THE FORMER OTTOMAN EMPIRE - The Revenge of Geography - page 215

ization, while a force for unity on one level, is a force for civilizational tension on anoth-
er, since it brings large and spread-out solidarity groups together; and so while the Islamic
world lacks political cohesion, Islamic consciousness nevertheless rises alongside global-
ization. Thus, the Islamic aspect of Turkish identity grows. This happens at a time when
the non-Western world becomes healthier, more urbane, and more literate, so that there is a
rise in the political and economic power of middle tier nations such as Turkey. 7
Turks helped lead the House of Islam for almost 850 years, from the Seljuk Turk victory
over the Byzantines at the 1071 Battle of Manzikert in eastern Anatolia to the defeat of
the Ottoman Empire by the Western Allies in 1918. Only for the past century have the
Arabs really been at the head of Muslim civilization. In fact, until the Iranian Revolu-
tion of 1978-1979, even the then 50 million Muslims in Iran were largely invisible to the
West; just as 75 million Muslims in present-day Turkey were largely invisible until the
Gaza flotilla crisis erupted at the same time that the Turks made a deal with Iran to accept
its enriched uranium, and voted against sanctioning Iran at the United Nations. Suddenly,
Western publics and media woke up to the blunt geographical fact of Turkey.
Then in 2011 came the uprisings against tired autocracies across North Africa and the
Middle East, a beneficiary of which in a historical and geographical sense was Turkey. Ot-
toman Turkey ruled North Africa and the Levant for hundreds of years in the modern era.
While this rule was despotic, it was not so oppressive as to leave a lasting scar in the minds
of today's Arabs. Turkey is an exemplar of Islamic democracy that can serve as a role mod-
el for these newly liberated states, especially as its democracy evolved from a hybrid re-
gime, with generals and politicians sharing power until recently—a process that some Arab
states will go through en route to freer systems. With 75 million people and a healthy eco-
nomic growth rate until recently, Turkey is also a demographic and economic juggernaut
that can project soft power throughout the Mediterranean. It simply has advantages that
other major Mediterranean states proximate to North Africa—Greece, Italy, and Spain—do
not.
Yet there are key things to know about Turkish Islam, which indicate that the West may
find a silver lining in Turkey's rise in the Middle East.
Indeed, if we knew a little more about Jalal ed-Din Rumi, the thirteenth-century founder
of the Turkic tariqat that was associated with the whirling dervishes, we would have been
less surprised by Islam's compatibility with democracy, and Islamic fundamentalism might
not seem so monolithic and threatening. Rumi dismissed “immature fanatics” who scorn
music and poetry. 8 He cautioned that a beard or mustache on a cleric is no sign of wis-
dom. Rumi favored the individual over the crowd, and consistently spoke against tyranny.
Rumi's legacy is more applicable to democratizing tendencies in the Muslim world than
are figures of the Arab and Iranian pantheons with whom the West is more familiar. The ec-
lectic nature of Turkish Islam, as demonstrated by Rumi, goes together with Turkey's very