{"id":57413,"date":"2012-09-22T23:06:43","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T20:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=57413"},"modified":"2023-07-26T12:07:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T09:07:49","slug":"turkeys-towering-ambition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/09\/22\/turkeys-towering-ambition\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey\u2019s Towering Ambition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hugh Eakin<\/h3>\n
\n
 <\/p>\n

A woodcut of the S\u00fcleymaniye mosque in Istanbul by Melchior Lorichs, 1570<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In March 1548, having brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power, Suleiman the Magnificent decided to build a mosque in Istanbul. \u201cAt that time,\u201d an anonymous chronicler explains,<\/p>\n

His Highness the world-ruling sultan realized the impermanence of the base world and the necessity to leave behind a monument so as to be commemorated till the end of time\u2026.Following the devout path of former sultans, he ordered the construction of a matchless<\/em> mosque complex for his own noble self.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In late May of this year, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2014Turkey\u2019s powerful prime minister, a devout Muslim, and the self-styled leader of the new Middle East\u2014announced that he would be erecting his own grand mosque above the Bosphorus. It will be more prominent than Suleiman\u2019s. The chosen site\u2014the B\u00fcy\u00fck \u00c7aml\u0131ca Tepesi, or Big \u00c7aml\u0131ca Hill, overlooking the city\u2019s Asian shore\u2014is 268 meters above sea level; it is easily the most conspicuous point of land in greater metropolitan Istanbul. (A favorite look-out spot, it is here that the protagonist in Namik Kemal\u2019s late Ottoman novel Awakening<\/em> (1876) begins a tragic love affair with a woman of loose morals.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will build an even larger dome than our ancestors made,\u201d an architect involved in the project, Hac\u0131 Mehmet G\u00fcner, boasted to the Turkish daily Milliyet<\/em> in early July. G\u00fcner added that the mosque would be built in a \u201cclassical style\u201d and have six minarets\u2014more than any in Istanbul save for the Blue Mosque (Suleiman\u2019s mosque, the S\u00fcleymaniye, has four). He also said that their height would exceed that of the Prophet\u2019s Mosque in Medina, whose tallest minarets are 344 feet.<\/p>\n

Among Turkey\u2019s secular elite, these plans have met with a mixture of incredulity and derision. Suleiman\u2019s mosque complex was built by Sinan, the greatest Ottoman architect; G\u00fcner was a little known municipal public works official. One architecture professor likened the envisioned vast prayer hall to an \u201cOlympic stadium.\u201d Nor has Erdo\u011fan\u2019s previous record of mosque building helped his case. In July, with debate over the \u00c7aml\u0131ca project in full swing, the prime minister announced the completion of another Ottoman-style mosque on Istanbul\u2019s Asian shore by calling it a selatin<\/em> mosque\u2014using the word for religious institutions built at the behest of a sultan. \u201cHas Erdo\u011fan Just Declared His Sultanate?,\u201d one Turkish newspaper editor asked.<\/p>\n

\n
AP Photo\/Thanassis Stavrakis<\/p>\n

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan campaigning in front of a mosque in Istanbul, June 11, 2011<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Nonetheless, walking the streets of Istanbul this summer, I found it difficult to miss the intended symbolism. Erdo\u011fan, who comes from the city\u2019s rough Kas\u0131mpa\u015fa neighborhood and has not conquered any foreign countries, is hardly a Suleiman. But after a decade in power in which he has presided over a record economic boom and a dramatic resurgence of Turkey in international affairs, he is widely acknowledged as the most powerful politician since Kemal Atat\u00fcrk, the country\u2019s modern founder. At the same time, he has gone further than any of his predecessors in moving away from the stridently anti-religious state that Atat\u00fcrk created in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

Soon after proclaiming the new republic in 1923, Atat\u00fcrk\u2019s government abolished the caliphate and closed the madrasas, turning Turkey overnight into the most secular nation in the Muslim world. But earlier this year, Erdo\u011fan declared he wanted the country to have a \u201creligious youth,\u201d and, since March, when parliament passed a controversial bill to expand Islamic education, more than sixty new religious schools have opened in Istanbul. When you enter the courtyard of one of the city\u2019s historic mosques, you are increasingly likely to run into groups of young boys or girls (they are separated by gender) sitting at little desks, receiving instruction in the Quran.<\/p>\n

Headscarves, once rare in the fashionable European districts that Orhan Pamuk writes about in The Museum of Innocence<\/em>, have become common, including in high-end, designer versions. All over the city, Ottoman religious complexes are being restored at great expense (among them a beautiful Sinan madrasa, built around an octagonal courtyard, which construction workers proudly showed off to me). One Turkish political analyst complained that the call to prayer, broadcast everywhere on outdoor speakers, is far louder than it used to be. And the Ramadan fast, once better known locally for being honored in the breach, was embraced this summer with newfound rigor. Under pressure from the religious establishment, a local rock music festival that was staged a few days before the beginning of the Muslim holiday decided to ban alcohol, despite having been sponsored by Turkey\u2019s largest beer company.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that Turkey\u2019s deeply secular state has seemed to move in a more religious direction. As far back as 1967, a close replica of another sixteenth-century Sinan mosque was built in Ankara; a more daring, modernist design by Vedat Dalokay was rejected. Turgut \u00d6zal, who was prime minister in the late 1980s and is credited with beginning the economic opening to the world that has matured under Erdo\u011fan, was a devout Muslim who went on the Hajj while in office. And Erdo\u011fan\u2019s own AKP party is a direct heir to the since-banned Islamist party of Necmettin Erbakan, who briefly served as Turkey\u2019s first Islamist prime minister in the 1990s (leading to a military coup in 1997).<\/p>\n

But what makes the recent changes particularly dramatic is that the Turks themselves seem to be generally embracing them: headgear has become a point of pride for many Anatolian businesswomen, and the recent alcohol bans appear to have been imposed as much by local communities\u2014by some far more than others\u2014as by higher authorities. Indeed, Erdo\u011fan, now in his third term of office, has a huge base of popular support. And while the AKP has not quite gained the supermajority in parliament the prime minister has sought, it has had sufficient dominance to transform significant parts of the Turkish political system.<\/p>\n

In successive steps that have continued in recent days, the prime minister has skillfully taken control of the once-dominant\u2014and fiercely secular\u2014Turkish military; dozens of top generals and admirals have been thrown in jail for alleged coup plots, including one that supposedly involved bombing mosques in Istanbul. Meanwhile, his conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP) has been pushing through far-reaching reforms of the judiciary and the education system, some suggest, to favor its own agenda. (Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rapid transformation of the courts from a bastion of Turkey\u2019s military-secular elite into a key part of his own campaign against the military can only be the envy of Egypt\u2019s new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, whose judiciary remains loyal to its own politically powerful armed forces.) More radically, AKP leaders are now drafting a new constitution that, if adopted, could turn Turkey\u2019s parliamentary system into a strong presidential republic\u2014just in time for Erdo\u011fan\u2019s planned move in 2014 to the presidency, where he could spend another decade running the country.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the most controversial aspects of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s leadership have little to do with religion. Human rights activists are far more concerned by what they describe as his increasingly authoritarian style of leadership and his use of the police and judiciary to suppress critics. In July, the government announced it was eliminating the much-criticized special court system that has been used to prosecute \u201cconspiracy\u201d cases and \u201cterrorism-related\u201d crimes. But dozens of journalists, students, and scholars are already in jail, many of them for writing about the Kurdish PKK, or criticizing the government\u2019s ties to the powerful Gulen religious movement. Abolishing these courts has struck critics as largely cosmetic; other courts may end up with the same sweeping powers. In a recent interview with Christiane Amanpour, Erdo\u011fan disputed the number of jailed journalists, claiming that \u201cthere are 80 people who are in prison right now. Only nine of them have yellow press identification cards.\u201d But he also said, \u201cinsult is one thing; criticism is another thing. I will never put up with an insult.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Turkish government has gone from a dull but reliable NATO ally to an assertive leader of the new Middle East. Before last year\u2019s uprisings, Turkey made much of its \u201czero problems\u201d strategy with all neighboring powers\u2014a policy that included promoting economic ties with Assad\u2019s Syria and Ahmadinejad\u2019s Iran, and, before the flotilla raid, working relations with Israel. Now, Ankara has renewed ties with Hamas while aggressively supporting the Sunni-led Syrian uprising and giving refuge to fugitive Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni leader who was sentenced to death in Iraq last week on charges of orchestrating sectarian killings. With Sunni-led governments in charge through much of the Middle East and Turkish economic growth driven increasingly by trade relations with the Gulf, Erdo\u011fan seems to have found it convenient to bring Turkey closer to the old lands of the Caliphate, regardless of the diplomatic consequences.<\/p>\n

All this, too, can be seen on the streets of Istanbul. Amid the attractions of the Old City, the usual summer influx of European tourists was leavened this year by groups of visitors from the Arabian peninsula, often with the women in full black niqab. In fact, there has been a staggering 71 percent increase in Arab visitors to Turkey in the first six months of 2012, a figure that is even higher for some nations like the UAE and Qatar. I asked several Turkish friends about it and was told that Arabs have supplanted Israelis, who before the flotilla incident used to visit Turkey in large numbers. Part of the appeal\u2014along with Halal food, Turkish soap operas, and ample new shopping centers\u2014seems to be that the country is now led by a popular Muslim leader with strong pro-Arab credentials. A new Turkish law has also made it easier for foreign nationals to invest in real estate, a move that seems to be particularly aimed at Arab investors.<\/p>\n

One longtime Istanbul resident, citing the government\u2019s interest in malls and infrastructure projects that can \u201crival Mecca,\u201d suggested that the new pro-Arab policies have been accompanied by Persian Gulf-style urban development. Large as it is, she observed, the planned \u00c7aml\u0131ca mosque complex\u2014which is apparently to be funded by pro-AKP businessmen\u2014is far from Erdo\u011fan\u2019s most ambitious building project. In recent months, he has renewed his campaign promise to dig a second Bosphorus, a thirty-mile shipping channel to the Black Sea\u2014an undertaking so enormous that, he claims, it would surpass the Suez and Panama canals. And the government\u2019s announcement this spring that it plans to fill in a 2.8 square mile section of the Sea of Marmara along the Istanbul shore\u2014apparently to create a public assembly space for up to 800,000 people\u2014has been compared by one writer to \u201cwanting to straighten the Seine or turn the Colosseum into a football stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Vedat Dalokay<\/p>\n

Vedat Dalokay’s experimental 1957 design for the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, later rejected in favor of a replica of a Sinan mosque in Istanbul<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But far more than the scale or apparent religious content of such mega-projects, what has rankled Turkish critics most is how they will look. In late July, perhaps embarrassed by the \u00c7aml\u0131ca controversy, the Islamic association overseeing the mosque project took out advertisements in Turkish newspapers announcing an architectural design competition for the complex. But the hasty competition seemed to foreclose the possibility that something exciting or unusual might arise from it: entries were limited to Turkish architects and not much more than a month was allotted for designs to be submitted\u2014all of which had to conform to the enormous proportions of the building specified. (The winning design was supposed to be announced earlier this month, but the decision has been postponed.)<\/p>\n

The larger irony is that in calling for a huge new mosque in the tradition of Sinan, Erdo\u011fan may be missing the more fundamental lesson of the Ottoman architect\u2019s work. As Bruno Taut, the German architect who emigrated to Turkey to flee the Nazis, argued, Sinan was himself a proto-modernist whose ability to create extraordinary beauty from novel engineering had more in common with twentieth-century German functionalism than earlier Islamic architecture. Rather than imitating his predecessors\u2019 designs, he continuously sought out new and more subtle ways to surpass them. Sinan aimed to be more elegant than his Byzantine and Ottoman forebears; Erdo\u011fan, it seems, just wants to be taller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hugh Eakin   A woodcut of the S\u00fcleymaniye mosque in Istanbul by Melchior Lorichs, 1570 In March 1548, having brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power, Suleiman the Magnificent decided to build a mosque in Istanbul. \u201cAt that time,\u201d an anonymous chronicler explains, His Highness the world-ruling sultan realized the impermanence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":57414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[2819],"class_list":["post-57413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-mosques"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}