Turkey's Torn Soul

The much-maligned and sometimes misunderstood former Harvard professor Samuel Huntington proposed a thesis on the Clash of Civilizations which asserted that the post-Cold War world would be defined by conflict rooted in culture. Different cultural units, or civilizations, were defined by their religious traditions: Islamic, Western Christian, Eastern Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, and others were the main civilizations which would replace ideologies and the nation-state as the foci of political competition, struggle and domination.  He also proposed a category that did not neatly fit into his framework: "torn countries", that is, those states that are internally divided at the level of culture and hence had to make a choice on which side of the global struggle they would join. Torn countries included Mexico, Russia, and the country that will be the subject of this blog post: Turkey.

I arrived in Turkey last week, and since then I have walked around extensively, silently making observations about the people I talk to and the places I see. On this basis, I can confirm that Huntington was on to something when he called Turkey a torn county, because signs of a divided soul are easy to see. The first is the territorial division of Istanbul: the Western part of the city is in continental Europe, while the Eastern part is in Asia, and these sections of the city are divided by the Bosphorus waterway. Within both the Western and Eastern parts there are geographical divisions that coincide with different cultural expressions: Islam and the West. The hostel I am staying at is in the "European" part, both geographically and culturally. It is in a neighborhood characterized with features that are present in pretty much any modern Western city: Churches that reflect its Christian heritage, and the elements that reflect the secularism that most Christian societies have become: bars where people openly drink large amounts of alcohol, advertisements with scantily clad and food deprived models, couples--both gay and straight--openly displaying affection for each other, women seductively flaunting their features, some with style, others crassly.

The Islamic/conservative part of the city, the Fatih neighborhood, is about a 25 minute walk from where I am, and walking there gave me the sense of being in another civilization.The first thing I noticed was that there were fewer tourists, although I am not sure why, since there is a lot to see. There are also fewer European-looking people, more Arabs, more women with full length veils and face coverings, more men with beards and the traditional cap and Abayas rather than trousers. The stores in the European part usually have the names and prices of goods in English as well as Turkish. In Fatih the main language other than Turkish was Arabic. I did not see any bars or people openly drinking, although I am sure that alcohol is available. There are also more mosques. One of the more interesting experiences of being here is hearing the call to prayer, when the Muezzin reminds worshipers through loudspeakers from the Minarets that it is time to worship Allah. Although these can be heard across the city, even in the European part, in Fatih one hears a cacophony as many Muezzin from many Mosques simultaneously recite the call. The call to prayer there is louder but also more melodic and rhythmic, penetrating windows and walls so all can hear. Most people in public places ignore it, but for somebody hearing it for the first time it can have quite the effect, giving one a sense that here, religion continues to play a significant role in the public sphere. It creates the impression that Islamic belief suffuses even the minutiae of daily life; this strongly contrasts with the West, where in all but a few places explicit expressions of religion have been relegated to the margins of society.

The Hagia Sophia embodies Turkey's torn soul as it represents the clash between Christianity, Islam, and secularism. This Church was founded by Constantine the Great in the fourth century and remained the largest place of worship in Christendom for over a thousand years. Then it was taken by Muslims in the famous battle of Constantinople, who proceeded to turn the Churches, including the Hagia Sophia, into Mosques. It was from Istanbul that the Ottomans governed their huge and diverse empire, and their luxurious palace--the splendour of which rivals the palaces in Europe--is situated right next to the Hagia Sofia. One can picture the Sultan and other dignitaries praying in that Church-turned-Mosque as a symbol of their domination over former Christian lands. After the rise of Mustafa Kemal in the early 20th century, Turkey became a secular republic and, consistent with his contempt of all religion, Kemal turned the Hagia Sophia into a Museum. Today, it bears all the fingerprints of this tortured history. With the exception of the minarets, the external structure displays the typical form of a Byzantine Church. Inside, the main floor has been altered to suit the sensibilities of the Ottoman conquerors: depictions of prophets, angels, or any human form, whether pictorial or otherwise, have been expunged and replaced with large signs that dominate the main hall and with Arabic inscriptions that say "There is no god but Allah" and with the names of first Caliphs. On the second floor, there are the remains of the Christian frescoes that depict Christ and Mary, although these were, to my knowledge, only uncovered by restorations that took place in the 20th century. Now that the Hagia Sophia is a museum, it is no longer a symbol of imperial power--Christian or Muslim. It reflects to some extent the secularism that Kemal embodied: open to all regardless of creed and to be viewed and enjoyed as art from the temporal world, not as holy or transcendent. Out of the three worldviews that the history of the Hagia Sophia represents--Eastern Christianity, Islam, and secularism--it is the last two that currently represent the struggle for Turkey's soul at both the political and cultural levels.

The current government in Turkey clearly represents the Islamic side of this divide. Led by President Erdogan, the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (the Economist uses the curious term "mildly Islamist" to describe the party), the government receives much of its support from the poor, religious, and conservative folks who crowd some parts of Istanbul and the hinterland. Many, perhaps most, vote for economic reasons--after all, under Erdogan Turkey has enjoyed very fast rates of growth. But others vote for religious reasons, which is odd when one considers that it is illegal under Turkey's secular constitution for political parties to openly call for a return to the Sharia law that provided the ethical and legal code for the Ottoman empire before it was disbanded by Mustafa Kemal. Many of the secularists I spoke to in Istanbul fear that Erdogan is bringing Turkey into an Islamic direction, and they cited many examples that justify their concern: Turkey's support for Islamist political movements across the Middle East, especially during the Arab Spring, controversial comments from the Minister of religious affairs which suggested turning the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque again, the introduction of mandatory religious instruction in schools, the attempt to make adultery illegal, high taxes and other punitive measures that make alcohol unavailable except in tourist areas, and retrograde comments on the status of women (Erdogan recently said that men and women are not equal).

At the cultural level the divide is equally pronounced. As mentioned above, the life and atmosphere of religious parts of the city seem to be worlds apart from those in the secular part. There is also often barely disguised contempt between the two sides. I have heard that one expression that secularists use when referring to women who wear the full face covering is "cockroaches". Many religious folks, on the other hand, view the lifestyles of secular Turks as morally degrading and corrupt. Of course, this polarization does not tell the entire story. There is a veritable kaleidoscope of orientations here, with various shades of belief and unbelief fluidly intermixing within families and friends. One common sight is groups of young female friends walking around taking selfies and enjoying each others' company, with one or two wearing the traditional Islamic garb while the others dress in typical European style. This cultural schizophrenia certainly exists at the individual level as well. One gets the sense that many of the people here expressing Islamic belief, either in dress or speech, engage in pre-marital sex and drink alcohol when their parents aren't looking, both of which are prohibited in Islam. In this, they are not that different from some of the late-modern Ottomans who were infamous for professing piety while engaging in all the sultry pleasures that their positions of power gave them access to.

Turkey's divided soul has important implications for one of the most important political questions facing the country: whether it should join the European Union. It is my opinion that Turkey will never join for the simple reason that Europe's great powers, France and Germany, do not want it to. Turkey's huge population and growing economy mean that, were it to join the EU, the influence of France and Germany would be greatly reduced (this is one of the cynical reasons for which Italy and the UK support Turkey's accession). But apart from these political realities, it is worth reflecting on whether Turkey belongs in Europe. Many of my secular friends here certainly think so, and in fact they support Turkey's attempt to become a member of the EU precisely because they believe (or, more accurately, hope) that Europe will bring their country closer to its civilization. What is more, as mentioned above, some parts of Turkey are unmistakably European, and there is also the fact that this was the centre of the Eastern Roman Empire for over 1000 years. This suggests that Turkey has the cultural and historical requisites for EU membership. 

However, officials in Paris and Berlin cannot but notice that Erdogan is pushing Turkey into a more Islamic direction. This trend certainly militates against Turkey's potential EU membership. Whether Erdogan will succeed in fully Islamicizing Turkey is open to doubt, however. If a major economic slump reduced his popularity, and the secular opposition were to unify, the political winds might change and the Islamists would be thrown out of office, which would halt or reverse many of Erdogan's policies. When or if that happens, Turkey might see a trend towards secularism and away from Islam, but the country would still have a torn soul, as Huntington accurately observed. Maybe this is not a bad thing, and perhaps it was meant to be this way; after all, the country has been and is the cultural and geographic cross road between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the far east, and even now the population is composed of a bewildering array of different sects and ethnicities that set their roots here at one time or another in the 9000 years that this land has been inhabited. Having a torn soul, in addition, in individuals as in countries, provides the diversity and creativity that makes life colourful and interesting even if it is chaotic and unstable. Besides, would Turkey be as interesting as it now is if it was more culturally homogeneous? I strongly doubt it.