When you write a column that is called ‘on the spot’ it can be very annoying when you sometimes just miss being on the spot. This is what happened to me in Istanbul. I was there, as you know if you read this column, a couple of weeks ago and staying in a hotel overlooking Thaksin Square. On my first day in the city I explored the square and the winding streets and narrow alleys that led downwards from it towards the Bosporus. In the square I stopped at pavement stalls selling posters and knickknacks. In a little jewelry shop I bought myself an evil eye bracelet and in a small café I ate delicious kebabs and drank cold, dry Turkish wine. And, then with others attending the conference I had come to attend I wandered down a street filled with restaurants, bars and shops selling Turkish sweets to an old building where in a room with large windows there was a reception. We drank more Turkish wine and ate mezze. So it was that I spent two peaceful and lovely days in Thaksin Square without realizing for a moment that days after I left it would erupt in protests and violence that political commentators all over the world are already beginning to call a Turkish spring.
Did I sense the possibilities of this spring in the four days that I spent in Istanbul? Yes, I did and it was mostly from talking to women. I met a former bureaucrat who told me that she thought she had lost her job in government because she was not Islamic enough. She was an attractive, middle-aged woman who said she believed in God, just like most people did, but she did not think this prevented her from enjoying a glass of wine. The people who denied her a renewal of her government contract clearly did and according to her version of what happened she was told when she was being dismissed that it had been noticed that she publicly drank wine.
She was not the only woman who sensed what many people described as ‘Erdogan’s insidious Islamization’. The woman guide who showed me around the magnificent Agya Sofia said that there were attempts to turn it back into a mosque. ‘It has been a museum now since Ataturk’s time,’ she said ‘and it should stay a museum because it was once a cathedral that was converted into a mosque in Ottoman times and so it is best that it remain a museum. But, now on Fridays protesters gather outside and demand that it be converted back into a mosque.’ Luckily for humanity this place of worship that was built as the largest cathedral of its time by a Roman emperor was not destroyed by the Ottoman sultans. They simply plastered over the Christian frescoes and mosaics on its vaulted ceilings and covered the faces of angels with masks. If it is converted back into a mosque now what will happen?
While I was in Istanbul I noticed some signs of creeping Islamization. There were many more women wearing hijab than I remembered from when I was here two years ago although when I mentioned this to the Turkish women I met they said I may have seen Arab tourists and mistaken them for locals. While I was in Istanbul a ban on liquor being sold between 10 pm and 6 am was announced. This would have a direct effect on Turkey’s huge and very lucrative tourism industry. Turkey gets more than 30 million international tourists a year and Istanbul alone gets close to 13 million. This is a nightmare for traveling foreigners like myself, who was deterred from seeing many wonderful mosques and palaces by the long queues, but has helped turkey’s economy grow enormously.
The Turkish economy has done very well under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But, what worries people is not just his Islamic streak but his tendency to be ruthlessly authoritarian. I met a woman journalist while I was there who told me that when it came to controlling the media his administration now used subtler means than before. Instead of sending inconvenient journalists to prison they simply lose their jobs she said. But, there are enough who have been sent to jail. The Erdogan government has a reputation for sending more journalists to jail than any other and this makes the media less critical of his grandiose plans than it may have been. Among them is a truly grandiose plan to build what is being called a ‘second Bosporus’ to link the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara.
What worries people even more are Erdogan’s alleged plans to remain in power after his second term as prime minister ends next year. I heard on my wanderings in Istanbul that he is considering becoming President and moving Turkey to an American style presidential form of government. So the protesters in Thaksin Square were not just protesting against the decision to turn a public park into a shopping mall or a mosque. What they were protesting against was a leader who seems to have allowed his decade in power to go to his head. Perhaps the protesters are really only a small majority, perhaps they are those of secular bent who do not represent the vast majority of Turkish people who are deeply religious and see no problem with Islamization or an authoritarian ruler. But, as a visitor to one of the most beautiful cities in the world I have to say that it would be a great tragedy if Istanbul suddenly lost its bars and restaurants and if Islamization caused monuments of great international importance to be turned into mosques.
What I will say in Erdogan’s defense is that in the days I spent wandering about Thaksin Square I never sensed for a single moment that I was in a city in which repression lay under the surface in any deep way. There were no signs of repression that I detected at all nor were there signs of an eruption of public anger or I may have stayed on longer in Thaksin Square than I did. If there is going to be a long and hard Turkish spring we can only hope that it does not in any way ruin Istanbul which is truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
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