By Mohammed Ayub Khan

09/11/2001

Author: Stephen Kinzer
Pages: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2001)


Turkey occupies a unique and somewhat contradictory position in the modern world. On one hand it is the inheritor of the glory of the Ottoman Empire. On the other it is also the most westernized among Muslim countries. It claims to be a democracy; but also has ruthless army generals who frequently intervene in parliamentary affairs and on occasion have even managed to dislodge legitimately elected governments.

In the current international scenario, Turkey finds itself as a vital member of the U.S.-led coalition's war against terrorism. Stephen Kinzer's Crescent and Star - Turkey Between Two Worlds is a timely work about a country and a people who, for centuries, have been represented as the face of terror in Western imagination. Even to this day, as Kinzer writes, many people in the West think of Turkey as "exotic and fascinating but at the same time repressive, wild and vaguely dangerous." It is this perception that Kinzer seeks to correct.

Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent who, until recently, was the New York Times correspondent in Istanbul. During his stay in Turkey he inter-mingled with the society, chatting with ordinary people, riding the buses, hosting a radio program and even managing to swim across the Bosphorus. He also spent a lot of his time in bars called meyhanes, where he drank a lot of raki - an anise based alcoholic drink. 

Kinzer takes the reader on a journey through Turkey in which the past and present intertwine. He writes that modern Turkey is country caught in a tug of war between a young, increasingly, well educated population "eager to build a nation that embodies the ideals of democracy and human rights" and a ruling elite that "refuses to embrace this new nation or even admit that it exists." This elite, he says, is a "sclerotic cadre" of "military commanders, prosecutors ... lapdog newspaper editors, [and] rigidly conservative politicians," which claims to be acting out of loyalty to the country's modernizing founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Kinzer writes that Ataturk was a "one man revolution" who toppled the Khilafah (the formal governmental structure mandated by Islamic law), replaced the Arabic script with Latin characters, banned Islamic dress, ordered the azan (Muslim call to prayer) to be made in Turkish instead of Arabic and made all efforts to erase any traces of religion from the country.

The author goes on to explain that it is Ataturk who has become an icon for post-Ottoman Turkey and a symbol for those with the power to control the nation's direction. Ataturk's infamous legacy, says Kinzer, has become a straightjacket. His successors have turned him into a "secular god." This cult of Ataturk, known as Kemalism, is institutionalized with its own places to pay homage to the man - dozens of rooms around the country where he slept, spoke or ate. A huge mausoleum surrounds his grave and giant busts are seen even in the remotest corners of the country. For Kinzer, this cultic mentality is best illustrated by a story related to him by one of his Turkish friends who saved the first essay his young son ever wrote: "The boy was a third-grader when his teacher explained to the class what an essay is, read a few simple ones aloud and then assigned her pupils the topic 'love' for their first try. His essay began like this: 'Love means love for Ataturk. Love means love for Ataturk's mother, Zubeyde Hanim. Love means love for Ataturk's father, Ali Reza Bey.'" 

Kinzer argues that the Turkish military sees of itself as a successor to and guardian of the Kemalist legacy and that members of the military believe, as did Ataturk, that "the state, not popular will, was the instrument by which social and political change would be achieved." He goes further to say that the military thinks that people and politicians are incapable of making vital decisions and hence frequently intervene and suppress any kind of dissent. 

Kinzer also discusses in detail the alleged Armenian holocaust committed by the Ottomans; but fails to mention the scholarly works of Bernard Lewis and others who reject the notion of architected genocide. He says that the Turks must acknowledge their past misdeeds. But while writing about the brutal crackdown of the Turkish army against Kurdish rebels, Kinzer seems to say that they should forget the past and move on: "Even definitely answering the question of guilt, which is of course impossible, would solve only the problems of the past. Turkey's challenge is to overthrow the tyranny of the past and begin to lay the foundation of a new future," he writes.

Kinzer does not hide his contempt for Muslim political parties in Turkey. He says that Erbakan and his Welfare Party got a chance to prove that politicians are capable of running the country effectively; but in this effort they failed miserably. Kinzer is particularly bitter about an incident in which he requested an interview with Erbakan, which was at first refused but was later granted on Christmas Day. 

But the author does say that ever since the departure of Erbakan, the Islamist politicians have matured considerably. "Turkish Islamists have matured considerably since the Erbakan debacle, and their emerging young leaders are eager for an accommodation. It would serve Turkey's interests because it would pull the Islamic movement toward moderation instead of demonizing it," he writes.

Kinzer says that he supports the idea that each person must interpret his faith as he sees fit. To illustrate his point, he offers the following interesting encounter with a Turkish gentleman on a flight from Frankfurt to Ankara:

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