Lucille Turner's Blog - Posts Tagged "lucille-turner"
Turkey's Ottoman Dream
We are living in turbulent times. Regime change is happening around us in many countries for reasons that are unclear to the common of mortals. Where is it leading? As Turkish President Recep Erdogan voices his desire to take Turkey back to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire, you have to wonder what kind of empire he is talking about, a kingdom of prosperity, or a Caliphate of cruelty?
I have been living in a fictionalised version of the Ottoman Empire for the past two years, writing my second historical novel, The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer. What I have discovered about the Ottoman, or the Osman dynasty, as it was known, has both terrified and fascinated me. It clearly fascinates a good number of modern Turks too, as is evident from recent films by Turkish directors, such as Fetih 1453 and numerous others that glorify the seizing of Constantinople, the ancient Byzantine capital, by Mehmet the Conqueror.
Undeniably the Ottoman Empire was highly successful. It was Muslim expansionism in action; the Ottoman Sultanate had a strong religious hierarchy behind it called the Ulema. Religion aside, and on a more optimistic note, trade and the arts flourished under the Ottomans, and some ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, were mostly welcomed. The millet system gave a good deal of administrative autonomy to ethnic minorities; they were permitted to rule themselves as long as they remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire. Individuals could rise through the ranks of the social and military system on the basis of merit, but again, as long as no dissent was heard. On the surface of things, it seemed reasonable enough.
So, let’s take a closer look at the Ottoman success story:
The Ottomans converted a large number of Christians to Islam in the Balkan countries they occupied.
Because remaining a non-Muslim meant giving up your sons to slavery and paying high taxes.
The Ottoman dynasty lasted 600 years
But cruelty became an almost Darwinian factor, since the practice of fratricide (killing male relatives who had a claim to the throne) meant that only the most ruthless members of the dynasty ever became Sultan.
The loyalty of the Viziers, the governing body, meant that there was little real dissent
But the execution of Viziers was commonplace, so much so that a Grand Vizier was said to tuck his will in his robe every morning on leaving his chambers, just in case today was not his day.
The Sultans of the Ottoman Empire wielded great power
But many Ottoman heirs were badly prepared for that power by a practice of virtual imprisonment within the harem, which would have done little more then increase their sex drive.
The Ottoman Empire gained significant territories during its 600-year rule
But it did so at the point of a sword; the Ottoman armies were so feared by Western Christendom that even the mention of them was enough to strike terror into the minds of its citizens, a terror that reverberates even today for that matter, at the thought of any Islamic army.
To be fair to the Ottoman Turks, Western Europe was not behaving much better than they were, at the time. The Italian city-states had spawned a series of condottiere warlords, like Cesare Borgia, for instance, who probably also knocked his brother off for the sake of power. Even in Florence, Renaissance jewel of beauty and art, noblemen were being stabbed in cathedrals by cardinals without so much as an Ave Maria Amen. And fifteenth century England was hardly a beacon of principle. Henry VIII was limbering up to a serious amount of familicide, and his henchman Thomas Cromwell had at his disposal a torture rack worthy of the Spanish Inquisition — whose imaginative range of equipment was sufficient to provoke a gritting of teeth and a crossing of legs in all but the unfeeling.
Violence, then, was fairly commonplace in much of the world during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is the standards of our present time that make it unacceptable to us. But yet more worrying is the desire to return to those fifteenth century standards. For Turkey to dream of a renewal of old Ottoman ways would be a little like Queen Elisabeth wishing she could send her spouse to the Tower. It simply isn’t done any more. Without a doubt, many countries do look back at their golden age of empire and dream of repeating it, but that, I venture to say, would be a grave error. There is rot at the core of Empire. Holding a large number of conquered countries together requires either great flexibility (which leads to the dissolution of the empire in any case) or great ruthlessness (which may work but only for a while), because at the end of the day it is about one people imposing their will on another and that can never truly be right.
Sign up on the homepage at www.lucilleturner.com to find out what my new book, "The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer" is all about!
I have been living in a fictionalised version of the Ottoman Empire for the past two years, writing my second historical novel, The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer. What I have discovered about the Ottoman, or the Osman dynasty, as it was known, has both terrified and fascinated me. It clearly fascinates a good number of modern Turks too, as is evident from recent films by Turkish directors, such as Fetih 1453 and numerous others that glorify the seizing of Constantinople, the ancient Byzantine capital, by Mehmet the Conqueror.
Undeniably the Ottoman Empire was highly successful. It was Muslim expansionism in action; the Ottoman Sultanate had a strong religious hierarchy behind it called the Ulema. Religion aside, and on a more optimistic note, trade and the arts flourished under the Ottomans, and some ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, were mostly welcomed. The millet system gave a good deal of administrative autonomy to ethnic minorities; they were permitted to rule themselves as long as they remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire. Individuals could rise through the ranks of the social and military system on the basis of merit, but again, as long as no dissent was heard. On the surface of things, it seemed reasonable enough.
So, let’s take a closer look at the Ottoman success story:
The Ottomans converted a large number of Christians to Islam in the Balkan countries they occupied.
Because remaining a non-Muslim meant giving up your sons to slavery and paying high taxes.
The Ottoman dynasty lasted 600 years
But cruelty became an almost Darwinian factor, since the practice of fratricide (killing male relatives who had a claim to the throne) meant that only the most ruthless members of the dynasty ever became Sultan.
The loyalty of the Viziers, the governing body, meant that there was little real dissent
But the execution of Viziers was commonplace, so much so that a Grand Vizier was said to tuck his will in his robe every morning on leaving his chambers, just in case today was not his day.
The Sultans of the Ottoman Empire wielded great power
But many Ottoman heirs were badly prepared for that power by a practice of virtual imprisonment within the harem, which would have done little more then increase their sex drive.
The Ottoman Empire gained significant territories during its 600-year rule
But it did so at the point of a sword; the Ottoman armies were so feared by Western Christendom that even the mention of them was enough to strike terror into the minds of its citizens, a terror that reverberates even today for that matter, at the thought of any Islamic army.
To be fair to the Ottoman Turks, Western Europe was not behaving much better than they were, at the time. The Italian city-states had spawned a series of condottiere warlords, like Cesare Borgia, for instance, who probably also knocked his brother off for the sake of power. Even in Florence, Renaissance jewel of beauty and art, noblemen were being stabbed in cathedrals by cardinals without so much as an Ave Maria Amen. And fifteenth century England was hardly a beacon of principle. Henry VIII was limbering up to a serious amount of familicide, and his henchman Thomas Cromwell had at his disposal a torture rack worthy of the Spanish Inquisition — whose imaginative range of equipment was sufficient to provoke a gritting of teeth and a crossing of legs in all but the unfeeling.
Violence, then, was fairly commonplace in much of the world during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is the standards of our present time that make it unacceptable to us. But yet more worrying is the desire to return to those fifteenth century standards. For Turkey to dream of a renewal of old Ottoman ways would be a little like Queen Elisabeth wishing she could send her spouse to the Tower. It simply isn’t done any more. Without a doubt, many countries do look back at their golden age of empire and dream of repeating it, but that, I venture to say, would be a grave error. There is rot at the core of Empire. Holding a large number of conquered countries together requires either great flexibility (which leads to the dissolution of the empire in any case) or great ruthlessness (which may work but only for a while), because at the end of the day it is about one people imposing their will on another and that can never truly be right.
Sign up on the homepage at www.lucilleturner.com to find out what my new book, "The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer" is all about!
The Barbarian of Europe
The girl who helps me with my ironing is Polish. She’s clever - too clever for ironing, but she does it because it’s not that easy to come over to Western Europe and find a job just like that. Really, she’s an engineer. Mechanical. I found that out the other day as I watched her push the iron across a shirt, suddenly compelled to take it from her hand and give her a hard hat and iron toe shoes instead. They work hard, these people. Harder than us. They form part of a group of people we have designated as Eastern Europeans. We know, without even having to say it, that the economies of their countries are less developed than ours, but we do not stop to wonder why, just as we do not stop to examine how it is that they have become a sort of poor European cousin, relegated to the back seat while we drive on in the front, as though it is our birthright.
Poland is situated on the fringes of Eastern Europe, west of Russia and north of the Balkans. Together with the Balkan countries below it, which include Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria - not to mention Greece to the south, Poland has a turbulent history. All the Balkan countries do; when you delve into the past of these regions it is as though you are reading the substance of a never-ending nightmare. How did this nightmare come about, and what did it mean for the people who had to endure it?
Amusingly or not, the people of the Balkan countries were once considered, by the people of Western Europe, as barbarians. The term, ‘barbarian’ is an old one, used to describe a people who are ‘uncivilised’. The Goths, from whom many of the Balkan people descend, were once called barbarians because of their wild appearance and manners, and their warrior culture. The Germanic tribes, of whom the Goths were part, lived to the north, in Scandanavia, and the word ‘barbarian’ was once reserved for them. But, as Larry Wolff says in his book, ‘Inventing Eastern Europe’ (Stanford University press, 1994), in the eighteenth century ‘barbarism shifted from the north to the east’, and the concept of an Eastern Europe was born in our consciousness. By then, the Balkans had had a good deal to endure. They had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. They had been forced by circumstance and destiny to change their faith and adopt a new system, which was entirely feudal in its construction. While the rest of Europe emerged from the Renaissance and headed towards the Enlightenment, with all the scientific and industrial progress that came with it (not to mention the economic growth) the Balkan countries were still locked in a kind of never-ending system of serfdom. In the end, they had to fight their way out of it - and they did, with the Serb Uprising from 1804 and a second ten years later. Then there was the Greek War of Independence from 1821 to 1830. The Greeks were still smarting from the fall of Constantinople, which had further fuelled animosity between the two old enemies, and bloody battles raged between the Turks and the Greeks for years. But the worst was yet to come. Just when the Balkan countries thought they had earned their right to growth and change, other empires stepped in to cause yet more havoc. Worried about who would gain control over the Balkans once the Turks had left, the Austro-Hungarians and Germany, the Russians, Britain, France and the US began to intervene, turning the Balkans into a powder keg that was just about ready to ignite in 1914, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated on the streets of Sarajevo, and Germany made its secret pact with the Ottoman Turks.
The Balkan Wars, first between Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria against the Ottomans, and then between Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, were dreadful. The effect of the subsequent two world wars on the Balkans would deliver the final blow to the aspirations of a downtrodden people, and even when the Western countries tried to make things better, all they did was make them worse. The region fell under the yoke of dictatorships; all hopes of democracy and self-determination became the dream of a future that would never come. The so-called barbarians of Europe had come to understand the real meaning of barbarity: politics.
Poland is situated on the fringes of Eastern Europe, west of Russia and north of the Balkans. Together with the Balkan countries below it, which include Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria - not to mention Greece to the south, Poland has a turbulent history. All the Balkan countries do; when you delve into the past of these regions it is as though you are reading the substance of a never-ending nightmare. How did this nightmare come about, and what did it mean for the people who had to endure it?
Amusingly or not, the people of the Balkan countries were once considered, by the people of Western Europe, as barbarians. The term, ‘barbarian’ is an old one, used to describe a people who are ‘uncivilised’. The Goths, from whom many of the Balkan people descend, were once called barbarians because of their wild appearance and manners, and their warrior culture. The Germanic tribes, of whom the Goths were part, lived to the north, in Scandanavia, and the word ‘barbarian’ was once reserved for them. But, as Larry Wolff says in his book, ‘Inventing Eastern Europe’ (Stanford University press, 1994), in the eighteenth century ‘barbarism shifted from the north to the east’, and the concept of an Eastern Europe was born in our consciousness. By then, the Balkans had had a good deal to endure. They had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. They had been forced by circumstance and destiny to change their faith and adopt a new system, which was entirely feudal in its construction. While the rest of Europe emerged from the Renaissance and headed towards the Enlightenment, with all the scientific and industrial progress that came with it (not to mention the economic growth) the Balkan countries were still locked in a kind of never-ending system of serfdom. In the end, they had to fight their way out of it - and they did, with the Serb Uprising from 1804 and a second ten years later. Then there was the Greek War of Independence from 1821 to 1830. The Greeks were still smarting from the fall of Constantinople, which had further fuelled animosity between the two old enemies, and bloody battles raged between the Turks and the Greeks for years. But the worst was yet to come. Just when the Balkan countries thought they had earned their right to growth and change, other empires stepped in to cause yet more havoc. Worried about who would gain control over the Balkans once the Turks had left, the Austro-Hungarians and Germany, the Russians, Britain, France and the US began to intervene, turning the Balkans into a powder keg that was just about ready to ignite in 1914, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated on the streets of Sarajevo, and Germany made its secret pact with the Ottoman Turks.
The Balkan Wars, first between Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria against the Ottomans, and then between Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, were dreadful. The effect of the subsequent two world wars on the Balkans would deliver the final blow to the aspirations of a downtrodden people, and even when the Western countries tried to make things better, all they did was make them worse. The region fell under the yoke of dictatorships; all hopes of democracy and self-determination became the dream of a future that would never come. The so-called barbarians of Europe had come to understand the real meaning of barbarity: politics.
