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Norman Stone
Villagers may have odd ways of dealing with it, but this country has a history of coping with medical problemsTHE BIRD FLU scare has hit Turkey with especially unfortunate timing. In the first place it is midwinter in eastern Turkey, where the first casualties have been reported, and that means deep snow: it takes heroic effort for ambulances to get through and, in the remoter mountain villages, even culling the sick poultry is impossible.
On top of this, the country has just embarked on a traditional holiday, “the Feast of the Sacrifice”. At this time of the year you sometimes think that the entire country is on the move. It is a holiday when people go back to visit their families, whether in the provinces (nearly half of the population of Istanbul was born either in the Black Sea region or the mainly Kurdish east) or in the Netherlands or Germany. In the past few years the level of prosperity in Turkey has shot up, so that many Turks can afford to buy plane tickets whereas, ten years ago, they were saving empty plastic bottles of water against a rainy day. The airports are swamped — especially Istanbul — and the problem is not made any easier because many would-be travellers not only travel with the kitchen sink but even try to pass it off as hand luggage, and have long arguments at the check-in desk with some poor long-suffering girl who does not have the same opinion of the eternal superiority of the male of the species that the male of the species in Turkey sometimes displays.
It is easy to show television images of general backwardness in Turkey, of course. The Feast of the Sacrifice itself does not do much to counter these, because, once you get out of the Westernised parts, you will find dozens, or even, at Adana on the southeastern coast, thousands of sheep corralled along the side of the road, waiting to be killed and eaten. The Feast of the Sacrifice revolts most educated Turks, and in the old days the streets of towns used to run with the blood of the animals.
The paradox about modern Turkey is that these peasant habits have carried on into not just urban life, but the ultra-modern urban life of television and mobile phones. Girls wearing Muslim kit, for instance, gabble into mobile phones and the mayor of Kadiköy on the Anatolian shore of Istanbul (where the Council of Chalcedon was held under Emperor Constantine) has just, in his wisdom, declared that it is all right to slaughter the beasts provided that their feet have been disinfected against bird flu. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, who was brought into power by the same constituency of “upwardly mobile” migrants from small-town Anatolia, has spoken out in his support. What does it all mean? Will Turkey deal with this crisis effectively? The answer is yes, at least in the sense that this particular foreign resident is not going to join the throngs at Istanbul airport to flee the country.
The good mayor of Chalcedon’s comments have to be placed in a context. Village life, as noticed from Balzac to Zola, is not as other life. There was an extraordinary case the other day in the local press. A man discovered that his neighbour had used the man’s chicken for sexual purposes. He was very angry, and shot him. Sexual congress with chickens would probably have been the most direct way of contracting bird flu and most Turkish villagers would behave sensibly. The question is, who leads them?
Now here we have the central matter of today’s Turkey. In the first place there is quite a long tradition of dealing with medical problems effectively. Turkey has, with Japan, the only story of a non-Western country that successfully adapted. The story is traditionally thought to go with Kemal Atatürk, but it had longer origins. Efforts to modernise the country were being made by good Turks — or Ottomans — before his time. A medical school was founded in 1864 and though for some time many of the doctors were Armenian, in the post-Ottoman period bright young men (and women: the stethoscope and the dentist’s drill were as considerable agents of emancipation as were the typewriter and the bicycle in Western Europe) could prove their progressive credentials by contributing to the nation’s health. Abolishing malaria and cholera came high on the list — the draining of the marshes upon which the capital, Ankara, was built was part of that modernisation story.
While that modernising process has been a considerable success it was complicated by a tremendous process of demographic explosion. In the first generation of “progress” peasants go on with the old ways, slaughtering sheep and making babies as before. Then reality supervenes and the Turkish population — a basic sign of its modernity — has learnt to trust doctors.
It is still true that in Turkey the brightest and best tend to go into the “hard” professions — engineering and medicine — because their talents are needed in a way that is not as obvious in the West, where the laurels go elsewhere. However, as to their general competence, we do not need to worry overmuch. What is particularly significant at the moment is that there is also a government that is attempting to bridge the gap between that peasant-migrant world and the world of the medics and engineers.
A crisis such as bird flu is interesting because it shows the two worlds of Turkey — Kurdish women in inaccessible villages trying to defend their livelihoods on the one side; on the other, a State determined to match the latest Western norms, and a government that sometimes says silly things but often does right ones.
What will be the outcome? Those of us who live here have been through other problems, such as the earthquake of 1999, and know that the Turks always get there in the end.
Norman Stone is Professor of History at Koç University, Istanbul
ANKARA [MENL] — Turkey has ordered a major military operation against Kurdish insurgents near the Iraqi border.
Officials said Turkey’s Gendarmerie Command has launched an operation against the Kurdish Workers Party. They said the counter-insurgency mission was taking place in Tunceli, a rural area near the Iraqi and Syrian borders.
“This is a major operation against what we detect is a large concentration of terrorists,” a Turkish security source said.
Officials said the Gendarmerie Command has deployed more than 1,000 troops in the offensive against the PKK. They said the ground force was supported by combat helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
@mikethehack wrote:
ANKARA [MENL] — Turkey has ordered a major military operation against Kurdish insurgents near the Iraqi border.
Officials said Turkey’s Gendarmerie Command has launched an operation against the Kurdish Workers Party. They said the counter-insurgency mission was taking place in Tunceli, a rural area near the Iraqi and Syrian borders.
“This is a major operation against what we detect is a large concentration of terrorists,” a Turkish security source said.
Officials said the Gendarmerie Command has deployed more than 1,000 troops in the offensive against the PKK. They said the ground force was supported by combat helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
They are referring to the city of Tunceli?
Maybe a 10 hour drive to the border, at least.Bulgaria will open a new border checkpoint to neighbouring Turkey in a bid to boost bilateral trade and contacts.
The new crossing will connect the Bulgarian village of Lessovo, some 400 km southeast of Sofia with Hamzabeyli in Turkey, Bulgarian Minister of Regional Development Assen Gagauzov said.
He said the construction of the Bulgarian part of the crossing would be complete by the end of this year.
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