Istanbul and the East and West puzzle

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.