No sex please, we’re Turks

I read – though I can’t swear to the truth of it – that when people in Hungary encounter some extraordinary mishap they are consoled with the words “Never mind; more was lost at Mohács field” (Több is veszett Mohácsnál). The reference here is to the Battle of Mohács, fought in August 1526 between Hungarian forces led by King Louis II and those of the Ottoman Empire, commanded by Suleiman the Magnificent, the greatest of all the sultans. It was a disaster for Hungary, so much so that it occupies a place in the national consciousness similar to that of the Battle of Kosovo for the Serbs.

Given his prestige, given this victory, given the way that Turkish forces advanced so far as the walls of Vienna under his leadership, given that his death was followed by a long drawn-out decline, Suleiman continues to occupy a central place in the consciousness of Turks.

Now this iconic figure is the centre of a new battle, one that ranges the country’s Muslim conservatives against the secularists who take their stand behind the memory of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern, post-Ottoman Turkey. It’s the great fault line, becoming ever wider because of; because of what, exactly? Well, it’s because of a television drama series!

The series penetrates right into some of the places that conservative Turks would much rather not go: namely, into the harem. Suleiman is not just shown as the great soldier and leader; he is also shown as a man, a man with ordinary passions, a man lusting after Roxelana, the love of his life. Just as bad, he is shown drinking goblets of wine, particularly unpalatable for the conservatives.

It does not really matter if it’s true or not, it does not really matter that his son and successor was such a notorious drunkard that he has gone down in history as Selim the Sot, to see a national hero, caliph as well as sultan, breaking a fundamental Muslim commandment against the consumption of alcohol is another step too far.

Things are so bad that Halit Ergenc, the actor playing the sultan, has received death threats. Even the government has been moved to intervene. Bulent Arnic, deputy prime minister, has called for the series to be scrapped. “It shows him”, he said, “in his harem, fond of drinking and in certain scenes that I cannot find words to express.” Well, let me express it then: it shows that Suleiman was a man.

RTUK, the state media watchdog, has warned the broadcasters, Show TV, that they are clashing with the “national and moral values of our society.” Meanwhile protesters have gathered outside the studios, ushered there by the Islamist Saadet party. In spite of this the producers are fighting back, saying that “the children of the Sultan were not conceived by pollination…he did have a sex life and a family.” As is the way with these things the controversy has boosted the ratings tremendously.

It all seems so minor, I know, such a silly fuss over what are, I imagine, not having seen the show, some very chaste sex scenes. Still, its significance should not be minimised: its part of a bigger struggle over Turkey’s identity as a nation. Is it to remain a secular and modern republic in the fashion of Atatürk or is it to retreat into more fundamental courses, a place where sultans and caliphs may have all the sex and alcohol they like, just so long as the population remains in a state of benighted ignorance?

The valley of death

It’s Good Friday, April 10, 1846. Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims on an Easter weekend that happened to fall on the same date in both the Latin and Orthodox calendars. The mood is tense. The two religious communities had been arguing over who has the right to be first to carry out the rituals at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest places in Christendom, standing on the spot where Jesus is said to have been crucified.

That Friday was to be anything but good. The Catholics arrived only to find that the Greeks were there first. A fight broke out, priest against priest, soon to be joined by monks and pilgrims from the respective camps. People fought not just with fists but anything they could get a hold of – crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense burners. Wood was torn from the sacred shrines and used as clubs. Knives and pistols were smuggled into the church. By the time the Mehemet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had restored order forty people lay dead.

This dreadful incident, all in the name of a shared belief, marks the departure for Orlando Figes’ Crimea, the Last Crusade, the first full account of the Crimean War that I have read. I know Figes well, one of the best specialists on Russian history in the English-speaking world, the author of the superlative A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. Although his history of the Crimean War lacks the range and power of the latter book, he has done a tremendous service, placing the conflict firmly within the context of the Eastern Question – the issues arising from the continuing decline of the Ottoman Empire – and European power politics as a whole.

I’m not completely convinced by his ‘crusading hook’, I have to say. Yes the war did begin with a conflict over who had the best claim to protect the holy places within the Turkish empire, the Catholic French or the Orthodox Russians, and again, yes, Tsar Nicholas I was strong in his conviction that he was a defender of the ‘true’ faith, a defender of the Orthodox faithful in all the Turkish lands. But almost immediately, when the fighting started, the religious issue was obscured by more general issues arising from European geopolitics. Besides, a war which involved Turkish Muslims, British Protestants and French Catholics, on one side, against Orthodox Russians, on the other, does not look much like a ‘crusade.’ The Tsar may have begun with crusading thoughts, but before his death in March 1855 he was more preoccupied by the decline in Russian power.

Figes' greatest service has been to rescue the conflict from fragmentation and partiality, the preserve, at best, of amateur military historians, more interested in the clash of arms than the reason for the clash of arms. The war may have been tragic and ‘unnecessary' but it still marks and important stage in the development of European politics and diplomacy. It marks the end of the Concert of Europe, the arrangement between the powers to police the settlement of 1815 emerging from the Napoleonic Wars. It marks the break in the informal alliance between Russia and Austria that helped preserved that settlement in aspic, allowing for the rise of new nations like Italy and Germany. So, in all, it was so much more than the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Thin Red Line and the Lady with the Lamp.

So far as the conflict itself is concerned there was really no need, as the author shows, for the Crimean War ever to have been the Crimean War. There was no need, in other words, for the landing on the Crimean peninsula, followed by the lengthy, and bloody, siege of the port of Sevastopol, for the simple reason that the Russians had suffered a serious tactical and strategic reverse in early 1854.

They had previously occupied the semi-autonomous Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Walachia, now Romania, with a view to pushing south of the Danube in a march on Constantinople. But unexpectedly tough resistance by the Turks at the fortress of Silistria prevented any further advance. When this was coupled with the landings of the French and British at Varna, in what is now Bulgaria, and the threat of Austrian intervention, the Russians had no choice but to withdraw from the occupied provinces. But the blood was up; the war had to run its course, Russia had to be humbled; Sevastopol had to fall.

Crimea marks a vital stage in the development of warfare, combining elements of the old and the new, combining the Napoleonic Wars at one remove and the First World War at the other. It was the last of the old wars, if you like, containing the seeds of the new. Although it may come as a surprise, the campaign on the Crimea itself, and its eventual outcome, was far more a French than a British affair. The French contributed many more troops. It was their capture of the Malakhov redoubt in September 1855 that led to the fall of Sevastopol and the end of the war.

Diplomatically their role was also decisive. Palmerston, who succeeded the far less militant Aberdeen as prime minister in 1855, rather took on the role of Cato the Elder. Cartago delenda est was his war cry. His Carthage was Russia, which he intended to remove forever as a threat to the British Empire. If he had had his way the Russian borders would have returned to those of 1709, before Peter the Great’s victory over the Swedes at Poltava. The press was behind his war-drive, the people were behind him, even the Queen was behind him; the French were not. He did not have his way because Napoleon III had other visions. Britain may have had the fleet, but the French had the army.

This is a good story, an important story told with verve and style, told in a wholly compelling fashion with plenty of balance and nuance, placing the Crimean War in proper context. The author is to be commended for his industry and his scholarship, for writing a first-class account of an important passage in European history.

Old Enemies, New Friends

Serbia is doing its best to recast itself. Earlier this season Boris Tadic, the president, paid homage to the 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed after the town fell to Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. Meanwhile, at Novi Sad in northern Serbia, the tenth annual Exit music festival was held, so called because it is meant to represent the “exit” from Serbian nationalism. It’s obvious that the country is trying to clean up its image in anticipation of joining the great European club.

Actually a strange paradox is at work; for while Serbia is looking to the west it is at the same time looking east to Turkey. Yes, it is an oddity: Serbia and Turkey, two ancient enemies, are reaching out to one another. They both stand at the door of Europe, and while they may not be outcasts they might best be described as orphans. So, making the best of the situation, they have concluded a series of agreements allowing for free trade between the two countries as well as visa free travel. Both, I think, are anticipating a future that may not include membership of the European Union.

If Serbia does not join, or is not allowed to join, it will be because of one thing: Kosovo. This region, which declared its independence in 2008, is a setting for yet another paradox. It contains few people of Serbian ethnic origin though it is still considered not just to be part of Serbian soil but in many ways the most sacred part, the place where the country suffered defeat and martyrdom in the Middle Ages at the hands of – can you guess? –the Turks, bad old enemies, good new friends.

The Serbian government continues to fight a rearguard action against this unilateral act of the Kosovo Albanians through various international agencies, including the UN. The problem is that the independence of Kosovo has been recognised by twenty-two of the EU’s twenty-seven member states which is hardly likely to smooth the Serbian passage. Membership of the EU contains to be the main objective of Serbian foreign policy but the rapprochement with Turkey, and other nations beyond, is clearly being shaped as a line of second defence.

Turkey is back in the Balkans through a Serbian door. History really does have a strange sense of humour.

Pragmatism and Principle

The reason why Gladstone and Disraeli took such opposite views over the Turkish massacres in Bulgaria in 1876 comes down to one simple thing: the 'ethics of opposition' versus the 'pragmatism of power.' William Ewart Gladstone famously called for the Turks to be removed 'bag and baggage' from the areas they had devastated in the Batak outrages; Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister of the day, held steady to the established British position in maintaining the Ottoman Empire as a counter to the expansionist ambitions of Russia.

Would Gladstone in office, it is fair to ask, have behaved any differently? Yes, I think he may very well have, and not purely for reasons of moral outrage. There was simply no reason to suppose, as Disraeli did, that an independent Bulgaria would have been little more than a Russian puppet. In fact, there was a pragmatic dimension to Gladstone's whole perception of the issue, and it is this: a line of vigorous independent Balkan nations would, in the long run, have served the British purpose far better than a weak and weakening Turkish Empire.

Not many years after the Treaty of Berlin had greatly reduced the Bulgarian borders previously established at San Stephano the country was behaving in a determinedly independent manner, much to the frustration of the Russians. Indeed, when Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia joined to together in 1885, in defiance of the Treaty of Berlin, the move was opposed by Russia, though it was supported by Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, who had been Disraeli's Foreign Secretary at Berlin. Thus the diplomatic world was turned upside down. So, in the end, even the Tories recognised that the Grand Old Man had not been entirely wrong!

Genocidal Thoughts

I was casting my over press reports at the weekend on the outrage in Turkey after the United States Congress defined the mass killings of Armenians in the First World War as ‘genocide.’

The Turks are a proud people, a people with a deeply ingrained sense of national honour. I suppose I can understand, to some degree at least, the collective anger that this move has occasioned. After all, it places their country on the same moral level as Nazi Germany, or at least that’s how they feel. Official channels in Turkey do not deny that something terrible happened in those years, though the tendency is to view these events as part of a pattern of inter-communal violence.

There are a number of things that occur to me. First, I think it wrong to reduce the debate to numbers; it’s just as terrible if a ‘mere’ 300,000 Armenians died rather than 1.5 million, a figure favoured by those who define the event as genocide. Second, and perhaps more important, it’s wrong to get stuck in a bog of semantics.

So far as I am concerned- and I do stress this is a highly personal view- the Armenian tragedy cannot be equated with the Holocaust for the simple reason that it was not premeditated and systematic. In other words, there was no master plan, no proposal to exterminate an entire race, no Turkish Wannsee Conference, no Turkish Heydrich and no Turkish Eichmann. The whole thing, the deportations of a politically suspect minority and all that followed, was just a bloody mess, the kind of horror, though on a larger scale, that had been such a feature of Ottoman history, in episodes like the 1878 Batak Massacre in Bulgaria that so angered Gladstone.

There is, perhaps, a more fundamental point still. The crime was the responsibility of the Ottoman Empire, in general, and the then Young Turk government, in particular. But the Ottoman state disappeared in 1923 when the Republic of Turkey was born, the creation of Mustafa Kemal. This was a genuine young Turkey, a new and modern nation, which emerged from the ruins of an empire that had been degenerating for decades beforehand.

So, yes, I do find it difficult to understand the passion over this lost past. I know it’s an even more remote past but I personally would feel no sense of outrage, bemusement, yes, but not outrage, if the Irish decided to define the crimes of Oliver Cromwell, or the more recent Potato Famine, as forms of ‘genocide.’ There are indeed occasions when the dead are best left to bury the dead.

And so far as the US Congress is concerned one wonders when it will accept a resolution to the effect that what happened to the Indians in the nineteenth century in their own country was genocide. Unlike Turkey the United States does not have the excuse of historical and political fracture. These are matters that should be thought about deeply before rushing into the politics of gesture, often empty and more often meaningless.

Cossack Pirates

I suppose when people think of Cossacks they bring horsemen to mind, but the story of the sea-going variety is every bit as dramatic, and still remembered in Ukrainian foklore. Their story really begins after the Ottoman Turks gained control of the Crimean Khanate, and began to operate a trade in Ukrainian slaves out of the port of Kaffa. In 1553 Dmytro Vyshnevetsky organised several Cossack bands into a single host, centred on a fortified camp, known as a sich. This fortification was located on the lower Dnieper River close to a series of cataracts or za porohamy. Because of this the host took the name of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and began raiding Turkish settlements along the shores of the Black Sea.

Their first recorded naval raid dates to 1538, with an attack on the fortress of Ochakov. This was followed by more frequent and better-organised raids elsewhere, the freeing of Christian slaves being one of the chief aims, as well as the acqusition of plunder. Their success was such that they attracted the attention of the western European powers, including the Papacy, who made diplomatic overtures in the hope of launching joint ventures against the Turks.

During the early decades of the seventeenth century the Zaporozhian naval war reached the height of its success. Using small, shallow-draft, and highly manoeuvrable galleys known as chaiky, they moved swiftly across the Black Sea. According to the Cossacks' own records, these vessels, carrying a 50 to 70 man crew, could reach the Anatolian coast of Asia Minor from the mouth of the Dnieper River in forty hours. The chaiky were often accompanied by larger galleys, that served as command and control centres. The raids also acquired a distinct political purpose after Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny became hetman in 1613, intending to turn the host into the nucleus of a Ukrainian nation with the support of the European states.

By 1618 the Zaporozhians were members of the Anti-Turkish League, as Schaidachny transferred his seat of power to Kiev, nominally under Polish control, but functionally independent. The fighting qualities of the sea-going Cossacks was even admired in the Ottoman chronicles: "One can safely say that in the entire world one cannot find a people more careless for their lives or having less fear of death; persons versed in navigation assert that because of thir skill and boldness in naval battles these bands are more dangerous than any other enemy."

In 1615 the raiders even sailed to the walls of 'Tsarhorod', as they referred to the Turkish capital, plundering the ports of Mizevna and Archioca. An attempt by the Turks to blockade the mouth of the Dneiper, and thus deny the Cossacks access to the sea, was defeated in the spring of 1616, the raiders going on to capture Kaffa, which was burned down after all of the slaves were freed. That same year Trebizond, in eastern Anatolia, was captured and destroyed. Sultan Ahmed I sent his fleet to the Dneiper in pursuit; but instead of going home the Cossacks once more sailed to Istanbul, where they raided at leisure, even rampaging through the Topkapi Palace, according to one account. The city was raided four more times, once in 1620 and no fewer than three times in 1624.

After 1624 the Zaporozhian raids gradually died out, as the Cossacks began to devote more and more of their martial energies to land-based campaigns, fighting on one side and then the other during such conflicts as the Thirty Years War. But the legacy of the raiders remains an important part of the Ukrainian national consciousness. And if anyone wants a little fanciful insight into the spirit of these indomitable men, then I would suggest looking at Ilya Repin's marvellous painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV.

I want to sleep with Muhannad

I see the Turks are making some smash TV shows, a smash in the Arab world anyway. There is a show called Valley of the Wolves in which Israelis are shown doing nasty things to Palestinians, but that’s not the most popular, not by a long-way. You see Arabs don’t always go for high politics; they also like a spot of romance; they like a soap-opera called Noor.

This show, dubbed in Arabic, was first broadcast last year by MBC, a Saudi-owned satellite network viewed across the Arab world. The message is interesting, not one the Arabs are generally used to, cantering around the adventures of an emancipated modern woman. But for women throughout the Middle-East and North Africa that is not the main issue, no, the main issue is a blue-eyed blond former male model who goes by the name of Muhannad. The other issue is a portrait of a marriage; for you see Muhannad is a ‘modern man’, one who even does the dishes!

The bliss of this ideal throws the reality into a distressing contrast. Noor, it is said, is responsible for a rising number of divorces in the Arab world, as women compare Muhannad with their own husbands. In Jordan one woman was divorced after her husband found his picture on her mobile. It gets worse. In Syria another divorce was occasioned after a wife announced to her husband that “I want to sleep with Muhannad for just one night and then die.” :-))

Not surprisingly this trend has caught the attention of the Saudi religious establishment. The Grand Mufti has called for a boycott of the Turkish series, describing it as ‘evil.’ But MBC knows a good thing. Not only does Noor continue but it has obtained the broadcasting rights to other Turkish television dramas. This is how revolutions are made, by popular culture rather than grand politics. It was West German TV that brought down the Berlin Wall as much as anything else. Perhaps the Turks will bring their Muslim cousins right into the modern age, the age of Noor and dishy Muhannad.

Great is Diana of the Ephesians!

I was in Ephesus in Turkey last summer, in the ruins of the old Greco-Roman city, once the centre of the cult of the many-breasted goddess Artemis or Diana. The making of votive statues of the goddess by the silversmiths was an important part of the local economy.

Then St Paul arrived. Because of his preaching the trade in these religious artefacts dropped off sharply. One of the silversmiths, a man called Demetrius, gathered his fellow craftsmen. The initial complaint was over the decline in business but they found a higher cause, blaming Paul’s preaching for a loss of respect for the goddess herself. Rumours spread through the city, until a great crowd gathered in the central amphitheatre. The story is detailed in the Book of Acts, chapter 19, verses 24 to 41:

24: For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;
25: Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.
26: Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands:
27: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.
28: And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
29: And the whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre.
30: And when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not.
31: And certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him, desiring him that he would not adventure himself into the theatre.
32: Some therefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together.
33: And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand, and would have made his defence unto the people.
34: But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.
35: And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?
36: Seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly.
37: For ye have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess.
38: Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him, have a matter against any man, the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another.
39: But if ye inquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly.
40: For we are in danger to be called in question for this day's uproar, there being no cause whereby we may give an account of this concourse.
41: And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly.

For an hour those people shouted out “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” Well, I stood in the ruins of that amphitheatre, some 2000 years later, and shouted those same words at the top of my voice, something I had longed to do, to the complete astonishment of the hordes of tourists and our Turkish guide. Great she is indeed. :-))