Closing the Edinburgh International festival dance programme, this concert of Turkish classical and Sufi music climaxes with a still sacred religious ceremony little changed since its conception in the 15th century.
There is essentially only one repeated movement to review – the whirling. And this spinning is performed, rather surprisingly given the dance billing, for only a short period in the second half. Pre-interval, the group concentrates on ancient music performed on delicately beautiful traditional instruments and five deeply male voices. There are readings from religious texts too. Delivered in English, they are sincere but add little.
So, the slow build-up to the whirling lasts nearly two thirds of the evening. The rhythms are soporific and mystical, the words sung low and sonorous, the verses many and repetitive. Hypnosis seems the aim. Much of the six-part Sema ceremony consists of walking in circles, gesturing and bowing with respect. Meanwhile, a moth dances in the lights above.
When the dervishes finally treat us to the main attraction, their billowing white full-length skirts (the ego’s shroud) are freed from black cloaks (the grave) and transcendence is gentle and without extravagance. One hand turned to the sky and God, and the other to earth, their tall fez-like hats (the ego’s tombstone) tilt to one side in unison. It is as simple as that. A beautiful, poetic, meditative gesture. The only concession to performance are pink, blue and orange spotlights catching each turn.
[Edinburgh festival dance review: Istanbul Music and Sema Group, Edinburgh Playhouse – This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday September 02 2008 on p36 of the Features & reviews section. It was last updated at 00:57 on September 02 2008]
General Ilker Basbug, new chief of the Turkish General Staff, says a pluralistic democracy requires the preservation of secularism. He considers Turkish-US relations “excellent” and calls for fair EU treatment of Ankara’s membership bid.
By Ayhan Simsek for Southeast European Times — 01/09/08
General Ilker Basbug became chief of the Turkish General Staff last week and gave a key speech to outline his views on secularism, the nation-state and globalisation.
A months-long power struggle in Turkey between the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and secularists led by the military focused attention on the turnover of the military’s top position.
Basbug, in a long-awaited address, expressed the military’s commitment to democracy and democratic principles but raised concern over the increasing Islamisation of society under the AKP.
“Part of our society fears a new cultural identity and lifestyle in Turkey under the domination of religion emerging. These fears should be taken seriously,” Basbug said.
Commander of the Turkish Land Forces in the past two years, he firmly advocates preservation of the secular, unitary character of the Turkish nation-state.
“General Basbug took over the most difficult position at a most difficult time,” veteran liberal columnist Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in the daily Milliyet. Birand credits the general for possessing “outstanding qualifications” at such a time.
According to Birand, Basbug is renowned for his deep knowledge of political-military issues and realism.
During the handover ceremony, the scholarly Basbug cited philosopher Jurgen Habermas in emphasising the need to preserve the nation-state against the challenges of globalisation.
Leading actors of globalisation try to strengthen their national structures to address the challenges of globalisation. We cannot ignore that this holds true for the United States and the European Union member-states as well, he stressed.
Weighing the nationalism principle and Kurdish issue, Basbug signalled support for expanding cultural rights for Turkey’s ethnic Kurds but ruled out any move to confer “group rights”, which he said would undermine the nation-state structure.
Like many top-ranking Turkish generals, Basbug has a NATO background. He served as chief of logistics and infrastructure at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, and as commander of the 1st Armoured Brigade in Istanbul.
During his first address as the top Turkish commander last week, he described military relations with the United States as “excellent” and praised US help in countering the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Army. “Turkish-American relations are deeply rooted and built on common values,” he said.
He had a message for the EU as well. Basbug called on Brussels to give Ankara the treatment enjoyed by other EU membership candidates.
He pointed to the EU’s strategic needs and warned the 27-member bloc’s influence would end in the Balkans, falling short of the Caucasus and the Middle East, if it did not admit Turkey. Besides, he said, Turkey is the most powerful secular democracy in the region.
ANKARA – The foreign ministers of Georgia and Russia are expected to visit Turkey separately in a few days’ time for talks on the escalating crisis in the Caucasus, a government official said Friday.Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan will host his Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili on Sunday in Istanbul, two days before he meets Sergei Lavrov of Russia on September 2 in the same city, said the official, who requested anonymity.
There were no plans for a three-way ministerial meeting, he added.
Turkey was put on edge as Russia sent tanks and troops into Georgian territory on August 8, a day after a Georgian offensive to retake the rebel region of South Ossetia.
Tensions increased on Tuesday when Russia recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia — another secessionist Georgian teritory on the Black Sea — as independent states.
Turkey, which has developed close ties with Georgia, said at the time that it supported its northeastern neighbour’s territorial integrity, but refrained from openly condemning Russia.
Ankara has in recent years worked hard to improve ties with Moscow, which has become an important trading partner and Turkey’s biggest supplier of natural gas.
Russia is on the other hand angry that NATO member Turkey has allowed US and NATO warships through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits into the Black Sea.
Moscow has accused the Atlantic alliance of building up its forces in the Black Sea and has said it was taking “measures of precaution”.
NATO has denied Russia’s accusations while Turkey says the ships’ passage was in line with the 1936 Montreaux Convention which sets limits for the number and type of military vessels in the Black Sea.
NATO says five ships are currently in the Black Sea for routine exercises planned before the Georgian conflict while two US warships are in Georgia to provide humanitarian aid.
I recently checked the Nobel Foundation Web Page and found nothing about our homeland, Azerbaijan, in connection to the world recognized Nobel Prize. Well, I complained. Here’s the letter I wrote and the result…
“I recently saw the Nobel Foundation Web Page and the article about Alfred Nobel, benefactor of the Nobel Prize. The article is very well written except that it omits that Nobel acquired much of his wealth in Azerbaijan, specifically from oil fields in Baku at the turn of last century. This money is still being used to honor Nobel Laureates and their great contributions to modern society. Please contact me if I’m wrong, however I would really appreciate if additional material about the life of Nobel in Azerbaijan could be added to your Web Server.”
The reply I received came from Hans Mehlin of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who wrote, “You are correct. Especially Alfred’s brothers, [Robert and Ludwig] were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan. We are planning to make extensive changes to the Server this summer. Plans are already being made to include this kind of information. Several relatives of the Nobel Family will be traveling to Azerbaijan this summer to visit places that relate to the Nobels. They will provide us with photos and text after the trip.”
Adil Baguirov
Northwestern Michigan University
e-mail: ([email protected])
April 30, 1996
Editor: Azerbaijan International wrote about the relationship of the Nobel Prize to Azerbaijan (AI 2:3. Summer 1994). Alfred Nobel was the largest single shareholder in the Baku oil fields and factories owned by his brothers, Robert and Ludwig. When Alfred died in 1896, much of his legacy went to fund the Nobel Prize. Swedish historian, E. Bargengren, who had access to the Nobel family archives, insists that it was this “decision to allow withdrawal of Alfred’s money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established.” This year, 1996, commemorates 100 years since the Prize was established, although the first awards were designated in 1901.
For the article and photos about Petrolea Park which surrounds the still existing beautiful stone structure of the Nobel Residence, visit our Web Site: ) Environmental Issue, Summer 1994.
The Russia-Georgia conflict has put Turkey in a tight spot. Will Turkey side with the United States, its NATO ally, and let more U.S. military ships into the Black Sea to assist Georgia? Or will it choose Russia which also shares a Black Sea coast with Turkey? As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, ever since Turkey joined NATO in 1952, it has hoped to never have to make a choice between the alliance and its Russian neighbor to the north.
By Dorian Jones
Istanbul
The U.S. Navy coast guard cutter Dallas passes through Bosporus Strait, Istanbul, Turkey, 24 Aug 2008
Turkey has been playing the role of mediator between various parties in the region: the United States and Iran; Israel and Syria; Pakistan and Afghanistan. But as more U.S. warships pass through the narrow Turkish-controlled strait into the Black Sea to deliver aid to Georgia, a time for choosing sides may have arrived.
Last weekend, U.S. warships used the Turkish straits to deliver aid to Georgia. A Russian official condemned the move and warned Turkey it was obliged to enforce the rules of an agreement that gives a 21 day limit on any warship from a country that does not border the Black Sea.
The Turkish government is responsible for policing the 32-kilometer Bosporus, the only route for ships traveling to the Black Sea, under the Montreux agreement of 1936. The Bosporus provides sole access for ships to Georgia’s Black Sea ports.
International relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Bilgi University said this has put Turkey in a precarious position.
“Turkey is a NATO member and is also a neighbor of Georgia’s and great supporter of Georgia both economically and militarily,” he said. “And Turkey controls the passage from and to the Black Sea. Therefore whatever happens next Turkey is going to find itself impacted by the developments.”
Also at stake is Turkey’s trade relations with Russia. Turkey’s trades more goods with Russia than any other country, mostly because of Turkey’s dependence on Russian gas.
“We have very good economic relations with Russia,” said Ozel. “Our trade is over $10 billion and we are overly dependent on Russian gas at 64 percent and 40 percent for Russia oil.”
Turkey has been trying to boost trade with Moscow as it struggles with a current account deficit that’s growing as energy costs soar.
But Russia has introduced new custom regulations which, according to the Turkish trade minister Kursad Tuzmen, could cost Turkey as much as $3 billion. Tuzmen attacked the regulations as political, saying Moscow may be punishing it for allowing the U.S. ships to pass through the Bosporus.
Tuzman said that on September 1 Turkey will impose curbs on Russian exports and withdraw support for its membership of the World Trade Organization.
But a Turkish diplomatic source said that Ankara is determined not to be drawn into the conflict. Much of the Turkish media is also calling for a neutral stance.
With the Turkish prime minister visiting Moscow and Tbilisi, Ankara is now working hard to secure peace. Soli Ozel doesn’t believe such efforts have much chance of success, but still thinks they are important.
“For the moment I see it as an empty shell and as a good will gesture. If anything comes out of it will be good, and if nothing comes out of it no one will blame Turkey,” said Ozel. “It is better than what the Europeans can and would do anyway.”
This weekend Georgia’s foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, is due to visit Turkey, while his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, is expected next week. While few people give little chance of any breakthrough, experts say the real motive behind such efforts is for Turkey to balance its relations between Russia and the West. But with another U.S. warship headed to the Black Sea this weekend, those efforts are predicted to get increasingly difficult.
Decades before Herzl, Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel that grappled with Zionism
by Adam Kirsch
An undated portrait of Disraeli
By the beginning of 1830, when he was twenty-five, Benjamin Disraeli was tired of England. For three years, he had been suffering from acute depression, brought on by the triple fiasco that marked his entrance into public life. Before he turned twenty-two, Disraeli had lost thousands of pounds in stock-market speculations; alienated the publisher John Murray after their plan to launch a newspaper ended in failure; and caused a scandal with his first novel, Vivian Gray, a satirical roman à clef about high society. For the young Disraeli, already supremely ambitious, these reverses had come as a terrible shock, and it took him years to recover his nerve.
Now, with his second novel completed and the advance in his pocket, Disraeli was set on traveling. But he did not want to follow the usual itinerary of the Grand Tour, which took rich young Englishmen to the churches of Rome and the salons of Paris. Instead, he set his sights on the East—Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine. In part, he was following the example of his beloved Byron, who had created a vogue for the East in his highly colored poems. But for Disraeli, a journey to Jerusalem had more than literary significance. Although he had been baptized at the age of twelve into the Church of England, Disraeli’s very name made clear that he was a Jew, and the experience of visiting the Jewish homeland was to transform the way he thought about himself, his ancestors, and politics in general. Almost fifty years later, when he was Prime Minister of England, it would be his destiny to redraw the maps of the countries he visited as a young man.
The first fruit of Disraeli’s pilgrimage, however, was a novel—The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, published in 1833. Disraeli wrote that he had been “attracted” to the “marvellous career” of David Alroy even as a child. But Disraeli’s Alroy bears little resemblance to the minor figure mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela, the Spanish Jew whose Travels are a classic of medieval Hebrew literature. According to Benjamin, Alroy, a Kurdish Jew, raised a revolt against the Seljuk Turks in Azerbaijan around 1160 AD. He was credited with magic powers by his followers, who proclaimed him the Messiah, but this pretension won him the hostility of Jewish leaders in Baghdad, who begged him not to antagonize the Turks. Finally he was betrayed by his father-in-law and killed, probably without winning a single battle.
Disraeli’s Alroy is a much grander figure, a kind of Jewish Alexander the Great. In his novel, Alroy wins victory after victory, conquers Baghdad, and comes close to establishing a new empire in the Middle East. Disraeli also provides his hero with a loyal sister, Miriam, and a lover, the Princess Schirene. There is also a good deal of what Disraeli called “supernatural machinery” in the novel, including a magic ring, a secret underground temple, and the Scepter of Solomon, which Alroy must claim if he is to conquer Jerusalem.
Disraeli writes that all this is based on Jewish tradition—“Cabalistical and correct,” he puts it—but it is clear that the real sources of the novel’s mysticism lie in The Thousand and One Nights, the Eastern tales of Byron, and the quest poems of Shelley. In general, Alroy is better understood as high Orientalist fantasy than historical fiction. Even Disraeli’s prose, the emphatic rhythms and repetitions of which suggest that some sections started out as verse, is kitschily intoxicated: “‘Ah! bright gazelle! Ah! bright gazelle!’ the princess cried, the princess cried; ‘thy lips are softer than the swan, thy lips are softer than the swan; but his breathed passion when they pressed, my bright gazelle! my bright gazelle!’”
But if Alroy seems impossibly overripe today, its psychological core remains entirely serious. Disraeli said that he began to write the novel in Jerusalem in 1831, at a moment when he was pondering the role Jewishness might play in his own life and career. And in his hands, the story of David Alroy becomes a veiled meditation on the state of the Jews in Europe, and a parable of his own possible future.
From the beginning of the novel, Alroy, a scion of the house of David, rages against the degradation of the Jews under Muslim rule. But as Disraeli makes clear, the condition of the Jews is hardly unbearable. On the contrary, Alroy’s uncle, Bostenay, is a rich man, and enjoys the honorary title of Prince of the Captivity. “The age of power has passed; it is by prudence now that we must flourish,” he declares. He is, perhaps, Disraeli’s critical portrait of the wealthy English Jews of his own day—men like the Rothschilds and Montefiores, who had all the advantages of wealth, but none of the dignity of power.
Alroy, like Disraeli himself, cannot be satisfied with making money. He is an ardent patriot, disgusted by the state into which his people have fallen: “I am ashamed, uncle, ashamed, ashamed,” he tells Bostenay. When he sees a Turkish official accost his sister, Alroy impetuously kills him and flees into the desert. He is about to die of thirst when he is rescued by Jabaster, a magician and fanatical Jewish patriot. When Alroy has a dream of being acclaimed by a vast army as “the great Messiah of our ancient hopes,” Jabaster decides that the young man represents his long-awaited chance to reestablish the kingdom of David. After a series of romantic adventures, Alroy begins to put Jabaster’s plan into action, scattering the Turks and conquering Baghdad.
But in the meantime, Alroy acquires another advisor—Jabaster’s brother and mirror image, Honain. Honain represents the tempting path of Jewish assimilation: He has achieved wealth and honor, but only at the price of “passing” as a Muslim. In his own view, however, he has not betrayed his people, but simply effected his own liberation. “I too would be free and honoured,” he tells Alroy. “Freedom and honour are mine, but I was my own messiah.” Honain introduces Alroy to the beautiful Princess Schirene, the daughter of the Caliph, and though she is a Muslim he falls in love with her. (“The daughters of my tribe, they please me not, though they are passing fair,” Alroy admits—a sentiment Disraeli himself shared.)
But now, at the height of his fortune, with an empire in his grasp and a princess for his wife, Alroy begins to succumb to Honain’s worldly counsel. Why, he asks, should he exchange rich Baghdad for poor Jerusalem? Why not rule over a cosmopolitan empire, rather than a single small nation? “The world is mine: and shall I yield the prize, the universal and heroic prize, to realise the dull tradition of some dreaming priest, and consecrate a legend?” Alroy asks. “Is the Lord of Hosts so slight a God that we must place a barrier to His sovereignty, and fix the boundaries of Omnipotence between the Jordan and the Lebanon?” Mischievously, Disraeli even makes Alroy begin to speak in the stock phrases of modern English liberalism: “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian prejudices and exclusive rights.”
From a portrait by Count D’Orsay, 1834
Jabaster tries to recall his king to the righteous, Jewish path, but to no avail. At last he attempts a coup against Alroy, but he is defeated and sentenced to death. From that moment, however, God’s favor deserts Alroy. In his next battle he is defeated, and a Muslim king, Alp Arslan, takes him prisoner. Now Honain reappears with one last, Satanic temptation: If Alroy converts to Islam, his life will be spared. But the scion of the house of David has learned his lesson. His strength is not his own but his nation’s, and individual glory means nothing next to the redemption of the Jews. He taunts Alp Arslan with his refusal, and the king, in a rage, cuts off his head.
For Disraeli, writing at the very beginning of his own career as an English politician, the moral of Alroy was deeply ambiguous. After all, David Alroy is a gifted youth like himself, but one who sacrifices worldly ambitions for love of the Jewish people, and is exalted by that love. The novel does not endorse the Jewish sectarianism of Jabaster—Disraeli expresses a Voltairean hatred of priestcraft—but it clearly repudiates the plausible assimilationism of Honain, which leads only to dishonor and disaster. Indeed, it is Disraeli’s distinction between Jewish belief and Jewish solidarity, and his insistence that it is possible to have the latter without the former, that makes Alroy a significant proto-Zionist text. If Disraeli had obeyed the novel’s logic in his own life, if he had tried to translate Alroy’s vision to the nineteenth century, he might have become a real-life Daniel Deronda.
Source: www.nextbook.org, 08.26.08
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
