WHY TURKEY?

The Janissary and the Mirror

by Elif Safak
A young Turkish novelist

Published: Thursday, December 16, 2004
zaman.com

"You be the Turk and I ll be Storm Trooper X-G," shrieked my friend s 13-year old son, just as I was bringing in another tray full of food to the room where the two boys had been camping since early morning. "You take the cannonball, I ll get the Galaxy Gun."

"I want the Galaxy Gun too," objected Reinaldo -a skinny Italian-American boy who refuses to have his long, reddish hair cut for fear of becoming sick and dying immediately thereupon. "The Turk wants technology too!"

Utterly mesmerized by the dialogue I d just heard, I stayed there frozen with a puzzled look on my face and a plate of stuffed green peppers in my hands. It was Sinan, my friend s always hungry son, who offered me an explanation, either for my sake or for that of the food on the tray.

"You can t have it both ways. You cannot be a Janissary and have a Galaxy Gun at the same time. It s either this or that. It s against the rules."

"What are you playing?" I asked.

"Rise of the Nations," the boys chorused and then took turns to explain the rules and characters of the game to me, each having little success.

"But why can t you be a Turk and have a Galaxy Gun too?" I heard myself mumble, utterly insecure in this battleground.

"Because the Janissaries were elite corps who served the Ottoman Sultan," sighed Sinan and rolled his eyes, obviously losing patience with me. "You are given a certain profile for each nation. Turks can excavate, pitch grenades, dig tunnels and shoot cannonballs but they cannot possibly have laser beams. We are fighting a war of two different civilizations here!"

Where was that "here" and who were "we", I did not dare to ask to none of these boys, one of them born in Istanbul and then brought to Michigan at the age five, the child of an intercultural couple, half Turkish half Irish-American; the other an Italian-American secretly in love not only with his hair but also with a Lebanese girl in his class. I sat next to them, unable to divert my gaze from the plastic toys scattered on the delicate motifs of the unashamedly crimson Turkish carpet. The Janissaries had cerulean uniforms, tall pointed hats and moustaches as big as their heads. Storm Troopers were metallic shiny robots, each with a carved number on their chest as if catapulted from some gloomy Zamyatinean dystopia. As I watched the boys fight a preordained battle of words and swords it seemed to me they were playing less a war of two different civilizations than a war of "frozenness in time" against "standardization in place".

* * *

As December nears, Turkey s EU membership continues to be a hot topic on the international agenda, triggering the unconcealed doubts of some Europeans as to how "Western" the country really is. Turkey has a lot to gain from its membership, politically, economically and strategically. Joining the EU will bolster Turkey s civil society and democracy bringing a definite end to the era of military interventions; accord her a more privileged place in the Islamic world; diminish the state s role in the economy and the state s centralizing command over the society; render Turkish Armed Forces a significant part and parcel of European Army; and provide many young Turks access to new opportunities for better education. A number of European politicians seem to contend that this is too much to bestow to a country whose position in the map of civilizations is still notoriously dubious.

Turkey might have a lot to gain from her full membership but so has the EU much to gain from her inclusion. Once the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline is completed, the EU will have one less worry about her energy needs. Given that the EU is Turkey s number one trading partner this large, dynamic, and young society will provide an important market for Europe and will further help to overcome the paucity in Europe s labor, land and natural sources. Furthermore, it is apparent that in the years to follow the world s mapping will shift again, as it has many times in history, and the Middle East will attain enormous importance in shaping both international and domestic politics. Within this framework, Turkey s full membership will help the EU to strengthen its hand regionally and globally, furnishing it with a more credible role vis-a-vis ethnic, religious and national tensions around the world. After Turkey s inclusion the Islamic world will have a better view of the EU and hopefully, the EU will have a better view of Islam.

It is a truism that there is an ongoing clash today. But unlike what many like to think, this is not a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, or between the Janissary with the cannonball and the homogenized Storm Trooper X-G. It is not a clash between an imaginary Turkishness frozen in time and an imaginary Europeanness thriving upon homogeneity. Rather than that, it is an internet-game-like clash between "the Mirror-Oriented" and "the Cosmopolitans". On the one hand are those who want to live a life primarily, if not entirely, surrounded by people who are like them, who think and act and dress and talk and pray just like them, who are each other s mirror images. On the other hand are those others who are more cosmopolitan, more ready to welcome ethnic, religious, national diversity, those who are not so obsessed with their mirror image. The clash between these two mentalities is an ongoing tension that recognizes no map, cutting across national, geographical and religious boundaries.

Today in some Turkish villages on the Aegean coast there is an enduring custom regarding the mirrors on the walls. They either cover the surface of a mirror with dark velvet or hang it with its silver ornamented back facing the wall. Aegean peasants believe that mirrors are the gateways to the uncanny netherworld of the djinni. Perhaps the belief is the outcome of centuries of wisdom in an old land where numerous ethnic and religious groups have both succeeded and failed to co-exist. In lands like this, in times like this, one should know better. Europeans, too, should well know that they have nothing to gain from the clash of the frozen-in-time Janissary and the homogenized-in-place Storm Trooper X-G, not only because of mutual economic, political and strategic gains but also precisely because there is something elusively, existentially dangerous in living in front of mirrors, surrounded only by one s own image day and night, east and west.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=whyturkey&alt=allarticles&hn=14793