Turkey: East, West, or Turkish

Disclaimer: This is a bit of a ramble, but I don't have the time to edit it properly. Hopefully the idea comes through regardless.

The NYT's Baghdad Bureau Blog just posted an Iraqi woman's take on Turkey. The title asks, is it east or west? The verdict isn't completely clear, but it appears that she thinks it is west and it seems like she likes it.

Before I went to Turkey I thought it was an Oriental country. After I arrived, and even though I’ve never been in Europe, I felt I was in a European world.
It is not like the Orient I know: the clean streets, the fancy and high buildings, what people were wearing, the number of Turkish women with such a modern way of wearing the hijab, lovers kissing each other openly in the streets.

She notes the number of mosques, and the Japanese tourists in shorts that are allowed to enter them. The alcohol bars, the happy tourists, the electricity, the clean streets, the clean tram and tunnels. She likens it to what she's seen on TV of France or even America.

What is interesting, though, is that she is talking about Istanbul, which isn't really "Turkey" in toto. Istanbul is quite different from Ankara. They are both quite different from the little villages that lie outside them. And all of that is different from the far-flung reaches that border on Iran, Iraq, Syria. Languages change, people change, loyalties change. One Turk in Istanbul told me that the Turkish identity is "fake." He was not a Kurd, but he said that the Kurds were the only ones who had a "real" identity. I think what he meant is that Turkishness is a constructed identity, made up of many groups of people and the purest of those at this point are the Kurds. What is sure is that within the Turkish identity and the Turkish state there are a wide variety of different regions, groups, and feelings, of which, Istanbul is the most European. It is in Europe after all. I really loved the city. It is an amazing cosmopolitan area, full of amazing history and culture and modern life at the same time, in a way that no city in the Middle East seemed to be able to capture, in my opinion.

Another thing that I found to be very interesting in both Istanbul and Ankara was the amount of modern cultural forms. There were a lot of bookstores, filled with books in Turkish, both original and translated. It was very hard to find a book in English, even in the most modern malls. Also, I saw young students carrying books, instrument cases, art portfolios everywhere. It really was refreshing. Some might say that Turks have given up their true culture to try to emulate the West.

I think that they have created their own modern and enduring culture by coming to their own terms with the rest of the world. For me, the most striking thing was language. The range of books, magazines, movies, TV shows, etc available in Turkish were far greater than what I found in Arabic in the Arab world. And there are far more Arabs than Turks. It seems to me that Arab cultures that have tried to refuse interaction with the rest of the world are in danger of extinction. Witness the perpetual articles about identity in the Gulf (and I don't mean articles by Westerners, but the Arabic language articles that are always in the papers and in magazines like al-Majella). If you do not modernize your culture, people will go to other modern cultures to get what they want. They'll watch movies, listen to music, read books, speak, etc, in English, French, whatever language. They'll walk around museums in their own country about their own heritage, explaining exhibits to their children in English (which is obviously not their native language). They will slowly lose their culture because people are refusing to allow it to adapt. By accepting cultural change, the culture stays fresh and pliable, as does the language.

Consider this. I found it very difficult to converse with most people in Turkey because those not directly involved in tourism can do everything they need in Turkish. In the Middle East, there is almost no need for foreigners to speak Arabic because nearly everyone (especially in the Gulf) speaks English. This is not because they are more cosmopolitan than the Turks, but because they have to. It saddened me to see an older Omani gentleman having to use a picture menu in a fast food restaurant in his own country because he didn't speak English and the server didn't speak Arabic.

Flipping through the channels in my hotel in Turkey, nothing but a few international news channels were in English. Everything else, to include SpongeBob Squarepants, was in Turkish. In the Arab world, non-Arabic programs are almost always subtitled, not dubbed. If you want modern, non-religious literature in the Arab world, you have few choices. Major non-religious bookstores are at least 75% English.

In the Middle East, I did not see students with art portfolios or musical instruments. It was rare outside of a few places near universities in Jordan (in my experience) to see students carrying around a stack of books. Concert halls are rare. Museums are sub-par. To me, this is where Turkey has it right and the Arab world has it wrong (with some exceptions and some new attempts to correct it). Modern high culture is critical to maintaining identity and pride, in my estimation. And the Arab world has very little modern high culture, and even less modern high culture that is accessible to their people, rather than just a stunt to attract foreign tourism and investment.