Influence of Buddhism on Islam

FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES                     

Tel/Fax ; 43034706                                                          Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh                                                      

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KGSingh@Yahoo.com                                                                     Mayur Vihar –Phase 1,

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/                                                                Delhi 91, India .

Influence of Buddhism on Islam

Through out history, there was natural interaction through migration and conquest, travel and trade, between the Fertile Crescent, Asia Minor, Persia, Khorasan and Central Asia and Hindustan. Alexander the Macedonian went up to Bukhara and then north west Hindustan. Earlier some Indo- Aryan tribes like Mitannis had migrated from Eurasian steppes and ruled in upper Mesopotamia.  Then the Arab armies marched north east and conquered areas up to the steppes. Then the Turkish tribes marched from eastern Asian steppes to Persia! and Turkey (and the Indian sub-continent). Then came Chengiz Khan and the Mongol hordes.

Culturally, linguistically, ethnically and spiritually there is no area in the world that has so much in common as that formed by the regions connecting the river basins of Euphrates, Tigris; Amu and Syr Darya: Indus and the Ganges. This is an area with a continuous history and cradle of most civilizations and religions; Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism and Christianity and Islam and their variations. The intermingling of Semitic, Indo-Iranian and Ural- Altaic languages with local languages produced a mosaic of new languages and tongues.

Influence of Buddhism in Central Asia perhaps started from the time of Greek King Menander in Bactria. During the rule of Kushana Emperor Kanishka (who was converted to Buddhism) from Peshawar, not only traders but also religious teachers moved freely throughout his Empire which then encompassed today's Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang, Pakistan and Northern India and laid the foundations for the spread of Buddhism. Earlier Asoka had undertaken energetic steps to spread the Dhamma, but his efforts were more successful in South East Asia and Ceylon. Buddhism was taken to Central Asia either directly or via Tibet or Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) where with little competition, it was easily accepted . But it was not so in Sogdiana and around it, where Zoroastrians were well entrenched, later came followers of Manichaeism and Nestorian Christians. Conquerors (and traders) spread their religions, but they were also influenced by the cultures and the creeds of the ruled.

To begin with in Buddhism symbols represented Buddha and Tantras. Sculpture representing Buddha in human form is a Greek contribution through Gandhara art from Afghanistan. Starting from Bactria, Buddhism evolved the concept of Bodhisattva Maitreya as incarnations for attaining Nirvana and return to guide and help the laity. This universal and secular religion found favour with Central Asian Turks and Mongols (also Uyghur's in Xinjiang) when it reached there.

Influence of Viharas and Stupas on darghas and khankahs in Central Asia

Excavations have revealed Viharas and Stupas all over eastern Turkistan, up to Bukhara and into Turkmenistan. To begin with, Stupas were built to keep sacred relics (of Buddha and some of his disciples) although Buddha himself was against such practices. Later Stupas became associated with the symbols of remains of saints and cemeteries. The respect and veneration is , perhaps ,based more on Aryan belief in Brahman or the Reality (Universal Soul) and Atman (individual Soul) with the saints having achieved the Union with the Reality. Prophet Mohammed had underlined that God and man are different. (Christians have still not resolved this dilemma fully). Miracles and veneration of dead persons are denounced in Quran (Sura XI, 31).

Stupas started as simple structures, as in Sanchi in Central India (1st or 2nd Cent BC) with a semi-spherical dome for the remains, fenced by a wall and 4 entrances and a Chhatri (umbrella symbolising the Lord and the Sovereign). Later a raised square platform was added under the dome with the structures then becoming more complex and sophisticated, adorned with sculptures like Bamiyan Buddhas and paintings (some times in caves i.e. in Ajanta and Barhaut in India). Viharas are monasteries with cells constructed around a court yard, with Stupa in the middle, for monks to stay during the heavy Indian monsoon rains. Normally the monks were not to attach themselves to any fixed place.

With the spread of Buddhism Central Asians including Turks and Mongols adopted and assimilated phrases from Buddhism i.e. Sanskrit and Pali words like Nirvana =Nirvana (Nibanna), Dhamma =Dharma, Cindan =Chandan (sandalwood), used for funerary ceremony, Aratna =Ratan, Stup =Stupa, Mandal= Mandala, Chakra= Chakra, Bodhistava =Bodhistav, Bakshi (accountant)=Bhikku /Bhikshu (because a Bhikshu once did accounts for the Mongols) etc. 

An excavation in 1930s at Moghoki Attar mosque in Bukhara, perhaps the oldest surviving mosque in Central Asia, revealed under it ruins of a Zoroastrian temple destroyed by Arabs and an earlier Buddhist temple beneath it. The name Bukhara itself perhaps derives from Vihara. (Tashkent could be from Tashkhund; region of stones in Sanskrit). There are many ruins of Viharas and Stupas in Termez on Amu Darya (Uzbekistan), Merv (Turkmenistan), Afrasiab (Samarkand), Khojand etc in Ferghana valley and around Lake Issik Kul in Kyrgyzstan .Of course in Eastern Turkistan (and Tibet) apart from the ruins, many thousand old Buddhist manuscripts (300 pages found in Merv too) and books were recovered. Buddhist paintings have also been found in Afrasiab and elsewhere in Central Asia. It is not a simple coincidence that after Islam's arrival all these places became centres of Sufi Islam. From Stupas and Viharas have perhaps emerged sacred tombs, khankahs, darghas and madarsas.

Tombs were not popular in Arab heartland around Saudi Arabia. But the Persian, Turkish, Asian and African, even Berber Muslims accepted Pirs, Calandars, Sheikhs, Babas, Dervishes and others and their tombs became places of worship. Freedom loving eclectic nomads and others resisted Arab warriors in Sogdiana and Central Asia and their still austere Islam. It was only the modified, personalised and spiritual Islam of Persian Samanids based in Bukhara (Ismail's tomb looks like a simple Stupa) that was first accepted by Turks and others in Central Asia .To Islam had been added strands of local religions and beliefs .It is this form of Islam that was spread in India mostly by Sufi saints, but also by forced conversions or inducements.

Sufism developed fully by 12^th century by which time Arab Islam had been modified and enriched by streams from Persian, Central Asian and other religions, beliefs and philosophies .It was in the heartland of Arab Islam ie Baghdad and Aleppo, where Sufis saints Al Hajj (for insisting " Ana Al-haq "-I am the Truth) and Suhrawardy were martyred. Because of Sunni hostility tombs were erected much after the martyrdom of Imam Ali and Imam Hussein in Najaf and Karbala. The Wahhabis, Salafis remain deadly opposed to Sufism.

The major Sufi Tariqas ( ways) had central Asian origin or influence i.e., Qadiriyas, Nakshabandis (many current Turkish leaders are its adherents), Rumi's dervishes, Bektashis, the patron saint of non-Turkish (mostly Slav), non-  Muslim ( mostly Christian) born Janissary corps and top Administrators of the Ottoman Empire based on devshirme (slave ) system. Turkey's Shia Alevis' faith (majority from Turkmen Oghuz tribes) has strands from Christian, Shaman and other beliefs.

Intermingling of beliefs and faiths;

Human wish to comprehend and experience the Reality is as old as the natural talent to transcend beyond oneself, until this faculty was dimmed by technological afflictions. There are glimpses of it in earliest Aryan writings like Vedas and Avestan, even among Greek philosophers like Orpheus, Pythagoras, Socrates and others .So the environment and tools existed before formal religions evolved or were revealed.

Buddha himself went through the whole gamut of experiments and meditations including Jain like and other austerities, Hindu systems before realisng Nirvana. And his path and method of meditation were modified in east India, Tibet, China and Japan. If Buddhism influenced the evolution of Sufi Islam then Buddhism itself was influenced earlier by other religions and practices.

Indo-Iranian religion Mithraism flowered between the 2nd and 4^th centuries in the Roman world and became very popular among the Roman aristocracy, military leaders and soldiers, traders and slaves with powerful patrons among Roman emperors, like Commodus, Septimium Severus, Caraculla and others. Diocletian built a temple for Mithra near Vienna on Danube as "the Protector of the Empire". He was the god of Light and Sun, contract, loyalty and justice. Celebrations for Mithra's birthday on December 25, the sun's solstice, was so popular in the Asia that Christmas had to be shifted to this day from January 6 to make it acceptable among the masses. Christianity also took over many of the rituals and symbols of Mithraism, like baptism, resurrection and prayers to honor the Sun.

India's Sikh religion also known as gurmat, the teachings of the guru, founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539), combines many elements of Hinduism and Islam. Guru Nanak believed that one could come close to the God through meditation and devotion .God is the true guru and his divine word has come to the humanity through the 10 historical gurus. Their sacred scripture Adi Granth is also called "Guru Granth Saheb ". The Sikh temples are known as gurdwaras, Guru's door. Many Shi'ites Ghulat groups believe that Ali and the Imams are doors to God. When the Sunni Moghul emperors persecuted the Sikhs and their gurus, Sikh religion took to militancy and those who died for the panth ( gurus' path) became martyrs.

Human beings have evolved many paths to the Reality ie various Yoga systems; Tibetan, Zen, Vipassana and other Buddhist Margs, Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Hesychasm, Gurdjief way, Sufi Tariqas and Transcendental Meditation (TM) in modern times for spiritually challenged materialists. The masses accept what the saints and holy men they trust teach them.

September4, 2004.Bucharest.

(K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990-91 Gulf war), Romania and Senegal.  He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.  The views expressed here are his own.- Email-Gajendrak@hotmail.com)

Mosque and tombs

The word mosque itself derives from the Arabic masjid, "a place where one prostrates one's self (in front of God)." In earliest times any place could be used for private prayer with correct direction (qiblah, originally Jerusalem, but soon after Mecca). The collective prayer on Fridays, with a collective swearing of allegiance to the community's leadership also strengthens common bonds among all members of the Ummah.

According to some experts, the Quran does not utter a word for or against the representation of living things. But from about the middle of the 8th century a prohibition was formally stated .It became a standard feature of Islamic thought, even though the form in which it was expressed varied from absolute to partial. It has been suggested that Islam developed this attitude when it came into contact with other cultures and it was felt that the dreaded idol worship might return. The Qur'an (Sura ix, 31) prohibits the veneration of holy men and saints. In early Islam there was no special embellishment of funerary sites; 'the tombs of the rich and poor are! alike'. But the human desire to venerate and by many to be venerated is too old and deep rooted. The first changes occurred through veneration of the tombs of holy persons. 

It appears that the construction of commemorative buildings over certain burial places began in the late 9th and 10th centuries especially over those of Shi'ite saints. Then over the tombs, mostly in Iran and Central Asia, of rulers of marginal or semi-independent regions, who often followed non-Sunni beliefs? T! hey were to project status symbols of secular power and were rather ambitious .In contrast, the tombs of holy men were simpler – which went towards satisfying the devotional needs of the population. Generally complex ensembles grew up around the tombs of many saints, like that of the mystic Sufi poet Jalal ud-Din Rumi, in Konya, or of Bayazid, in Bistam (1313). 

Therefore the earliest surviving tombs belong to Shi'ite persona; the shrine of Fatima, sister of the Imam 'Ali ar-Rida at Qum, and that of the Imam Ali in Najaf. The earliest rulers' tombs are of 'Abbasid Caliphs al-Muntasir (in Samarra in 862), al-Mu'tazz and al-Mohtadi (built as a domed square building enclosed in an octagonal ambulatory) and are better preserved. A feature of royalty mausoleums was its concentration, like the Timurid Shah-i Zinda ensemble in Samarqand of 14th and 15^th centuries or the Mamluk tombs of Cairo. 

Mausoleums were also built to commemorate Biblical persons, companions of the Prophet and scholars, popular heroes and ghazis (fighters for the Faith). From 12th century secular mauso­leums proliferated all over the world, in Egypt and Central Asia, northern and north-eastern Iran and Anatolia, and also in India and North Africa. They continue to be built, both for spiritual and secular leaders e.g., Firdausi, Avicenna, Umar Khayya! m, the late Agha Khan and the poet-philosopher Iqbal, and particularly im­posing structures for Riza Shah Pahlavl, Ataturk and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. 

The mausoleum of the Samanids in Bukhara, commonly referred to as the Tomb of Isma'il, was constructed before 943 and consists of a square structure with a large central dome and four small corner ones set over a gallery. Especially noteworthy is the use of bricks to create different pat­terns in its various parts. 

Then of course there are the famous imperial Moghul mausoleums, of Humayun (d. 1556) in Delhi, built of red sandstone and white marble; and the marvel in marble, the Taj Mahal, built in Agra by Emperor Shah Jehan for his favourite queen Mumtaz Mahal. The mausoleum of Akbar (d. 1605) is at Sikandra, and of his son Jehangir (d1627) near Lahore. The word mausoleum comes from the structure built in Asia Minor (Bodrum -Western Turkey) for an Asian ruler, Mausolus by his Queen, around the time Alexander the Great passed that way. 

 

Influence of Buddhism on Islam

Influence of Buddhism on Islam

 

Through out history, there was natural interaction through migration and conquest, travel and trade, between the Fertile Crescent, Asia Minor, Persia, Khorasan and Central Asia and Hindustan. Alexander the Macedonian went up to Bukhara and then north west Hindustan. Earlier some Indo- Aryan tribes like Mitannis had migrated from Eurasian steppes and ruled in upper Mesopotamia.  Then the Arab armies marched north east and conquered areas up to the steppes. Then the Turkish tribes marched from eastern Asian steppes to Persia! and Turkey (and the Indian sub-continent). Then came Chengiz Khan and the Mongol hordes.

Culturally, linguistically, ethnically and spiritually there is no area in the world that has so much in common as that formed by the regions connecting the river basins of Euphrates, Tigris; Amu and Syr Darya: Indus and the Ganges. This is an area with a continuous history and cradle of most civilizations and religions; Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism and Christianity and Islam and their variations. The intermingling of Semitic, Indo-Iranian and Ural- Altaic languages with local languages produced a mosaic of new languages and tongues.

Influence of Buddhism in Central Asia perhaps started from the time of Greek King Menander in Bactria. During the rule of Kushana Emperor Kanishka (who was converted to Buddhism) from Peshawar, not only traders but also religious teachers moved freely throughout his Empire which then encompassed today's Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang, Pakistan and Northern India and laid the foundations for the spread of Buddhism. Earlier Asoka had undertaken energetic steps to spread the Dhamma, but his efforts were more successful in South East Asia and Ceylon. Buddhism was taken to Central Asia either directly or via Tibet or Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) where with little competition, it was easily accepted . But it was not so in Sogdiana and around it, where Zoroastrians were well entrenched, later came followers of Manichaeism and Nestorian Christians. Conquerors (and traders) spread their religions, but they were also influenced by the cultures and the creeds of the ruled.

To begin with in Buddhism symbols represented Buddha and Tantras. Sculpture representing Buddha in human form is a Greek contribution through Gandhara art from Afghanistan. Starting from Bactria, Buddhism evolved the concept of Bodhisattva Maitreya as incarnations for attaining Nirvana and return to guide and help the laity. This universal and secular religion found favour with Central Asian Turks and Mongols (also Uyghur's in Xinjiang) when it reached there.

 

Influence of Viharas and Stupas on darghas and khankahs in Central Asia

Excavations have revealed Viharas and Stupas all over eastern Turkistan, up to Bukhara and into Turkmenistan. To begin with, Stupas were built to keep sacred relics (of Buddha and some of his disciples) although Buddha himself was against such practices. Later Stupas became associated with the symbols of remains of saints and cemeteries. The respect and veneration is , perhaps ,based more on Aryan belief in Brahman or the Reality (Universal Soul) and Atman (individual Soul) with the saints having achieved the Union with the Reality. Prophet Mohammed had underlined that God and man are different. (Christians have still not resolved this dilemma fully). Miracles and veneration of dead persons are denounced in Quran (Sura XI, 31).

Stupas started as simple structures, as in Sanchi in Central India (1st or 2nd Cent BC) with a semi-spherical dome for the remains, fenced by a wall and 4 entrances and a Chhatri (umbrella symbolising the Lord and the Sovereign). Later a raised square platform was added under the dome with the structures then becoming more complex and sophisticated, adorned with sculptures like Bamiyan Buddhas and paintings (some times in caves i.e. in Ajanta and Barhaut in India). Viharas are monasteries with cells constructed around a court yard, with Stupa in the middle, for monks to stay during the heavy Indian monsoon rains. Normally the monks were not to attach themselves to any fixed place.

With the spread of Buddhism Central Asians including Turks and Mongols adopted and assimilated phrases from Buddhism i.e. Sanskrit and Pali words like Nirvana =Nirvana (Nibanna), Dhamma =Dharma, Cindan =Chandan (sandalwood), used for funerary ceremony, Aratna =Ratan, Stup =Stupa, Mandal= Mandala, Chakra= Chakra, Bodhistava =Bodhistav, Bakshi (accountant)=Bhikku /Bhikshu (because a Bhikshu once did accounts for the Mongols) etc. 

An excavation in 1930s at Moghoki Attar mosque in Bukhara, perhaps the oldest surviving mosque in Central Asia, revealed under it ruins of a Zoroastrian temple destroyed by Arabs and an earlier Buddhist temple beneath it. The name Bukhara itself perhaps derives from Vihara. (Tashkent could be from Tashkhund; region of stones in Sanskrit). There are many ruins of Viharas and Stupas in Termez on Amu Darya (Uzbekistan), Merv (Turkmenistan), Afrasiab (Samarkand), Khojand etc in Ferghana valley and around Lake Issik Kul in Kyrgyzstan .Of course in Eastern Turkistan (and Tibet) apart from the ruins, many thousand old Buddhist manuscripts (300 pages found in Merv too) and books were recovered. Buddhist paintings have also been found in Afrasiab and elsewhere in Central Asia. It is not a simple coincidence that after Islam's arrival all these places became centres of Sufi Islam. From Stupas and Viharas have perhaps emerged sacred tombs, khankahs, darghas and madarsas.

Tombs were not popular in Arab heartland around Saudi Arabia. But the Persian, Turkish, Asian and African, even Berber Muslims accepted Pirs, Calandars, Sheikhs, Babas, Dervishes and others and their tombs became places of worship. Freedom loving eclectic nomads and others resisted Arab warriors in Sogdiana and Central Asia and their still austere Islam. It was only the modified, personalised and spiritual Islam of Persian Samanids based in Bukhara (Ismail's tomb looks like a simple Stupa) that was first accepted by Turks and others in Central Asia .To Islam had been added strands of local religions and beliefs .It is this form of Islam that was spread in India mostly by Sufi saints, but also by forced conversions or inducements.

Sufism developed fully by 12^th century by which time Arab Islam had been modified and enriched by streams from Persian, Central Asian and other religions, beliefs and philosophies .It was in the heartland of Arab Islam ie Baghdad and Aleppo, where Sufis saints Al Hajj (for insisting " Ana Al-haq "-I am the Truth) and Suhrawardy were martyred. Because of Sunni hostility tombs were erected much after the martyrdom of Imam Ali and Imam Hussein in Najaf and Karbala. The Wahhabis, Salafis remain deadly opposed to Sufism.

The major Sufi Tariqas ( ways) had central Asian origin or influence i.e., Qadiriyas, Nakshabandis (many current Turkish leaders are its adherents), Rumi's dervishes, Bektashis, the patron saint of non-Turkish (mostly Slav), non-  Muslim ( mostly Christian) born Janissary corps and top Administrators of the Ottoman Empire based on devshirme (slave ) system. Turkey's Shia Alevis' faith (majority from Turkmen Oghuz tribes) has strands from Christian, Shaman and other beliefs.

 

Intermingling of beliefs and faiths;

Human wish to comprehend and experience the Reality is as old as the natural talent to transcend beyond oneself, until this faculty was dimmed by technological afflictions. There are glimpses of it in earliest Aryan writings like Vedas and Avestan, even among Greek philosophers like Orpheus, Pythagoras, Socrates and others .So the environment and tools existed before formal religions evolved or were revealed.

Buddha himself went through the whole gamut of experiments and meditations including Jain like and other austerities, Hindu systems before realisng Nirvana. And his path and method of meditation were modified in east India, Tibet, China and Japan. If Buddhism influenced the evolution of Sufi Islam then Buddhism itself was influenced earlier by other religions and practices.

Indo-Iranian religion Mithraism flowered between the 2nd and 4^th centuries in the Roman world and became very popular among the Roman aristocracy, military leaders and soldiers, traders and slaves with powerful patrons among Roman emperors, like Commodus, Septimium Severus, Caraculla and others. Diocletian built a temple for Mithra near Vienna on Danube as "the Protector of the Empire". He was the god of Light and Sun, contract, loyalty and justice. Celebrations for Mithra's birthday on December 25, the sun's solstice, was so popular in the Asia that Christmas had to be shifted to this day from January 6 to make it acceptable among the masses. Christianity also took over many of the rituals and symbols of Mithraism, like baptism, resurrection and prayers to honor the Sun.

India's Sikh religion also known as gurmat, the teachings of the guru, founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539), combines many elements of Hinduism and Islam. Guru Nanak believed that one could come close to the God through meditation and devotion .God is the true guru and his divine word has come to the humanity through the 10 historical gurus. Their sacred scripture Adi Granth is also called "Guru Granth Saheb ". The Sikh temples are known as gurdwaras, Guru's door. Many Shi'ites Ghulat groups believe that Ali and the Imams are doors to God. When the Sunni Moghul emperors persecuted the Sikhs and their gurus, Sikh religion took to militancy and those who died for the panth ( gurus' path) became martyrs.

Human beings have evolved many paths to the Reality ie various Yoga systems; Tibetan, Zen, Vipassana and other Buddhist Margs, Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Hesychasm, Gurdjief way, Sufi Tariqas and Transcendental Meditation (TM) in modern times for spiritually challenged materialists. The masses accept what the saints and holy men they trust teach them.

Mosque and tombs

The word mosque itself derives from the Arabic masjid, "a place where one prostrates one's self (in front of God)." In earliest times any place could be used for private prayer with correct direction (qiblah, originally Jerusalem, but soon after Mecca). The collective prayer on Fridays, with a collective swearing of allegiance to the community's leadership also strengthens common bonds among all members of the Ummah.

According to some experts, the Quran does not utter a word for or against the representation of living things. But from about the middle of the 8th century a prohibition was formally stated .It became a standard feature of Islamic thought, even though the form in which it was expressed varied from absolute to partial. It has been suggested that Islam developed this attitude when it came into contact with other cultures and it was felt that the dreaded idol worship might return. The Qur'an (Sura ix, 31) prohibits the veneration of holy men and saints. In early Islam there was no special embellishment of funerary sites; 'the tombs of the rich and poor are! alike'. But the human desire to venerate and by many to be venerated is too old and deep rooted. The first changes occurred through veneration of the tombs of holy persons. 

It appears that the construction of commemorative buildings over certain burial places began in the late 9th and 10th centuries especially over those of Shi'ite saints. Then over the tombs, mostly in Iran and Central Asia, of rulers of marginal or semi-independent regions, who often followed non-Sunni beliefs? T! hey were to project status symbols of secular power and were rather ambitious .In contrast, the tombs of holy men were simpler – which went towards satisfying the devotional needs of the population. Generally complex ensembles grew up around the tombs of many saints, like that of the mystic Sufi poet Jalal ud-Din Rumi, in Konya, or of Bayazid, in Bistam (1313). 

Therefore the earliest surviving tombs belong to Shi'ite persona; the shrine of Fatima, sister of the Imam 'Ali ar-Rida at Qum, and that of the Imam Ali in Najaf. The earliest rulers' tombs are of 'Abbasid Caliphs al-Muntasir (in Samarra in 862), al-Mu'tazz and al-Mohtadi (built as a domed square building enclosed in an octagonal ambulatory) and are better preserved. A feature of royalty mausoleums was its concentration, like the Timurid Shah-i Zinda ensemble in Samarqand of 14th and 15^th centuries or the Mamluk tombs of Cairo. 

Mausoleums were also built to commemorate Biblical persons, companions of the Prophet and scholars, popular heroes and ghazis (fighters for the Faith). From 12th century secular mauso­leums proliferated all over the world, in Egypt and Central Asia, northern and north-eastern Iran and Anatolia, and also in India and North Africa. They continue to be built, both for spiritual and secular leaders e.g., Firdausi, Avicenna, Umar Khayya! m, the late Agha Khan and the poet-philosopher Iqbal, and particularly im­posing structures for Riza Shah Pahlavl, Ataturk and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. 

The mausoleum of the Samanids in Bukhara, commonly referred to as the Tomb of Isma'il, was constructed before 943 and consists of a square structure with a large central dome and four small corner ones set over a gallery. Especially noteworthy is the use of bricks to create different pat­terns in its various parts. 

Then of course there are the famous imperial Moghul mausoleums, of Humayun (d. 1556) in Delhi, built of red sandstone and white marble; and the marvel in marble, the Taj Mahal, built in Agra by Emperor Shah Jehan for his favourite queen Mumtaz Mahal. The mausoleum of Akbar (d. 1605) is at Sikandra, and of his son Jehangir (d1627) near Lahore. The word mausoleum comes from the structure built in Asia Minor (Bodrum -Western Turkey) for an Asian ruler, Mausolus by his Queen, around the time Alexander the Great passed that way. 

September4, 2004.Bucharest.

 

(K Gajendra Singh, served as Indian Ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan in 1992-96. Prior to that, he served as ambassador to Jordan (during the 1990-91 Gulf war), Romania and Senegal.  He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.  The views expressed here are his own.- Email-Gajendrak@hotmail.com)

 

 

Turkey and the Central Asian ethnic octopus

                                                                      FOUNDATION FOR INDO-TURKIC STUDIES                         

Tel/Fax ; 0040216374602                                                         Amb (Rtd) K Gajendra Singh                                                       

 Emails; Gajendrak@hotmail.com                                               Flat No 5, 3^rd Floor

 KGSingh@Yahoo.com                                                                     9, Sos Cotroceni,

Web site.                                                                                          Bucharest (Romania ).

www.tarafits.com                                                                              17 December, 2003

 

Asia Time online

 

Turkey and the Central Asian ethnic octopus
By K Gajendra Singh                                                                        18 December, 2003

Once again, Chechen suicide bombers have struck in the center of Moscow, on December 10, this time to influence the outcome of parliamentary elections in Russia. An earlier devastating attack on a train near Chechnya on December 5 killed over 40 persons and injured hundreds more.

Russia has many millions of Muslim citizens. Tragically, these bleeding attacks are not expected to be the last. Chechens and other tribes around the Black Sea and the Caspian and the mountainous Caucasian region which separates Russia and the Middle East and Anatolia migrated here and have established deep roots. Like sleeper cells put in place over the centuries, their presence could have ramifications beyond their borders and serious implications for the region.

In the Caucasian region - which includes southwest Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia - not only do the geological plates grind against each other, making the area earthquake prone, strategically the tectonic plates of kingdoms and empires have rubbed against each other throughout history. Powers and states have always interfered with each other, and they still do so. Earlier the actors were Turks and Mongols from Central Asia and then the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Later, the Russians replaced the Mongols and the Turks, and after World War I the British from the southeast. Now, the United States has taken over the mantle from the British in this Great Game.

The region remains very important and dangerous, with complex linkages and relationships between the people of Turkey and the people of the Caucasian region. These ties were established when the Ottoman empire was shrinking, and they are deep and abiding.

But after World War I, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the creation of the Turkish republic in Anatolia by Kemal Ataturk saw outside contact with the Muslim peoples of not only Central Asia but the Caucasian region cease almost altogether. Ataturk jettisoned the Ottoman religious heritage and he forced Turks to look West and become Westernized, modern and secular citizens in an effort to reach the levels of contemporary European civilization. During my first tenure in Ankara (1969-73), there was little real interest or even material available on Central Asia. Pan-Turkic leaders like Alp Aslan Turkes were looked on with suspicion.

The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkey's historical enemy, pleased the Turks to no end. It opened the floodgates of exchanges and relations between the Turks of Anatolia and the Turkic people of Central Asia and the Caucasus. There were delegations galore, with the two "lost people" hugging each other, with many Central Asian leaders bending down to touch the soil of Turkey with their foreheads on first arrival. The initiative to bring the Turkic countries together was taken up by president Turgut Ozal, but unfortunately he died in 1993.

Migration and intermingling among Turks and Caucasians
From the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of refugees flooded into the Ottoman empire in flight from oppression and massacres. The Ottoman countryside had been largely depopulated since the 17th century as the result of misrule and the ravages of war, famine and plague. So the Refugee Code (Muhadrin Kanunnamesi) of 1857 granted plots of state land to immigrant families and groups. They were given exemptions from taxes and conscription for six years if they settled in Rumeli (the European part ) and for 12 years if they opted for Anatolia. They were to cultivate the land and not to sell or leave it for 20 years and they had to become the subjects of the sultan, accepting his laws and justice.

They had freedom of religion, whatever their faith, and were allowed to build churches if none were available. News of the decree spread widely through Europe and met with a ready response from various groups unable to find land or political peace at home. Almost to the end, the Ottoman rulers were tolerant of other religions. It is the West which exploited ethnic and religion-based nationalism to break the Ottoman empire and divide Hindustan, Palestine, Cyprus and other regions. But the same right is denied to the north Irish, Basques, Corsicans, Sardinians and others.

A Refugee Commission (Muhacirin Komisyort) established in 1860 in the trade ministry became an independent agency in July 1861. It was a belated response to the influx. Most of the refugees came from the Turkish, Tatar and Circassian lands being conquered by the Russians to the north and west of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Even though there was no official Russian policy of driving these Muslims from their homes, the new Christian governments imposed in the Crimea (1783), in the areas of Baku and Kuban (1796), in Nahcivan and the eastern Caucasus (1828), and finally in Anapa and Poti, northeast of the Black Sea, following the Treaty of Edirne (1829), made thousands of Muslims uncomfortable enough to migrate, without special permission or attraction, into Ottoman territory.

Even hundreds of Russian "Old Believers" had fled from the reforms of Peter and Catherine, settling in the Dobruca and along the Danube near the Black Sea. Between 1848 and 1850 they were joined by thousands of non-Muslim immigrants, farmers as well as political and intellectual leaders fleeing from the repression that accompanied and followed the revolutions of 1848, especially from Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. While many of these were absorbed by Ottoman urban life, many were settled as farmers or managers of the farms being built by large landowners, contributing to both estate-building and the improvement of cultivation.

The flow became a torrent after the Crimean War following new persecutions elsewhere in Europe. The war itself led the Russians to change their relatively tolerant policy toward the Tatars and Circassians into one of active persecution and resettlement from their original homes to desolate areas in Siberia and even farther east. (This was repeated during World War 2) The result was mass migration into Ottoman territory, often with the encouragement of the Russians, who were glad to get rid of the old population to Russianize and Christianize the southern areas of their new empire.
From individual accounts it appears that the numbers were immense. Some 176,700 Tatars from the Nogay and Kuban settled in central and southern Anatolia between 1854 and 1860. (I always stopped by Esksehir for lunch, where Tatars sell fried thin-rolled bread like puris in India, except it is more delicious). Approximately a million came in the next decade, of whom a third were settled in Rumeli, the rest in Anatolia and Syria. From the Crimea alone, from 1854 to 1876, 1.4 million Tatars migrated into the Ottoman empire.

Even Slavic migration begun before the Crimean War intensified - Cossacks who fled from the Russian army settled as farmers in Macedonia, Thrace and western Anatolia. Bulgarians settled in the Crimea to replace the Tatars returned to their homes in the Ottoman empire from an alien environment. The mass migration of Muslims continued, though at a somewhat less intense pace, during the early years of Abdulhamit II, mostly in consequence of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1888 and the autonomy given to Bulgaria and Romania, Austrian control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the cession of northern Dobruca to Romania and northern Macedonia to Serbia. Official statistics estimated that over a million refugees entered the empire between 1876 and 1895. The number of male Muslims doubled during the years from 1831 to 1882, with the proportion of Muslims to non-Muslims increasing substantially.

The immigrants were settled widely throughout the empire, many in villages that had been abandoned and some in eastern Anatolia, particularly in Cilicia (Adana region) and Arab lands like Syria, sometimes leading to conflict and problems. The lands could not have been intensively cultivated and the rural middle class built up had it not been for the tremendous influx of refugees who provided the necessary labor and males for future wars.

But the ingress and intermingling of Caucasian people with the Turks is much deeper among its elite. "Young girls of extraordinary beauty, plucked from the slave market, were sent to the sultan's court, often as gifts from his governors. Among the singular, lasting privileges of the valide [mother] sultana was the right to present her son with a slave girl on the eve of Kurban Bayram [sacrificial day]. The girls were all non-Muslims, uprooted at a tender age. The sultans were partial to the fair, doe-eyed beauties from the Caucasus region. Circassians, Georgians and Abkhasians were proud mountain girls, believed to be the descendents of the Amazon women who had lived in Scythia near the Black Sea in ancient times and who had swept down through Greece as far as Athens, waging a war that nearly ended the city's glamorous history.

"Now they were being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. A customs declaration from around 1790 establishes their worth at about 20 percent to 40 percent of a horse. The promise of a life of luxury and ease overcame parental scruples against delivering their children into concubinage. Many Circassian and Georgian families encouraged their daughters to enter that life willingly. They were immediately converted to Islam and began an arduous training in palace etiquette and Islamic culture." (From Harem by Alev Lytle Croutier).

Lucie Duff Gordon also reported it in her 1864 travel diary. While the earlier mothers of sultans were Greek or Serbian princesses married to the rulers, after the capital shifted to Constantinople, everyone was a member of the harem under valide sultana's control, with those giving birth to children, especially boys, jumping up in the harem hierarchy.

Many of the mother sultanas were Circassians and Georgians, one even French, Aimee de Rivery. They exercised great influence over their sons, now the sultan. The harem politics also became a reason for the decline of the empire. The word odalisque literally "woman in the room", comes from oda (room). But harem life was embellished by feverish European imagination, whose rulers were no less sensual, but lacked wealth and culture at that time.

In friendly arguments with Turkish friends, mostly diplomats, I would tease them, "What do you mean you are a Turk. You don't even look like a Turk. They are chinky-eyed and have little hair on their face. Of course you speak good Turkish, as you have been practicing it for 500 years." This devastating repartee usually ended the argument. Most would smile and happily admit that his grand uncle or grandmother came from Circassia or Bosnia. During the days of the empire, the elite called itself the Ottomans. The word Turk was reserved for the village yokel and a term of contempt. It was Kemal Ataturk who bestowed dignity on the word Turk.

Turkey and Central Asia
President Ozal's successor, Sulieman Demirel, did not have his vision or drive with regards to Central Asia and the whole thing came to a standstill, although after initial resistance to Turkish aggression Turkic leaders felt more comfortable in an institutional relationship with Turkey. In any case, even if Turkey had wished for a bigger role in Central Asia, it did not have the wherewithal to play it. Many Central Asian leaders to whom power fell like manna from heaven in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union were confused and rudderless. They were cautious and wanted good relations with all. The US encouraged Turkey and was afraid that Russia would try to come back, which it tried in some ways, but the horse had already bolted the stable.

Fears that Iran would spread its version of fanatic Islam and support anti-US regimes also proved farfetched. After an eight-year exhausting war with Iraq in the 1980s, in which Iran lost a million young people, there was little energy or money left to spread its message of Shi'ite revolution. Except for the Azeris and some other pockets, most people in Central Asia are Sunni Muslims, closer to the more mystic Sufi way of life. They have a very high level of education and a lifestyle of drinking and good living. With deep-grained nomadic habits, they could not easily be led to Islamic fundamentalism. It was ill-conceived US, Saudi and Pakistani policies that brought Wahhabi Islam to Central Asia.

Except for the Caspian basin for its energy resources and in Kyrgyzstan, the American leadership soon lost interest. The Caspian basin has between 60 to 200 billion barrels of oil. The US courted Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, touting him as a democrat and helped his country join the World Trade Organization in 1998. The reason was to have a friendly regime with freedom to base personnel and sensing equipment to monitor China, next door. Akayev has proved no different than leaders of other Central Asian republics in terms of his record on democracy though.

The early 1990s were a very opportune moment for Turkey, which under the dynamic leadership of Ozal had successfully undergone a decade of economic reforms and had opened its economy to the West, especially Europe. The country had many trained managers and experts who, because of ethnic, linguistic and religious similarity, became advisers and even ministers in the new Turkic governments in Central Asia. Both at state level and in the private sector, Turkey made large investments in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. The Turkish government provided loans amounting to US$750 million to Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Turkish private investment runs into billions of dollars. Turks have established industries and run hotels and other businesses.

Turkey also arranged to train 10,000 students and teachers from the new republics. Turkish as spoken in the Republic has been purified by excluding many Arabic and Persian words. Many European words, especially from French (almost all in the game of bridge) have been added. The Azeri language is quite similar to Turkish, as well as the Turcoman language. The languages spoken by Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and in Kazakhstan are somewhat different. Originally, Soviet Russians prescribed Latin script for the Central Asian languages, but when Ataturk changed to the Latin script from Arabic, the Russians changed to Cyrillic. Many Turks have opened schools in Central Asia, too. Turkey has also started beaming Avrasia TV programs to Central Asia, but with uneven results.

But Turkey's efforts to create an area of influence in Central Asia were opposed by the newly independent leadership. A loose organization of Turkic states exists without having achieved much. The old Baghdad pact was joined by the new Central Asian republics and became the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). To soothe the Russians, a Black Sea organization was also created, but it remains equally ineffective. Tansu Chiller, who had still not shot to fame by becoming the first woman prime minister of Turkey, told me that Central Asian governments did not repay Turkish loans, while they paid back Western ones. I had also been told that the new leadership in Central Asia would like to establish authoritarian political regimes and try to follow the capitalist system of East Asia. It has certainly succeeded rather well in its first objective.

Problems in the Caucasus
Soon nationalist Russian politicians, ex-communist cadres, ambitious Russian generals, local mafia and international oil executives all entered the fray to play their part for personal or national gains on the Caucasian chessboard.

Even Turkey was put in an embarrassing situation when Azeri president Heydar Aliyev, who died last Friday at the age of 80, accused a Turkish group in 1995 of trying to overthrow him with the help of his opponents in the capital Baku. But generally Demirel, a believer in the status quo, was helpful to Aliyev. Himself sent packing twice by the armed forces when prime minister, Demirel suggested to Aliyev to go on television and take other steps to control rebellions in Baku. This was a technique King Carlos of Spain had used successfully to quell rebellion by his armed forces.

East and south Turkey and the Kurdish rebellion
From 1984 to 1999, Abdullah Ocalan led the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) rebellion for a Kurdish state in the southeast of Turkey, a campaign that cost over 35,000 lives, mostly Kurds, including the lives of more than 5,000 Turkish soldiers. To control and neutralize the rebellion, thousands of Kurdish villages were bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated; millions of Kurds were moved to shanty towns in the south and east or migrated westwards. The economy of the region was shattered. Half of the Kurdish population now lives in western Turkey, making Istanbul the second largest Kurdish city after Diyarbakir. With a third of the Turkish army tied up in the southeast, the cost of countering the insurgency amounted to between $6 billion to $8 billion a year. After the capture of Ocalan in 1999 and the passage of laws last year to ease the lives of Kurds, things have now quieted.

The war in the 1980s between Iraq and resurgent Shi'ite Iran helped the PKK to establish itself in the lawless Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. The PKK also helped itself with arms freely available in the region during the eight-year war. After the 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war, with lack of legitimate authority and absence of possible Turko-Iraqi joint offensives against the Kurds in the north of Iraq, the Kurdish rebellion blossomed most violently. Turkey crossed over quite deep into north Iraq from time to time for punitive attacks on PKK hideouts and formations, despite the usual international furor. It even bombed some border areas in Iran too, where the PKK might have taken shelter.

The attempt by the Turkish armed forces and the establishment to clear east and south Turkey of Kurdish rebels (and populations) , has made it easy for groups to move around from one country to another, notably from Turkey to Iran and Afghanistan and from Azerbaijan to Chechnya.

Once, while I was able to drive along the sea coast from Baku to the border with Daghestan, I was advised not to go towards Gynza, towards the border with Georgia. It was a dangerous area under Surat Hassonov, a mafia chief and smuggler and once prime minister of Azerbaijan under Aliyev. There are many such areas in the region, and mafia teams in the import and export business do not pay customs duties. Even ministers are involved. The bludgeoning truck-based trade between Turkey and the Central Asian republics via Azerbaijan and Iran, without proper police control, means control by the mafia and freedom of movement for those who are determined or prepared to pay up.

Political-police-mafia link in Turkey
In a notorious case, an automobile crashed at Susurluk in western Anatolia on November 3, 1996. In the accident, Haseyin Kocadag, director of the Istanbul police academy, Abdallah Catli, a "Grey Wolf" ultra-nationalist militant and gangster who was implicated in seven murders in 1978 and convicted on drugs charges in Switzerland, and Catli's mistress, Goncas, were all killed in the same car. The driver of the car was Sedat Bucak, a ruling True Path party deputy and Kurdish chieftain heading a large gang of "village guards" (that is, pro-government Kurdish militiamen paid for and trained by the armed forces), who was the only occupant to survive. The crash suggested credible links between the security forces, the "Grey Wolves", organized crime and pro-government Kurdish chiefs.

In the beginning of November 1998, 25 prosecutions were launched covering murder, gangsterism and narcotics smuggling, in which 75 suspects were charged and the parliamentary immunities of both Bucak and of Mehmet Agar, the minister of interior, was lifted. But after two years, only two relatively low-ranking police officers had been convicted. Most of the alleged ringleaders in these crimes remained at large, some abroad, with even diplomatic passports. Inquiries revealed nothing concrete, but it emerged that the police regularly used mafia hit men to kill PKK people.

Istanbul bombs
The human bombers who destroyed two synagogues in Istanbul last month have been traced to Bingol, a small dusty town near the Iranian border. It means 1,000 lakes, and includes lake Van. I spent four quiet days in 1969 looking around the region, including lake Van, as the guest of its vali (governor) Kemal Ozturk, a very charming and gracious host, with evenings beginning with high officials - including the military chief - at 6pm and ending two hours past midnight. I found the same kind of lavish hospitality, now declining in Turkey, at Babur University as well as at private homes in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley city of Andijan (the birth place of Babur, the founder of the Moghul Empire in India ) which I visited in 1998.

By the 1990s Bingol had become Kurdish rebel-infested and dangerous. When I revisited nearby cities like Diyarbakir, the main Kurdish stronghold, by 4pm before sundown everyone, including the police, would retire for the day, thus leaving most of the countryside in south and east Turkey for rebels and others to roam about and transfer personnel and arms.

Nearby is the city of Batman, which had become the center of the Turkish Hezbollah. Unfortunately, the Turkey establishment helped this organization by encouraging some of its units in the region in the mid-1990s to eliminate PKK guerillas or sympathizers in southeast Turkey. The Turkish Hezbollah is quite different from the Lebanese one, and was reportedly helped by the Iranians. Only when Hezbollah started creating cells in Istanbul and west Turkey was the experiment abandoned, but the cat was out of the bag.

Jordan connection
Despite very strong control by the security establishment in Jordan, mostly manned by loyal tribesmen, the country with nearly a 60 percent population of Palestinian origin remains a place of acute underground activity. Daily killings and counter-killings across the border in the occupied West Bank and Gaza make things worse. It is a stronghold of Muslim Brotherhood, which did very well in 1990 elections, with King Hussein even including some of them in the cabinet to face Western criticism of not joining in the coalition against Saddam Hussein.

The United Kingdom and the United States blatantly encouraged Islamic and obscurantist groups to counter nationalist and socialist regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, when Iran's Shi'ite revolution unnerved everyone. But for the Western support to Islamic elements, it would have led to more equitable and democratic regimes in the region. So the current talk by Western leaders and the media of ushering democracy into the region is absolute humbug. And nobody is fooled, except sometimes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

Jordan has produced many well-known jihadis, like Ibn-al-Khatib. There are now two new factors. The reported linkages between Jordanians of Caucasus origin and Chechens. Most of them are Circassians, known as Cherkess. It could be a very dangerous development because the Cherkess are the Hashemite kingdom's palace guards and hold important key positions in the police establishment and elsewhere.

Although only about 15,000 in number, a seat in parliament is reserved for them. After World War I, when Emir Abdullah, son of King Hussein of Hejaz and great great-grandfather of King Abdullah, stopped at Amman to reclaim Syria, which had been promised by the British to the Arabs for revolting against the Ottomans, the Cherkess community, which had been established since the 19th century, was the first to express its loyalty to him. Although the Cherkess community has remained loyal, there are now murmurs of disaffection. The number of Circassians in Syria is much higher, but then Syria exercises very strict control over such groups. Thoughtless efforts by the US neo-conservatives to destabilize Syria would have devastating consequences.

The late King Hussein, before dying of cancer in 1999, to further strengthen the British and the American motivation to protect the kingdom and his dynasty, at the last minute removed his younger brother, Crown Prince Hassan, married to late Indian chief justice Shri M Hidayatullah's niece, and instead made his son Abdullah the Crown Prince. Abdullah was the eldest son of the late king and his second wife Toni, a British citizen who embraced Islam and remained Queen of Jordan until 1972 when she and the late king divorced.

The US embassy in Amman, Jordan's capital, which I visited just before leaving in 1992, is like a fortress, replete with underground chambers. During the 1990- 91 Gulf crises and war, King Hussein adroitly remained neutral, much to the anger of the Anglo-Saxons, but the masses remained peaceful and under control. King Abdullah is not as nimble or experienced, and many Jordanians feel that he is siding with the Americans and extending them help, so there remains a danger to the throne. Such warnings were conveyed by attacks on the embassy of Jordan in Baghdad.

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Email Gajendrak@hotmail.com

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

BULENT ECEVIT -FOLLOWER OF GITA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

 
 
                       BULENT  ECEVIT, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER IN THE NEW TURKISH GOVT.

                           FOLLOWER OF GITA AND INTERPRETER OF GEETANJALI

 

                                            Bulent Ecevit, twice Prime Minister in 1970s, now  Deputy Prime Minister in the new secular Turkish govt, when in opposition a few months ago, during a Parliamentary debate praised India's democracy and its political leadership,for having got together from the very left to the right of the political spectrum to keep out the religious Bhartiya Janata party out of power , unlike in Turkey , where in a similar situation the secular party leaders had failed to remain together and had allowed Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's Refah party to head a coalition with secularTrue Path party (DYP) of Deputy PM Tansu Ciller. Following the December 1995 Elections, in which Refah  had won 160 seats out of 550 ,with the two secular right of center parties DYP of Ciller and Motherland Party ( Anap) of Mesut Yilmaz each getting around 130 seats each and Ecevit's left of center DSP 75 seats, the coaliton govt formed under pressure from secular elite , the West and the Armed Forces between Yilmaz and Ciller collapsed after a few months. The Refah led coalition with DYP  formed in July 1996, resigned on 19 June , 1997 after only eleven months, after opposition from secular forces led by the Armed Forces., which accused the govt of promoting Islamic fundamentalism and threatened to intervene unless the Refah led govt quit.                                 

                                 In 1974, on a visit to London I had switched on the BBC Television and saw Bulent Ecevit, then Prime Minister who had just sent the Turkish troops to Cyprus, where they still stay put, being interviewed. When asked what gave him the courage to send in the troops, which many other Turkish Prime Ministers in the past would have liked to do but dared not; apart from other reasons he said that he was encouraged by the teachings of Bhagavata  Geeta ; if one is morally in a correct position, one should not hesitate to fight injustice against mighty and even against ones near and dear ones. Earlier I had read an interview in the International Herald Tribune , in which the interviewer remarked on the books in Ecevit's library and among others , he prominently pointed out  the Geeta and Nehru's Glimpses of World History, which Ecevit said had affected him profoundly.

                                    Inspite of stereotyped   West promoted notion of the terrible Turk, following centuries of Crusades and Jihad between them, Turks are no different than other people and having never been enslaved are a  proud people, who hold India and its leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi etc , Indian civilisation and culture and the democratic system in the highest regard., not withstanding their having  been on the other side during the Cold War and their quid pro quo support to Pakistan on Kashmir, for the latter's support on Cyprus and other issues.

                       When I returned to Ankara in 1992, ( having been earlier in Turkey from 1969 to 1973) I requested Mr Ecevit to elucidate his views on Geeta's role in his decision to invade the Republic of Cyprus. He said that Turkey along with UK and Greece was one of the Guarantor powers in the Cypriot Constitution according to which , if a change was brought in the status of Cyprus, it could act with them to restore  the situation. The Greek  Cypriot leadership in league with Greece after a coup had declared unity with Greece ( Enosis ) and as Britain was dithering ( to take any action ),Turkey had no option but to protect Turkish Cypriots and  its interests.  As for Geeta's influence in his decison making he said that he abhorred violence in politics  and even in international relations, but he  was convinced that the situation created by the Greek Cypriots brought the Greek border with Turkey right into  Cyprus and enlarged it. It would have led to constant tensions and perhaps a full scale  war  between Turkey and Greece. So with a heavy heart he ordered the  military strike as he felt that he was morally right and the action   would ultimately produce less strife and violence  in the long run.( While he was quoting Geeta in international media, we , ofcourse, because of our foreign policy compulsions were denouncing Turkish invasion in the UN and elsewhere).

                        Mr Ecevit mentiond Bhagvad Geeta again when I recalled his defeating the legendary and venerable leader Ismet Inonu ( whom Nehru had met in 1960 during his visit to Turkey ,inspite of the opposition of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes)  in the contest for party leadership in 1972. Inonu was the right hand man of Kemal Ataturk,Turkey's liberator, founder and  moderniser.  Inonu became Turkey's President after Ataturk' death in 1938 ( and earlier was most of the time Prime minister )  and adroitly kept Turkey out of the Second World War-(if the Turks joined the Allies , they would be first overrun by the Nazis and then liberated by the Soviet Russians ) He played a vital role in Turkey's transition from one party rule to multiparty democracy.

 

After the 1971 Army ultimatum which forced  Prime minister Suleyman Demirel to resign, Ecevit and  Inonu had different perceptions of the political situation. Ecevit had opposed the ultimatum, while Inonu had acquiesced in,not to exacerbate the situation.at that juncture.Ecevit said that he had the greatest regard for Inonu, a father figure ( Bulent' s father was Inonu's personal physician and close friend) and who was his teacher and leader( like Dronacharya !) , but he differed from his teacher very strongly and in order to make up his mind and choose the right path , he  again studied Geeta before taking up the poltical fight against Inonu..Inonu lost;  he resigned from the party and died a year latter at the age of 89.

                        Ecevit was born at Istanbul in 1925 and as a young man  took some Sanskrit lessons at the Indology department of Ankara University .Like our Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ecevit is a poet, but a leftist and had also worked  as a journalist. Represening the coalminers of Black Sea coast town of Zonguldak,as a labour minister he gave the Turkish workers the right to strike for the first time in Turkey .He has translated Ezra Pound and TS Elliot.He was  Prime Minister  in  1974 and twice from 1977 to 1979. in coalition govts, once  with Necemettin Erbakan, the first Islamist Prime Minister. In a military exercise Ecevit was greatly pained and concernrd with the agony of an injured horse, much to the disgust and chagrin of his Military Chief, Gen. Kenen Evren.

 

When Ecevit was posted as Cultural Attache in  the Turkish Embassy in Londonin 1950s, His love for poetry and a philosophic bent of mind had brought him to the study of Rabindra Nath Tagore's Geetanjali and Bhagvata Geeta.. He learnt Sanskrit to better understand Geeta and Bengali  to appreciate  and translate Tagore's writings ( and  he was surprised to find similarities between Turkish and Sanskrit and Bengali , not only in the vocabulary but in the syntax also). He said that he had  translated only a few poems from Geetanjali. He would like to do more but his profession gave him little respite. Tagore's works, Geetanjali ( in full), Gora, Hungry Stones, the Gardener, Chitra ,Stray Birds etc ,perhaps more than 20 works have been translated into Turkish , most longtime ago, some recently.

 

In 1971, after the Military crackdown on leftists, mysteriously Upanishads, Geeta,Geetanjali etc were banned. On enquiries, it was revealed that these books were found along with writings of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin in a leftists den and  in the beauracracy as no one went through them , all were banned. The ban on Indian writings was soon  lifted. ( During the early 1970s Naxalism and Kanu Sanyal and Charu Majumdar were seriously studied by the leftist students in Ankara )

                          Ecevit was invited by  President Shankar Dayal Sharma to visit India during his visit to Turkey in 1993, but  the continued and almost perennial political crisis in Turkey has not allowed him to come to India. He is of course very keen to visit Shantiniketan and listen to Bengali as it is spoken in Calcutta. And perhaps learn a thing or two from India's Deng Xiaoping , Jyoti Basu. Only Calcutta can have a Karl Marx street and a Siemen's street under the same regime.

 

PM Ecevit during his visit to India in 2000 went to Shantniketan where he was honoured for his work.

 

I hope this will add to the knowledge about Indo Turkish relations .

 

I am circulating it to some on my mailing list of over around 400 which comprises of ,politicians including ministers ,policy makers ,retired and active diplomats, civil servants , military officers, journalists ,think tanks, university professors, faculty at diplomatic and defence institutes, business consultants and others in India, US ,Turkey, Jordan ,Romania and many other countries .Exchanges with them keeps me up to date and on my toes. .

 

Cheers Gajendra  22 Feb 2010.Delhi  

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