secularism and turkey
September 23, 2005 8:40 AM Subscribe
Secularism: The Turkish Experience. Here is a transcript (pdf file). It talks about the Turkish system and it contrasts the social system of the Ottoman empire, the "millet" system, with the modern one, called "laiklik" which is based on the French model.
Didn't the Armenian genocide take place under the Ottoman Empire, rather than the Turkish Republic?
Christopher de Bellaigue, Left Out in Turkey, the New York Review of Books:
In 1915, following severe military defeat at the hands of the Russians and an Armenian uprising in the eastern city of Van, the Ottomans ordered the deportation of Armenians from Anatolia. Well over one million are thought to have died in what many historians consider to have been a premeditated act of genocide. ... In 1925, around one million Anatolian Greeks were sent to Greece under a population exchange that was managed relatively humanely and cleansed Anatolia further of non-Turkish minorities.
I found this part particularly interesting:
... the most striking thing about the Turkish identity promoted by Ataturk is just how many citizens of the new state enthusiastically accepted it. Few of today's Turks are descended from the original Central Asian migrants. Ataturk himself was not the "Father of the Turk" that his self-conferred surname suggests, but was probably descended from Slavic converts to Islam. Many of the people I spoke to in Turkey this spring told me that their ancestors had fled from the Balkans, the Caucasus, or Ottoman Mesopotamia during the empire's collapse. I met others who were assimilated Kurds; they had, they said, no sympathy for Kurdish nationalism.
posted by russilwvong at 1:31 PM on September 23, 2005
Christopher de Bellaigue, Left Out in Turkey, the New York Review of Books:
In 1915, following severe military defeat at the hands of the Russians and an Armenian uprising in the eastern city of Van, the Ottomans ordered the deportation of Armenians from Anatolia. Well over one million are thought to have died in what many historians consider to have been a premeditated act of genocide. ... In 1925, around one million Anatolian Greeks were sent to Greece under a population exchange that was managed relatively humanely and cleansed Anatolia further of non-Turkish minorities.
I found this part particularly interesting:
... the most striking thing about the Turkish identity promoted by Ataturk is just how many citizens of the new state enthusiastically accepted it. Few of today's Turks are descended from the original Central Asian migrants. Ataturk himself was not the "Father of the Turk" that his self-conferred surname suggests, but was probably descended from Slavic converts to Islam. Many of the people I spoke to in Turkey this spring told me that their ancestors had fled from the Balkans, the Caucasus, or Ottoman Mesopotamia during the empire's collapse. I met others who were assimilated Kurds; they had, they said, no sympathy for Kurdish nationalism.
posted by russilwvong at 1:31 PM on September 23, 2005
The documentary is actually looking at what that system as it is, rather than what it "should" be. It's a discussion of how the term "secularism" is incomplete in describing what the relationship between church and state is in Turkey, and the history of what forces have brought the current situation to bear.
As for the ethnic strife, I wonder how the "laik" state ties into that situation, how or whether or not it has contributed to current ethnic divisions, and what the state of those divisions are today.
posted by ishmael at 1:41 PM on September 23, 2005
As for the ethnic strife, I wonder how the "laik" state ties into that situation, how or whether or not it has contributed to current ethnic divisions, and what the state of those divisions are today.
posted by ishmael at 1:41 PM on September 23, 2005
Er, no mention of the Genocide the "Young Turks" led and which Turkey continues to deny happened. Call it whatever you want, but when they jail novelists for offhand remarks and ban conferences discussing the genocide...
posted by Cassford at 1:57 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by Cassford at 1:57 PM on September 23, 2005
Didn't the Armenian genocide take place under the Ottoman Empire, rather than the Turkish Republic?
The ongoing expulsions and disappearances of various ethnic and religious groups has not stopped since it started at the end of the Ottoman era.
In 1914 the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople listed around 1600 parishes, 250 monasteries with over 700 monastery buildings. The total of Armenian Orthodox buildings alone was over 2500.
In 1974 a survey by the UN found that around 900 building sites could actually be located. 500 of the sites showed no discernable signs of the buildings. 250 sites had ruins and the remaining 150 actually had a usable building.
In 1975 J. M. Thierry, a French art historian was arrested and sentenced to hard labor for being caught drawing the floor plan of a ruined Armenian church. He managed to escape the country.
In 1986 Hilda Potuoglu was arrested and charged with "making propaganda with intent to destroy or weaken national feelings" because she mentioned in a footnote in the Turkish translation of the Encyclopedia Britannica (a since banned book) that "During the Crusades the mountainous regions of Cilicia were under the hegemony of the Armenian Cilician Kingdom."
The official line of the Turkish government, to this day, is that there never were many Armenians in Turkey to start with.
That's just the Armenians. Siriani and Greek Christians fare no better. At the beginning of the 20th Century there were about 200,000 Siriani Christians in Southern Turkey, now there are about 900.
For me, I tend not to agree with the author you quoted that non-turkish ethnic groups began to refer to themselves as Turkish as a sign that they enjoyed existence under Attaturk, rather that they weren't given much choice. It was assimilate, leave or die. If this assimilation was purely secular then let me ask this then, how many of those that converted to the Turkish identity also kept their former religious ties? How many converted to Islam?
posted by Pollomacho at 2:30 PM on September 23, 2005
The ongoing expulsions and disappearances of various ethnic and religious groups has not stopped since it started at the end of the Ottoman era.
In 1914 the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople listed around 1600 parishes, 250 monasteries with over 700 monastery buildings. The total of Armenian Orthodox buildings alone was over 2500.
In 1974 a survey by the UN found that around 900 building sites could actually be located. 500 of the sites showed no discernable signs of the buildings. 250 sites had ruins and the remaining 150 actually had a usable building.
In 1975 J. M. Thierry, a French art historian was arrested and sentenced to hard labor for being caught drawing the floor plan of a ruined Armenian church. He managed to escape the country.
In 1986 Hilda Potuoglu was arrested and charged with "making propaganda with intent to destroy or weaken national feelings" because she mentioned in a footnote in the Turkish translation of the Encyclopedia Britannica (a since banned book) that "During the Crusades the mountainous regions of Cilicia were under the hegemony of the Armenian Cilician Kingdom."
The official line of the Turkish government, to this day, is that there never were many Armenians in Turkey to start with.
That's just the Armenians. Siriani and Greek Christians fare no better. At the beginning of the 20th Century there were about 200,000 Siriani Christians in Southern Turkey, now there are about 900.
For me, I tend not to agree with the author you quoted that non-turkish ethnic groups began to refer to themselves as Turkish as a sign that they enjoyed existence under Attaturk, rather that they weren't given much choice. It was assimilate, leave or die. If this assimilation was purely secular then let me ask this then, how many of those that converted to the Turkish identity also kept their former religious ties? How many converted to Islam?
posted by Pollomacho at 2:30 PM on September 23, 2005
I wouldn't say that Turkey is a model state; but I think it is pretty important, because it's one of the few Muslim states that's been relatively successful at modernizing.
More on the population exchange/deportation between Greece and Turkey.
For me, I tend not to agree with the author you quoted that non-turkish ethnic groups began to refer to themselves as Turkish as a sign that they enjoyed existence under Attaturk, rather that they weren't given much choice. It was assimilate, leave or die.
From de Bellaigue's account, it was Muslims who assimilated. I didn't know before reading his article that many Turks are not actually of Central Asian descent.
Continuing the quote:
What has induced these people to embrace Ataturk's national identity? As Muslims under the Ottoman Empire traumatized by the loss of their former lands whether in the Balkans or elsewhere, their forebears found refuge in Anatolia. In the face of new threats to their security, not least Allied attempts at the end of World War I to carve up Anatolia and create new Armenian and Kurdish countries, the only thing for them to do was to assimilate. Most forgot their Balkan or Caucasian languages and traditions; their children became model Turkish citizens, diligently learning at school about allegedly Turkish skull types and memorizing the poems of Ziya Gokalp, an exponent of Turkish nationalism who wrote much of his poetry in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. And
so modern Turkishness, while theoretically springing from a common racial heritage, actually means something more and less than that. It was born in response to irredentist Balkan nationalisms of the nineteenth century and it became a means of uniting people against hostile states trying to divide up Anatolia at the end of World War I.
Ataturk chose Turkishness, and not Islam, to bind the citizens together because he had decided that Turkey should be a secular state, and hoped that Islam, which he felt retarded modern development, would lose its influence over people's daily lives. In the words of the Turkish historian Taner Akcam, who has written extensively about Turkey's self-image, particularly in connection with the atrocities committed against the Armenians, the national identity "developed together with the fear of extermination, of extinction" by predatory enemies. For the Armenians, of course, the fear of extermination turned out to be real; but many modern Turks concur with the words of Talat Pasha, the chief vizier who ordered the deportations: "If I had not done it to them, they would have done it to us." Any attempt to dismantle Turkishness, even now, is bound to revive old fears.
posted by russilwvong at 3:04 PM on September 23, 2005
More on the population exchange/deportation between Greece and Turkey.
For me, I tend not to agree with the author you quoted that non-turkish ethnic groups began to refer to themselves as Turkish as a sign that they enjoyed existence under Attaturk, rather that they weren't given much choice. It was assimilate, leave or die.
From de Bellaigue's account, it was Muslims who assimilated. I didn't know before reading his article that many Turks are not actually of Central Asian descent.
Continuing the quote:
What has induced these people to embrace Ataturk's national identity? As Muslims under the Ottoman Empire traumatized by the loss of their former lands whether in the Balkans or elsewhere, their forebears found refuge in Anatolia. In the face of new threats to their security, not least Allied attempts at the end of World War I to carve up Anatolia and create new Armenian and Kurdish countries, the only thing for them to do was to assimilate. Most forgot their Balkan or Caucasian languages and traditions; their children became model Turkish citizens, diligently learning at school about allegedly Turkish skull types and memorizing the poems of Ziya Gokalp, an exponent of Turkish nationalism who wrote much of his poetry in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. And
so modern Turkishness, while theoretically springing from a common racial heritage, actually means something more and less than that. It was born in response to irredentist Balkan nationalisms of the nineteenth century and it became a means of uniting people against hostile states trying to divide up Anatolia at the end of World War I.
Ataturk chose Turkishness, and not Islam, to bind the citizens together because he had decided that Turkey should be a secular state, and hoped that Islam, which he felt retarded modern development, would lose its influence over people's daily lives. In the words of the Turkish historian Taner Akcam, who has written extensively about Turkey's self-image, particularly in connection with the atrocities committed against the Armenians, the national identity "developed together with the fear of extermination, of extinction" by predatory enemies. For the Armenians, of course, the fear of extermination turned out to be real; but many modern Turks concur with the words of Talat Pasha, the chief vizier who ordered the deportations: "If I had not done it to them, they would have done it to us." Any attempt to dismantle Turkishness, even now, is bound to revive old fears.
posted by russilwvong at 3:04 PM on September 23, 2005
This guy's doing his best. (More of interest here). Bleak times, of course, but the church has put up with that in the past.
Side note- the Theological School of Halki where he studied has been closed since 1971 by government order. There is pressure to bring it back. This article is worth reading in its entirely. (I'd be interested in comments from others who know something about Orthodoxy in Turkey, a subject about which I know little.)
posted by IndigoJones at 3:09 PM on September 23, 2005
Side note- the Theological School of Halki where he studied has been closed since 1971 by government order. There is pressure to bring it back. This article is worth reading in its entirely. (I'd be interested in comments from others who know something about Orthodoxy in Turkey, a subject about which I know little.)
posted by IndigoJones at 3:09 PM on September 23, 2005
By the way, it was Attaturk himself who ordered the Siriani Patriarchate expelled in 1924 (they settled in now also "secular" Damascus). In 1978 the Turkish government sealed the Siriani's fate by outlawing the teaching of Aramaic, the ecclesiastical language of the Siriani.
IJ, a pretty good book about the last vestiges of ancient Christianity is From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple. It is a sort of travel journal where he tries to seek out the last pockets of Byzantium in the region.
posted by Pollomacho at 3:29 PM on September 23, 2005
IJ, a pretty good book about the last vestiges of ancient Christianity is From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple. It is a sort of travel journal where he tries to seek out the last pockets of Byzantium in the region.
posted by Pollomacho at 3:29 PM on September 23, 2005
Ask a Kurd, Armenian, Greek, Siriani,Jew, Christian, Arab or so forth if Turkey is a model "secular" state. That is if you can find any.
I know a Turkish Kurd. But of course he's here, not there. He seems to like Turkey well enough except for the bits about getting put in jail if he speaks Kurdish in public.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:46 PM on September 23, 2005
I know a Turkish Kurd. But of course he's here, not there. He seems to like Turkey well enough except for the bits about getting put in jail if he speaks Kurdish in public.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:46 PM on September 23, 2005
Dalrymple. Excellent. I've read other stuff by him, but not this. I'll put it on the list right now, thank you.
posted by IndigoJones at 3:58 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by IndigoJones at 3:58 PM on September 23, 2005
I had a Turkish acquaintance. We discussed things on several occasions but I could never quite get her to explain the contradictions I saw. Maybe none of them can.
Many Turks seem to regard Kurds the way many in the West regard Muslims -- as dangerous fanatics.
posted by dhartung at 3:58 PM on September 23, 2005
Many Turks seem to regard Kurds the way many in the West regard Muslims -- as dangerous fanatics.
posted by dhartung at 3:58 PM on September 23, 2005
You're Armenian, aren't you, Pollomacho.
posted by ghastlyfop at 4:26 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by ghastlyfop at 4:26 PM on September 23, 2005
Huh?
Lots of people condemn the Armenian genocide who aren't Armenian. The Canadian parliament formally condemned the genocide last year.
posted by russilwvong at 5:13 PM on September 23, 2005
Lots of people condemn the Armenian genocide who aren't Armenian. The Canadian parliament formally condemned the genocide last year.
posted by russilwvong at 5:13 PM on September 23, 2005
Did I say you have to be Armenian to condemn the genocide?
posted by ghastlyfop at 5:30 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by ghastlyfop at 5:30 PM on September 23, 2005
Also--have you spent any time in Turkey? I mean, we can all agree on the notoriously, and historically, corrupt government in Turkey. But what can you tell us about the people who call themselves Turks?
posted by ghastlyfop at 6:05 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by ghastlyfop at 6:05 PM on September 23, 2005
Other than the fact that they hate themselves and are in denial.
posted by ghastlyfop at 6:07 PM on September 23, 2005
posted by ghastlyfop at 6:07 PM on September 23, 2005
I know a Turk. He does not hate himself and he's not in denial. He wrote and produced the above documentary, and I thought it warranted thoughtful discussion. I don't know much of Turkish history, so I don't claim to know the reasons for the Armenian tragedy or cultural suppression. But I think that discussing the reasons behind the Turkish government's actions throughout history, and the cultural movements that spawned them, is worthwhile. How does nationalism, within a religious culture, spawn xenophobic policies, or if there are other factors what could they be? Here's another article from the New York times discussing Turkey's political present and future. If you need a password, use bug me not.
posted by ishmael at 10:47 AM on September 25, 2005
posted by ishmael at 10:47 AM on September 25, 2005
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Turkey is only "secular" because they've managed to slaughter or drive out anyone that disagrees with the regimes. Ask a Kurd, Armenian, Greek, Siriani,Jew, Christian, Arab or so forth if Turkey is a model "secular" state. That is if you can find any.
posted by Pollomacho at 10:39 AM on September 23, 2005