THE OTTOMAN AND TURKISH ECONOMIES AND THEIR INTEGRATION INTO EUROPE. 1453-2006.
Case-Study: Turkish-Polish Relations.
Dr. Gerrit De Vylder, Associate Professor Lessius Hogeschool, Antwerp, Belgium, and Polonia University, Czestochowa, Poland; Affiliated Researcher Leuven University, Belgium
Object of study
In a publication for the 40th Annual Meeting of the World Bank at Seul, Korea, in 1985, Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal of Turkey summed up some objectives for the year 2000 under the title “It’s not a dream” (Turkey in the 2000’s, 1985). And he included the possibility that Turkey would have become a full member of the EEC in the year 2000. He assumed that application would be made in 1986-1987 and that Turkey was to assume its place in Europe by 2002 at the latest. We now know that this remains a dream. Only in 1999 in Helsinki, the EU finally decided to accept Turkey’s candidacy for membership. But still the EU countered that democratic and economic deficiencies in Turkey’s institutions and practices disqualified it from membership. Again in November 2000 the EU announced a list of the conditions Turkey has to meet before it can start negotiations to join the EU (The Economist, November 4th 2000). Among others the EU expressed worries about Turkish economic performances. In December 2000 the situation became apparent when in December 2000 the International Monetary Fund agreed on a $10bn loan for Turkey. In return Turkey’s Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit promised to speed up privatisations and reform of the crisis-hit banking sector. Yet again in February 2001 the Turkish Lire lost about one third of its value and foreign capital started leaving the country. The new government of the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister, R.T. Erdogan, continued to find a balance between demands of, on the one hand, the EU (which Turkey obviously still wanted to join) and the IMF (with which it had a vital stand-by agreement), and, on the other, an increasingly nationalist lobby at home. In October 2005 Turkey and the EU finally started accession negotiations. Despite monetary and other reformsin order to leave the country better prepared to face external shocks, inflationary tensions, a serious debt burden and a large current-account deficit continued to challenge the economy. However, some economic indicatorsalso showed that Turkey was performing better then the economies of other EU-member candidates. The question arises whether Turkish application for EU-membership was or should be considered differently from other applications? (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005).
We argue that the idea of “Europe” itself is the result of “Eurocentric” thinking and that concepts like democracy, market economy or rationalism moved around in an “Eurasian” world for millennia and belong to mankind in general. Too often Europeans consider themselves as the only heirs of such traditions thereby pushing away many Moslim and other communities who start considering themselves as “not belonging to the club”. Moreover we argue that the Ottoman or Turkish sphere contributed significantly to this exchange of ideas, concepts, techniques, products, capital and people.
In order to assess this we consider the subject not in the usual way of analysing contemporary economic and social performance, but from a broad socio-economic and historic perspective that may give us an insight into the very structures of Turkish society and economy and its relations with Western Europe.Like Winston Churchill stated: “The further backwards you look, the further forward you can see” (Andrew, 2002, xi). This will also provide us insights into whether it is justifiable to treat the Turkish application in a different way from other applications. It should also be taken into account that quite often the “historical argument” is used as an argument against Turkey’s EU membership.
From a Polish Point of View
What would be the role of Poland in such a discussion? One of the milestones of Polish history is King Jan III Sobieski’s (1629-96) defeat of the Turks at Chocim in 1673. This episode is usually referred to by Eurocentered historians emphasizing the West-European and Catholic nature of Polish identity. Poland-Lithuania was the “Bulwark of Christendom” protecting Europe against the Muslim Ottomans. Indeed Poland’s Catholicism determined that all her elected rulers (kings) came from the West and the main axis of Polish commerce lay westwards on the roads to Germany or on the Baltic Sea lanes to Holland, France, and Spain.
However, this is only one side of the story and there are arguments which illustrate a long-lasting positive relationship between Poland and Turkey. First, the Turkish war was not of Sobieski’s making. It had been launched by the Turks as part of a strategic encirclement of the Habsburgs, and in response to the marriage of the previous King Michal K. Wisniowiecki (1640-1673), to a Habsburg. Poland happened to be geographically in the wrong place. As alliances were generally made regardless the religion of the partners concerned, there were no “holly wars”.
Second, Poland-Lithuania’s adjacence to the Moslim world and Poland’s overland trade on the Black Sea route should not be ignored. Poland’s long wars with the Turks did not discourage a stronge taste for Persian and Ottoman rugs, Turkish saddles, Tartar haircut, and Oriental fashion. Nor did the multiple confrontations with the Tartars prevent the Polish nobility from dressing in a Tartar, Oriental style or cultivating Tartar horsemanship. One of the best examples is Tomasz Zamoyski (1594-1638), Wojewoda of Kiev, and briefly, Crown Chancellor. He was trained from childhood in Oriental affairs and had a fluent command of Turkish, Tartar, Arabic, and Persian. He turned the Academy of his father in Zamosc into a centre of Oriental studies. Zamosc itself, with its Armenian and Jewish colonies and its Persian carpet manufactory, became a hub of the eastern trade. Actually, also Sobieski grew up in very similar surroundings. He had lived in Istanbul in 1654 and he had commanded the Republic’s Tartar auxiliaries in 1657. The Polish gateway to the West, Gdanks or Danzig, remained after all a predominantly German-speaking area. The real inland Poland remained for a very long time oriented towards the Orient.
Third, an entirely new situation emerged after Sobieski’s victory. The depth of Poland’s rejection of her Russian neighbour made a weakened Turkey eventually an ally. Whenever Poland was hard pressed by the Habsburgs, or by the Muscovite Russians, the Poles would fervently pray for a Turkish campaign in the Balkans or on the Black Sea coast. The Ottomans provided the only regular counterbalance to Poland’s more immediate eastern neighbours, and increasingly the only hope of relief (Davies, 2001, 300-305; Davies, 2005, 327-354). Again after the Second World War the new TurkishRepublic proved to be a trustworthy ally against the Soviet-Union. And as Eurocritical attitudes multiply in today’s Poland, Turkey would be a usefull ally within the EU, sharing common agricultural interests and possibly moral values.
The Ottomans: Economic Growth or Stagnation?
Let us return to our argument that historically the Turkish Ottoman empire was an integral part of European economic and material civilization and culture. More specifically, the Turkish Ottoman empire always acted as the “bridge of the world”. The so-called “Turkish menace” was in reality a means of diffusing Asian and Arab technologies into Europe.
However, somewhere from the late 17th century onwards a myth was created that the Ottoman empire was a backward area. The English economic liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as the philosopher John Locke, argued that the first requisite for national economic growth was the protection of private property, for unless the right to property was sustained the incentive to work was reduced and the production of wealth would decrease (Fusfeld, 1994, 19-22). A favorite illustration of this principle was a comparison of the wealth of the English and the poverty of the Turks. In ancient times, liberals pointed out, the domain of the Turks was the wealthiest in the world, with flourishing cities, prosporous agriculture, large exports, and world-famous manufactures. But a despotic and arbitrary government seized wealth without justification, imposed confiscary taxes, and operated both justice and government through a system of bribery. These actions brought an end to prosperity. The Turk languished in poverty thereafter, unwilling to work, to produce, or to accumulate capital because it would be seized or destroyed by a corrupt government. Happy and prosperous England, on the other hand, was growing wealth because individual initiative was protected by a rule of law that preserved for the individual the wealth he or she produced and saved.
However, according to Frank (1998, 78) the European view that the Ottoman empire was a world onto itself and “virtually a fortress” (Braudel, 1995, 69-92) is more ideological than factual. Moreover, the “traditional” Eurocentric put-down of the Ottomans as stuck-in-the-mud Muslim military bureaucrats only reflects historical reality insofar as it is an expression of the very real commercial competition that the Ottomans posed for European commercial interests and ambitions. The famous French historian Braudel (1995, 69-92) claimed that “Turkey’s real greatness, denied for a long time in Europe, is now gradually re-emerging through research by historians”.
The Case for Growth. 16thand 17th Centuries.
So, what did happen in the Ottoman empirein the 16th and 17th centuries? The Ottoman Turks were indeed responsible for a remarkable re-emergence of islam from the 15th century onwards aided by a general recovery of the world economy. Their rapid military victories began well before their conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Constantinople had developed as and lived off its role as a major North-South and East-West crossroads for a millennium since its Byzantine founding. That also made it attractive for conquest by the Ottomans, who renamed it Istanbul. By the sixteenth century the Ottomans had made Turkey one of the great powers in the Mediterranean. They were the new masters of Byzantium and of the Arabian holly places. Soon they more or less restructured the whole of Islam.
From an economic point of view the Ottomans took over the merchant’s role of the Arabs and Byzantines. They did indeed occupy the geographical and economic crossroads between Europe and Asia, and they sought to make the most of it. The East-West spice and silk trade continued overland and by ship through Ottoman territory. With a population of 600,000 to 750,000 in the 16th century, Istanbul was by far the largest city in Europe and West-Asia and nearly the largest in the world (Frank, 1998, 12 & 78).
The Ottoman empire drew an important part of its public revenues and silver stocks from the silk and other trades with Europe. Apart from the relations with Europe there was the very important trade Eastwards with Moghul India and Safavid Persia, using the Asian land routes. Of course, because of the geographical position, the transit trade was of particular importance. The Ottoman court and others had their own resources and transcontinental trade connections, to import large quantities of distant Chinese goods, such as porcelain. The wealth of the Ottoman empire also derived from substantial local and regional production and commercialisation, interregional and international specialization, division of labour and trade. Evidence of private, public or semipublic enterprises involved in silk, cotton and their derived textiles, leather and its products, agriculture in general, as well as mining and metal industries (Frank, 1998, 78-82). A very special product that Turkey gave Europe and the world was the tulip. Possibly, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Ferdinand I’s ambassador to the court of Süleyman the Magnificent in Istanbul, was responsible for introducing it. Busbecq or Busbeke (1522-1591) was one of a long series of Flemish ambassadors who represented the Habsburg emperors in Istanbul and sent plants and other curiosities back to their patrons. Busbecq wrote: “The Turks cultivate flowers with extreme zeal, and though they are careful people, do not hesitate to pay a considerable sum for an exceptional flower”. Cargoes of bulbs started arriving in Antwerp from Istanbul in 1562 long before they were shipped into Amsterdam. But by their industry and application in growing and selling bulbs, the Dutch ensured that they were the last, triumphant survivors in the tulip trade (Pavord, 2000). Already during the so-called “Tulip-period”, from1718 to 1730 the trade reversed: Dutch tulips were than exported to the Ottoman empire (Bakker, Vervloet en Gailly, 1997, 106).
Furthermore, the Ottomans’ territory expanded further both westward and eastward. This expansion was motivated not only politically and military but also, indeed primarely, economically. Like everybody else, be they Venetians, French, Portuguese, Persians, Arabs, or whatever, the Ottomans were always trying to divert and control the major trade routes, from which they and especially the state lived. Thus the Ottoman Mulims sought to displace the Christians in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, where economic plums were to be picked, including the control of the trade routes through the Mediterranean and the timber and dye wood of the Balkans (Frank, 1998, 78-82).On the other hand, the Ottoman empire could not participate in the “American experience” because its territory did not extend to the Atlantic coast and the straits of Gibraltar were an effective barrier to keep out Ottoman traders. In the long run this proved to be disastrous for capitalistic development in the empire. “El dorado” did not reach the Ottomans and they became relatively capital extensive compared to Western Europe which gradually became more capital intensive.
But until the end of the 18th century the balance of trade with Western Europe remained in favour of the Ottoman empire. In this way the empire indirectly did profit from the flow of Latin American precious metals to Western Europe. The few European exports to the Ottoman empire were curiously enough dominated by the slave trade. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the main source of supply was in southeastern Europe, where the advance of the Ottoman jihad brought a steady and ample supply of Albanian, Slavonic, Wallachian, Hungarian and other Christian slaves. Some were recruited by the famous devshirme, the levy of Christian boys from the subject populations of the empire; others were captured. Great numbers of Balkan Christian boys entered the Ottoman military and bureaucratic apparatus, which for a while even came to be dominated by these new recruits to the Ottoman state and the Muslim faith. Many of them rose to the highest offices in the Ottoman state (Lewis, 1994, 190-91).
After conquest no longer provided an adequate flow of slaves to meet the needs of the empire a substitute was found. The Tatar Khans of the Crimea, an autonomous Muslim dynasty recognizing a loose Ottoman suzerainty, developed a vast apparatus of slave raiding and slave trading. They captured slaves from Russian, Polish and Ukrainian populations and brought them to the Crimea, where they were sold and shipped to Istanbul for further distribution through the slave markets of the Ottoman empire. Unlike the recruits of the devshirme, they rarely penetrated the Ottoman ruling élite, but served instead in humbler and often menial capacities. Apart from forms of service in households and harems, they were also employed in plantations and in mines mostly operated by the government, and were as such used for economic purposes (Lewis, 1994, 190-91).
Already in the 15th century, also the trade in weapons was very extensive and included vital raw materials. The Vatican and different European governments were concerned about the supply of war materials and military skills to the Turks by rival European powers. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Catholic powers frequently accused the Protestants, and especially the British, of supplying a wide range of war materials, and especially tin (Lewis, 1994, 185-200). On the other hand, the Ottoman empire itself was the very site of various technological revolutions, especially in the field of military technology, many of which diffused across to Western Europe (Hobson, 2004, 186-189).
Apart from slaves and war materials, Europe seems to have had little to offer that would interest the Ottoman purchaser. There was, however, one exception; that was British cloth, already famous in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages (Lewis, 1994, 185-200).
While emphasising the economic successes of the Ottoman empire we should also consider the fact that the Ottoman empire, like Moghul India and Safavid Persia, was indeed a cash-taxing empire. Fiscal pressure is normally considered an obstacle for economic growth. But these taxes could not exist without flourishing internal and external trade. The interests of the state and the economy were in a certain way identical. Brummett summarises that the Ottoman state could be compared to European mercantilist states on the bases of ambitions, commercial behaviours, and claims to universal sovereignty (Frank, 1998, 78-82). It is also interesting to mention Franks’ observation that the shifting tactical diplomatic, political, and military alliances and competitive maneuvering or outwright war in pursuit first and foremost of commercial advantage belie the myth of alleged common fronts and interests between the Christian West on the one hand and the Muslim East on the other. Muslim Mamluks, Ottomans, Persians and Indians fought with each other, and they forged shifting alliances with different European Christian states, all in pursuit of the same end: profit. So only when it was convenient the use of religious rhetoric was a strategy employed by all contenders for power in the Euro-Asian sphere.