By Alexander Borg
No nation such as ours has suffered such a subconscious phobia of the superb foe that was the Ottoman Turk. It is said that Maltese fishermen will hardly ever venture into the open sea for more than 48 hours, a legacy of the centuries long state of siege experienced by our ancestors at the hands of the Turkish and Barbary corsairs. When something goes wrong we promptly exclaim "haqq it-Torok" (damned be the Turks). When it rains and the sun shines simultaneously, we say "twieled Tork" (a Turk is born) _ ironic wishful thinking? Life would have certainly been far smoother for our forefathers if Turks were born only on such days! The gruelling siege of 1565 is an event which no Maltese will ever forget.
Even our mischievous leprechauns (fatati) who brought money and grief to our grandmas were little turbaned Turks -- fancifully some ghost of the countless Turkish or Barbary slaves who sweated, toiled and died in the dungeons and galleys of fortress Malta! Who knows, maybe one or two of these slaves earned some gourmand Knight's favour, enough to earn a post in his kitchen -- and that was how that delicious Turkish sweet "helwa tat-Tork" became part of our local culinary tradition (what little of it survives now, thanks to British palate).
So strong was the Turkish and Barbary syndrome from the Middle Ages through to Napoleon's seizing of the islands, that it nearly became our raison d'être. The crusades in Malta virtually lasted until 1798, some four or five centuries after the last Christian crusade to the Holy Land ended in disaster. Ironically, the Ottoman Empire also became our raison d'économie, since slave-trading and piracy against Moslem shipping were our principal sources of sustenance. And not surprisingly, with trade beginning to bypass the Mediterranean after Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, no sooner had the Serene Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire started to decline than the Knights Hospitallers' inevitable downfall followed suit. The Order's coup de grace was eventually dealt soon after the French Revolution with the ensuing confiscation of the French nobility's property and estates. Perhaps it was then that we realised that the moment had come for us to kick out the old decrepit and corrupt Order and leap onto Imperial Britain's band-wagon since the French were so impertinent as to rob our churches of the riches we had "rightfully" robbed from the Moslem misbelievers! But that is another story.
These and other more mundane reasons such as its beauty and magnificence, apart from cheap shopping for leather jackets, should be why Istanbul and Turkey must figure prominently among the Maltese traveller's destination together with his/her favourite spots like London, Rome, Palermo, Florence and Paris. Yet let us take a look at the situation now, 200 years after the last Turkish merchant ship laden with silks, spices and other booty was towed into Grand Harbour.
Fresh from a short holiday in Istanbul, as I contemplated the motley crowds of hawkers, beggars, bank clerks, rotund bureaucrats, veiled child-weary women and yes -- even the occasional venturesome mini-skirted secretary in Cumhurriyet Caddesi (Republic Street) I wondered: maybe centuries of violent conflict with the Turkish enemy has made us somewhat similar to them in certain aspects.
DIFFERENT YET SIMILAR COUNTRIES
Although the basic and largest difference between us and the Turks is obviously our religion and language, Istanbul has the same gay atmosphere of colour, hubbub and steaming humanity as you would find in other towns and villages of the Mediterranean, be they marketplaces and alleyways in Alexandria, Bodrum, Chioggia, Vieste, Patmos, Naples, Granada, Algiers, Tunis and many more.
So I imagined Valletta _ I would don a few men with skull cap or fez, women with colourful veils or full-bodied chadors, switch the churches round with mosques, and you will have a little Istanbul, teeming with activity and effulgence, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean. Indeed 1565 was a very close shave!
Yet apart from this mysterious unifying character of all cultures bordering the Mediterranean, whether Moslem, Christian or Judaic, there are a few interesting parallels to be drawn between Istanbul and Malta. Both are historically cosmopolitan par excellence. The former, with its Hellenistic, Byzantine and Ottoman heritage has been for nearly two millenniums a strategic gateway to the East, from the times of Marco Polo and the Way of Silk, down to Turkey's strategic placing as a major Nato ally in the geo-political map during the Cold War.
Malta, on the other hand, a stepping stone, a vantage point, the Holy Roman Empire's outermost rampart ravaging Moslem shipping on both sides of the Mediterranean, down to the days when it acted as a virtual aircraft carrier poised to harry Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Western Desert.
Istanbul, straddling two continents and two worlds, West and East, and Malta wedged in tightly between Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa.
OBDURACY AND FATALISM
In certain respects both Turks and Maltese share the same obduracy, partisanship, and fatalism. I dare anyone to discuss the issue or indeed the plight of the Kurds in the remote eastern regions of Turkey with an average middle class Turk, or the emancipation of women with an Islamic fundamentalist. It may be like trying to talk a Maltese trapper or hunter out of his favourite "traditional" past-time, or trying to persuade a Catholic fundamentalist that he should not impose his morality on somebody who for some very valid reason chooses to end his marriage (Malta is the only country in Europe which does not allow its citizens to divorce, and where the state delegates annulments cases to the Catholic Church's Ecclesiastical Tribunal).
Indeed we both have our kismet (incidentally a borrowed Turkish word), "Jekk Alla jrid" as against "Inshallah", both meaning "if God wills".
But by far the largest characteristic we have in common, apart from a giant parasitic and slumbering bureaucracy, are the countless contradictions in both our societies. In a Turkish bank I once saw a fundamentalist veiled charwoman humbly serve tea to bank clerks at their desk. Most of the employees were women, and the cashier who was seeing to me was a very pretty brunette wearing a very sensual tight-fitting mini-skirt. On the other hand in Malta, in a small, very modest village bar I asked the bartender if I could make a phone call, and I was promptly given a cellular phone, much to my surprise. Many more examples could be mentioned of the stark contrasts of antiquity mingling with modernity present in both societies.
KEMAL ATATURK AND MODERNISATION
After many centuries of Islamic legacy, Ottoman obscurantism and a lurking inferiority complex towards nearby Europe after the dawning of the Enlightenment in the early 18th century, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, overthrew Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in 1923, and catapulted the country into a secular world of modernity. Among the most significant radical changes Atat?rk brought about were the abolition of polygamy, the latinisation of the language, the secularisation of the state and its laws _ modelled on the Swiss civil and Italian penal codes _ and equal rights for women. Indeed women have been voting in Turkey since 1930, divorce is legal, and Turkey has one of the world's highest percentage of women doctors, and now a female prime minister Ms Tansu Ciller. Des pite this the Turks still seem somewhat confused about what they should be: European, Moslem, Asian or whether they should pursue a pan-Turkish policy (some neighbouring ex-Soviet states are populated by ethnic Turks speaking a Ural-Altaic Turkic language similar to modern Turkish).
Turks too, like us Maltese, have very strong religious traditions (Moslem in their case of course), both are dazzled by a consumer society goal, and both are very vexed that Europe at times seems to be dragging its feet over their respective applications to join the EU as full members. It is an endless courtship with Turkey always on the verge but never in, because Europe is obviously well aware of the cultural and economic differences. Conscious of Turkey's vitally strategic position on the geo-political map, Europe probably prefers to play for time and tango perennially with Germany in the backdrop, host for over 1.8 million Turkish immigrants, grimly looking on.
THE ANALOGY OF FLAWS
And Malta! Where is the analogy here? Alas, this is perhaps where the sweet block of helwa tat-Tork and its connotations flaw, and parallels suddenly diverge. Military technology has possibly robbed Lilliputian Malta of its strategic importance in the Mediterranean, hundreds of married couples continue to live in forced misery, thousands of arrogant hunters continue to make country walks in th is tiny island very distressing and deranging, and we never had a Maltese version of Mustapha Kemal Atat?rk who secularised the country, which is still smug and helpless within the powerful talons of the Holy Catholic Church and pious, patronising politicians.