Turkey's Identity Crisis Keeping It From Western Europe's Embrace

This past week, I returned from a week-long trip to Istanbul, Turkey. In between touring the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, shopping in the crowded Grand Bazaar (which features more than 4,000 stores), becoming addicted to their amazing chai tea, chowing down on Turkish ravioli (don't tell them, but it's essentially Spaghetti-O's), I was given a tutorial on a fascinating nation that literally sits on the cusp of dual -- and dueling -- worlds.

On one hand, Turkey is a thriving secular democracy with its most important city, Istanbul, rivaling New York City in terms of culture and energy. On the other hand, Turkey still struggles with fundamental problems of identity that have been part of the psychic landscape for as long as modern Turkey has been a nation. What's more, these problems continue to deprive Turkey from winning approval to join the European Union The public relations campaign to win EU approval actually illustrates the problem.

When Armenia's soccer team came to town for a recent match, World Cup fans were instructed by no less a personage than Turkey's president to display "Turkish hospitality" to the visitors. They've been doing just that for visitors from many countries, but Armenia is most significant. Despite the recent diplomatic normalization between the nations, many Armenians still view "Turkish hospitality" through the lens of the "Armenian genocide." And the Turks historic refusal to squarely face up to that grim World War I-era ethnic slaughter has been one of the reasons that western Europe has been wary of fully embracing Turkey despite its membership in NATO.

This Turkish charm offensive has also extended to the United States, where a group of American writers, artists and academics were invited by the Turkish Cultural Foundation, a D.C.-based tax-exempt foundation, to visit the secular democracy. I was among the guests on this Anatolian trek -- though I also confess to having gone "rogue" – not in the Sarah Palin way, but merely by abandoning the tour early in favor of spending more time in Istanbul proper, conducting interviews with unexpurgated Turks.

In terms of the care and feeding of tourists, our tour guide subscribed to the drill sergeant approach. What is more, despite having a fine education, our tour guide -- and I'm guessing she believes what she was telling us -- made several obviously false statements, including saying that the Ottoman Empire entered World War I by accident, and that Turkey was the first nation to recognize Israel. (Um, no, that would be the U.S.)

What I observed once I'd cast off the shackles of a tour guide was very much a tale of two cities. Istanbul is a seductively cosmopolitan city filled with world-class attractions. They include trendy hot spots that rival those in Paris or Prague and a vast and beautiful array of awe-inspiring, historically significant sites.

Arguably, the greatest of these is the Hagia Sophia, which was the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years. Other historical sites worth seeing include the Blue Mosque and the Chara. Any American tourist with a pulse would be captivated by the history and aura of the city.

But a visit to these hallowed places, most of which are fraught with religious significance, underscores the deep divisions within the very character of this country. Since the time of Ataturk, the government has aspired to join the world's great powers. Yet even while looking to the world's great Western powers instead of the Arab capitals for inspiration, the Turkish government has used authoritarianism, instead of democracy, as a counterweight to the Turks' tendency toward theocracy.

I visited the ecumenical patriarchate, the historic home of the Greek Orthodox Church. During the powerful Christian empire of Byzantium, when Istanbul was called Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia was the patriarch's home. After the sacking of Constantinople by the Ottomans, the Hagia Sophia was converted to a great mosque; it was turned into a museum when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became president after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Today, the patriarchate finds itself on the verge of extinction. Turkey requires that the patriarch (essentially, the senior bishop and honored leader of the Eastern Orthodox religion) to be a natural-born citizen of Turkey. The problem is there are only a few thousand Eastern Orthodox Christians left in the nation, from which to choose a leader.

What is more, as the EU noted disapprovingly, the government of Turkey closed the church's Theological Seminary of Halki – the only Turkish-based seminary that could train a future patriarch. In essence, Turkey has made it likely that -- unless reform comes soon – that Orthodox Christianity will die out in the nation. The once powerful Christian empire of Byzantium now consists of about 4,000 believers in the nation that was once its capital.

This infringement on religious freedom is not a simple matter of re-creating a seminary here or there to finesse European democrats. Secularization was a key part of the approach used by Atatürk to forge a modern nation out of Turkey.

Turkey's horrific battlefield losses in World War I left Turks receptive to such a restructuring and they were hardly alone: The upheaval of that war sparked the Russian Revolution and the march of communism. Acting on his belief that religiosity hindered Turkish nationalism, Atatürk also did away with the Caliphate, a core institution in Sunni Islam, setting himself, and his nation, apart from the Arab world.

To this day, Turkish law is ruthlessly secular. In defending their laws, Turks stress that they must be guard against Islamic "fundamentalism," knowing that this will strike a chord in European capitals -- and, even more so, in the United States. To be sure, Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise in Turkey, although it's still difficult to understand why in this day and age it should still be illegal for a Christian priest (who is a citizen) to display a collar. Similarly, a Turk may not wear a cross necklace -- or any religious jewelry -- in public. While I visited Turkey, I also had cause to ruminate on the fact that in America the right to worship freely is codified in the same amendment -- and it's the First Amendment -- as the one promising freedom of expression.

And so, as the EU has taken note, religious liberty is not the only issue in Turkey -- so is the lack of a free press. Turkey recently fined Dogan Media Group, Turkey's largest media company, 5.7 billion Turkish liras ($3.9 billion). The EU was not happy with what looked to be a retaliatory act. "If a tax fine is worth the annual turnover of the company, it is quite a strong sanction and it may not only be a fiscal sanction but also it feels like a political sanction," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters in Brussels. "We have serious concerns."

The government claims the media giant was dodging taxes, but feuding between media mogul Aydin Dogan and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is decidedly not about money. The latter remains insistent that the tax fine is part of a routine investigation, but Dogan is a wealthy secularist who represents the old order. Erdogan, the former mayor of Istanbul, is an Islamicist who was once jailed by the regime for his political activities and who is so devout a follower of Islam that he was hospitalized three years ago after fasting so intently during Ramadan.

He feuded constantly with Dogan since coming to power in 2002, and is believed to have been behind the forced resignation of star secular columnist Emin Colasan in 2007. Nonetheless, when the Dogan media began covering German criminal investigation into a Turkish Islamic charity linked to the government, Erdogan called on his followers to boycott Dogan's newspapers.

We have these kinds of spats in America, too, but to draw the analogy out: The Obama administration could not level a nearly $4 billion fine against Fox News. In any event, the EU has watched these developments in Turkey with alarm, knowing that even if the fine does not bankrupt the nation's largest media company, the government's war of nerves against the firm will certainly have a chilling effect on other outlets.

But traditional media is not the only target. Turkey has also banned YouTube and MySpace. Apparently, the YouTube blackout was prompted by videos posted by Greek soccer fans, which included lines that Turks find appalling and blasphemous, such as: "Today's news: Kemal Ataturk was gay!"

If one believes democracy is an evolutionary process, then one should also understand that Turkey is just 90 years removed from the Ottoman Empire. The world should appreciate Turkey for the strides it has made but also hold it accountable for respecting religious minorities and the freedom of the press. Aside from the traffic, the chai and the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul is also famous for the hamam, or Turkish bath. This essentially involves a masseuse using a rough cloth and soap to exfoliate the dirt out of the pores. Turkey, it seems, could use a similar treatment.