed from view, and other statues of gods and members of the Commagenian royal family were pushed over, causing some minor damage, although they have now been mostly restored to their original locations. So the cultic aspects of Commagene still cause contention. It must be said that the cult itself lives on. Local understanding of Nemrut Dağı is that it should be visited at sunrise or sunset because the holy place is marked by the risings and settings of the sun, its cosmic significance as demonstrated by the horoscope. Strikingly the Adana parliamentarian Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat suggested that the next annual Commegene Symposium in 2011 (planning for which was to begin immediately after this first event was over) should be celebrated not on 24–25 June, but in the month following, on 7 July, the day in 62 bce when, according to the lion horoscope, Antiochus I, the king responsible for the Nemrut Dağı monuments, was acknowledged for the first time as God-King of ancient Commagene. The sense that the cult itself had been revived was enhanced by another event, a fashion show of male and female costumes (the term seems more appropriate than male and female clothing), which were designed and modelled by students from Istanbul Aydın University, in which the young students walked the catwalk in lavish but ugly robes, largely made from felt. This was staged on the east terrace of Nemrut Dağı itself, accompanied by a reading of a description of the ancient ruins, of the achievements of Antiochus I, the significance of the sun and other aspects of the site. This self-conscious staging reinforced the sense of a cultic occasion. The writings of Antiochus I, accessible in bowdlerized summaries of Şahin’s scholarly translation, make possible a cultic revival that has some genuine connection to the ancient ideology. The material

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evidence of the monumental sculptures on Nemrut Dağı and along the processional way at Arsameia on the Nymphaeus provide inspiration for designers of costumes, touristic replicas, posters and other paraphernalia. The significance of these goes far beyond attracting tourists to the region and is a pervasive iconographic theme of regional life. Moreover, ancient Commagene provides another less obvious but more important theme for the modern cultural festival, in that it has provided a template for the creation of a modern social and political identity. Professional Turkish scholars (and their counterparts outside Turkey) have already recognized that the particular and distinctive achievement of Antiochus I rested principally on two achievements, whose consequences can be seen in the imposing material remains of ancient Commagene. First, he created a top-down religious system explicitly based on a mixture of Greek and Persian cults. Second, he was able to avoid war and maintain peace with both his immediate neighbours and the great powers of Rome to the West and Persia to the East, despite occupying a key position on the frontier zone between them. Indeed, he was able to profit from, rather than suffer the consequences of occupying the critical crossing point of the Euphrates at Zeugma. This, as it happened, was the theme of my own lecture to the 2010 symposium, which was designed to explain Commagene’s extraordinary good fortune and prosperity between c.100 bce and the moment in ce 72 when it became part of the Roman Empire. The kaymakam of Kahta, who chaired this session of the symposium, summarized my lecture by making explicit the link between the achievements of Antiochus I, who managed to profit from being friends with both the Romans and the Parthians, and that of Adıyaman, which was able to achieve a fruitful compromise between Turkish nationalism and Kurdish aspirations. Regional identities are important in modern Turkey, although often overlooked by commentators who focus on the national or metropolitan picture. Adıyaman is carving out its own profile in a distinctive geographical niche. To the north-west is the AKP stronghold of Kayseri, the heartland of the ‘Anatolian Tigers’, the Islamist business class, whose aspirations and ideals are embodied in the current Turkish president Abdullah Gül. To the east is a city that is sometimes characterized as the legitimate capital of a ‘Kurdish state’, the dynamic and

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turbulent city of Diyarbakır. Adıyaman’s south-eastern neighbour is the still more ancient city of Şanlıurfa, home to a very mixed population of Turkish, Kurdish and Arab origin. Significantly in recent years it has been the only provincial capital in Turkey to elect a mayor with no party affiliation, most recently in the elections at the end of March 2009. Ancient Urfa – Edessa – was an independent kingdom on the frontier of Rome and Persia throughout later antiquity, the centre of a thriving local culture and of Syriac Christianity. Ancient Commagene has supplied Adıyaman with an important example that has resonated in contemporary local (and national) politics. The theme of reconciliation and co-existence was taken up in two other symbolic events. The final words of the Symposium, at the spontaneous invitation of the Rector of Adıyaman University, were spoken by the leader of the province’s tiny Christian minority, the metropolitan of the Syriac Church Melki Ürek.29 The bishop, who originates in the Syriac monastic community of Mardin, crossed himself and blessed the auditorium with a short Aramaic prayer, before giving a three-minute speech of thanks to the organizers of the symposium in Turkish. The final event was held on Nemrut Dağı itself, as the sun began to set after the end of the fashion parade. Readings of their own work by two local poets from Adıyaman were followed by recitations of favourite poems by the leading attendees of the symposium, all done with excellent ‘miking’, and with real passion and feeling. Most of the pieces chosen were about nature, the sun and the land, interspersed with poems about love and personal feelings. None had a religious or political content. After this contemplative, peaceful and profoundly uncontroversial ending, the participants stumbled down the stony pathway back to the waiting minibuses that would run them back to Kahta. All attended a fish supper at a popular local restaurant, the Nesrettin Yeri by the Kahta lake: very democratic and moderate: no alcohol, no hierarchy, no speech making. Turkey faces a deeply uncertain future. Its position as an increasingly self-confident middle-ranking world power can only be sustained by internal national coherence and stability. But stability is undermined by the tension between authoritarianism and democratic aspirations, which is palpable in every aspect of Turkish life, and especially in the

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growing cultural divide between secularists and Islamists. The danger that Turkey’s energies will be consumed by this latent conflict is very substantial. Regional culture, however, and regional politics offer some relief from this dangerous polarization. As an outsider and privileged observer at an absorbingly interesting gathering, I was left with the hope that a sense of its ancient history had provided the prominent members of Adıyaman’s community – politicians, academics, businessmen, journalists and cultural figures – with tools for creating a consensual harmony, which could make something exceptional out of this conservative and unremarkable region of south-east Turkey.

Notes 1. Ben Fortna, Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic (London: Palgrave, 2010). 2. Laurent Mignon, ‘The literati and the letters: a few words on the Turkish alphabet reform’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland (Third Series) 20/1 (2009), pp. 11–24. 3. It is telling that a museum that incorporates precisely this authorized version of the founding narrative of the Turkish Republic has been created literally beneath the foundations of Atatürk’s Mausoleum at Ankara. 4. H.Z. Kosay, Ausgrabungen von Alaca Höyük: ein Vorbericht über die im Auftrage der Türkischen Geschichtskommission im Sommer 1936 durchgeführten Forschungen und Entdeckungen (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari 2a, 1944). 5. See http://en.ankara.edu.tr/about/profile-history/the-sun-disc. 6. Wendy M.K. Shaw, ‘Whose Hittites, and why? Language, archaeology and the quest for the original Turks’, in Michael L. Galaty and Charles Watkinson (eds), Archaeology Under Dictatorship (New York: Springer Link, 2004), pp. 131–53. 7. Traffic routing is a major focus of controversy in the political struggle between the Ankara mayor and his opponents. 8. B.S. Ezgi Sarıtaş, ‘A semantic approach to the city: three urban symbols in Ankara’, First International Conference of Young Urban Researchers (FICYUrb), Lisbon, 11–12 June 1997 (http://conferencias.iscte.pt/viewabstract.php?id=12&cf=3). 9. The project, whose origins date back to 1944, was always controversial. Significantly, the eventual design replaced a modernistic design by Vedat Dalokay, the mayor of Ankara responsible for commissioning the Sıhhiye sculpture.

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10. See the illustrations in C. Marek, Stadt, Ära und Territorium in PontusBithynia und Nord-Galatia (Wasmuth: Tübingen, 1993), pl. 40–41. Some excellent colour images at http://romeartlover.tripod.com/Taskopru.html. 11. S. Mitchell, ‘The Ionians of Paphlagonia’, in T. Whitmarsh (ed.), Microidentities and Local Knowledge in the Imperial Greek World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 86–110. 12. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeiopolis. 13. A. Bindokat-Peschlow, ‘Zur Säulenstrasse von Pompeiopolis in Kilikien’, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 25 (1975), pp. 373–91. 14. The passages are discussed in Mitchell, ‘The Ionians of Paphlagonia’, pp. 88–89. 15. For these see the discussion of N.Z. Gülersoy and Z. Günay, ‘Cultural heritage and intercultural dialogue in the Black Sea region’, in G. Erkut and S. Mitchell (eds), The Black Sea. Past, Present and Future (London: British Institute at Ankara Monograph 42, 2007), pp. 145–57. This chapter advocates the significance of historic sites and monuments both in creating regional identities and in supporting transnational intercultural dialogue within the modern Black Sea area. 16. Private entrepreneurs have done the same. Businesses locally and all over Turkey have taken the name Nemrut to annex the glamour of the statues on the mountain. 17. S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 217–25. 18. I attended the Symposium as one of two overseas, non-Turkish, speakers. The other, in the event, was unable to attend. Another, Turkish, speaker at the conference was a Professor of Tourism from the University of Delaware, USA. 19. S. Şahin, ‘Nemrut Dağ Tapınak Mezarındaki Büyük Kült Yazıtı Çevirisi’, in N. Başgelen (ed.), Tanrılar Dağı Nemrut (Istanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayınları, 1998), pp. 31–35. The only published full English translation of the long text on Nemrut Dağı seems to be on the website of the International Nermud Foundation, a Dutch organization that has contributed to the restoration of the monuments, http://www.nemrud.nl/. 20. Significantly, one of the lectures in the historical section of the symposium was a painstaking account of the career of the Adıyaman parliamentary representative and loyal Kemalist in the 1919–23 period. 21. M. Çevik (ed.), Uluslararası Samsatlı Lucianus Sempozyomu, 17–19 Ekim 2008 (Adıyaman Üniversitesi Yayın no. 2, Adıyaman 2009). M. Çevik also contributed a paper on Lucian to the 2010 Commagene conference. 22. Muzaffer Demir, ‘IV Antiochos dönemi öncesi ve sırasında RomaKommagene arasındaki siyasi ilişkiler: Yeni bir gözden geçirme’ in Said Öztürk and Yusuf Tosun (eds), Güneşe Doğru (Istanbul, 2010).

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23. Notably a lecture on the mosques of Adıyaman province and the presentation of the achievements of the Adıyaman Milletvekili (M.P.), 1919–23. 24. Based on the first Turkish version of this inscription, by Şahin, ‘Nemrut Dağı Tapınak Mezarındaki Büyük Kült Yazıtı Çevirisi’. 25. For an official report, referring to the contributions of the Rector, the Vali of the province, and the General Director of the Istanbul Chamber of Culture, see the summary at http://www.adiyaman.edu.tr/gunluk/?p=5819. 26. His speech is summarized in the report at http://www.sondakika.com/ haber-kommagene-festivali-nde-adiyaman-in-tarih-ve-2121508. 27. A full analysis is out of place here. Note the huge state investment since c. 2003 in the cities of southeast Turkey, with their predominantly Kurdish populations; the creation of the new multicultural university at Mardin, designed to be a cultural beacon for the far southeast and neighbouring regions; the decision not only to allow but to promote the use of Kurdish as a language of instruction in this and other universities. Also the permission granted to Armenians to celebrate Easter Mass at the most famous and beautiful church of Eastern Turkey, on the island of Ahtamar in Lake Van. 28. Brown road signs, distinguishing places worth the attention of tourists and visitors, have been set up to all these minor sites. 29. He was appointed in 2006, the same year as the foundation of Adıyaman University. For the situation of the church exactly at the time of the Symposium, see the article in the English language on-line version of Hürriyet: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=adiyaman-assyrianorthodox-metropolitan-church-granted-renovation-permit-2010–06–30.

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CHAPTER 11 INVISIBLE CHANGE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL PR ACTICES IN TUR KEY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM Deniz Burcu Erciyas

Archaeological practice in Turkey has mainly been limited to excavations and publication of finds as catalogues without necessarily questioning why and how we do archaeology.1 Neither education in archaeology nor the socio-political context in which archaeology was, and is, performed has been truly questioned until recently. But in the past decade or so there has been an awakening that has led to a greater awareness of contemporary approaches and technologies. Scholars in Turkey have begun to discuss the past and future of the field of archaeology, although still in a more or less descriptive manner. In most of the publications on the subject the development of archaeology in Turkey is discussed in a superficial way by going through the historiography of museology and excavations while emphasizing the role of pioneers in Turkish archaeology.2 More critical topics such as ethnicity, ideology, nationalism and politics have scarcely been touched upon, although a small number of more provocative articles have appeared in the past few years; in these the authors challenge our understanding of the past and of our relations with our neighbours in the light of how

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we perceive ourselves and each other and Europe’s role in determining how we need to conduct research.3 In this chapter the aim is to move away from discussions of the historical development of the field of archaeology in Turkey and of the role of Atatürk and Europe in shaping our approaches to our identity through archaeology;4 instead, the changing research and education strategies in archaeology in the last decade, the shifting balances between foreign and Turkish research institutes, the state’s role in the conduct of archaeological projects and the increasing number of publications in the Turkish language are considered. The research done for this chapter was designed to capture possible relations between the changing political environment in Turkey in the last 20 years and archaeological practice in this same period. Since changes in the former included a renewed focus on Islamic identities and morality as well as strong nationalistic discourses, the study of archaeological remains and policies concerning their preservation and presentation were expected to have been affected as well. The study verified that the Turkish state has a strong presence in the formulation of policies regarding cultural heritage, therefore changing political views can and do have an effect on the decision making process. Notably, these are especially visible in restoration projects. Scientific studies in the fields of archaeology and art history were also affected by politics as evinced by the increasing number of archaeological projects in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods. On the other hand, the observation on the rising popularity of Byzantine studies demonstrated that the cultural diversity in Turkey does not allow for just one (narrow) approach to heritage and therefore, when assessing the developments regarding archaeology, history and politics, one should see Turkey within its larger geographical, political and historical context.

The legal framework In the Turkish law on Preservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (2863), passed in 1983, Article 5 reads: All movable and immovable cultural and natural property that needs to be conserved and is found or to be found on property

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belonging to the state, public institutions, private institutions or individuals is considered state property. The definition of cultural property is given in Article 3A.1 of the law: ‘all movable and immovable, above or underground or underwater, that belongs to the prehistoric and historic periods and relates to science, culture, religion and fine arts’. According to these articles the Turkish state owns all cultural property unearthed in Turkey and controls the preservation and study, including publications, of related materials. Parallel to this, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is responsible for issuing permits for archaeological research, including excavations and surveys. Therefore, every year, every archaeologist, whether Turkish or foreigner, must apply to the Ministry for a new permit or a renewal of their existing permit. In this application, a study plan, time schedule and a list of experts and team members are required. During the excavations and surveys a Ministry representative accompanies the archaeological team in order to control the fieldwork and report to the Ministry. All of the finds are taken to the local museum, although some remain in local storage, a depot sealed by the Ministry representative and the local museum director at the end of every field season. Then every year in May, each researcher is invited to present the previous year’s results at an international conference organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. While this is an invaluable chance for all archaeologists, art historians, historians and geo-archaeologists, among others, working in Turkey to come together and share results, this is also an obligation which is taken seriously by the Ministry. Both the law and the procedures explained above bring out the nature of the relationship between scientific study in archaeology and the state. The recent trend has been towards more regulation. A new set of rules from the Directorate of Monuments and Museums now requires both Turkish and foreign archaeology teams to have much longer field seasons (no less than two months of excavation), obliges the team to have an assistant director at least with a PhD in archaeology, anthropology or art history and gives the Ministry of

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Culture and Tourism site representative more authority. For both the Turkish and the foreign teams this assistant director has to be Turkish. Furthermore, the teams are asked to present their budget in detail. These recent developments are considered by many to be restrictive and will likely cause some teams to stop fieldwork. However, there has been no collective reaction to these new regulations due to the danger of termination of excavations or surveys by the Ministry. The tense relationship between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and archaeologists is discussed further in the last section. Notably, in spite of the bureaucratic difficulties of fieldwork in Turkey, there has been a constant increase in the number of excavations and surveys through the years: not only the number but the variety of studies, especially in terms of chronology, have increased.

Archaeological investigations in numbers To return to the international conference on annual archaeology work in Turkey referred to previously, the proceedings are published in the May of the following year and these then constitute a record of the extent and range of the studies conducted in the fields of archaeology, art history and related disciplines. In an attempt to explain changing research strategies in the past decades, it seemed to me that a quantitative analysis of these papers was most appropriate. In order to do that I have examined the proceedings volumes from 1999–2009. Both excavations and surveys were taken into consideration, with the aim of demonstrating changing approaches to archaeology quantitatively and to strengthen the discussion about these changes as a whole. Specific groups, based primarily on chronology but also taking into account culture, were identified. For example, the Byzantine and Turkish/ Seljuk/Ottoman periods were deliberately kept separate although chronologically they partially overlap. The aim was to reveal possible changes in intentional choices made by scholars based on broad ideological trends, although in most cases these choices were known to have been based on scholarly interest. Prior to evaluation of the publications, my expectation was to see an increasing number of studies in the Turkish/Islamic periods, this

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reflecting the increase in the popularity of the Ottoman period in contemporary art, literature, culture and in general scientific studies; for instance there are novels by Elif Şafak (Aşk, 2009), Orhan Pamuk (Benim Adım Kırmızı, 2009) and I.O. Anar (Puslu Kıtalar Atlası, 2004) which incorporate as main themes the cultural and social histories of the Ottoman period. This popularity should be understood in the context of the leadership of the ruling conservative party (AKP) in Turkey, the interests of which intersect with the nationalistic right. This broad intersection has enabled shared interests and greatly facilitated their expression in the cultural realm. Contrary to the current political environment, an increasing number of studies on the Byzantine period were also expected as the study of the Byzantine Empire internationally has grown markedly in recent years.5 The reasons for this are of course various, but the increasing significance of Istanbul as a European city may well have contributed to it.6 Scholarly trends should not be overlooked either; in general, there appears to be a tendency towards interest in and study of previously neglected areas (an example is the increasing number of research projects in and publications regarding the Black Sea region). As for prehistory (Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages) and the Classical period (encompassing Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman eras), no really sound predictions could be made: they were both popular and so might be expected to remain so. An examination of the publications indicated that archaeological research in Turkey increased substantially in general terms between 1999 and 2009. Excavations especially at Chalcolithic, Iron Age, Byzantine and Turkish/Islamic sites increased considerably during that period. Among these, the number of Byzantine excavations increased from ten in 1999 to 25 in 2009 and the Turkish/Islamic period excavations (Seljuk and Ottoman) increased from six excavations in 1999 to 23 in 2009 (see Figures 11.1–2). The number of excavations at Bronze Age and Classical sites also increased, but more steadily. Palaeolithic excavations carried out exclusively by anthropologists remained constant, so indicating limited popularity in general.

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Figure 11.1 Number of archaeological excavations in Turkey by period between 1999–2009 (categories are shown from top to bottom in the graph)

Figure 11.2

Number of Byzantine and Turkish/Islamic excavations in Turkey between 1999–2009

In survey projects during the time span under review here (1999– 2010) all groups demonstrated a stable state (Figure 11.3). The Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods were rarely studied through surveys while the Chalcolithic period began to receive some attention after 2005: until then, there were no survey projects dedicated to this period.

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Number of surveys by period between 1999–2009

Number of Byzantine and Turkish/Islamic surveys between 1999–2010

The Iron Age also remained stable while Bronze Age and Classical period surveys almost doubled. Between 1999 and 2010 surveys which concentrated on the Turkish/Islamic period were few (ten at most) while the Byzantine period gained popularity, this demonstrated by the almost doubling of research project numbers (Figure 11.4). In the case of the surveys it is difficult to make broad generalizations but the

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increasing number of Byzantine surveys is consistent with the rise in interest internationally in the discipline as a whole. In the hope of revealing a more meaningful pattern, especially for the study of the Anatolian Middle Ages, I also examined the reports from 1991. In summary, there seems to have been only one Byzantine period excavation in 1991, this number rising to 25 in 2009, while Turkish/Seljuk/Ottoman period excavations increased from five to 23 between 1991 and 2009. In surveys, the Turkish/Seljuk/Ottoman group indicated an increase, from one project in 1991 to eight in 2010, while the Byzantine group also increased: from four projects in 1991 to 17 in 2010. A consideration of the publications of archaeological studies between 1999 and 2010 complemented by a look at 1991 shows that the number of archaeological investigations in Turkey have increased in general. For most periods this increase has been gradual. A more noticeable increase stood out for two periods: the Byzantine and Turkish/Seljuk/Ottoman periods. The main leap in Turkish Islamic excavations was observed in 2007, an increase which seems to coincide with the second electoral term of the AKP. While an emphasis on Turkish Islamic studies can be attributed to the accentuated presence of the ruling party for a second term with an increased vote-share, a similar increase in excavations of the Byzantine period calls for a more cautious approach. Overall, the results of the study of publications met the expectations set out above. Archaeological investigations increased for various reasons, perhaps principal among them an increase in the money allocated to fieldwork by the government on the one hand, and on the other the increase in the number of archaeologists in Turkey, this a result of new archaeology departments opening in new universities. The growth in particular areas of study may have various reasons, among which are the prevailing political environment, scholarly interest, popular interest and, notably, a renewed search for identity within society and the state. There is no doubt that there is a stronger focus on the Islamic and Turkic past nowadays. The Turkish Republic has changed dramatically since 1923, as has the way in which it is perceived at home and abroad. The Kemalist search for a common

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past preceding the Ottoman rule has been replaced by a past understood within the more narrow parameters of the Islamic world. Today’s expectation by the centre that a strong emphasis on a single religion can unify and bring together people of different backgrounds and outlooks is likely to remain a delusion.

Infrastructural changes In addition to an increase in archaeological research in the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in the number of archaeology departments in Turkish universities. In fact, there has been a notable increase in the number of both state and privately owned universities in Turkey since the 1990s. In 1970 there were just eight universities in Turkey, in 1980 there were 19, in 1990, 29, in 2000, 73 and by 2012 the number had risen to 188. Among these universities there are 37 archaeology and five anthropology departments. The education quality in these departments is variable and in more than half of the cases the faculty is composed of just one or two assistant professors with a few research assistants. While the number of departments does matter, what is in fact most important is the education style. In Turkey, archaeology is generally taught from a ‘culture-historical’ perspective. The study of material culture tends to be over-emphasized while the conceptual framework is mostly absent in classes, theses and archaeological projects alike. The reasons for this are diverse but we can say that an important reason lies in the very beginnings of archaeology in Turkey when German scholars fleeing the Nazi regime during World War II established many of the departments.7 In the 1930s, classification, typology and chronology were the keywords for archaeology and the presentation of the material culture without discussion of why and how these remains represented human life formed the basis of archaeological discussion. Once established, the style remained unchanged for many decades. A critique of discoveries is still missing in many projects and studies, but contemporary methods such as the application of GIS, geophysical prospection and remote sensing have begun to be employed. Moreover, interdisciplinary work, including environmental studies, is now carried out more often.

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While the annual symposium organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has had a very important role in increasing the popularity of contemporary techniques among archaeological projects, the newly established institutes that focus on the study of cultural heritage in Turkey have also had a major impact. The AKMED Suna-Inan Kıraç Institute for Mediterranean Studies funded by the Koç family is one such active institute. AKMED publishes books on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, with topics ranging from ceramics to cults; it publishes two journals, Anmed and Adalya, and translates important traveller accounts. The institute also offers six scholarships to doctoral and Master’s level students. The institute has a lecture series throughout the year. The Koç University Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) was established in 2005 with the purpose of ‘creating in Istanbul a centre of superior intellectual standing that supports and disseminates research and the study of the past of Turkey, increasing the quality and quantity of research on the archaeology of Turkey, museum studies and heritage management and increasing the awareness of the contributions and interactions Anatolian civilizations have had with other major world civilizations’.8 The institute, which like AKMED is funded by the Koç family, has a very dynamic programme of fellowships, seminars and symposia. Every year ten doctoral level and ten post-doctoral level scholars are supported by the institute and they reside and conduct research in Istanbul. In 2003, the Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation established a second research institute, the Istanbul Research Institute. This concentrates on Istanbul during the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Republican historical periods. The institute’s aim is ‘to develop and support projects in light of these relevant research areas and to organize local and international conferences and other activities, consequently sharing the results with relevant institutions and the public through the media’.9 Two other institutes are the Turkish Institute of Archaeology and the Research Institute of Cilician Archaeology. Both have periodicals, which publish widely in topics relevant to archaeology in Turkey, and both organize conferences. The above mentioned institutes share an objective approach to archaeology in Turkey, cautiously avoiding any emphasis on identity

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issues and thereby providing for a diverse collection of topics and scholars. If there is any limitation it is explicitly geographical. A more recent institute stands out with its aim. The goal of the Institute of Eurasian Archaeology is summarized as ‘to prepare a cultural inventory of Turkish heritage in order to reveal the spread of Turkish culture in Eurasia through which a unison can be achieved’. This attempt may be evaluated along with the growing interest among the populace in a renewed focus on the Turkic past. The new institutes channelling funds to archaeological studies and encouraging research in the fields of archaeology, history, art history and social studies have become important agents in promoting studies concerning cultural heritage. Young scholars especially have benefitted from the fellowships and the publications have provided new outlets for dissemination of knowledge. The regular and irregular symposium series organized by the institutes have increased opportunities for scholarly discussions and introduced thematic approaches to meetings. Until the new millennium, foreign archaeology institutes had a prominent role in promoting archaeological research through financial support to foreign excavations and building libraries. The British Institute at Ankara, the German Archaeological Institute, the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, the French Institute of Anatolian Studies, the Swedish Archaeological Institute and the American Research Institute are among these. Today, with the emergence of the Turkish institutes, the research environment has been enriched. The Turkish institutes have now begun to take over the role of providing fellowships to young researchers and there is now research funding for Turkish scholars as well as for Turkish projects. Wealthy families, such as Koç and Sabancı, and large companies have also begun investing in archaeological studies in the last 10–15 years. This kind of philanthropy arrived in Turkey much later than in Europe since the accumulation of a certain amount of wealth and education was first required. While Turkey’s richest business families began taking prominent roles in the sponsorship of art and culture, thereby exposing their social circles to world renowned artists, performances and collections (because they have also established museums), it must be said that the

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greater number of Turkish people on the street are mostly untouched by these developments. This emphasizes the early stage Turkey is in vis-à-vis the patronage of the arts and culture. However, the increasing growth of private-sector philanthropy should be flagged as a significant change of the past decade that could impact on how awareness of art and history and related identity issues develops in Turkey. Another area which has progressed is publications in archaeology, both scientific and popular. Three major publishers, Ege or Zero Production, Homer Books and Arkeoloji ve Sanat Publishers, have been publishing books, monographs, proceedings, translations, journals and reports in archaeology, history, art history and art in increasing numbers since the 1990s. They publish in Turkish, English, German and French and therefore their books are widely available in university and institute libraries around the world. The optimistic outlook represented by increasing archaeological activity and the introduction of modern techniques, as well as the emergence of Turkish institutes and a wider dissemination of field results, should not, however, conceal the problems present in the field. To focus on just one important issue, Turkey is a developing country which is in need of sustainable energy resources, so the construction of various dams has occupied Turkish and foreign academia and media for a while now. Notable here is the Ilısu Dam, fiercely criticized for various reasons, but mostly for the fact that it will submerge Hasankeyf, an important antique site.10 However, the Ilısu and Kargamish Dam projects did result in a very thorough archaeological investigation in south-eastern Turkey and the results were published in five massive volumes.11 The Ilısu Dam has not been the only dam project to be criticized: the Yortanlı dam, which has begun to inundate the ancient site of Allianoi, has also met with strong opposition. Allianoi, which is located right at the centre of the dam lake, will end up under 17m of water and in 40–50 years the site will be covered by 12m of alluvium. Campaigns against the construction of the dam have been going on since the 1990s.12 While these are well-known examples, in many parts of Turkey cultural as well as natural heritage is in danger of being destroyed by aggressive investment activities. Ironically, this includes the tourism sector, whose expansion especially

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in coastal areas often seems completely unchecked. One positive outcome of these conflicts has been the emergence and strengthened voice of environmental NGOs such as Doğal Hayatı Koruma Derneği (DHKD) and Çevre ve Kültür Kuruluşları Dayanışma Derneği (ÇEKÜD). The battles continue, but it is hard to tell whether material interests or heritage will win. As Gülriz Kozbe says in a recent article: ‘The ultimate goal should be to achieve the most appropriate practice while allowing investments to define the level of prosperity on the one hand, and cultural studies to define the level of culture on the other’.13 Considering the dominant role of the Turkish state in cultural heritage and archaeology, the state bears greatest responsibility in recognizing and managing this delicate balance. The Turkish state is responsible for another very important area, namely the restoration projects ongoing all over Turkey. Recently funds allocated for these have increased, resulting in a sharp rise in the number of restoration projects, although it has to be said these are of varying quality. There is a clear emphasis on the restoration of Turkish Islamic monuments in cities, such as medreses, mosques, türbes, hamams and, especially, city castles. These buildings are owned by the General Directorate of Foundations, which is directly under the office of the prime minister. The restoration projects are approved by a regional preservation committee under a higher committee at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Thus, an approved restoration project involving a foundation building is funded by the Directorate of Foundations, whose budget has been enlarged in recent years. Unfortunately, in these projects key conservation and restoration principles are regularly overlooked and brand new buildings often emerge as the supposedly restored models. Not only are restoration principles overlooked, but also some significant periods too. Notably, there seems to be an intentional effort not to restore, licence or even protect Republican period buildings. One can envisage a time in the future when the 2000s will be criticized for the many flawed restoration projects carried out in the period. Nonetheless a positive development is the restoration of buildings which have become symbols of different ethnic groups living in Turkey. Among these are the restoration projects carried out at the Armenian Akdamar

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Church on Akdamar Island in Van, the Ani Remains in Kars and Syriac churches in Mardin and Iskenderun. The conservative mood in restoration is yet another indication that the state has a rather narrow view of the past and the cultural heritage of the nation. The general attitude of the state towards archaeology as evidenced in the legal and administrative organization of the excavation and surveys was discussed above. It is to be added that the Ministry’s expectations at the same time have a strong role in determining what is important: as in most countries, the expectation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism – as well as that of local authorities – is oriented towards economically valuable and sensational discoveries which are likely to attract more tourists. That combined with the deliberate choice of certain periods for restoration projects points to a national and political agenda for policies regarding archaeological activities. This phenomenon is best observed in the gradual change in preferred periods for field study. A quick overview of the reports of the field projects in Turkey indicated that there is a tendency towards the study of periods previously overlooked, the Byzantine and Turkish/ Islamic periods (Seljuk and Ottoman) in particular. In the latter case undoubtedly this has resulted from the general political and social circumstances following the ascendency of AKP; in the former, the increasing fascination with late antiquity by scholars can be identified as the cause of the growth. After all, archaeologists have begun to recognize multi-period habitation at sites and its significance in understanding the settlement history of a site more comprehensively. Therefore, it would be correct to say that there is a combination of political, social and scientific reasons behind the changes taking place in archaeological practice.

Conclusion A critical view on issues in archaeology and cultural heritage management in Turkey in the new millennium was presented in this chapter. The title preceded the preparation of the chapter and until all the data was compiled, a change, especially in the philosophy behind archaeology in Turkey, was not expected to be demonstrated. But

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there is indeed a change: an emphasis on the Turkish/Islamic past is clearly visible, while enthusiasm and curiosity for neglected periods of Turkey’s history and archaeology, such as the Byzantine period, is equally noticeable. Turkey is a fast developing and at the same time changing country. It is comparatively young and full political and economic stability has yet to be achieved. Under these circumstances ethnic, religious and nationalistic forms of identity can offer crucial means of psychological support. In the last 10–15 years, both Islamic conservatism and Turkish nationalism have been growing in the sphere of identity politics. These are observable in political developments, notably in the Gezi Park events of 2013, as well as in governmental policies. Archaeology is in an organic relationship with politics, culture and society and both the exaggerated interest in the Islamic past expressed through the restoration of Seljuk and Ottoman ruins and the remarkable increase in the number of archaeological studies focusing on the Seljuk and Ottoman periods are indicative of this relationship. Legislation concerning antiquities in Turkey has always been strict and the state ownership of cultural property has been at the centre of this discourse. However, recent developments whereby greater bureaucratic measures have been imposed are regarded by archaeologists as manifesting distrust towards scientists; as a result and in sum archaeological practice has become more difficult in Turkey. As remarked, archaeology is owned by the state in Turkey and the state, influenced by the current conservative political mood, is influential in determining the path for archaeology in the country. Under the current climate it seems that archaeology is being used to back the construction of an identity that privileges a pro-religious and Turkish format. In the midst of this, however, there is a continuing strong will among many archaeologists to practice scientific, unbiased archaeology.

Notes 1. On the theory and practise of archaeology in Turkey see especially M. Özdoğan, ‘Arkeolojinin Görmediğimiz Yüzü’, Toplumsal Tarih 101 (2002), pp. 42–46.

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2. See for instance M. Yolaç, ‘Istatistikten Siyasete Tarihçilik’, Toplumsal Tarih 101 (2002), pp. 70–72; Özdoğan, ‘Arkeolojinin Görmediğimiz Yüzü’; G. Pulhan, ‘ArkeolojininYaşama Şansı’, Toplumsal Tarih 101 (2002), pp. 46–49; O. Tekin, ‘Anadolu’da Romalılar Şansı’, Toplumsal Tarih 101 (2002), pp. 42–46. 3. See D.B. Erciyas, ‘Ethnic identity and archaeology in the Black Sea region of Turkey’, Antiquity 79/303 (2005), pp. 179–190; T. Tanyeri Erdemir, ‘Archaeology as a source of national pride: changing discourses of archaeological knowledge production in the early years of the Turkish Republic’, Journal of Field Archaeology 31/4 (2006), pp. 381–393; Ç. Atakuman, ‘Cradle or crucible: Anatolia and archaeology in the early years of the Turkish Republic (1923–1938)’, Journal of Social Archaeology 8/2 (2008), pp. 214–235; F. Dikkaya, ‘National archaeologies and conflicting identities: examples from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey’, Ancient Near Eastern Studies 46 (2009), pp. 117–137. A more recent contribution dealing with ‘the story of archaeology under the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914’ brings together a valuable collection of articles ranging from archaeology in Greece to journeys through the Ottoman Empire. In several of these articles the issue of ethnicity is discussed from different perspectives: Z. Bahrani, Z. Çelik and E. Eldem, Geçmişe Hücum. Osmanlı Imparatorluğu’nda Arkeolojinin Öyküsü, 1753–1914 (Istanbul: SALT, 2011). 4. The author has discussed these topics elsewhere: see Erciyas, ‘Ethnic identity and archaeology in the Black Sea region of Turkey’. 5. Note for instance important works such as Nevra Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life (Leiden: Brill, 2001) and Helen Evans (ed.), with Brandie Ratcliff, Byzantium and Islam. Age of Transition (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012); archaeological research projects such as the Euchaita/Avkat Project (Princeton University), the Yenikapı excavations in Istanbul, and excavations at Amorium and the Sinop Balatlar Church, as well as conferences on Byzantine Archaeology organized annually. 6. See chapter 7 for the development of modern Istanbul. 7. For more on this subject see Erciyas, ‘Ethnic identity and archaeology in the Black Sea region of Turkey’. 8. See http://rcac.ku.edu.tr/about/rcac. 9. See en.iae.org.tr/aboutus/detail.aspx?SectionID=ceZ2%2bGSlUqvQ5s5r0d WbSQ%3d%3d&ContentId=SkrirLtaCpfgxlj%2bxEmWNg%3d%3d. 10. See http://hasankeyfesadakat.kesfetmekicinbak.com/; http://www.dogadernegi. org/hasankeyf-yok-olmasin.aspx. 11. N. Tuna and J. Öztürk (eds), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilisu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs, Activities in 1998 (Ankara: Middle

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East Technical University, 1999); N. Tuna, J. Öztürk and J. Velibeyoğlu (eds), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilisu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs, Activities in 1999 (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 2000); N. Tuna and J. Öztürk (eds), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilisu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs, Activities in 2000 Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 2002); N. Tuna, J. Greenhalgh and J. Velibeyoğlu (eds), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilisu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs, Activities in 2001 (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 2004); N. Tuna and O. Doonan (eds), Salvage Project of the Archaeological Heritage of the Ilisu and Carchemish Dam Reservoirs. Activities in 2002 (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, 2011). 12. See www.allianoi.org. 13. Gülriz Kozbe, ‘Dilemma on a knife-edge: modernization and preservation’, in D. Burcu Erciyas (ed.), Studies in Southeastern Anatolia Graduate Symposium YAS 3 (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2010), pp. 1–9, p. 8.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Sevilay Aksoy is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir, Turkey. Her research interests include international relations theory, ethics and foreign policy, and Middle East politics. In 2009–10, she was a British Academy visiting fellow at the University of Exeter. Her recent published work includes studies on the Clinton administration and Turkey, and the representation of Turkey’s EU bid in the Times and The Guardian newspapers. Christine Allison is Professor of Kurdish Studies at the University of Exeter. Her main areas of interest are orality and literacy, collective memory and the Kurds of the former Soviet Union. She is the author of The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan (2001), and co-editor, with P.G. Kreyenbroek, of the collected works Kurdish Culture and Identity (1996) and Remembering the Past in Iranian Societies (2013). She has also edited a special issue of the Journal of Kurdish Studies on the Yezidis (2008) and has published numerous articles in this area. Fatma Umut Beşpınar is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She researches social policy, gender and women studies, family and migration. She is the author of a number of journal articles and has published chapters in several edited volumes, most recently in Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of Change (2010) and the Routledge Handbook of Turkey (2013).

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Deniz Burcu Erciyas received her PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of Cincinnati in 2001. Since then she has been teaching on the Graduate Program in Settlement Archaeology at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Her research interests include Hellenistic and Roman archaeology in the Black Sea region, medieval archaeology in Anatolia, urban history and public archaeology. She is the author of Wealth, Aristocracy and Royal Propaganda Under the Hellenistic Kingdom of the Mithradatids. She is the lead investigator on the Komana Pontika project and has recently published several articles on her research there. Jak den Exter studied anthropology at Utrecht University and Turkish Studies at Leiden in Holland. He has worked as a social worker for Turkish immigrants and as a civil servant at the Dutch Home Office. Over the years, he has organized and led over 50 cultural tours to Turkey and is a dedicated birdwatcher, trekker and mountaineer. He has published two books, on Turkish Islam and on genealogy respectively, as well as many articles on subjects ranging from migration, ethnicity, eco-criticism, travel and minority policies. Since 2006, he has been the director of the Netherlands-Turkey Higher Education and Vocational Education Foundation in Ankara. William Hale is Emeritus Professor of Turkish Politics in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is a specialist on the politics of the Middle East with especial interest in Turkey. His books on the subject include, The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey; Turkish Politics and the Military; Turkish Foreign Policy 1774–2000; Turkey, the US and Iraq and, with Ergun Özbudun, Islam, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP. Donna Landry is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Kent and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. She has published widely on eighteenth-century British literature, culture, questions of empire and postcolonial theory. The author of Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture, she has argued for the importance of Ottoman Turkmen as well as küheylan (purebred Arabian) horses in the making of the English Thoroughbred. With

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Ercihan Dilari, Caroline Finkel and Gerald MacLean, Landry founded the Evliya Çelebi Way Project to re-enact the journeys of – and pioneer routes on horseback following – Evliya Ҫelebi (1611-c.1685), the greatest of Ottoman travellers. Laurent Mignon is University Lecturer in Turkish at the University of Oxford. His research interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century Turkish literature, minority literature, socialist literature, biblical themes in modern Turkish literature and nineteenth-century Jewish intellectual history. He is the author of Ana Metne Taşınan Dipnotlar: Türk Edebiyatı ve Kültürlerarasılık Üzerine Yazılar (Footnotes Moving to the Main Text: Essays on Turkish Literature and Interculturalism) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Stephen Mitchell is a Fellow of the British Academy, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter and Honorary Secretary of the British Institute at Ankara. He is the author of Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor and A History of the Later Roman Empire, as well as many other books and articles concerned with the history and archaeology of Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor. Baskın Oran is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations and a political activist who has repeatedly challenged the ideology and practices of Turkish state institutions. As an academic, he was dismissed twice by ruling military juntas, in 1971 and 1982. He is the author/ editor of over 20 books and of numerous articles in Turkish, English and French. Notably he is the author of the Minority and Cultural Rights Report (2004), which set a milestone in Turkey’s debate on minority rights, and his edited three-volume Turkish Foreign Policy (1919–2012) is the standard work for the study of the international relations of Turkey. Paul Osterlund received his BA from The Evergreen State College in 2009 and his MA in Turkish Studies from Sabancı University in Istanbul in 2013. His interests include the modern history of nonMuslim communities in Istanbul, as well as issues pertaining to urbanization, public space and gentrification in Turkey’s largest city.

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GLOSSARY

AKP

Alevi

BEDI

BDP

CHP Cemaat Ferman Gastarbeiter

Gecekondu

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Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party), centre-right, conservative political party, founded in 2001 and in power since 2002 a religious community in Turkey whose belief is a syncretic mix of Shi‘a Islam and Sufism. Alevis are thought to number 15–20 million Biz erkekler değiliz (We are not men), activist group focused on rethinking notions of masculinity and male identity Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi), pro-Kurdish political party, founded in 2008 in place of its banned predecessor, the Democratic Society Party Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party), centre-left, secularist political party, founded in 1923 religious community or fraternity an order or decree from the authorities during the Ottoman period migrant workers from Turkey and Southern Europe who moved to northern Europe, mainly Germany, in the 1960s and 1970s as part of an official work programme squatter dwelling; ‘built at night’

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GLOSSARY

Gezi Park

Hamam Hemşeri Istanbullu Izmirli Jandarma

KA-DER

Karakol Kaymakam Kervansaray Kemalism Kızılay

Kurmanji Ladino Laz

Medrese MHP Millet

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a small park adjoining Taksim Square in Istanbul; focus of mass public demonstrations in Summer 2013 a Turkish steam-bath a person from the same part of the country an inhabitant of Istanbul an inhabitant of Izmir a branch of the Turkish Armed Forces responsible for public order in areas outside the jurisdiction of the police Kadın Adayları Destekleme ve Eğitme Derneği (Association for the Support and Education of Women Candidates). An association set up in 1997 with the primary aim of increasing the number of women in politics police station prefect or governor of a district roadside inn where travellers could rest and recover during their journey state ideology based on the principles of secularism and nationalism as developed by Mustafa Kemal a neighbourhood which lies in the city centre of Ankara and which was named after a Turkish Red Crescent hospital nearby a dialect of the Kurdish language language mostly spoken among Sephardic Jews and originating in Spain an ethnic community from the coastal Black Sea region of Turkey and Georgia, originally from South Caucasia Muslim religious school Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi), far-right political party, founded in 1969 Ottoman term for a religious community, sometimes also used as a term for ‘nation’ in contemporary Turkish

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TURKEY &

Mithraism

Pir Prehistory

RP

Seljuk Shahada Shi‘a

Sheikh Sunni Suryani

Taksim Tarlabaşı Tezkire Topakev Türkmen

Türbe

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worship of the Iranian god Mithra; his cult was widespread in the Roman Empire during the period of the first to the fourth century ce title for a Sufi master; may also refer to a Zoroastrian site of pilgrimage the period before written history begins. The first historian is often said to be Herodotus of Halicarnassus, a city on the west coast of Anatolia (modern Bodrum) Welfare Party (Refah Partisi), a pro-Islamist party, founded in 1983 and dissolved by the Turkish constitutional court in 1998 a Turkish Muslim dynasty of the eleventh–twelfth centuries which ruled from Anatolia to Persia the Muslim declaration of faith After Sunni Islam, the second largest confessional branch within Islam; constitutes roughly 15–20% of Muslims in the world. title of leader or elder of a particular community or tribe largest branch within Islam ethnic-religious community whose traditional homelands are in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia a square in central Istanbul a neighbourhood in the centre of Istanbul in Ottoman literature, biographical works, mostly poems, on famous individuals a mobile tent covered in felt, used widely amongst nomad communities an ethnic Turkic people living in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, northern Pakistan, Afghanistan and also Iran, Iraq and Syria; may also be used to refer to yörük, a nomadic, pastoral group travelling around the Anatolian region tomb or religious shrine; the term usually refers to the grave of a holy man

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GLOSSARY

Türkiyeli Ulusalcılık Üsküdar Vakıf Vali Vilayet Yezidi

YÖK

Zaza

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a term of identity meaning ‘related to Turkey’ secularist variant of Turkish nationalism a district on the Bosphorus on the Asian side of Istanbul charitable foundation governor of a province term for province in the Ottoman Empire a syncretic religious community spread across eastern Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Caucasus as well as in diaspora communities in the West Council of Higher Education (Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu), a body that is responsible for the supervision of universities in Turkey a dialect of the Kurdish language

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INDEX

abortion 119, 127, 130, 131, 137 Akbulut, Serkan 36 Ali, Hüseyinzade 4 Anatolia/Anatolian x, xi, xiv, xvii, 5, 11, 25, 32, 49, 97, 102, 109, 110, 135, 146, 153, 182, 194–5, 199, 229, 230, 231, 234, 246, 247, 252, 253, 254, 258, 277, 279 ‘Anatolian Tigers’ x, xi, 11, 265 Anderson, Benedict 2 Andrews, Walter 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 226, 227, 233 Ankara xii, xvii, 3, 32, 63, 64, 65, 69–89, 118, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 164, 172, 250, 251, 252 Arab League 79, 81, 82, 84 ‘Arab Spring’ 10, 64, 65, 68–76, 77, 78–83, 85, 87, 88 Arabization 103, 105 Arat, Yeşim 122, 124, 125 archaeology 6, 249–53, 270–86 Armenia/Armenians xi, 16, 31, 49, 103, 104, 105, 109, 171, 172, 184, 194–5, 197, 198, 199, 200, 207, 208, 209, 210, 238, 246, 247, 282

ShaneBrennan_17_ind.indd 309

Asia 218, 224, 227, 231, 246, 251 Assad, Bashar-al 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 Association for the Support of Women Candidates (KA.DER) 124, 125 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal x, xi, xii, xiv, xvi, 3, 5, 6, 28, 32, 33, 41, 43, 44, 154, 232, 234, 245–9, 250, 271 Athens ix, xv, xvi, 200 Avni, Hüseyin 33 Aydıngün, Haldun 161, 162 Bacca, Pippa 127, 129 Balkans, the 69, 70 Bayar, Celal 229 BEDI (‘We are not men’) 127, 137 Benjamin, Walter 199, 226 Billig, Michael 2 Black Turks ix–xvii Bora, Tanıl 3 boundaries, geographical and metaphorical 4, 34, 66, 218, 222, 227, 233, 248 Britain 31, 47, 48, Bronze Age 6, 250, 274, 276 Byzantine 172, 182, 190, 271, 273, 274, 276–7, 279, 283, 284

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310

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THE

POLITICS

Caucasus, the 15, 69, 70, 77, 97, 100, 102, 110 children 120, 130, 131, 132 China 31, 81, 82 Çiçek, Cemil 39, 40, 56 citizenship 6, 8, 15, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 48, 96, 164 civil liberties 39, 43, 45 civil society 16, 17, 77, 78, 86, 88, 123, 134, 135, 138, 173, 223 Cold War 65, 69, 73, 75, 88, 245, 246 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 4, 99 conservatives/conservativism xiv, 1, 13, 53, 110, 124, 132, 138, 139, 173, 196, 215, 224, 274, 284 constitution 10, 27, 33, 38–62, 79, 134 Constitutional Commission 41 Constitutional Conciliation Commission 39 Constitutional Court 39, 40, 44, 52, 53 constitutional reform 40, 44, 223 Council of Europe 47, 73 Court of Cassation 24, 30, 35, 40 crime 45, 46, 47, 74, 111 hate 127, 136 ‘honour’ 127, 128 sexual 128 Cyprus 32, 246 d’Azeglio, Massimo 5 Davutoğlu, Ahmet 64, 68–72, 74, 75–7, 83, 85, 87 Deleuze, Gilles 210, 211 Demirel, Süleyman 41 democracy xv, xvii, 11, 26, 38, 39, 42, 52, 67, 68–76, 78, 79, 84, 85, 86, 88, 125, 126, 246, 247 Democrat Party 230, 234 Democratic Society Party 52 democratization 55, 74, 75, 78 Derrida, Jacques 238 Dink, Hrant 15

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diplomacy 64, 70, 77, 81, 84 discrimination 13, 14, 47, 128, 136, 139 Diyarbakır xi, xii, xiii, 108, 109, 195, 263, 266 Doty, Roxanne Lynn 3 economy 8, 11, 12, 14, 73, 84, 86, 138, 161, 173, 189 education 33, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 103, 119, 120, 121, 146, 156, 210, 270, 271, 278, 280 Egypt 10, 75, 77, 78, 86 elections xiv, 8, 9, 15, 39, 41, 48, 57, 173, 180, 223, 230, 246, 266 environmentalism 88, 147, 153, 154, 158, 163, 164, 223, 278, 282 equality, gender 122, 128, 132, 134 Erbakan, Necmettin 252 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip x, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 10, 40, 41, 42, 49, 55, 56, 57, 78, 81, 108, 130, 173, 180, 182, 183, 187 Ergenekon investigation xvi, 9 ethnicity 4, 6, 7, 14, 26, 197, 270 see also Yezidi European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) 52 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 45, 46, 47, 54 European Court of Human Rights 24, 45, 54 European Union (EU) x, xii, 8, 12, 39, 47, 69, 70, 72, 73, 81, 82, 86, 87, 126, 134, 138, 155, 162, 246, 248 feminist/feminism 122–9, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 216, 234 foreign policy 10, 63–78, 83, 88, 89, 188 France 25, 31, 33, 47, 48, 50, 111, 176

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INDEX Frank, Adam 224, 225, 226, 236, 237 Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP) 52 freedom of assembly 45, 88 of expression 9, 24, 45, 46, 47, 88 of movement 33, 70 of the press 46, 55 Gaza Strip 76, 77, 78 Gemalmaz, Efrasiyap 31 gender identity 13, 216, 223 gender issues 118–44, 155, 156, 215, 218, 221, 222, 223, 236, 237, 238 Germany 52, 80, 96, 97, 98, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 230, 231 Gezer, Emrah 36 Gezi Park/protests xvii, 9, 12, 56, 79, 139, 140, 164, 170, 180, 183–4, 191, 284 globalization 2, 13, 187 Gökalp, Ziya 4, 7, 197, 199, 207 Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI) 74 Greece/Greeks 16, 25, 27, 32, 47, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 184, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 206, 209, 210, 219, 246, 254, 256, 258, 259, 260, 265 see also nonMuslim religions Guattari, Félix 210, 211 Gül, Abdullah xiv, 41, 42, 57, 74, 265 Gulf Cooperation Council 80 Gurnah, Abdulrazak 217, 226, 227, 236 Hamas 64, 77 Hamid, Sultan Abdul 4 headscarves 40, 44, 50, 53, 124, 127 heteronormativity 139, 217, 221 heterosexuality 13, 225, 228 Higher Education Board (YÖK) 49, 50

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311

historiography 16, 195, 197, 198, 199, 206, 210, 211 Hittites 6, 250, 251, 252 homophobia 221, 222 homosexuality 13, 16, 132, 225 human rights 8, 11, 23, 44, 47, 49, 54, 72, 73, 74, 80, 85, 88, 136, 225 Human Rights Advisory Board (HRAB) 9 Human Rights Advisory Commission (HRAC) 23, 24 Huntington, Samuel 71 inflation 11, 12 infra-identity 26–8, 30, 31, 32 integration into the West 69, 134, 138, 169, 245 regional 70, 75, 83, 84, 87, 263 International Monetary Fund (IMF) xiv, 173 internet 9, 14, 137, 152 Iran 63, 64, 73, 77, 87, 88, 97 Iraq 73, 79, 81, 87, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 131 Iraq War (2003) 63, 73, 76, 78, 224 Ireland x, 43 Islam see also religions Shi’a 50, 81, 88 Sufi 15, 106, 235 ul-Islam, Sheikh 51 Islamist/Islamism xiii, 4, 5, 40, 44, 50, 51, 64, 74, 78, 86, 98, 99, 106, 107, 122, 123, 124, 125, 138, 154, 215–20, 223–5, 228–30, 233–5, 237, 239, 247, 252, 263, 265, 267, 271, 277, 278, 282, 284

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312

TURKEY &

THE

POLITICS

Israeli-Palestinian conflict 88 Istanbul xvi, xvii, 9, 12, 13, 56, 98, 123, 134, 145, 146, 156, 157, 158, 159, 164, 169–75, 177, 180–4, 186–91, 199, 207, 218, 219, 220, 222–4, 227, 238, 246, 247, 262, 264, 274, 279 Italy 5, 8, 25 Izmir ix, x, 145, 149, 157, 205, 208, 210 Japan 25, 224 Jews/Jewish 16, 25, 27, 50, 171, 172, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 206, 209, 210 Justice and Development Party (AKP) x, xii, xiv, xvi, 1, 7, 8, 9, 14, 39, 40, 42, 44, 48–50, 51–3, 55–7, 63, 64, 71, 74, 76, 78, 81, 83, 85, 86, 95, 107, 109, 128–30, 132, 133, 138, 139, 154, 173, 188, 245–9, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265, 274, 277, 283 Kaboğlu, Ibrahim 24 Kalpaklı, Mehmet 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 226, 227, 233 Karakaşlı, Karin 194, 196 Kavaf, S. Aliye 13, 132 Kaynak, Nazım 35 Kazım, Musa 33 Kemal, Yusuf 33 Kemalist/Kemalism 6, 8, 42, 50, 96, 123, 125, 154, 223, 246, 249, 277 Kılıçdaroğu, Kemal 48, 49 Kurdish problem/question xii, xvi, 56, 81, 88, 126 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) xii, xvi, 15, 34, 35, 56, 69, 76, 82, 105, 106, 107, 108, 155, 258, 262 Kurds/Kurdish xii, xiii, xvi, 7, 14, 15, 25, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 47,

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OF

NATIONAL IDENTITY 48, 52, 57, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102–6, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 122, 123, 124, 131, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 184, 246, 247, 262, 263, 265, 266

labels (identity) 2, 95–117 Lacan, Jacques 226 language Hebrew 199, 200, 202 Kurdish xiii, 14, 49, 50, 105 Kurmanji 95, 105 Ladino 199, 202, 205 Lausanne Treaty/Treaty of Lausanne 7, 25, 30, 34, 49 Laz 25, 262 Lebanon 77, 81 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) 13, 118, 119, 127, 128, 129, 132, 136, 139, 171, 172, 184, 215–43 see also sexual orientation liberal/liberalism 39, 52, 53, 70, 72, 123, 124, 125, 138 liberalization 8, 247 Libya 75, 76, 79, 80, 85 literature 16, 86, 194–214, 219, 250, 274 marriage 101, 102, 121, 128 Marshall Plan 229, 230 Maruş, Hovsep 197, 200 Marxist/Marxism 34, 50, 154, 226 masculinity 137, 228, 232 Massad, Joseph 217, 224–5, 237 media xiii, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 35, 48, 96, 103, 107, 111, 127, 128, 130, 131, 136, 173, 182, 183, 279, 281 magazines 123, 127, 137, 161, 205, 208 news 163 social 137, 152, 155, 163–4, 183 Facebook 137, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 164

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INDEX memory 96, 109, 153, 175, 180, 247–8, 249, 256 Menderes, Adnan xiv, 9 Middle East xii, 10, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 72, 77, 78, 80, 87, 95, 102 Midhat Efendi, Ahmed 208, 209, 210 migration, rural-urban 12, 13, 161 minority communities 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, 23, 25, 29, 34, 47, 48, 49, 95, 97, 99, 171, 172, 196, 200, 207, 210, 211, 246, 263, 266 minority rights 25, 47–50 modernity 4, 7, 74, 78, 86, 106, 108, 188, 190, 218, 220, 228, 229 modernization 4, 5, 6, 7, 78, 97, 119, 159, 164 moral values 43, 44 Mubarak, Hosni 78 multiculturalism 8, 12, 16, 17, 26, 72, 109, 196, 263 multilateralism 64, 71 musealization 169–93 Musafir, Sheikh ‘Adi 97, 98, 107, 111 music 14, 16, 258 N.Ç., rape victim 129 Naon, Avram 198, 205 narratives 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 16, 98, 101, 188, 195, 249 nation-state 2, 5, 7, 26 nationalism Armenian 104, 105 Kurdish 53, 103, 263, neo- 154 Turkish 3, 6, 8, 34, 42, 43, 44, 154, 155, 197, 246, 265, 270, 284 Nationalist Action Party (MHP) 56, 155 neoliberal/neoliberalism xiv, 11, 119, 134, 138, 173 Netherlands, The/Holland 156, 157, 161, 164 non-governmental organization (NGOs) 13, 74, 109, 118,

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313

119, 126, 127, 134, 135, 136, 282 non-Muslims 7, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 34, 49, 64, 171, 172, 184, 195–9, 202, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) xii, 71, 80, 85, 229, 245 Öcalan, Abdullah 15, 34, 107 Okkan, Gaffar xiii Ottoman Empire x, xii, xv, 4, 5, 6, 16, 26, 27, 30, 31, 51, 69, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 122, 170, 171, 172, 188, 189, 190, 195–200, 202, 205–11, 215–39, 245, 246, 249, 263, 271, 273, 274, 277, 278, 279, 283, 284 Ottoman Millet system 31, 95, 206, 209 Özal, Turgut x, 11, 41, 105, 247 Özbudun, Ergun 39 Özdamar, Emine Sevgi 217, 226, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 236 Life Is a Caravanserai 229, 230, 234 The Bridge of the Golden Horn 233 Palestine 64 Pamuk, Orhan 16, 235, 274 Paşa, Kazim (Özalp) 34 Paşalı, Ayşe 129 Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) 48, 49, 52, 56, 57, 105 Pericles xv, xvi, xvii pluralism 13, 109, 125 poverty 104, 121, 190, 202 Qaddafi, Muammar 80, 85 queerness/queer identity 16, 215–42 Qur’an 228, 233 realpolitik 10, 66, 70, 77, 80, 83, 86, 88 Refah Party 124, 252

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314

TURKEY &

THE

POLITICS

religions Islam see also Islam Alevi 7, 25, 50, 51, 109, 110 Sunni 6, 14, 31, 50, 51, 81, 88, 233 non-Muslim Armenian Orthodox 25, 197, 199 Christians 15, 50, 97, 99, 172, 195, 197, 202, 207, 219, 247, 263, 266 Zoroastrianism/Zoroastrians 15, 97, 102, 106–8, 109, 111 Greek Orthodox 15, 25, 29, 30, 200 religious instruction 50–1, 232 Republican People’s Party (CHP) 5, 40, 44, 48, 49, 55, 56, 234, 251 Roma 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 184, 188 Romania 25 Russia/Russians 45, 64, 77, 81, 82, 194, 235, 246 Şafak, Elif 16, 217, 226, 234, 235–7,

238, 274 The Bastard of Istanbul 237 The Gaze 234, 235 Sâmi, Şemseddin 197, 200 secular/secularism 6, 14, 44, 46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 78, 86, 101, 124, 125, 138, 154, 188, 197, 221, 222, 252, 267 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 224, 225, 226, 236, 237 self-image x, xvii, 2–4, 7, 8, 13, 16, 38, 72, 118 sexual orientation 13, 128, 130, 136 see also LGBT sexuality 132, 215, 216, 217–22, 223, 224, 237, 238, 239 Shehid ibn Jerr 101, 106 Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) 39 Socialist Party 52

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NATIONAL IDENTITY

socialist/socialism 123, 197, 229, 230 solidarity 5, 51, 105, 124, 127, 129, 132, 133, 134, 138, 139, 164, 183, 239, 258 Soviet Union 95, 97, 103, 104, 173 Spain 31, 47, 52 Şükrü, Emin 33 Sumeria 6, 106 supra-identity 26–8, 31, 32 Switzerland 25 Syria 10, 64, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 97, 99, 195 Tanzimat 199, 200, 206, 207 technology 14, 75, 152, 162 terrorism xiv, 39, 47, 74, 76 Tocci, Nathalie 65, 66, 67 Tomkins, Silvan 215, 224–6, 236, 237 tourism 11, 12, 148, 149, 159, 185, 256, 260, 261, 262, 263, 272, 273, 279, 281, 282, 283 transparency xv, 67, 221 Treaty of Sèvres 25 Tunisia 75, 77, 86 Türkiyeli 8, 23–37 United Nations (UN) 12, 67, 71, 79, 80, 82, 126, 127, 134, 162 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 123, 126, 127 United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) 127 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 127 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 66, 79, 82 United States of America xi, 41, 53, 63, 71, 73, 81, 82, 88, 97, 155, 224, 234, 238 urbanization 12, 13, 145, 149, 159, 189

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INDEX Vartanyan, Hovsep 200, 209, 210 violence 178, 186, 189, 238 against members of LGBT community 13, 222, 225, 231 domestic and against women 13, 119, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 129, 133, 139 ethnic 105, 111 as political tool 52, 78, 154, 183 state/police 35, 76, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 183 War of Independence 5, 25, 32, 34, 196, 260 wealth 171, 184, 189, 190, 280 Welfare Party 124, 173 White Turks ix–xvii Wolfers, Arnold 66 women’s movement 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 126, 134

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315

women’s organizations 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 134, 136, 137 women’s rights organizations (WROs) 125, 126 Workers Party of Turkey (TIP) 34 World War I 30, 34, 95, 98, 194 World War II 52, 69, 71, 73, 109, 229, 245, 278 Yezidi/Yezidis 15, 95–117 caste system 100, 101, 102 ethnicity 102–6 ritual 100, 108, 110 Yıldırım, Nevin 129 Yıldız, Ahmet 129 Young Turks see Committee of Union and Progress

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ShaneBrennan_17_ind.indd 316

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