Identity in Istanbul

Our speakers have made it clear that identity in this multiethnic city has been an issue right from the beginning of the Byzantine Empire through today. Professor Necipoglu informed us that that members of the Byzantine Empire did not consider themselves Byzantine, that they considered themselves members of the (Eastern) Roman Empire whose capital Constantine had moved East with the founding of Constantinople in 334 AD. They continued to view themselves as members of the Roman Empire even after 395AD when the Roman Empire formally split into the East and West Empires. The leaders in Constantinople spoke Latin, until gradually so much of the population spoke Greek that they changed the official language to Greek. It was only at the very end of the Byzantine period after the 4th crusade sacked Constantinople and the people became anti-Roman that they considered themselves to be Greek instead of Roman. The population was made up ethnically of Greeks, Armenians, slavs, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and others, depending upon what territories the Empire encompassed. Necipoglu said there were three essential elements of the Byzantine Empire: a Roman legal/administrative tradition, a Greek culture, and religion that transitioned from Pagan to Christian in the early part of the period.

Our speakers and our site visits made it clear that these issues of identity continued through the Ottoman Empire. For example, Meltem Toksoz (History) and Professor Gun Kut (Political Science and International Relations) discussed the identity of the "Ottomans" and the "Turks" who defeated the Byzantine Empire in 1453AD and who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923. The Turks were a Nomadic people who were driven out of Central Asia by the Mongols and settled in Asia Minor and the steppes of Anatolia. This area had previously been settled by the Seljuks who had brought Islam. The Turks converted to Islam during their mass migration out of Central Asia. Other groups were also in Asia Minor, such as the Armenians. The Ottomans did not look on themselves as Turks, and for much of this period, "Turk" was perceived as a somewhat derogatory label. The Ottoman Empire in its early stages after the conquest faced continuing challenges by the Mongols and Crusaders. But Tamerlaine, a Mongol chief, finally stopped the Crusaders. On one of our site visits, we saw a park filled with large busts of warriors who had presumably founded provinces or states for the Ottoman Empire (ending with a huge statue of Ataturk). Tamerlaine was included, as was Attila the Hun. There wasn't an explanation for why each of these was included, but Attila would have been included for areas in the Balkans, Tamerlain for this defeat of the Crusaders. Thus, the Ottomans were including Mongols and Huns, two groups that at times had fought against ethnic "Turks" as members of their Empire in the sense of establishing territory for it. A confusing identity issue for me, anyway. And our speakers were clear that one of the reasons that the Ottoman Empire was successful was because it managed to incorporate a very diverse population. Even though most of the population was Muslim, by no means all of the population was Muslim. The word Turkish came to mean Muslim in common usage, and the Empire preferred the term Ottoman because it implied multi-ethnic and multi-religious.

Professor Gun Kut went on to explain that in the modern Turkish Republic "Turk" was officially defined to be: anyone attached to Republic of Turkey by the link of citizenship, that is, a citizen of Turkey, not an ethnic concept at all. They took on the names "Turk" and "Turkey" because that was the name that had been given to them by the outside, especially the West. And the leaders developed a new language for everyone to speak, that was based on Turkish, but different, with a new alphabet, so that it would be easier for everyone to learn to read and write, and communicate in the official language, regardless of ethnicity. And they improved the educational system, including increasing the number of schools to accomplish this also. And to a great degree they were successful, at least in terms of communication through speaking. But the issue of ethnic identity lingers on. When people speak of Armenians (who are Turkish citizens) and Turks, just who are the Turks to whom they refer? Are they Turkish citizens in the official non-ethnic sense? Are are they Turkish citizens who are non-Armenian in the ethnic sense? Or, are people thinking about ethnic Turks, and what would that mean in a country where it's not clear how many truly ethnic Turks there would be, as Professor Kut points out?

It is clear that to nationalist Turks, the issue of ethnicity and identity is troubling, and in the sense I mean almost every Turk we've met is nationalist. Nowhere is this more clear than when discussing the Kurdish question. Professor Kut and Professor Soysal (former Foreign Minister and Professor of Political Science, Ankara University) both say that the Kurds do not have collective rights, that is an ethnic group, although of course each individual has the human rights that the state gives every citizen of Turkey. They both were disturbed at least a bit at the Kurds for considering themselves as part of an ethnic group, with a group identity, instead of viewing themselves as individual citizens of Turkey, each one a non-ethnic Turk.