Dr. Andrew Mango, who died on 6 July 2014, at the age of 88 was an exceptional scholar, writer and journalist.\u00a0 The author of a highly acclaimed biography of Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk and many other meticulously researched, finely detailed books on the country\u2019s history and current affairs, he was perhaps the most prominent, respected \u00a0contemporary authority on Turkey.<\/p>\n
\u00dcnal \u00c7evikoz, until a few days ago the Turkish ambassador to the United Kingdom, remembers Dr. Mango\u00a0 as a man\u00a0 \u201cspeaking \u00a0with a soft, \u00a0gentle tone and using the most elegant forms and syntax of old Ottoman Turkish; at first sight he would give the appearance of a gentleman who came from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYet\u201d, Ambassador \u00c7evik\u00f6z adds: \u201cwith his insight into the Republican Turkish history with such an expertly understanding and interpretation, Andrew Mango could never be out of touch with the contemporary realities of Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevsal Baylas Hughes, an author<\/a> and a former colleague at the BBC World Service, had known Dr. Mango for 41 years and visited him regularly during his recent illness.<\/p>\n \u201cAndrew Mango`s Turkish was better than most ordinary Turks; his command of modern and Ottoman Turkish was exceptional. He spoke many languages, from Russian to Persian, from French to Greek.\u00a0 His thirst for knowledge lasted till his death. Even when he was physically incapacitated, his brain was very much alert.\u00a0 He was an avid reader and even during the last months of his life he made sure he read his daily newspapers and listened to the radio every day; \u00a0although he was not able to write on the computer anymore as he used to do.\u00a0 Whenever I visited him at his home in the last months of his life, we discussed Turkish affairs amongst other things.\u00a0 He closely followed the latest developments and enjoyed speaking in Turkish very much with his Turkish visitors\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Like Nevsal Baylas Hughes, I met Andrew Mango at the BBC World Service. In April, 1986, on my first day at work, I was introduced to Dr Mango, then the Head of the South European Services, as the new and the youngest producer of the Turkish Service.\u00a0 My most vivid memory of the occasion would have to be how courteous Dr. Mango was. Kind, soft spoken as he was, his views and writings were always sharp and concise. .<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> with Research Turkey (August 2012), Dr Mango was asked why he concentrated so much of his writing on Turkey.\u00a0 He replied:<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, I found the country interesting. I tried to understand it first, and explain it afterwards. My impression was always that the country was not sufficiently well understood, explained and described; that descriptions of Turkey tended to be clich\u00e9-ridden. I read many books on Turkey, but, in those days, racist clich\u00e9s were very common in Europe, and I saw many clich\u00e9s about Turks and Turkey, most of which were absolute rubbish\u201d.<\/p>\n Dr. Mango was best known for his book \u201cAtat\u00fcrk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey\u201d (1999). He clearly admired Atat\u00fcrk but at the end of long years of research, the book \u00a0was the most scholarly and objective, even irreverent biography of the leader to date. Yet, he was equally critical of those who dismissed \u00a0Ataturk. \u00a0Ambassador \u00a0\u00c7evik\u00f6z\u00a0 \u00a0told me that \u201cDr. Mango \u00a0would probably be remembered as the best biographer of Atat\u00fcrk, but he was more than that. He could not tolerate any disrespect to Mustafa Kemal Atat\u00fcrk and his criticism to the sceptics of Atat\u00fcrk’s legacy was scientific. My admiration to his perception of Turkey’s modernisation and democratisation process is mainly due to this exemplary approach, something most of today’s political elite in Turkey fail to grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevsal Baylas Hughes says that Dr. Mango retained his love for Turkey, the country where he was born, until the day he died but he was also clearly frustrated with the recent state of affairs. He was openly critical of some aspects of the current foreign policy of Turkey, especially in the Middle East and he was outspoken about disregard for judicial independence, violations of human rights and freedom of speech.\u00a0 In an article published in The Middle East in London <\/a>\u00a0in April 2014, he wrote about the political \u201cuses and abuses\u201d of Islam by Turkey\u2019s past and present rulers, noting that \u201csince 2002, Turkey has become more puritanical, more obviously a Muslim country\u201d.<\/p>\n In a 2010 interview with journalist and academic Faik Uyan\u0131k, then a producer of the BBC Turkish Service, Andrew Mango was expressing his dismay over the widespread belief in conspiracy theories, not only among the general public but in media and in academia. He was also \u00a0underlining the importance of solving Turkey\u2019s Kurdish problem.<\/p>\n