DREAMING IN TURKISH
My favorite word in Turkish is istiklal . The dictionary says it means independence, and that alone is enough to win it a place of honor in any language. It has special resonance in Turkey because Turkey is struggling to become independent of so much. It wants to break away from its autocratic heritage, from its position outside the worlds political mainstream and from the stereotype of the terrifying Turk and the ostracism which that stereotype encourages. Most of all, it is trying to free itself from its fearsfear of freedom, fear of the outside world, fear of itself.
But the real reason I love to hear the word istiklal is because it is the name of Turkeys most fascinating boulevard. Jammed with people all day and late into the night, lined with cafs, bookstores, cinemas and shops of every description, it is the pulsating heart not only of Istanbul but of the Turkish nation. I go there every time I feel myself being overwhelmed by doubts about Turkey. Losing myself in Istiklals parade of faces and outfits for a few minutes, overhearing snippets of conversation and absorbing the energy that crackles along its mile and a half, is always enough to renew my confidence in Turkeys future. Because Istanbul has attracted millions of migrants from other parts of the countryseveral hundred new ones still arrive every daythis street is the ultimate meltingpot. The country would certainly take a huge leap forward if people could be grabbed there at random and sent to Ankara to replace the members of Parliament. Istiklal is perfectly named because its human panorama reflects Turkeys drive to break away from claustrophobic provincialism and allow its people to express their magnificent diversity.
That drive has been only partly successful. Something about the concept of diversity frightens Turkeys ruling elite. It triggers the deep insecurity that has gripped Turkish rulers ever since the Republic was founded in 1923, an insecurity that today prevents Turkey from taking its proper place in the modern world.
No nation was ever founded with greater revolutionary zeal than the Turkish Republic, nor has any undergone more sweeping change in such a short time. In a very few years after 1923, Mustafa Kemal Atatrk transformed a shattered and bewildered nation into one obsessed with progress. His was a one-man revolution, imposed and steered from above. Atatrk knew that Turks were not ready to break violently with their past, embrace modernity and turn decisively toward the West. He also knew, however, that doing so would be the only way for them to shape a new destiny for themselves and their nation. So he forced them, often over the howling protests of the old order.
The new nation that Atatrk built on the rubble of the Ottoman Empire never could have been built democratically. Probably not a single one of his sweeping reforms would have been approved in a plebiscite. The very idea of a plebiscite, of shaping a political system according to the peoples will, would have struck most Turks of that era as not simply alien but ludicrous.
In the generations that have passed since then, Turkey has become an entirely different nation. It is as vigorous and as thirsty for democracy as any on earth. For years its leaders, acting to safeguard what they considered Atatrks legacy, fiercely resisted change. They believed that Turks could not be trusted with the fate of their nation, and that an elite should make key decisions because the people were not wise or mature enough to do so. Only at the beginning of the twenty-first century did voters find a way to rebel against this stifling order.
Their rebellion is the defining episode of modern Turkish history. It marks the beginning of the end for the class that dominated Turkey forits first eighty years, and for the suffocating ideology it preaches. It is an epochal turning point not only for Turkey but for Islam. Nonetheless it fills many Turks with dread.
Atatrks infant Turkish Republic was a very fragile creation. Sheiks and leaders of religious sects considered its commitment to secularism a direct assault on all they had held sacred for centuries. Tribal chieftains and local warlords realized that a strong centralized state would undermine their authority. Kurds who dominated eastern provinces sought to take advantage of the new states weakness by staging military uprisings. European powers hoped it would collapse so that they could divide its territory among themselves. The new Soviet Union actively sought to subvert it and turn it into a vassal state.
In this hostile climate, Atatrk and his comrades came to think of themselves as righteous crusaders slashing their way through a world filled with enemies. They ruled by decree and with a rubber-stamp Parliament, equating criticism with treason. During their first years in power, arrest and execution were the fate of their real and imagined opponents.
Nearly a century has passed since then, and in that time Turkey has changed beyond recognition. The nation that faced Atatrk when he took power was not only in ruins but truly primitive. Nearly everyone was illiterate. Life expectancy was pitifully short, epidemics were accepted as immutable facts of life and medical care was all but nonexistent. The basic skills of trade, artisanry and engineering were unknown, having vanished with the departed Greeks and Armenians. Almost every citizen was a subsistence farmer. There were only a few short stretches of paved road in a territory that extended more than a thousand miles from Iran to Greece. Most important of all, the Turkish people knew nothing but obedience. They had been taught since time immemorial that authority is something distant and irresistible, and that the role of the individual in society is submission and nothing more.
If Atatrk could return to see what has become of his nation, he undoubtedly would be astonished at how far it has come. Muddy villages have become bustling cities and cow paths have become superhighways. There are universities and public hospitals in even the most remote regions. The economy is booming, and Turkish companies are makingprofits in every corner of the globe. Thousands of young men and women return home every year from periods of study abroad. People are educated, self-confident and eager to build a nation that embodies the ideals of democracy and human rights. This nationthe Turkey of Turks dreamsis now, at long last, emerging from long shadows cast by geography and history.
During the last decades of the twentieth century, Turkish society was split by a steadily deepening chasm of culture and ideologywhat Marxists might call a profound contradiction. The entrenched elite, successor to Atatrks clique of revolutionary officers and technocrats, was accustomed to holding ultimate power and refused to surrender it. But the society it sought to rule was hurtling toward modernity and impatient for democracy.
For years the elite seemed unaware that this brash new nation had come into existence. Military commanders, police chiefs, security officers, prosecutors, judges, university rectors, narrow-minded bureaucrats, lapdog newspaper editors, state governors, nationalist politicians and other soldiers in this superannuated army remained psychologically trapped in the 1920s. They saw threats looming from across every one of Turkeys eight borders and, most dangerously, from within the country itself. In their minds, Turkey was still a nation under siege. To protect it from mortal danger, they insisted on running it themselves. They saw the Turkish people, on whose behalf they claimed to rule, not as the embodiment of the nation but, perversely, as a profound threat to it. Caught in the grip of irrelevant experiences, they fiercely resisted pressure from Turks who wanted their country to break free of its shackles and complete its march toward the democracy that was Atatrks dream.
