12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Realistic Portrait of The Current Situation in Turkey, August 2, 2000
This review is from: Anatolia Junction: A Journey into Hidden Turkey (Paperback)
The author in this book explores the life of Said-i Nursi, the founder of the Nurcu Movement in Islam. He traces the steps Nursi took throughout his life, and while doing that he presents the readers with a realistic portrait of today's Turkey. Thus this book is both an enjoyable travelogue and a serious sociopolitical analysis. Particularly useful is Reed's description of the Islamiist and Kurdish problems in this country. Unfortunately, however, Reed has examined Nursi basically through the eyes of Nurcus, and therefore the portrait he draws of this religios leader is too positive, approaching a hagiography. The views of Nursi's critics and opponents are not represented adequately.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great topic, executed horribly., October 14, 2001
This review is from: Anatolia Junction: A Journey into Hidden Turkey (Paperback)
Fred Reed's idea was to write a travel narrative of his quest to learn about Said Nursi, an Islamic dissident who still has an active following 50 years after his death. Said Nursi is a fascinating man deserving a fascinating study: Reed's scholarship is fine, but his book fails miserably.
I could barely get through his writing, despite my determination to finish the book. Full of ironic pretensions to omniscience, with the self-pity and self-doubt that characterizes impotent intellectuals, Reed's writing could put out small fires. He is paranoid and suspicious, and his writing full of quickly withdrawn implications. Preoccupied with displaying his cleverness, he fails to take anything seriously.
If you want to learn about Said Nursi and his followers, I don't know of a better source, and that is a sad statement. Yet there is absolutely no other reason to endure this book.
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11 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A covertly sympathetic view of Turkey, September 4, 2000
This review is from: Anatolia Junction: A Journey into Hidden Turkey (Paperback)
This is a fuzzy book about a fascinating man who shined in a complex world: indeed my natural antipathy towards the culture (Turkish/Islamic) that has all but annihilated mine (Anatolian Greek/Byzantine, the "invading" one of 1919) over the last nine centuries cannot overwhelm my admiration for a society tenacious enough to distribute the words of a perceived 20th century clandestine spiritual leader by way of scribes; nor can the author's failure to draw a clear picture of Said Nursi's ideology for the uninitiated reader eliminate my respect -- despite further reservations in other directions -- for the highly original task he undertook.
The author's failure to draw a detailed portrait of Said Nursi is largely compensated by a decent introduction to the history and politics of modern Turkey. The reader may in fact wonder at times whether his real target was Said Nursi's movement or Turkey's contemporary realities. Taking this question one step further, one has to wonder whether the author's decision to center Turkey's "presentation" around Said Nursi is accidental or not: for it can indeed be argued, by the author at least, that the gifted leader exemplified the best qualities or even hopes of the Turkish nation.
Of course an individual diverse enough to study "western science" in the backyard of an Armenian church in the outskirts of Van and to travel on a German submarine to Libya in order to instigate religious revolt during World War I can probably provide sufficient material for more than one books; and there is no question that his "inner" view of an otherwise "corrupted" world did touch the hearts and minds of a sizable portion, perhaps even a majority, of Turkey's population. But Said Nursi was also a Kurd who opposed the Kurdish revolt of 1925 and did believe in the unity of Kurds and Turks under Islam, undisturbed by deep differences in language and history -- differences that nowadays seem to be important to quite a few people in Turkey and elsewhere, including the author himself in other environments (such as his "Salonica Terminus", a book that focuses on neighboring Greece and the Balkans, for example)...
More generally, it seems that in his approach to Turkey Mr. Reed makes no futile effort to deny the undeniable but goes out of his way to doubt the "unproven": no question that Ataturk was unreasonably authoritarian or that non-Muslims had been singled out for hideously heavier taxation in 1942 or that the contemporary military regime is violating basic human rights; strong hints casting doubts on whether a genocide was committed against the Armenians in 1915 or whether the Istanbul massive pogrom of September 1955 was a state-orchestrated attempt to terrorize and expel the city's Greek minority. (In the first case, the author stresses Armenian atrocities in Van and collaboration with the Russians without mentioning the massacres of Armenians in 1909 or 1896; in the second case, a Turkish attempt to portray the pogrom as a popular revolt against plutocracy, be it Greek or Turkish, is not unequivocally refuted.)
Unfortunately, no information is provided on Said Nursi's views on what happened in 1915 or 1955, although there are hints to the effect that he was potentially tolerant of Turkey's Christian minorities and critical of the Muslims' envy of their successes. Nor is it clear to the reader why he so quickly turned against the Young Turk revolution of 1908, despite his initial support of it: his views on that fateful development would be of particular importance, casting perhaps some badly needed light on the exact nature of the Young Turk movement (and its failure to produce a modern multiethnic state, a failure that Mr. Reed seems to attribute more to the European powers' and Turkey's ethnic groups' aspirations than to the movement's leaders' hidden nationalistic choices and agendas).
Of course there are essentially no Christian minorities left in Turkey today, and the contemporary reader would naturally be more interested in Turkey's present dilemmas, namely the Kurdish question or the collision between the west-bound state and the ever alive Islamic zeal. We know that Said Nursi advocated for both freedom to use the Kurdish language and brotherhood between Turks and Kurds, hence offering a solution that appears to be sensible yet in violation of Ataturk's fundamental principle of "one and only one nation". But the suggestion to his followers about "not attempting anything until you have the support of two thirds of the population" does place a question mark on the fate of the dissenting one third...
Despite its flaws, this book is a well written introduction to Turkey, endlessly but not tiresomely oscillating between its past and present, and also a peek at the life and beliefs of a relatively unknown major figure in the development of Islamic faith and thought. It helps to de-demonize Islam and intrigue even the possibly biased reader with its complex intellectual history and overall tenacity. The author surfaces as an inquisitive traveler rather than an expert, and that is even truer of this armchair reviewer!
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