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Considering that Laurence reviewed this book two years ago last month, I don’t feel too bad about writing another review. Quite a bit has happened since then. Many of the factors mentioned in this book as being current events in 2005 still hold true today. The United States is still in Iraq, an independent Kurdistan is still in limbo, the EU and Turkey remain in relatively the same position, though who knows where this newest round of French riots will send Europe’s relationship with Muslim immigrants and their children, disappointed by the equal treatment they are promised but kept from by the inherent racism of a once homogeneously white country? Granted, a Turkish-led riot in Berlin could well be even worse than the Detroit race riots of 1943 and 1967. I have a German friend, a native of Berlin currently living in the United States, that has stated how much she prefers the Turks of Turkey to the immigrants living in her own neighborhood. We talked on the subject at length, and it put me in mind of the complaints against ethnic Uzbeks living and working in Kazakhstan. Those who know Uzbeks in their homes readily agree that Uzbeks living and working abroad tend to act by a different set of rules. Another friend joined in this conversation, saying that it wasn’t only Turks, but that strongly family-oriented societies tend to use a large amount of shame and fear of the elders to control their younger family members, and that when those pressures are removed, the youth act callously and irresponsibly. His examples were the immigrant Italians from Sicily, who, like Uzbeks and Turks, would give you the shirt off their back if you happened upon the house of their parents, but might not stop to save your life if they witnessed your car accident. That’s a drastic illustration, but I can recall several horrible car accidents where the driver of the car I was in could not be persuaded to stop and help. Still, I don’t want to take specific life examples out of context - it’s a slippery slope to racist stereotypes. Mr. Pope’s intentions seem pure enough, and he really only wants to educate those interested as the realities of a “Turkish World” and how those people act, think, live, worship, and do business.

As for my own experiences with Uzbeks, Tatars, Turks, and the lot, it would be a momentous task to boil down my opinions into a novel, and I have a deep respect for Hugh Pope’s ability to describe opinions garnered over decades of living and traveling among the Turkic people. As for Turkic violence, discrimination, acts of genocide, and uncaring treatment of strangers, this is a darker side of the Turks than Mr. Pope concentrated on, though he’s no apologist. The Armenian Genocide is mentioned, and the atrocities of the Ottoman, Timurid, and other Turkic empires are stated without trying to offer extenuating circumstances.

Suffice it to say that over this past week I’ve been reading Hugh Pope’s Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World. Published, as I mentioned, in 2005, it is one of his newer works concerning the Turkic world, and definitely his most widespread attempt at approaching the entirety of the Turkic people. Mr. Pope, a Reuter’s writer who contributes to the Wall Street Journal, has lived in Turkey for many years. He speaks Turkish fluently, and can also speak Arabic and Persian. He has fans in many circles, from NPR listeners to Economist readers to Robert Kaplan and company, which in turn gives him even more attention. He has all the appeal of the clever British student making good on his dreams of becoming international, worldly, and respected. There are a few times when I didn’t follow his logic, as Mr. Pope seems a bit too apologetic on the behalf of President Karimov of Uzbekistan. In his defense, he makes no allusion to the Andijan massacre, so i assume that happened after his deadline.

On the whole I enjoyed the book. His writing is as entertaining as it is intelligent, and not condescending to the anyone he portrays. I sensed a very real love of Turkey, without a sense of him forgiving all the sins of their fathers. It’s simply the realistic response that would come from living among a people I objected to certain adjectives, as I have a knee-jerk reaction to the use of the word ‘wily’ being used to describe anyone, no matter how ‘wily’ they may be. I guess it stems from reading old British imperialist texts, and less old American imperial texts. They seem to assume the white people are clever and intelligent, and ‘Orientals’ are dastardly, wily, and fully of tricks. That being said, I’m willing to chalk that up to nuance and connotative differences between American and British academic writing styles. I don’t actually think that Hugh Pope is racist in the slightest degree, and I mention this largely to make the point that many of the books written on the Turks and Turkic Republics of the former Soviet Union have been British, and their vocabulary is quite different from what I am used to. Descriptive words like “keen”, ”clever”, ”cheery”, and “wily,” are just not in my everyday lexicon, nor do I particularly understand the exact meaning of “smart” as it applies to appearance. For me it’s still rather like reading C.S. Lewis or Roald Dahl as a kid. It’s the wonder of our dual-English age, when someone can ask for a ‘torch’ and be expecting a flashlight and be handed a stick of wood dipped in burning pitch.

As for writing about the Turkic World… Just as it would be impressive to see someone try and nail down the ideas, policies, histories, and beliefs of the Germanic peoples, it’s staggering to see such a feat even attempted, let alone carried off. And, to my mind, that’s just what happens – Hugh Pope really has done an excellent job with this book. In about 400 pages the reader is whipped around from Asia to Europe and back again, with brief stops in the Americas to cover both the new Turkic minority in the New York/New Jersey area, as well as the tenuous and controversial connection between certain Native Americans and the Turks. Hugh Pope does a brilliant job, however, of not coming off as some quack impersonating an anthropologist. He merely states that the Turks are “notoriously hard to classify.” Turks, Azeris, and Turkmen are certainly related. Uzbeks, Tatars, Kirghiz, Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Karakalpaks, too. Mongolians, Tuvans, Manchurians – the reach becomes longer, the ties tenuous, but still there is a common ancestry. Stretching that across the Bering Strait, while a bit of a stretch, is at least within my own realm of imagination. I also liked seeing the pan-Turkic take on History, arguing that the Turkic nomads and conquerors stretch from the storming of Constantinople to the Genghis Khan’s and Tamerlane’s sackings, back to the Seljuks and Huns. The Scythians didn’t make the cut, though, as Mr. Pope must agree with the anthropological assumption that they were proto-Indo-European nomads, and thus relatives of the Tajiks, Persians, Kushans, etc. In my own opinion, seeing as how many conflicting theories there are about the origins of each of these groups of people, it’s less important which theory Mr. Pope picks than how consistent he is with his reasoning. And that is where I think he really shines. It might be difficult to find a common thread throughout the Turkish world, from the Turks in Germany to the shamans living on the shores of Lake Baikal, but I think that Sons of the Conquerors makes a bold and enjoyable attempt at capturing some of the mythos and most of the science and history. And I love the “Turkic Family Tree” in the Appendix! I wish that the various Peace Corps programs in the Turkic Republics had one so they could help the new Volunteers keep track of the various Turkic tribes.
I had some favorite moments in this book. His interview with Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbaev was just great, and I wasn’t shocked at all when Nazarbaev identified himself first and foremost as a “Turk.” The idea that the Turks of Turkey are the half-blooded sons of the original Turkic conquerors may or may not be true, but it’s a real stretch of the imagination to think that the Kazakhs have had any more luck preserving some kind of pure warrior’s bloodline. Ethnicities don’t die off - they merge and marry off. The Turkic Determinist’s version of anthropology is as sketchy and self-serving as Stalinist accounting and statistic managing.

The entirety of the epilogue was just brilliant - as daunting a proposition as wrapping up this kind of work must have been, Mr. Pope met the task head-on with clear and concise conclusions, without being too sentimental. Also, every example given from his personal life and experience was constructed very professionally, never taken out of context or expected to stand for broad generalizations. There’s a very real trend in travel writing for the worst-day-ever in some tourist’s life to be used to build a very nasty view of some ethnicity or country. While some Uzbeks may delight in ripping you off, others are as honest as they come. It’s akin to judging all Americans by the hawkers of fake watches in New York City, and Mr. Pope did admirably at avoiding falling into that particular trap.

I also enjoyed using the Uygurs to bookmark the work. They are almost the furthest east of the Turks, and probably the most oppressed of their brothers, with the least amount of hope for the immediate future. They are beginning to turn to Islamic fundamentalism as a political reaction, much more than a religious reaction. I imagine we can expect to see the Uzbeks continue in the same vein with Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has come a long way in the last fifty years since its founding. While these Islamist people will seek to be peaceful in the beginning, the brutality of their respective governments’ responses will, I’m afraid, certainly drive them to violence. Mr. Pope even mentions those Uygurs picked up while the US DoD was filling the halls of Guantanomo with Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. I strongly recommend listening to this interview with Adel, an Uygur held in Guantanomo, given on the NPR radio show This American Life.

I really had a great time reading this book, and I’m hoping that next week’s The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macntyre will be as intriguing as its subtitle leads me to hope. I welcome all comments, questions, and cuss words! Let me know what you thought of Hugh Pope’s work, and if there are other works which might relate to our Central Asian emphasis here at Registan.net.

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