Ezra Mannix

Since I have been here, I  have swallowed two must reads about Turkey that make a great pair to read at the same time or in succession. The first is no hidden find, especially since its author won some Scandinavian bling back in ’06. It is Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. You can read reviews of it here.

The second perhaps less famous one is Star & Crescent: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer. You can read a review of it here.

Whats nice about reading them together or in succession is that one offers the reader  reflective and emotional insights into a city whose best days have past it by. It is very human, even in its recounting of the city’s history in the last 200 years. Instead of Monday morning quarterbacking  Istanbul’s  decline, it breathes life into it by relating first-hand accounts made by European travelers in the 19th century who saw a poverty stricken yet enigmatically charming place. He weaves these accounts with his own memories of growing up in a family that was also losing its wealth and prestige, a melancholy (hüzünlü) bunch that Westernized in its own superficial way.

All well and good, but it doesn’t dump you right into the heat of the conflicts and issues of modern Turkey. For that we turn to Kinzer, a former New York Times Bureau chief who is obviously used to condensing issues in a way that doesn’t oversimplify or patronize the reader’s ability to grasp subtleties of a culture. I thought his book was going to be a cheerleader of how wonderful modern Turkey is and just regurgitate official lines about issues. Indeed,  from the cover, it looks like he is going to do just that. While he does suffer from tiny spurts of unqualified hyperbole about how amazing Turkey is, he gets to the real meat of issues such as the Armenian genocide question, the war with the Kurds, the censure of artists and writers, and more. Naturally being a yabanci (foreigner) helps him get away with a lot, but he doesnt offer a Holier than Thou, look-I-come-from-a-REAL-democracy perspective. He is humbled, for example, when one Turkish writer calls him a Turcophile, a badge he obviously continues to wear with pride.

And as a nice connection, Kinzer discusses his friendship with Pamuk and notes that Pamuk is naturally inclined to be a-political, a reminder to me how good these two books balance each other out.

Plus he really gets how great mezes, nargile, and ambling about forgotten ruins are!