Turkey: Between Paranoia and Prosperity

...In a region long associated with passionate nationalism, Turks have distinguished themselves by the fierceness with which they embrace their Turkishness...

...In the Middle East too, the JDP has exploited Turkey's multifaceted history...

...that, in fact, they have always been more than just Turks...

...To take just one example, Istanbul's new Panorama 1453 History Museum offers a dramatic recreation of the Ottoman conquest of the city, complete with panels explaining that Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror issued one of the world's first human rights declarations when he forbade his victorious soldiers from plundering Christian property...

...The jingoism that sustained Turkish nationalism has become an obstacle to EU membership and domestic peace...

...Rather than pine for a time when Turkey allied itself with America against Russia or Israel against Syria, Turkey's allies should work to build more stable relationships with a more secure Turkey...

...Unfortunately, admiration for Ottoman tolerance has not always made Turkey more tolerant, and the truly multicultural view of Turkish identity remains an embattled one...

...Turkish Arabs living near the border have been well positioned to capitalize on their native fluency in Arabic, which might, in another context, have been politically problematic...

...Many Americans can understand why Israel might feel this way, but the sources of Turkey's fears are more obscure...

...They have simply made sure that those historians whose views they support have the resources to pursue and publish their research...

...When currying favor with Iran, Turkish politicians have spoken about the profound influence of Persian poetry on Ottoman literature or the four centuries during which the Ottoman and Persian empires allegedly shared a peaceful border...

...Though the JDP rejects the label Neo-Ottomanism—which has raised some concerns among former Ottoman subjects in the region—it has not hesitated to make Ottoman history part of Turkey's cultural diplomacy...

...Whenever possible, the JDP has argued that it is challenging Turkey's rigid interpretation of secularism not in the name of conservative Islam but rather on behalf of a more pluralistic liberal vision...

...It also burned Kurdish villages accused of sheltering terrorists, thereby employing the same logic of collective punishment Turks are now quick to criticize in Lebanon or Gaza...

...and used Turkish minorities, who see themselves as descendants of the Ottomans, to promote trade ties...

...Both Israel and Turkey are regional powers that still see themselves as vulnerable countries surrounded by implacable foes...

...In the last parliamentary election, a nationalist party suggested that, if elected, it would defend Gallipoli against future attacks...

...candidate in history at Georgetown University...

...As historian Mark Mazower put it, "Other futures may require other pasts...

...In countries like Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, all eager to find powerful regional allies, Turkey has helped restore Ottoman monuments like the Mostar Bridge...

...They have also drawn on the same rhetoric to deny Turkey's responsibility for certain unbrotherly events that occurred along the way...

...If some Turkish leaders see these regional relationships as a hedge against EU rejection, most hope that in the long term the wealth they generate will make Turkey more attractive to Europe...

...Durak, a photographer, not only offers portraits of politically sensitive minorities like Armenians and Kurds, but also those like Georgians and Bosnians, whose ancestors took refuge in Anatolia during the final years of the Ottoman Empire and were often quick to adopt a Turkish identity...

...While some liberal reformers see Ottoman tolerance as a template for a more pluralistic future, many nationalists have incorporated it into a different narrative...

...The JDP has also been quick to see the benefits of this narrative...

...It is not that the EU or the JDP has bought off historians or bribed them to write the right kind of history...

...More than any of its predecessors, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (JDP) has emphasized the importance of lifting restrictions on the public expression of Kurdish identity...

...If this happens, politicians and voters will look at history and conclude that tolerance is a virtue seldom repaid by Turkey's enemies, against whom Turkey must remain vigilant...

...Because national identity has been central to all of Turkey's best-known conflicts—with Greeks and Kurds alike—Western observers have gotten a close look at its ugly side...

...Under the Ottomans, it is said, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together peacefully in places like the Balkans and the Middle East, where they seldom do so today...

...During the 1980s the Turkish government fostered this impression by insisting that people who spoke Kurdish and fervently believed they were Kurds were, in fact, Turks...

...More recently, it was sustained by the Cold War, when Turkey was surrounded by the Soviet Union to the north and east, Soviet-bloc Bulgaria to the west, and Soviet-supported Syria and Iraq to the south...

...If the Ottomans treated their minorities so well, the argument goes, the only possible explanation for the fact that these minorities eventually rose up to form their own countries must be outright disloyalty, coupled with the covert support of perfidious European powers...

...Now, suddenly, having largely succeeded, Turkey's leaders are discovering that it is no longer enough for Turks to be Turks...

...At the same time, highlighting these accepted minorities also makes the presence of groups like the Kurds less threatening to the Turkish-nationalist narrative...

...According to this view, much as Turks were living happily together with Armenians before the Russians provoked the Armenians to rebel, Turks would be living happily with Kurds if only the United States and Israel were not secretly funding Kurdish terrorists or using NGOs to promote the divisive ideology of minority rights...

...Since Turkey and Syria lifted visa restrictions in November of 2009, for example, bilateral trade has more than doubled...

...Perhaps the best articulation to date of this appealing vision is the 2004 novel Birds Without Wings...

...The result of these experiences is an unfortunate, if understandable, sense of national paranoia...

...in Syria they see a reflection of where it was several decades ago...

...One need not have an unduly cynical or conspiratorial view of the role of money in academia to think it influences how history is written...

...Meanwhile books like Attila Durak's Ebru: Reflections of Cultural Diversity in Turkey have depicted the country's subnational ethnic groups as a rich inheritance from the Ottoman era...

...For example, the Ottoman Empire's treatment of Jews does indeed look impressive—when compared to that of the Spanish monarchy or Russian tsars...

...Nick Danforth is a Ph.D...

...Conveniently, Turkey's bridge metaphor helps its leaders explain the fact that in pursuing better relations to their east, they are not turning their backs on the West...

...When the resulting EU grant money arrived, though, priority went to restoring mosques rather than churches and synagogues...

...A more pluralist version of history also serves the JDP's foreign policy well...

...This view developed largely in the aftermath of the First World War, when European powers proposed dividing what is now Turkey between the British, Greeks, Italians, French, Kurds, and Armenians...

...In doing so, he makes it easier for members of these well-assimilated groups to rediscover their heritage and embrace new identities as Bosnian Turks or Turks of Bosnian descent...

...Then, faced with the task of salvaging ties with the Israelis, they remind listeners that it was the Ottomans who welcomed the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492...

...Academics, politicians, and many interested citizens, both in Turkey and other countries, have rediscovered the Ottoman Empire as a paragon of religious tolerance and cultural diversity...

...The hope is that if Turkey is on good terms with its neighbors it will become a trading hub and an arbiter of regional conflicts...

...Similarly, as Turkish nationalists worry about the ideological threat posed by a semi-independent Kurdish government in Northern Iraq, Turkish business is flooding the region...

...Davutoglu's signature foreign policy initiative, awkwardly translated as the "zero problems with neighbors policy," revolves around using this heritage to improve relations with traditional enemies along Turkey's borders...

...A 2009 poll revealed that more than 80 percent of Turkish citizens believe that the United States and the European Union are working to destroy Turkey's territorial integrity...

...Yet as with the Kurdish issue, the government's behavior does not always match its admirable rhetoric...

...Yes, Turkish secularism helped make the alliance possible, but so did a shared sense of encirclement and a commitment to crushing terrorism through military force alone...

...There is always a risk that as Turkey's relations with its Western allies deteriorate, Turkish paranoia will simply be redirected against a new set of foes...

...The image of a multicultural Turkey with a multicultural past holds an obvious appeal for the European Union, a transnational entity whose success depends on overcoming national boundaries...

...The book begins with a Christian woman giving birth after drinking from a bowl engraved with verses from the Koran and then, for added luck, sleeping with a cross on her belly...

...It drew on the worst instincts in each country's political culture...

...Similarly, when Turks praise Sultan Mehmet for protecting Christian homes, it is worth remembering that his army had also enslaved quite a few of the homeowners first...

...That is, in fighting for women to be able to wear headscarves, it also fights for Christians to be able to build churches and freely choose their religious leaders...

...advertised Turkey as a tourist destination...

...and, ultimately, like so much else, bad for the Palestinians...

...Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, argues that Turkey's Ottoman heritage has given it a historic and cultural "strategic depth" that can, if properly used, enhance its regional power...

...bad for America...

...Americans and Europeans have often been less appalled by the violence of these conflicts than by the accompanying nationalist rhetoric—at times so extreme that it appears to have led adherents into a series of futile struggles against reality itself...

...Much as Israelis' sense of insecurity has created domestic support for militant anti-terror policies, Turks have long seen Kurdish separatism as a threat so severe that it must be defeated by force before the country can entertain liberal ideas about human or cultural rights...

...Consistency has never been a strong point of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—since being elected he has accused Israel, America, and China of genocide while defending the president of Sudan—but at least his attacks on Israel are matched by a desire to challenge Turkey's traditional approach to Kurdish terrorism...

...Yet when confronted by nationalist opposition, Erdogan has consistently proven himself more interested in maintaining his hold on power than in pursuing liberal ideals...

...The plot revolves around a Turkish youth's love for his beautiful Greek neighbor and repeatedly highlights examples of religious syncretism in the daily life of the village...

...But to forget this qualifier, as many Turks have, creates a somewhat misleading picture of what life was like for Ottoman Jews...

...When Ottoman tolerance is romanticized, when the caveats—the persecution and the occasional enslavement—are left out, tolerance becomes a distinctly Turkish virtue, and the past quickly becomes further justification for nationalist paranoia...

...In contrast to the embattled Turkish Republic, the powerful Ottoman Empire also offered a political structure and collective identity that incorporated diverse cultural groups such as the Tatars, Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs, and Laz...

...If Turkey continues to improve relations with former adversaries like Syria and finally succeeds in accommodating the political demands of its Kurdish minority, it will not only be more powerful, but also more secure...

...The broader question surrounding both Turkey's ongoing democratization and its new foreign policy is whether these changes will succeed in overcoming Turkish fears or simply redirect them...

...Yet when the minor exaggerations in scholarly history are further exaggerated by politicians, authors, and filmmakers, the results can become unrecognizable...

...And businesspeople who want to build apartments or sell biscuits in Kurdish Iraq, Syria, Armenia, or Greece have discovered that the language of historical enmity does not open doors or win customers...

...The EU has been trying to forge a new sense of European identity with varying degrees of success for some time now, and those within the EU who think that Turkish membership would create a stronger, more dynamic union have an obvious interest in including Turkey in this vision...

...Turks, no less than Israelis, have often viewed their neighbors as an existential threat...

...Depicting Turkey as a land where religions have mingled and coexisted also serves to make the JDP's mildly Islamist agenda more appealing to American audiences...

...The more optimistic alternative, however, is that Turkey will use its history to become a more prosperous, powerful country, in turn making this more tolerant, multicultural, but still, one hopes, accurate version of history all the more appealing...

...More recently, Turkey's ongoing denial of the Armenian genocide has made it appear a country whose sense of national pride refuses to make room for historical truth...

...Written by Louis de Bernieres, a British author best known for Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the book takes place in a small village on the southwestern coast of Anatolia that is inhabited by a mixed population of Greeks and Turks...

...If Turkey's use of history often seems ineffective (as in the Israeli case) or limited to the realm of cultural diplomacy (as in the Balkan case), the "zero problems with neighbors" policy has already paid dividends for Turkish businesses...

...When Turks and Greeks bicker over who really invented baklava it seems harmless, but no less absurd, by comparison...

...After facing harsh criticism for its 2009 "Kurdish Initiative," for example, the JDP shifted its energy into promoting a constitutional reform package that voters approved in September 2010...

...In addition to making rhetorical use of a more diverse history, Turkish politicians and business leaders are working with the EU to fund the museums, nongovernmental organizations, and universities that research and publicize this new narrative...

...In de Berniere's Ottoman past, Greeks and Turks lived side by side before the forces of nationalism and organized religion intervened...

...More recently, the JDP has tried to draw upon the centuries-long history of Turkish-Armenian brotherhood as part of a faltering but courageous effort to improve relations with Armenia...

...After coming to power in 2003, at a time when EU membership seemed a more realistic goal, the JDP embraced the cliche of Turkey as a bridge between East and West, presenting the country's religious diversity and historic tolerance as antidotes to the rising tide of Muslim alienation and European fear...

...The legal changes in the package will improve Turkish democracy, but in a manner that advances the JDP's interests far more than the cause of Kurdish rights...

...In part, because so much of what European and American historians used to write about the Ottoman Empire was so clearly distorted by anti-Turkish bias, many Western scholars seem to show a little extra patience with the pro-Ottoman bias that sometimes appears in recent historiography...

...Indeed, it is telling that Turkish visitors to both Syria and Greece come back struck by the cultural similarities they ob-served—in Greece, however, they see an image of where their country could be in a decade...

...In this light it is no surprise that a rising class of pious businesspeople from central Anatolia has been one of the JDP's main constituencies, while even the more established secular business community has often supported the JDP's foreign and economic policy...

...It helps Orhan Pamuk sell books as well...

...The JDP promoted Istanbul's winning bid to become a 2010 European Capital of Culture with a video featuring Orthodox chants mingling with the Islamic call to prayer...

...Still, one need not forgive the mistakes made by either side in order to acknowledge that the Turkish-Israeli alliance always rested on a troublesome foundation...

...70 percent of the foreign commercial activity in the Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq is now Turkish, and the firms involved are well aware of what a serious outbreak of ethnic violence would do to their profits...

...For almost a century, Turkey's leaders have been trying to convince an ethnically diverse group of Anatolian Muslims, who during the nineteenth century might have seen themselves as Circassians, Alevis, subjects of the Sultan, or simply Muslims, that they were, and had always been, Turks...

...As a result, various national and transnational actors now find it necessary to convince Turks that they are more than just Turks...

...In the 1990s, for example, the Turkish military cooperated with Israel to combat Syrian support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK...

...In part, Turkey's ability to achieve this success hinges on the fate of a remarkable effort to recreate Turkish identity by rewriting Turkish history...

...The belief that external support sustains Kurdish terrorism has justified support for repressive policies that in turn fuel terrorism and increase Turkey's sense of insecurity...

...The world is changing, and the monolithic identities that leaders worked so hard to impose during the twentieth century cannot meet the political and economic needs of modern states...