Lord Elgin was wrong. Not the eighth earl whom we know as a viceroy of India, but his more famous father, the seventh who had carted away the Parthenon Marbles from Athens during 1802-1812. Elgin feared the Ottoman Turks, who had occupied Greece, might vandalise them.
I used to believe him, and spent a whole afternoon once in the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles rooms, thinking of and thanking him. Now, after a 10-day Christmas-New Year holiday in Turkiye, I am convinced the Ottomans would have guarded the marbles and all the Hellenic sites, relics and ruins even better.
The Turks’ capture of Constantinople in 1453 changed the world from medieval to modern by forcing Europe to seafare, see new lands, gain knowledge, ‘renaissance’ themselves, invent machines, (colonise lesser peoples), and usher in the age of science and reason. The Turks, too, captured and conquered as their forefathers had; they too destroyed much, but preserved more, and built still more.
So much so, Turkiye has a lot to show you as their own family silver, and not of ‘others’—Hellenic sites of Troy (where, like Dr Faustus, I hallucinated Helen was hanging on to my arm; it was my wife), debating halls of the pagan Greeks and champion arenas of the Romans, Hercules’ gate, Nike’s images, Byzantine ruins including Mother Mary’s supposed retirement home in Ephesus with its topless towers and memories of epistles received from St Paul, and of course the crown city from where Constantine the Great lorded over Christendom, and Justinian decreed Lex Romana.
The city retains its Byzantine soul after 575 years of Muslim rule. The Byzantine walls cannonaded by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453 have been rebuilt. Basilica Cistern, the underground reservoir that supplied water to the city for 2,000 years, is still held up by Roman columns on whose bases are sculptured the fiery head of the Greek demoness Medusa. (Look away, you may turn to stone.) Old churches are still there, new were built during the zenith of Ottoman glory. A beautiful 1898 Bulgarian Orthodox church stood close to our rooms in Istanbul; an old wooden Armenian church stands at the square of a popular shopping spot.
Hagia Sophia is there, standing proud with its murals and mosaics, including the one depicting Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and a divinely-inspired fantasy of Constantine showing a model of the city to Jesus and Mary, and Justinian I a model of Hagia Sophia. The shrine remains as pristinely Christian as was the model, of course with the rebuilds done by successive Byzantine rulers.
Then what has Erdogan done? Well, he has let Turkish Muslims use a hall for prayers, without any way harming or hurting the structure, its murals or its thousands of visitors who come from across the world. He has his political reasons for that; more about it some other time.
Most Turks I met were eager to see India, meet Indians, trade with India, and can’t understand the current chill in ties. They are proud of what they are—a member of NATO, the gateway to Europe, the guardians of the Bosphorus who can block or lock up Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea fleet, and a people of both culture and technology. They may like to join Pakistan’s newfangled alliance, so has Saudi Arabia who are our friends.
They are a happy people. Bars serve fine wine and vile arrack (raki) till 2 am (the one closest to my abode was named Erdogan Bar). They take everything with a smile or a laugh, except any vile word on Ataturk. They revere him as we do Gandhi; you see his pictures and statues everywhere, and not even one of the dictator Erdogan.
prasannan@theweek.in