Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“TO THE CITY” by Alexander Christie-Miller (William Collins publishers, $NZ 39:99)

 

            Alexander Christie-Miller is an English journalist who, for seven years, lived in Istanbul and was the Turkey correspondent for The Times of London. He also wrote for Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Atlantic and other publications. He gave very detailed accounts of both the politics and the daily lives of the people of Istanbul. A relatively young man, he married a Turkish woman, but eventually they had to leave the country because politics drove them out. Under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the government was becoming more and more authoritarian. Dissent was being punished. Erdogan and his increasingly Islamist regime jailed, fined or deported journalists who said negative things about the situation.

            To the City deals mainly with three things – the present state of Istanbul and its inhabitants; the current politics of Turkey; and the history of Turkey, especially Istanbul’s history. To the City is subtitled Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul. In his Prologue, Christie-Miller says  “This is a book about the old Byzantine land walls of Istanbul and the people who have lived around them, their history, and their endurance through an era of relentless change”.  He has an interesting and engaging way of presenting his case. He does not deal with one issue a time, but takes us around the ancient gates that encircle the old part of Istanbul. At each gate he talks with locals, then discusses politics, then enlightens us about Turkey’s history. So we go through The Tanners Gate, The Buried Gate, The Gate of the Saints, The Cannon Gate, The Gate of the Riven Tower…. and so forth up to The Rebuilt Gate, The Crooked Gate, The Gate of the Plagues and The Marble Tower which overlooks the Sea of Marmara, all fifteen of them.

            Rather than following Christie-Miller’s itinerary literally, I’ll simplify by breaking up his narrative, dealing one at a time with his three preoccupations.

First, the present state of Istanbul, which now has about 20,000,000 inhabitants. At The Tanners Gate, he notes that dogs [and to a lesser extent cats] run free in the streets near the walls, as they have always been looked after. Admiring this tradition, Christie-Miller joined in and for a couple of years volunteered at a dog shelter. There is still a sense of neighbourhood in the older quarters embracing many ethnicities, but it is rapidly being destroyed now. He speaks, at the Gate of Saints, with a man called Ismet who has been able to regain his house when developers flooded in, demolished houses and built luxury hotels beyond the reach of the poorer locals. Nevertheless there are still many tea-houses for the less well-off. Since it has been grown on a large scale in Turkey, tea has become Turkey’s most-consumed drink, overtaking coffee. Meanwhile, at other gates, we learn that when it comes to municipal plans, Kurds, Roma and members of the Alevi religion [a religion of its own, but with some Muslim tropes] are often moved on to other locations, thus once again breaking up long established neighbourhood and ensuring Muslim dominance. At The Gate of the Dervish Lodge, Christie-Miller hears parallel narratives of a young woman who maintained her religion, but was also addicted to heroin. Istanbul is now one of the major stops for drug-dealers bringing heroin from Asia to Europe and there is widespread addiction in the city. As at The Gate of Saints, the local communities at The Gate of the Dervish Lodge are now threatened with houses being demolished and increasingly, parents are forced to send their children to Islamic schools. At The Gate of the Spring, Christie-Miller talks with a Kurd who worked at the city’s major airport and discovered how callous the staff are in dealing with their workers. It is noted that to re-build Istanbul’s airport, much of the land taken destroyed square miles of forests and wild animals. The airport was opened in 2018. It did prosper, earned much money, and became a major hub between Asia and Europe… but many workers [probably in the hundreds] were killed in the construction. Then, at the Rebuilt Gate, we learn of another problem plaguing modern Istanbul. Obviously the city wants the ancient walls and fortresses to attract tourists and so some are “restored”. But the “restoration” often means cheap material, producing walls nothing like their original form, almost becoming Disneyfied.

All this might lead some readers to assume that Christie-Miller is reporting only negative things. After all, doesn’t every city in the world rebuild and demolish? But in many cases the re-builders of Istanbul are focused on destroying communities, driving out people of different ethnicities and ensuring that only expensive apartments become available. As for  Christie-Miller, he reports many happy things – the resilience of those who refused to be moved; the good spirits of so many people he had talked with or interviewed; the sense of solidarity, even if it was being attacked… and the tea houses. Poorer people are not tyrants and good for them.

Next, the ancient history of Istanbul – and note it is mainly ancient. At the Buried Gate, Christie-Miller comments on remains of the huge cannon that was ordered by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, who ultimately smashed his way into old Constantinople at the beginning of the 15^th century AD. At this point Christie-Miller gives a brief outline of the origins of the city and how it fared over the centuries. First there was a small port which was part of the Roman Empire. Then the Roman Emperor Constantine made it his capitol and it was given his name. Then the Roman Empire split into two, with one capitol in Rome and one in Constantinople. Then the “barbarians” gradually overtook Western Europe and the Western Roman Empire basically disappeared. Rome no longer had an emperor although the Catholic faith endured and spread. But Constantinople still regarded itself as the Roman Empire, though we now call it the Byzantine Empire. A major split of Christian faith came in the early 11^th century when pope and patriarch had different interpretations of the faith, and Constantinople no longer regarded the pope as their leader. Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic were now separate. Christie-Miller makes it clear that for a number of centuries, the Byzantine Empire was a major force, governing vast lands. But at the Golden Gate, Christie-Miller gives a very detailed account of the decline and fall of Constantinople and its empire. Gradually the Byzantines lost their territories as Arab Muslims from the south and Turks and Seljuks [who had converted to Islam] from the east pushed further and further into the Byzantine Empire until there was little more of it left than Constantinople itself. Constantinople had been overrun before (when marauding Crusaders ran riot through the city) and the Turks had twice failed to take the city as it was protected by its great walls and towers. But finally, in 1453, Mehmet II and his cannons broke in, massive slaughter followed, and old Constantinople was no more. In the West, the city was still called Constantinople until the 20^th century, when the city became universally know as Istanbul. At the Prophesied Gate, Christie-Miller gives a very detailed account of the tactics that were used by each side when the city was taken. And of course the Christian churches were converted into mosques, including the great Hagia Sophia which is now surrounded by Muslim minarets, and with its Christian icons and images now removed.

And so to what I think is Christie-Miller’s most important preoccupation -  the current politics of Turkey. In the early 20^th century, Turkey had lost much of its power, and was “the sick man of Europe”. In the First World War, Ottoman Turkey lost its hold on Arabia and the Middle East. Turkey’s rulers also understood that it had many Turkish citizens who were not ethnically Turks, some of whom [especially the Kurds] wanted to break away from Turkey. But, in the middle of the First World War, it was the Armenians who were targeted as “the enemy within”. Up to 1,500,000 Armenians were killed by the Turks in what is now understood to be a genocide. To this very day, Turks claim that this never happened – Erdogan insists that it never happened and journalists are forbidden to say otherwise. The era of the Ottomans was over in 1923 where a revolution, headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, turned Turkey into a republic. Ataturk insisted that the new state would be secular – that is, there would be no established religion, even if most of the country was Muslim. Among other things, the Hagia Sophia became a museum, no longer used as a mosque. Ataturk was, however, domineering in many ways. Indeed it was he who began the process of moving people away from long-established neighbourhoods in Istanbul, although not on the same scale as has happened in more recent times… and he had firm views on the minor ethnicities within Turkey. He died in 1938.

Turkey was neutral in the Second World War, but from the 1950s on, there were many tensions with regard to the minor ethnicities. At the Gate of the Spring, Christie-Miller talks to a Greek journalist who recalls the great pogrom in the 1950s, where thousands of Greeks were driven out of the country. In the Cold War, Turkey sided with the West, joining NATO and for some years allowing American nuclear missiles to be based in Turkey (they were removed in a deal when Khrushchev said he would remove his missiles from Cuba if the USA would remove theirs from Turkey). But there was much unrest in Turkey. There were clashes and riots between leftists and ultranationalists. Paramilitary forces were formed, assassinations brought down members of parliament, there was violence on a large scale. In 1980 there was a military coup d’etat and a period of huge repression – newspapers shut down, protests forbidden, radio and TV censored.

The most worrying problem remained the status of the minor ethnicities. The Kurds made up one fifth of the population, and wanted to create their own country. Some Kurdish activists modelled themselves on the Communists and formed their own party, the PKK. The violence of the PKK matched the violence of the Turkish army. Many people died. Christie-Miller’s narrative is seeded with stories he was told of the PKK’s threats. At the Cannon Gate, a young man who had been a primary school teacher told him that he had been driven out of his town by the threats of Kurdish activists.

 

Erdogan had been mayor of Istanbul before he became president. Turkey is on a tectonic plate, especially felt in Anatolia. There was a major earthquake in 1999, but the government was unable to help those who had suffered or lost their homes. Erdogan was severely criticised for his poor handling the situation, and there were once again major riots and protests. At first, the West endorsed Erdogan’s regime. He was the head of a secular state; he had adopted the neo-liberal code of a free market, the U.S.A. saw him as somebody who would be able to master a moderate form of Islam different from the more fanaticism of Islamism. Christie-Miller speaks with a man from Anatolia who saw his mother die painfully because there were limited hospitals to help in his region. He was delighted when Erdogan’s AS Party took power with its neo-liberalism and its promises of an improved health system. But his delight faded away as the Erdogan regime gradually moved in a different direction. In 2016, there was a failed coup against Erdogan. It was easily quelled and there were torture and death for those who had taken part. It had been inspired by the rival authoritarian Gulen Movement, which looked to a more enforced type of Islam. Bit by bit, Erdogan adopted a similar agenda. He encouraged Islamic schools which preached against secularism. Parents were encouraged to send their children to such schools, including the Alevi people who were not really Muslim. In 2020, now turning away from the secular state upon which the Turkish republic had been formed, Erdogan made the Hagia Sophia once again a mosque.

At the Gate of Plagues, Christie-Miller interviews many people who have suffered under the new authoritarian regime. Their complaints are many. During the months when Covid struck, young Islamist men were ostensibly made an auxiliary of the police, ensuring that Covid didn’t spread and people stayed inside. In fact they became bullies, beating up secular or non-Muslim people as they pleased. More people were pushed out of their locality and forced into inadequate small apartments. The huge drug-trade (especially heroin) could be seen on every corner. Nepotism determined who could or could not find places in the universities… and once again, when another major earthquake struck in 2023, Erdogan offered only very limited relief. Fittingly, the final chapter considers the foul pollution of the Sea of Marmara, which used to be teeming with edible fish but which now is a health hazard.

In his conclusion, Christie-Miller reverts to his account of the taking of the city of Constantinople by the Turks, but suggesting that modern Istanbul will one day collapse as old Constantinople did. The cycle of history does not allow great cities to last for ever. Turkey, in its many contradictions, on-going strife with large minority peoples, and severe authoritarianism, is increasingly unstable.

Is Christie-Miller a pessimist? Is he belittling Turkey and the Turks? Far from it. He knows the Turks intimately, has lived with many Turkish friends and has enjoyed their discussions and pastimes. He never belittles the way people live. But the current state of Turkish politics is ominous and the rolling-back of the secular state to favour Islamism is daunting.

A couple of footnotes:  First, when I taught in high-school, I sometimes guided a team to take part in the mock United Nations in which teenagers were assigned countries and debated as if they were diplomats. One year, the team I trained was assigned Turkey, so my team pronounced all the good things about Turkey… and that year, a nice Turkish woman from the Turkish consulate came to listen. I had a nice chat with her when the kids weren’t debating, but when I [foolishly] mentioned the Armenian genocide, she bristled and insisted that it had never happened. Some years later, a young Turkish man visited the school where I taught, and in the common room he began to argue [not with me] that the Armenian genocide had never happened. I prudently kept my mouth shut. The fact is, in Turkey now it is forbidden to face up to this atrocity, even though it happened over a century ago.

Second, when Erdogan in 2020 made the Hagia Sophia once again a mosque, he was basically doing what Putin has done. Here is Putin, atheist, former KGB man, who suddenly cuddles up to the Russian Orthodox Church, ostentatiously letting himself be seen at religious ceremonies, making the church a means of rebuilding the old Russian Empire. So too, Erdogan turns his back on the secular state because he sees that Islamism will help boost him. So on comes his ostentatious worship at the Hagia Sophia. And don’t get me started on Mr Modi in India who wants a Hindu-only country. How similar tyrants are.