Ara Guler

The Times has an appreciation of Turkish photographer Ara Guler by Orhan Pamuk, with a nice sample of his famous pictures of Istanbul. The Suleymaniye Mosque in winter, seen from the Galata Bridge, 1955

My thought about Guler's work is that it is very good, but in a very conventional way; I have seen photographs very similar to these of Paris, London, Rome, Athens, and many other cities. This seems to have been a common style and subject matter in the mid 20th century. Carrying water, 1965.

The search for the city's "character" is at the forefront; we see people in every picture, preferably ordinary people doing everyday things, and best if they have some traditional, half forgotten profession.  Gypsy broom seller, 1969.

Guler himself accused Pamuk of only liking his work because it reminded him of the Istanbul of his youth. A coffee bar in a Beyoglu arcade, 1958.

One might say that these images were a shared language Europeans used to speak about the cities they loved, and the things they loved about them. A merchant in the bazaar, 1959.

Real and Unreal

When I saw this photograph on the front page of the Times yesterday, I assumed it was from a TV show. I was startled to discover that this is an actual photograph of the assassin who killed Russia's ambassador to Turkey, right after the deed, with the dying man on the floor behind him. He is shouting "Don't forget Aleppo! Don't forget Syria!" to the cameras that had been recording the ambassador's speech.

The assassin, Mevlut Mert Altintas, was part of the security detail for the event. It's a disturbing sign of how the Syrian war and the Erdogan regime's response to it may lead to even more conflict and chaos in Turkey. Nobody yet knows if the assassin was part of any organized group, or, if so, which one, since there are several different groups in Syria and Turkey that would be happy to assassinate Russians.

But it also disturbs me that my first reaction on seeing this photograph was to think of television. I suppose that is partly because this was taken through a TV camera that was recording the ambassador's speech; part must also be the way the handsome assassin is dressed, just like a TV assassin would be. The gesture also seems more stage than reality.

I worry a little about my mind when it has been filled with so many images of staged violence that real violence looks staged to me.

Words from a Wise Turk

The worst democracy is better than the best coup.

–Koray Suzer, a 25-year-old Istanbul resident, quote in the Times

A Divided Istanbul

Interesting article by Tim Arango in the Times about Istanbul, where the economic boom and optimistic attitudes of the 2000s have been replaced by what Turks call "huzun," an old word meaning melancholy and spiritual malaise.

Arango finds that both devout Muslims and secularists are unhappy with the direction of events.

“Everything is being Arabized,” said Karaca Borar, who owns an antiques shop on one of the crooked, cobbled streets in European Istanbul. . . .

He said he was tired of hearing the Arabic greeting of “salaam aleikum” on the streets, and tired of so many Syrians in general. (It is a widely shared sentiment: When Mr. Erdogan recently said Turkey should offer citizenship to Syrians, a right-wing secular newspaper called Syrians “vermin” in a front-page headline.)

Asked about the mood of the city, which before the coup attempt had faced several devastating terrorist attacks for which the Islamic State was blamed, Mr. Borar said, “Terrible, terrible, terrible.” . . .

He continued: “We were the only secular, decent country in a bad region. Now, we are like one of those Arab states.”

But another long-time resident of the city frets about secularism:

Mr. Bardok said he quit drinking in 1994 when he turned to religion, and blamed secular Turks for the country’s polarization because they are “arrogant and disrespectful.”

Now that they are moving in to his neighborhood, he is worried that “in five to 10 years this place is going to turn into Amsterdam.”

Recent times in the U.S. have sensitized me to stories about places where both traditionalists and modernizers think the tide is going against them. I suppose what happens is that strongly ideological people of any sort associate bad things with their enemies, so when things go badly (and a lot is going badly in Turkey) they naturally blame those enemies whether they are responsible or not.

A Coup in Turkey

As I am writing, it looks like the coup attempt in Turkey is failing. I consider this good news; I do not like Erdogan's authoritarian ways or his cult of himself, but he won the election, which makes him much more of a democrat than any military rebel could be.

It puts me in mind to wonder about the mysteries of power. So much is about expectations; if the coup in Turkey fails, it will be because people in Turkey refuse to let it succeed. But which people? This seems to me a hard question, because in these situations some people matter much more than others: army officers, police captains, bureaucrats, newscasters, legislators, people willing to take to the streets in the capital. Yet I think to some extent everyone matters, and we have seen cases in which the actions of ordinary soldiers have been crucial, like those who defended the Russian parliament against the last-ditch coup of the fading Soviets. If enough people have the courage in these early chaotic days to stand up against the plotters, they can be defeated before they get the levers of power in their hands.

People in Turkey like to talk about the "deep state," a mysterious alliance of army officers, spies, rich businessmen, and politicians that rules the country from behind the scenes. If this coup had succeeded, I think many would have blamed these shadowy powers. Its failure means either that these powers do not really exist, or more likely that they are as divided as everyone else in Turkey.

Because Turkey is divided. Over the role of Islam in politics, over the place of Kurds in the state, over the response to civil wars in Syria and Iraq, over terrorism, over refugees, over how close to get to Europe, over Erdogan himself. The coup attempt shows the seriousness of these divisions. In Erdogan's defense, these are hard problems, and no government in the region is really succeeding any better at handling them. But I think his own ambitions and his paranoia are making them worse, and I doubt they will get any better as long as he remains in power. But better him than some conspiracy of random colonels, and better an elected troublemaker than the endless trouble of a military that takes power whenever it feels threatened and gives it up when it gets bored. That has been Turkey's past, but it looks now like it will not be their future.

The Curse of Suicide Bombing

In Turkey, another Islamic state is suffering cruelly from the tragic disaster of suicide bombing. I have long thought that this pernicious way of waging war would haunt the Middle East for decades, and I curse the men who invented it. It gives violent expression to a sick mixture of rage and despair, combining nihilism and faith into a perfect death machine. A few years ago some American conservatives tried to rechristen these attacks "homicide bombings," but that didn't catch on because the certain death of the bomber is at the heart suicide bombing. This makes these attacks all but impossible to prevent, and more importantly gives them the power to express two opposite impulses: the suicide bomber surrenders personally while continuing the fight politically.

No nation where suicide bombing has become a cult can ever know peace.

Erdogan, Gulen, and Turkey's Troubles

If you are at all curious about what is happening in Turkey, with protests and riots and so on, I recommend Suzy Hansen's long article in the Times. She explains that Turkey is run these days by an alliance between the AKP, the center-right political party headed by Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, and a Muslim religious and social movement headed by Fethullah Gulen:

Erdogan welcomed the movement’s international influence and media support. With its endorsements, he achieved real gains. He sidelined the military. He moved Turkey’s laws significantly toward European Union norms. The economy flourished, as he pushed privatization and investors from abroad poured money into the country. The A.K.P. built hospitals, roads, bridges and luxury shopping malls. Turkey had been so dysfunctional, and so undemocratic, that many of these initiatives were necessary.

Eventually, however, they seemed like a power grab. Around 2007, the A.K.P. and Gulenists in the judiciary and the police force put hundreds of journalists and former military generals on trial, charged with being members of a Kemalist “deep state.” Much of the evidence appeared to have been manufactured by Gulenists. At the same time, many Turks were beginning to believe that the intelligence wing of the police force was wiretapping the phones of journalists and businessmen. Erdogan himself bullied the corporate owners of media outlets, and hundreds of journalists were muzzled or fired. And in 2010, a referendum on the Constitution revamped the judicial system to favor the judges affiliated with Erdogan and Gulen. Instead of reforming the state, the A.K.P. appeared to be capturing it.

A big part of the problem is that Turkey's opposition is too fragmented and too troubled by past scandals to mount much of a challenge to Erdogan; a well-organized opposition could have beaten Erdogan in 2010.

The background to the current crisis is that Erdogan and Gulen have fallen out. Gulen has denounced the violent tactics Erdoan has used against protesters, and it is Gulenists who have aired corruption charges against Erdogan's close associates. Erdogan would almost certainly lose an election held today -- that is, if anyone can be found to run against him.

I am sure all of this is very stressful to live through, but I think that in the long run it is making Turks more and more involved in their government, and I hope that eventually the current protests will be seen as a bump in the road toward real Turkish democracy.