Pettifer is particularly good at outlining the reasons why younger Turks especially in the cities increasingly find themselves drawn

Posted by admin · · Jump to comments

Pettifer is particularly good at outlining the reasons why younger Turks, especially in the cities, increasingly find themselves drawn to Islamic ideas and culture, and hostile to what they see as western exploitation. Despite Ataturk's reforms, Turkey is 95 per cent Muslim; since the Welfare Party seeks to spread democracy, to integrate Turkey into the Muslim world, to restore the authority of parliament and so to shift power away from the generals, it isn't likely to last very much longer.James Pettifer's The Turkish Labyrinth offers a highly intelligent perspective on the problems of Ataturk's legacy and the sort of Islam the Welfare Party has adopted in its attempt to solve them. When Russia was the threat, Turkey was bolstered by the west as a barrier against the growth of communism. Now, with the new Great Game centred on Iran (the Middle Eastern country most likely to emerge as a regional superpower), Turkey has been co-opted in the Americans' economic fight against the spread of radical Islam. Internally, the army is at loggerheads with the Welfare Party, which has formed Turkey's first Islamic government. The rise of Islam is the excuse for these latest books on Turkey, which reveal a country disastrously failing to live up to Ataturk's social and economic ideals, and beginning to question his legacy of pro-western policies. Most significantly, he legislated that the army be constitutionally bound to uphold the secular foundation of the state, which still leads some to the delusion that the army are the defenders of some kind of "democracy".

He replaced Islamic law with the Swiss civil code and Mussolini's penal code. He introduced the Latin alphabet, launched a nation-wide literacy campaign and instructed everyone to adopt a surname. When, in 1923, Mustafa Kemel Ataturk established the Republic of Turkey and began to lead it towards an industrialised, pro-western secular state, every aspect of Turkish life was influenced by Ataturk's reforms. He forbade the fez and all other Islamic attire in favour of western suits and hats. He encouraged the appreciation of western culture, particularly dance music. My preferred new piece of information is that Grant liked to watch, on the telly bought for him by the painter Lindy Dufferin, "Dr Finlay's Casebook"..

Perhaps he was alluding to the indulgence of gossip and not to over-discriminating aesthetic judgement. One senses a caginess.Duncan Grant is a subject worthy of biography, not only on account of his life's interweaving with those scrutinised contemporaries. Uncommonly generous, a teacher and inspirer in his work and in himself, a man who thrived in the company of others as may artists do not, his work conducts a beguiling conversation with the history of European art and with modernism. He painted in his youth continually from old masters and he hated "Guernica".The shape of his life, too, is of considerable chastening interest.