Correspondence
A LEITER FROM ANCORA. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—When A was in Turkey in 1928, it seemed to me rather a happy-go-lucky country. This year, however, I was left with a different impression. Two years had produced startling changes, moral and material ; and the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of 1928 was clouded over by the tension and the oppression of problems which appear to have taken young Turkey almost by surprise. In Europe and the Western world, sudden shocks normally produce violent national reactions. But the Turkish mentality of to-day is only partially, and that thinly, Westernized. New Western instincts have certainly prevented any movement towards a return to things as they were and no shade of present Turkish opinion hankers after, or dreams of the possibility of a revival of the old Ottoman regime. But the Oriental fatalism, still latent in every Turk, has reacted towards the present situation with a sort of negative helplessness which has produced throughout the country what may be described as a state of suspended animation. The newly-built Turkish ship of State is tempor- Tardy in the doldrums.
Outwardly and visibly, Turkey in the last ten years has altered and has been smartened up out of all recognition ; so much so that the traveller to-day is hard put to find any traces of Oriental anachronisms. The veil and the fez have gone : Arabic characters—and this is not an over-statement- are never to be seen anywhere : except in Constantinople, there are fewer beggars : and there are no picturesque water sellers in the streets, no donkey nor camel traffic. Indeed, even if the traveller lands, as I did, at Mersina which used to be entirely of the East, he will be, as I was, almost bewildered. For the Turkish machine—the passport control, the customs, railway organization, indeed, the public services as a whole— are working entirely un-Orientally. And inland he will be confronted with a new Western facade which almost com- pletely eclipses old Turkey. The peasantry is no longer after the Bashi-Bazouk model, but looks like Balkan yeomanry the official and business classes might be of the Continental bourgeoisie; the hotels, though still primitive, are luxury itself compared with the Khans of other days ; the trains arc modern, clean and punctual ; the official uniforms are smart and of European pattern ; and even the youth of the country—the schoolboys and, more surprisingly, the school- girls—wear special martial-looking caps which might be emblems of clubs in Bulgaria, Greece or Rumania. Thus far, Mustapha lienial's Westernizing policy for the young Republic has produced valuable results.
The old unwieldy Ottoman Empire, thanks to the Caliphate, belonged definitely to Islam and the Orient, and in abolishing the Caliphate, Mustapha Kemal sought to sever the last Turkish link with the East. Ile set his face West, just as his great equestrian statue in the centre of Angora faces West ; for in his mind to Westernize Turkey was to de-Ottomanize it, from both a religious and a secular standpoint. Ile has succeeded up to a point. Turkey may not be Europeanized ; but it has been absolutely severed from Ottoman tradition, and a Balkan Turkey and a Balkanization of the Turkish mentality are, in fact, already realities. They are realities which every Western negotiator with the new Republic and every student of Turkish evolution, would be wise to impress on his mind to replace the standard pre-War conceptions of Turkish tactics of the bad old days of the Sublime Porte.
The old Ottoman Adam may still lurk in the fastnesses of North Eastern Anatolia : but in Angora he, like Angora, has been modernized out of recognition. Angora reveals a further phenomenon in New Turkey—a psychological phenomenon. The successful creation of a new national capital has removed from the Turkish mentality that inferiority complex of other days which was cultivated as much as anywhere in Constantinople itself, as a means whereby the old Ottoman Government might most conveniently rule the subject peoples within the Empire. All Turks are deeply proud of Angora : for to them it epitomizes New Turkey. Two years ago the
town was but a town in plan ; to-day the visitor will find the plan has been realized. Government departments are nobly housed, whereas in 1928 they were merely billeted : old Turkey which, two years ago, was round every corner, has been swept away, and in its place are wide, elegant boulevards crowded with taxis and motor-buses, and efficiently controlled by point duty policemen, complete with white linen arm-bands. It is a vast development and a notable achievement. But the bureaucratic and domestic efficiency of Angora—the new uniforms, the European hats, the clocks that go, the telephones that work, the train and 'bus services, the modern hotels— has nut altogether influenced the Turks to their immediate good. For there is radiating from Angora to-day an immature spirit of self-satisfaction and of parochialism which extends to every walk of life. Inferiority complexes are bad in a nation ; parochialism and self-satisfaction are perhaps worse, and are certainly more dangerous because they are positive and lead to narrow-mindedness.
Turkey is at present in the throes of these growing pains, and Mustapha Kemal has yet to prescribe a remedy for their alleviation. He had diagnosed and treated his young patient as lacking in self-assurance and objectivity, and as a tonic had produced Turkish nationalism and Angora : but the remedy provoked the complication of over-assurance and parochialism. And meanwhile, causes which were beyond Turkish control produced further and more fundamental complications in the shape of the present financial. Crisis, which is not responding at all well to parochial treatment. Moraily and materially Turkey has been regenerated, but in the process a New Turkey has been established, with standards far more elaborate than Turkey ever dreamed of—and far more expensive.—I am,
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