We commemorated in 1988 the sesquicentennial of the Convention of Balta Limani, the ground-breaking Ottoman-British commercial agreement that set a pattern for Ottoman agreements with other powers in the years immediately following. The Convention sprang from British interests and from Ottoman needs during the 1830s in the Near East. My function is to sketch the general international background for the Convention, to look at the situation of the Ottoman Empire, at British foreign policy in the early nineteenth century, and in particular at the development of British policy in the Near East in the years from 1827 to 1841. A subtitle indicating the desirable breadth of view might read “From Navarino (1827) to Nezib (1839), and from Hercules’ Pillars to Hormuz and Herat.”

The Republican discourse of progress has established a strong link between Turkey's modernization and the absolute power of light. As the Turkish word aydin (enlightened) replaced the Ottoman münevver (intellectual), the obligation to be enlightened along the dictates of Kemalist precepts became a national imperative. This over-valuation of light in the cultural and ideological spheres has provoked some Turkish novelists to interrogate the clichés of the symbolism of light versus dark, by obscuring their writing with the twilight colors of shadowy zones. Their texts challenge the reader to dig up what lies beyond the shadows and behind the mists with which these writers have chosen to darken their tales. As the intellectual tradition of modern Turkey has evaded doubt, uncertainty, and indeterminacy, the majority of Turkish novelists have opted for novels of clarity, sited on the axis of conviction and invested with moral certitude. The genealogy of the writers of the dark and dim zone of doubt, disillusionment, and frustration, however, has generated the more intriguing, if not more interesting, novels.

Your nostalgia has created

A nonexistent country, with laws

Alien to earth and man.

George Seferis, The Return of the Exile (Keeley and Sherrard, 1981, pp. 224-25)

The history of Greece's first century as an independent nation-state is in many ways a history of the interplay among urban space, nationalism, and identity. It is also a history of nostalgia: Western European nostalgia for one specific past, Greek nostalgia for another, and the tension between the two.

In a recent book detailing the massive war migration in the South-East of Turkey, Kemal Öztürk questions: “Has an Islamic position been made clear on the Kurdish problem, which for the last ten years has assumed the highest place on the national agenda?” and goes on to ask: “In the fifteen reports suggesting solutions to the Kurdish problem is there one representing muslims?” He concludes by saying, “Unfortunately the answer to both questions must be ‘no’” (Öztürk 1996, p. 104). Öztürk's comments are interesting for three reasons: first, is his assumption that a distinct Islamic stance is possible regarding the Kurdish problem. Second is his deploring of the fact that such a position has not been enunciated. And third is the rather disingenuous claim that the lack of a clear response in the name of Islam is synonymous with no position at all by the religious camia (community), as if the ‘de facto’ positions of muslims, i.e. their actual practice, could be dismissed quite so unproblematically.

After experiencing serious macroeconomic imbalances in the 1977-1980 period, fundamental policy changes were introduced in Turkey on January 24, 1980. The problems addressed were typical of a middle income country constrained by its balance of payments: inability to service foreign debt and inability to finance imports required for production, high inflation rates, and all other related macroeconomic imbalances. The reasons for the 1977-1980 crisis and subsequent developments, including post-1980 developments, have already been studied extensively by a number of researchers. We shall, therefore, refer the reader to the relevant literature (e.g. Celasun and Rodrik, 1989; Ekinci, 1990; Uygur, 1991) and concentrate on the narrower topic of external financial liberalization or capital account liberalization and the related topic of exchange rates which has attracted much less attention.

The typical view of the Turkish economy in the 1930s generally has been that it not only performed well while coping with the hardship brought about by the Great Depression, but that it also received a big boost from the state's industrialization program. This usually has been characterized as the success of the economic policies implemented by the new republic in the 1930s. These policies have been considered successful because the young republic not only recovered from the wounds it suffered during the turbulent transition period from the Ottoman Empire, but it also began to realize considerably higher growth rates-mainly in industry, but also across the national economic spectrum.

During the last few years the Turkish Flag has gained incessant public attention and visibility. Events in both foreign and domestic Turkish politics are often discussed in relation to the honor of the ay yıldız, the ‘Star and Crescent’, and sometimes the banner itself is to be found in the very center of ongoing events. Among recent examples from the realm of foreign policy, one could refer to the crisis of January 1996 between Turkey and Greece over an uninhabited cliff in the Aegean Sea, which culminated in a commando operation to plant the Turkish flag on the cliff; or to the latest incident on the Turkish-Greek border in Cyprus where a young Greek trying to tear down the Turkish colors was shot dead. In the domestic arena, one of the most shocking and disturbing events of recent Turkish politics has centered on the insult to the flag during the last political rally of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democracy Party, HADEP, in June of 1996. At the rally, the Turkish “Red Banner”, the al sancak, was cut down, and replaced by the flag of the banned Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK. The scene was captured by television cameras and repeatedly broadcast by different channels, in slow motion.

It is customary to say that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century prosperity of the Ottoman Empire was derived from its control of international trade routes leading toward Europe. From this perspective, the closing years of the sixteenth century are regarded as a turning point. When English merchants entered the Mediterranean and the Dutch established a monopoly over the Moluccan spice trade, the Ottoman state lost its dominant role in world commerce, particularly since Ottoman merchants rarely left the Sultan's domain, and therefore did not control the sources of their trade goods. Loss of customs revenue contributed to fiscal crisis, which in turn led to political turmoil as overtaxed peasants fled their villages (Lewis, 1968, p. 27 ff.). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (or so it is claimed), world trade would have bypassed the Ottoman Empire entirely if it hadn't been for the transit trade in Iranian silk which continued into the 1730s, and a limited exportation of local grains and cottons, which did not become really significant until the high prices of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. From 1815 onward, the Ottoman Empire increasingly entered the orbit of industrializing Europe as a market for manufactured goods and a source of raw materials, and this state of affairs was made “official” by the signing of the Anglo-Ottoman convention of 1838.

In the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, British entrepreneurs were prominent in all the major sectors of the Izmir economy, forming one of the most important western communities in the city. They played an active role in the city's large commercial sector, not only in imports and exports, but also in complementary sectors such as insurance and maritime transportation. They also participated in money-lending and tax-farming. As the light-industrial sector of Izmir's economy grew, British entrepreneurs took advantage of the new opportunities offered there. They were particularly prominent in sectors that needed large capital resources and technological expertise, such as mining or infrastructure projects. Despite their strong economic presence, at no time did they monopolize any sector. Their dominance in various sectors was constantly challenged and at times checked by strong competition from other capital, both western and local. Nevertheless, the larger British houses attempted to dominate the sector in which they specialized, and constantly diversified their economic activities and patterns of investment. Despite intense competition, the British maintained a primary position in Izmir's economy throughout this period.

Est-ce donc vers le passé qu'il regardait, plutôt que vers l'avenir? Il n'est pas facile de trancher. Après tout, l'avenir est fait de nos nostalgies, de quoi d'autre?

Cet âge où les hommes de toutes origines vivaient côte à côte dans les Echelles du Levant et mélangeaient leurs langues, est-ce une réminiscence d'autrefois? est-ce une préfiguration de l'avenir? Ceux qui demeurent attachés à ce rêve sont-ils des passéistes ou bien des visionnaires? Je serais incapable de répondre. Mais c'est en cela que mon père croyait. En un monde couleur sépia oû un Turc et un Arménien pouvaient encore être frères.

Maalouf 1996, p. 49