Given my ongoing fascination with the 500th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul, I am excited to publish a guest post today from my friend Gennady Kurin about the commemoration (and non-commemoration) of the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Chaldiran in Iran. Gennady is currently a doctoral student at Cambridge researching Ottoman-Safavid relations. This cool Chaldiran graphic, designed by Mehdi Fatehi, can be seen at full size here.
The Five hundredth anniversary of the
Battle of Çaldıran and how the Ottoman-Safavid conflict has shaped the Middle
East.
The Middle East is rapidly changing. Yet, many crises the region is
currently facing and the realities it lives with remain largely misunderstood. Here
is an attempt at shedding some light on the past and the present of Turkey,
Iran and everything in between as well as contextualizing some key factors
determining the policies of these states, and showing how the shared history is
used in constructing counterproductive political discourses.
While the world is passively watching the
developments in Iraq and Syria and the Western countries are trying to decide
what their policy towards the Islamic State should be, it is in fact Turkey and Iran that are key to finding long-term solutions to some of the problems the region is now facing. Having a history of military and religious-ideological
struggle these two countries, willingly or not, seem to be slipping into
another potentially very dangerous conflict with their support for either Sunni
or Shi’a factions. And just like the ultimate outcome of this early modern
sectarian conflict the current crisis is very unlikely to bring about anything
other than chaos and destruction. This text should serve as an introduction to a series of articles about
the conflict and how it has reshaped the region in question.
Historical background:
The scene of this struggle was the region between modern Turkey and Iran,
including the Tigris-Euphrates valley and the southern Caucasus. Historically
within the Iranian cultural and political sphere of influence, the post-Mongol
period saw this region ruled by a number of Turkoman dynasties, the most
prominent of which - and in many ways the predecessors of the Safavids - were the
Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu[1].
The Mongol conquest of the Middle East and the destruction of the
Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad triggered a mushrooming of various Islamic
mystical orders as well as number of messianic movements. We can hardly speak
of orthodoxy, either Sunni or Shi’a, as being strictly imposed or practiced in
the Turco-Iranian world prior to the conflict in question. Indeed, without any
central authority which at least nominally the Caliphate used to provide, a
state of religious flux might be the most appropriate way to characterize this
period of the region’s history.
By the end of the fifteenth century, the Ottomans had already become
what these days political analysts would call a super power. Having recovered
from a crushing defeat inflicted by Tamerlane in the Battle of Ankara (1402)
and the resultant civil war, they conquered Constantinople in 1453 and for a
moment there seemed to be no rival capable of challenging their dominance. This
challenge would eventually come from within their own domains - the Turkomans
of Eastern Asia Minor.
Before and after the battle:
Isma’il was only thirteen (1501) when he began his career of conquest,
but within a decade he had succeeded in bringing much of Iran and parts of
Eastern Anatolia under his sway. One of his first policies was to kick-start
the conversion of the country, at the time majority of the population of Iran
are believed to have practiced various forms of Sunni Islam, to Twelver Shi’ism.
To this end, he invited a group of Shi’a clerics from what is now Southern
Lebanon to the Safavid realm. So for those who ever wondered why the Islamic
Republic of Iran, in itself a product of Shah Isma’il’s conversion policy, has
such close ties with the Lebanese Hezbullah and the country’s Shi’a community,
the answer is rather straightforward; those people are the descendants of the clerics
who over the course of the sixteenth century worked hard to spread the Shi’a
form of Islam in Iran.
The Qizilbash[2], the
above-mentioned Turkomans of Anatolia and Azerbaijan, were instrumental in
Isma’il’s rise to power and his successful campaigns. With their messianic
ideology and almost fanatical allegiance to Isma’il they would form the
backbone of the Safavid state and army. But as most of the Qizilbash came from
Eastern Anatolia, a significant part of which was Ottoman territory, they posed
a real threat to the Empire’s standing. It was not long after Shah Isma’il’s
rise to power that a number of Qizilbash rebellions, only some of which were
instigated by the Safavids, took place throughout Anatolia, culminating in the
first clash between the two states on 23 August 1514.
In the years leading up to the battle, the Ottomans were not only facing
the Safavid-Qizilbash challenge in the East, but also as Sultan Beyazıt II got
older a bloody struggle for the throne began. The least likely successor of
Beyazıt, Yavuz[3]
Selim – then a prince and governor of a province on the fringe of the Empire (Trabzon)
– would emerge victorious. Thanks to his energy and ambition Selim was
successful in securing the support of the Janissaries and organizing a
victorious Eastern campaign. His march from Edirne via Constantinople to
Azerbaijan took about five months and along the way he did everything to make
sure that his army would not get attacked on two fronts. What this meant was
‘neutralizing’ or deporting thousands of his Qizilbash subjects to as far away
as Bulgaria and Greece where their descendants are still found today.
Another move as part of Selim’s
preparations for the battle was to ensure the support of the Kurds. Inhabiting
a significant part of the lands in between the two enemies, their support would
prove instrumental in not only securing victory in the battle, but also retaining
the conquered lands. A man called Idris-i Bitlisi, an Ottoman bureaucrat and a
Kurd himself, was a mastermind behind this successful policy. He conducted much
of the negotiations with the leaders of various Sunni Kurdish factions,
rallying them against the ‘heretical’ Qizilbash and Shi’a Safavids and ensuring
their gravitation into the Ottomans’ sphere of influence. In recent years there
have been attempts to rename a famous hill bearing the name of French
orientalist and traveler Pier Loti, in the Istanbul district of Eyüp, the
Idris-i Bitlisi Hill[4].
Idris’ grave is in Eyüp, but the timing suggests more calculated motivations as
well. In an attempt to solve the Kurdish question, the Justice and Development
Party has been working hard to construct a ‘neo-Ottoman’ or perhaps even
‘pan-Islamic’ discourse into which the Kurds of Turkey would fit ‘perfectly’. Indeed,
what could be more appealing to the Kurdish electorate, at the very least that
of Bitlis, than one of the major tourist spots in Istanbul bearing the name of
their hemşehri[5]?
The two armies finally met in late summer 1514 on steppe in Western
Azerbaijan. The Safavids were not only at a numerical but also at a
technological disadvantage. The Ottoman army, 100,000 soldiers strong and
supported by artillery, faced 40,000 Safavid cengâverân [6] Qizilbash cavalry. There have been many speculations as to why the
Safavids did not use artillery, ranging from claims that they considered
firearms un-Islamic or unmanly to speculations that such technology simply was
not available in Iran at the time. According to one of the most renowned
scholars of Iranian history, the firearms were not only available in the
country decades before the battle but were in fact used by Shah Isma’il’s
father Haydar in fort sieges as well as by the Aq Qoyunlu[7].
His conclusion is that the Safavids did not use firearms at Çaldıran because they chose not to[8],
whatever the real reason behind such unpragmatic decision might have been. The result of the battle was somewhat
predictable as is the fact that this historical event is remembered differently
throughout the region.
For Turkey it was a victory, signifying the annexation of the province of
Diyarbakır and, at least in the short term, keeping the Safavid threat at a
distance. Following the battle Selim proceeded to occupy the Safavids’ capital
Tabriz but decided not to spend the winter there and withdrew to Amasya instead.
No peace treaty was signed and Isma’il took the city back within weeks of
Selim’s withdrawal. Over the next two centuries, the Ottomans would have a few
more attempts at conquering the lands of Western Iran, but would never succeed
in holding onto them for any substantial period of time. The peace treaty of
Amasya (1555), ending the second war between the two countries, would seal the
Turkey-Iran border more or less in its current place. Within two years of the
victory at Çaldıran, the Ottomans defeated the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and took
over the title of the Sunni Caliph. Selim became the first Ottoman Caliph and
it was only during the radical period of reforms implemented by Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk in the 1920s that the Caliphate would eventually be abolished. It was a
move that naturally made many people uneasy, and many others call for its
restoration today. Currently there seems
to be an abundance of potential ‘Caliphs’, from Saudi Arabia to Iraq to Turkey,
with everybody promoting the ‘right’ form of Islam.
For the Safavids the defeat at
Çaldıran meant the permanent loss of the territory which for centuries had been
within the Iranian sphere of influence. It also meant that the Qizilbash of
Anatolia and Iran found themselves within two warring countries, with former
becoming a marginalized religious minority and the latter being largely
converted to Shi’ism and thus gradually losing their ties with Anatolia. Put
differently, one of the consequences of Çaldıran was the gradual
crystallization of a Shi’a Azeri identity as opposed to the Sunni Turkish one.
The continuous Ottoman invasions of the Safavid lands, and the repeated
occupations and sackings of Tabriz, would eventually push the Safavids to move
their capital out of Azerbaijan and away from Anatolia - first to Qazvin and
later to Esfahan. Thus, what began as a Turkish dynasty and a state by the
seventeenth century had come to assume a more Persian character, in many ways
in direct opposition to its adversaries. Shi’a Iran would become a buffer
between Sunni Turkey and Central Asia, contributing to the latter’s isolation
and relative decline. That in turn would pave the way for the annexation by the
Russian Empire in the nineteenth century.
For the Kurds, who are these days moving ever closer to attaining
political independence, albeit for now within a relatively small region of
Northern Iraq, Çaldıran and its aftermath also brought significant changes. In
his 2014 New Year message to the people of Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani made a
reference to the battle stating that it split Kurdistan[9]
and calling for Kurdish unity. Barzani is right in the sense that different
Kurdish factions ended up within two warring states. Yet considering the
linguistic and religious diversity of what the Kurds themselves would these
days refer to as Kurdistan, as well as the continuously shifting alliances
within the Ottoman-Kurdish-Safavid triangle, one can hardly speak of the
existence of Kurdish unity at time of Çaldıran. The existence of a number of
parallel discourses on this subject in Turkey and outside only seems to confirm
this.
Where the Bosphorus Strait becomes the Black Sea, today a bridge bearing
the name of Sultan Selim is being constructed. Despite being highly
controversial and having faced much opposition from various environmental and
political groups the construction is going ahead. It is noteworthy, yet
unsurprising, that millions of Alevis, the descendants of the Anatolian
Qizilbash, do not feel particularly excited about the name choice. It is also ironic
that a structure intended to connect two continents has already brought about
so much tension and resentment, not to mention the somewhat unambiguous message
from the less and less secular Turkey to a religious minority of many millions.
For Recep Erdoğan, recently elected president of Turkey, once upon a
time his current position must have also seemed very distant. Having a modest
background and coincidently also being from the Black Sea region of the country,
he has, just like Selim, gone a very long way to get to the top and I would even
dare to suggest that he is very aware of many similarities between himself and his
historical predecessor. They may well have called the bridge Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan Köprüsü, but perhaps the third Istanbul airport might be good enough
for now[10].
All these are by no means to suggest that Erdoğan is soon to face ‘Shah
Isma’il’ on the ‘battlefield’. For the current Iranian establishment Isma’il
hardly represents the right kind of piety, and is very unlikely to be a role
model for politicians and other public figures of the country.
Despite the loss of the battle
the Safavids managed to preserve their sovereignty, survive for more than
two
centuries and, most importantly, to make Iran the only Shi’a Muslim state in
the world. The latter almost by definition implied Iran’s playing an active role
in the Shi’a affairs abroad and a completely new historical trajectory. During
my visit to Çaldıran on the day of the annivsary
I had a chance to speak to some locals and enquire wether they knew what day it
was. The answer I got was ‘Saturday’. The day before, however, saw a big
commemoration ceremony of a martyrdom of another Shi’a holy figure with loud
sermons and religious songs heard in every corner of town. The real
lessons of Çaldıran and the subsequent wars should be the emphasis on the
destructive consequences of this conflict and the dangers of repeating the
mistakes of the distant past. Instead, the Islamic Republic of Iran
establishment appears to be keener on framing everything in Shi’a religious
terms and at least with this particular event, consciously or not, failing to
point out the meaningless nature of this sort of religious conflicts either in
the past or the present.
There is one more parallel to be drawn between AKP Turkey and the
Islamic Republic of Iran and their historical doubles. It is the role both
countries have been trying to play in Syria and lately in Iraq. With Turkey at
least indirectly backing the Sunni and Iran the Shi’a (or the Syrian Alawites,
not to be confused with the Alevis of Turkey or Iran) factions we can hardly
say that the region is entering an era of peace and prosperity. In one of his
recent public statements Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani made it very clear
Iran would intervene militarily should the Shi’a holy cities of Najaf and
Karbala be threatened by the Islamic State militants. We can only speculate as
how the more radical factions within the Sunni world would feel about Islamic
Republic’s direct intervention in the Iraq crisis[12].
One thing we can say with degree of confidence is that there will be no
shortage of comparisons between the IRI and the Safavids.
History can be a powerful tool at the disposal of modern states for good
and bad. Unfortunately, it too often seems much more convenient to make an
easy-to-relate-to comparison with some Shi’a holy figure’s martyrdom, a hemşehri or a sultan. Yet where there exists an opportunity to
learn from the mistakes of the past as well as those of the others it is very
unfortunate to see different people ‘stepping onto the same garden rake’[13]
again and again.
In addition to the references below, anyone interested in finding out more about this subject can consult either of the works below or watch a discussion of Chaldiran at Manchester University with Colin Imber and others from October 23, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
In addition to the references below, anyone interested in finding out more about this subject can consult either of the works below or watch a discussion of Chaldiran at Manchester University with Colin Imber and others from October 23, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
İranlı Tarihçilerin Kaleminden Çaldıran (1514), by Vural Genç; (2011, Bengi Yayınları, İstanbul)
Shah Isma'il va Jang-e Chaldoran, by Hashim Hejazifer with an introduction by Muhammad Isma'il Rezvani;(1995, Publication of Iran National Archives Organization, Tehran)
[1] Black and White Sheep,
these two dynasties ruled much of Eastern Asia Minor, Iraq, and Western Iran at
various times during the 14-15th centuries.
[2] Red-heads, called so for their characteristic red headgear.
[3] Yavuz in Turkish means grim, a much deserved nickname.
[4] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/20952795.asp
[5] Fellow townsman.
[6] Those who go to war, warriors, heroes.
[8] İbid.
[9] http://krp.org/english/articledisplay.aspx?id=euDLHFUUFTw=
[10] http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/ucuncu_havalimaninin_adi_recep_tayyip_erdogan_havalimani_olacak-1206623
[11] http://chaldoran.mihanblog.com/post/886
[12] http://en.trend.az/azerbaijan/politics/2305588.html
[13] A Russian proverb.
