Torn Ethnicities

Kaya Genç
Google Images

Kaya Genç , writing "Who Is a Turk? It’s Complicated" (NYT, April 1, 2018), notes that new means of genetic analysis are wreaking havoc with ethnic nationalisms and ideologies of ethnic purity. The results in Turkey are quite interesting, for there has been a:

. . . debunking [of] the imaginary ethnic purity of Turkish nationalism. Indeed, a 2012 study in the journal Annals of Human Genetics found that Turkey’s paternal ancestry was 38 percent European, 35 percent Middle Eastern, 18 percent South Asian and 9 percent Central Asian.

So much for the romantic myth of the Turk storming down on thundering hooves from Central Asia!

Turkey has also recently opened its population register, whose archives go back to Ottoman times, and people are finding many surprising things:

One Turkish nationalist learned that his great-grandmother was of Kurdish origin . . .

A writer friend was surprised to discover her great-grandfather’s name was Isaac . . .

One of my neighbors found out she had European roots and decided to apply for dual citizenship . . .

Many Turks discovered they had Armenian family ties just recently . . .

That part about Armenian ancestry will be very interesting to pick up on. I would, in turn, like to see what a genetic analysis of various European countries would uncover, particularly in such ethnically 'pure' states as Hungary and Poland.

Alawite versus Sunni: Spillover into Turkey?

Alawite and Christian Iconography
Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times
New York Times

When I lived in Germany, I became friends with a Turkish Kurd named Memo who belonged to the Alawite minority, about 15 to 20 million (sic. see update below) of the Turkish population. I noticed from the start that he was a very liberal Muslim, but I eventually came to see that most Muslims -- or most Sunnis, anyway -- wouldn't consider him Muslim at all. At one point, he confided that the Alawites considered the Christian "Sermon on the Mount" as sacred scripture. Note the above photo, which shows an Alawite combining Christian and Alawite iconography.

Despite their moderate religious character (courtesy of their syncretism), Turkish Alawites are feeling spillover from the conflict in Syria between Alawites and Sunnis, as Jeffrey Gettleman explains in his article "As Syria War Roils, Unrest Among Sects Hits Turkey" (NYT, August 4, 2012):

As Syria's civil war degenerates into a bloody sectarian showdown between the government's Alawite-dominated troops and the Sunni Muslim majority, tensions are increasing across the border between Turkey's Alawite minority and the Sunni Muslim majority here.

Many Turkish Alawites, estimated at 15 million to 20 million strong and one of the biggest minorities in this country, seem to be solidly behind Syria's embattled strongman, Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey's government, and many Sunnis, supports the Syrian rebels.

The Alawites fear the sectarian violence spilling across the border. Already, the sweltering, teeming refugee camps along the frontier are fast becoming caldrons of anti-Alawite feelings.

And the Turkish Alawites worry about their own Sunni government and its increasingly Islamist policies, which could be designated "creeping sharia":

The Turkish government is led by an Islamist-rooted party that is slowly but clearly trying to bring more religion, particularly Sunni Islam, into the public sphere, eschewing decades of purposefully secular rule. Alawites here find it deeply unsettling, and a bit hypocritical, that Turkey has teamed up with Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive countries in the world, and Qatar, a religious monarchy, both Sunni, to bring democracy to Syria.

The Alawites point to the surge of foreign jihadists streaming into Turkey, en route to fight a holy war on Syria's battlefields. Many jihadists are fixated on turning Syria, which under the Assad family's rule has been one of the most secular countries in the Middle East, into a pure Islamist state.

Sunni jihadists would certainly not take kindly to Alawites, either in Syria or Turkey, for orthodox Muslims consider them bad Muslims or not even Muslims at all, making them subject to 'legitimate' attack:

The Alawites here [in Turkey] are worried they could become easy targets. Historically, they have been viewed with suspicion across the Middle East by mainstream Muslims and often scorned as infidels. The Alawite sect was born in the ninth century and braids together religious beliefs, including reincarnation, from different faiths.

Many Alawites do not ever go to a mosque; they tend to worship at home or in Alawite temples that have been denied the same state support in Turkey that Sunni mosques get. Many Alawite women do not veil their faces or even cover their heads. The towns they dominate in eastern Turkey, where young women sport tank tops and tight jeans, feel totally different than religious Sunni towns just a few hours away, where it can be difficult even to find a woman in public.

Refik Eryilmaz,an Alawite member of the Turkish parliament, meets Mr. Gettleman to explain why they are different:

He was sitting in a cafe in Antakya, a border town with a large Alawite population, and digging into a plate of baklava during the bright, sunny hours of the afternoon, when Muslims observing Ramadan usually fast.

"Look at my people," he smiled, spreading his hands wide and encompassing families eating ice cream and one young couple nuzzling on a couch. "My people are free."

He means free from sharia, and he's right . . . for now.

UPDATE: Long-time reader Erdal points out that Mr. Gettleman has conflated Alawites with Alevis, and I was careless enough to neglect fact-checking. The Alevis number 10 to 20 million, mostly in Turkey. The Alawites (or Alawi) number about 2.5 million, mostly in Syria. I knew of the two different groups, but not of the relative numbers.

Why Turkey Can't Admit to Its Armenian Genocide: The Crucial Reason!

Ahmet Davutoğlu

Foreign Minister of Turkey

(Wikipedia)

In an article in Sunday's Zaman, "Sarkozy insists: Turkey not part of EU" (October 7, 2011), the outspoken French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, is reported as stating a blunt opinion about Turkey's responsibility for the Armenian genocide:

During his visit to Armenia, Sarkozy . . . urged Turkey to recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide, threatening to pass a law in France that would make denying this a crime. "The Armenian genocide is a historical reality. Collective denial is even worse than individual denial," Sarkozy told reporters. "Turkey, which is a great country, would honor itself to revisit its history like other great countries in the world have done."

Turkey was not especially pleased by Sarkozy's outspoken remarks, and Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu offered a stiff rejoinder

Turkey, in response, said France should confront its colonial past before giving lessons to others on how to face history. "Those who will not be able to face their own history for having carried out colonialism for centuries, for treating foreigners as second-class people, do not have the right to teach Turkey a history lesson or call for Turkey to face its history," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told reporters on Friday.

Ah, I now see why Turkey cannot own up to the Armenian genocide. Having carried out colonialism for centuries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans, Turkey has no right to teach itself a history lesson!

Who knew that history was so difficult to pursue, so demanding of purity among its practitioners, so discriminating in its moral scruples that we are all unworthy to teach true history?

After yesterday's ridiculous, today's sublime...

Pope Benedict XVI and Turkey's Religious Affairs Director Ali Bardakoglu

(AP Image from Yahoo! News)

(Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press)

(Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc.)

Pope Benedict appears to be trying to soothe relations with Muslims, shaking hands with Ali Bardakoglu, head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directories and stating:

"Peace is the basis of all religions."

Let's hope that it is. Bardakoglu, anyway, doesn't object to greeting the Pope and shaking his hand, unlike this fellow who blogs at The Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge and who would refuse to shake hands with a Christian, as explained in his November 27th entry "Shaykh 'Azzam: Let Them Find Harshness In You":

[T]hey said to Ibn Hajar al-Haythami: "Is it allowed for the Muslim to extend his hand when greeting a Christian, so that he could shake it?" He answered: "No, because the Christian will feel at peace when he is shaking your hand. So, it is not allowed for you to extend your hand for him to shake." ... It was narrated to me by the leader of the Islamic Movement in Jordan -- our teacher, Muhammad 'Abd ar-Rahman Khalifah....

Not knowing anything about the teacher Muhammad 'Abd ar-Rahman Khalifah nor about Muslim views on this issue of refusing a handshake -- though it sounds Salafi to my ears -- I'll ignore the missing pieces of my knowledge in this puzzle and leave the research to others.

Why?

Because I've got other fish to fry ... such as to finish grading, by classtime this morning, the final three of those hundred essays that I've been busy with for over a week now...

Mustafa Akyol: 'Deleting' Sexism in Turkey

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey

(As Depicted at Wikipedia)

If only deleting sexism were as easy as deleting hate email. Nevertheless, this is a good development for Islam in Turkey.

The Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol, in his article "[Sexism Deleted] in Turkey," written for the Washington Post (registration required), reports on a recent "step toward reforming Islamic tradition ... [by] Turkey's religious authorities."

Reform in Islam? Isn't that considered innovation (bid'ah) and therefore a form of heresy? There is, after all, a report of Muhammad's words in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 49, Number 861:

Narrated Aisha: Allah's Apostle said, "If somebody innovates something which is not in harmony with the principles of our religion, that thing is rejected."

For Salafist Muslims, who interpret this passage narrowly, the clause beginning with "which" would probably be set off with commas in the English translation:

"If somebody innovates something, which is not in harmony with the principles of our religion, that thing is rejected."

The comma before the word "which" would make the clause a nonrestrictive relative clause and thereby imply that every innovation is to be rejected. Not knowing Arabic, I'll have to leave this translation issue to the experts.

At any rate Turkish Islam is not Salafist Islam and might well be termed "Kemalist Islam" after the gentleman whose photograph you see above, Kemal Atatürk.

Atatürk was a Turkish nationalist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who emphasized Turkish tradition over Islam and who came to political power after Turkey's defeat in WWI and set up a secular state that tightly controls Islam ... although these controls have loosened considerably in recent years.

Despite the loosening, the Turkish state still controls Islam and official religious scholars have recently declared hadith such as the following to be inauthentic:

"Women are imperfect in intellect and religion."

"The best of women are those who are like sheep."

"If a woman doesn't satisfy her husband's desires, she should choose herself a place in hell."

"If a husband's body is covered with pus and his wife licks it clean, she still wouldn't have paid her dues."

"Your prayer will be invalid if a donkey, black dog or a woman passes in front of you.

One sees what is at stake here, namely, the denigration and control of women, and one must applaud the efforts of Ali Bardakoglu, the liberal Muslim theologian who has for three years served as president of the Diyanet Isleri, Turkey's highest Islamic authority, and who has led it to declare that a new collection of hadiths free of misogyny will be ready by 2008.

Concerning this reform, Akyol makes an interesting point:

These reform-minded Muslims [such as Bardakoglu] are not [extreme] secularists who want to do away with religion. On the contrary, they want to reinterpret Islam because they believe that its divinely ordained, humane and generous essence has been eclipsed by mortal man's erroneous traditions and ideologies.

This is crucial because only such godly reformists have a chance to appeal to more traditional members of their faith. Since the 19th century, traditional Muslims have felt forced to choose between their faith and modernity -- a dilemma that has been fueling a reactionary strain of radical Islam. The Islamic world needs an alternative -- a path between godless modernity and anti-modern bigotry. With its revision of the traditional Islamic sources and with its rising Muslimhood that embraces democracy and open society, Turkey may just be opening the way. The West should be taking notice -- and encouraging other Muslim countries to take inspiration from Turkey's moderate course.

In effect, Aykol is arguing that Islamic reform will only work if pious Muslims reform it through arguing that the innovators are precisely those who have accepted as authentic the manifestly inauthentic hadith such as the misogynistic ones quoted above. The burden of proof is shifted from the reformers to the traditionalists. In effect, the reformers as challenging the traditionalists by asking them how they can consider hatred of women to be something that Muhammad authentically taught.

The traditionalists reaction to this challenge should prove interesting to observe, and I hope that Aykol will keep us posted, for if this reform takes hold in Islam, so can other reforms.