Why I admire the Turks
It is painful to see Turkey waging against the Kurds who are also fighting against Islamic State
anwer.mooraj@tribune.com.pk
This year when the international media commemorated the battle of Gallipoli, I was disappointed that no reference was made to Turkish heroism. It reminded me of something that was said to me early in 1946, in my boarding school in India, by a close friend, Talal Asad. It was a question that got me profoundly interested in Turkey. “Did you notice that in our history books, the word ‘Turkey’ is hardly ever used as if the country never existed? Instead, the historians refer to ‘the Turks’, suggesting that the people who inhabited Asia Minor were some kind of nomadic tribe or horde like the Mongols. Haven’t they heard of Ataturk?” Talal was right. None of the English or American boys in the school liked Turkey. It was the sort of place that genteel European folk were advised to avoid.
“Did you know that they eat their young,” said Ma Hoyle the matron, shaking her many chins. That remark didn’t go down too well with the Muslim boys who planned to slip something into her nightcap, or the Hindu boys who remembered that the Mahatma had supported the Khilafat movement and thought she should be pushed off the edge of Tableland. I made up my mind that at the first available moment I would visit the country.
In the 19th century, the country was referred to as ‘The Sick Man of Europe’ and became the focus of a clutch of greedy European powers who wanted to carve up the floundering empire of the Ottomans that had completely lost its grip. The Kaiser and the Czar wanted control of the Dardanelles. The Russians decided they had a propriety claim over the Caucuses. The French took Morocco and had their eyes on Lebanon and Syria. Italy grabbed Libya, and being Italy had a problem holding it. The British took Cyprus, held sway over the Egyptians and fixed their binoculars on the oil deposits in Iraq. The British, being British, bungled three major campaigns — the 1915 drive on Baghdad after capturing Basra, the drive across Sinai after repulsing a Turkish advance on the Suez Canal and… Gallipoli. In a sense, this was a great victory for the Ottoman Empire. A French-English attack by sea was repelled. For eight months, the two sides fought fiercely with huge losses on either side. The British pulled back their troops to Egypt, and Gallipoli was regarded as a defining moment in the history of the Turkish people — a final surge in the defence of the motherland.
The Turks don’t flinch in battle. For them, it is a matter of honour. I chuckled when President Erdogan in a recent broadcast on international media on the issue of the PKK drew reference to that episode in the Korean War, when the United Nations fought the Chinese volunteers and the American brigade deserted its post and left the Turkish brigade to fight to the last man.
In the Gallipoli battles, Mustafa Kemal rose to prominence as one of its commanders. The bitter encounter formed the basis for the War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal who had firmly established his position. After that he never looked back. He embarked on an ambitious programme of economic, political, cultural and educational reform and replaced the old Ottoman Empire with a modern secular nation-state. The umbilical cord with the old Arabic script was cut as Ataturk switched over to the Roman script and rounded up a team of scholars to compile a dictionary using the new script. What is painful, however, is the war they are waging against the Kurds who are also fighting against Islamic State. Stupid thing nationalism, isn’t it?
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2015.
“Did you know that they eat their young,” said Ma Hoyle the matron, shaking her many chins. That remark didn’t go down too well with the Muslim boys who planned to slip something into her nightcap, or the Hindu boys who remembered that the Mahatma had supported the Khilafat movement and thought she should be pushed off the edge of Tableland. I made up my mind that at the first available moment I would visit the country.
In the 19th century, the country was referred to as ‘The Sick Man of Europe’ and became the focus of a clutch of greedy European powers who wanted to carve up the floundering empire of the Ottomans that had completely lost its grip. The Kaiser and the Czar wanted control of the Dardanelles. The Russians decided they had a propriety claim over the Caucuses. The French took Morocco and had their eyes on Lebanon and Syria. Italy grabbed Libya, and being Italy had a problem holding it. The British took Cyprus, held sway over the Egyptians and fixed their binoculars on the oil deposits in Iraq. The British, being British, bungled three major campaigns — the 1915 drive on Baghdad after capturing Basra, the drive across Sinai after repulsing a Turkish advance on the Suez Canal and… Gallipoli. In a sense, this was a great victory for the Ottoman Empire. A French-English attack by sea was repelled. For eight months, the two sides fought fiercely with huge losses on either side. The British pulled back their troops to Egypt, and Gallipoli was regarded as a defining moment in the history of the Turkish people — a final surge in the defence of the motherland.
The Turks don’t flinch in battle. For them, it is a matter of honour. I chuckled when President Erdogan in a recent broadcast on international media on the issue of the PKK drew reference to that episode in the Korean War, when the United Nations fought the Chinese volunteers and the American brigade deserted its post and left the Turkish brigade to fight to the last man.
In the Gallipoli battles, Mustafa Kemal rose to prominence as one of its commanders. The bitter encounter formed the basis for the War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal who had firmly established his position. After that he never looked back. He embarked on an ambitious programme of economic, political, cultural and educational reform and replaced the old Ottoman Empire with a modern secular nation-state. The umbilical cord with the old Arabic script was cut as Ataturk switched over to the Roman script and rounded up a team of scholars to compile a dictionary using the new script. What is painful, however, is the war they are waging against the Kurds who are also fighting against Islamic State. Stupid thing nationalism, isn’t it?
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2015.