Shankar Acharya: Talking Turkey

A PIECE OF MY MIND

July has been the cruellest month. It started with another unseemly exercise of state power by the health minister against the director of the country's leading, government medical institution (and an outstanding cardiac surgeon). Just as people were wondering what authority the Prime Minister wielded over his cabinet colleague, the answer came, indirectly, through the speedy and humiliating reversal of his Cabinet's decision to disinvest modest holdings of Nalco and Neyveli Lignite in the face of opposition from DMK "allies". Once again, the events demonstrated that real political power resides outside the PMO (this emperor is seriously underclad) and sparked editorials questioning the viability of such an "anointed" PM. Meanwhile, in Mumbai, a few cloudbursts again showed up the massive infrastructure deficit in India's commercial capital. Much greater tragedy struck the "maximum city" on July 11, when eight bombs ripped through carriages of Mumbai's suburban trains, killing almost 200 innocent travellers and injuring many hundreds more. Preliminary investigations suggested the importance of home-grown terror networks, thriving in an ecology of weak governance and a compromised apparatus of law enforcement and justice. As if these very serious domestic setbacks to social harmony and development were not enough, the international environment worsened sharply. Massive Israeli overreaction to relatively minor Palestinian and Hezbollah provocations plunged the Middle East (especially Lebanon) into turmoil, sent oil prices above $75 a barrel and cast a shadow on global growth. The Doha round of trade negotiations staggered towards a possibly final breakdown without earning many column inches of global attention.

I could easily write a ponderous column on any one of these unhappy developments and depress myself and you (dear reader) in the bargain. Instead, I shall be escapist and talk about Turkey, where my wife and I spent a glorious fortnight last month. My reason (or excuse) for devoting scarce edit page space to a somewhat "touristy" account is that we in India are woefully ignorant about Turkey, a remarkably successful, secular Muslim country of 70 million, located athwart the crossroads between Asia and Europe, with income per head of $4,000 (as against $750 in India), an astonishingly diverse heritage (far better preserved than in India) and thoroughly modern aspirations for integration into Europe. Turkey does not merit such neglect.

The country is redolent with history. The Hittites ruled over most of Anatolia (roughly modern Turkey) from around 2000 BC to 1000 BC and sometimes clashed with the ambitions of Egyptian pharaohs. Displayed in Istanbul's Archaeological Museum (just next to Topkapi Palace) and carved on a stone tablet, is the world's oldest surviving peace treaty (of Kaddish), between Hittites and Egyptians in 1269 BC. In later centuries western Turkey was very much a part of the Hellenic golden age. Troy (or what little remains of it) is just across from the Gallipoli peninsula (where more than two millennia later, in 1915, young Winston Churchill helped develop the costly and abortive Allied campaign against Turko-German forces, including divisions led by another young man, Mustafa Kemal, later Ataturk, the indisputable founder of modern Turkey). The philosopher, Heraclaetus, was born around 540 BC in Ephesus in south-west Turkey. A few decades later the Greek historian, Herodotus, was growing up in nearby Bodrun. With the passage of centuries, the Greeks gave way to Romans, as in Ephesus, where the old Greek city (including the wondrous Temple of Artemis) has largely disappeared but the justly famous ruins of the Roman capital (of the province of Asia) still enthral thousands of global tourists every day. By mid 4th century AD, Emperor Constantine had come to power and founded Constantinople (in his time called New Rome) as the capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire. In the 6th century, Justinian built the splendid Aya Sofia church, which even today is one of Istanbul's three most spectacular sights. As Byzantium went into decline around 1000 AD, power and territory were ceded to a medley of conquerors, including Selcuk Turks, Norman crusaders and Mongol hordes. The seeds of the Ottoman empire were sown in the early 14th century and flowered after Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453. The empire reached its zenith in the 16th century under Suleyman the Magnificent, who greatly expanded the empire, decreed good laws, added major edifices to Constantinople, rebuilt Jerusalem and took Ottoman power to the gates of Vienna. After him came the long slow Ottoman decline to the 19th century "sick man of Europe", which was reversed only after Ataturk took charge in 1923 and, almost single-handedly, invented modern Turkey.

Istanbul is steeped in this history. This magical "city of a 1,000 mosques" and 16 million people is criss-crossed by the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn and bounded on the south by the Sea of Marmara. Part of its immense appeal comes from the successful marriage of European standards of public infrastructure with Asian culture and hospitality (Istanbul meets my crucial test for successful modern cities ... clean public toilets, a standard we don't even aspire to!). For sheer beauty of city centres there are few rivals in the world to the rose-bedecked park in Sultanahmet with the glorious Blue Mosque on one side and the majestic Aya Sofia on the other. For a contemplative afternoon, it's hard to beat the lovely gardens of the hill-top, Suleyman mosque (architect Sinan's masterpiece), from where you can gaze down on the Galata bridge spanning the Golden Horn to the posh Beyoglu district.

Turkey's charm is not limited to lovely mosques, churches and palaces. Geography has also been kind, lavishing the beautiful coastlines of the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Seas on three sides of the Anatolia peninsula. But for us the most spectacular scenery was the extraordinary moonscapes of Cappadocia in central Turkey, where millions-year-old volcanic ash sediments have eroded into thousands of conical rock outcrops (with phallic or mushroom shapes, "depending on your perspective" as the Lonely Planet drily observes). Many of these "fairy chimneys" were converted into dwellings in Hittite and Byzantine times (a growing number now host up-market pensions and mini-hotels!). Some of the larger conical outcrops were hollowed out into frescoed churches and monasteries in Byzantine years, as in Goreme.

With Muslims (mostly Sunni) accounting for 98 per cent of her population, you could call Turkey a Muslim country. But in practice it's a more secular nation than India. Kemal Ataturk's modernising reforms of the 1920s have had a lasting impact. Today the Turkish gaze is firmly fixed on Europe and the goal of entry into the EU. (Even the ads on TV and hoardings display mainly blonde, Nordic models.) In today's increasingly polarised world, Turkey's yearning is hardly reciprocated by the present EU membership. Yet, the "Turkish way" could be the most effective antidote to the growing "clash of civilizations". The tragedy is that the chances of successful Turkish entry into the EU are clearly worse than even.

The author is Honorary Professor at ICRIER and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. The views here are personal