The Model Of Liberal Democracy?
When the term ‘Oriental Studies’ is voiced after being asked what I study by a Turkish student, I hastily change the subject. On occasion I have been accused of being an ‘Orientalist’. If I am, I only pity my accuser for not understanding what the term actually implies. I might be in a department with a slightly outdated name but that does not have any bearing on the learning that goes on in it.
Edward Said put the term firmly in our consciences and once there, it was very hard to remove. However in Turkey there is a tangible awareness of the difficulties of how we should study the past. Edward Said, in his acclaimed book Orientalism criticised Westerners as ‘creating’ the notion of the Orient as an area for study, with all ideas of Western superiority firmly, and mostly, unconsciously embedded in it.
Much of what he said is valid, but when inhabitants of a country come to view outsiders’ study of their culture with suspicion we have gone too far in the other direction. By cutting themselves off from ‘the Orient’ and trying to align with the West, the founders of the Turkish Republic reinforced Western ‘superiority’. At the same time they created a dilemma for future generations looking back at their history and how it is studied by others.
A lecturer at my Turkish university is very much aware of the pejorative implications of ‘Orientalism’. She criticised a Frenchman’s 16th century portrayal of a cross-dressing dancer, because, by giving him a knife, the artist was trying to make him look more masculine. The same artist’s portrayal of a female dancer with a veil was “typical of a Western Orientalist mentality.
�� Later, however, this teacher, talking about portrayals of dance in an Ottoman miniature, used the term ‘Oriental dance’ to refer indiscriminately to all forms of dance in the Far East. Her sensitivity to Orientalism only went so far. References to Western Orientalism exist in most spheres of life in Turkey, most obviously in advertising. In Taksim Square, an enormous screen has been put up with a beautifully constructed Turkey tourist board advertisement on it.
It illustrates perfectly the attraction that Turkey holds for foreigners. The way it is constructed, as a mystical, visionary onslaught on the senses, is exactly what Western artists were trying to produce in their works for hundreds of years and are now criticised for doing so. However when these tactics are employed in an advertisement on Turkish television, not intended for the eyes of foreigners, it does not quite make sense.
The opening scene of a bathroom fittings advert is a real life tableau of the foremost figure in Ingres’ The Turkish Bath (a circular composition of voluptuous nudes in a Turkish bath �" picked purely from Ingres’ imagination). It seems hard to understand why this advertisement should be effective on the Turkish public.
The response of one extremely opinionated man when I told him (my Turkish not being fantastic at the time, I was searching for a simple conversation) that there was going to be an Ottoman themed ball in Oxford was one of unnecessary indignation. “That’s absolutely disgusting,” would be a direct translation. Trying to stick up for all things Oxford, I launched a futile counterattack of justifications.
This same man then went on to criticise a book I was reading on Ottoman history because it had a chapter entitled ‘The Harem’. As harems most definitely did exist, why was he so critical? In my opinion, he associates such stereotypically Ottoman things as an embarrassing example of Ottoman luxury, and does not want any outsiders associating modern Turks with such behaviour. Thank goodness I never told him my degree is entitled ‘Oriental Studies’.
I suppose he is demonstrating excessively the ‘it is only acceptable to criticise what is your own’ argument, as he failed to criticise a greatly admired cover for Istanbul Life magazine, which consisted of a well-known Turkish singer attired in luxurious dresses, lounging around in the harem quarter of a Bosphorus mansion. Were this to have been done anywhere outside of Turkey I am sure that it would have roused feelings of indignation in this man.
One further and final example concerns a man called Pierre Loti, real name Julien Viaud, a French naval officer stationed onboard a frigate in the Bosphorus in the late nineteenth century. In his obsession with all things Turkish and especially, with a certain young (married) Turkish woman, he renounced all things Western and spent his days wandering the streets of old Istanbul, in Turkish dress, writing affected poetic letters about his newly assumed life and love. Today’s Istanbul loves him.
Photographs of him abound on postcards, a holiday village has assumed his name, and due to its ever-increasing popularity, a peripherique leading up to the Pierre Loti café (a former haunt of the great man) is under construction.
Yet, in his books Loti is doing in words what Ingres and the other French chap did in pictures: embellishing the truth to attract Westerners’ interest; and his endless references to oriental eyes, diaphanous veils and Turkish ragamuffin scoundrels get rather unconvincing after a while. How the Turks are able to abide him I cannot imagine.
Turkey is neither comfortable with its past nor with the future started out on after the Republic was declared in 1923 and possibly continuing with EU succession. Finding itself in such a state how could there be uniformity of ideas? Modern art, Western theatre and dance are not a part of Turkish tradition and consequently the modern Turk does not know how to react to it.
In the newly opened Istanbul Modern Art Gallery everybody looks lost, at theatrical and Western music performances nobody knows when to and when not to clap. I feel that I am being critical, but why should it be a sign of inferiority not to be able to appreciate our traditions? Turkey clearly does feel this, however.
Why else would the government make enormous subsidies for the national ballet and opera companies and indeed open modern art galleries, where the first thing to be seen by visitors are long messages written by the French, British and German prime ministers, saying what a wonderfully important cultural step forward it is for Turkey? If anything shows Westerners being patronising, that does.
2nd Jun 2005