Turks, Arabs and matters of perception

It is important to be concerned with perceptions about Turkey. Recently, a field called public diplomacy has focused specifically on managing the perceptions that countries have about themselves. Yet in my previous article I tried to say that more important than this is becoming aware of our own perceptions about others. We care a great deal about what Europeans say about Turkey and respond to it immediately, but we never ask, for example, what kind of perception lies behind the news or publications about Europeans that appear in Turkish public opinion. With the Arabs it gets far worse. Comparing the publications about Turkey that appear in the Arab world with the publications about Arabs that appear in Turkey can be a good occasion for looking at ourselves in this respect.

The basic question we sought an answer to with the officials we chatted with after the conference at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Research in Riyadh concerned the obstacles to the necessary degree of rapprochement between Arabs and Turks. We agreed that there is much that can be done in this area. Since I had devoted a part of my talk to the recent openings in Turkey in the field of higher education (such as the lifting of the headscarf ban, the doubling of the number of universities, and the creation of the sociological ground for Turkey's democratization by spreading education to the masses), they especially pointed to the lack of communication and cooperation in this area.

For example, 138 thousand Saudi students are currently studying abroad, and every year universities from many parts of the world set up bases here to attract Saudi students, but no university from Turkey has any effort in this direction. Yet they explained that, if it were known that a suitable university environment exists, Turkey could be preferred by Saudi students over all other countries. Let us announce this here, especially to YÖK and to all our universities that provide education in English.

Another demand that was insistently voiced concerned the opening of Turkish courses. Among Arab youth there has recently arisen a great interest in Turkey in this regard, but there is no proper supply meeting this demand. Cemalettin Sancar, who has a very close relationship with the Center and makes special efforts to spread Arabic education in Turkey, underlines that the same should be done in reciprocity for Turkish education in Saudi Arabia. This is a subject worthy of special attention from TİKA, the Yunus Emre Foundation, the Presidency for Turks Abroad, or other civil institutions of Turkey.

At the Faisal Research Center we had a private meeting with Princess Sara, daughter of King Faisal by his Turkish wife, Iffet Hanım. Three more grandchildren of King Faisal were with her. The meeting offer was conveyed by the director of the Research Center, Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmuhsin, owing to the special interest they showed in the conference agenda on Turkey. Sara Hanım, in her sixties, speaks very proper Istanbul Turkish; she is a person who has received a very good modern education and palace upbringing, and is just as modest. She inspires a deep feeling of respect. At the insistence of her niece, Princess Meha, she began speaking Turkish with us; despite her voice trembling with excitement, her speech was extremely proper. After a while, with the joining of the others, we returned to Arabic.

She spoke at length about the effort her late mother Iffet Hanım had begun, especially regarding the education of women and the raising of their social position. Her efforts, which began at first as madrasas for girls, later reached an Islamic sciences faculty, and now, through the efforts of her daughters, a huge, fully equipped university with all its departments. As she told these things, she explained how her mother's Ottoman education had nourished such activism in her.

At one point in the conversation, Princess Meha explained the historical differences between Turks and Arabs using Ibn Khaldun's concepts such as nomadism, sedentary civilization (hadarah), and asabiyya. According to her, "After serving Islam for a long time, the Arabs were subjected to the sluggishness and heaviness that come with becoming sedentary. But God sent, at just the right time, the Turks, who carried the advantages of nomadism, its dynamism and self-sacrifice, and from that moment began the historical period in which the Turks truly carried the banner of Islam. After the First World War the two turned their backs on each other. Turkey appeared to the Arabs as a country that had made its choice in favor of Europe, whereas in the last ten years 'Turkey's return to the region' under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been welcomed with tremendous excitement and great goodwill among the Arab peoples, especially among the Saudi people. In the face of the many troubles that the Arab world is exposed to today, Turkey can lead a recovery across the whole Islamic world, and indeed does so..."

While on the subject, she offered an interesting and, to us, quite "empathetic" explanation of the Turks' seemingly excessive love for the Prophet. According to her, "Since for the Arabs the Prophet was one of their own and they knew Arabic, the Quran, with all its miraculousness, captivated them. That is why, for Arabs, Islam is a Quran-centered religion. Islam, however, reached the Turks through concrete persons and their practices, and because they did not understand the Quran at first, they felt a great love, in his absence, for the Prophet who had raised those persons they encountered, rather than for the Quran. This love made Islam, for the Turks, a Prophet-centered religion rather than a Quran-centered one. This too is a blessing of God for the Islamic world. The fact that the Turks, out of respect for the Prophet, preferred the name 'Mehmet' instead of Muhammad and use it so commonly has always inspired in me a distinct respect for the Turks."

It was a quite sociological explanation, full of reason and understanding. As for our astonishment at how easily she moved from sociology to political science, from hermeneutics to history and the religious sciences, she tried to dispel it by saying she had studied sociology. But evidently she had not been content with a sociology education alone.

Frankly, if even I was surprised to witness this high cultural level in several women in Saudi Arabia, this should be taken as a serious warning about the origins of the perception of Arabs that we hold.

In addition to the impressions we had earlier in Saudi Arabia through those who come from Mecca, Jeddah and Medina on pilgrimage visits, these impressions we have gained from the political and cultural capital say a great deal about Turkey.

What is the source of the paranoia we create, by closing in on ourselves, about the intentions others have toward us, and whom does it serve? Which of our psychological or nafs-related illnesses does this paranoia conceal? Isn't it worth looking back at again and again, don't you think?