routes from Persia, the Caucasus, and beyond.
Arising from this geography came a sprawling, multinational empire that by the late nineteenth century was in its death throes, with the Ottoman Sultanate only giving up the ghost in the aftermath of its defeat in World War I. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Father Turk), the only undefeated Ottoman general, who forged a modern state in Anatolia following the imperial losses in the Balkans and the Middle East, was an authentic revolutionary: that is, he changed his people’s value system. He divined that the European powers had defeated the Ottoman Empire not on account of their greater armies, but on account of their greater civilization, which had produced the greater armies. Turkey would henceforth be Western, he said, marching culturally and politically toward Europe. Thus, he abolished the Muslimreligious courts, forbade men to wear the fez, discouraged women from wearing the veil, and replaced the Arabic script with the Latin one. But as revolutionary as these acts were, they were also the culmination of a Turkish obsession with Europe going back centuries. Though Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II, Kemalism—the pro-Western, secularist doctrine of Kemal Ataturk—guided Turkey’s culture and particularly its foreign policy right up through the end of the first decade after the Cold War. Indeed, for years Turkey entertained hopes of joining the European Union, a fixation that Turkish officials made clear to me during many visits to the country in the 1980s and 1990s. But in the first decade of the twenty-first century it became apparent that Turkey might never gain full membership in the EU. The reason was blunt, and reeked of geographical and cultural determinism: though Turkey was a democracy and a member of NATO, it was also Muslim, and thus not wanted. The rejection was a shock to the Turkish body politic. More important, it merged with other trends in society that were in the process of issuing a grand correction to Turkish history and geography.
Actually, the European orientation that Ataturk imposed on Turkey entailed a contradiction. Ataturk was born and brought up in Salonika, in northern Greece, among Greeks, Jews, and other minorities. He was a man of Europe, in other words, as Salonika in the late nineteenth century was a multilingual outpost of cosmopolitanism. Likewise, Ataturk’s definition of nationality was strikingly modern. For he oft declared that whoever says he is a Turk, speaks Turkish, and lives in Turkey is a Turk, even if he be a Jew or Christian. He moved the capital to Ankara, in the heart of Anatolia, from Istanbul (Constantinople) in European Turkey, because of Istanbul’s association with the ancien régime. And he made no effort to regain lost Ottoman provinces in the Balkans or the Middle East: rather, his strategy was to build a uniethnic Turkish state out of the heartland of Anatolia, which would be firmly anchored toward Europe and the West. The keeper of the Kemalist flame would be the Turkish military, for authentic democracy was a thing to which Kemalism never got around during Ataturk’s lifetime. The problem, and this would takedecades to play out, was that by focusing on Anatolia, he unwittingly emphasized Islamic civilization, which was more deeply rooted in Asia Minor than in the European Turkey of Constantinople and the sultanate. Furthermore, democracy, as it developed in Turkey in fits and starts between periodic military coups, delivered the electoral franchise to the mass of working-class and devout Turks in the Anatolian hinterlands.
For the first few decades of Republican Turkey’s existence, the wealth and power resided with the military and with the ultra-secular Istanbul elite. During this period, American officials had the luxury of proclaiming Turkey’s democratic status even as the Turkish generals were responsible for its pro-Western foreign policy. That began to change in the early 1980s, when the
Arising from this geography came a sprawling, multinational empire that by the late nineteenth century was in its death throes, with the Ottoman Sultanate only giving up the ghost in the aftermath of its defeat in World War I. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Father Turk), the only undefeated Ottoman general, who forged a modern state in Anatolia following the imperial losses in the Balkans and the Middle East, was an authentic revolutionary: that is, he changed his people’s value system. He divined that the European powers had defeated the Ottoman Empire not on account of their greater armies, but on account of their greater civilization, which had produced the greater armies. Turkey would henceforth be Western, he said, marching culturally and politically toward Europe. Thus, he abolished the Muslimreligious courts, forbade men to wear the fez, discouraged women from wearing the veil, and replaced the Arabic script with the Latin one. But as revolutionary as these acts were, they were also the culmination of a Turkish obsession with Europe going back centuries. Though Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II, Kemalism—the pro-Western, secularist doctrine of Kemal Ataturk—guided Turkey’s culture and particularly its foreign policy right up through the end of the first decade after the Cold War. Indeed, for years Turkey entertained hopes of joining the European Union, a fixation that Turkish officials made clear to me during many visits to the country in the 1980s and 1990s. But in the first decade of the twenty-first century it became apparent that Turkey might never gain full membership in the EU. The reason was blunt, and reeked of geographical and cultural determinism: though Turkey was a democracy and a member of NATO, it was also Muslim, and thus not wanted. The rejection was a shock to the Turkish body politic. More important, it merged with other trends in society that were in the process of issuing a grand correction to Turkish history and geography.
Actually, the European orientation that Ataturk imposed on Turkey entailed a contradiction. Ataturk was born and brought up in Salonika, in northern Greece, among Greeks, Jews, and other minorities. He was a man of Europe, in other words, as Salonika in the late nineteenth century was a multilingual outpost of cosmopolitanism. Likewise, Ataturk’s definition of nationality was strikingly modern. For he oft declared that whoever says he is a Turk, speaks Turkish, and lives in Turkey is a Turk, even if he be a Jew or Christian. He moved the capital to Ankara, in the heart of Anatolia, from Istanbul (Constantinople) in European Turkey, because of Istanbul’s association with the ancien régime. And he made no effort to regain lost Ottoman provinces in the Balkans or the Middle East: rather, his strategy was to build a uniethnic Turkish state out of the heartland of Anatolia, which would be firmly anchored toward Europe and the West. The keeper of the Kemalist flame would be the Turkish military, for authentic democracy was a thing to which Kemalism never got around during Ataturk’s lifetime. The problem, and this would takedecades to play out, was that by focusing on Anatolia, he unwittingly emphasized Islamic civilization, which was more deeply rooted in Asia Minor than in the European Turkey of Constantinople and the sultanate. Furthermore, democracy, as it developed in Turkey in fits and starts between periodic military coups, delivered the electoral franchise to the mass of working-class and devout Turks in the Anatolian hinterlands.
For the first few decades of Republican Turkey’s existence, the wealth and power resided with the military and with the ultra-secular Istanbul elite. During this period, American officials had the luxury of proclaiming Turkey’s democratic status even as the Turkish generals were responsible for its pro-Western foreign policy. That began to change in the early 1980s, when the
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