The failure of cannonballs and the father of canon law

As a preface, I will argue that the relationship is shallow. Turks, like the rest of the world, obviously know far more about the superpower than the reverse. But these impressions still tend to be limited to bright Hollywood images or theories drawing on recent dark history. In the opposite direction, history is all the more recent. Little exists before World War II. Then came the Marshall Plan, NATO, Chrysler trucks in the city and John Deere tractors in the hinterlands. The 1960s were bracketed at one end by the Black Sea rocket launchers in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Peace Corps teaching English at the other. No sociologist has yet been able to explain to me how the 1970s produced both the Cyprus crisis and Turkish participation in the trans-Atlantic addiction to the saccharine Greek singer Demis Russos. It’s just one of many assumption-defying dichotomies.

The transition to the 1980s occurred in an era when the real U.S. ambassador in Ankara was the CIA station chief. As that decade concluded, grim years had grown brighter under the stewardship of the late President Turgut Özal. By the end of the first Gulf War, Özal had earned a visit to Camp David and the embrace as a "brother" by Bush the Elder. When Özal died, a few years later, most European heads of state attended his funeral. His "brother," however, was preoccupied in retirement with the details of his presidential library. A company called Enron came to Turkey in the 1990s, as did President Bill Clinton after the 1999 earthquake. Clinton is remembered; Enron is not.

The latest Gulf War has been one long mess. At the Pentagon, it will be remembered for the day in 2003 when the Turks said "no." At the Turkish General Staff, the signature memory will always be the moment a few months later when the 173rd Airborne said "hands up" to a group of Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq. And that’s about it.

It is this shallowness in mutual perceptions that got me thinking about cannonballs Ğ two cannonballs, to be precise. They sit on pedestals on either side of the entry to a walkway leading into the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. They may be gone now, for when our Washington correspondent Ümit Enginsoy tried to hunt them down during the Annapolis Peace Conference in 2007, he was unsuccessful. But when I attended a wedding at Annapolis back in 1989, these two cannonballs were there as a greeting, along with a small bronze plaque explaining that they were used by the Navy of Sultan Mehmet during his conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Cannonballs make an odd house gift. I can only guess how these projectiles changed hands; a squeaky microphone and words of solidarity at a dress blue reception come to mind. But excised from the context of kitsch, the meta-message is clear to me. Someone sought to say: We have been here a long time, the art of war is part of our makeup, we can make a claim that few in the world can Ğ we have never been vanquished.

Americans should understand a martial sense animates much of Turkish culture. It transcends ideology. The traffic here is martial, as is the street play of children. So is the rhetoric of politicians. Turkey’s press is hardly the world’s freest; but that Turkish journalism is the world’s most martial is beyond dispute. This gift to America at Annapolis, I believe, sought to convey this depth. That it did not is self-evident. Which brings me to canon law. The etymology should be done by William Safire at the New York Times, but short of that, I can find two histories for the word: in one, it derives from the ancient Greek for "measure," or "scale"; the second holds that it comes from the Arabic-derived "kanun," or "law." In Turkish, it is primary law. Many Turkish words dealing with law and order Ğ "yasa," "hukuk," "talimat" Ğ are really regarded as merely advisory.

But the more seldom-used "kanun" means business. You can trample a "yasa," as Turks from all walks of life routinely do. But don’t tread on a "kanun." For in the Turkish mind (if my colleagues will indulge my saying so), it evokes "Kanuni," the sobriquet given to Sultan Süleyman, to this day regarded as the father of Turkish jurisprudence. At Wikipedia, here is what I found:

"Suleiman [Wikipedia’s spelling] became the pre-eminent monarch of 16th century Europe, presiding over the apex of the Ottoman Empire's military, political and economic powerÉ" the encyclopedia writes. "Suleiman personally instituted legislative changes relating to society, education, taxation, and criminal law. His canonical law (or the Kanuns) fixed the form of the empire for centuries after his death." He died in1566.

In light of this, consider a bas-relief sculpture that somehow made it to the U.S. House of Representatives. It is one of a score of portraits of history’s lawgivers that surround the top of the chamber. You can see it from the press gallery, a place where I have passed some interesting hours of my life, but far more that were downright boring, allowing ample time to ponder what is directly opposite, the statue of Sultan Süleyman. Hamurabi is in the pantheon somewhere. So is Moses. On one side of the Turkish sultan is Pope Innocent III, known for delivering Roman law through the Dark Ages. On the other is Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher from Cordova who died in 1204.

From what I have learned, the U.S. Capitol, planned as early as 1776, was first occupied in 1800. British invaders burned it in 1814. It was serviceable again by 1830. Much of what one sees today was constructed between 1869 and 1902. That I never went to the architect of the Capitol’s office to ask just who put Süleyman atop the U.S. House of Representatives is one of many things I have left undone.

The fact that it is there, however, remains emblematic of the depth that could have Ğ but never has Ğ been attained in U.S.-American relations. Who decided that American legislators should learn from the Turkish father of canon law? I have no more idea who it was than I know who might have decided U.S. naval cadets should learn about Mehmet’s cannonballs. I do know that no one at Annapolis notices those cannonballs, and that the sultan serves no real utility when the U.S. Congress does its work. That both efforts at inspiration have failed saddens me.

Those inspirations sought to speak to the depth of this society, to that which informs it today, to the many cultural tributaries of the river of contemporary Turkish consciousness. Those inspirations could have partially filled the void in understanding between these two societies. Instead, they speak only of the failure to enable that understanding.

These are the thoughts that occupy my mind this weekend as we await Obama. It was always there in front of them. Too bad America’s leadership has never grasped the significance to the Turks of two cannonballs and the father of canon law.



David Judson is editor-in-chief of the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review