In front of the fire and across the valley from a wall of snow (previous post), it’s a natural time to do some reading. It’s harder than ever to keep up with everything that needs to be read. The other day I put up a list of recommended reading including The Dawn Watch, but just now I’m still working through last week’s recommendation of Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country, a memoir of her time in Istanbul.
Ataturk’s trick, she proposes (I think without sarcasm), is to have been “the man who had saved (the Turks) from Western rapaciousness, Islamic torpor, even death itself.” And so, she implies, the Kemalists had the legitimacy to rule the country for the next decades.
This single sentence has the clarity, all in one go, to explain the breadth of Ataturk’s appeal to a nascent Turkey. Pure, concise, commendable writing. Cheers, Ms. Hansen.
Common Sense and Whiskey 
Thoughtful blogs and much enjoyed! Last time I was in Istanbul it was snowing and I got shoes full of freezing water stepping off one of those high kerbs. How cold is it there now? And is it just me, or does Ataturk look like Lucifer on those banknotes? I am really not sure about Ataturk. OK he did a lot of good for the country, but…
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Thanks for your reply Pete. The western canon on Ataturk is full of secular approval, isn’t it? I shouldn’t characterize Ms.Hansen’s book at page 57, but so far she’s much more equivocal on Ataturk.
And hey, on whatever music-on-demand site you use, check out Istanbul 1:26 a.m. by Orient Expressions. It was the audio for an Istanbul promotional video that ran over and over in the hotel last time we stayed there. It’s kind of burned into my head now, and in a good way.
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