Turkish Awakening

by Alev Scott

Erdoğan’s ability to polarise the population is impressive – roughly half of Turkey’s 75 million hate him, half love him. That, at least, was the case at the 2011 election; in the light of the protests, the scale has probably tipped against him, although his most ardent followers admire him more than ever for taking a strong line. For many, he is a new Atatürk – a strong, fearless, charismatic leader who has a bold idea of where he wants to take the country, and who also understands his religious base. Erdoğan appeals to ordinary Turks because he comes from a modest background, has a covered wife and worked his way up from nothing. He nearly made it as a professional footballer (giving him automatic kudos), and worked as a bus driver before getting involved in politics. It’s almost as if someone has made up his CV specifically to appeal to the large portion of ordinary working Turks who had previously been ignored by relatively privileged politicians who made them feel guilty for practising their religion, for example by banning headscarves in public institutions.

  Republican Turkey’s respect for strong, charismatic leaders stems from the extraordinary hero worship of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Every Turkish leader since Atatürk has struggled in the shadow of the great man, and many people suspect that for Erdoğan he is a particular nemesis. Erdoğan represents many of the religious values Atatürk tried to eradicate, and on a few occasions has nearly slipped up by showing his true feelings towards the national hero – once he obliquely referred to the notoriously raki-loving Atatürk as a ‘drunkard’. Erdoğan has also surreptitiously reduced Atatürk’s legacy by curbing military celebrations on Republic Day, and by urging his supporters to carry Turkish flags ‘not bearing any other symbols’ (many Turkish flags traditionally incorporate a portrait of Atatürk). Still, Erdoğan has usually been careful not to make his feelings too obvious because he risks alienating the religious nationalist Turks who might otherwise vote for him.

  I have worked this out only gradually, and when I first arrived in Turkey I was completely bewildered by the complexity of its politics. I had no idea how to unpick the various threads of religion and nationalism, and Atatürk’s legacy confused me. I needed basics. I would ask myself: what is it that connects Turks, above and beyond their abstract sense of patriotism? What creates a sense of belonging to something called ‘Turkey’? What is concrete?

  Sometimes I look at a Turk in the street and think, ‘That woman has rolled thousands of dolma [stuffed vine leaves] in her life,’ or ‘That man has consumed hundreds of döner kebabs.’ Food is something all Turks share, alongside a myriad of other experiences like the modulations of the muezzin’s call to prayer, the smell of rosewater cologne, the melodies of songs everyone knows from childhood. These things connect people more strongly, more tangibly than convictions of national identity. They are the day-to-day make-up of what it is to be a Turk.

  Turks are fundamentally happy to be Turkish, taking delight in shared experiences as well as pride in the concept of Turkey as the best motherland in the world. Alongside the ubiquitous portraits, busts and flags of Atatürk in this country, you will often find his most famous quotation: Ne mutlu Türküm diyene, which translates as ‘How happy is the one who can say “I’m a Turk.”’ It is their equivalent of ‘God Save the Queen’, but more individualistic and thus more powerful. It is inscribed over the entrances to army bases and is part of the student oath that every Turkish child has traditionally had to utter, every week. This oath also includes a vow of Turkey-serving ideals and the promise: Varlığım Türk varlığına armağan olsun, ‘My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence.’

  I once had a discussion with a Turkish friend, Bülent, about the intensity of Turks’ feelings of attachment toward their country, and why this often prevents them from living abroad. Bülent asked me: ‘Do you worry about England when you are away? No. England will prevail, it is not vulnerable like Turkey.’ By contrast, many Turks feel that Turkey is being ruined both materially, for example through excessive construction (as was the catalyst for the protests at Gezi Park), and ideologically, for example by the repression of free speech, reflected in the huge number of imprisoned journalists and the self-censorship of domestic media. Turks who tend towards conspiracy theories are always worried that Turkey is under attack from foreign powers, as Erdoğan claimed in the midst of the Gezi protests.

  Bülent, a twenty-seven-year-old, incurably romantic leftist liberal, is nostalgic for a country he has never really experienced – the Turkey portrayed in leftist songs and poetry – but he still feels strongly that he belongs to this country, and he has the protective attachment of a father towards his wayward child. This is obviously a strange overturning of the normal child–parent relationship of citizen to motherland, especially in a nationalistic country like Turkey, but it somehow works both ways. That is why my mother still, after forty years of living in England, reacts very defensively to any criticism of Turkey. She left it, quite aware of its problems, but she cannot brook any foreign attack on the country that instilled such an indelible sense of owning and being owned.

  I have come to realise that the question of Turkey’s identity crisis is a very Western formulation. Westerners assume that Turks are confused about their identity because Turkey is a country torn by contradictions and impossible to pigeonhole. The Western view of Turkey is heavy with clichés, the general line being ‘a nation torn between East and West, treading the line between Religion and Democracy’ (note the Western assumption that the two are a priori mutually exclusive). The clichés have a point, of course, and lead to the legitimate question: in a country so filled with people of widely varied descent, where ethnic minorities are in fact the majority, surely it must be natural for people to question their national identity? The answer is that the racial melting pot of Turkey is, if anything, the reason why Turks are so sure about being Turkish. They have to be – it is what welds them all together in the utopian national dream that Atatürk created, which has been perpetuated for nearly a century through the sheer force of his vision. This is not to say that all Turks agree about the political direction Turkey is going in; that was dramatically demonstrated by the Gezi protests. While they may disagree on politics, I have never met a Turk who is not proud of being Turkish on a fundamental level.

  America is a nation of assorted immigrants, a genetically disparate country just as Turkey is, and patriotic in the same way – though not to quite the same extent, because it is not as young and insecure as Turkey is. Every American is proud to call herself an American just as every Turk is proud to call herself a Turk. This sense of belonging is an incredibly important part of their personal identity, but it does not preclude an interest in their particular family heritage. It is precisely because the sense of national identity is so strong in these two countries that people can explore and celebrate their roots.

  Every American who has an Irish background will unfailingly tell me all about his potato-digging, freedom-fighting ancestors, and every Turk with Georgian blood will tell me about how her great-great-grandparents left everything to travel to the Black Sea coast of Turkey in the nineteenth century. This heritage is chronologically remote but closely treasured, and the Turkish and American fascination with previous generations is a totally human vanity. Everyone wants to feel connected to their particular past even if they have never visited the country of their forefathers and none of their surviving family has even a hint of the accent. The rapidly developing market in DNA tracing is evidence of people’s desire to explore themselves, to create an individual backstory which makes them unique.

  However, it is only in relative security that people can do this. Ultimately, a Turk is a Turk. Their Arab or Greek or Azeri ancestry is a pleasing flourish to their persona, but not integral to their being. Being Turkish is the fundamental thing, and they feel part of an important whole when they take the oath of allegiance or put a portrait of Atatürk up on their wall, and Americans are similar. It is when people feel uneasy, fearing that perhaps they do not belong, that they try despera
tely to fit in by obscuring their ancestry. The Turk with Georgian roots boasts of his great-great-grandparents because they have no impact whatever on his Turkishness. He is secure, quite possibly a member of a nationalist political party, as ideologically Turkish as it is possible to be.

  Coming to Turkey as a half-Turk was far more complicated than I had expected. My name, for a start, caused just as much bewilderment as it has always done. In England, it was an embarrassment in the state school yard of my childhood, but then became a point of interest in London’s politically correct social circles. In Turkey, the unexpected reaction of people I had just met was scepticism. Inevitably, I would be interrogated: ‘Türk müsün?’ (‘Are you a Turk?’) On ambiguous visual evidence and indisputable aural evidence, I was clearly a foreigner of some description, a yabancı, so what was I doing masquerading with a Turkish name? I am a peculiar fraud in Turkey – mislabelled foreign matter.

  Foreigners are much more of a scarcity in Turkey than in the UK, which is why their otherness is more significant; why would these people accept me as a Turk when I was much more unusual and interesting as a Brit? A Turkish name became something to be justified, rather than exhibited. I soon realised I couldn’t even pronounce my own name properly; I started practising the way others said it. It was when this happened that I realised I had a lot to learn and change about my self-perception if I wanted to be more than a product of my British upbringing with a quirky name attached. In other words, I had to understand what it means to be Turkish.

  As I taxied my way around Istanbul in the first few months of arriving in the country, all these existential musings were yet to come. What struck me initially was the bewildering visual variety of Istanbul, and then further afield, as I explored other areas of Turkey. To understand the social complexities of the country, I first had to get the lie of the land.

  Istanbul was a formidable starting point. I caught glimpses of the city in all its uptown, downtown, chic and shabby guises; a kind of complementary slideshow to accompany the running commentary of freely expressed Turkish opinion provided by my driver. This city is both the beauty and the beast of cosmopolitan aesthetic, full of historical treasures, soulless apartment blocks, great sweeps of coastline and miles of urban motorway. Its very variety is overwhelming. En route to work, I would pass by manicured residential sites (gated compounds, pronounced as the French cité), ancient cobbled alleyways, bustling farmers’ markets and gargantuan shopping malls, ending up in the skyscraping sprawl of Levent – the City. Further afield, on the Asian side of town, a new financial heart is growing on the outskirts of the sleepy suburbs of the city – Ümraniye, so grim and remote as to be a rival Slough. Back in fashionable districts on the European side, you could be forgiven for thinking you had wandered into Mayfair on the streets of Nişantaşı, which is characterised by Louis Vuitton and Prada stores, a few independent designer atölyes and bejewelled ladies swilling large glasses of rosé outside smart Italian restaurants. Ten minutes south, a very different picture awaits you in the grey underbelly of Dolapdere, where local bakkals (corner shops) provide the only splashes of colour with their crated fruit on pavements patrolled by stray dogs and glue sniffers.

  Istanbul is set apart from other patchy metropolises by its trump card: the most spectacular setting in the world. Threaded by the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, dotted with scattered hills and the nearby Prince’s Islands, this city is unrivalled in the majesty of its geography. The most dramatic and uplifting ride in Istanbul is the crossing of the Bosphorus bridge from Asia to Europe – a gradually unfolding view of Ottoman palaces, Byzantine churches, fishing ports and a glittering sea beneath you is quite literally breathtaking and reduces even seasoned Istanbullus to wondering silence. It is during these crossings that I remember why I put up with the frenetic chaos of this city. Living in Istanbul is like dealing with an opera diva: you accept the tardiness and the tantrums because you cannot resist the beauty of her art, a gift which silences the mediocrity of all rivals.

  2

  Urban Empires

  Stepping out of the yellow taxi cab, you are immediately reminded that Istanbul is a city of noise and mayhem. Car horns, endless construction work, artificially magnified calls to prayer and the responding barking of dogs form an unrelenting soundtrack as soon as you open a window or step out of the door. I felt extremely English on arrival, dropped into a bubbling pot of public emotion – angry lovers, bawling street sellers and operatic tramps assailed me on a daily basis. The city teems with approximately 16 million people, and an ever-increasing number of arrivals from rural communities and Western tourists mix with disgruntled indigenous residents, resulting in an inevitable clash of different behaviours. Tensions simmer in traditionally conservative areas which have become newly hip, attracting liberal, often Western crowds who are not always welcomed by the existing residents.

  One of my dearest friends is Andrew Boord, who has been living in Istanbul for twenty-five years and is actually now a Turkish citizen (the name on his Turkish passport is ‘Enver Borlu’, the result of a bizarre interview with a senior official who was trying to approximate ‘Andrew Boord’ during the application process). He rents out his flat in Galata, a beautiful, historic part of town which is now popular with musicians and Western journos in particular. Andrew can command a sizeable rent for his flat from short-term visitors, but the only problem is the crazed xenophobe who lives in the opposite building. This maniac can be relied on to shout abuse at whoever happens to be staying in Andrew’s flat, accusing one French couple of ‘fornicating in broad daylight’ in view of this man’s window. ‘Take no notice,’ said Andrew. ‘He always says that.’ The next day the couple were awoken by a loud thud and went out onto their balcony to discover a large plastic bottle filled with what could only be urine, crumpled and leaking with the force of impact among the flowerpots.

  There is nothing Andrew can really do about this man – the police are totally uninterested and luckily the short-term nature of the let means Andrew can juggle tenants without too much trouble. Longer-term residents are less lucky. Amanda and Taylor, two American friends of mine, live in an expensively converted apartment in a run-down part of town, and they like entertaining. Most of their neighbours are religious Turks and are very suspicious of the stream of expat friends who visit the building. One Monday evening I attended a dinner party there; quite early on, someone downstairs complained but no one took any notice. At about 11 p.m., when a few guests remained, Taylor began coughing in what we thought was a theatrically exaggerated manner. Soon, however, everyone in his vicinity was spluttering, with streaming eyes; cries of ‘Tear gas!’ were heard over the mêlée as we fled to a bedroom at the opposite end of the flat. Ridiculous as it seemed, it was undoubtedly tear gas we had inhaled – I knew the tell-tale rasping of the throat – and the most plausible explanation was that a neighbour had left a canister near the front door to put an end to festivities. The hysteria of the situation somehow took a comic turn and, to spite the party poopers, we remained in the flat, red-eyed but jolly, taking it in turns to gasp at the open window while we polished off the wine. We have since found out from the friendly newsagent that the local branch of the Muslim Association is across the street from this flat, and has a great deal of influence among the neighbours. Amanda and Taylor are considered to be bad influences on their children, in particular. The last tenants of the flat, also foreigners, were beaten up by their irate neighbours and ended up in hospital; Amanda and Taylor are flat-hunting again.

  The urine-flingers and tear gas wielders are fairly extreme examples of guerrilla neighbourhood watch tactics, which I cite only to show how strongly some residents feel about what must be an alarmingly swift invasion of people with very different values from their own. I’ve known some London neighbours to get nearly as angry over an unkempt hedge or stolen parking spot. Most of the time my neighbours have been almost overwhelmingly hospitable, taking particular care to welcome me in the same way they would a gues
t, seeing themselves as surrogate family to a displaced waif with no apparent family of her own. The extremes of neighbourly behaviour – kindly matron versus aggressive, religious zealot – are almost irreconcilable but demonstrate the gamut of Turkish behaviour and ideals.

  Less worrying are the squabbles between like and like – for example, the bored and frustrated gangs of Turkish youths who have no real quarrel, but who feel the need to guard their territories over-zealously. I used to go to school in Stanmore, in north London, and these Turkish gangs remind me of the Ali G types in the rather boring suburbs of London who strut around with oversized hoodies and talk of knives, but who are really grade A students making regular visits to their grannies and taking care to avoid parking tickets. In a similar vein, I have seen puffed-up Turkish youths circling each other and trading insults in Tophane, only to be broken up by their scolding mothers telling them that dinner is on the table and how dare they be late – some of these mother hens don’t even bother to emerge from the kitchen, but scream out of windows on high. The ‘gangs’ disperse immediately, with a few feeble parting shots, and no doubt the same sequence repeats the next day.

  Since the 1970s, there has been an extensive migration from rural to urban areas in Turkey, and the greatest example of that is Istanbul. In many ways, this enormous city is a microcosm of the country, containing pockets of quite distinct communities from, say, Urfa, Kayseri, Diyarbakır or Rize, as well as the traditionally ‘Western’ areas of Bebek, Beyoğlu and Moda, which can look like London or New York. In Fatih, a residential, conservative community near the historical area of Sultan Ahmet, the proliferation of burqas and beards has led to its nickname of Little Afghanistan (though the residents are eastern Turks, not Afghans). If I want to visit the area, I wear trousers or a long skirt and top. I do not feel under any kind of moral pressure, as such, but one instinctively does not want to be the oddity, the cultural alien. It is bizarre that a mere five-minute taxi ride from here brings you to Beyoğlu, where you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the West End of London, short skirts and public smooching aplenty.