The Sick Man of Europe is not a pretty sight
Philip Glazebrook
TURKISH DELIGHT by Philippa Scott Thames & Hudson, £14.95, pp. 110, ISBN 0500 510377 0 ften it is the illustrations in a book, rather than the book's text, which reflect most clearly the subconscious attitude of a generation towards the book's subject. Thus in the 1830s it was the Turkey which had knocked at Europe's gate at Vienna, the Turks of Byron, the languid, dangerous race lurking amid splendid ruins — these were the inhabitants of Asia Minor who appeared in, for instance, Thomas Allom's steel engravings of the Turkish empire. Philippa Scott, in her Turkish Delight,
reflects the attitude of a Western generation which has swept quite out of sight the romantic trepidation of its grandfathers.
Swept it under a Turkey carpet, you might say, for many of the illustrations, and much of the text, consider Turkish civilisation in its modern role as a useful sourcebook for Western designers. The book is full of information and interesting pictures, but there is a touch of the post mortem about it, Turkey cleaned up and laid out on the slab for the pathologist's dissection. We are told, for instance, that in 1826 Sultan Mahrnoud 'abolished' the Janissaries. He had them slaughtered to the last man, the old Turk's methods differing little in spirit from the methods of the Young Turks who abolished the Armenians, or the contemporary efforts of today's Turks to abolish the Kurds. Turkey, whenever you look into it, is not a pretty picture.
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