by Ottoman Odyssey- Travels Through a Lost Empire (retail) (epub)
I often get asked by non-Turks whether my name has any connection to Alevism. ‘Alev’ means flame, and fire is used extensively in Alevi worship, but the more mainstream theory is that Alevism is a Turkish derivation of ‘Alawite’, i.e. a follower of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Even without an etymological connection, however, I feel drawn to Alevis, because I like their extremely relaxed form of Islam. They drink alcohol, and women and men worship together, not in a mosque but in a modest, round room (the cemevi), which is often hard for outsiders to find. There is a typically unobtrusive, white-washed cemevi on Burgaz Ada, one of the islands off the coast of Istanbul which were home to many of the city’s minorities during the Ottoman era, including Jewish and Christian families. They were party islands for rich Muslim subjects too, and today they are full of Arab tourists from the Gulf delightedly eating ice cream while being driven around in horse-drawn carriages.
‘Derya’s mother’s side of the family is blond and blue-eyed, and they are from the south-east of Turkey. There could be two explanations for this: that they are related to the crusaders and pilgrims who passed through en route to the Holy Land hundreds of years ago, or that they have Russian blood. In 1915, the Young Turks [revolutionaries who seized power from the sultan in 1908 and led the empire on to the losing side of the war] fought against the Russians at the battle of Sarikamiş in the mountains of Eastern Turkey near Armenia. They lost, and decided to relocate Armenians and Russian families in Eastern Turkey to Iraq and Syria. [Again, a circumspect reference to the Armenian genocide.] But some families – blue-eyed, blond-haired – remained.’
Blue-eyed Turks are one of my favourite subjects of conversation, and I tell Ziya so.
‘Yes. We are all mixed up, you know. In Sagalassos [an ancient Greek site in modern south-west Turkey], Bulgarian archaeologists were carrying out excavation work and hired local Turks to work on the site. They found skeletons from the second century so they decided to compare the DNA of the skeletons with the local workers. It was a one hundred per cent match. They called the workers to explain the skeletons were their ancestors, and the workers were completely horrified. They went on strike, saying, “Are you trying to say we are Greeks?’”
The absurdity of this reminds me of the famous speech from the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, where the titular hero gives an angry speech about the perils of nationalism: ‘I have done things for my country that would make your hair stand. I have killed, burned villages, raped women. And why? Because they were Turks or Bulgarians. That’s the rotten damn fool I was. Now I look at a man, any man, and I say, “He is good. He is bad.” What do I care if he’s Greek or Turk?’
As I travelled across Turkey and to ex-Ottoman territories beyond its borders, I met for myself the people Ziya had told me about – the Armenians of the eastern empire, and the Balkans of the west – but first, I found an ancient minority community from the south-east of Turkey almost literally on my doorstep.
The Sacré Coeur
I used to live near Taksim Square in the district of Gümüşsuyu (‘Silver Water’), on one of the highest points in Istanbul, with a panoramic view of the Bosphorus. About twenty metres from my door was the unassuming Sacré Coeur church, and at Easter, the usually tiny congregation would blossom – extended families would materialize in full regalia, grandmothers teetering in high heels, fussing over children with carefully combed hair. There was a sense of occasion, of celebration, and the collective body language of the congregation held an almost imperceptible defiance.
This was the Syriac Catholic community, which hails originally from Aleppo in northern Syria, and now has a base in the south-east of Turkey. The Syriac Catholic Church sprang from the more ancient Syriac Orthodox Church, established around AD 500, after Jesuit missionaries sent to Syria from France in the 17th century began appointing their own patriarchs, causing a Catholic-Orthodox schism within the community. The sultan initially backed the Orthodox patriarchs, but after a protracted struggle both churches were accommodated. In the early 20th century, massacres of Syriacs along with Armenians were followed by state persecution after the founding of the Republic in 1923 (in 1925, shortly after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk expelled the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate from Turkey to Syria). Today, a very rough estimate of 10,000 Syriacs remain in Turkey (most of them Orthodox), many of whom no longer live in the south-east of the country but in Istanbul. Like most of the city’s minorities, they are relatively wealthy and the younger generations have started to leave, part of Turkey’s increasingly rapid brain drain, exacerbated by an increasing sense that local non-Muslims have become vulnerable in recent years.
On Easter Sunday in 2016, armed riot police stationed themselves outside the Sacré Coeur church, reinforcements waiting in vans parked up the narrow street, and civilian police in red security vests stood nearer the entrance as families arrived for the Easter service. This was a response to recent threats made by IS to the kafir (infidels); all churches and synagogues were on high alert throughout Istanbul. I joined the people streaming through the doors just in time for the 11 a.m. service. Inside, the church gave the impression of light and space despite being crowded, its high roof covered with a turquoise mosaic. Around 250 people had shown up, despite the police presence outside, and a sizeable, mixed choir was accompanied by an electric keyboard set to organ mode. At one point in the service, there was a muffled commotion in the choir; a girl stormed down the aisle in tears and a boy hurried behind her – a covert lovers’ spat. Here was a community with inner relationships and gossip, all played out and dissected during the two-hour service and in the scrum outside the church afterwards, where chocolate eggs were handed out to the children. By the end of the service, so many people had arrived that there was barely standing room at the back; I felt guilty, a non-believer taking up a precious seat, but also too self-conscious to leave mid-service.
Many of the ancient minorities of Turkey have been forced from their ancestral homeland in the east of the country to the metropolis of Istanbul – or, in far greater numbers, further afield – to Europe and the United States. In Byzantine times, Anatolia was a Christian heartland, hosting some of the most important events and figures of Christian history. The Council of Nicea (modern-day Iznik) in AD 325 was the first ecumenical council of the Church, and resulted in the first articulation of uniform Christian doctrine, the Nicene Creed. The Council of Chalcedon in modern-day Kadikoy, Istanbul, was the third ecumenical council, at which almost everyone agreed that Jesus Christ was both perfectly divine and perfectly human. Smyrna – modern-day Izmir – was home to one of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelations, and Antioch – modern-day Antakya – is the seat of Eastern Christianity, where St Paul (born in Tarsus, south Turkey) set off on his missionary journeys. According to the Book of Genesis, Antioch is also the home of the first non-Gentile Christians (the first to actually be called ‘Christian’). Much of the Christian history of Turkey is no longer evident, but the towns of Antakya and Mardin are still home to both Christian and Jewish congregations.
I headed down there for the first time in 2012, just before the opposing factions of Syria’s civil war began to spill across the border into Turkey; by the time I visited again in 2014, they had not only spilled over but established cells in these towns.
Antakya
A large signpost to HALEP (Aleppo) on the road from Hatay airport serves as a reminder of the proximity of Syria’s devastation just twenty kilometres over the border. Antakya lies south of the port of Iskenderun on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast; the surrounding province of Hatay used to be part of Syria, then existed as an independent state for one year in 1938 before finally being subsumed into the Turkish Republic in 1939, a sore subject for Syrians ever since. There are roughly half a million Syrian refugees in Hatay province, most of them Sunni Muslims fleeing the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad across the border, but also a number of Alawites fleeing the Sunni rebels in nearby villages –
the divisions between the two groups means that more and more are leaving for the relative urban anonymity and safety of Istanbul. While many Antakyan residents I spoke to claimed that they are ‘all brothers’, this seems increasingly anachronistic: tensions have seeped into the town, and kidnaps and bomb threats are common. While I was there, a group of Sunni Muslim men wearing white marched down the central street, loudly protesting the arrival of more Alawites.
Those who live in Antakya like to compare it to pre-war Damascus and the town does have a very Middle Eastern feel, particularly the ancient warren of the medina (centre): baking sandstone houses, souks, narrow streets overhung by fig trees and vines, criss-crossed by the odd chicken or goat, and children darting through heavy wooden doors open to the hurly-burly of family life within. In shops and cafés, Arabic is liberally scattered through conversation, and Turkish has the harsh aspiration of the south-eastern accent and Arabic mother tongue. On my way to the pilgrim house where I would stay that night, a meandering walk led me via the smell of warm caramel to a tiny atolye (atelier) manufacturing stewed walnuts and pumpkin slices, bubbling away on little stoves in sugar water. Eventually, I found the pilgrim house, which is run by a sturdy German Catholic nun called Sister Barbara. A few hours after I arrived and dropped my bag, I had the awkward experience of encountering her in a bar on the outskirts of the medina; she sipped a beer, avoiding eye contact, so I followed her lead.
The town is still full of Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic churches and a single synagogue, which attracts only a handful of elderly worshippers. The old faithful attend their services doggedly and narrate the centuries-old histories of their communities with undimmed enthusiasm. When they speak of themselves, however, it is usually with a melancholic bent, conscious that they are literally dying out. One Jewish man showing me around the empty synagogue looked bowed down by sadness. At one point in the tour he stopped and turned to me: ‘I sometimes worry that when I die there will be no one left to bury me.’ The energy of the medina dissipated in this echoing testament to past faith.
Mardin, 500 kilometres to the north-east of Antakya, is a sprawling town of sandstone high on a hill, overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia. I visited in the early years of the Syrian war, arriving as dusk was falling and the call to prayer was ringing out from scattered minarets into the valley below, the amplified Arabic at odds with the quiet of the landscape. A minute later, a bell struck solemnly from the Syriac Orthodox church and as evening approached, the town came alive with light and sound, the tinkle of wine glasses and the swell of Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish conversation. The next day I attended a service at the church. Unlike the Catholic service in Gümüşsuyu, this was in Aramaic, and I spent some time after the service marvelling over the otherworldly script in a beautifully bound Bible I found near the altar.
I thought of the energy of the medinas of Mardin and Antakya when I read Battle for Home, an account by a Syrian architect, Marwa al-Sabouni, of her home city of Homs. She describes its pre-war transformation at the hands of inept ‘urban planners’ who, even before years of shelling wrought irreversible destruction, damaged a centuries-old communal spirit by replacing some of the ancient structure of the town with apartment blocks.
‘It was common to hear the bells of Christian churches and the Muslim calls for prayer echoing through the streets at the same time.18 [. . .] In Old Homs, neither Christians nor Muslims had to prove their social status through their religions; they belonged to the city, and the city embraced them through a common experience of the built environment, with their religions publicly honoured and placed at the core. In Old Homs, as in all old Syrian cities, alleys embraced houses, and mosques opened their front doors to the facing doors of churches, and minarets and church towers raised their praying hands in unity above the rooftops. This way of life promoted cultivation and harmony.’19
In 2017, the Turkish government ‘re-appropriated’ around fifty properties belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church, on the grounds that their ownership deeds had lapsed after the reordering of municipal boundaries in 2012. Monasteries such as the 5th-century Mor Gabriel became the official property of the Diyanet, Turkey’s religious body which holds jurisdiction over mosques and Koranic schools across the country, before an outcry reversed the decision20 As a leader who casts himself in the Ottoman mould, President Erdoğan often makes grand gestures to accommodate minorities in Turkey – for example, in the early years of the Syrian war he invited the Syriac patriarchate back to Turkey, though nothing came of this overture. In 2013, he also pledged to repatriate Syriac Orthodox properties previously seized by the government, only some of which have been returned. Social strictures on minorities introduced after the formation of the Republic are still imposed – for example, Syriac children must still take Turkish names as well as their family-given Christian names.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew claimed in 2012 that under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) ‘circumstances are better than the past for the Greeks and other minorities’. It would not be difficult for any government to improve on the record of the Republic, but the AKP’s efforts are counterbalanced by an overeagerness to identify with less politically correct examples of Ottoman history, such as the decision to name Istanbul’s third bridge after an Alevi-massacring sultan.
Izmir and the Levantines
At the western end of the Anatolian trade route is Izmir – ancient Smyrna. Like Antakya, Smyrna has an ancient Christian history, but is defined by its even more ancient community of Greeks. Until the day it burned to the ground in September 1922 it had a majority of non-Muslim inhabitants (most of them Greek, and a significant number of Jews), which earned it the nickname Gavur Izmir (‘Infidel Smyrna’). In Ottoman times, and indeed in Turkey today, members of the Greek Orthodox community are known as Rum - a reference to the Byzantine Christian Empire as the eastern division of the Roman Empire. Rum (literally “Rome”) always refers to a Greek within Turkey, as opposed to Yunan - a Greek from Yunanistan (Greece).
In the latter centuries of Ottoman rule, a community of entrepreneurial Europeans from Italy, Britain, Spain and France based their highly profitable businesses in coastal towns like Izmir, not only a city of infidels but also ‘the Pearl of the Aegean’ and the most significant trading port in the Levant (literally the ‘rising [sun]’ or ‘The East’). Essentially, the Levant is the Eastern Mediterranean, and in particular the major trade ports of Izmir, Mersin, Beirut and Alexandria, where Christian and Jewish merchants settled from Byzantine times, and in much greater numbers during the latter half of the Ottoman Empire. There are still around a thousand well-known Levantines in Turkey today, members of the grand old families: Jonathan Beard, for example, represents the sixth generation of the famous Beards of Alexandretta, or ‘little Alexandria’ (modern-day Iskenderun near Antakya, in the province of Hatay). The Beards moved there from England in 1846 to start a liquorice, cotton and tobacco business and, 170 years later, Jonathan Beard has a curious quasi-English accent in Turkish despite having grown up in Istanbul, and an occasional Turkish lilt in English. He states on the website of the Levantine Heritage Foundation that he indulges all his composite cultural parts ‘without hesitation’:
‘As is dictated by our family rules I look forward to the day my eldest daughter Natalie takes over the business to become the 7th generation [of Beards]. I am proud to be referred to as a Levantine, I received my education in Arabic, Turkish, English and French and indulge in these cultures without hesitation. I look forward to returning to England one day but realize it shall not be permanent as the Levant and its beauty and intrigue is our natural home.’
In November 2014, the historian Philip Mansel told an audience at the British Consulate in Istanbul: We are all Levantines now.’ The status of a Levantine has always been curiously exalted, even today – perhaps especially today, because the very use of the word recalls a bygone time where highly respected European families living on Turkey’s coastline held a u
nique social status, boasting international connections that locals could not compete with and enjoying the support of local European consuls (the original Beards, for example, went into business with the British Consul in Iskenderun, Augustine Catoni, and subsequent generations kept up the partnership). Rich Levantines were the original Western ex-pats, several social levels above most economic migrants in the empire. They also had the oddly fierce attachment to their European roots that is typical of diasporic communities, artificially glamorized with distance and time.
The Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf is a Maronite Christian from Beirut who now lives in Paris; his mother was an Egyptian Catholic of Turkish origin, and his father belonged to the Greek Melkite Church (‘Melkite’ comes from the Arabic for ‘king’ and was used pejoratively to describe those who backed the Byzantine emperor during the schism in Eastern Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon). In his novel Balthasar’s Odyssey, Maalouf reimagines the life of a 17th-century Levantine book-dealer, Balthasar Embriaco, who runs a legendary bookshop in the Lebanese town of Gibelet, home of the Embriaci for centuries. One day, he decides to pursue a particularly valuable book across Anatolia to Istanbul and finally to Genoa, the lost home of his ancestors. In Maalouf’s imagining, Balthasar’s belatedly awoken love of Genoa has an element of sentimental hypocrisy: a wealthy ex-pat worshipping a city abandoned by long-dead relatives for the prospect of making money abroad. Maalouf presents Genoa as a Promised Land to the Embriaci, inviting a comparison to Jews who feel they can only be truly accepted and safe in Israel; at one point Balthasar declares that,
