Relations between Turkey and Israel have been deteriorating since the ascent of a Muslim political party, and the loss to Israel is immense.I have been to Turkey five times now: once on a tour arranged by the archaeology department of the Hebrew University, once at the beginning of an overland trip from Istanbul to Tashkent with Dragoman Tours, once on the way from Macedonia to Romania with some friends, once on a weekend deal to the resort of Antalia, and now we met some friends in Istanbul, flew to Izmir, and saw some of the ancient Greek sites of the Aegean coast. Every time I have gone to Turkey, I have liked the country and its people more.
You can't exactly say that the Turks have a benign reputation. The Ottoman Empire was a dangerous rival to the kingdoms of Europe for centuries, halted at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Romantic support for the Greek revolution against Ottoman rule did not exactly make Europeans love the Turks, and the slaughter of the Armenians during World War I is a crime against humanity that the Turks haven't yet wrestled with, as far as I know. "Midnight Express" also made Turkey look very bad. When I was in college, back in the 1960s, almost no one wanted to go there.
On our first visit to Turkey we were dyed in the wool hellenophiles and prepared to dislike the Turks, but we couldn't. They were friendly and helpful, pleasant and hospitable. So much so that I find it absolutely impossible to fit what I know about Turkey - brutal suppression of the Kurds, illegal invasion and occupation of Cyprus, repression of civil rights and dissent - with my uniformly pleasant experiences there.
I am aware that, aside from reading a couple of books by Pamuk and seeing a few good Turkish films, I see Turkey very much from the outside, and I understand little of what I see. Use of the Roman alphabet makes the signs legible for us but unintelligible.
That was one of Ataturk's major reforms. He sought to make Turkey into a modern, secular state and only succeeded partially. We were there on October 29, Turkish Independence Day. The streets were full of flags and huge pictures of Ataturk. But the present government does not, I gather, wish to follow through with the program he mapped out.
Being in Turkey gave me a useful perspective and insight into the big picture of recent world history. During the twentieth century many nations achieved independence and were forced to invent or reinvent themselves, and many of these new self-definitions have proven to be false or inappropriate, ignoring too much of the historical heritage, denying the presence of minorities, and adopting institutions that did not grow up from within their culture but were imitations of those of the West. The results were catastrophic.
Indeed, the rise of fascism in much of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century shows that Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal (to name just a few) had as much trouble defining themselves for the twentieth century as Egypt, Turkey, India, and China are having in their effort to redefine and redesign themselves today.
In Turkey I am more or less impartial, not an Armenian or a Greek with a historical grudge, not a Kurd who wants independence, but an observer coming from a country with its own deep problems of conflict and self-definition. The outside observer sees problems with clarity that derives from ignorance of the details and complexities. Can one bring that perspective back home and apply it to the issues one faces there?
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