Istanbul and the East and West puzzle

Samuel Huntington’s theory The Clash of Civilisations has mesmerised all the warmongers from all backgrounds and all walks of life around the world since he published his book with the same title in 1996. And his theory has become even more popular after 9-11.

With his theory, Huntington, who became a controversial celebrity author in his 70s and enjoyed a considerable fame before he died in 2008, sets out to prophesy the future of the political affairs and the new political order in the world in post-Cold War period.

And he defines new sources of cleavages between different nations in a world where it became no longer possible to categorise the societies in terms of the free-capitalist-west versus the dictatorial-communist-bloc after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

Huntington classifies all societies into several broad categories of civilisations that are based on common geography, ethnicity or religion including Western, Latin American, Islamic, Sinic (Chinese), Hindu, Orthodox, Japanese and the African ignoring the countless differences among the countries and groups in each civilisation. And in his vision, culture - with a specific emphasis on religion - forms the new source of conflict between these civilisations.

Huntington’s so-called apocalyptic book is full of bad omens and warnings: if the Western civilisation wants to survive, it has to safeguard itself especially against “Islamic intolerance and Chinese assertiveness”.

And since the emergence of Huntington’s theory, it has become very trendy to label any tensions and conflicts that occur between different ethnic or religious groups or societies as “clash of cultures” or “clash of civilisations”.

But when one carefully tries to understand the real nature of such tensions and conflicts, different historical, social and economic factors and power politics appear as the real motives behind them.

Turkey exemplifies the absurdity of classifying a unique society - all societies are unique - with its unique history, geography, socio-economic circumstances, and ethnic and cultural diversity within a broadly-defined civilisation and the impossibility of understanding the complexity of certain tensions within a unique society by describing them as “clash of cultures”.

And it would be oversimplifying to classify Turkey within an Islamic civilisation and to describe it as a “torn country”, as Huntington and many commentators in and outside of Turkey do, because of the never-ending tensions between the secularist elite and masses with a more religiously oriented worldview in this country.

In fact, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006, explains the origins and nature of these tensions in his autobiographical work Istanbul: Memories and the City.

Istanbul, the city generally considered as a bridge between the East and West and between Asia and Europe, was once the glamorous capital of the powerful Ottoman Empire that ruled over many countries in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East for centuries.

But it became a bleak and sad city when the empire began to decline in the 19th century. With the take-off of the industrial revolution and consequently momentous developments in every aspect of life, Europe became the new centre of power and glamour.

And some Ottoman elites who looked up to Europe tried to save the doomed empire by modernising it in many ways in parallel to the progress over there but to no avail. In the early 20th century, especially during World War I when most countries under its rule began to declare independence, the Ottoman Empire lost most of its lands, and the contemporary Turkey was built upon the much smaller leftover land.

With a quick revolution Ataturk, the founder of this new Republic, replaced all the religious institutions with modern and very secular ones. And one of the greatest achievements of his revolution was of course to provide women with the same political and social rights as men at such an early time in history, much earlier than in many other countries.

In order to erase almost all the signs of a religious and obsolete preceding empire, always aiming to be contemporary, to look forward to the future and to never look back on the past, Ataturk closed down some religious institutions and imposed European clothing on everyone. He, for instance, constantly encouraged men to wear European hats of the time by wearing them himself in public.

He outlawed certain religious and traditional clothing in public places, and today the practice of not allowing female students, including university students, to wear the headscarf at schools and universities goes back to this time.

Since Ataturk’s revolution, there has been a strong schism within the society mainly along the lines of modern/secular/urban/upper-middle class versus traditional/religious/provincial/working-lower class. And an affluent European-educated elite in Istanbul, some of whom became wealthy through their contacts in government or some dishonest ways in the past, became the flagship of secular Western values from early on, always snubbing the religious and traditional masses.

They always felt themselves Western and distinguished themselves from the Oriental masses through consuming certain Western products rather than engaging in or encouraging industrial productivity or artistic creativity like in Europe. Orhan Pamuk, who was born into such an elite family and now in his late 50s, tells how some wealthy friends of his parents would often to go to England and live in ugly brick houses leaving behind their luxurious homes with a sea view in Istanbul just to immerse themselves in European culture, and to boast of their Europeanness once back home.

Political and media elites along with urban, educated and secular - though still Muslim - middle classes in big cities have also been the supporters of such a paranoid secularism, and have always considered religion and religiousness in a condescending and contemptuous way as the main cause of ignorance, backwardness and poverty. For instance, educated, secular and middle class women, dubbed “Ataturk’s daughters” or “the Republican women”, have always disdained the religious women with headscarves.

But the elites have always overlooked the real causes of social disadvantage including socioeconomic inequalities across the country and the lack of education opportunities in some provincial areas in a society where there has been no industrial revolution to quickly urbanise all the parts of the country.

Although the elites’ admiration for European countries, which are more advanced in many ways than their own country, is understandable, they have isolated themselves from the rest of the population by imitating the European colonialists and Orientalists snubbing the religious and traditional masses in their own country which has never been colonised by a Western nation but was itself an imperial power in the past.

But the Western-oriented Turks have developed a love-hate relationship with Europe. However much they have imitated Europeans and aspired to become a part of Europe, Europeans have always viewed them as a Middle Eastern society and Turkey as an oriental country and objected to this Muslim society’s membership to European Union.

And these Turks get furious and lament it whenever European ignorance and indifference about Turkey surfaces, for instance when Europeans imagine Turkey as a Muslim country like Iran or Saudi Arabia, or whenever they represent Turkey with exotic photographs of veiled women and peasants in magazines instead of showing, for instance, the images of European-looking Turkish women in mini skirts or bikinis.

Since the fear of the return of political Islam has always been well rooted in the psyche of the Western-oriented part of the population, the army has always been considered as the protector of the secular republic and enjoyed an elite status. And in order to maintain its privileged status, the army has always manipulated religious tensions and the ethnic conflicts, especially the one with the Kurds in eastern Turkey.

With the migration of more and more peasants each day from the countryside to in particular Istanbul, which has a population of more than 10 million people, for better opportunities and to escape the political conflict in eastern Turkey, and also with the rise of a wealthy class of orthodox Muslims in Istanbul, people in religious clothing, especially women with headscarves and some even in veils, have become more visible.

Therefore middle class secularists, who are generally dubbed “the white Turks”, have felt under attack and they generally complain that bogans and orthodox Muslims have infested and invaded “their cities”. And of course the recent migrants in big cities are not totally blameless.

Some of them might sometimes suffocate others and kill the joy of life in big cities with their lack of urban sophistication; their watchful provincial morality; their expectation of a similar morality from other people around them. And in case of some orthodox religious groups, they may stigmatise others with more liberal values with their strong aversion towards alcohol and any signs of sexuality in public places, and with their concentration on religious rules and rituals rather than focusing on the question of how religion should help them become better and more ethical people.

And since the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in the early 2000s, not necessarily because people in Turkey have become more religious but because other political parties have failed to achieve the socioeconomic outcomes they promised, tensions have often erupted.

Although some members of the AK Party, including its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan flirted with political Islam in the past, today it has similarities with the Republican Party in the US or the Liberal Party in Australia due to its social conservatism and strong connections with and involvement in the business world, and it has also some characteristics of a populist left party with its policy, for instance, that has helped everyone have access to public health services.

And all the efforts to overthrow the AK Party have so far failed: the western-oriented secularist groups have taken to the streets many times to protest the democratically elected party; the constitutional court has tried to close down the AK Party claiming that it aims to change the secular nature of the republic, and the army have kept plotting against the party to overthrow it including getting involved in the murder of important secular public figures and bombings and blaming the Islamist groups for these crimes.

And there has been relentless tension between the army that tries to overthrow the AK Party and the government that attempts to prosecute the members of the military who supports a military coup.

Such manipulated cleavages in Turkey have created a cynical society where people constantly despise and detest each other, and waste all their valuable energy and resources in unnecessary tensions and conflicts rather than co-operating to create a better society.

But the election of the AK Party, a party with its own flaws like every other political party, has provided Turkey with the opportunity to overcome this paranoid secularism. For instance, the Prime Minister and President appear at their government offices and official events with their covered wives, which would have been unthinkable before.

Some European countries have had similar tensions about secularism with their Muslim minorities. And it is not useful to explain such tensions in terms of a crude theory of clash of cultures.

Neither paranoid secularist arrogance that always associates religion with bigotry nor an erstwhile progressive attitude that promotes one uniform identity for all nor inflexible religious and social conservatism can provide the ideal social principles in a society in the 21st century.

But the important thing is to create better and more inclusive societies with socioeconomic justice where differences are allowed to flourish within ethical limits without letting any group suffocate other groups or the individuals within itself.