By Piro Misha
At the end of last year, on the occasion of the opening ceremony of a conference titled “Ottoman legacy and Muslim communities in today’s Balkans” the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmed Davutoglu, held a speech in Sarajevo that has stirred quite a debate. This time the debate is not related to such hot issues of international politics as the war in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hamas or even Sudan, on which the position of Ankara is noticeably different from that of the West. Instead the debate focused on what many analysts have called the “neo-Ottoman” or “neo-imperial” (according to the American magazine Forbes) inspiration of Turkish foreign policy. The reason being, that for the first time, in Sarajevo the Turkish Foreign Minister confirmed the suspicion, that if truth be told had been circulating for quite some time, that Turkey’s ambition of becoming a global power envisages the establishment of an area of influence (or outright hegemony) which stretches from faraway Middle East up to the shores of the Adriatic. In other words, exactly the territories once ruled by the Ottomans.
Given the fact that he was speaking in Sarajevo, it is understandable that the speech of the Turkish Foreign Minister focused first of all on the Balkans. The invitation that Davutoglu extended to the region from Sarajevo was very clear: in his view, today’s Balkans are nothing more than a neglected periphery of Europe, a victim of global competition. At the same time, the Balkans have the chance to become a center of global politics in the real sense of the word if the region decides to revert to its natural role as a strategic center of Afro-Eurasia, as it supposedly was during the centuries of Ottoman rule; centuries that, again according to Davutoglu, constitute the “golden age of the Balkans.” In other words, in Davutoglu’s view the future of the region lies in its past. “The Ottoman era in the Balkans is a success story. Now it needs to come backƎow is the time for reunification,” he declared.
It would certainly be useful to have a long discussion on the Davutoglu version of history, but suffice it to say that, at least in the academic circles in the region, it would be hard to find anyone that shares his view. But, for the sake of truth, it must be said that the speech of the Turkish Foreign Minister in Sarajevo did not focus solely on the Balkans. In fact our region constitutes but a small part of the new Turkish geopolitical strategy. Turkish ambitions are on a grander scale. “There are 23 countries,” declared Davutoglu, “that are close to us, and that expect something of usƉn their eyes, Turkey is the centreƉn other words, we share the same history, we share the same fate, and we will share the same future. Just as in the 16th century, when the rise of the Ottoman Balkans to the center of global politics took place, we will turn the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, alongside Turkey, into the future centre of world politics. This is the objective of Turkish foreign policy and we will achieve this. We will reintegrate the Balkans, the Middle East and the CaucasusŢ
While reading the speech held by Davutoglu in Sarajevo one cannot help noticing another fact. The European Union is not mentioned even once although he was speaking of a region, such as the Balkans, that has already either become a part or aspires to become a part of the European Union. It is not hard to guess the reason behind this omission: in the new Turkish geopolitical vision, an increased European presence in the Balkans constitutes unwanted competition. Davutoglu suggested as much in an editorial he wrote for the Belgrade daily, Politika, titled “Turkey and Serbia, key countries in the Balkans,” where he complained that as a result of the EU enlargement in the region, the dynamics of Turkish politics in the Balkans during the last decade have slowed down.
There was another passage in the same editorial that drew my attention. “Even today,” Davutoglu wrote, “Balkan culture is an important element of Turkish culture as millions of Turks migrated from this region to Anatolia when the Ottoman Empire was gradually retreating.”
What did he mean? It is a well known fact to those who know something of the history of the Balkans that many ethnic Turks truly left or were expelled from the region alongside the Ottoman armies and administration. But they could never have amounted to millions. They can become millions only if one considers as Turks the tens and hundreds of thousands of Albanians (Bosnians, etc) that were expelled from their lands in present day Greece or the former Yugoslavia. And if truth be told, in those days they were indeed considered as Turks not just by the Greeks and Serbs, but first of all by the Turkish government. It must not be forgotten that up to the end of their rule, the Ottomans never recognized the existence of an Albanian nation, insisting as they did that all Albanians of the Muslim faith were simply Turks, while those of the Orthodox faith were Greeks. Albanians were the only people in the Balkans who were never allowed the use of their mother tongue, not even at the time when this right was granted to all other people in the region. The dire consequences such a policy brought about are well known. It’s well known too that this Turkish attitude did not change even after the creation of the Turkish Republic, as proven by the Turkish-Greek treaty of Lausanne of 1923 on the exchange of population, which classified all Muslim inhabitants of Greece as Turks, thus legitimizing the first mass expulsion of the ȡm population.
Similar agreements that served to legitimize the expulsion of Albanians from their territories were signed between Turkey and Yugoslavia too, even well into the Tito era. On occasion these treaties were even used for pursuing other ambitions, such as for instance the substitution of the Albanian language with Turkish in Kosovo. It must also not be forgotten that upon their arrival in Turkey, the hundreds of thousands of Albanian and Bosnian emigrants who spoke no Turkish whatsoever, were subjected to an intensive policy of assimilation, in accordance with one of the main principles on which the Turkish state was (and still is) founded: there live only Turks in Turkey. However, what is more important, is the fact that these people, which Davutoglu calls Turks when in Belgrade, and Albanians and Bosnians when in Tirana or Sarajevo, are today Turkish citizens in the real sense of the word; citizens that have but a vague memory of the origins of their grandfathers or great grandfathers who arrived in Turkey a long time ago from Kosovo, Macedonia, the Sandjak etc.
It is with good reason that I spent so much time on this point. By now it has become clear that the frequent references to the so-called Turkish Albanians are not a coincidence. In fact, in Sarajevo, Davutoglu made it clear that the legitimacy of the Turkish geopolitical claims on a number of areas in the Balkans, and further a field, rests on the fact, that supposedly there live in Turkey more Albanians, Bosnians, Chechens, Abkhazians, than in their respective countries. Such claims have lately been mentioned ever more frequently in the international press. However, when hearing claims of this nature, a number of questions spring naturally to mind. For instance: Where does this information, that is the claim that there are supposedly five million Albanians living in Turkey, come from, while it is well known that censuses of this nature have never been conducted in Turkey?! Or, if Turkey accepts that there are so many Albanians living there, do they have the possibility to exercise any of the universally recognized minority rights?
Last December, the Turkish President Abdullah Gul took this speculation even further during his official visit in Tirana, when in a ceremony organized in the Turkish school Turgut Ozal he declared: “Allow me to say, that all of us together are part of one great nation.”
What nation? Because according to any universally accepted definition of the nation, Turks and Albanians cannot be one nation. Unless, that is, we substitute the modern concept of the nation, with the concept of the milet of Ottoman times, when the inhabitants of the empire were not divided according to their ethnicity, but were classified according to their religion, thus including Albanians of the Muslim faith in the same millet as Turks, Chechens, Arabs, etc, and those of the Orthodox faith in the so-called Rom millet alongside Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and so on.
In any case, all that has been said above, including the speech by Davutoglu, would be seen as harmless rhetoric, were it not for the fact that from a number of years, certain Turkish circles have been working in the field in accordance with the same logic.
The first to express this concern three years ago was Arb철Xhaferi. In September 2007, in his editorial “On the consequences of akraball쫠[translates roughly as belonging to the same family]”, he drew attention to the fact that certain sections of Turkish society or the Turkish state, under the guise of religious activities, were organizing and financing manifestations, whose real purpose was to show that Albanians are an integral part of the Ottoman civilization. To illustrate this he mentioned an event that happened in the remote region of Librazhd, Albania, “where the religious authorities of these parts, alongside certain Turkish circles, organized the collective circumcision of more than 200 Albanian children in accordance with the Turkish tradition. The cameras of Top-Channel,” – wrote Xhaferi – “offered us this bizarre event in which children dressed in clothes of white satin, wearing caps similar to fezes with the writing ‘Mashallah’ on them, waved the flags of the Turkish state and the flags of the Albanian stateƔruth be told, these political-religious events are not accidentalƓome time ago, during the month of Ramadan, such structures organized iftar-s in the city squares of cities once ruled by the Ottoman Empire. These projects, smuggled under the guise of religious activities create a number of problems in the relations within the Albanian community, but also in the state and international relations of the Albanians in the European context,” he warned. “What would happen if the Greeks or the Serbs were to do the same thing? If they were to organize similar ceremonies where Orthodox Albanian children were baptized while waving Albanian or Greek flags?” – he asked.
One can think of many examples of this nature. Remember the polemics in Tetova when the iftar held in the centre of town was used to glorify the Ottoman Empire? Many in Tirana were surprised when the Municipality of Istanbul used the iftar to fill up Scanderbeg Square with Turkish flags last year. The same thing happened this year in Shkodra. And surprisingly no one seems to notice that the Turkish flag is simply the national flag of another state, and that there is no reason for it to be used during an activity of religious nature organized in Albania.
Until yesterday these were all thought to be the initiatives of certain circles. The speech of the Turkish Foreign Minister in Sarajevo puts things in a whole new perspective.
In fact it is not hard to understand that the whole geopolitical construction of Ahmed Davutoglu rests mainly on two political-cultural elements: the Muslim faith and history, or to be more specific the so-called Ottoman legacy. Both these elements are used in order to create the short cut Ottoman legacy – Islamic faith – Turkey, which would then enable the success of the new Turkish strategy. These are the very same elements around which focuses the activity of the circles mentioned by Arber Xhaferi.
If truth be told, it is also not very difficult to notice that, behind the garrulous fa袤e of some of the so-called debates on history or on the identity of the Albanians that have taken place in Albania in recent years, what is really at stake is not our past, but our future. By insisting on a thorough reevaluation of the place occupied by the legacy of the Ottoman period, and consequently, on a reevaluation of the place occupied by its main component, the Islamic faith, in the collective self-identification, culture and, more broadly speaking, on what it means to be an Albanian, what is being aimed for is nothing less than a redefinition of the historical determination of the Albanians and their place in the modern world. Naturally, owing to the great popularity it enjoys, the ‘European’ project itself is very rarely attacked openly. This is done only by groups that are quite marginal and with no real influence in society. But the idea that is proposed every now and then of an Albania that belongs neither to the West, nor to the East, according to which, due to Albania’s history and the supposed Islamic faith of the majority of the Albanians, our more natural geopolitical position should be that of a connecting bridge, of a permanent intermediary between Asia and Europe, between East and West, between yesterday and today, is not that different from Davutoglu’s vision. It must also be added that in most cases this sort of talk is presented under a nationalist veneer, in which an important place is occupied by the amplification of existing stereotypes and suspicions vis-ஶis our Christian neighbors, portrayed as our historical enemies from whose threats we were supposedly protected throughout history by Turkey and our Muslim faith. And not rarely, all this is also extended to the Albanians of Orthodox faith.
“Time has come for us not to ignore any longer the actual identity of the Albanians,” wrote the Kosovar writer and former politician Milazim Krasniqi, one of the main spokesmen of those that today can be classified as neo-Ottomanists. He complained that “our children still learn that the historical enemies of the Albanians, are the Albanians’ allies, and that the real allies of the Albanians are still presented as enemiesƁlongside the Kastriotik identity [reference to Gjergj Kastrioti, also known as Scanderbeg, Albania’s national hero, who led the resistance against the Ottoman invasion of Albania in the 15th century] and its production in our national history and culture, we must also accept that layer of cultural identity of Ottoman origin, which in fact became the embryo of the Albanians’ national ideology.”
Let us be clear, when I speak of the Ottoman legacy I do not refer to the need for a critical and serious reexamination of this part of the Albanian historical heritage, within the context of the reinterpretation of all of our history, in order to avoid the romantic nationalist inspiration that has usually characterized the examination of this period. This is certainly something that must be done as quickly and as properly as possible. What I refer to are the attempts being made to rehabilitate and once again make relevant the legacy (and nostalgia) of the Ottoman Empire; attempts which in truth bear no connection to academic interests, although they are often presented under such a guise. In this context, in order not to create any misunderstandings, it would be useful to clarify that there is no doubt that our long coexistence within the Ottoman Empire has exerted its influence in all areas of our life, in our mentality, habits and even our behavior and way of life. The Ottoman legacy is a constituent part of the historical and cultural heritage of the people of the Balkans, even though this influence can be more obvious in some places than in some others, depending on a variety of factors, but first and foremost depending on the duration of Ottoman rule in a certain place and the time that has elapsed since its separation from the Empire. But this is not the problem. The question that must be asked after reading the text of Davutoglu’s speech is this: Does the influence of this past constitute such a cultural and social reality as to constitute a serious reason for us to reexamine all the ideas we have of ourselves, of the society we live in, and consequently, even the idea we have our country’s place in the world and in history?
In truth, although the Ottoman legacy continues to be present, its influence has long been in a process of continuous decline; a decline that began when Ottoman rule started to wane and all the people of the peninsula started to look up to Europe, deciding that a process of Occidentalization presented the only possibility they had in order to come out of their deep, inherited backwardness. It is a fact that starting from mid 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, there has taken place in all our region a drastic interruption of the active influence of this heritage in almost of walks of life; an interruption accompanied by its replacement by a host of new influences coming mainly from Europe, whose impact during the 20th century has undoubtedly become dominant. This is just as true in the case of Albania. It is true even for the Turks who, as it is known, founded their modern republic under Ataturk, by fiercely opposing the political, social and cultural legacy of the Empire, which was seen as an obstacle standing in the way of the country’s development and Europeanization.
In other words what we are talking about is a complex process which began with the project of national emancipation during the 19th century and is by now concluding with the integration of the Balkan countries in the EU and NATO. Allow me to add that the reason why integration into NATO and the EU is of such historical importance for the Albanian Europhile elites, is not simply related to considerations about the country’s economic development or security, but is also related to the fact that (in their eyes) this integration will make the country’s march towards Europe practically irreversible, thus eliminating once and for all the fear of sliding back into the past. This is the reason why every step taken in this direction constitutes a step away from the influence of the Ottoman legacy, much in the same way as we are moving away with every passing year from the influence of the much shorter period of Enver Hoxha’s rule. It is precisely the realization that very soon the process of Albania’s Europeanization will have reached the point of no return that explains the unusual reactions on the part of Milazim & co.
But let us conclude this line of thought by remembering what Maria Todorova wrote: “Imperial legacies for all their prolonged and profound impact, are historical phenomena with their termini post quem and ante quem. Any reifying of their characteristics along immobile and unreformable civilizational fault lines can be, of course, the object of ideological propaganda or superficial political science exercises, but cannot be a legitimate working hypothesis for history.”
Naturally, after having said all of the above, a question presents itself: is there a reason to be concerned? Is there any truth to the comment posted by a reader in the comments rubric that accompanied the latest editorial by Arb철Xhaferi in the “Shekulli” daily, “The Ottoman Challenge,” which analyzed the speech held by Davutoglu in Sarajevo? It said: “Once again Turkey is trying to separate us from Europe. This time it is trying to undermine Albania’s EU integration process, striving to take us back into the ‘Ottoman fold,’ and make us part of its plans for another ‘battle’ against the rest of Europe for the fate of the Balkans. Albanians brought down Communism in the name of a European Albania, not in the name of an ‘Ottoman’ Albania.”
Does this threat really exist? At a first glance one can answer no, since the overwhelming majority of Albanians have already made their choice. That is why every project that suggests a departure from the European path would be neither realistic, nor acceptable. Of course, it would be useful for Albanian political leaders to make it perfectly clear and without any ambiguity whatsoever to Turkish officials that Albania appreciates the development of relations with a friendly country like Turkey, but that such friendship cannot be based on a thesis such as that proposed by Davutoglu, that is, it can be based neither on Ottoman nostalgia, nor on religious solidarity! Furthermore, they must make it clear that this already consolidated friendship is not helped by the actions of certain circles, especially if one keeps in mind that Albanians are extremely sensitive if and when someone tries to exploit their religion in order to achieve goals that can cause division. I hope that if Albanian politicians have not done this already, they will do so as soon as possible. However, at this point a parenthesis is in order, concerning the bad impression created by certain officials of the Albanian state when they rush to support the Davutoglu thesis. One such official seemed so carried away in his enthusiasm that, writing under a pseudonym, he called the new Turkish geopolitical strategy brilliant, while claiming that its architect, Mr. Davutoglu was an extraordinary personality, of the same caliber as Kissinger! Naturally, every citizen of this country has the right to express his or her opinion, but when it comes to a state official one cannot help but wonder: how does his view compare to the official policy of the state or the department he represents? Another official, of an even higher rank, appeared on TV and after a long tirade on the traditional friendship between Turkey and Albania, began to talk about one of the myths that have quite successfully been put in circulation lately, as part of the propaganda offensive mentioned above: on the so-called privileged role that Albanians supposedly played in the Empire. And while listening to her, I was inadvertently reminded of what Faik Konica wrote in 1903, in an attempt to counter the propaganda of some Turkophile circles of the time against the Albanian national movement: “I wonder how this idiocy (that Albanians are in command in the Ottoman Empire) has spread – he wrote in ‘Albania’- Albanians constitute one fourteenth part of Turkey (their number is estimated to stand at two million). There are 80 vilayets in Turkey. As we speak, Abedin Pasha is the only Albanian vali. Out of 250 mutasarifs that govern Turkey, only 7 are AlbaniansƏut of three or four hundred generals, there may be ten Albanians. In diplomacy there is but one chief scribe. All the good positions are reserved for the Turks, Greeks and ArmeniansƉ do not regret this situation. On the contrary, I wish the Sultan would bit by bit expel all the Albanians because only then will they begin to come to their sensesƈow come they do not realize that if many Albanians are employed by the government, they occupy the lowest positions, zaptie, 袵sh, etc, positions from which they cannot ‘control’ a kingdom?”
Of course, Turkey is a big country that can aspire to become a global power, by employing to this end the necessary political and propaganda initiatives, and so forth. On the other hand, Albanians have reason enough to be sympathetic to the growing economic and political presence of Turkey in our region, as well as in our country where, as it is known, in recent years there has taken place a noticeable growth of this presence, especially in the economy. One must mention too, the widespread network of Turkish educational institutions in Albania, with more than 7000 participants (3860 students and 3260 former students) and 612 teachers and administrative staff. These institutions cover almost the whole education cycle in Albania, from kindergartens to universities, and are certainly an important factor in the promotion of the Turkish language and culture. This fact is explained, among other things, by the good reputation they usually enjoy, on the quality as well as the discipline they offer. But, there is a butƉt concerns transparency, because I think it would be normal for the Albanian public to be better informed on the “Gulen Movement” that owns these schools, on what it represents, and why not, on the polemics that there have been every now and again in Turkey on this movement and on its founder and leader, Fetullah Gulen. It is true that many, in Turkey as well as in the world, hold in high esteem the contribution of this movement as a representative of moderate Islam in opposition to more radical forms of Islam, in promoting tolerance and dialogue between religions and civilizations. But it is also true that there are others that view it with suspicion, as a movement that is essentially political in its ambitions, and which aims to create and elite capable of implementing the Islamization of the Turkish state and society. What is the truth? That I do not know. But in the Balkans the more transparency there is, the better it is.
To conclude: There is no doubt that a thesis such as that put forward by Davutoglu constitutes a challenge; a challenge that becomes greater if behind this thesis there really stands a powerful state such as Turkey. Nevertheless, it is a challenge that can be met without harming the good relations Albania has with Turkey, as long as our leaders have a clear idea on what is our national interest, thus becoming spokesmen of that overwhelming majority of Albanians that just like Ismail Kadare think that: “ƴhe West, just as it is, problematic, arrogant, more closed in its refusal, than open in its acceptance, the West that just like democracy, just like freedom itself is not as beautiful and as perfect as we thought it to be at the time of our misfortune, the West remains our only choice.”
