I like Turkey. I lived there for a significant number of years, and I think I grasped somehow the local spirit. If I have sometimes different opinions than the mainstream, my reasons are personal. I had the opportunity to have transited quick enough the “foreigner” status, although this not making me quite a genuine Turk. For a number of years I lived in a very closed community, with me in and out of it, depending on my moods and the degree of common interests we shared. Here come the personal reasons I don’t quite love the Turks as a whole. But let’s start with some history.
Great Wall of China
In 552 AD, Chinese chronicles mention the founding of an empire in Central Asia by the T’u-kue, the first people known to call themselves Turks. After another 200 years (not that much on the great scale), it is believed that they converts to Islam, the Chinese Buddhists being driven out from Central Asia after the battle of Talaş, with the Arab Muslim armies. In 1071, the Selçuk Turkish Sultan Alparslan Beg defeats the Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes IV at Manzikert, near lake Van, opening Anatolia for settlement by the Turkish tribes. After just 20 years, the First Crusade ravages Selçuk domains, alowing Byzantines to retake control over some of Anatolia. At the end of 1290’s, the House of Osman emerges (at least so said some reports), near Söğüt, this Osman being the one who gave the name of the Ottoman Empire (Osman Imparatorluğu) himself the first ruler of it. Before that, the Turkish soldiers were helping Mongols to conquer Central Asia and most of China.
Mehmet II, the Conqueror, by Zonaro – Gates of Constantinople
The first important moment was the conquering of Constantinople in 1453, after a long siege over the former Byzantine capital, with the undeniable help of the Greek civil and clerical aristocracy. They preferred to become Muslim instead of Catholics, Roman-Catholics more precisely, they preferred to perish and to let the magnificent city to be almost destroyed than to accept the help of the western world. Now, with such a citadel, the Ottomans were ready to conquer the whole of that west. A thing Turkish children earn in schools is that the Ottoman Administration wasn’t intrusive, and didn’t mix in the religion beliefs of the conquered territories. Quite the contrary, they were good, but they mixed and mingled with religion, and that was bad for them, they were not loved, just feared.
Kara Mustafa Pasha, the Sieger of Vien
In actual Bulgaria, was obvious. Because of the regulation which said that no church may be taller than a mosque, the churches were quite flat actually and the Bulgarians still celebrate some “inner resistance” rituals from the times they were a Paşalık. Of course there wasn’t much love between Turks and Greeks as well, the Vali’s (Governors) ruled also the covering of female faces, another unpopular measure. That happened at the South of Danube. North of the great river were the descendants of Dacians, mixed with Romans and Ostrogoth blood, if not as warlike, better to negotiations. Upper Danube, the appearances were maintained for a heavy tax. Women were free to expose their face and the churches were as tall as the sums invested in their building, 🙂
Seljuk Empire
It can’t be said they were that bad, but they were not loved, they were feared and with that in the luggage one can’t become the master of the world. Ottomans formed an Empire too self consuming, too decadent, there just wasn’t enough to please everybody, so they become to erode. In the meantime, Spaniards and Brits were conquering the seas and the rest of the world. Russians, unlike the Ottomans, were just warriors, with no viable administrative structures, but they conquered anyway enough territory to be feared by the rest. The Mongolian blood is present in these Slaves as it is in Turks somehow, even if it is proved they’re no relatives.
The Dinasty
In 1854, Turks fight on the side of British and French against Russia and so, contract first foreign debt. You know what that means, isn’t it? In fifty years, what they took from their territories were spent by the Sultan and to covering the debt. Nice. So, between 1908 and 1918, The Ottoman Empire manage to dissolute itself. The victorious side of the First World War wanted a partition. They wanted to share the territories between them. But the story doesn’t end here, because I started with Erdoğan in my mind when I started this article. More to come, very soon, :). I want especially to cover contemporary Turkey, and yet, in my story to date, this hasn’t been born yet. Tomorrow is another day, 🙂
See Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel and A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin.
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