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A TOUR OF ONE BIG LUMP OF DYNAMISM WITH
SEVENTY MILLION INHABITANTS AND LARGE POLITICAL MUSCLES: FROM KEBAB TO THE
BEKO-REFRIGERATOR
The East is the Turkey of the Anatolian
farmer, honour-revenge actions and emigration to Western Europe. But the West
of Turkey in fact happens to be modern, brimming with energy. The country that
might be admitted to the vestibule of the European Union this year is bursting
with contrasts. Get acquainted with a new and at the same time old neighbour.
Jacqueline de Gier in Istanbul
With one million units their army is bigger
than that of the United Kingdom or Germany. Their richest trade-dynasties are
so wealthy that their names have been included in the Forbes-list of 500
richest people in the world. They love to dance to the tango. Prostitution is
legal there and managed by the state in special state-brothels. Liberal
Israeli’s go there in order to get married and to divorce without the yoke
of the Rabbi.
Turks refuse to conform to black-and-white
schemes and commonplaces. Nevertheless, their country, as James PETTIFER
writes in The Turkish Labyrinth, remains the victim of firmly anchored
prejudices.
In Western Europe the prejudices about Turkey
are being fed by the Turks who emigrated there, the guest-labourers. These
most of the times originate from Anatolian agricultural communities and even
in Turkey itself they are regarded as ‘backward’. From the Turkish press:
„They would also be unable to integrate over here.“ The true Turkey is an
entirely different country.
Should Turkey become a member of the European
Union (EU), then she will immediately be the biggest member state after
Germany. The expectation is that in December of this year Ankara will receive
a date on which the negotiations for the accession can begin. The German
Chancellor Gerhard SCHRÖDER ‘fully’ supports that membership. France does
not, of course, for she would be bumped from second place by Turkey. Germany,
Great Britain and Turkey will then form the new axis within the EU. With
Turkey it will not be some insignificant little peasant state from Eastern
Europe that will be joining, but a power house with nearly seventy million
(mostly Islamic) inhabitants and the political muscles to match.
What do we know in truth about this important
country, this regional superpower with influence in the Middle East and
Central Asia? Getting acquainted with old neighbours.
[Picture of men wearing caps on an open
vehicle, caption reads: ‘TURK’ In Turkey there are not just Anatolians,
but also Arabs, Jews, Circassians, Greeks. And a small map of Turkey,
underneath which is listed some general information: Population: 69 million;
Surface area: 19x the Netherlands; President: Ahmet Necdet SEZER; PM: Recep
Tayyip ERDOGAN; Parliament: Türkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi (550 seats);
Official languages: Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Armenian, Greek; Religion: Islam
(99.8%); Annual income per head: 5400 Euro.]
KEBAB
Traveling with an Ottoman dish
The kebab, roasted Lamb- or mutton on a
skewer, was invented on the Ottoman battlefields as a quick barbeque-snack. In
Greece, which for five centuries was a province of Turkey, the kebab is called
souvlakia. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States one eats a kebab with the
Turkish grill.
Follow the trail of the kebab and you will
get an idea of the size of the former Ottoman Empire (around 1300 to 1922).
This precursor of the present, much smaller Turkey stretched from Hungary to
Yemen, from Algeria to Iraq. Just line up all kebabs and the present, just as
impressive Turkish sphere of influence becomes clear. From the Berlin
Kruetzberg-quarter to inside Mongolia people speak some form of Turkish. Large
parts of Central Asia are ethnically Turkish. The Kebab came with the guest-labourers
to Northern Europe, but it also landed in Sydney and Melbourne. And since the
Americans eagerly started bringing in highly trained Turks the kebab also
became popular in New York and in California, where there are large Turkish
communities.
THE OTTOMAN
Link in the Mediterranean world
Yes, Turkey is a bridge between East and
West, between Asia and Europe, but she is also an important link in the
Mediterranean world itself. Many Christian messengers came to the European
continent on their sandals by way of these coasts. In Constantinople, the
present-day Istanbul, Christianity was declared as the official religion of
the Empire back in 333.
An Ottoman was not per definition a Muslim,
but could also be a Jew or a Christian. The elites of the Ottoman Empire were
the Christians and the Jews. Sultan BEYAZID II invited the Jews of Spain to
come to Turkey when they were persecuted by the Inquisition. The Jewish
influence, in the culinary sense alone, still is great. The Ottoman
elite-troops, the janissaries, were recruited with force from amongst the
Christians. They were raised and taught to become model Ottomans. It was not
unusual for the Valide Sultan, the mother of the Sultan, to be a Christian.
The patriarch of all orthodox Christians in
the world still has his seat in Istanbul and every month he lunches with the
Great Mufti and the Chief Rabbi. Turkey is also the link between the Western
and the Eastern Christianity.
‘TURK’
Generic name for different ethnic origins
The history of Turkey is like a relay race of
civilizations, cultures, and religions. ATATÜRK and other founders of the
modern republic choose the name of the new state very carefully in 1923. It is
not the ‘Turkish Republic’, for that would have ethnic connotations. It is
the Republic of Turkey, the Türkiye Cumhuriyeti. The inhabitants, the Türkiyeli,
live in the land of the Turks, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Jews, the Circassians,
the Armenians, the Greek, the Laz, and the Turcoman. Thus, ‘Turk’ is just
as much a generic name like ‘Brit’ or ‘American’.
CONSTRUCTION WORKERS
Most famous Kurd
The torch song singer Ibrahim TATLISES is
Turkey’s most famous Kurd. Ibrahim is the king of the arabesque, a genre
that reckons both truck drivers and transvestites amongst its biggest stars.
It is always touching to see an Anatolian farmer with moustache listening with
tears in his eyes to his favorite transvestite singer.
As it happens, Ibrahim Tatlises is a guy, a
former construction worker from Urfa, the native town of the Kurdish party
leader Abdullah ÖCALAN. According to the tabloid press Ibrahim never goes on
tour in Germany without his own barbeque. He also plays macho-roles in police
series on television.
PASTA
From the Asian steppes
Many Italian pasta products are being made
with Turkish flour. And the Turks are now competing with the Italian food
manufacturer Buitoni for the American market of ready-made meals. Their Pasta
Alfredo is made in Turkey, but has Italian flair.
The favorite pasta dish in Turkey is manti,
originally from the Asian steppes, from where the Turks themselves also
originated. Manti might well be regarded as the precursor of ravioli. It is
pasta filled with lamb and it is served with a yoghurt-sauce. Also a large
share of the ‘Italian’ olive oil on the shelves of the supermarket is made
with Turkish and Greek olives. On the label it says that the oil was bottled
‘in the European Union’.
[Picture of a Mosque with a Turkish flag
waving in the foreground, caption reads: ISLAM In the cities the Islam is
modern. Some Imams want to have internet cafes in the Mosques. And a graph
showing demographic figures.]
ATATÜRK
The man who separated Mosque and State
The statesman Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK
(1881-1938) is the ‘father’ of the new Turkey, which flourished after the
First World War (1914-1918) on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Atatürk was a
radical reformer and modernizer, who enforced Western practices in order to
drag Turkey into the twentieth century. But, according to the British author
Andrew MANGO, in his biography Atatürk, it was not a question of imitating.
His goal was ‘to take part in a universal civilization’, which he, just
like the thinkers of the Enlightenment, regarded as a leap forward for
humanity, ‘independent from religion and the division that religion
brought’.
Above all, Atatürk was a nation-builder. He
introduced a new Constitution and made Ankara instead of Istanbul the capital.
The Arab alphabet made room for the Latin one. The rule of the Islamic clergy
was terminated. Turkey is still the only true nonreligious democracy in the
region (in Greece and Israel, for instance, Church and State are not
separated).
Despite his humanist vision Atatürk was also
a dictator who laid the foundation for many human rights violations. Towards
the end of his life he too proved sensitive to the poison of ethnic and racist
superiority-sentiments, when he wished to cleanse the Turkish culture from
Arab- and Persian ‘stains’. But Atatürk did propagate equal rights for
women. His own daughters, all of them adopted, became examples for the
Republic. Their father took them with him to meetings with, amongst others,
the British leader Winston CHURCHILL and the Soviet dictator Josef STALIN. One
of them, Sabiha GOKCEN, became Turkey’s first female pilot.
COFFEE HOUSE
Place of residence of subversives
Twice, in 1529 and in 1683 the Turkish armies
just fell short of invading Vienna, but their Apfelstrudel did. Attempts at
disengaging Turkey from Europe run aground every time with each cup of coffee.
The coffee house and the culture of drinking coffee came from the Turks. The
first coffee houses in Paris and London were founded by Ottoman Turks. Just
like the Sultans the British rulers in the first instance forbade people to
drink coffee. Coffee kept the mind sharp, and that could only lead to
political subversive actions.
The tulip, the croissant, the sorbet,
long-haired cats, angora wool (the name is derived from Ankara), inoculation
against smallpox, all of them are Turkish in origin. Turkish words have also
made their way into the Dutch language, like kiosk, divan and sofa. And the
Dutch word tjokvol comes from the Turkish çok, which means very or many.
ISLAM
Mosques not filled to capacity
Turkey is a country where most inhabitants
are Muslim, without it being an ‘Islamic’ country -so it certainly is no
theocracy. And the Turks have always had a relaxed relation with their Islam.
Many Sultans, as did Atatürk for that matter, were ruined by drink and women.
The Mosques are faced with the problem of
fewer people coming in. One Imam even wanted to house internet-cafes in the
Mosques under the heading of: ‘Perhaps that will bring them in’. Each
Ramadan the Great Mufti has to beg people not to consume too much alcohol. A
part of the population belongs to the Alevi, the flowerpower-children of the
Islam. The Alevites do not practice their religion in Mosques, they drink
alcohol and worship trees. On account of their philosophy of absolute equality
between men and women they are being accused by the Anatolian farmers and the
Kurds of holding ‘orgies’.
REFORMER
The broom of PM Erdogan
PM Recep Tayyip ERDOGAN (to be pronounced
Erdoan) is a very religious man but he sees the future for Muslims in
democracy and pluralism. When he was Mayor of Istanbul pornographic magazines
were allowed to be sold, but only with a green Islamic cover.
His Party for Justice and Development, the
Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (abbreviated to the AK Partisi, which in turn also
means white party) came into power thanks to protest-votes. Shortly before the
elections the British daily The Financial Times described Turkey as ‘a
country where corruption has become a life-style’. Politics and the trade
and industry world had become so entwined that public works were routinely
given to favorite contractors. But now people are taking the broom to all
that. The groundwork for many reforms -like the abolition of the capital
punishment- was done by the last administration, with Ismail CEM as Minister
of Foreign Affairs and Kemal DERVIS as Minister of Economy. But it is foremost
the present Government that is readying Turkey for the membership to the EU.
Slowly but surely the power of the Generals is being pushed back. On every
level, also on that of the social legislation the changes can be felt.
DILIGENT
Infectious energy
Until late in the evening shopkeepers are
busy cleaning their stoops and washing their windows. Groceries are being
delivered right into one’s refrigerator by the youngest shop assistant. One
neighbourhood store in Istanbul that sells wine, keeps the bottles cooled and
a corkscrew next to the cash register.
The diligence and the work-ethic evoke both
admiration and envy with the neighbours of Turkey. Thus, the Russians see
their big example in the Turks. The Arab press is regularly talking of the
‘Turkish work-ethic’ and the Syrian newspaper the Tishreen, wrote that
Syria could well use some of that ‘Turkish energy’. But a comment in the
Arab newspaper the Al Qudz al Arabi sneered: „Do they really think that they
are Europeans?“
JAZZ
Turks launch Mingus
The Jazz-label Atlantic was founded by Ahmet
and Nesuhi ERTEGUN. As sons of the Turkish Ambassador in the United States
they were infected by the jazz-virus in the thirties. In the sixties Atlantic
was responsible for the launching of the careers of Charles MINGUS, John
COLTRANE, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Jazz is enormously popular with the
middles classes and the elite in Turkey. Turkey still remains one of the best
places for Jazz. Bodrum (the old Halikarnassos, the birthplace of Homer) is
the most important jazz-city of Turkey. The Ertegun-brothers had a villa
there, the American singer Norah JONES worked in one of the jazz-bars there
and is now big in Turkey.
BEKO-REFRIGERATOR
German quality
The Turkish Beko-refrigerator always scores
high in consumer tests: she is right up there with such German brands like
Bosch, AEG, and Miele. But it only costs a fraction of the price of her
competitors. Turkish companies are also supplying parts for washing machines
and refrigerators to German manufacturers. From a style point of view it is
cool to have a Beko in your kitchen. A recent edition of the British magazine
Elle Decoration put the BekoTA7012S, the ‘American style fridge-freezer’
right next to Siemens, Bosch, and LG Electronics.
But the Beko-refrigerator is also a metaphor
for what is wrong with the Turkish economy. Turkey has an economic growth of 8
percent, but she is not selling herself properly. The Turks are snobs; they do
not want a Beko if they can purchase a Bosch or a Miele (with Turkish parts)
for a lot more money. They are still importing far too much. The export needs
to go up and the national debt needs to be brought down. There is to be more
competition. That is certainly true for the textile industry, the biggest
export product. Much of the knit-work of the Italian fashion house of Benetton
is being manufactured in the factories of the BOYNER-family, one of the super
wealthy families in Turkey.
IMMENSELY RICH
The twelve Big Families
The Turkish economy is still being led by
approximately ten to twelve very rich families: the Big Families. They can be
compared with the Agnellis and Pirellis of Italy and the Brenninkmeijers of
the Netherlands. The capital in Turkey often stays in the same family for five
or six generations.
According to Tom Zwaan, director of ABN AMRO
in Turkey, the resilience of the Turkish economy has much to do with these
conglomerates and the spreading of small and medium-sized companies that are
part of big holdings. He said in Values, the magazine of ABN AMRO for private
banking: ‘Individually such a medium-sized company may have a trade volume
of „only“ 200 million dollar. It would not survive a crisis on its own,
but because it is part of such a big whole with much capital, it will get
through the storm.’
The Köc family has her name on everything,
from Beko-refrigerators to banks. Köc Holdings has fifty thousand employees
and had a turnover of 10 billion dollar in 2003. By that, they are on the
level of mega-companies like Nike and Colgate Palmolive. Last year, the young
Mustafa Köc took over the helm from his father Rahmi, who started to dedicate
himself fulltime to philanthropy. Rahmi’s personal fortune is estimated at
1.8 billion euro. Big families like Köc and Sabanci have their own
universities.
FASHION
Young Turkish designers
The Turkish fashion-scene has meanwhile
broken through as well, with Rifat Özbek, Nicole Farhi and Husein Chalayan.
Chalayan is very successful during the Istanbul Fashion Week. Young Turkish
designers work in the fashion houses of Paris, Milan, London and New York. And
Turkish workshops deliver to Milanese fashion houses like Armani and Fendi. To
pay attention to: the three Turkish lady designers that are active in Paris
under the name Dice Hayek. But also: Mustafa Karaduman. He designs for the
modern Muslim woman and sells worldwide. His labels Tekbir and D-8 are
trend-setting. Just like his colleagues in the haute couture, he gives his
creations a name. One design is called Merve Kavakci, after the Turkish woman
that was banned from parliament after she wanted to take the oath wearing a
headscarf.
LITERATURE AND FILM
Successes outside the own country
My name is Crimson by author Orhan Pamuk was
a worldwide bestseller and is a good introduction to the nuances of the
Turkish cultural heritage. His most recent novel Snow is selling well in the
Netherlands. Another famous author is Yasar Kemal, who is tipped for the Nobel
Literature Prize. Also in the field of film quite a few things have happened
since Yol by Yilmaz Güney. Thus, Uzak, the third film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan,
won the prestigious Grand Prix at the film festival in the French beach resort
Cannes.
THE TULIP
Official flower of Ottomans
The tulip, Dutch national symbol, originates
from Turkey (although the Afghans claim it as well). The tulip was already the
official flower of the Ottoman Empire and had a mythical status. The Turkish
word for tulip is laleh, which has the same letters as ‘Allah’. And when
you read laleh backwards in the Arab script (which was used in Turkey until
1924), you get hillal, the crescent, the symbol of the Islam. Turkish guest
workers must have been pleasantly surprised when they saw the Keukenhof and
learned of the Dutch love for Allah’s flower.
The tulip was unknown in Europe, but the
Fleming Ogier Ghiselin de Busbeck, who arrived in 1554 in Istanbul as
ambassador of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, could not get enough of it. He
took some bulbs home and gave a few to the Leiden botanist Carolus Clusius,
who introduced the tulip in Holland in 1593.
The Turkish obsession with tulips led to it
that the Ottoman Empire was combed for special varieties. In 1574 sultan Selim
II wrote to an official in Aleppo: ‘I need fifty thousand tulips for my
royal gardens. I will send you one of my servants’ chiefs. I order: no
delays.’
The time of reforms under sultan Ahmed III,
from 1703 until 1730, is still being referred to as the Tulip period. Already
in 1720 alone, nine hundred new tulip varieties were cultivated. And things
remained getting used to for European emissaries regarding the fact that the
head gardener of the sultan was also a top diplomat.
NETHERLANDS - TURKEY
Second-largest investor
The Netherlands already had important trade
relations with the Ottoman Empire in the time of the poet Joost van den Vondel
(1587-1679) and has been officially represented in Turkey since 1612. Cornelis
Calkoen, who arrived in Constantinople on 14 September 1727, had this recorded
by the French painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour. The audience by sultan Ahmed III
in the Topkapi-palace can still be seen on three paintings.
Dutch people have therefore witnessed the
history of the Turks for centuries. The Turkish republic was proclaimed in
1923, but the Hollandse Bank Unie - nowadays ABN AMRO - already opened an
office in Constantinople in 1921. The bank was already there when sultan
Mehmet VI was deposed by Atatürk. The Netherlands invested in the period
1980-2002 approximately 4 billion euro in Turkey. By that, the Netherlands is
the second-largest foreign investor in the country, right behind France. After
the British HSBC, ABN AMRO is the biggest bank there. The consulate in
Istanbul is the biggest Dutch consulate in the world with a staff of 38
people.
BACKWARD
Farmers do not integrate
City-Turks can be very annoyed by the
‘Anatolians’. The Anatolian may come to live in the city, but does not
shake off his farmer’s mentality. He puts his washing machine in front of
the door and turns his balcony into a shed. He cooks in the street and does
not care for city manners. He will easily stop the traffic in the center of
Istanbul with his herd of sheep.
Things between the city and the countryside
do not really hit it off in Turkey. That has always been the case. In that
respect there is still mention of two ‘countries’: the west and the east.
The west does not come in the east, but the east does infiltrate, however,
massively in the west. The invasion of the countryside in the cities takes
place at a rapid pace. Ankara is meanwhile edged with slums, just like Izmir,
Turkey’s ‘disco-city’ at the Aegean Sea, and the port Adana. Many rural
Turks wind up in the gecekondu, a kind of slum. According to an old Ottoman
tradition, you can stay there if you are able to build a roof over your head
in one night. The city board must deliver facilities in that case like water
and electricity. In Istanbul there are meanwhile many of such areas.
Still approximately 40 percent of the Turks
work as small farmers. The Turkish economy needs good educated people and
Turkey has, ironically enough, its own ‘guest workers’: Russians and
Ukrainians that work mainly in the service sector. In Istanbul alone
approximately two million Russians are living and Russian is, after Turkish
and Kurdish, the third language.
The rapid urbanization sees to much headache
with city planners. In Istanbul, a city with sixteen million inhabitants, the
gigantic gap between western Turks and a poor, uneducated subclass of eastern
Turks is clearly visible. It is these farmers that provide the image of the
Turk in northwestern Europe. The daily Cumhuriyet published a number of
reports about Turks in Europe and arrived at the conclusion that it would be
impossible for these people to return: ‘They get a good scare every year
again when they go on holiday in Turkey. They hold on to the image of thirty
years ago. They see assertive Turkish women and girls in short skirts, but
demand from their own daughters that they live like in the past in their
village. European governments are struggling with the lack of integration, but
they will not integrate here either.
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