FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Rebel Land

Rant Number 414 5 October 2010

‘The sick man of Europe’, the gloating European powers termed Ottoman Turkey way back. Funny how today it is Europe that has become sick. But Turkey has its own ailments, albeit of a different kind. Christopher de Bellaigue’s penetrating book, Rebel Land, is like a surgical probe. Under his sharp, healing scalpel the patient’s condition is exposed to full, veridical view. What the outcome of the disease will be, however, is unclear.

‘We have no minorities in Turkey’, the governor of the Kurdish town of Varto glibly informs the author. That takes you straight to the heart of the matter. Because Turkey’s disorder is kind of cardiac. There are more than 10 million Kurds in Turkey. Kurds themselves say as many as 20 millions. A proud, self-conscious people with its own identity, languages and traditions. Whatever Kurds are, they are not Turks. But Turkish Kemalist state dogma asserts that Turkey is for Turks. Hence Kurds are ipso facto outsiders. Aliens in their own land. From their resentment flows the festering insurgency that has long been bleeding Eastern Turkey. As well as the ugly, brutal counter-insurgency. The state’s repressive stock in trade, says De Bellaigue ‘was torture, targeted killings, and the burning of villages, and its practitioners those sickos and opportunists, peddlers of arms, narcotics and murderous xenophobia who never wanted to end.’

I am familiar with De Bellaigue’s Rebel Land. I shall never forget dreary, rainy towns like Bingol, teeming with scowling plainclothes cops, submachine guns peeping out of their coats. ‘We’ll kill the all!’ boasted one of the Turkish commandos manning a roadblock, meaning the ubiquitous but invisible guerrillas. My friend Nicolas and I had a close shave, when I innocently mixed up an inquiry about the PTT – Post Office – with the PKK – Kurdish guerrilla movement. Good job that Turkish officer had a sense of humour!

Moreover, I recall a certain young Ankara friend, an NCO sent to fight the dirty war. His letters from the rebel lands made my hair stand on end. ‘Surely H. must be exaggerating’ I wondered. Alas, it was true, all too true.

Turkey’s Islamist, reformist government has eased the repression somewhat. PM Erdogan’s approach to the Kurdish question seems attractive. ‘He promotes the unity of Turks and Kurds, not as Turks all together, but as Muslims under God’, De Bellaigue notes. I warm to that. Religion should unite people. If the Kemalist establishment does not stop him, Erdogan might even succeed. But there are powerful snags. First, the religious affinity argument cherished by Islamists may not be quite enough. Consider: Spaniards, Frenchmen and Austrians are all Catholics. Did that ever stop those nations fighting each other to death for centuries? England and Holland both share Protestantism. Yet their empires conducted bloody clashes over rival colonial and trading interests. Spaniards and Basques also are Catholics. Does that stop ETA terrorists from attacking the Spanish state? Muslim Arabs and Muslim Turks – have they never warred against each other? You get my drift. Actually, deeply-felt grievances – and antipathies - may override the strongest faith bonds.

Second, Turkish Islam is not homogeneous. A fascinating strand in Rebel Land concerns the large Alevi minority. How many? Millions? Nobody is sure. Statistics differ. They are heterodox branch of Islam, especially numerous amongst Kurds. De Bellaigue found them reticent about their actual beliefs and tenets. He admits most of the time people thought him a British spy. (A fate many Westerners must suffer in Turkey. Of course, the real spies no one knows.) Regardless, Alevi credences set them apart from mainstream Muslims, even the Shia to whom they are loosely related. Alevi Scriptures are said to subordinate Muhammad to Ali, or to amalgamate them. Daily ritual prayers, fasting, the Mecca pilgrimage are also disregarded. Alevis hotly deny that, they complain of Sunni calumnies. Allahu a’alam. However, spiritual imperatives like ‘Be master of your hands, of your tongue and of your loins’ appeal to the priest. And I absolutely adore the story our author relates of the Alevi shaykh, Seyit Neseme. A Sunni guy once asked him: ‘Which are the better Muslims? Alevis or Sunnis?’ Obviously, a trick question. I envy the beauty of his response: ‘The good are good.’ Spoken like a true mystic! They say Seyit was a clairvoyant and had magical powers. None of that popular lore can efface the tautological splendour of that ‘The good are good’. I might have become one of Seyit’s followers myself, I feel.

Anyway, the point is that these peculiar Alevi Kurds are unlikely to buy Erdogan’s panislamism. Hence the Kurdish question will not fade out as easily as the Turkish government may wish. The sickness is likely to endure.

De Bellaigue writes exceedingly well. He combines the skills of litterateur and ethnographer. Rebel Land is a manual of Turkish history, culture, religion and politics, narrated with the verve of a novelist. The only fault is that this novel pullulates with perhaps too many characters. I have counted 42 dramatis personae but there must be more than that. Well, luxuriance has its virtues.

Rebel Land is also somewhat autobiographical. From a distinguished English family, married to an Iranian, a fluent Turkish speaker – groan...the wretched priest never approached that – the author’s love affair with Turkey is long-standing. His own personal Verwirrungen are more than hinted at. His decision to do his research in Varto – surely an unlovely Cinderella in the Turkish East – was prompted by the objections an American scholar took to something he had written about the extermination of the Armenians. Indeed, the bloody shades of the victims of the genocide – I chose the word advisedly - perpetrated by the Young Turks during WWI still haunt the Turkish lands which were once Armenia. Amidst the ruins of the sublime Armenian church of Akdamar on Lake Van I became aware of voices of ancient Armenian saints whispering to me. My friend Nicolas heard me converse with invisible interlocutors – ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. But I never felt better.

What were the voices saying? As befits saints, they spoke neither of rage nor revenge but of justice. A justice which is still owed to their martyred people.

Franz Werfel’s fine novel, The 40 Days of Musa Dag, reports moving stories of Armenian suffering and resistance. Notably, a Turkish sheikh who opposed the genocide was the head of a major Sufi fraternity. Seyit Nemesi, I bet, would have done nothing less. Naturally so. Because the bad are bad, but the good are good.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli