The Challenges to Turkey

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF ATATÜRK'S LEGACY

Istanbul is an apt metaphor for Turkey: at once multifaceted, diverse, and unitary; Byzantine, Ottoman, Asiatic, and European; modern and traditional; parochial and cosmopolitan; Muslim and Christian, even Jewish. Astride two continents-figuratively and literally, then, of Asia and Europe-the megapolis bears the marks of a succession of civilizations that are not merely superimposed, but that continue to coexist. The splendid domes of the Byzantine churches, built under the Eastern Roman Empire between the fifth and fifteenth centuries, are set off by the thousand and one graceful minarets of the mosques later built to the glory of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire: the basilica of Sancta Sophia, disguised as a mosque, symbolizes the synthesis. The presence in the city of the Greek patriarchate, the "Vatican" of Orthodox Christendom, testifies to the tolerance that allowed the sultans to reign over a multitude of peoples and races, religions and sects, in an empire that stretched from the Arab east to the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from the Balkans to North Africa. The astonishing range of physical types and complexions in Istanbul today is a reflection of that great diversity.

In founding the republic on the ashes of empire following the debacle of World War I, Kemal Atatürk imposed upon these disparate peoples the dogma of the homogeneity of the Turkish nation. He saw the elimination of ethnic and cultural differences as the only way to forge the cohesion needed to create a modern nation state on the European model. Through persuasion, but also by draconian decrees and repressive measures, he succeeded in imposing an identity that sought to be monolithic, a culture of Western inspiration.