<div dir="ltr"><div class="">
<div class="">
<h1 class="">It's Erdogan vs. Ataturk in a battle for Turkey's soul</h1>
</div>
</div>
<div class="">
<p class="">Analysis: Moves to reintroduce Ottoman language and script reflect a culture war over Turkish identity</p>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<span class="">December 10, 2014</span>
<span class="">4:45AM ET</span>
</div>
<div class="">
<span class="">
by
<a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/d/joseph-dana.html" title="Joseph Dana" class="">Joseph Dana</a>
<span class="">
<span class="">
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/ibnezra" target="_blank" title="@ibnezra" class="">@ibnezra</a>
</span>
</span>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class=""><div class="">
<p>With his vociferous call on Monday to elevate an older form of
Turkish in the national school curriculum, President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan is attempting to dismantle the linguistic cornerstone on which
modern Turkey was built — and challenge the legacy of its master
builder. If 20<sup>th</sup> century Turkey had been modeled on the
obsessively secularist “modernizing” vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
Erdogan has revealed the extent of his ambition to root the country’s
future in the image of its imperial Ottoman past.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s comments came on the heels of a decision last weekend by
Turkey’s National Education Council to make Ottoman language classes
compulsory for the religious vocational high schools that train imams
and elective for secular high schools across the country. The council’s
position was widely criticized by Turkey’s secular opposition parties.
But Erdogan made clear where he stands in a Dec. 8 speech in Ankara.</p>
<p>“Whether they want it or not, Ottoman [language] will be learned and
taught in this country,” Erdogan said. “There are those who are uneasy
with this country’s children learning Ottoman.”</p>
<p>The Ottoman language, which was abolished by Ataturk’s decree in
1928, is a predecessor to modern Turkish. It was written in Arabic
script, and can still be found on monuments and buildings throughout
Turkey. Added Erdogan, “They say, ‘Will we teach children how to read
gravestones?’ But a history and a civilization is lying on those
gravestones."</p>
<p>Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have never
concealed their intention to uphold traditional notions of piety and
establish a regional power base that would act as a counterweight to
Western influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. The <a href="http://rt.com/news/190032-turkey-headscarf-schools-ban-amendment/">government lifted a decades old ban on Muslim headscarves</a> in state high schools in September, and Erdogan’s political allies on the education council <a href="http://www.todayszaman.com/national_council-decides-to-axe-bartending-classes-at-tourism-high-schools_366225.html">recently voted to ban bartending classes</a> in tourism-industry vocational high schools. Last Thursday, Erdogan <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.630124">lashed out at the United Nations Security Council for being a “Christian body”</a>that didn’t properly represent the interests of Muslim nations. </p>
<p>But changing the Turkish language is different; it is striking at the
heart of the grand transformation ushered in by Ataturk in the 1920s.
When Ataturk came to power as the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of
World War I, the language spoken in Turkey had been a rich tapestry of
Arabic, Turkish and Farsi woven together in flowing Arabic script. As
part of Ataturk’s scheme to “modernize” Turkey, Arabic script was
replaced with the Latin alphabet. Arabic and Farsi words were
systematically replaced with German and French.</p>
<p>All of Ataturk's reforms, from the political reorganization of the
empire to the adoption of the Saturday-Sunday Sabbath, pivoted Turkey
towards European patterns of life. But the language reforms were the
ones most profoundly felt every day. Seemingly overnight, an entire
society was rendered illiterate and forced to rewrite its stories in an
unfamiliar European script. Decades later, modern Turkish is a rich and
expressive language, reaching its apotheosis in 2006 with the awarding
of the Nobel Prize in literature to Orhan Pamuk for his novels written
in modern Turkish.</p>
<p>With parliamentary elections slated for early 2015, Erdogan’s embrace
of Ottoman Turkish is a preview of how he intends to spend the
political capital he has accumulated over the past decade in power. If
the AKP maintains its parliamentary mandate, Erdogan will not face
elections for another four years and will have ample opportunity to make
more fundamental changes to the way Turkey is governed.</p>
<p>The past year has seen Erdogan confronted by protesters angry with
his increasingly authoritarian leadership and the ongoing corruption
scandal that has embroiled his closest political confidants. His
relationship with the West remains deadlocked over how to handle the
crisis in Syria and Iraq. Still, Erdogan’s party won crucial municipal
elections across the country and he became Turkey’s first directly
elected president. He is now the most powerful Turkish politician since
Ataturk, and is setting his sights on reorienting Turkish society
through conservative educational reforms.</p>
<p>Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has criticized the proposed language policy as yet another sign that <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ottoman-language-classes-to-be-introduced-whatever-they-say-vows-erdogan.aspx?pageID=238&nid=75329&NewsCatID=338">Erdogan is stuck in the past</a>.
“Even the Ottomans would not make these decisions,” CHP Deputy
Parliamentary Group Chair Akif Hamzaçebi said on Dec. 8. But nostalgia
has always been a part of Erdogan’s political appeal. His regular
complaints that pious Turks are “subjected to all kinds of criticism,
insult and abuse” serve to remind Erdogan’s base that he remains, at
heart, a son of the Anatolian heartland.</p>
<p>In his canny use of cultural codes, however, Erdogan has much in
common with Turkey’s great modernizer. Ataturk was often photographed in
public drinking raki, a popular anise-flavored alcoholic drink, to
demonstrate that secularism had come to the nascent Turkish state.
Erdogan has crafted a different image — in the grandiose presidential
palace he recently constructed and in the remaking of Istanbul as an
imperial city through <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/12/turkey-erdogan-palacescandal.html">myriad mega-infrastructure projects</a> ranging from a new five-runway airport to a third bridge spanning the Bosphorus.</p>
<p>For much of the 20th century, the term Ottoman carried a negative
connotation. The Ottoman Empire had been the "sick man of Europe"
demolished by the Kemalists in order to build the modern Turkish state.
Attempts to reconnect with Ottoman history, especially in literature by <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/19/how-the-time-regulation-institute-became-a-global-bestselling-book/">writers such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar</a> and
Pamuk, were viewed as suspect, overly romantic and obsessed with
failure. Erdogan has challenged all of that, recasting everything
Ottoman as a source of pride for Turks and even as a symbolic
inspiration for his foreign policy. His careful attempts to rebrand
Turkish identity as rooted in Ottoman glories cast Erdogan as a
latter-day sultan challenging Ataturk’s once unassailable position as
the father of the nation. And it’s on that symbolic battlefield that the
latest struggle over the Turkish language will be waged.</p>
</div>
<a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/10/remodelling-turkeyinerdogansimage.html">http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/10/remodelling-turkeyinerdogansimage.html</a><br></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
</div>