The curious case
of the disappearing Turkish military moustache
I was recently passing a hot afternoon on a guided tour of the museum at Selimiye Barracks in Istanbul. (No one has ever accused me of being normal.)
I was recently passing a hot afternoon on a guided tour of the museum at Selimiye Barracks in Istanbul. (No one has ever accused me of being normal.)
I was a kind of support worker on a medical tour. We were from a small cruise boat exploring the eastern Mediterranean. Most of the participants were over seventy and some were octogenarians or even nonagenarians. My role was, in part, to help them on their trip, which was primarily designed to visit museums and the ruined sites of archaeological interest, such as asclepieia (healing centres in the ancient world), and it wasn’t the sort of experience I’m likely to forget.
‘Keith, hold on. I can’t find my hat. I can’t go out in the sun without it.’
‘You’re wearing it, Michael.’
‘Ah, yes, good. That’s a relief... Oh, no, it’s not that! I meant my stick. I need my stick.’
‘I’ll get it for you. When did you last have it, Michael?’
‘I’m not sure. It might be with my passport...’
‘Ok, Where’s your passport?’
‘I’ve no idea. I can’t find my passport either.’
‘You’re wearing it, Michael.’
‘Ah, yes, good. That’s a relief... Oh, no, it’s not that! I meant my stick. I need my stick.’
‘I’ll get it for you. When did you last have it, Michael?’
‘I’m not sure. It might be with my passport...’
‘Ok, Where’s your passport?’
‘I’ve no idea. I can’t find my passport either.’
Since we visited Istanbul, Gallipoli, Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus, Bodrum, Kos, Rhodes, Syros, Nafplion, Epidauros, Mycenae and Athens in just a couple of weeks, it was all educational and great fun but pretty exhausting. The trip ended in Athens and I remember 87-year-old Rachel leaning, conspiratorially, towards me and saying, ‘I’m so disappointed I couldn’t make it right to the top of the Acropolis. But I’ve been before, many years ago: and that ouzo bar you took me to last night was much better!’
Back to the plot. When we all leapt from the coach at the barracks – you can picture the scene – we were herded into a waiting area, because Selimiye is an active military headquarters and administrative establishment and under strict army rules. You can only get in with special permission.
(As an aside: everyone has to do military service in Türkiye. For six months. Unless you can afford to pay the equivalent of £5,200, in which case you only have to do 28 days. George Orwell was right, of course. As ever. Some are more equal, everywhere you go.)
Anyway, a very smart-looking soldier was to be our guide. He told us to line up, in ranks of four: we were to proceed, in a militarily precise formation, to the museum building. I wonder if anyone reading this has ever attempted to harness the myriad disabilities of forty aged former medical consultants and dentists along two hundred yards of scorched pathways, keeping them in lines, up slopes and round obstructions? No, thought not - but the image of them scattered like disorientated First World War casualties along what seemed a vast expanse of roadway will linger long in my memory.
Finally inside the museum, we stood respectfully in wide corridors where hundreds of injured British soldiers had lain during the Crimean War (1853 -1856), when the Turks were our allies against the Russians. It used to be called the Scutari Barracks Hospital and was where Florence Nightingale began to establish her reputation, having previously run the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Harley Street in London.
I’d visited the place before and knew we ended up climbing a short spiral staircase to the room in which the Lady with the Lamp used to work. It is now much as it was then. Her actual carpet and chair are there, as well as her desk, with her notes upon it; and there are extracts from her handwritten writings, framed, on the walls. The view from the window, right to the Bosphorus, is stunning. She would have been able to look down and see, in the distance, wounded soldiers being unloaded from transports at the wharf.
However, it was the room from which you climb to Nightingale’s study that particularly held my attention on this occasion. It serves as a memorial to Turkish soldiers who died in the Crimean War, the First World War and the War of Independence (1919 – 1923), which was fought in a confusing scenario against the UK, Greece, Armenia, France, Italy and the collapsed Ottoman Empire and which established the Republic of Türkiye. Around two of the walls runs a floor-to-ceiling metal frieze of very human moments from the conflicts, and there are free-standing life-size tableaux, including cannons and the men firing them, and Nightingale is there too.
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| Florence Nightingale and wounded soldier tableau |
One moving representation is of a Turkish soldier carrying an injured British enemy from the battlefield in WW1.
In that war, the man who became the greatest Turkish hero, Mustafa Kamal, known as ‘Ataturk’, made his reputation by repulsing the allied forces at Gallipoli, out-marshalling Churchill and his commanders and, after thousands of casualties on both sides, forcing the invaders to withdraw. The remaining British and Empire forces might well have been massacred during the evacuation, but it’s believed the Turks, who had held the heights throughout eight months of fighting, simply allowed them to retreat.
That is credible, because Ataturk was an unusual and special man.
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| To slightly mis-quote Shakespeare, ‘he bestrid his world like a Colossus’ |
When independence was achieved in 1923, he founded the Republic and served as its president until his death in 1938. He was forward-thinking and probably as ‘woke’ as it was possible to be back then. He modernised the country, shifting it into the twentieth century and making it westward-looking. Türkiye became a secular state and he introduced equal rights for women. He was revered and still is today. On the anniversary of his death, the country comes to a halt for two minutes at the time he died. Traffic stops and people stand in silent tribute.
As you stare at the frieze and tableaux in the museum, it is instantly apparent you are looking at Turkish soldiers. Some wear the fez – which Ataturk sensibly decided was no way to protect your head in modern warfare, and banned – and all of them, each soldier, sports a luxuriant and mightily impressive moustache, thicker than a ‘Freddie Mercury’ in every case, better harnessed than a ‘Dave Bedford’ (for those who remember the great runner) and perhaps akin to a ‘Graeme Souness’, so they might all have played for Liverpool FC in the late 1970s.
However, in 1923 Ataturk also banned the wearing of moustaches in the armed forces. It was one very small part of his plan to leave the past behind and focus the state on being part of the new world. As a consequence, all the soldiers we saw at the barracks were immaculately clean-shaven. Traditionally, the Turks had believed that his moustache gave a soldier courage and strength; the more prolific the growth, the greater the resilience of the man wearing it. Ataturk told them that when times get tough what really matters is mental attitude and professionalism. You can’t rely on facial hair to bring you victories; especially, I suppose, when the enemy’s armed with machine guns and tanks...
We left Selimiye and Istanbul and all its glories and sailed south through the Dardanelles and away. Our daily trips from the boat continued, of course, and our brilliantly lucid but extremely antique cruisers coped incredibly well and on a daily basis with the difficulties they encountered on the sites we visited: miles of often extremely rough ground and steps and obstacles, as well as intense heat.
At times it became positively gruelling. How did they manage to cope? Well, a coach carried us to the right location, then it was all down to their mental fortitude, I guess. They certainly didn’t rely on moustaches. There wasn’t one to be seen. Michael didn’t have one. Neither did Rachel. And neither did anyone else.
That Ataturk guy knew stuff.
A moustache, neither bushy nor trim,
doesn’t add to your valour or vim:
so Ataturk said -
sharp focus instead
was essential, according to him...
Keith Brindle
www.keithbrindlewriter.com
so Ataturk said -
sharp focus instead
was essential, according to him...
Keith Brindle
www.keithbrindlewriter.com
