Gratitude

As the sun sets in a view from my hotel terrace on my last night in Istanbul, it now time for my expressions of gratitude for the people who made my trip possible.

For allowing me to visit Istanbul during the school year: Mrs. Pullen, Dr. Watts, and Mrs. Wolcott.

For providing me professional inspirations: my colleagues at Saint Stephen’s, my colleagues in the AP World History community, and my students.

For filling in the gaps in my absence: my wife Heather, my sons, Mr. Zappa, and Mrs. Pommer.

For their hospitality: Recep Cok, the World History Association, the students and professors at Istanbul Sehir University, the staff of the Erguvan Hotel, and the sunny people of Istanbul. 

If any of you are looking for a high quality blog that provided an inspiration for this one, check out greenteamedia.blogspot.com for Christina Pommer’s blog of her trip to Japan two years ago.  It is well worth your visit.   

Sufi Dervish

Islam, just like every other major world religion, has its mystical aspects.  The Sufis are a group of Muslim that have been active for centuries trying to access God’s mysteries through mystical expression.  Many of them wrote beautiful love and dream poetry as I heard in two of the presentations at the symposium.  One sect of Sufis that is still active in Istanbul is the Dervish.  They are famous for using music and dance to enter into a trance in which they have fuller expression of God’s mysteries.  

Several of the members of my group decided to visit the most authentic whirling Dervish monastery in Istanbul for a sacred ceremony.  Instead I decided to go out on the town with Recep.  On my last night, however, I went out to dinner with a group including Ron and his wife, two professors from Alberta, the German professor who helped explain mosaics in Hagia Sophia, and a young grad student from Germany who is also an expert in slavery and eunuchs. 

We ate a glorious fish dinner.  Afterwards we wandered into a more commercial, non-authentic Dervish ceremony at an outdoor market.

Mosaics of Hagia Sophia

When I returned to Hagia Sophia, I got a chance to look at the mosaics with a German specialist in Byzantine history.  He apologized for not being an art historian, but he was marvelous in talking about the political importance of the various mosaics.  Some of them displayed emperors and empresses that I had heard discussed during the symposium. 

These mosaics and the ones at the church at Chora have been preserved because the Muslim took over Constantinople.  The Islamic authorities wanted to quickly rid their churches of their Christian images before turning them into mosques.  So they either painted over them or put plaster on them.  When restoration occurred in the 20^th century, there were the mosaics preserved for 500 years under the paint and plaster. 

History and Turkish Politics

The tour group that I travelled with on Sunday was directed by a professor of Istanbul Sehir University and a capable graduate student.  While we were traveling around Hagia Sophia, my friend Ron, his wife, and I invited the grad student Adil to lunch with us. 

Adil is considered the most promising graduate student in the university’s history department.  He too has worked as a tour guide.  Later when we went through Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace complex (my second time for both), Adil was quite knowledgeable but needed to be prodded with questions before answering.  I think that he was a bit intimidated by the group, most of whom had PhDs in Ottoman and Byzantine history. 

At lunch, however, he opened up.  I asked my typical question, which was “why do you like your university.”  Adil had started a PhD program before in Ottoman history, but he found that his field of study was considered politically inappropriate.  Until recently all universities were government run, and the government has for the past 80 years been neglecting its Ottoman past.  Starting in 1923 Turkey has been a republic.  I was constantly reminded of this by huge banners on the roadways celebrating independence day this Saturday.  Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, tried to strip Turkey of its ignoble past as an empire in decline.  Symbols of the Ottoman Empire were removed.  Even the Fez, the famous Turkish red headgear is STILL illegal for Turks to wear in public.  Religion too was removed from the government establishment in a drive for secular, western values. 

The president of Turkey today has reversed course.  He is using the republican language of Ataturk but stressing that Islamic values are not counter to what Turkey should become.  Some people have said that if France and other countries don’t want Turkey part of the European Union, that’s OK.  Turkey can become the centerpiece of a “new Ottoman empire” with the Balkans and the Middle East in its zone of influence. 

Just a few weeks ago a sweeping set of constitutional changes were adopted in Turkey by popular vote with the support of the president.  These changes were supposed to increase democracy by expanding the role of the courts at the expense of the military.  In reality the president’s party would be in charge of implementing these changes, and by doing so can cement their rule in a tighter hold.  The military, which has always supported the secular views of Ataturk in recent years, could finally be contained. 

Conservative parts of Turkey in the East voted overwhelmingly for the changes.  The western-oriented parts of Istanbul voted against.  The European Union protested the vote, and the president hailed it as a huge victory, and the military did NOT stage a coup d’etat to overthrow the government.  Otherwise I could have been on a front row seat for a military takeover. 

What does this have to do with my conference?  Well, ISU is supported by government ministers and is relatively conservative in its values.  Ottoman history is in vogue here, and I would imagine that most of the people at the school would support the president. 

Yes, history does have power. 

English Uber Alles

English is everywhere in Istanbul.  Very rarely did I find myself in a situation in which my supreme lack of language was a problem.  Although the symposium had a majority of Turkish participants and presenters, all of the major presentations that I heard were in English.  Istanbul Sehir University conducts all of its classes in English, as do a large number of universities in Turkey.  ISU is particularly focused on English because it wants to distinguish itself as a major research institution.  In order for students to be on the cutting edge of research today, they need to learn English. 

Everyone involved in the tourist trade in Istanbul has a passing familiarity with major expressions in English, and I encountered scores of people who were completely fluent.   Once I went to a restaurant (the one recommended by Rick Steves mentioned in an earlier post) that had a large group of Chinese tourists.  They spoke in broken English to the waiter, who himself only spoke in broken English.  It was comical in a way, but a definite sign of the globalized world that we live in and the role of the English language.

People may debate the declining influence of the United States as a world power today.  From my experience the complete  dominance of the English language, however, is undeniable. 

Hippodrome

One of the surprising aspects of my Sunday tour of Istanbul was when our Sunday guide stopped literally right in front of my hotel door and pointed to a huge wall across the street.  This was the foundation to the hippodrome of ancient times, the center of the city’s entertainment area.  He did a short summary of the major hippodrome monuments that the emperors brought to Constantinople from the distant parts of the empire.  The idea was to help reinforce their rule through displaying power monuments from all over their empire. 

The most famous monument was the obelisk that I mentioned in an earlier post.  The base of the monument was what we spent our attention on with the tour.  Several Byzantine specialists in the group talked about the issues of power represented in the carved marble base. 

One side had a dedication of the monument written in Latin.  Another side had its translation in Greek.  Yet another side had the emperor shown in the chariot racing imperial spectator box with his body guards.  A retired German professor in the group pointed out how the hairstyle of the bodyguards showed that they were Germanic. 

Yet another image on the monument displays the emperor with his senators (remember the Roman connection) with crowds of people below including dancing girls at the very bottom. 

My friend Ron

When I first got the idea to travel to Istanbul, I went on to an internet discussion group listserve that has about 3000 world history teachers as subscribers.  I said that I was going to the World History Association symposium in Istanbul in October.  I asked if anyone else was planning on going.  Plenty of people said that they wished that they could go.  Only my friend Ron indicted actual interest in going. 

I’ve known Ron for almost ten years.  He is a teacher in Los Angeles at a private Christian school.  We met in the summer of 2001 when we attended a three-week world history institute hosted by some of the biggest names in the world history community.  Ron and I were project partners.  His good natured, buoyant personality is just fun to be around.  Over the years we have met again at the Advanced Placement exam readings in Nebraska and Colorado.  We’ve gone on several small-scale adventures hiking and exploring, and so he seemed to be the best possible partner on this adventure.  His wife Nathana came with us.  She is not a world historian, but attended most of the sessions with the same good humor as Ron has always shown.