Is Turkey a multicultural society? Is it moving at a sufficient pace towards multiculturalism? Is it serious about it? Is it in Turkey’s interest to become a multicultural society modeled on the European one with all of the political and social consequences?
These are legitimate questions that deserve a real discussion. Multiculturalism in Turkey, however, is noticeably debated in a different context; a context that is doubting, apologetic and detached from the accounts of history. Are we Turks, as a nation, ask Turkish intellectuals, capable of achieving multiculturalism? Can we coexist with the Kurds and other minorities in one society?
Turks can build a multicultural society. They possess evidence for that. The Ottoman archives are nothing but a thorough record of a multicultural society that lasted over 400 years. The society consisted of no less than 80 different ethnicities, religions and sects. The social and judicial order it brought about was not confined to territories where Muslims formed the majority. Rather, it was the law and order the state brought into practice in every territory it added to its reign. Today, courts in non-Muslim modern countries like Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia still have only the Ottoman archives to refer to in land registry disputes.
In the Ottoman social system the use of an ombudsman was a source of inspiration for nations outside Ottoman territories. During his years of exile in İstanbul from 1709-1714, King Charles XII of Sweden was impressed by the Ottoman ombudsman system. He decided that his country should have a parallel institution, as explained by Cüneyd Er in his column dated Nov. 29, 2010, in this paper. Swedes today speak openly of a national ombudsman institution, the world’s envy, as derivative of the Ottoman one. Other Scandinavian countries followed suit.
The evolution of the settler of Anatolia
There was a time when none of this existed in Anatolia. The primitive society that the new (Turkish) settlers brought to Anatolia had to evolve, find new parameters and pass through crucial phases before finally arriving at its regional multicultural phase. External factors played a vital role. The early 16th century clash of values in the region caused by the recent conversion of Persia to shi’ism put the fabric of the region’s society at stake. The development was an acid test. The Ottomans corrected the regional power balance and came out as the savior of multicultural societies as opposed to the mono-culturalism of the Safavids.
As a result, the Ottomans entered into a values alliance with societies in their hinterlands, making them a virtual extension of their social fabric. The new territory of their society was no longer Anatolia alone, and no longer were the Turks its only citizens. It was a multicultural society built around a new regional concept.
A new social harmony was born, and a new social and political map was drawn. This weeded out trouble spots, nationalist and sectarian, in the hinterlands of Anatolia, effectively pushing the frontiers away from the heartland of the empire. The result was a settled surrounding for a society (Anatolian) in the world’s most complex ethnic mosaic.
The acquired depth gained the Ottomans a mindset wherein they were in the majority -- a crucial psychological factor for a governing power in a multicultural environment. The art of maintaining an equal distance from all minorities and disengagement from their internal disputes became second nature to the Ottomans. The regional concept shaped the Ottomans personality. They edged ever closer to the historical, regional managerial role left unfulfilled by the decline and departure of previous Muslim states.
A sense of chemistry, partnership and belonging to the Ottomans was felt by societies in the region, the way it did before to the Umayyads, the Abbasids, to whose reign parts of Anatolia belonged, and the Seljuks.
Everything was in place for the Ottomans. Multiculturalism, a concept embedded in Islamic doctrine, was now a safe option for Ottoman social architects.
The arrival of Nizamı Milli, an extensive code of practice aimed at protecting minority rights was conceived in the correct atmosphere. It was considered, and still is, the biggest leap in the legislation of human rights and citizenship in a multiethnic state. The Ottoman regime “was not exploitation but integration, and the world’s first truly multiethnic governing system, as opposed to a multiethnic empire,” as described in research conducted on Aug. 2, 2010, by the Stratford think tank titled “The Geopolitics of Turkey.”
Self-autonomy, freedom of mother tongue and the collection of their own tax were at the heart of “Nizamı Milli.” Minorities were allowed to run their affairs in accordance with their religions. Minimum wages to prevent exploitation were introduced. Social programs upgraded the social status of disadvantaged minorities.
Entire sections of cities were preserved for different ethnic groups. Local religious leaders often were granted legal authority to enhance their positions. High-ranking officials, not simply at the local level, but also at the imperial level in İstanbul, were regularly selected from subject populations. By tradition, the grand vizier, the second-most powerful person in the empire, was never a Turk.
Despite far-reaching and tolerant legislation, the social fabric of the empire held, and the Ottomans exhibited less anxiety about the sovereignty of their empire than modern Turks do of their national state.
According to “The Geopolitics of Turkey,” “The fact remains that [Ottoman] İstanbul forged a governing system that granted its conquered peoples solid reasons to live in, work with, profit by and even die for the empire.”
The Ottoman social system, however, met challenges that meant that it could no longer function as envisaged. Fissures were visible in the Ottoman social fabric in the period following the assignment of the protection of citizen rights of Ottoman citizens to other states known via the Ottoman capitulations. Minorities in the Ottoman provinces were no longer, in effect, citizens of the state, but subjects of other states and spheres of power. The Ottomans lost their strategic regional depth and were up against a different set of rules.
Minorities, now under the protection and influence of foreign powers, started using the institutions of the state to destabilize the state. The Ottoman Parliament, the Mebusan, itself a fruit of the sweeping reforms of the Tanzimat era that incorporated minorities in the running of state affairs, was used to incite secessionism in the provinces and encourage policies that invited damage to the strategic interests of the state. The decision to go to war with Russia in 1877 was not entirely disconnected from such a role.
A tag attached to the ‘Ottoman despot regime’
The decision in 1878 to dissolve parliament and abort the institutionalization of the minorities secessionist project, taken as the one and only way to halt a train on its tracks and terminate a journey to the unknown, was a decision coined by the propaganda machine of the late 19th century as the most enviable tag to be attached to the “Ottoman despot regime.” It found its way into the textbooks of school pupils for generations to come.
Parallels can be drawn with the role of the deputies of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in the Parliament as a voice of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization. The call by the government to lift the parliamentary immunity of the BDP deputies who have been accused of promoting the use of weapons and maintaining ties with a terrorist organization, which invited wide criticism from the media and the political spectrum, bears a similar message to that of the mebusan, both in reasons and remedy.
Turkey is a state no longer surrounded by states, but by masses that have lost their states through foreign invasion as in Iraq or radical internal political and social interruption as in Syria. The once mature and protective fabric of regional society has degraded into primitive tribes or sects. The vacuum created by the fading of the state is being filled rapidly by concepts that are disdainful of state philosophy.
Dwarfed by bigger powers and anxious about survival, new ethnic and sectarian entities like the Kurds in Iraq and the possible emerging Alawite entity in Syria, are in a relentless search for alliances and are candidates for protection by regional and international powers. The regional political map in the minds of the former citizens of states is redrawn. It bears little resemblance to the one preserved by the mutual interests of the disappeared states. Anatolia’s unstable hinterlands of the 19th century are being restored.
Looking at today’s concept of Turkish society
Today, Turkey’s aspiration to multiculturalism lacks the prerequisites for success. Turkey does not, effectively, share today with her hinterlands what its predecessor did. The Turk’s concept of society, as a continuation of the Muslim tradition of acceptance and integration of minorities, does embody multiculturalism, and their present territory, Anatolia, enjoyed prolonged periods of multiculturalism in its true form and essence, but it was one that was part of a wider multiculturalism that the entire region lived, contributed to and safeguarded. The regional concept that was the whole mark of the Ottoman past does not exist today.
Currently, Turk’s sensitivity towards minorities is not in harmony with their past, but can be understood. Without binding regional concepts that turn Turkey’s hinterlands back into a form where it has strategic depth, Turks will not recover the regional majoritarian mindset the founders of “Nizamı Milli” enjoyed. Their borders will remain porous to non-state axes and cross-border hostilities, hindering their recent hard-achieved state reforms.
Multiculturalism in Turkey cannot be debated within the framework of a nation state. The two do not go together. To join this debate is ambitious at best and is bound to result in a continuous downhill trajectory. Yesterday, the Turk’s faith in regional multiculturalism was demolished. Today, they doubt it at home.
Multiculturalism, devolution, self-autonomy and federation are different themes in the modern state with one meaning: a state under pressure yielding power to minorities. The inevitable weaker central government is not the worst outcome of this process, the dismembering of the state can be.
No political regime defies this rule; certainly, not one as stable as the United Kingdom. The minority Scots who are bluntly accused of working to dismember the union, cannot be accused of any wrongdoing, since every step they take towards their unambiguous goal is constitutionally correct and takes place under the roof of parliament. What limits the strategic damage for such nations is a harmonized and safe hinterland that, effectively, isolates the secessionist pockets and prevents the formation of regional axes. No nation embarks on the multiculturalism path while circled by an antagonizing environment. The path is then suicidal. The formerly harmonized and protective hinterlands of Anatolia are the source of Turkey’s problems today.
The state that the Turks built, to go down in history as the sealing chapter in a 14-century run of Muslim states, spanned three continents. But it was the southern Arab hinterlands where the Ottomans rose brought it its multicultural status, and it is here where everything came to an end.
Turkey can only become multicultural and survive if it reaches out to its Arab hinterlands.
*Rabee Al-Hafidh is the head of the Arab–Turkish Relations Unit of the Forum of Muslim Thinkers. Birmingham, UK. [email protected]