As
an anthropologist, he was in Dagestan with his Russian wife last month,
researching the local people. Taking a break from work, they went into
the town center in the evening for a celebratory anniversary dinner.
While in the restaurant, trouble broke out between the local Free
Dagestan militia and the Russian authorities. As they watched in horror
from their table, sub-machine gun fire rang out throughout the streets
-- some combatants even jumped on the hood of Peter’s jeep parked
outside to get better cover. Peter
and his wife found themselves caught up in the turmoil and struggle
that is the North Caucasus today. Terrorists? Rebels? Freedom-fighters?
The definition you apply will depend on your view of the centuries-old
conflict between the tribes of this region and the old empire of
Russia. Peter and his wife will surely have some interesting stories to
tell their children and grandchildren. In
"Turn My Head to the Caucasus,” Aydın Osman Erkan, the grandfather of
popular Turkish presenter Rana Erkan Tabanca, recalls the stories told
to him about his grandfather Osman Ferid Pasha. In the preface, he
writes that it is the story of a family caught up in the upheaval and
exodus of the North Caucasus war, saying that the tales he was told as
a child were "perhaps romanticized, perhaps exaggerated, but [told]
with such imagination, patience and enthusiasm [they] left a deep
imprint on my mind and heart.” "You
must review this book, Marion”, said Gaye Hiçdönmez, a well-loved and
hardworking member of the British Community Council (BCC) and
proprietor of the former Four Seasons Restaurant popular with locals
and tourists on İstiklal Caddesi by Taksim, as she browsed our books
table at the BCC pantomime. So, on Gaye’s recommendation, I picked up
my copy, to discover it comes highly recommended by another
well-respected member of the British community in İstanbul -- Professor
Norman Stone. In Professor
Stone’s commendation, he says, "‘Circassian’ is one of the great
romantic names in history, and deserves to be. Tough and wily mountain
warriors in the northern part of the Caucasus -- Circassia -- held off
the Russians for forty years and then, in an epic of endurance,
settled, in hundreds of thousands, in the territory of modern Turkey.
This splendid book is the story of one of them, written up by his
descendants.” Osman Ferid Pasha’s
story starts in the middle of the 19th century. Born to the chief of
the Ubykh tribe, he grows up among a struggle for survival against
hostile assailants and aggressors. In those days, Circassia was an
independent confederacy of the Adyghe, Abhaz and Ubyhk peoples. But
Russia wanted to possess the Caucasus to strengthen its approached to
the Black Sea, and also the Baltic. So,
as a young boy, he learns through play the skills of mountain guerilla
warfare. From the older boys he learns to swim in fast-flowing rivers,
to jump from swinging ropes tied to a tree into the cold swirling
waters below and how to maneuver a horse through rivers and flowing
rapids. Janbolat, his father’s standard-bearer, takes charge of his
military training. "In war in the mountains your best friend is your
horse. … The forest is your camouflage, safety zone and war zone.” A contemporary poem reads, "Oh the wild people who live in these countries, Whose God is freedom and whose law is warfare, Whose friendship is strong and revenge is stronger These feelings are inflicted on them by their Lords in the sky. They answer goodness with good and evil with equal evil, And for them hatred is as eternal as love.” The
boy born into a leader’s family in the Caucasus becomes a member of the
royal staff of the sultan in İstanbul and eventually rises to the
position of general of the Imperial Ottoman Army, where his varied
responsibilities include commander of the Taşkışla Barracks in
İstanbul, envoy to Tripolitania in North Africa and overseer of the
Medina Garrison, which meant he was also afforded the title of guardian
of the Holy Shrine of Medina. The
skill of a historian such as Professor Stone is to show us how history
has a bearing on modern life, society and politics. As Erkan relates
the tale of his grandfather, he weaves sections describing the history
and politics of the day with sections quoted from authors and observers
and with Osman Ferid Pasha’s life story. Sometimes
the story seems to progress a little slowly, but in many places the
pace picks up as the relevance to today’s geo-political climate in
Russia and Turkey reaches a boiling point. The roots of today’s news
from Grozny, Chechnya, Ossetia and Ingushetia extend back to Osman
Ferid Pasha’s childhood, when Naqshibandi Shaykh İmam Shamil united the
people under the banner of Islam to defend their land against Russian
advance. After the end of the
Crimean War, Russia launched an aggressive military attack with three
armies against Shamil and his Murid mountaineers in Chechnya and
Dagestan. The young Osman Ferid becomes chief as his father dies
defending their cause. His mother dies soon after, but not until she
has made him promise to take his family to İstanbul. Osman Ferid’s
tribe fights on, after many capitulated, and their desperate last stand
includes protecting the refugees that streamed in. The tsar’s peace
deal allows those who want to go to Turkey. Sailing in overcrowded
schooners across the Black Sea, refugee boats take the four brothers to
Constantinople (İstanbul), where they enroll in the military academy. But
a decade later, this great city is engulfed in tension and violence in
the streets as the people wanted a new constitution, and the sultan
seemed reluctant to grant their wishes. Again Osman Ferid’s story
becomes uncannily modern. Promoted to major, he now holds a senior
ranking position in the army, at a time when the minister of war was
planning the first coup to overthrow a sultan. The minister of war was,
of course, the commander general of the Ottoman army, and in the run-up
to the bloodless coup, there were often heated exchanges in the
officers’ mess. "‘We are officers
in the Ottoman Army, answerable only to our superiors. Our duty is to
obey without question, so let’s not argue amongst ourselves but wait
for orders.’ Mustafa, a close
friend rejoined, ‘Osman Ferid, we cannot remain observers or be
dogmatic at such a time; the scale of the political unrest in a country
can lead to civil war and we should be prepared.’ Osman
Ferid saluted him. ‘I believe the military forces to be above politics,
as officers our duty is to carry out orders and remain silent. I advise
you to do the same’. ” Some 40
years later, after years of loyal service to his empire, Osman Ferid is
once more confronted with the issue of politics, as the military
commanders were impelled to swear an oath of allegiance, not just to
their sultan and caliph, but also to the Committee of Union and
Progress. "His reply was polite and honest. He would be honored to
swear an oath of loyalty to Sultan Reşat Mehmed V, to serve him as a
faithful servant, an officer of the Ottoman army and Sheikh-ul-Haram
under the Caliph of all Islam, but it was against his principles, as an
officer in the Ottoman Army, to swear an oath of allegiance to any
political party.” Osman Ferid’s
life reminds us how topical history is! We shall have to see whether
future news reports from the Caucasus and Turkey teach us that history
teaches us nothing, or not. "Turn My Head to the Caucasus” by Aydin Osman Erkan, published by Çitlembik, TL 25 in paperback, ISBN: 978-9944-424-64-6
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