“YYYesss..just some yoghurt will be ok..believe me. All right! I will also try a biscuit, thank you. Please, yes, more coffee, I promise it will be the last cup.”
I am in the breakfast room of the Neva Palace Hotel, communicating by gesture with a kind girl who literally invades my table with a very rich tray. Symit, eggs, jams, breadsticks, fresh fruit, borek still steaming… everything is ready for me to consume the ritual of kahvalti, but at 8 a.m. I can only impress even the Turks by asking for yet another cup of coffee.
Today is one of those days I look forward to. I meet up with the Turkish customers at 5pm, so I have the whole day to explore a city I have never seen. Although the Ulucanlar prison, the museums of the Revolution and of Anatolian civilisations seem to be the main attractions, in the mood for a healthy dose of personality cult I decide to head for the Anitkabir. Namely the gigantic, overwhelming and at the same time sacred Mausoleum of the gazi Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The tomb of his dauphin Ismet Inonu is almost laughable in front of the magnificence of this great military hero, founder of Turkey, but in which sense.. father of the Turks?
Anitkabir
I arrive at Anitkabir in the middle of a military commemoration, when access to the mausoleum is armoured by the army and a crowd of onlookers watches in religious silence. Later they explain to me that some deputies of the main opposition party, the CHP, the secular party given life by Ataturk himself, have organised the commemoration. In times of elections, symbols are brandished. After all, who knows what the long-lived Sultan will come up with by next June 2023.
Ankara is grey and militaristic, but it is an easy, low-traffic city, functional to the political role it has to play. Here the various souls of the political establishment clash, particularly the two main ones: the Eurasian, at times neo-Ottoman, Recep Tayyip’s current, and the cosmopolitan, secular, social-democratic vision of Ataturk. Western by training, visionary, charismatic, Ataturk was born in Thessaloniki, lived and died in Istanbul, but started the Turkish revolution from Ankara. It is here, therefore, that the exploits of the hero of Gallipoli/Canakkale, who turned the Ottoman Empire upside down and invented the Turkish state, are marked and narrated.
Long story short, what happened is approximately this: with Istanbul under British occupation, Asia Minor divided among the highest bidders at Sevres (1920), the Greeks try to get as far as a few handfuls of kilometres from Ankara. The affront is too great. The museum of Anitkabir traces the stages of the Turkish nationalists’ remuntada, from the battle of Sakarya, to the exile of the collaborationist Sultan sided by the occupying powers, to the proclamation of the Turkish nation. A year later, Ataturk structurally breaks up what remained of the Ottoman state, crumbling the network of privileges that the Ottoman aristocrats derived from their proximity to the Sultan, promulgating a secular constitution, abolishing the Caliphate, stripping Turkish citizens of their fez, banning the female veil in educational institutions and public offices, introducing universal suffrage, appropriating Latin characters (some Turks can no longer read their own language in an unknown alphabet), codifying the Turkish language, resorting to frequent Frenchisms where the gaps in the language make it necessary (Ataturk mastered French). And in an era when empires are crumbling, the urge to join the families of nation states demands action, and fast, on pain of extinction. A true flight forward, not without bloodshed and socio-cultural shocks. Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and any Ottoman minority become a Turkish minority, with some of them still today not considered to be “Turk enough” and called under the term gavur (“unfaithful”). Yet, what about the old Ottoman overlords, custodians of centuries-old traditions, what would become of them? Well, Turkey, whatever it was, was born thanks to the exploits of the gazi, and free of the foreigner. This great historical achievement, implemented abruptly and accomplished with refined genius, brings Ataturk today to be for everyone, indiscriminately, almost a demigod. Those who outrage his memory can still be sent to prison. In the bookshop at the end of the visit, his angel face is everywhere, on lighters, pens, coasters, curtains… 2023 will be the centenary year of the Republic and perhaps even the graphic designers of these sophisticated gadgets have begun to go mad about this event.
Before I take my leave, I, like all bystanders, witness the solemn ceremony. Sound silence reigns supreme, and I, as all the present Turkish citizens, lie motionless on the Anitkabir plain, chilled by the sharp wind and warmed only by a faint November light. The landscape is arid, ochre, inhospitable. Ankara resides in the heart of Anatolia, and the monolithic Anitkabir can only embody its soul. Who knows whether Ataturk would have liked it. The only note of colour is an imposing, fluttering, red Turkish flag. Its swaying movement is the only moving body, clashing with the immobility of the armed forces, which guard the leader’s burial. The Anitkabir is perhaps the metaphor of Turkey, guarding its founder, encapsulating the country’s irresistible charm: the grandeur, the reminder of the past as a guarantee of the future, magnified by the protection of the controversial, oppressive, necessary power of the armed forces. The contrast of the light spread by a Genius of history, coexisting with the darkness of uncertainty, of restlessness, of the unavoidable tension between the innumerable frictions of a land caught between East and West.
I decide to leave. Compared to Anitkabir, a concentration of signs and significances, in semi-arid Ankara nothing is much. I visit the fortified Citadel, the oldest part of the city. Since the 8th century B.C. Phrygians, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and Ottomans have followed one another, marking out the territory on these heights; today remain a few caravanserais, a much remodelled castle, and traditional houses converted into colourful restaurants and antique shops. Just as no one cares much about the Roman remains found in the middle of the streets of downtown, I care little for the teeming, renovated Hamamonu district, which apart from being very integralist does not give me any vibe. More or less annoyed, I go back to hotel area in the Kizilay district, stopping for lunch at Kakule Kahve to play the real boring urban girl with hummus salad, fruit extract and single-origin coffee, in a place perfectly furnished in the latest London fashion.
[continues..]
