And yet, there have been other images that somehow give a kind of hope in the grimness, pictures of peaceful protesters holding up books to the police who stand behind them in riot gear, groups that normally do not have much to do with each other standing shoulder to shoulder. These immediately pulled me back to what I've been reading in my course texts. The great strength of the Ottoman Empire was in its tolerance and acceptance of "the other," according to the book we have been required to read. Unlike most of the rest of medieval Europe, at its height, the Empire based worth on what you could do as much as where you were from or whom you worshipped. Different did not have to mean evil or marked for destruction under their rule. Instead, "different" mean exactly that, not the same, but not unworthy. Even the "big three" religions managed to find a way to coexist there in what, when compared to the rest of the world at that time, can be considered to be mostly peaceful. Not total equality or total freedom, but mostly peacful. It was not any sort of democratic or Utopian paradise, but it was something beyond the Inquisition and the pogroms.
That same idea of tolerance and unity seems to be showing up in these protesters. One news article I read talked about how people from different ethnic groups, people from different regions, even people from rival soccer teams are coming together in these protests against the increasing strictness of the current government. Even though the violence and the injuries that are accompanying them are terrible, there is something remarkable about that unification of differences.
As the readings for this course have made me more aware of the history of the Ottoman Empire, I have realized suddenly just how much the lands it used to control are still in flux, still searching for themselves in the wake of its decline. Surely most of us probably think of nations as something permanent, something always there, even those of us living in a nation as new as this one. The truth of it is that the people of Turkey (and everywhere else that the Ottomans once governed) are less than ninety years out of the rule of a government that held some of them, for better or for worse, for more than six centuries. The powers of the West that carved the dead empire up into pieces and parcels for themselves after its demise have only prolonged the process of growth, of a necessary forging of identity. Therefore, even though they are standing on ancient foundations, they are new construction, and probably we should not be surprised that they change as that process continues.
I very much hope that the protests in Turkey come to some form of peaceful and...well...right...resolution. That may sound very naive. It may actually be so. I do not pretend to be wise enough to know what "right" is in this case. It's not my land; they aren't my issues, even though one of the sources of unrest is the NATO presence on the Syrian border. However, Turkey has been making great strides economically and a time of seemingly slow renaissance for its place in the world has started. I think it would be terrible if that forward motion and self-definition were damaged by the usual suspects: selfishness, powermongering, and pride. Again, I will say that I don't know who is right and who needs to change in this moment. I hope that, even as controversial as it might be, the legacy of that seven-hundred-year old empire can give all that was good and wise of unity and coexistence to its children and allow its darkness and bloodshed to fall away.
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And then you said.....