Turkish Labyrinth: Ataturk and the New Islam, The

Middle East Policy, Jun 1998 by Lombardi, Ben

The Turkish Labyrinth: Ataturk and the New Islam, by James Pettifer. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1997.

Scholars such as Fernand Braudel and Halil Incalcik have long made us aware of Turkey's illustrious history. Until very recently, however, there has been little attention paid to modern Turkey since the end of World War I. Then, the views of the victorious European Powers, namely Great Britain and France, were characterized by a combination of arrogance and ignorance. One writer remarked in late 1918 that

[t]he presence of the Ottoman Turk as a sovereign ruler in Europe is one of the standing anomalies of modern history. That an Asiatic nomad of a low and unprogressive type should ever have succeeded in planting himself among the settled and civilised peoples of the West, and should have gained possession of the great city of the Caesars, is astonishing enough. That he should have been able to maintain himself in Constantinople for four and a half centuries, and that he should still continue to exercise lordship over Christian Europeans, are phenomena which, though familiar, are so strange that they deserve consideration and demand explanation.1

Such opinions were quite common as the "Sick Man of Europe" lurched toward its end. International discussion was not just about what physical shape the new Turkey would take. Turkish domestic politics, particularly the social role of religion, fascinated onlookers, and a British journal of that period, The New Europe, published a variety of articles on those subjects.2

In retrospect, it almost seems that the European Powers did not know what they wanted to do with the "Eastern Question." That such uncertainty existed is not a surprise, for it was rooted in Europe's perception of Turkey. Rather than an international actor in its own right, the Ottoman Empire was seen as an object of European diplomacy, a playing field on which others' objectives would be pursued. Nowhere perhaps is this better seen than in a speech in the House of Lords in 1878 by Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield. In explaining the Treaty of Berlin, he noted that "the course we have taken will arrest the great evils which are destroying Asia Minor and the equally rich countries beyond" (emphasis added). There is no room within that perspective for the innate dynamism of Ottoman society or for the forces of reform already stirring below the surface of a decaying empire. Although his words were born of a romantic imperialism, Disraeli did not envisage the Ottomans as political actors. The solution to the problems in Turkey lay in London, not Constantinople. Without denying British interests in the preservation of a Turkish barrier to Russia, he believed that "the time had come when we ought to consider whether we could not do something which would improve the general condition of the dominions of the Sultan in Asia" (emphasis added). Disraeli's view of the Ottoman polity was entropic, with the loss of energy leading to further anarchy, a problem that Britain had to arrest. Corruption, incompetence, brutality and lethargy were typical of the Ottoman leadership. When the "Sick Man" roused himself from his Oriental lassitude, it was only to commit outrageous acts such as the Bulgarian massacres of 1878 and the Armenian killings during the 1914-18 war or, more commonly, simply to retreat in the face of Western advance.

That image of the "Sick Man" changed with the arrival of Kemal Ataturk and his government's advocacy of nationalism, secularism and Westernization. His program for reform in the Turkish rump of the former Ottoman lands meant that the negative attention garnered during the empire's protracted decline dissipated. In The Turkish Labyrinth, James Pettifer argues that a new myth was constructed, one based on what Ataturk and his followers wanted Turkey to become, not what it was during his lifetime or is today.

Given the number of recent publications focused on Turkey, it might be argued that the "Eastern problem" has returned. But the question is, for whom is Turkey a problem? It seems that for most people Turkey is still wrapped in its Ottoman past, illustrated by portraits of fierce janissaries, whirling dervishes and exotic (or erotic) images of the harem. Robert Kaplan argues similarly when he notes that the "encompassing sense of Turkish history is the dream-burden of the Turkish middle and upper classes, and foreigners like myself who find it necessary to have an idea of Turkey."3 However, Turks must live daily with the consequences of their history. For many of the rest of us, the image of Turkey is almost cartoon-like: colorful, animated, but not real. The result is that, while many non-Turks might know about Ataturk and his secular agenda, the presuppositions they draw upon are likely to be pre-republican. The travails of the modern republic, its successes and complexities, weaknesses and abuses, are simply not considered.

This simple set of images is now under assault. The rising profile of the Islamist Welfare (Refah) party has challenged the comfortable notions of Turkish political stability and its Western alignment that are part of Ataturk's myth. Those interested in modern Turkey are now concerned that the secular regime of the past seven decades is coming to an end. A 1996 report by a major American think-tank noted that