The Turkish-Egyptian fez issue

As a want to finish my thesis this month, I've been writing and reading a lot this week. I had never imagined that I could use some of that reading material for my blog - most of it is too serious too handle - but I've stumbled upon some really funny stories.

It appears that Turkey and Egypt were on the brink of a serious crisis for a fez - or tarboosh as it is called in Egypt - somewhere in the thirties. The fez is a conical red hat that was worn by men in most parts of the Middle East, until the first half of the 20^th century.


The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II (reign 1876-1909) wearing a fez


Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), the Turkish leader that established the Republic of Turkey and carried out a series of reforms in his efforts to modernize his country, prohibited the fez on the ground that it was a sign of backwardness or whatever. You might not believe it, but people were actually put in jail for wearing the fez. Such was the sensitivity of the Kemalists regarding a simple headgear.

Well, the postwar (referring here to World War I) Egyptian regime had no such problems with the fez - or tarboosh I must say - and kept the hats just as they were. In fact, it was part of the Egyptian national attire and was hence also worn by Egyptian diplomats abroad. So when the Egyptian diplomatic envoy to Turkey, Abdel Malek Hamza Bey, attended a 'Day of the Republic' celebration where Mustafa Kemal himself was present too, he had no idea that he was 'offending' the Ghazi (that's Mustafa Kemal's nickname in Turkey) by wearing his beloved tarboosh!

Upon seeing the tarboosh, the Turkish officials hurried to Hamza Bey with the request to put it off, but he refused and declared that it was an essential part of his national attire. Feeling insulted himself by the officials he promptly left the place.

When the reason for Hamza Bey's unexpected departure was made public, the Turkish and Egyptian press - the Daily Herald in London too by the way - took the issue to a another level by dealing with it as a matter of national dignity. While some argued that Egypt's dignity was violated and asked for an apology, others claimed that no such thing was the case and that Turkey would not need to apologize at all. At the end, the two parties managed to come to an agreement and the incident passed without serious consequences.

Some twenty years later, in 1952, the tarboosh was abolished in Egypt by the newly established republican regime - yes, yes also in the case of Egypt it was a republican regime! At the same time, all relations with Turkey were broken off.

I love the irony of it.