Better relations that hark back to the imperial era

The Times Supplement
March 21, 2005

Michael Binyon on the indelible legacy of the Ottoman Empire

Some 26 countries with seats in the United Nations were once under the
sway, in varying degrees, of the Ottoman Empire. And the legacy of
this rule, lasting in some cases for 400 years, is indelible – be it
buildings, laws or cultural and culinary traditions of a world that
stretched from Morocco to the Gulf, from the gates of Vienna to Yemen.

The shrinking of the empire was a melancholy, long withdrawal as the
provinces broke away – by war, through colonial conquest or after
the empire’s final collapse in 1918.

Many of the newly independent states tried to bolster their individual
credibility with strident opposition to Turkey and the Ottoman past.
Greece, Serbia, the Arab world and the Balkans have all incited
popular emotion against the Turks.

Times have changed. Astute diplomacy has strengthened Turkey’s links
with its neighbours.

Reconciliation with Greece has been recent but spectacular. Turkey’s
size and economic strength gives it a regional weight that has proved
influential. Turkey has also begun, cautiously, to explore links
with its neighbours that hark back to imperial days.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of culture. Istanbul is
the most vibrant city got 1,000 kms in any direction. At a crossroads
between East and West, it is well placed as a centre where cultures
interact.

There has been a steady growth in regional links. The city is
reaching out to its old constituency. Arab writers and film-makers,
restricted in what they can say or show at home with censorship and
social taboos, feel freer in Istanbul. They come from Cairo or
Damascus, Tunis and Amman to take . up residence in a city that is
sufficiently Muslim and eastern to provide a familiar framework but
far more in touch with European culture than their own capitals.

Turkey is also reaching out to its Balkan neighbours. As one
intellectual remarked: “Every Turk has some ancestral connection.
There is a homesickness for these lands running through our music
and literature.”

The old connections were strikingly revealed during the Bosnian
wars. Turkey took in a million Bosnian refugees seeking shelter.
Turkey also took steps to save the physical heritage damaged by war.
After its destruction, the famous bridge at Mostar, built in 1556,
was rebuilt by Turkish engineers.

There is no unifying language; the Ottoman empire was itself polyglot
and did not insist on the use of Turkish everywhere. Northern Cyprus
is the only fully Turkish area outside Turkey, and the cultural,
political and ethnic connection to the mainland is as strong as it
is controversial. Dervis Denis, Turkey’s Minister of Tourism, says
that Ankara is giving help to Northern Cyprus to develop its cultural
assets, pointing out that 90 per cent of the island’s heritage,
including sites important to the Greeks and Christians such as the
Orthodox monastery Apostoilos Andrea, are in the north.

Mehmet Ala Talat, the Prime Minister of Northern Cyprus, says: “Arts
and cultural activities should be used for peacemaking and to make
people create empathy.”

In other areas, Turkey now understands its culture in a broad and less
nationalistic sense and is taking tentative steps in controversial
areas. There is, for example, daily discussion of the Armenian
massacres, with columnists arguing over the claims that this was
genocide.

A museum in Istanbul recently put on a display of sepia postcards
of the Armenian-inhabited towns before the First World, an evocative
reminder of a world whose recall would once have been taboo.