Note to Reader: This story centers on mother and daughter, the daughter name is Asya and the mother name is Funda. The story is told primarily after the First World War during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the Turkish Republic. Both women are beautiful in their own right, Funda with her blonde hair and hazel eyes and Asya with her black hair and blue eyes. Theirs is a time of change and this story tries to capture this change. Enjoy!!
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A running man cries through the streets of Istanbul, "The allies are here, disaster, terror and horror will stalk the land. Oh Sultan, lead us to victory! Oh Sultan, expel these foreign invaders! Oh Sultan, won't you hear our cries? Oh Sultan, these Greek soldiers are rapists, pure and faithful woman are being violated. Turkish virgins are losing their honor, because we do not fight back, oh Sultan."
Funda looks upon the crier and feels a sense of relief, for starvation and blockade have besieged the streets of Istanbul and now with the allied take-over the sense of siege is over. But Funda is also worried about what this invasion means for her country. It's been thirty years since she was a Harem girl, but even now, she can recall the splendour of palace life. More importantly, she believed in the Ottoman Empire and its system of government, which had not only allowed her to raise a family, but also protected her family from the 19th century massacres of Muslims in Europe. Funda's grandfather was born in Salonika-Greece, 1-year before the Greek anti-Ottoman Nationalist revolutionary war (1821-1830) broke out.
Although Muslim, her grandfather was ethnically and culturally Greek and spoke Greek as his first language. At age 8 his family moved to Athens and then two-years later, Greece had become independent of Ottoman rule and the massacres of expulsions of Muslims increased. Aged-10 he was forced to flee Athens for Istanbul with his uncle as his parents had been murdered by Greek revolutionaries. The horrors of the war have been passed down the generations to Funda and from Funda to her daughter Asya. Funda's husband, Mehmet, a tall strong man, who was an ethnic Laz and had roots in Georgia and whose family fled Russian expansionism, fell in service to the Ottoman Empire in Baghdad fighting the British in 1917.
On top of this, the victorious allies are now carving up the Ottoman Empire for themselves. New States are being created, it's not clear whether there will be a Turkish State, but British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George has talked about re-creating the Greek Empire and encouraged the Greeks to take Istanbul and set-up Constantinople again. Rumours of large territories in Anatolia being awarded to an Armenian State, stories of European soldiers pulling the veil of women in the streets, and of rapes. Over 3 million Turks were killed during the Great War (First World War), but despite this, they are being humiliated long after defeat. Passed down trauma, traumatic experiences and sense of fear of what might happen are shaping Funda's thinking.
Asya is sitting in a hotel bar where some Greek military officers have gathered, her Euro-Turkish looks and European dress style make her a figure of intrigue to the drinking officers. Unbeknown to the officers, is that she is deliberately trying to attract their attention, albeit in a subtle and lady like way. Asya is unlike her mother, she does not believe in the old ideas of the Ottomans, since she was a teenager, she has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Young Turks Movement. She wanted nationalistic reforms of the Ottoman Empire, constitutional monarchy and representative democracy. She has always believed that the Ottomans should stop reacting to other peoples' nationalism and assert muscular Turkishness.
Sick of passed down trauma and defeatism of the late Ottoman age, she is eager to assert post-Ottoman Turkey. If the Ottomans are unable to create a strong nation, than the Ottomans have to go and a modern nationalist Turkish State should replace it. Although, Asya knows of her family origins, she has rejected it and instead adheres to the new nationalist thesis of the Turks being one people, who originate from nomadic hordes of Central Asia. These hordes are strong and tough and not a defeated people, they will guide the new Turkey. Her belief in this is so strong; she has joined an underground movement called the Grey Wolves, who seek to resist allied-occupation. She is their agent and her mission includes having affairs with European officers and getting information out of them.
Delicately holding her glass and sipping her beer, while sitting at the bar with the Greek officers sitting in both behind her. Checking out her backside and her occasional glances at them, when she turns her head side-ways. Finally, one officer cannot take it anymore and get's up and approaches the young lady. He smiles at her and she glance into her eyes and pretends to be uninterested and looks away from him again.
"Hello, how are you?" He asks.
She glances over at him again in an uninterested way and responds in a uninterested tone, "I'm fine." She doesn't even have the courtesy to ask how he is back.
"My name is Captain Andreadis, what's your name, if I may ask?"