On the third floor of a cafe, overlooking some of the nicer and busiest streets, it’s easy to forget that Istanbul has been an imperial capitol for 1,500 years. Few cities can claim that kind of longevity as the great city of an Empire. Athens, Rome, Jerusalem all had their days. While they remain important cities and capitols, their empires fell long ago.
Although Turkey isn’t what it once was, it remains a large and relatively powerful country. It’s days of Empire ended only 90 years ago and while the seat of government was moved to Ankara, Istanbul remains the jewel of the crown – the big international city it always was.
Time walks Istanbul’s streets.
Today Istanbul is decorated to the hilt to celebrate Republic Day – a national holiday commemorating Turkey’s independence/rebirth in its modern form. Mustafa Kemal – known as Ataturk (Father Turk) – led the successful rebellion to kick out the Europeans who were carving up Turkey (no pun intended) among themselves as spoils of victory from World War I. Turkey refused to become segmented into British, French, Greek and Italian colonies.
While the Ottoman Empire’s Middle East holdings were lost to the British and French mandates, Turkey became a “republic” under Ataturk – who made it the country’s mission to modernize. Secular government, westward outlook and modernization were the orders of the day. Ataturk was bent on bringing Turkey into the world stage in a new way.
Like revolutionary leaders in China and Russia, Ataturk found that new government didn’t mean anyone would so easily make a radical break with their deeply rooted pasts. Change meant shunning the past. Change meant renouncing what was Ottoman and Byzantine – and bringing glory to a new government, with new ideas and new directions.
Unlike China, Turkey didn’t try to completely gut its culture. The republic worked to walk that fine line between using history culture to keep hearts and minds, but at the same time dissociating with past.
It all seems very complicated to me, but the best illustration I’ve found is that there’s a government building on Cumhuriyet Caddessi which has a sculpture garden. In a semi circle are bronze busts of some of the great Ottoman sultans. They are all facing a roughly 30 foot tall, imposing statue of Ataturk looking down on them.
Today, people celebrate the republic and its achievements. They don’t celebrate centuries past. They don’t celebrate 1500 years of civilization. Just the past 90.
History has a sense or irony. Ataturk, like Mao Zedong, supplanted royalty and worked hard to take his country in a different direction. Along the way, he moved into the sultan’s palace and died there – much as Mao finished his days in the Forbidden City.
It’s hard to really change cultures and empires as old as theirs. And that’s exactly why they have survived – they flex, but never break.
The other day, as I watched a traffic jam at a busy intersection with taxi horns blaring and pedestrians rushing through the gridlocked cars, I wondered what someone who lived on that block 200 years ago, would think of what they saw. What about 600 years ago? People probably even lived on that block 1200 years ago.
Nobody imagines just how different the world can be after they’re gone. We like to think we are living the chapter where we shape how things will be. We like to think that the current world order is the way “it ended up”. History teaches us how the story leads to the present moment – but not how the present moment is just part of the larger, ongoing story.
The people living on that block 300 years ago were living in height of Ottoman greatness. Their block, in the middle of their glorious capital was one of the centers of the world. Today, it’s just a busy street in a country struggling between worlds – neither first nor third world, neither east nor west – and not center.
It makes me think about how amazingly lucky I am to be a citizen of the predominant empire of my day. Everywhere we travel, English is the language of travel. People from different countries use English as their medium. Turks and Italians converse in English. And they do it, in part, because America made English the language of software, computers and as a result, business. This is the age of Pax Americana and amazingly – through all the possible twists of fate – I am carrying the right passport.
America is so different than other countries. We have never changed governments like Turkey or France. There was no king, emperor or other incarnation of republic before ours. We are fortunate not to have the experience of a metamorphic upheaval that tears a society apart and forces it to ask and answer very difficult and unpleasant questions. We were not born out of dire necessity like Singapore and we have never known foreign soldiers occupying our streets like so much of the world has. We enjoy the kind of security and confidence you see on a kid from a good home.
But once upon a time, Turkey came from a good home too. As a citizen of empire, Istanbul is very comforting and hopeful. Because while I know empires rise and fall, Istanbul and Turkey are proof that you can gently drift out of center without shattering and breaking. People in Istanbul are still living life in the greatest city of their nation – and it remains a vital, international city. Their country no longer enjoys the dominion of empire – but it’s not weak and falling apart. It remains intact.
So, on Republic Day, I salute Turkey a country and a people which have changed with time – enduring, persevering, and in their own quiet way – triumphing.
Sent from my iPad
