The Challenges to Turkey

Abstract

Istanbul is an apt metaphor for Turkey: at once multifaceted, diverse, and unitary; Byzantine, Ottoman, Asiatic, and European; modern and traditional; parochial and cosmopolitan; Muslim and Christian, even Jewish. Astride two continents?figuratively and lit erally, then, of Asia and Europe?the megapolis bears the marks of a succession of civilizations that are not merely superimposed, but that continue to coexist. The splendid domes of the Byzantine churches, built under the Eastern Roman Empire between the fifth and fifteenth centuries, are set off by the thousand and one graceful minarets of the mosques later built to the glory of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire: the basilica of Sancta Sophia, disguised as a mosque, symbolizes the synthesis. The presence in the city of the Greek patriarchate, the Vatican of Orthodox Christendom, testifies to the tolerance that allowed the sultans to reign over a mul titude of peoples and races, religions and sects, in an empire that stretched from the Arab east to the borders of the Austro-Hungar ian Empire, from the Balkans to North Africa. The astonishing range of physical types and complexions in Istanbul today is a reflection ofthat great diversity. In founding the republic on the ashes of empire following the debacle of World War I, Kemal Atat?rk imposed upon these dis parate peoples the dogma of the homogeneity of the Turkish nation. He saw the elimination of ethnic and cultural differences as the only