Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
Sometimes you come across a piece that sums things up so well that you’re embarrassed at everything else you’ve read, tweeted, retweeted and posted in the recent past because they now all seem superfluous and redundant. This Cengiz Aktar article in AhvalNews is exactly that: “Taking account of the damages to Turkey“.
Money quote:
“A strong state tradition manifests as the guarantee of the country, which is the guarantee of property. The main pillars of the state’s guarantee are courts of law, military, foreign affairs, academia, treasury, and civil services. Today, we are living through a rapid discrediting of these institutions, as their institutional memories are emptied. These institutions are being abolished by the government, instead of being transformed and democratised in line with tendencies of the world.”
I once got into an argument with a Turkish art historian friend of mine after I referred to the eight round canvasses with the first caliphs’ names on them (I think) in Hagia Sophia as “the hideous green billboards”. She, of course, thought they were “cool” or “pastiche-y” or “palimpsest-y”. I thought, and think, that they not only mar the space by covering the joints between the massive square space and the massive dome which are perhaps the most ingenious aspect of this miracle of Roman engineering, but that they were meant to send a clear message of who was now in charge. Hers is a typical “woke” take on these things. In the article below, Axel Çorlu highlights the dangers of such gleefully amoral, post-modern celebrations of funky “conjunctures” and how they essentially elide the historical facts of violence, persecution and appropriation from our picture of the past, and how — in the particular case of Hagia Sophia — these academics end up feeding the discourse of both Ottoman/Muslim triumphalism and the oppression and displacement of religious minorities by the nationalism of the Turkish Republic.
In short, you may want to get past “conquest narratives”; Erdoğan — who justified the reconversion by the “right of conquest” — doesn’t.
My money quotes:
They [Patricia Blessing and Ali Yaycıoğlu, titled “Beyond Conquest Narratives: Hagia Sophia, Past and Present”] conclude this section with the heart of their essay: “…in this essay, we would like to divert the conversation and discuss how the conquest narrative, which is shared by those who oppose and support the decision, does not do justice to Hagia Sophia and its architecturally, spiritually, and emotionally charged history.” This sort of interjection, very appealing to the academic mind, nonetheless includes ominous terminology such as “doing justice” to the Hagia Sophia and its “…emotionally charged history.”
This narrative at once establishes the issue of “justice,” not in the sense of the expropriation and destruction of Christian and/or minority populations and the appropriation of their cultural heritage, but as in, “Let us not be unfair to the Ottomans or the Turkish Republic…” and the fact that those who respond to the Hagia Sophia issue might be affected by the same “emotionally charged” aspects. In other words, the authors are guiding us to focus on “justice,” as long as it is to protect the powerful who do not need any protection –there appears to be no need to consider the concept of justice for the dispossessed, whom the Hagia Sophia also symbolizes. […]
While the republican regime was indeed interested in recasting the Ottoman past (usually not in a very bright light, as it also distanced itself from many of its aspects and dictated a highly selective version of its history) and kept busy trying to prove that “Turks” had existed in Anatolia for millennia through the Hittites and other ancient peoples with an eclectic mix of the racial theories and pseudo-science of the time (including the infamous obsession with the morphology and measurements of skulls), it hardly made an effort to understand, teach, or preserve its Byzantine past, let alone “making a claim” to it, if what we mean by “making a claim” is anything more than a possessive but not inclusive approach.
Indeed, the Byzantine past of Turkey remained either buried, neglected, or carefully molded in the public imagination, as nothing more than the “other” that had happened to be there before.At no point did the republic genuinely try to make a direct connection to the Byzantines beyond their role as the adversary in history textbooks, the adversary that had been vanquished, the adversary that had nothing to do with the ethnicity or cultural heritage of the people in Turkey. […]
Beyond its [the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum] practical use as described, it was neither part of a grand historical or intellectual vision, nor a noble gesture of “tolerance” by a regime that did its very best to eliminate the remaining diversity of cultures and religions in its lands for decades to come through acts ranging from the population exchange with Greece, to the Izmir Economics Congress of 1923 where the elimination of “foreign” bourgeoisie and its replacement with a “national” one was planned, to the Varlik Vergisi (Capital Tax) of 1942, among many other examples. Such a regime surely could not care less about multiculturalism, inclusivity, or the Byzantine past as the authors suggest. […]
This idea also worked very well for the urban Kemalist elite and their newly created middle class throughout the 20th century, because it did not require them to symbolically come to terms with the vast destruction visited upon the minorities of the land, from whom they had acquired significant aspects of their material and cultural wealth via direct or indirect appropriation…
I agree that a narrative that “equates Ottoman approaches to Hagia Sophia with iconophobia and iconoclasm is incorrect” but I do not think it is necessarily “marked by Islamophobia and Orientalism” given the fact that Byzantine art and architecture suffered tremendous degradation and damage, sometimes in the name of Islam, and other times at the hands of unscrupulous republican bureaucrats, treasure hunters, or the common public in more recent times. Any scholar, casual observer, or visitor of Byzantine, Armenian, or Syriac heritage sites in Turkey will be more than cognizant of the intentional damage done to frescoes, mosaics, and other elements of Christian architecture. The damage was done over a period of centuries under different conditions, the perpetrators were/are not a homogeneous group, and the practice ranges from officially undertaken projects to “simply” neglected sites. This is an undeniable fact, and it would be disingenuous to suggest that the few token examples in the Ottoman era, republican era or today somehow represent a “preservationist” or “tolerant” attitude when in the vast majority of locations they were covered at best and destroyed at worst. …..Today, the Turkish state uses sites such as the restored Aghtamar Cathedral of the Holy Cross or the Sumela Monastery as tokens of its hollow “multiculturalism” and “tolerance.” As scholars, we have a grave responsibility to challenge this narrative. This multiculturalism narrative and tokenism of Turkey is a propaganda tool designed to cover the simultaneous appropriation and destruction of the past and the present, motivated to a significant extent by the conquest narrative. The conquest narrative was a real factor in history, and it is a real factor today. Ignoring it, reducing it to merely an “incorrect” historical interpretation, or diminishing it to an ahistorical approach is dangerous. […]
The reconversion of the Hagia Sophia is about power; in a world where power relations past and present influence the lives of millions of people, and history is weaponized for various agendas, we do not have the luxury of pretending to “stay above it” in a noncommittal manner.
The interior of Hagia Sophia with the eight “hideous green billboards”. Getty Images.
Dangers of Convenient Universalism: Power Relations and Responsibility of Scholars on the Hagia Sophia
2020-08-08
By Axel B. Çorlu, Ph.D.
The recent reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque by the (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan regime generated heated debates among scholars, politicians, and the public. A recent article by Patricia Blessing and Ali Yaycioglu, titled “Beyond Conquest Narratives: Hagia Sophia, Past and Present” offers sophisticated but ultimately convenient universalism, where both the past and the present are presented from a distorted lens, with strategic omissions.[1]
According to Blessing and Yaycioglu, there is a binary “conquest narrative” that both the supporters and opponents of the Hagia Sophia reconversion utilize, and that in essence this simplistic view does not reflect the “complex history of Ottoman Hagia Sophia.” The authors go on to label the concerns about the protection of the structure, especially regarding the issue of the mosaics as ahistorical “disinformation,” and offer a “correct” version of history.
I will follow their text in the same order, and point out the multiple issues… (see below)
“German supermarket chain EDEKA has released a new commercial. The film focuses on the warm surprise of a German, who does not like his Turkish neighbors, on a Christmas eve spent alone with COVID-19.“
A wonderful, loving, attractive Turkish family has fun making goose and dumplings for their pissy old man German neighbor. The last line of the song is: “Dünyada en güzel şey, dost edinmek” — “The most beautiful thing in the world is having friends.” I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff.
Don’t know what “☪︎ Everything Turkish” is though, in the upper left. Maybe an AKP or Gülen front?
What is new is not the negative image of the West; “Christianophobia” in the East is as old as the Ottomans and it is the flip side of “Islamophobia” of the West. These prejudices are the historical legacies of centuries-long crusades and jihads. What is sad is that the parties see only what lies in front of their eyes; they do not look at a mirror. It is also heartbreaking that paranoia cannot be demonstrated to the obsessed. There is also a high probability that Erdoğan’s extreme anti-West rhetoric is not a tactical choice, but a sincere conviction.
The meaning attributed to the persistently used term “international law” is probably the most indicative sign of the big changes that have taken place in Turkey as of late: it is a self-proclaimed and nationally interpreted “justice” and “our right”. In other words, this is a blatant nationalist declaration of arbitrariness with which “international” law is openly defied on a “national” basis.
If this is the situation, i.e., if in Turkey there is a deep anti-Western conviction and a nationalist alliance, then an expectation of reinstalling Turkey of the past may prove to be a chimera. The changes that occurred in Turkey in the last few years are not some “manoeuvres on policies”; the core body of decision-making has been replaced. The old state has been toppled.
This is a new Turkey that needs to be re-discovered and re-evaluated. Limited ingredients necessitate new recipes.
“I would love to see these people try and live somewhere like Pendik or Küçükçekmece, and commute to work for 4 hours total/per day in crowded public transport for 3,000 TL/month… like most of Istanbul… and then see what they have to say.
“At least these people aren’t as terrible as the (appallingly numerous) Westerners who think Dubai is a lovely holiday destination.”
Dubai? Who needs Dubai when Erdoğan builds hideous and hubristically six-minaretted mosque monstrosities like this:
For 2,676 years, the Megaran Greeks who founded the city, the Romans, meaning the the Italian ones and us, and the Ottomans only built things that added to the beauty of Istanbul. Only Erdoğan had the arrogance to build something so hideous on a site so conspicuous that it mars the entire sea-landscape, horizon and view of the City.
…are so blissfully ignorant of how much ugliness and violence went into creating the questionably “beautiful” city you see today. Your type probably wept in the 90s (if you’re even that old), along with Susan Sontag and Angelina Jolie, for the violent segregation and ethnic cleansing that evil Serbs inflicted on poor Sarajevo. But there’s apparently a statute of limitations on such crimes where Istanbul is concerned. And if, like most ex-pats, your existence is pretty much limited to the axis between Karaköy to Bebek — maybe some 0.5% of the territory of the city — with an occasional foray to the islands or to Kadıköy to go eat at AKP Çiya, and you’ve ingested enough Turkish tourist propaganda, then you’ll believe anything.
You know nothing about Istanbul. You know nothing of the violence, massacre, pogroms, property destruction and confiscation, discriminatory taxation and imprisonment, expulsions and deportations that created the wonderful East-West playground you love so much. You know nothing of the genuine Mediterranean worldliness that’s been displaced by rural Anatolian puritanism. You know nothing of the last muhallebici in Pera that’s been replaced by another kitschy restaurant with women in salwar and headscarves kneading flatbreads in the window. You know nothing of the subtlety and sophistication of the City’s cuisine that’s been totally replaced by the monotony of kebab/köfte joints that you think are authentic and cool.
Yes, it still has a modicum of its old charms. And it’s hard to beat its stunning physical location, though the Padishah’s monster kitschario-mosque has managed to mar even that. But mostly, Istanbul today is a Baudrillardian simulacrum of the city that it was for centuries. And you buy it up. It’s a massive — and aside from the axis mentioned above — hideous monstropolis of 15 million, 99.9% of whom are Turkish or Kurdish Muslims, and yet still manages to sell itself as multicultural.
Look at what a tiny bit of the actual city you really have any relation to:
And how ignorant you are of even the neighborhoods that you do move about in. How clueless you are about who used to live there. (see below)* About who was displaced to house you and your Turkish yuppy friends. The zoning corruption that’s destroyed neighborhood after neighborhood and the woodlands and wetlands of the City’s environs and replaced them with massive high-rise developments that make the Queensbridge Houses in New York look like the Place des Vosges. The megalomaniacal mega-mosques disfiguring Taksim or Çamlica, that are more Riyadh or Dubai than Istanbul. The cheezy, glitzy Gulfie shopping malls…
Plus, how glibly non-concerned you seem to be about political developments…Islamist dictatorship…more imprisoned journalists than any other country in the world…whatever.. It’s exhausting to even talk to you.
This “DAMN” city is right.
Enjoy your Turkish Life.
Oh, that’s the Sülemaniye on the right, isn’t it? and the Yeni Camii in the distant left?
“All – I thought a lot about whether I should use “almost all” in this sentence and decided against it –becauseall the hippest, funkiest, most attractive, gentrified neighborhoods in the historic parts of İstanbul are neighborhoods that were significantly, if not largely, minority-inhabited until well into the twentieth century: not just Pera and Galata, but Cihangir and Tarlabaşı, and even Kurtuluş — of course — and up and down the western shores of the Bosphorus and much of its eastern towns too, and central Kadiköy and Moda and the Islands. (And if serious gentrifying ever begins in the old city it’ll be in Samatya and Kumkapı and Fener and Balat; I wouldn’t put any big money into Çarşamba just yet.) If young Turks are fighting to preserve the cosmopolitan character of areas made cosmopolitan by a Greek presence, among others, is it a recognition of that presence, however vestigial, that I want? Yes. Is it because some recognition might assuage some of the bitterness of the displacement? Perhaps. Is the feeling proprietary then? Does the particular “cool” quality of these neighborhoods that protesters have been fighting to protect register for me as a form of appropriated “coolness?” I’m afraid that yes, sometimes it does. In darker moments this spring and summer, these Occupy Gezi kids annoyed me: “What’s wrong mes p’tits? The Big Daddy State threatening to break up your funky Beyoğlu party? Do you know the Big Daddy State made life so intolerable for the dudes who made Beyoğlu funky that they not only had to break the party up, but shut down shop altogether and set up elsewhere? That your own daddies and granddaddies probably stood by and watched, approved even? Do you know that now? Do you care?”
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 