Ottoman Odyssey

Starred review from March 1, 2019
A journalist born to a Turkish mother and British father engagingly weaves together personal odyssey with Ottoman and contemporary history.In her second book, Scott (Turkish Awakening: Behind the Scenes of Modern Turkey, 2015), who has reported from Turkey for a variety of publications, including the Financial Times, delivers an ambitious travel memoir/history, tracing the footsteps of "descendants of ancient minorities that were allowed to flourish in the empire, and [were] then intimidated, ignored or expelled from modern Turkey." The author grounds her thoroughly researched narrative in history and past travel accounts, and she injects it with earnest, wry observations and personal interviews with the many interesting people she met along the way. Besides Turkey, the dizzying tour covers Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, the Balkans, and the Levant. Threaded throughout the tale are intriguing historical details; at the same time, Scott shows the significance of the past to the present, especially how historical sites from the Ottoman past are often appropriated to support modern tribalism. As the author writes, Mehmed Pasa Sokolovi? Bridge over the Drina River, built in 1577, has become "a perverse symbol of retribution of Christians against Muslims supposedly righting the wrongs perpetuated against their Ottoman subject forefathers hundreds of years ago." Scott also pinpoints little-known historical injustices--e.g., in 1989, Bulgarian-born Turks were deported from Bulgaria but could not integrate because they spoke Ottoman, rather than modern, Turkish. As the author ably demonstrates, shared language is an important legacy of the lost empire. As George Hintlian, an Armenian scholar from Jerusalem, says, "if you speak the language, you can't hate the people." The author also includes a timeline divided by country.In her quest to understand her complicated, tense childhood, Scott treats us to a lively grand tour of the lost Ottoman Empire and shows how contemporary leaders exploit simplified versions of history to support nationalist agendas.

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March 25, 2019
In this insightful and easily approachable combination of travelogue and history, journalist Scott (Turkish Awakening) surveys the mosaic of competing ethnic and religious allegiances that characterizes the former Ottoman Empire, from the Balkan states to the Middle East and the Caucasus, and the fate of the diverse former empire’s minority groups in the present-day climate of nationalism. Scott writes that she had planned for her second book to focus on the minority religions of Turkey, but her intentions changed after she was expelled from the country by the Erdogan regime in 2016. This forced her to range farther afield in her research, seeking out the Turkish diaspora and the remnants of empire, “descendants of ancient minorities that were allowed to flourish in the empire, and then intimidated, ignored or expelled from modern Turkey” including “auto mechanics in rural Kosovo... the children of Armenian genocide survivors in Jerusalem... Lebanese warlords, and professors in... Sarajevo.” With a skill for drawing out telling anecdotes from her subjects, a lyrical sense of humor, and an evident compassion for those whose lives have been constrained by forces larger than themselves, she probes the scars left by history even 100 years after the end of empire. This is essential reading for those interested in how historical mythologies warp and contort individual lives.