Hey there.
I lived in Turkey for five years, and I’ve watched the one thing everybody knows about
the country change.
Five years ago it was “that’s the country where East meets West”.
Now it’s “Isn’t Turkey getting more Islamic”.
Both of these statements are true in some senses, but get sillier the closer you look
at the country.
In particular, the extreme version of this sentiment.
“Turkey’s turning into Saudi Arabia” is deeply ridiculous.
To explain why this is, I’m going to need to talk about the English Civil War.
Obviously.
In 1641 England had a king named Charles, a parliament, a ruling aristocracy, and a
thriving commercial culture that would change the world.
In 1660 England had a king named Charles, a parliament, a ruling aristocracy, and a
thriving commercial culture that was changing the world.
It seems the same but in fact it was quite different.
In 1660 the Parliament was much more powerful.
It took another three decades to really settle it, but this era saw the birth of England’s
modern political system.
Elements of this English system are now present in almost every country in the world.
It’s what happened between these two years that makes me think of Turkey today.
What happened in the middle was the English Civil war.
A group of religious fanatics, far more extreme than Turkey’s AK party today, took over
the country.
Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wait sorry, Under the leadership of Oliver
Cromwell, the New Model Army rose to power, smashing religious iconography, destroying
the old establishment and taking charge.
The parallels between Cromwell and Erdogan are striking.
Though the English leader was much more extreme.
Cromwell started out as a figure that stood up for fire and brimstone Christianity and
the people’s right to govern themselves, and then ended up destroying that right, setting
up personal, authoritarian rule.
But he couldn’t change England entirely.
Even after the death of the king, and as many as 200,000 Irish, English, Scottish, and Welsh
soldiers and Civilians Cromwell couldn’t build his religious utopia.
It didn’t last for much more than a year after his death.
What he was bumping up against was English culture and institutions.
Religious fanatics can take power for a while in any society, but they can’t truly defeat
the generations deep traditions and inclinations of a country.
The English wanted a king and a strong parliament and they got it.
They’ve still got it today, though in a very different mix.
Erdogan has the same problem Cromwell did.
Even if he wanted to turn Turkey into Saudi Arabia or Iran, which I don’t really think
he does, he couldn’t.
There’s just too much history there.
Saudi Arabia’s development is unique.
It tries hard to claim the heritage of the ancient Islamic empires, dating back to the
time of the prophet.
In truth, however, the Sauds stole Mecca and Medina from the real owners of that heritage
back in the 1920’s.
Back then Saudi Arabia had a distinctly pre-modern blank slate of a society.
It had a royal family and a religious establishment, but that was it.
Thanks to oil wealth they were able to build a country from scratch very quickly.
Before oil, Saudi Arabia didn’t have much in the way of institutions, history, an educational
establishment, or even people really.
Saudi society is as weird as it is because it’s been invented out of thin air in less
than a century.
No Turkish leader will ever have that opportunity.
Some Turkish institutions, like the University of Istanbul, and to some extent its military,
go back 500 years.
Before the Ottoman Empire fell in the 1920’s it had been reforming and modernizing for
over a century.
A Turkish parliament, no matter how many times it has been ripped up and started over, dates
back to 1876.
Saudi Arabia still doesn’t really have one.
Ataturk, the father of the Turkish Republic, a deeply anti-religious figure, set Turkey’s
path in 1923.
For 80 years Turks were brought up to believe their country was a secular republic.
Erdogan’s rise in the first decade of the century showed that there were many who were
not content with a completely anti-religious government.
Turkey wants to be a little more religious.
But it also wants to be a secular republic.
No matter how many people he purges, Erdogan can’t beat history out of Turkey.
He will never be able to defeat the legacy of Ataturk, and he will never be able to do
without the country’s centuries old institutions.
This history is in the hearts and minds of his opponents, but it’s also in the hearts
and minds of his supporters as well.
When the Turkish Cromwell finally leaves the stage, a stronger, better Turkey will emerge,
just as it did in England so many years ago.
Turkey can never be Saudi Arabia.
Thanks for watching, please subscribe.
Also, I’m in the middle of a funding drive at the moment.
If I can’t get my crowd-funding dollars up to US minimum wage by July 15th, 1979,
I’m going to have to stop running this channel.
If you want to help keep this thing alive, please consider chipping in at the link here...