Week After Spring Break (8)

This week I was interested in the increased influence in the Middle East and the rejection of independence and sovereignty in their own nations. We learned about British influence in Egypt after Ali Pasha’s death, and how it became a protectorate not a ‘colony’, etc. I always find hypocrisy of ‘Western’ countries fascinating, when such nations are presented as ‘modern’ but because of their own political and economic agenda stop progress- the International Debt Commission (French and British control over Egyptian finances) stopped the Western style constitution of 1879 because it called for the country’s financial autonomy. They then pushed for a leader more easily manipulated then Khedie Ismail in Egypt. Ottoman laws restricting land sales to Europeans and the policy of welcoming Jews fleeing Europe in anywhere but Palestine were ignored.
I really enjoyed reading the Bastard of Istanbul since it addressed some pretty interesting issues, and led to some good comments during the class discussion. Not to repeat myself, but I found the portrayal of the two different communities (Turkish and American Armenian) was useful, Armenian victimhood vs. Turkey’s denial of a historic event. The creation of a new national identity by Ataturk, which changing the script, names and traditions of the people, was based on the rejection of negative aspects of the Ottoman past. The new state could not afford the Armenian genocide to be connected to it, a sort of beautification process was underway. Characters in the novel show this, since they present Ottoman history as unrelated to their experience and culture and have accepted propaganda undermining Armenian experience. The discussion of the labeling genocide and our lack of knowledge of this particular example revealed a lot about Americans’ understanding of history and politics, when compared against prominent representation of Holocaust survivors’ suffering in our textbooks and media.
Essay:
The Bastard Of Istanbul
In The Bastard Of Istanbul Elif Shafak addresses the issues of memory and identity for twenty-first century Turks and Armenians concerning to the 1915 Armenian genocide. Approaching this subject through a fictional novel, Shafak questions the two groups’ understanding of the genocide and each other. Shafak suggests that the Turks and Armenians’ relationships with history have been problematic and very different. Armenians choose to remember and associate themselves with the past while Turks live in the present and do not recognize their Ottoman heritage as relevant to their current lives. A silencing and ignorance of history is typical of Turks in The Bastard Of Istanbul on both a national and a personal level, for example Zelthia consciously forgets the trauma of being raped. Shafak explores two worlds in which her characters actively put themselves in the place of the victims or are the oblivious citizens of a country that has committed crimes against humanity unpunished. Shafak compares and contrasts Armenians and Turks using two young female characters, Armanoush and Asya, to display the ignorance between the two communities since their separation. She also questions the position of Turkey in the modern day world, as some Turks fear being seen as Middle Eastern by the ‘West’ and conservatives wish to cling to their Islamic roots. Shafak examines the importance of memory and the Armenian genocide in the formation of identity and nation for Armenians, and the impact Ottoman history and heritage in almost European Turkey, she complicates identity in order to bring the two groups closer together.
The Turks and Armenian Americans in The Bastard of Istanbul have to deal with the evolution of identity in Turkey since the genocide. Armanoush, an Armenian American college student, has been brought up with the collective memory that Ottoman oppression is ongoing in present day Turkey. Other characters she interacts with, Armenian, Greek and other former Ottoman minorities, fear for her safety among the Turks before she travels to present day Istanbul. They warn her, in the anti- Turk chat she joined, that the police will stop her because of her ethnic name and call her their “war reporter,” following the idea that she will be witnessing the conflict on the ground in Istanbul. Their experience and understanding is based on their memory as victims of the Ottoman Empire. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Ottoman Empire went through a complicated process that questioned its Ottomanist identity as all encompassing of its many minorities against the growing Arab or Islamic feeling. The Young Turks involved some minorities in deposing the sultan in 1909 with feelings of Ottomanism. Unfortunately this all encompassing identity did not survive as different communities wanted autonomy, and the state came to see Armenians as part of the World War I Russian threat within their population. The deportation and murder of Armenians ensued in 1915 and Armanoush’s family, the Tchakmakhchians, moved to the United States with bitter memories and pain that had not been given closure due to the denial of the Turkish government.
Though the majority of the novel takes place in the twentieth century, the Armenian experience seems to revolve around the genocide and ultimately looks toward the past not the future. At this point, Shakah examines the permanent image of Turks that the frightened victims have and disputes the claims of a continuation of the struggle. The heritage Armanoush seems to inherit is that of surviving victims. Her Armenian family in the United States keeps a collective memory of the massacre but still fears some aspects of life, such as standing out intellectually because the Ottomans went after “the brains” of their society. These are valid memories, but the Tchakmakhchian family cling to each other and make outsiders not as concerned with the struggle uncomfortable or unwelcome. In the United States the family makes Armanoush’s mother feel like an outside, “odar,” and the young girl talks about remembering the genocide when on a date with an American. Though they champion the “collective spirit” that allowed them to survive, as victims or not, Turks are aware that Armenian Americans trumpet the image of the oppressive Turk and this affects the identity of the Turks.
In the novel, characters in Turkey suffer from a variety of identity problems related to their position as an Islamic country on the edges of European ‘Western’ society. While the Armenians struggle to keep the memories of the early twentieth century alive, Shafak portrays Turks as having systematically forgotten their Ottoman history through laws and personal choice. In the 1920s the government pushed the new national identity and more reforms that were more like the ‘Western’ world. The reforms portrayed the Ottoman Empire as something that socially ended with the official change transition to the Turkish Republic. Asya is deeply involved in this problem as represents the youth of Turkey, the representation of Istanbul when Armanoush arrives, and the symbolic representation of forgetting. Asya and her young Turkish friends discuss the influence of former Ottoman minorities in the United States in damaging the image of Turkey as a modern secular state. Before the novel confronts the disputed subject with the interaction of Armanoush and Asya, this idea of Turkey on the edge of Europe is often emphasized. Whereas the Armenians have a strong identity supported by history, in Shafak’s novel Turks struggle for an identity while often forgetting or ignoring the past and only looking toward the future.
The two groups are personified in the characters of Armanoush and Asya, who deal with identity and forgetting or remembering directly. As Armanoush travels to Istanbul to better understand the conflict and stays with Asya’s unknowing family the Kazancis, she adjusts her preconceived notions of Turks and tries to understand the average Turkish experience. There is a literal fight when the Armenian genocide is mentioned to Asya’s friends, portraying part of the society that is nationalist and accepts the official story, personified by a character that is called “The Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultra-nationalist Movies.” This character previously feigned disinterest in history and nationalism, but violently reacts and argues that the genocide was a product of ‘The premodern era and its premodern tragedies.” She addresses an attitude of Turks that ignores the experience of the Ottoman minorities, distancing themselves from the problem by saying it happened in a different time, or even country.
In an interview Shafak explained that her novel contrasts the collectivity of Armenian experience against the “collective amnesias” of the Turks. This is shown in most of the Turks’ lack of knowledge and interest in the masses, and symbolically through Asya’s experience and relationship to forgetting. Shafak gradually unfolds the mystery surrounding Asya’s heritage as the ‘bastard’ of the novel, and it appears that she is the product of the traumatic rape of Zelthia by her brother Mustafa. Zelthia censors herself and does not talk about Asya’s father while Mustafa flees Istanbul for the United States, one of the earlier conversations Armanoush has with him reveals that he is isolated from and is not curious about history. This is the epitome of forgetting in Turkish society, and Asya suffers from not knowing her personal history and heritage, her identity as an individual is weak like all Turks that are unaware of their heritage. Identity in the novel is further confused and tangled by Shafak as it is revealed that the Bazancis are descended from Armanoush’s Armenian grandmother who fled to America to embrace her identity as a survivor. The Bazancis have grown as people without any awareness of Armenians in their family or their society, results of the genocide and the official treatment of the event. Armanoush’s grandmother left her first husband, a Turk, who would not speak of the event to his family members afterward. The separation of the two groups from each other in the novel is complicated. Their relationship to history and each other is portrayed as much closer and more important than Turks believe.
The Bastard of Istanbul is a beautiful piece that addresses issues of identity in both the Armenian American and Turkish communities. Shafak tries to pick away at the relationships between the two groups, weaving their ‘separate’ stories into a complicated history that demands more understanding and direct confrontation. The characters’ are directly affected by the Armenian genocide in 1915 and the subsequent attempt to break away from Ottoman identity. Shafak addresses the Turkish stance towards history, which ignores Ottoman heritage as useless to the present. She questions this detachment symbolically through Asya who has tried to move on without knowing her heritage, which involves the Armenians and trauma, but cannot form her identity fully and suffers. Turks, in Shafak’s novel, have detached themselves from the Ottomans and tried to choose either European culture or Islamic traditional culture. Armanoush portrays Armenians who have developed a collective memory of the genocide, but cannot progress either as they live in the past and seem to live as victims ninety years later. Shafak seems to suggest a much more complicated situation for both groups that involves each other and is not a simplistic choice between remembering or forgetting the past and choosing between ‘Western’ and Islamic. Shafak develops the novel as a quest to understand identity and history, as the characters struggle with the separation of the Ottoman heritage and modern Turkey.