Savaş ve Serhad

(A tense face-off over contested terrain in Alanya, photo by Mary Hunter)

The title of this post means War and the Border Region, and it happens to be title of a book about Ottoman military history by my illustrious colleague Gabor Agoston. But of course when you refer to war and borders around here these days you are probaby referring to the Turkish border with Syria and Iraq. I have been holding off on posting anything on this blog in the past two weeks because I have felt like I couldn't ignore the border conflict, but I also had absolutely nothing insightful to say about it.

That remains true, but I need to get back to posting, so I have to find a way to address this, for better or for worse. Alanya is a bubble. The economy depends entirely on tourism, which means every business owner has a strong incentive to avoid political conflict like the plague. People here are generally very willing to offer their political opinions on what is happening on the border, from a range of perspectives. But in my experience they do so uniformly from a position of distant observers. This is a contrast to Ankara, where there was, inevitably, a greater sense of urgent engagement with government policy, and of being vulnerable to the consequences one way or another.

There are, what, a million Syrian refugees in Turkey now? Most of them undocumented, filtering throughout the country to any urban center where they can scrape their way towards survival. But if there are any in Alanya, they are keeping a very low profile.

There is an identifiable Kurdish population here, mostly hailing from Erzurum and other parts of Eastern Turkey. Many of them work as waiters in the local restaurants. I am sure they have strong opinions on current events and if I spoke Turkish better (or Kurdish, for that matter) I might be able to learn more about those. But there is no outward sign of political tension here.

Would that change if Turkey were to send ground troops into Syria? Probably. Because of obligatory military service (for boys only), most of the Turkish population has a relative serving in the Army. And the Army has played such a huge role in the formation of the modern Republic that anything the Army does on a large scale will attract everyone's attention, even here in Touristlandia. So, yes, if Turkish troops stream over the border I imagine the level of political attention here will ratchet up immediately. But that eventuality still seems unlikely (although less unlikely than it did a week ago). 

The greatest political conflict I have encountered here in Alanya is speaking Turkish, which I insist on doing in any establishment that will have me, much to the consternation of waiters and clerks who insist on speaking English. I had an intermittent hour-long battle with one restaurateur the other day, as I persisted in speaking Turkish and he insisted on answering in English. And this, btw, was in an unassuming döner kebap joint where we were the only yabancılar. (In the 1950s, the Ugly American was someone who went to Paris and expected everyone to speak English. In 2014, is the Ugly American someone who goes to Alanya and insists on speaking Turkish? I hope not.)

There have been times when we have gotten weary of being surrounded by Russian and German tourists, and longed for the real Turkey. But then I remind myself that the Anatolian coast has always been multilingual and multiethnic. In class we have been reading about the pirate enclaves on this stretch of coast in the first century BC. This region had nominally been incorporated into the Roman Empire, but that had not changed local life much. The coastal towns remained a mishmash, where Greek, Luvian and even Aramaic were all more likely to be spoken than was Latin. Pompey sailed along the coast in about 60 BC, imposing order by killing a few pirates and distributing land and privileges to the rest. But the region did not become any less diverse.

(Pirates of the Mediterranean, rounding the Alanya promontory, photo by Mary Hunter)

From a long historical perspective, multilingual, multireligious coastal entrepots are nothing new in this region—they have been around for thousands of years. The idea of a monolingual, mono-religious heartland populated by residents claiming a single (partly imagined) ethnic identity is,in contrast, the historical aberration. Alanya is no less the real Turkey than is Konya, and in its own way has more historical continuities. It may be harder to learn Turkish here. But it is much, much easier to find a beach volleyball game, which counts for a great deal. And if being here means being insulated from current political controversy, that is probably for the best.

But I digress. Where was I?

One political matter people have been debating around here is headscarves, surprise, surprise. This may seem unrelated to the border crisis, but everything is related. Just a few days ago, fulfilling promises made to voters last year, President Erdoğan overturned the longstanding ban on wearing headscarves in middle and high school. Erdoğan had already made some exceptions allowing headscarves in certain school contexts a couple of years ago (back when he was Prime Minister). Now he has gone ahead and entirely stricken from the law the language insisting that students be bareheaded. This makes headscarves legal and permissible starting in fifth grade.

This issue splits the populace in ways that have no immediate parallel in the United States. In Turkey, the conservative Muslim majority has been pressuring Erdoğan to get rid of school dress codes and allow freedom of attire. This enables Erdoğan and his political allies to justify repealing the headscarf ban as a liberal, democratic reform. A favor to the conservative base is packaged as a blow for freedom of expression. 

The secular, cosmopolitan minority, in contrast, clamors for a return to universal school uniforms and a ban on headscarves. The Turkish equivalent of the coastal elite wants rigorous dress codes. Not entirely—some secularists try to walk the line of defending freedom of dress but maintaining (or restoring) a ban on headscarves, but this is clearly going nowhere.

The upshot is that Erdoğan has—predictably—played to his base, further alienating kemalist secularists in the process. The result will be lots of fifth grade girls in headscarves, a transformation that has about as much to do with individual freedom of expression as peer-enforced, pre-game huddle prayer has to do with freedom of speech.

My understanding is that, according to the letter of the law, at least, boys are now permitted to wear headscarves, as well. Is it possible to imagine thousands of boys protesting by showing up to school in headscarves? Probably not. Even if they did, a complementary law gives school authorities ample latitude to forbid any clothing designed to incite political controversy. (The irony is that the headscarves are, in effect, a "political emblem," which the law prohibits, but they are also the reason behind the changed law, and therefore—as long as they are only worn by girls—could never be considered politically disruptive for the purposes of that law. If that makes sense.)  

Meanwhile, the law against middle and high school students coming to school with facial hair remains in effect. So maybe it will be more likely to see girls protesting by growing beards.

What on earth does this have to do with the border? Erdoğan has shown his Muslim bona fides by overturning the headscarf ban. This may leave him freer to lend more active support to a US-led coalition against the Islamic State. Here in Alanya, we will probably not be the first to know.