By the Beautiful Bosporus, Peace

February 16, 2003
Istanbul, Turkey


BY THE BEAUTIFUL BOSPORUS, PEACE

By James Ryan

The sky finally cleared after two weeks of misery from snow, sleet and rain. Today, the broad avenue leading down to the ferry pier at Kadıköy, usually packed with taxis, cars, trucks, mini-buses, and intrepid pedestrians, was empty, barricaded by the ever-preventative Istanbul police. For today, on this blowing, fresh day, Istanbul would make its contribution to the worldwide demonstration for peace. But here, demonstrations for peace, thanks to the police, often mean quite the opposite. So I suspected this gathering might become “interesting,” or worse. Below and far off, the majestic Bosporus glittered like a magnificent, shattered mirror.

People, hordes of them, streamed downhill toward the demonstration beside the sea, dutifully submitting en route to a police frisking and bag search. Mine was rendered by a plainclothesman with a three-day stubble, wearing a windbreaker with “Narcotics Squad” written on the back, in English, another indicator of the American presence.

Demonstrations here in Turkey, for peace or anything else, are not easy feats. A few weeks ago, the police disrupted a student peace march by efficiently grabbing the student’s placards and beating their heads with them. This aggressive “police presence” somewhat dampens the Turks’ enthusiasm for public self-expression, head beating here being exactly what it’s cracked-up to be— brutal, humiliating, and a disgrace to the nation. But today, the swelling, good-humored crowd seemed undaunted by history. The Turkish press, lackeys of the establishment (except for one or two newspapers). later reported the crowd to number 10,000. To my neophyte’s eye it seemed at least twice that, having witnessed the size of football crowds spilling into the streets after matches.

And a mixed crowd it was. Students, babies in strollers, people from the outlying villages, women with head scarves, long-haired artists, middle-aged and older folks, in short, Turks of all stripes, and my Turkish wife, and me, an American. We merged into the gathering crowd at the foot of the hill and began to march or, more accurately, shuffle for peace. The crowd was vibrant. Everyone seemed to be carrying something: a banner, a red flag, a placard of a bloody-fanged George Bush, an Iraqi flag, a baby. The air was filled with chanting and the cadenced upthrusts of fists. The vast esplanade beside the sea was packed and shouting. Many climbed trees and lampposts to lead exhortations.

The air was electric but we were no longer moving. My wife and I began to snake through the crowd, seeking the less claustrophobic space by the speakers’ platform beside the ferry terminal. As we slipped our way through I felt eyes on me, not an unusual phenomena here for me, since I am taller by far than 99.9% of the Turks and have a decidedly un-Turkish aspect. But today was different. Today, these weren’t looks of curiosity. One woman approached, spoke to my wife, and then shook my hand, appreciative of an American supporting peace. She patted my shoulder as we moved away.

Suddenly, we could go no farther. There, dead ahead, was the phalanx of Turkish police. Ranked and filed like Caesar’s legions, helmeted, body-armored, side-armed, club-fisted, all in black and definitely not glittering, they stood behind their shields, muttering and smoking, and waiting. Instead of a standard-bearer front-and-center proclaiming the glories of Pax Romana, there stood before each police detachment a black-armored dog-handler, leashed to his snarling, gnashing German shepherd-companion. I moved closer to snap some photos, the dog dutifully obliging by barking wildly and baring its fangs. I thought, this could be Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and the dogs of police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor that tore into the black flesh of his fellow Americans.

The cries of the dogs punctuated the pleas of the speakers as the crowd roared responses in a frantic, weirdly unifying jazz, an odd communion of man and beast. And I felt wonderful, alive in a common, though probably hopeless cause. For this was indeed a peaceful celebration of Turkish negation. A collective response to what, for the Turks, has been a preordained policy of their government to cooperate with the American cause, a cause rejected by 90% of the Turkish people. Which means exactly nothing in Turkey, for this so-called secular nation with a so-called democracy has a vast abyss between elected and electorate.

Corrupt politicians and business people have systematically plundered the now largely impoverished electorate for decades. It was written a few years ago that the entire indebtedness of Turkey, both public and private, approximated the total amount looted, then estimated at around $185 billion. Now, fully in the grasp of the economic talons of the United States via its crushing indebtedness to the IMF and World Bank, coupled with the entanglements of the military alliance in NATO, there seems no way out for Turkey but to roll over and do its master’s bidding.

Indeed Turkey has a problem. The new government, the majority party with fundamental Islamic roots that become clearer and more ominous by the moment, has inextricably linked Turkey to the American war with its neighbor Iraq, a fellow Muslim state. So much for Muslim brotherhood. Moreover, at a recent conference of neighbor nations, Turkey, and indeed all the attendees— Syria, Egypt, Jordan and others— agreed that Iraq is NOT a threat to them. Yet contemporaneously, Turkey has been haggling with the United States over the price of support for its war. Oil and Mammon win every time. So much for Allah alla Turka.

The placards and banners jumping before me and blowing in the wind told everything. Horror stories of CIA shenanigans here are legion, and while the Turks love Americans, they despise the CIA. But the world has changed. What was once covert is in plain sight. The CIA is a running joke. And the placards proclaim the truth about the United States, according to the people. The motives of this Bush-browbeaten war are writ large and caricatured devastatingly. This is indeed the people’s truth, the world’s truth. And this is terrifying in its aspect. Particularly for Turkey, now so firmly strapped atop the American tiger.

The speeches ended and the police stood steadfast in ranks protecting the Republic, and the crowd began its slow drift to wherever home was, and I thought about another American president, this one eloquent, polished, witty, indeed a president from an “old” America.

It was 1961, a freezing January afternoon. I know. I was there, a West Point cadet marching in the Inauguration Parade of John F. Kennedy. “Remember,” Kennedy told the crowd in front of the Capitol, “in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” And so, solidly on the back of the “new” American tiger, whither Turkey?

Today is another world. The elegant political discourse of a John Fitzgerald Kennedy has vanished. But wouldn’t Jack Kennedy be surprised by the stripes of this new American beast?

Today, the Bosporus shone a particularly lovely shade of green as it flowed westward to the sea. Green, the color of Islam. Green, the color of hope. Green, the color of US dollars. And again, whither Turkey? Indeed, whither us all?



James Ryan, a writer, lives in Istanbul.