An Athenian Diary

27

Politics and Culture

Fear and Loathing in the middle east

Note: I wrote this essay in November in the immediate aftermath of a series of terrorist attacks in Istanbul. I did not immediately post it because I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate for the Athenian Diary. Now that I have decided to create a special section on "Politics and Culture," it seems to me there is a home for such musings as this in the AD. I have left what I wrote then unchanged, although there have been a number of new developments -- further instability in Iraq, including new daily attacks on US forces and Iraqi collaborators; worries of various sorts in Greece; and, most notably, the sudden expectation of almost immediate settlement of the long-standing issue of the division of Cyprus, a development which, if consummated, will transform Greek-Turkish relations and may help explain the cooperation between intelligence services that looked mysterious to me back in November. I hope to have more to say about all these matters in further essays under the "Politics and Culture" rubric -- February 14, 2004

Last week there were four bombings in Istanbul, Turkey. On Saturday, November 15, two bombs exploded outside of two of the synagogues in Istanbul. (It may come as a surprise to many that any synagogues continue active in Turkey. While the Jewish population of Turkey is tiny, the Ottoman empire bequeathed a history of tolerance -- it was the Ottoman sultan who received the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 -- which is perhaps not yet quite completely dead, and Israeli tourists, to the number of 300,000 a year, has been a mainstay of the Turkish economy.) The death toll reached 27, with hundreds injured. Rumors say that the chief target was supposed to be officials of the Israeli intelligence services, who were supposed to be in the synagogues; but in reality, the vast majority of the victims were Muslim Turks. Then, on Friday, two more bombs exploded in downtown Istanbul, one at the British Consulate, the other in front of the HSB, a British-owned bank. Another 27 or so dead, another several hundred wounded, and again, the majority of victims Muslim Turks.

These attacks have had an extraordinary resonance here in Greece. For many Greeks, Constantinople -- called, with affection and longing, even in the sober press, simply Poli, "the City" -- remains the center of Greek civilization, a civilization predating by well over 1000 years the foundation of the modern Greek state in the aftermath of the war of independence and symbolized by the twin institutions of the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire. The ideology that drove the disastrous "Great Idea" of 1919-1922 remains alive in conservative religious circles; but the Poli exercises a compelling attraction even on ordinary Greeks who may not want to reconstitute the Byzantine state of Justinian. Witness the extraordinary success of the recent movie Politiki Kouzina, predicated on the great longing of Poli's Greek exiles for the city -- so great that those who could remain after the expulsions of 1957 might refuse even to visit their relatives in Greece because they could not bear to leave Poli.

These bombings have provoked anxiety in Greece for another reason too -- and quite an obvious one: fear that Greece during the Olympics may be a target high on the list. The Greek government had scorned European help for security for the Olympics; now they are asking for it. Bombs during the Olympics would be a disaster of the first water for Greece, and no doubt the crowds of American and British athletes, trainers, support staff, reporters, and tourists (I read an estimate that there would be 340,000 US tourists in Athens for the Olympics) would be a target of extraordinary temptation. (The US already demanded some time ago from the Greek government authority to run security operations for its athletes itself, and the Greeks agreed.) Some here say Greece has been spared because of its resolutely anti-US stand on Iraq, but one wonders how much this might really matter weighed against the temptation. The general view of Greek policy might change too if the conservative Nea Demokratia wins the election in the spring; ND has always been publicly more pro-US than PASOK.

Communiqués from al-Qaida (groups associated with it have taken credit for the bombings) lay out a plan of terror in the Middle East, Britain, and the United States. Bombs continue to go off almost daily in Iraq, most recently in a donkey-drawn cart -- so much for sophisticated "weapons of mass destruction" and nuclear bombs. An ass, a wagon, and a few hundred pounds of high explosive are all it takes. It's clear that, far from "broken" by the US attacks on Afghanistan last year and Iraq this, al-Qaida is as well-organized, well-disciplined, and well-financed as ever. Reports in the papers here indicate that a truckload of explosives left Iraq for Turkey last month; the event was "reported" to Turkish and Greek intelligence services (which clearly are working in close coordination, despite official coolness). One wonders what this says about US and British "control" of a country they are proposing to hand over to a local Iraqi government in June 2004, and how al-Qaida and its wanna-be's will exploit the chaos that surely will grow, not diminish, once inexperienced people take over responsibility for running the country.

Meanwhile, of course, life goes on. The British embassy here is surrounded by wire; there seem to be no new defenses at the US embassy. People walk the streets, park their cars, ride the Metro. What else can one do? You cannot let terrorists decide how you will live your life; you can only be sensible, and then continue on. In Istanbul, people on the street seem to be blaming the US at least as much as al-Qaida for the bombings. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this makes a certain sense -- in the short run, US actions in the Middle East over the past two years have radically increased instability and sharpened antipathy toward the west. The immediate victims live in the countries with long, porous borders with Iraq, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In the longer run, US refusal to divorce its foreign policy from oil dependence by seeking real alternative energy, and its fun-house mirrored refusal to demand from Israel settlement of the Palestinian question, have rendered impossible the pursuit of any reasoned foreign policy in this part of the world. These things are obvious to everyone here, so obvious that it is no surprise if, in reaching for an explanation of the behavior of Americans, people reach for the most cynical possible accounts, rather than attributing it to deep ignorance (the real explanation, I am sorry to say, for most Americans).

Mid-November, 2003, with an update on February 14, 2004

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