Author: Aylin D. Miller

BOOK REVIEW: The Image of an Ottoman City

BOOK REVIEW: The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries

H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by H-Levant@h-net.msu.edu (July 2008)

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh. _The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries_. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. xxi + 278 pp. Glossary, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $164.00 (cloth), ISBN 90-04-12454-3.

Reviewed for H-Levant by May Farhat, Department of Fine Arts and Art History, American University of Beirut

A City Reshaped

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s _The Image of an Ottoman City_ is an important contribution to the literature on the “non-western city.”[1] It explores the impact of Ottoman rule on the architectural and urban space of Aleppo over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study’s overarching concern is with patterns of “Ottomanization,” that is, the processes by which Ottoman imperial power appropriated, transformed, reshaped, and represented Aleppo’s historically multilayered urban environment, imprinting it with a distinctively Ottoman signature.

In chapter 1, Watenpaugh positions herself within the disciplinary practices that have shaped the study of Ottoman cities. Eschewing the disciplinary divisions that placed Aleppo and Istanbul in separate fields of inquiry, circumscribed by national boundaries and nationalist ideologies (Arab vs. Turkish), her goal is to frame “Aleppo as an Ottoman city,” by placing it in its premodern Ottoman context (p. 5).

Central to the author’s thesis is the “metaphor of encounter,” or “interconnection,” which allows her to reconceive the relationship between the imperial center and provincial city, and to read architectural and urban production as a visual embodiment of that relationship (p. 8). Watenpaugh argues that the need to “Ottomanize” the former Mamluk territories must have compelled the architectural production of standardized forms that “would index Ottoman rule” (p. 9). She draws widely and expertly on local and imperial archival sources, and confidently builds on the work of the French school of research (Jean Sauvaget, Andre Raymond, and Jean-Claude David), Ottoman architectural and urban studies, (Ulku Bates, Cigdem Kafescioglu, Gulru Necipoglu, and Irene Bierman), and urban historians (Spiro Kostof, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau).

Chapter 2 sets the scene by exploring Aleppo’s pre-Ottoman urban context. The author establishes that the pattern of patronage under the Mamluks changed markedly under the Ottomans. While wealthy local merchants joined Mamluk amirs and governors to participate in the process of shaping urban space, the patronage of powerful, Istanbul-appointed officials was most instrumental in the transformation of the city’s urban landscape during the first two centuries of Ottoman rule. Cognizant of Aleppo’s emerging preeminence as a hub for long distance trade in the empire, Ottoman officials invested heavily in Aleppo’s commercial infrastructure, radically changing the orientation of the city and creating a new urban center at the heart of the intra-mural city.

The Ottomans projected their influence into the former Mamluk cities by means of large endowed foundations (_awqaf_) that had an impact on urban, socioeconomic, political, and religious networks. In chapter 3, Watenpaugh exhaustively analyzes the patronage of the powerful Ottoman officials who reshaped Aleppo’s urban space into an Ottoman city during the sixteenth century. Between 1546 and 1580, successive governor-generals of Aleppo established four major endowments (_awqaf_). These were located along the old Roman east-west axis of the city, stretching between the Great Mosque and the Antioch Gate. The religious institutions at the center of these complexes introduced a distinctly Ottoman signature (”rumi” aesthetic), characterized by the domed prayer hall, pencil thin minarets, and spatial configurations that emphasized visibility (p. 73). These standardized forms, devised in the office of imperial architects in Istanbul, “shouldered the articulation of Ottoman hegemony” and permanently changed the skyline of the city (p. 120).

Watenpaugh argues that a different stylistic choice dictated the design of commercial structures (_khāns_), which were configured according to Mamluk models. Watenpaugh eschews the conventional view of two dichotomous styles, an imperial style introduced from Istanbul and a persistent local “tradition.” Instead, she argues that in these commercial structures, less symbolically charged than the mosque, an appropriation and Ottomanization of Mamluk forms took place, a point that she develops further in chapter 5. Contra to Sauvaget, who saw no evidence of concerted planning in the growth of the Ottoman city, Watenpaugh argues that the cumulative acts of patronage that contributed to the architecturally cohesive space of Aleppo’s urban center constituted a form of urban planning. One wishes, however, that the author had presented a more detailed analysis of the interplay between Mamluk typology, local building practices, and Ottoman visual idioms that contributed to the formation of that distinctive Aleppine urban language.

In chapters 4 and 5, Watenpaugh extends her examination of patterns of Ottomanization into the seventeenth century. Political instability at the turn of the sixteenth century, in conjunction with the slowing down of international commerce, introduced a rupture in the pattern of Ottoman patronage. The author briefly alludes to the political and social developments leading to this rupture. However, a more comprehensive exploration of the balance of power between the city and the imperial center would have done much to foreground her analysis of urban transformation. According to Watenpaugh, the shift from the patronage of large commercial complexes to the patronage of smaller religious establishments like Sufi lodges (_takiyyas_) underscored Ottoman officials’ attempts to co-opt the antinomian movements that were expanding and proliferating during this period. Visually, the _takiyyas_ are a disparate, architecturally hybrid group, and do not project a strong urban presence. While the author brings much needed attention to these religious institutions, her discussion of their architectural idioms remains inconclusive. The dearth of new commercial foundations during the seventeenth century is offset by the extra-muros commercial complex of Ipshir Pasha, which is distinguished by its incorporation of a magnificent coffee house. Although Ipshir Pasha was a notorious rebel, and thus one who may not be perceived as a willing agent of Ottomanization, Watenpaugh forcefully argues that by virtue of its endowment, established to support Islamic institutions and the protection of the _hajj_, Ipshir Pasha’s foundation remains–very much like the sixteenth-century foundations–a significant “artifact of empire” (p. 169).

In chapter 5, Watenpaugh moves the discussion to Ottoman renovation efforts, specifically the refurbishing of two of Aleppo’s oldest religious institutions–the Great Mosque and the Madrasa Hallāwiya. Subtle changes to the façades of these buildings are seen as a strategy to appropriate and Ottomanize the city’s past, a process that culminates in the façade of Khan al-Wazir, a commercial structure built within the city in the late seventeenth century. In her interpretation of two feline emblems that frame the gate of the _khān_, Watenpaugh deploys a compelling argument that a new visual idiom was created in the process of appropriating and recontextualizing Mamluk forms.

In her final chapter, Watenpaugh shifts her focus from the realm of architecture to that of book publishing, analyzing texts about cities that were produced in both Istanbul and Aleppo. Locally, the continued production of biographical dictionaries of Aleppine scholars underscores the presence of a strong urban identity. These texts, as the author observes, lack an “aesthetic awareness,” and do not explicitly expound on the spatial and formal qualities of the city’s architecture (p. 212).

In contrast, texts produced by Turkish-speaking Ottomans at the imperial center, like Matrakci Nassuh’s portrait of Aleppo and Evliya Celebi’s travelogue, represent Aleppo from the perspective of the imperial center, and thus reveal imperialist concerns and attitudes. In Nasuh’s painting, completed before the Ottoman transformation of the city in the sixteenth century, Aleppo’s cityscape is punctuated with recognizably Ottoman minarets featuring pencil-shaped tops and double balconies. As Watenpaugh suggests, Aleppo is not depicted as it is but how it ought to be. Celebi’s account displays a keen awareness of the city’s historical layering, one that privileges the Ottoman layer and highlights its Rumi style. By the end of the seventeenth century, Aleppo has been shaped in the image of an Ottoman city, as prefigured in Nasuh’s portrait.

Finally, Watenpaugh’s publisher, Brill, deserves criticism. The location of the figures and photographs at the end of the volume makes for an awkward reading experience; and the poor quality of the monochromatic photographs often fails to serve the author’s bold visual analysis.

Nevertheless, Watenpaugh’s sweeping account of Aleppo’s reshaping under Ottoman rule is thought provoking and groundbreaking. It offers insights into the working of imperial power in the production of urban space and the staging of public architecture in a provincial center. It is indispensable reading for all those concerned with Ottoman and Mediterranean urban history in the early modern period.

Note

[1]. See Zeyneb Celik, “New Approaches to the ‘Non-Western’ City,” _Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians_ 58 (September 1999), 374-381.

July 31, 2008
Even Armenia is Now Choosing NATO Over Russia

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 30 – Yerevan’s announcement that it will take part in military exercises this fall under NATO’s Partnership for Peace program underscores an important and to Moscow disturbing trend: Public statements to the contrary, all former Soviet republics now prefer to cooperate with the Western alliance rather than with the Russian Federation.
In some cases, Sobkorr.ru’s Yuri Gladysh says, they have made this choice with enthusiasm believing that it is better to have a big friend far away than a big friend next door, but in others – and that seems to be the case with Armenia – they have chosen NATO over Russia as “the lesser of two evils” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/488ED1F94EA6D.html).
On Monday, Armenia’s defense ministry announced that NATO’s September 20-21 Partnership for Peace exercises will take place on Armenian territory and that Armenian troops will participate in them, a stinging defeat for Moscow that has long viewed Armenia as its closest ally in what many Russians call “the near abroad.”
But Russian officials should not have been surprised. On the one hand, the Sobkorr.ru site reports, more than half of all Armenians now have a positive view of the Western alliance – some 52 percent in a recent poll – with only 35 percent having a negative and thus pleasing-to-Moscow attitude.
And on the other, in recent months, Yerevan has been involved in exploratory conversations with Turkey despite the centrality of the events of 1915 in the life of the Armenian nation. Indeed, Gladysh says, were it not for that historical memory, “Armenian would already long ago been among those countries oriented toward close cooperation with [NATO].
Given Armenia’s decision, the Sobkorr.ru analyst says, it is time to “honestly answer a simple question – which of the former union republics and now members of the ephemeral Commonwealth [of Independent States] is sincerely striking toward a new union ‘under the canopy of fraternal bayonets’ of a powerful Russia?”
Most observers, Gladysh continues, include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia as the most likely candidates for such a “new Union.” But an honest answer, he suggests, shows that “not one of the countries enumerated above is interested in any union on a political basis, especially, alas, under the aegis of Russia.”
Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, he says, simply don’t need it and are increasingly directing their attention to their neighbors in Southeast Asia. Belarus is better off as an independent state so that it “preserves the possibility of successfully converting into real capital its favorable geographic position.” For those three, “Russia is not a subject of interest.”
Indeed, Gladysh suggests, Russia has “not been able to present to its neighbors” any attractive vision for their future relationship, and so they like all the other “newly independent states” are looking to the defense alliance that most Moscow officials still view as ineluctably hostile to Russia.
Armenia, he continues, “occupies in this list a special place. Despite longstanding ties with Russia and a sense that Moscow is its protector against Turkey and Azerbaijan, “this small Caucasus republic is ‘the weak link’ in the modest ranks of [the Russian Federation’s] allies.” Yerevan’s decision shows that its “patience is ending” with Moscow’s “loud but empty declarations” and that Armenia cannot expect anything from Russia. Moreover, while Armenia does not have a land border with Russia, it does have borders in the south with “an active member of NATO.”
Consequently, Gladysh concludes, “Armenia willy nilly is choosing the lesser of two evils.” And in this case, he says, “‘the lesser evil’ turns out to be close [and] constructive cooperation with the West” and with the West’s most important alliance – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“What an infuriating irony of Fate!” Gladysh says. A great deal had to be done or left undone for “Armenia to begin to turn away from its historical ally and direct its vision to its long-time opponent.” But that is what Russia has succeeded in doing, a tragedy from her point of view but quite possibly a breakthrough to a better future for Yerevan.

July 30, 2008
Senate Set To Confirm New U.S. Envoy To Armenia

By Emil Danielyan

The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate paved the way late Tuesday for congressional approval of President George W. Bush’s nominee to serve as the new U.S. ambassador to Armenia.

The diplomatic post has been vacant since the last U.S. ambassador in Yerevan, John Evans, had his tour of duty in Armenia cut short by the Bush administration last year for publicly describing World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide. While acknowledging the deaths of more than one million Ottoman Armenians in 1915-1918, Washington has avoided using the politically sensitive term for fear of antagonizing Turkey, a key U.S. ally.

Richard Hoagland, another career diplomat nominated to replace Evans, saw his Senate confirmation blocked by one of the senators, Robert Menendez, after sticking to the administration’s policy during committee hearings last year. The White House had to withdraw Hoagland’s nomination as a result.

Menendez, whose New Jersey constituency is home to a large number of ethnic Armenians, joined other Foreign Relations Committee members in recommending Marie Yovanovitch’s endorsement by the full Senate despite her refusal to call the 1915 massacres a genocide. His decision not to place a “hold” on Bush’s new ambassadorial nominee was in line with the position of at least one of the two main Armenian-American lobbying groups and Armenia’s government.

While deploring Washington’s reluctance to explicitly recognize the genocide, the Armenian Assembly of America has argued over the past year that the absence of a U.S. ambassador in Yerevan is hampering the development of U.S.-Armenian relations. In a statement issued ahead of the committee vote, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian reiterated official Yerevan’s hopes that Yovanovitch will secure congressional approval and assume her ambassadorial duties “soon.”

Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, was the only member of the Senate panel to vote against Yovanovitch’s candidacy, having already delayed the confirmation process last month. Boxer, Menendez and the committee chairman, Joseph Biden, wrote to the State Department last week, demanding further clarifications of the U.S. policy on the issue.

In a written reply sent just hours before the committee vote, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, Mathew Reynolds, said the Bush administration “recognizes that the mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and forced deportations of over one and a half million Armenians were conducted by the Ottoman Empire.”

The letter was welcomed by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). “Today’s State Department letter, although clearly falling short of America’s moral responsibility and national interest in recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide, did mark a step in the direction of distancing U.S. policy from the dictates of the Turkish government,” Aram Hamparian, ANCA’s executive director, said in a statement.

Yovanovitch, who has until now served as U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, is now expected to be confirmed by the Senate before its August recess.

July 30, 2008
Turkish Parliament and Khojali massacre

[ 30 Jul 2008 18:35 ]
Ankara-APA. February 26 is proposed to be marked as Commemoration Day of Khojali massacre at the meeting of Turkish Parliament on July 29, APA Turkey bureau reports.

MP Rashad Dogru from Nationalist Movement Party commented on terrorist act occurred in Istanbul and noted that one of the crimes committed against mankind is a genocide committed by Armenian against Azerbaijanis in Khojali city in February,1992. MP mentioned that women and children have been undergone tortures by Armenians and their lands have been occupied by Armenians.
“Being Turks we should support these people. Armenians should be withdrawn from Azerbaijani occupied lands. Otherwise, relations cannot be developed between Armenia and Turkey. I propose to mark February 26 as Commemoration Day of Khojali massacre,” he said. MP from AKP Aladdin Boyukgaya supported proposal of his counterpart. He provided broad information to MPs about Khojali massacre.

July 30, 2008
British Unleash Ergenekon Network To Destroy Turkey and Its Peace Role

This article appears in the August 1, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

by Dean Andromidas

[PDF version of this article]

The nation of Turkey has been rocked by the indictment of a criminal network, the Ergenekon, for planning a military coup against the government, in an investigation that is only comparable to those conducted in Italy into the notorious P-2 Masonic Lodge and the Gladio NATO-linked “stay behind” networks responsible for Italian terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. These revelations occur at a time when Turkey is playing a key role in mediating peace talks between Israel and Syria, and taking major initiatives with Iraq and Iran that directly counter British efforts to launch another Southwest Asia war.

The planned Ergenekon “strategy of tension,” complete with terror attacks and assassinations, aims to pave the way for a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Like those of the P-2 and Gladio in Italy, the Ergenekon investigation reveals links both to NATO and state security services and to terrorist, assassination, and criminal networks.

U.S. intelligence sources have told EIR that the British are fully committed to destabilizing, if not overthrowing, the Erdogan government. Turkey is targeted because of its central role on several fronts to promote peace and economic development throughout the Middle East, a role that threatens to overturn the British Middle East chessboard, which hasn’t changed since the Sykes-Picot agreement, where Britain and France carved up the region after World War I.

These peace initiatives include Turkey’s role as mediator in exploratory peace talks between Israel and Syria, which promise to further Israeli-Palestinian talks, and, eventually, to open the door to talks between Lebanon and Israel. Turkey has now offered to play a similar mediator role between Iran and the West, in order to build up trust between Iran and the European Union, the United States, Germany, France, China, Russia, and Great Britain.

On July 11, Erdogan was in Baghdad, where he signed an historic “strategic cooperation” agreement that has been compared to the Franco-German treaty of 1963, between Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and French President Charles de Gaulle. The latter treaty created an alliance that formed the basis for the economic integration of Europe–a Europe of Fatherlands. The new strategic agreement will involve Turkey in the economic reconstruction of Iraq, and begin to integrate the two economies.

Recently, Turkey co-sponsored, with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, an international drug-enforcement conference, and Turkey is also playing a leading role in going after the multi-billion-dollar drug network that is trafficking heroin from Afghanistan. Thus, Turkey serves as a key flank against Britain’s new opium wars.

In this context, Britain’s historic assets have been unleashed.

Ergenekon: Modern Day Young Turks

On July 15, Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin submitted the indictment against the Ergenekon to Turkey’s high criminal court. The 2,455-page indictment named 86 suspects, 48 of whom are currently in custody, including retired–and possibly current–members of the armed forces, as well as academics, journalists, political activists, and organized crime figures. Among those arrested were retired generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur. The former had been the number two commander in the military when he retired, while the latter was former commander of the national gendarme force. Also arrested was the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Sinan Aygun.

The charges against the Ergenekon include: “membership in an armed terrorist group”; “aiding and abetting an armed terrorist organization”; “attempting to destroy the government of the Republic of Turkey”; “inciting people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey”; “being in possession of explosives, using them, and inciting others to commit these crimes”; “encouraging soldiers to disobey superiors”; “openly provoking hatred and hostility”; and other similar crimes.

Among the specific crimes Ergenekon is charged with are the 2006 armed attack on the Council of State High Courthouse, where one High Court judge was killed; and a shooting and hand-grenade attack at the Istanbul office of the newspaper Cumhuriyet

The Turkish media has compared the Ergenekon to Italy’s Gladio “stay behind” terrorist network, and identified it as part of the “deep state” apparatus. But Dr. Mustafa Acar, an economics instructor at Kirikkale University, went much further in precisely identifying who is destabilizing Turkey, in a commentary July 2 in the Turkish daily Zaman. Entitled ” ‘Ergenekon’: An Opportunity for Peace Between State and People,” Acar’s article not only describes the group as the “Turkish branch of Gladio–designed as a semi-military organization in NATO,” but also points to the deeper role of the Progress and Union Party, also known as the Committee of Union and Progress or CUP, which was the organization of the Young Turks in the early 1900s.

(The CUP was a freemasonic-type operation founded by British Intelligence, through the British Scottish Rite and allied French and Italian Masonic Lodges in 1906, as a vehicle to take over the Ottoman Empire. These same networks created Italian fascism and European synarchism.)

Acar writes:

First, Turkey has to deal with Ergenekon effectively if it seeks to get rid of the dire impacts of the Progress and Union Party (IVT), which remained effective in the country for more than a century. The harm inflicted by the IVT, which revolted against Abdul Hamid II with the promise of bringing liberties but resorted to repressive policies after it took the office, is simply indescribable. The country had to deal with enormous problems during the IVT’s term between 1908 and 1918; every attempt by the IVT during this period brought nothing but disaster and destruction. The Balkan Wars, World War I, the Sarikamis failure, the Armenian incidents,[1] loss of the Balkans, northern Africa and the Hijaz, the invasion of Anatolia and the path to the Sèvres Treaty[2] are all products of the IVT rule. The harm inflicted by the IVT on this country is not limited to the acceleration of the Ottoman state’s collapse and the incorrect policies that caused the subsequent tragic events, which still impacts current politics.

Maybe the Ottoman state would have collapsed anyway, just like the big empires of the time, including the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, collapsed at the end of World War I. The actual harm done by the IVT was in the mindset of the party; the IVT mindset, based on excessive nationalism–some may even call it racism–centralist ideas, repression, alienation from the people and protection against external actors left indelible imprints in Turkey’s last century. Ever since then, the ongoing disagreement between the state and the public, the clashes between the elected and the appointed, the perception that freedoms will lead to turmoil, and the perception that the recognition of diverse identities will partition the country have all, to a great extent, carried the marks of the IVT. Removing the greatest barriers before Turkey is directly dependent on getting rid of the IVT mindset and its imprints in the bureaucratic mechanisms.

Pointing to the Gladio-type connection, outside of Turkey, Acar adds that treating the Ergenekon as a purely domestic operation is “a failure to see half the picture.” Pointing to previous coups in Turkey, he says:

The coups also include some external dimensions. Currently we are aware, from the proper analyses made and the publicized documents, that every coup promoted and staged in Turkey is somehow related to the Gladio-counter-guerrilla-Ergenekon organization and the attempt to preserve Turkey in Western orientation….

Unfortunately this gang, which extensively relied on a nationalist discourse, had done nothing but implement plans devised by NATO actors. Turkey needs to get rid of the Ergenekon gang if it seeks to become a stable, pluralist and democratic country that has good relations with its own people and the world, and is able to retain a high growth rate.

Although Acar does not directly identify this as a product of the British Sykes-Picot “mindset,” the naming of the Committee of Union and Progress precisely identifies the ongoing destabilization of Turkey as a British operation.

The British Imperial Roots of the Young Turks

EIR has documented the British imperialist roots of the Young Turks in many articles. (See, for example, Joseph Brewda, “Palmerston Launches Young Turks to Permanently Control Middle East,” April 15, 1994). Here we will give only a thumbnail sketch.

The Young Turks were part a stable of fascist movements inspired by British agent Giuseppe Mazzini, including Young Europe, Young Italy, Young Germany, and so on, which were created to subvert and take over the Ottoman Empire on behalf of the European imperialists, led by Great Britain, and including France, Italy, and Russia. The CUP was founded in 1906, in the Greek city of Salonika, and then within the Ottoman Empire, under the direction of Emmanuel Carasso, an Italian official of the B’nai B’rith. Carasso was also grand master of the Italian freemasonic lodge in Salonika called Macedonia Resurrected, which provided the headquarters of the Young Turks. By 1907, leading Young Turk Mehmed Talaat, became grand master of the Scottish Rite Masons in the Ottoman Empire.

Carasso also played a leading role in the Young Turks’ overthrow of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, which paved the way for the CUP takeover of the administration of the Ottoman Empire, which the CUP ruled until 1918.

Through the Young Turks, the British gamemasters transmitted various false ideologies, including Pan Turkism, Pan Islamism, and even Zionism, as attested by the fact that Vladimir Jabotinsky was a member. Jabotinsky was the leader of the nationalist wing of Zionism and the spiritual guide of the Israeli right-wing Likud Party, particularly its chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, Jabotinsky was the editor of the CUP’s Young Turk newspaper.

During this period, the CUP was responsible for the disasters outlined by Dr. Acar.

After the Committee of Union and Progress destroyed the Ottoman Empire from within, the British, who had imprisoned many of its members on the island of Malta after 1918, on charges of war crimes, released CUP members to subvert the nation-building vision of Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk. For instance, Adil Bey, a leading CUP member and former interior minister in the Ottoman government, was given £150,000 by the British, who returned him to Constantinople to form the “Society of the Friends of England.” This group lobbied openly for the protection of the British, while secretly organizing provocations throughout the country in an effort to discredit the nationalist movement and provoke an Allied intervention.

Mustafa Kemal was never forgiven by the British for sabotaging their plans to dismember Turkey as part of the Sykes-Picot scheme, which was drafted by England and France in 1916, to divide up the Ottoman Empire as the “spoils of war.” Britain won control of Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine, while France received control of Syria and Lebanon.

While acknowledging Turkey’s loss of these Arab provinces, Ataturk led a struggle between 1919 and 1923, to create a new Turkish state whose sovereignty and independence would be recognized by the world.

At first, Ataturk, who was keen on establishing a Western-style republic, allowed the CUP’s return on the condition it pledged loyalty to the new government. Initially, Ataturk encouraged the CUP to take up the role of the official opposition, only to find in 1926, that the Committee was plotting his assassination. CUP members have been deeply embedded in the Turkish political and economic circles, and the military and security forces ever since. A careful examination of the three Turkish military coups that have occurred since 1960, will reveal in many cases first-, second-, and even third-generation members of the CUP.

Today’s Ergenekon also has links to the Committee.

Ergenekon in the Image of the CUP

According to press reports, the indictment identifies the Ergenekon as a cult-like organization based on the so-called central Asian “Agarta” myth, a supposedly 600-year-old legend describing the roots of the Turkish people. Far from being six centuries old, Agarta, or Argharta, is a synthetic myth created at the end of the 19th Century by Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, a Martinist freemason, who later became one of the godfathers of the European Synarchy which formed the basis of the French fascist movement of the 1930s, and the spiritual basis for today’s neoconservatives.[3]

According to the Ergenekon indictment, and a second one yet to be released, the nearly 100 people under arrest or being sought, are linked to a kaleidoscope of organizations from the far left to the far right, and from ultra-secularist to Islamic fundamentalist. Some of them call for resurrecting the Istanbul Caliphate, which had been abolished by Ataturk, not only because he was a secularist, but also because it represented a hotbed of British and French intrigue. The Ergenekon met in a church of the so-called Turkish Orthodox Church, which has no congregation but claims ownership to several properties and churches formerly belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church.

Another direct link to the Committee of Union and Progress is the connection to several leaders of the notorious Grey Wolves, the Pan-Turkic movement whose member Ali Agca was convicted for the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The spiritual godfather of the Grey Wolves was Ziya Golkalp, who died in 1924; he was the chief theoretician of the CUP and the chief protagonist of the racist Pan-Turkic ideology. This is another synthetic ideology; it was created in the 19th Century by Hungarian philologist, Orientalist, and Zionist, Arminius Vámbéry, an agent of Lord Palmerston and the British Foreign Office who served in the Sultan’s court in the 1860s.

The Ergenekon is also linked to the Pan Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C) led by Salih Mirzabeyoglu and Saadettin Ustaosmanoglu. Mirzabeyoglu, who is in prison, proudly states his family’s anti-Ataturk roots going back three generations. But where does his Pan-Islamism come from? Although the CUP promoted Pan-Islamicism, it was created in the 1870s by Wilfred Blunt, who worked for the British Foreign Office. (Blunt’s infamous descendant is Anthony Blunt, the librarian of the British Royal family who was later exposed as one of the four men in the spy ring led by Kim Philby.)

The Turkish daily Zaman published details from a document allegedly showing the structure of the Ergenekon, which revealed it to be organized as a secret paramilitary society with seven commands, including one each for a presidency, intelligence, intelligence analysis, operations, financing, intra-organizational research, and planning. The documents states such things as, “In the 21st century, intelligence agencies will inevitably be the institutions shaping world politicians and global policies.”

The Turkish media links Ergenekon to almost every terrorist group that has surfaced in the last three decades, including the narco-terrorist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is involved not only in attacks in Turkey; its Iranian branch, Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, has become part of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s operations against Iran.

Zaman quotes a former Ergenekon member, Tuncay Guney, as stating that Ergenekon had direct links to the PKK. Guney claims that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan met with PKK leaders, and had told the PKK “not to mess with Ergenekon.” The Ergenekon also had controlling links to the extreme left-wing Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, and was behind the 1996 assassination of businessman Ozdemir Sabanci.

Turkey: A Target of Sykes-Picot

There have been three military coups in modern Turkish history: 1960, 1971, and 1980. Some Turkish commentators have added a fourth, the 1997 “post-modern” coup which saw the “judicial overthrow” of the government of Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Islamic-oriented Welfare Party, after a pressure campaign by the military.

Commentators fear that the current case before the Constitutional Court seeking to close down current Prime Minister Erdogan’s ruling AKP party and ban 71 political figures, including Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gül, from party politics for five years, is an attempt at another “post-modern coup.” Some have asserted that Ergenekon was to be part of this new “post-modern” coup.

It is feared that if the court rules against the AKP, there could be major disturbances. Unlike 1997, when the Islamic Welfare party had to rule in a coalition, the AKP won a new mandate in last year’s elections and holds almost an absolute majority in the Turkish parliament. More importantly, a new generation of military officers has entered the military; these officers had not participated in the three earlier coups, and are expected to stay in their barracks and remain loyal to the constitutional civilian government.

The “Gladio-Deep State” narrative that has identified NATO and the CIA as the hand behind the past three Turkish military coups has served only to mask the British hand, that has sought to use Turkey in its geopolitical schemes, to maintain Britain’s dominance in the Middle East. Its purpose is to perpetuate the Sykes-Picot “mindset” to prevent the economic development of a region that is at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, as well as Eurasia and Africa, and to maintain it as trigger for global war. With the current financial crisis, powerful British financial interests are now prepared to pull that trigger.

[1] Sarikamis is a battle during World War I in which the Ottoman Army was disastrously defeated. It was initiated by Enver Pasha, a leading CUP member. In its aftermath, the “Armenian incidents,” occurred, i.e., the Armenian genocide, which has been used internationally to destabilize Turkey.

[2] The Treaty of Sèvres was forced on the Ottoman Empire by the Allied powers, including Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece, but it was never recognized by the United States or the Soviet Union. It not only removed all the Arab territories from the Ottoman empire, but also created a group of statelets out of what is now modern Turkey. Signed by the Young Turk-led Ottoman government, which was nothing by a puppet of the Allies, the treaty was opposed by the Nationalist movement led by Ataturk, who defeated the Allied powers’ attempt to use military force, to implement it.

[3] For a full discussion of the Synarchy and its links to Anglo-French financiers centered on Bank Worms, see Pierre Beaudry, “Synarchist-Terrorist Fifth Column in France,” EIR, June 9, 2006.

July 30, 2008
Turkey, a phoenix rising from ideological battles past

By Fadi Hakura
Commentary by
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Turkey is trapped in the unending cycle of the deja vu: the perennial, passionate debate over the place of Islam in society. This discussion on the balance between secularism and Islam is inevitably reduced to the issues of headscarf and alcohol. The current crisis was triggered – surprise, surprise – by the government’s decision to lift the headscarf ban at universities thereby sharing the characteristics of continuity.

During its first-term in office, the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) adopted waves of extensive political, human rights’ and economic reforms under the aegis of European Union accession. Excitement filled the air. A pious, energetic prime minister was expanding the boundaries of freedom, democracy and free markets. It was like a magical moment and rightly so. A thankful electorate handsomely rewarded the AKP’s solid track record of economic and policy achievements with 47 percent of the vote in the general elections of July 2007.

But magical moments are rarely permanent. Despite garnering a renewed mandate for reform, the AKP appears to have resorted to Islamic populism and confrontational, majoritarian politics. Gone were the days of reform and in came religion: closing down pig farms, attempts to restrict alcohol advertising on television and a prime ministerial acknowledgement that the headscarf is a “political symbol” to boot. Joining the EU ceased to be a priority.

Statism also reared its head. The AKP no longer aspired to liberalize the state but rather to change the people within it. A power struggle erupted between secularist and Islamist ideologues over the control of the powerful state apparatus.

There is the Constitutional Court case now being heard to ban the AKP and 71 AKP officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “anti-secular activities,” and the government-backed Ergenekon case indicting 86 suspects – including four retired generals – for seeking to foment violence in order to encourage a military coup. While the veracity of aspects of the allegations may be genuine, the conduct and timing of the case as well as the identity and treatment of some of the suspects raised many questions.

Yet underneath the high drama of power intrigue and score-settling, there is a dynamic and exhilarating Turkey in the making. Revolutionary change is lurking in the background.

According to credible surveys and opinion polls, Turkish support for secularism – more than 90 percent today – and religious sentiments are rising in parallel. Headscarf wearing is at the same time declining. That and other evidence point strongly to the intriguing development that Islamic and secular values are apparently converging among the Turkish people. A secularizing Islam may be progressing. Related studies demonstrate that the key drivers for political and religious modernization are socio-economic advancements underpinned by globalization, urbanization and industrialization.

Complementing this Islamo-secular convergence is the engagement of the Office for Religious Affairs or Diyanet, which regulates Islam in Turkey, in a wholesale re-interpretation of the Islamic holy texts. Crucially, there is a visible shift away from legalistic interpretations to purpose-specific understandings infused by the concepts of space and time. Theology is equally undergoing a thorough and comprehensive re-examination; the authenticity of many holy utterances, perhaps 70 to 80 percent of them, is being seriously questioned. Remarkably, Felix Koerner, a German Jesuit priest and an expert on Turkish Islam, is informally advising the authorities. Diyanet head Ali Bardakoglu noted that Islamic reinterpretation may take place repeatedly every 8 to 10 years.

On the political front, the Turkish electorate is yearning as never before for a Western-style, post-ideological discourse on bread-and-butter issues. Surveys reveal that economics, jobs and inflation are the number one matters. Concerns over the headscarf ban attract a scant 2-4 percent support.

This desire is potentially starting to impact the political scene. Respectable opinion polls indicate plummeting popular endorsement of the AKP and all the major political parties. None of the opposition parties is reaping benefits from the travails of the ruling party. The percentage of undecided voters has quintupled since January 2008. A plurality of Turks blame the AKP for the political mess, but the secularists are not far behind. Forty-five percent of Turks – a figure rising fast – want new political formations. Possibly, an electoral earthquake might be in the offing.

Rumblings can be heard on the left, but much louder on the right wing of Turkish politics, of liberal-minded secular-oriented religious politicians who wish to build coalitions of right and left, are comfortable with individual choice on headscarf-wearing or alcohol-drinking, and are protagonists of radical reforms and antagonists of ideological politics.

Proof of the dramatic changes in Turkish society is the unprecedented silence of the military throughout the ongoing saga. In past crises, the voice of the “guardians of secularism” was always at the fore. Not this time. Sensing that Turkey is fast becoming a diverse society, as opposed to a once-monolithic bloc of secularists and Islamists, the military is adapting to altering political, economic and societal conditions. It is a process likely to continue in the future. Turkey is increasingly peppered with capitalist-oriented conservatives, liberal secularists and moderate nationalists at odds with a one-size-fits-all state system.

Seen in the light of a changing society, the current crisis reflects the excruciating pains of adjustment. Whatever happens to the AKP and Erdogan, Turkey could be on the cusp of a novel style of politics, emerging as a phoenix from the gathering ashes of the ideologues’ battles of yesteryear.

Fadi Hakura is the Turkey analyst at Chatham House in London. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.

July 30, 2008