The Turks and ‘Europe’: The Argument from History

1. Le Monde, 2 November 2002.

2. A. Pagden, ‘Europe: Conceptualizing a Continent’, in A. Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.46.

3. Ibid., p.47.

4. J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Some Europes in their History’, in Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe, p.57.

5. Pagden, ‘Europe: Conceptualizing a Continent’, p.35.

6. A. Tietze and H.R. Kahane, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin (Istanbul: ABC Publications, 1988); Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, 12 vols. (1934–1961). Toynbee describes the rise and fall of 23 civilizations. His analysis focuses on a cyclical approach to civilizations.

7. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World at the time of Philip II, Vol.2 (London: Collins, 1972), p.1187.

8. N. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p.58; P.L. Wilson, Pirate Utopias. Moorish Corsairs and European Renegados (New York: Autonomedia, 1995).

9. J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York: Praeger, 1954).

10. P. Burke, The European Renaissance. Centres and Peripheries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).

11. Ç. Kafescioğlu, ‘Genişleyen Rönesans, Görsel Kültür ve Sanat Yazımında Rönesans ve Osmanlı Dünyası[The Broadening of the Renaissance. The Renaissance and the Ottoman World as Depicted in Visual Art and Art History], Toplumsal Tarih, No.116 (2003), pp.74–9.

12. L. Jardine and J. Brotton, Global Interests. Renaissance Art between East and West (London: Reaktion, 2000), p.2. The authors make the striking observation that the famous portrait used to hang in the National Gallery identified simply as ‘an Oriental figure’, ‘possibly by Bellini’. As recently as 1991, it was referred to in the Gallery's own catalogue as some kind of copy, ‘which may have originated in a likeness made by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini’.

13. Ibid.

14. G. Necipoğlu, ‘The Serial Portraits of Ottoman Sultans in a Comparative Perspective’, in G. Necipoğlu (ed.), The Sultan's Portrait. Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: İş Bank, 2000), p.28.

15. S. Yerasimos, ‘Türkler Romalıların Mirasçısı mıdır?’[Are the Turks the Heirs of the Romans?], Toplumsal Tarih, No.116 (2003), pp.68–73.

16. Ibid.

17. S. Yerasimos, ‘Avrupalılar Gözünde Osmanlılar: Stefanos Yerasimos ile Söyleşi’[The European View of the Ottomans: Interview with Stephanos Yerasimos], Toplumsal Tarih (October 2003), pp.24–9.

18. Ibid., p.24.

19. Yerasimos, ‘Türkler Romalıların Mirasçısımıdır?’, p.70, citing J. Bodin, La Méthode de l'Histoire.

20. J. Raby, ‘Tesavir-i Al-i Osman’, in Necipoğlu (ed.), The Sultan's Portrait, pp.18–19.

21. M. Mazower, The Balkans (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), pp.64–5.

22. L. Babaoğlu, ‘16–17 Yüzyıllar Arasında Avusturya Kültür ve Sanatında Türkler’[The Turks in Austrian Culture and Art in the 16th and 17th centuries], Aptullah Kuran İçin Yazılar. Essays in Honour of Aptullah Kuran (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Bank Publications, 1999), pp.103–15.

23. F.-M. Voltaire, Oeuvres completes de Voltaire. Essais sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des nations (Paris: J. Bry Ainé Librarie Editeur, 1858), Vol.3 bis, p.62. My translation.

24. Ibid.

25. D. Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, New Approaches to European History Series, 2002), p.12.

26. C. Finkel, Osman's Dream. The History of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923 (London: John Murray, 2005), p.370.

27. Y.S. Gönen, ‘The Integration of the Ottoman Empire into the European State System’, unpublished master's thesis, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, 1991, p.104. This thesis is just one example of the type of pioneering work that awaits the researcher in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. Based on Ottoman archival sources.

28. B. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp.40, 55.

29. Gönen, ‘The Integration of the Ottoman Empire’, pp.67, 68, 69.

30. H. Laurens, L'Expédition D'Egypte (Paris: Fayard, 1989), p.195.

31. Ibid., pp.189–90.

32. Ibid., p.197.

33. As cited in E. Eldem, Pride and Privilege. A History of Ottoman Orders Medals and Decorations (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, 2004), pp.21–5. The Admiral was in fact given two decorations, the aigrette and a diamond encrusted medal bearing the star and crescent, the tapestry reproduction of which is featured on the uniform at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. He was wearing this uniform at Trafalgar.

34. Gönen, ‘The Integration of the Ottoman Empire’, p.70.

35. C. Neuman, Araç Tarih Amaç Tanzimat. Tarih-I Cevdet'in Siyasi Anlamı[History as the Tool, Reform as the Aim. The Political Meaning of the Tarih-i Cevdet] (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Publications, 1999), p.141. Ahmet Cevdet Paşa wrote a multi-volume ‘History’, the Tarih-I Cevdet, which is commonly recognized as the first modern history of the Ottoman Empire in the age of reform.

36. S. Deringil, The Well Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), p.3.

37. Ibid., p.2: ‘Düvel ve emaret-i Hıristiyane içinde çakılub kalmışız’. Said Paşa served seven times as the Grand Vizier of Abdülhamid II. On him see, M.K. Inal, Son Sadrazamlar[The Last Grand Viziers] (Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1982).

38. Deringil, The Well Protected Domains, p.4.

39. S. Deringil, ‘Aspects of Continuity in Turkish Foreign Policy. Abdülhamid II and İsmet İnönü’, International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol.4 (1987), pp.42–3.

40. A.C. Paşa, Tezakir (Ankara: The Turkish History Institute, 1986).

41. For an excellent study on the deconstruction of Greek nationalism see P. Kitromiledes, Imagined Communities and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans (Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 1994), pp.149–92.

42. J. McCarthy, Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), particularly pp.1–21.

43. As cited by Mazower in The Balkans, p.11.

44. P. Magnus, Gladstone. A Biography (London: John Murray, 1963), p.242.

45. Mazower, The Balkans, pp.1–16.

46. M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.12.

47. R. Margulies, ‘Abdülhamid ve Kılıcı. ‘En korkunç Türk’[Abdulhamid and his Sword. The ‘Most Terrible Turk’], Virgül, No.89 (Nov. 2005). Margulies is referring to J. Krumgold, The Most Terrible Turk (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969), pp.32–50.

48. Margulies, ‘Abdülhamid ve Kılıcı’. Margulies gives a representative sample of some of these postcards.

49. For a recent example see, E. Çaykara, Tarihçilerin Kutbu. ‘Halil İnalcık Kitabı’ (Istanbul: İş Bankası Press, 2005) (this is a 484-page text consisting of a series of interviews with Halil İnalcık).

50. Ş. Alpay, ‘Bulutların Içindeki Şehir’[The City in the Clouds], Zaman, 20 June 2006.

51. Çaykara, Tarihçilerin Kutbu, p.181.

52. N. Pope and H. Pope, Turkey Unveiled. A History of Modern Turkey (New York: Overlook Press, 2004), pp.250, 260.

53. T. Özal (Premier Ministre de Turquie), La Turquie en Europe (Paris: Plon, 1988), p.17. The main argument is the old ‘Aegean Thesis’, whereby it is argued that the Aegean zone shared a common culture that pre-dated the ancient Greeks and that the Turks have an equal share in this heritage. The idea was put forward by a group of Turkish intellectuals led by Azra Erhat, a prominent expert on Greek mythology.

54. N. Uysal, Zaman Kaybolmaz[Time is Never Lost] (Istanbul, 2005) (a series of interviews carried out with İlber Ortaylı), p.277.

55. G. Aktan, ‘Milliyetçi Modernleşme’[Nationalist Modernization], Radikal, 24 Feb. 2005.