Turkey Between East And West

New Challenges For A Rising Regional Power

Vojtech Mastny, R. Craig Nation

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780813324203
• eBook ISBN: 9780429983047
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica mediorientale

Linked by ethnic and religious affinities to two post-Cold War crisis areas—the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia—Turkey is positioned to play an influential role in the promotion of regional economic cooperation and in taking new approaches to security. In this book, experts from Turkey, Europe, and the United States address key aspects of Turkey

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The Ottoman Rule in Europe From the Perspective of 1994

Kemal H. Karpat

The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 was followed by the formation of eight independent states in the Caucasus and Central Asia, six of which have a predominantly Muslim and Turkic population. All had historical relations with the Ottoman state dating back to the fourteenth century and culminating in the nineteenth century. The re-emergence of the Balkans as an area of international conflict has rekindled western interest in Turkey. The Balkans were mainly an Ottoman dominion until after the period 1878-1913 and remain of strategic, economic, and cultural interest to Turkey. In unforeseen and unpredictable ways history has revived the Turks’ cultural, religious, and political legacy and interwoven it with Europe’s contemporary politics. The Caucasus and Central Asia are rapidly becoming part of the global economic and political system and the western cultural sphere, not only because of their own need for survival but because they are a vital part of the emerging balance of power among Asia, Europe, and the United States. Most of the new Muslim republics of the former USSR have decided to accept the Latin alphabet, in large measure because of pressure from Turkey. Thus, the millenary relationship of the Turks of Turkey with their coreligionists in Asia, interrupted for seventy years, has been resumed in a new frame of reference.

The West saw Turkey as an oasis of stability and expected it to serve as a model of democracy, secularism, and free enterprise for the newly independent states. Turkey was envisioned as a model primarily because of its primordial historical and ethno-religious appeal to the Central Asians—which Turkey wanted to ignore in the past—but also because of its secularism, democracy, and relatively developed market economy. The Black Sea Economic Cooperation project added additional weight to Turkey’s attractiveness as a role model.

The Turkish government accepted these self-devised or assigned roles without much hesitation or reflection and without paying attention to the contradiction between the expected role and its poor record in dealing with Asia and Muslims in the past. Almost from its inception the Turkish Republic has abstained rigorously from becoming involved or even displaying interest in the history, culture, and languages of the Central Asian and Azeri peoples. Many individual Turks were greatly interested in the area but the government remained aloof for seventy years, not only towards the Turks and Muslims in Central Asia but also to those in the Balkans, lest it be accused of irredentism, pan-Turkism, and pan-Islamism.¹

The features that make Turkey attractive as a role model were all adopted from the West. In other words, the West expected to use Turkey as a relay station to transfer these acquired western values and modes of life to the newly emerging cluster of Islamic countries in the former USSR. Had these Muslim countries of Central Asia been Christian as in the case of the Baltics—or had the West found another Muslim country to act as a better model—Turkey might have been promptly discarded. At the same time, Europe seemed ready to ignore the Turks’ seven decades of relentless effort to modernize and westernize themselves, and prompt to embrace its old image of Turkey as a Muslim country likely to fall prey to fundamentalism, Islamism, or some other supposedly anti-western movement existing more in imagination than in fact.

The key consideration behind the foreign policy plans centered on Turkey in the post-Cold War period revolves around Islam. Turkey is expected and is able to play a role in Central Asia because of the Muslim faith and its shared ethnicity with the Turkic peoples of Asia and the Caucasus. Yet even though the West was prepared to consider Turkey sufficiently acculturated to western ideas of democracy, secularism, and capitalism to trust it to pass them on to Asian coreligionists, it did not accept the Turks as real partners of European culture and civilization because of their Islamic religion. Europe has never understood that Islam, which plays a key role in the life of the average Turk, has developed unique Turkish cultural and behavioral characteristics that make it more liberal than its Christian counterparts. Turkey can indeed play a role in the region only by retaining its Asian, Muslim-Turkish legacy.

The Central Asian countries seem to place great importance on their Islamic and ethnic Turkic background. The first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, was emphatic about it.² Uzbek president Islam Karimov and his associates have stated clearly that what brought Uzbekistan close to Turkey was history religion, and culture and because of this closeness it was willing to accept Turkey as a model. Uzbekistan has also appeared intent on reconstructing its “unique 1000 year old state structure while taking into account the effects of the immense change” which occurred in popular attitudes, culture, and mores under Soviet rule.³ The leader of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akaev, proposed inserting in the constitution a reference to Islam as a source of moral values and went to perform the umra (the off-season pilgrimage to Mecca), as did Karimov. No Turkish sultan or president, with the exception of the late Turgut Özal, ever went to Mecca while in office.

The Islamic and historical ties between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia, along with the latter’s commitment to change and modernization, provide the bricks and mortar for building a firm structure of cooperation between the Turks of Turkey and those of the newly independent states. (The dismissal of Abulfaz Elçibey as President of Azerbaijan dealt a severe blow to Turkey’s position but did not eliminate the bases of future relations with Central Asia and the Caucasus.) In sum, Turkey cannot be divorced either from Islam and Turkishness or from western-style modernism. The commitment to modernism was and remains a cardinal point in the life of modern Turkey; it was stated repeatedly by Atatürk and was enshrined in the old constitution of 1924 as inkilâpçılık (devrimcilik in the new language), one of the six key principles of the republic. Today, the western ideas of modernism and progress have become an integral part of the culture of society and could not be phased out any more than Turkey could be induced to abandon Islam.

The debate about the role to be played by Turkey in Central Asia and the Caucasus went hand in hand with the controversy over the admission of Turkey as a full member into the then European Community (EC). For years the Turkish application was delayed and then was essentially rejected supposedly because of the country’s low level of economic development, high rate of population growth, huge foreign debt, inflation, low tax revenue, high state expenditures, colossal state sector, human rights violations, etc. However, the main reason for the European refusal to admit Turkey into the EC was not a question of economics. As Ian O. Lesser puts it; “The fundamental issue for many Europeans is whether Europe can or should embrace an Islamic country of fifty-seven million. Significantly, the issue is being posed at a time of mounting intolerance and xenophobia in Western Europe, much of it directed against Muslim immigrants from the Maghreb and Turkey.”⁴

Indeed, with the tacit approval of the Vatican, Europe has refused to accept Turkey as a true partner in the Community while warmly opening its arms to the countries of eastern Europe, a fifty-year friendship with the Turks notwithstanding. Thus, when in its interest the West invokes and magnifies Turkey’s potential and qualities, but when Turkey fails to follow instructions, even if its own national interest is at stake, it is subjected to criticism and censure. The West is using the Kurdish question to bring the Turks to their knees in a manner similar to that in which it manipulated the “rights” of the Christian minorities in order to shatter the Ottoman empire. Turkish foreign policy is also at fault for its intellectual anemia. Turkey’s leaders have navigated the ship of state in such a way as to remain marginal to Europe and to the Muslim Middle East, while claiming to belong to both of them. Thus, in the end the Turks remain unable and unwilling to define their position on the religious, cultural, and ethnic map of the world and to act accordingly. Turkey today is a Muslim country converted to the civilization of the West and with the zeal of a new convert is ready to proselytize its faith—secularism, democracy, ethnic nationalism—among other Muslims, a role it cannot fulfill because of its ambivalent cultural and historical position.

The Making of an Image

Turks of all ethnic and linguistic denominations started moving westward toward Europe in the third century (if not before) as though attracted by an invisible magnet. The Huns, Pechenegs, Cumans (Kipchaks), Uzes, and, finally, in the thirteenth century, Tatars (Mongols) came westward, following the route along the northern shore of the Black Sea. Most were baptized as Orthodox Christians—the main body of Cumans became Catholic—and rapidly assimilated almost without a trace into the local populations of central and southeast Europe. Those who converted to Islam after the thirteenth century conquests of the Golden Horde or before (Bulgars accepted Islam in 880) stayed in central Russia or retired east of the Urals. Religion appeared from the very start as the key factor in distinguishing, for the West, “them”—the Turks—from “us”—the Christians.

The southernmost branch of the Turks began arriving in Anatolia as nomadic tribespeople as early as the eighth century. Those who had not accepted Islam or did not internalize it as their basic identity accepted Christianity and some, such as the Karamanlis, retained their Turkish language but were considered Greek. In 1926 these peoples were exchanged for the Turks of Greece (and Crete), some of whom were actually converted Greeks. Thus religion determined nationality. The bulk of the Turks moved into Anatolia in the tenth and eleventh centuries after their mass conversions to Islam ca. 950. After the Selçuki sultan Alparslan defeated the Byzantine emperor at Manzikert in 1071 and proceeded to conquer Jerusalem—more out of political and economic calculations than religious zeal—a negative image of Islam was reasserted with a vengeance.

By the eighth century, John of Damascus, among others, had declared that Muhammad was the enemy of Christianity, a false prophet, and that his followers pursued a path of vice, promiscuity, and decadence. Thus the Turks became part of an already existing anti-Muslim image of Islam—one that would be revived from time to time, reinforced, and perpetuated with new arguments regardless of the circumstances.⁵ The fact that Turks hindered the march of the crusaders through Anatolia and that later sultans like Zangī, Nur al-Din (Saladin was his subordinate), and Qutuz forced them out of Syria and Egypt certainly did not endear the Turks to Europe.

The Turks who founded the Ottoman state moved to western Anatolia not to confront the Christians but to escape the pressure of the Mongols (Chingiz Khan’s descendants). They crossed into the Balkans in 1354 to help sultan Gazi Orhan’s Byzantine father-in-law gain the throne of Constantinople. In due time the early Ottoman sultans and their companions (some of whom, such as the Mihaloğulları, were of Greek origin) took the name gazis (holy warriors) and developed the ideology of gazavat (holy war) in order to justify their conquering march westward.⁶ However, what the Turks conquered in the Balkans was the territory of the east Roman empire. This area was contested by Bulgarians, Serbians, and other groups which had re-established their medieval states in 1204-61 because of the fourth crusade. The crusade devastated the peninsula and the crusaders spent sixty years occupying Constantinople while trying to convert the Greeks to Catholicism. Therefore, the Turkish conquest not only liberated the Balkans from western domination and put an end to their feudal order in what is today Greece but also assured the survival of Orthodox Christianity. In this manner the Turks unwittingly became involved in the struggle between Orthodox Christianity and Rome and were eventually accused of perpetuating their schism.

The good will of the Orthodox Christians gained allies against western Christianity for the Turks and helped them secure their own rule in the peninsula. The failure of several western crusades, such as Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1444), was due not only to the Turks’ prowess as fighters but also to the animosity of the native Orthodox Christian population toward the West. Many Greeks, in particular, openly declared that they preferred “the turban of the Sultan to the tiara of the Pope.” Some Greek orthodox prelates, such as Anthimos of Antioch, wrote as late as the eighteenth century that the Turkish sultan was a God-sent gift to protect and benefit the Orthodox Christians.

The Orthodox church was divided into two groups; the unionists favored union with (and submission to) Rome, while the anti-unionists, the “nationalists,” sided with the Turks. The division deepened after the rulers of Byzantium accepted union with Rome at the fateful Council of Florence in 1439. This act persuaded the new Ottoman sultan, Mehmet II (1451-81), to expedite the conquest of Constantinople (1453) in order to forestall its possible occupation by the West. The Turks had thus, without any specific intent to do so, intervened in the bitter 500-year-old struggle between the eastern and western Christian churches and had prevented their fusion into a single whole—or at least it so appeared. The efforts of contemporary Greece to prevent the fusion of Turkey into Europe gives a rather ironic twist to the history of the area.

These events, publicized widely and unfavorably by Greek scholars who fled to Italy, further colored the image of the Turk as the enemy of Christendom. Greek scholars eventually reached the Muscovite court and pleaded with the czar to “liberate” the second Rome; already Ivan III had married Zoe Paleologus and staked a claim for Moscow as the third Rome. (Today, the Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul is seeking partners in Russia in the hope that a rebaptized Russia will assume its traditional role as defender of the Orthodox against the Turk and thus mask its reviving imperialist nationalism.)

The situation was aggravated further after the Venetian leadership, which for centuries enjoyed a privileged trading position in the Balkans, was replaced under pressure by the local Ottoman merchants and lords. This city-state then became the ally of the Roman church and the financier of its crusades. Venice remained an active player in Balkan and Mediterranean politics until the middle of the eighteenth century and was a major European source of information about Ottoman affairs thanks to the baglì (consuls) stationed in the main Mediterranean ports. In exchange, the Turks had the right to station their own representative in Italy. Catholic opposition to the Muslim and Turkish presence on their soil was so intense that the Turks had to defend their basic commercial interests in key Italian ports such as Ancona by appointing Christians as their representatives there, most of whom originated in the Balkans. In the eighteenth century the Habsburgs finally allowed Muslims to work in Vienna. Out of some ninety Ottoman commercial representations in Vienna approximately twenty were staffed by Muslims, including Turks.

For over a century and a half—that is, from the emergence of Osman’s small principality in 1286 (or 1299, when he minted coins in his own name), until the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II—almost the entirety of Romania (Rumeli) was brought under Turkish rule.⁷ After the conquest, Constantinople’s position as the administrative capital of the territory of the east Roman empire was reasserted and henceforth the city assumed the Turkish name of Istanbul. (The name actually derived from the Greek “Is-t-an polis” (to the City), not “Islambol” (City of many Muslims). The Slavs called it “Tsarigrad,” or “the Ruler’s City,” for, indeed, whomever ruled Constantinople was considered the ruler of the Balkans and Anatolia. The conquest created outrage in the Christian world, but there were many who regarded it as a divine punishment for the Greek schism from Rome. The Turks did not try to convert the Christians of the Balkans (the Bosnian and Bulgarian Bogomils and, to a large extent, the Albanians, converted voluntarily) but established a pluralistic cultural and religious system that took into consideration the mixed character of the peninsula and preserved it as such until 1878. Then, the newly established states in the Balkans embarked on a policy which was perhaps best described by Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria as edinstvo (unity), implying the supremacy of the dominant ethnic group, in this particular case the ethnic Bulgarians.

Indeed, the Ottoman empire developed a well-balanced socio-economic and political structure and a pluralistic cultural-religious corporatist structure and legalized it during the reign of Mehmet II (1451-81). This was accomplished through the issuance of kanunameler, which were in essence secular regulations formally sanctioned by the religious fetva, that laid down an Ottoman constitutional order that lasted until the collapse of the empire.⁸ It is clear that there was no Byzance après Byzance, as the Romanian historian of Greek parentage Nicolae Iorga once put it, but a new Turkish-Muslim order created specifically to suit the multi-ethnic, multi-religious structure of the Balkans and Anatolia. The reforms of the nineteenth century were simply a revision of the constitutional order of Mehmet II.⁹ (In the nineteenth century Fuad Paşa created a similar multi-confessional order in Lebanon that lasted until 1975.)

Thus, the reign of Mehmet II marked the emergence of the Ottoman empire as the dominant regional power in the eastern Mediterranean. He and his successor, Beyazıt II (1481-1512), consolidated the northern flank of the empire by turning the Black Sea into a sort of Ottoman mare nostrum. These military moves were accompanied by the replacement of Venice and Genoa as the dominant commercial powers of the eastern Mediterranean with France and England and by the rise of a powerful Ottoman middle class of merchants and craftspeople in the service of the state.

The encounters between the Ottoman empire and western Europe during this first period (the dwindling city-states of Italy aside) were sporadic and accidental. The arrival of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal after 1492, who had been invited initially by Mehmet II, provided the Turks with an excellent source of knowledge about Europe and a skilled pool of professionals, merchants, and craftspeople. In the exchang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 The Ottoman Rule in Europe From the Perspective of 1994
• 2 Turkey and the West Since World War II
• 3 Turkey in the New Security Environment in the Balkan and Black Sea Region
• 4 The Turkic and Other Muslim Peoples of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans
• 5 Developments in Turkish Democracy
• 6 State, Society, and Democracy in Turkey
• 7 The State and Economic Development in Contemporary Turkey: Etatism to Neoliberalism and Beyond
• 8 Black Sea Economic Cooperation
• 9 Turkey and the European Union: A Multi-Dimensional Relationship With Hazy Perspectives
• 10 Turkish Communities in Western Europe
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index
• About the Book