History’s Cycling Reveiled

Action and reaction. The aggressive expansionary tendencies of Westerndom, let’s call it, massively stimulated a “modernizing” reaction in one Turkish soldier who fought on the wrong side, let us call it, in World War I. The man was Abdul Kemal Atatürk. He rose to the leadership of Turkey and transformed that country from a traditional Muslim state into a modern power—by, among other things, forcing dress codes on the population. He ruled from 1923 to 1938. One of the last dress codes he instituted was a 1934 law relating to Prohibited Garments, principally those that signaled religious affiliations. The veil was one of these. Atatürk, in effect, intended to establish a secular state. In that effort he did his utmost in limiting the effective influence of religion, in his context the Muslim religion. Among groups prohibited were Sufi lodges and associations.

Today comes news that, in Turkey, parliament has once more permitted those who wear a veil to do so again—yes even if they work for government in public offices. Amidst the great cycles of history there are little ones that do not take a millennium or two to develop. The veil in Turkey, ripped from the faces of women in 1934 is restored in 2013. The old Turkish traditionalists—all dead, of course, but presumably taking a peak through little windows in heaven—are nodding and saying: “Well, it’s a beginning.”

The more skilled observer of cycles remains more neutral. Every beginning is but the first step to an ending. Every unveiling becomes a reveiling. And so it goes, round and round.

No! — Turkey!

Let there be turkey and pumpkin and

Stuffing made of old bread to soak up the fat
That isn’t supposedly there says the
Sniffing gourmet speaking on radio
And counsels that we eat instead
L’oie, ze goose, or un poulet grand,
ze chicken—but no! Let’s have the
Turkey, the stuffing, the works,
In all of the usual ways. The Pilgrims were
Glad they had the big bird and it’s their day
We celebrate, not the gourmet’s.
It isn’t the eating we’re celebrating
It is the Mercy of Providence.

[Belatedly—because it takes time to cross the Atlantic—I have been able to add the perfect “Ghulf” picture to this poem. It is the photo of a Thanksgiving meal prepared and eaten on this feast day but in Paris, where our son-in-law Thierry (aka The Chef) tells us that butchers have got the message finally and always stock turkeys ahead of the American feast.]

A Trend Going the Other Way

Turkey’s top education board has proposed its own answer to the long-running headscarf controversy, tacitly allowing covered women to attend classes in what essentially amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” solution. [Hürriyet Daily News, October 4, 2010]

Turkey has always interested me for multiple reasons. Turks were the boogey-men of my childhood—because the Ottomans had occupied Hungary for several centuries, and children growing up in Hungary were not going to be allowed to forget that. The Hungarian language carries traces of the Turkish language. And, later, I was fascinated by Turkey’s secularization, from within, under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk—so far as I can tell the first (and only) Muslim country to go in that direction. Now, of late, I’ve watched in absolute fascination as Turkey is in the process of loosening its embrace of the West in small but significant ways. Atatürk secularized with a vengeance, reaching right down to modes of dress. These strictures are now being eased ever so carefully.

Hürriyet, which is Turkey’s English language daily, reports here that YÖK, the country’s Higher Education Board, is more or less ignoring a 2008 Constitutional Court ruling which held that headscarves of the Islamic kind were not permitted to be worn inside public institutions. The paper opines that YÖK’s decision will prevail if it meets popular support.

From my peculiar point of view—as an amateur student of culture and cycling historical patterns—it is most interesting see this sort of development. It suggests that the hypnotic power of the West is weakening. Its power, after all, more or less triggered secularization in Turkey as a defensive reaction to western encroachment in the wake of World War I; the Republic was established in 1922. But the Muslim culture is younger than the Western, and it would make sense that it would reassert itself as it is able. Is that what’s happening?

Marginalia...

... or thoughts that occur reading or watching the news.

• Karzai fires two cabinet officers U.S. authorities happen to like. It occurs to me that the Afghanistanis are fed up with the USA and have been for quite a while, not least those who profit by our presence in some way. The most sincere among them engage us in arms.
• NYT headline today: “Turkey Goes From Pliable Ally to Thorn for U.S.” The subhead elaborates, saying: “Policies on Israel and Iran Show a New Assertiveness.” Three things occur to me. One is that “Iran,” in that subhead, really also means Israel. Iran is not a threat to the U.S. Our most recent direct contact with Iran was our imposition of an emperor to rule that nation. Iran has proved itself one of the most peaceful powers in, say, the last century—defending itself when attacked by Iraq. In that one we were helping Saddam Hussein on the sly. The second is that Turkey-bashing is now permissible because we no longer need Turkey as a stalwart ally against the Soviet Menace. Third is the interesting assumption that “assertiveness” is inappropriate, no matter what, and that Turkey ought quietly to swallow the death of its nationals at the hands of Israeli commandos to retain its highly desirable status as a pliable ally.