Looking at cities through history fundamental to Davutoğlu's political thought

Davutoğlu's response to the Taraf daily's questionnaire, which is said to be inspired by a list that originally came from French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922), was published in November 2008, before he took up his current post in May 2009. Until then, the foreign minister, a well-regarded professor of political science and international relations, had been the prime minister's chief foreign policy adviser since 2002.

Davutoğlu has never hidden his longing for teaching, and as a person whose love for İstanbul is obvious, since 2002, he has somehow been destined to live in the gray city of Ankara.

During a visit he kindly paid to the Ankara office of Today's Zaman on the third anniversary of its establishment last month, Davutoğlu shared his thoughts about city culture and city history with the Today's Zaman staff and explained how he associated the characters of cities with their relationship with civilizations.

He just smiled when asked what living in Ankara was like for someone who is particular about naming the cities in which he would love to live. Davutoğlu, nonetheless, talked freely about the relationship between his view of cities and his understanding of the history of political thought.

“There are cities which establish a civilization; for example Rome, Athens and Medina. There are cities which are established by a civilization, which means that the city is established after a civilization is established; for example, Baghdad is the most typical example of these kinds of cities. New York is also such a city since it is not a city which established a civilization on its own,” Davutoğlu explained.

“There are cities which are destroyed by a civilization; the ancient Aztec city in today's Mexico was destroyed. And there are cities which are transformed by civilizations, and there are cities which transform civilizations -- for example, İstanbul is such a city.”

Davutoğlu had used the concept -- “axis cities” -- in an essay published over a decade ago. He believes that if one tries to make a correlation between the city, the civilization and the conquest, then one also has to accept that some cities are different from others in this regard, and they should be named “axis cities” or “determining cities.”

Fall of Granada or discovery of America

Between 1995 and 1999, Davutoğlu taught at İstanbul's Marmara University as a visiting scholar. At the time, he also gave lectures to postgraduate students who were studying urbanization. In his lectures, he focused on the relationship between cities and political thought.

During his visit to the Today's Zaman office, Davutoğlu shared a question which he had asked those students at the time: “Here are some specific dates: 1453, 1492, 1187, 1258, 1683 and 1706. Write down what happened during these years and develop a philosophy of history with regard to the importance of these dates.”

Instead of hearing a response from his audience, Davutoğlu answered his own question, serving as a reminder that Davutoğlu's policies, which reflect a deep understanding of history and its political impact, require today's journalists covering Turkish foreign policy to have a full knowledge of world and Turkish political history.

“Those six dates are the stories of six cities. 1492 is the fall of Granada,” Davutoğlu started explaining, also mentioning that a student who had classified this date as Columbus' discovery of America had failed his class.

“1453, the conquest of İstanbul; 1258, the fall of Baghdad; 1187, the conquest of Delhi; 1683, the siege of Vienna; and 1706, Britain's establishment in Calcutta,” he added.

“In the field of West-East relations, there is an Orientalist approach which is characterized by well-delineated lines. According to this approach, Islamic civilization gradually ascends and reaches its peak in 1258. With the fall of Baghdad, this civilization starts collapsing. In the meantime, the West begins escalating,” Davutoğlu said, while highlighting that such an approach excludes the Ottoman era and the “axis” cities which were not at the center, but were on the periphery.

“Is it so, or is it a cyclic history?” he asked, in an apparent objection to a linear understanding of history, underlining how those six dates revealed that there are no sharp ups and downs in history.

Orientalism and universality

In a speech delivered last month in the ancient southeastern Anatolian city of Mardin, located on a hill overlooking the Mesopotamian plain, Davutoğlu said the international system needs a new philosophy.

Kadim, a word which means something old whose beginning date cannot be represented by any kind of calculation and which resonates with the eternal tradition of humanity, was the main theme in the speech. “Every mosque, every church, every temple in this city represents that beginning. Exactly like Jerusalem,” Davutoğlu said, describing Mardin, and explaining why they had chosen this multicultural city for a review of a five-day brainstorming conference which was held in Ankara and brought together about 200 current and former ambassadors under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry.

“Mardin is the best example of ‘kadim' and a city. If we are to find a new philosophy one day -- and that day is not far off -- those who will undertake this effort need to understand Mardin's soul,” he said, and listed four main principles for a new global approach.

The system should be comprehensive and not exclude any continent, country or race, should be participatory and should contain synthesis, Davutoğlu said, adding the fourth component: “Another lesson we need to take from the ‘kadim' culture is that there should be a system that is based on the equality of humanity. Everybody will value each other simply because of their ‘human-ness;' they will interact, but they will not overrule each other.”

An article written by Davutoğlu back in May 1993 shows how much work he put into arriving at the conclusions he publicized in Mardin, as the article reflects a focus on understanding the Orientalist approach within the West and contemplates how the flaws of such an approach could and should be corrected.

“The intellectual mindset that underlies the problem of Orientalism is actually concerned with an existential problem. A problem of existence in history is meaningful only in this regard. Indeed, Orientalists have conducted a number of technical studies about our historical background, and it is important that we study these. However, if we are to make projections about the future, we have to tackle this issue of existence. Here, in our confrontation with Orientalism, there is a chain, as you would assume, beyond Orientalists, and those who react to them or who convey them: a quadripartite chain,” Davutoğlu said at the time.

“An intellectual background that teaches Orientalism and that develops in the West. I will try to elaborate on their basic assumptions: The Orientalist thought, the circle of its influence on our intellectual community and the repercussions of this influence regarding Turkish academia in particular and the East's academia in general. With a rippling effect, an intellectual experience is inadvertently being transferred to another intellectual environment with its conceptions, categories and disciplines. We have to discuss this, and the problem is not a problem of transfer or interpretation that emerges when the Islamic civilization confronts the Greek or Indian civilizations. And there is, as Edward Said elegantly put it, a ‘hegemonic' background to this. I believe that there is much benefit in making this emphasis.”