午夜剧场

The massive earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey this February caused immense damage to both Turkey and Syria. For those of us living in the earthquake-prone Japanese archipelago who experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake, this tragedy was not someone else's problem. As the detailed extent of the damage in each country became clear, many people were likely heartbroken.

The Middle East, of which both countries are a part, consists of three cultural spheres: Arab, Turkish, and Persian. Turkey, as its name suggests, is the center of the Turkish cultural sphere, while Syria, which includes "Arab" in its official name, belongs to the Arab cultural sphere. At first glance, the border between the two countries seems to represent the boundary between these two cultural spheres. However, this border is a relatively new one, drawn just 100 years ago after World War I under the leadership of Britain and France. For the 400 years leading up to that point, present-day Turkey and Syria both belonged to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled most of the Mediterranean world, and the differences between the two were much more ambiguous than they are today.

In particular, northwestern Syria, which suffered heavy damage in this earthquake, was strongly linked to the Turkish cultural sphere before the Great War. Turkish had been widely spoken there since the 16th century, and intermarriage with people of Turkish descent was not uncommon. Furthermore, the people of northwestern Syria had strong economic ties with Turkey. For them, Turkey was a major market as well as a source of raw materials and food. Additionally, Hatay Province in Turkey, where severe damage was reported, is home to the port city of Iskenderun (Alexandretta); this port served as the gateway connecting Aleppo, a major city in northwestern Syria, to the Mediterranean until it was ceded to Turkey in the late 1930s.

The connection with Turkey can also be seen in the history of the anti-French rebellion (1919–21) that broke out in northwestern Syria after the Great War. Ibrahim Hananu, an Ottoman official from near Aleppo who led this rebellion, did not primarily align himself with Faisal of the Hashemite family (who appears in the film "Lawrence of Arabia"), who was based in southern Syria at the time. Instead, he confronted the French forces stationed in Syria while collaborating mainly with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the father of modern Turkey, who was fighting the War of Independence in Anatolia. It was only after the French Mandate period following the suppression of the rebellion that northwestern Syria strengthened its ties with Syria and the Arab world as it is today.