Europe’s Eastern Inheritance

Inspired by a recent exhibition in Munich, Curzon’s last post and my diplomatic work in Turkey for Her Majesty’s Foreign Service, which acquainted me with a great deal of the Byzantine empire and provided me with many opportunities to inspect pristine ruins, tombs, forts etc, I’ve been moved to pen the following post.

Byzantium Returns Home

At the height of its power in 550, the Byzantine empire stretched east from Serbia to the eastern end of present day Turkey, south through Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt and west through Libya with Byzantium (changed to Constantinople and finally Istanbul) at its head. Over the years the empire shrank until it was finally chizzled down into solely Constantinople, finally taken by the Seljuk Turks in 1453. However, to consider Turkey completely separate in terms of history, values, and culture is to forget the thousand year plus shared history between the Mediteranean Middle East (i.e. the Byzantine empire) and Europe. They operated under the Roman legal code, continued the tradition of Latin and were a mixture of strong Roman, Greek and above all Christian influence, all of which provided a strong foundation for Europe and later the United States. Hardly foreign at all.

While the Byzantines progressively lost land to the Arabs during the 7th century (Africa) and later to the Seljuk Turks, they still maintained control of modern day Greece, parts of Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Crimea as well as western Turkey. However, it should be noted that unlike western Rome, the lands were not lost to barbarians or lesser developed peoples. The Arabs, flourishing during this period, built upon ancient Greek and Roman knowledge, translating texts into Arabic and rapidly advancing their scientific knowledge, in for example the field of navigation, which later thanks to the Arabs, enabled the Europeans to explore and colonize a large part of the world and ironically a large part of their land as well. It should also be noted that despite religious differences, the Seljuk Turks and Arabs were very tolerant of minorities as well as other religions with Christians and Jews accorded legal protection and the freedom to worship despite being taxed at a higher rate. The same cannot be said about Europe during this period. After all, the last “witch” or “heretic” was burned in the 1800s in Europe. Spain was ages ahead of the rest of Europe during it’s occupation. History is rarely without a sense of irony.

After WWI, the fatal blow to the Ottomans, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a famous ex-General appeared and began a resistance movement which ultimately ousted the allied occupation troops and ejected Greece from mainland Turkey while simultaneously founding the modern Turkish Republic (1923). Atatürk made many important contributions to Turkey. He created a secular Republic, of which the military are special guardians, very clearly defining separation of church and state (indeed we’ve seen coups in the past because of just this). Culturally, he banned the Fez, switched the country from the Islamic to the Gregorian calendar, encouraged people to wear more European clothing, discouraged women from covering themselves and lifted the ban on alcohol. Additionally, he abolished the the old Turkish alphabet (referred to today as Ottoman Turkish) which was a modified Arabic script, with the Latin alphabet which not only more easily facilitated the printing of books, but drastically increased the literacy rate as people between six and forty were required to go to school to learn it.

Turkey has not only nurtured but thrived in a very strong and very secular democracy for over 80 years. While they were “out of the loop” for around 400 years, the Turks have still maintained active ties with Europe through the Concert of Nations, the Tanzimat reforms and Atatürk’s reforms. In addition, they’ve long been a trusted NATO ally. What reader would maintain that the former Yugoslavia is not “European?” Slovenia is already in the EU with Croatia not far behind. And though the Balkans were Turkish for many years and although there is a very visible Turkish influence to be seen there (especially in Bosnia), they are nevertheless recognizably European.

Turkey is ultimately not much more different from Central Europe than Spain or Greece. The Mediterranean has a shared history and culture dating back thousands of years from the Romans, Byzantines, Abbasids and Ottomans.To pretend Turkey is radically different based on superficial differences such as skin color, religion and a short period of being “disconnected” from the West, in short, to deny it EU membership, is to make an inexcusable mistake.

PS: Eastern Question Part III coming soon…