Spying on the Grand Vizier

Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki (a.k.a. Georg Franz Kolschitzky) – a Polish nobleman, born in the town of Sambor in today’s Ukraine – led a rather eventful life as a soldier and spy. In an article, Jerzy S. Kulczycki, a Polish historian and also a relative of Jerzy Franciszek, writes:

He graduated from the Sambor parish school but doesn’t figure among those inheriting family estates, as he became a military man. It’s quite possible that he served under Jan Sobieski, the prospective king […]. He participated in Polish military interventions in Bukovina and Moldavia […]. At the time J. F. Kulczycki was already learning how to speak Vlach (Romanian), Turkish and also Hungarian.

Little is known for certain about the early stages of his life. Some claim that he was taken captive as a Polish soldier by Ottoman troops and was a prisoner of war for two years – which would explain how he came to know Turkish so well. Others object, arguing that Kulczycki was, in fact, a Serb, only posing as a Pole. This seems a rather far-fetched notion, given that Kulczycki’s Polish lineage has been personally traced back by his own historian relative.

There is no question, however, that in 1660, Kulczycki found himself in Vienna, where he arrived via Serbia. His command of Turkish and Hungarian secured him a job with the Oriental Company, an Austrian trade organisation doing business with the East, for which he worked as a translator in Belgrade. Three years later, he was already acting as an Austrian diplomatic courier and translator in Istanbul, where he also appeared in the same capacity in 1679. In the Ottoman Empire, Kulczycki was asked to spy on the Turkish military – he is even said to have had an audience with the Grand Vizier.

In 1680, Kulczycki returned to Vienna, where he presented the state authorities with a written report in which he informed them that Turkey was preparing for a war against Austria. Despite attempts being made by the Austrians to maintain peace, war broke out.

An endless sea of Turkish tents

On 13th August 1683, during the fifth week of the siege of Vienna by the great Turkish army, Kulczycki, along with his servant Jan Michałowicz, sneaked out of the city at night. They weren’t fleeing – on the contrary, Kulczycki was carrying out a secret mission for the commander of the city’s defence, Count Stahremberg, who wanted him to send out a plea for help. Dressed up as Turkish soldiers and using Kulczycki’s expert knowledge of the Turkish language and culture, the two managed to pass through the invaders’ camp unnoticed.

Here’s how the noted German writer Eberhard Happel described the passage in his 1688 book Thesaurus Exoticorum (Encyclopedia of Exotics):

When it began to dusk a little, an endless sea of Turkish tents unfolded before his eyes. The sight made him wonder which route to choose to pass through the camp. Nevertheless, he kept moving on together with his companion […] and to divert any suspicion from the minds of the Turks that were riding past them, every now and then he sang merry songs in their language.

The Poles eventually reached the chief commander of the Austrian forces, Duke of Lorraine Charles V, whom they presented with letters from Viennese officials and informed about the city’s desperate situation: the lack of ammunition and diseases spreading among the townsfolk. They also shared the intelligence about the Ottoman camp they had acquired during their journey. The two Polish messengers then returned to the besieged city, using the same ploy as before, to bring back word from the duke that rescue was on the way.

The good news boosted the morale of the fighters just enough for them to hold out until the famous Battle of Vienna on 12th September 1683, when a coalition of international forces led by Polish king Jan III Sobieski won a stunning victory against the Turks, saving the city. Kulczycki’s intel about the Turks’ positions most probably played an important part in that triumph.

Rewarded with food for camels

The Austrians rewarded Kulczycki for his courage. He received a house in Leopoldstadt and a nice sum of money. But what he wanted most, was something else entirely – after some effort on his part, he was allowed to run a coffee house. At the time, Kulczycki’s idea to open a café must’ve seemed rather odd as there were only a handful of such establishments scattered around of Europe – coffee wasn’t the popular drink it is today.

It was often even disliked for its popularity among ‘the infidels’, as shown by the following words written around 1670 by the Polish poet Jan Andrzej Morsztyn:

In Malta, I remember, we tried coffee
A drink […] for Turks, but so very nasty
A beverage like vile poison and toxins
That doesn’t let saliva pass through one’s teeth
A Christian mouth let it never sully

Since Kulczycki had been to Istanbul before the war, he must’ve discovered the local coffee culture, which was much older and far more developed than that of other European countries. The Pole had seen the potential of the steaming black beverage. There was also another key factor at play: he was in the possession of a huge amount of fresh coffee beans. The winners of the battle had seized, along with other loot from the enemy camp, numerous sacks of coffee beans the Turks had brought with them to keep themselves alert during battle. But the victors failed to recognise the beans for what they were, presuming they might be some kind of food for camels. Kulczycki, who was well aware of their worth, managed to take plenty of them for himself.

Apparently, after the victory, King Jan III Sobieski summoned him to reward him for his efforts, allowing him to take anything he pleased from the loot they had recovered. Much to the astonishment of those present, Kulczycki chose what appeared to be the near-worthless camel feed.

Opening the Blue Bottle

Equipped with the beans and the knowledge of what to do with them, Kulczycki opened the first café in Vienna. Or did he? In some sources, you’ll find that the first Viennese café was actually opened by an Armenian by the name Johannes Diodato, two years after the battle. This version of events was suggested by the Austrian historian Karl Teply at the turn of the 1980s.

Then again, the Austrian Piarist priest Gottfried Uhlich, in his 1783 book Geschichte der Zweyten Türkischen Belagerung Wiens (The History of The Second Turkish Siege of Vienna), claims that it was indeed the Pole who was first. Although this account was accused of being false by Karl Teply in 1980, it was later backed up by the findings of Jerzy S. Kulczycki, who used his family archive to research the topic and published a detailed article on it in 2007, entitled Prawdziwa Legenda Wiedeńskiej Wiktorii (The True Legend of the Viennese Victory).

What we can say for sure is that Kulczycki opened one of the very first cafés in Vienna. The fact that he opened a popular coffee house in the city is beyond any doubt. For a long time one of the houses on Singerstrasse Street was even embellished with a plaque saying ‘Here in 1683, Kulczycki opened the first coffee house in Vienna’.

His new coffee business changed addresses and it was only after some time had passed that it re-opened at 624 Schlossergasse Street under the famous name The Blue Bottle. The name was a tip of the hat to his second wife, Leopoldina Meyer. Supposedly before the two were married, she had nursed Kulczycki back to health after he had been wounded defending the city, using a medication stored in a blue bottle.

The place quickly became popular and was frequented by Viennese aristocrats such as Count Stahremberg himself. To amuse his guests, Kulczycki would greet them wearing a Turkish outfit. And to make the taste of the coffee to their liking, he would add milk and sugar – the unaltered flavour was a bit too tart for the Austrian palate. Kulczycki is considered to be the first to mix the black and white beverages and is apparently the one who invented the classic Viennese drink Wiener Melange, a coffee drink similar to the cappuccino. Some even claim that he convinced a local pastry chef to make The Blue Bottle guests special crescent-shaped rolls commemorating the victory over the Ottomans – which later evolved into the French croissant!

Despite the controversies regarding whose café was actually the first one to be established in Vienna, even the official website of the City of Vienna acknowledges Kulczycki’s contribution to the development of the city’s rich coffeehouse culture:

The history of Viennese coffee house culture is closely linked to the end of the Siege of Vienna in 1683. Legend has it that the Viennese citizen Georg Franz Kolschitzky (1640 – 1694) was the first to obtain a licence to serve coffee in the city following his heroic actions during the Siege of Vienna. The coffee beans left behind by the Turks were the basis of his success. A street in Vienna’s 4th district was named after him and a statue was put up at the corner of Favoritenstraße and Kolschitzkygasse.

Patron saint

Thanks to his wartime deeds, Kulczycki became quite famous. Understandably, this drew attention to his café, but Kulczycki was more than just a celebrity owner. He wanted his establishment to be a meeting place, rather than merely a place of consumption – a place with a pleasant atmosphere, where one could come to relax and talk, exchange thoughts and ideas.

This approach of his was why he is still considered a ‘patron saint’ of Viennese café culture. The Viennese Coffee-Makers Guild even used to have a painting showing Kulczycki receiving the privilege of running a coffee house from Emperor Leopold I as its emblem. In the Old Polish Encyclopaedia written in the years 1900-03, the renowned Polish ethnographer Zygmunt Gloger wrote about yet another form of commemorating Kulczycki’s legacy in Vienna:

Up to this day in all the coffee houses in Vienna, every October, a portrait of Kulczycki wearing a Turkish outfit is put on display, to remember him.

Over the years the format of the Viennese coffee house evolved and eventually, it became an establishment, where not only the black beverage but also warm meals were served and the patrons were provided with newspapers. Also, it became a place of intellectual and cultural discussion, where the likes of the artist Gustav Klimt or father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud would bump into each other and have a chat or listen to a concert given by a renowned classical musician. The Viennese-style café eventually became popular in the vast territories of the Austrian Empire and became a benchmark for the continental coffee house.

Today the Viennese coffee house culture figures on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage and it’s hard to find a ranking of the world’s top coffee cities which wouldn’t include the Austrian capital. And Kulczycki is an important part of this heritage. In September 2017, The Guardian published an article about an American coffee chain named after the Pole’s café in which Kulczycki is described as a ‘Viennese folk hero’. If Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki were still around, maybe he’d comment on it with a merry Turkish song…

Source: Culture

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Victory party’s leader says he and Kılıçdaroğlu have signed agreement to deport refugees and not reinstate Kurdish mayors

The leader of Turkey’s ultranationalist Victory party has endorsed the opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, breaking ranks with the party’s former presidential hopeful Sinan Oğan, who endorsed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Victory party leader, Ümit Özdağ, declared at a joint press conference with Kılıçdaroğlu that the two had signed a memorandum of understanding, including guarantees to deport all refugees in Turkey within a year of coming to power.

They also agreed not to reinstate democratically elected Kurdish mayors in Turkey’s south-east previously replaced with appointees as part of a state crackdown on the leftwing and mostly Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP) – a swipe at the Kurdish support that buoyed Kılıçdaroğlu in the first round.

“We reached a consensus with him. As the Victory party, we decided to support Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round,” he said. The HDP, whose jailed leader Selahattin Demirtaş previously endorsed Kılıçdaroğlu, said it would meet to decide how to respond.

The split endorsement comes days before Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu face a runoff round in the presidential elections on 28 May. In the first round Erdoğan attained just over 49.5% of the vote, ahead of Kılıçdaroğlu’s 44.5%.

Oğan, who ran on a far-right explicitly anti-refugee platform, won just over 5% of the vote in the first round, and declared his support for Erdoğan earlier this week.

“We believe that our decision will be the right decision for our country and nation,” he said. “I declare that we will support Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the candidate of the People’s Alliance, in the second round of the elections.”

The Victory party had backed Oğan but said at the time that Oğan’s statement did not represent the views of the party.

Kılıçdaroğlu has already doubled down on his own anti-refugee rhetoric after the first round of voting, where both he and Erdoğan attempted to attract Victory party supporters to their side for the runoff.

Days after his setback in the first round of voting, Kılıçdaroğlu pivoted away from his previous messages of inclusion and democracy and instead focused solely on his anti-refugee promises, reiterating a pledge to send refugees back to their countries of origin.

Throughout his campaign, including at his largest rally in Istanbul, Kılıçdaroğlu declared he would expel all refugees in Turkey “within two years” of coming to power. When the Guardian asked how he intended to square this promise with a desire to join the European Union, he replied: “We do not think of this as racism. When we come to power, we will sit and talk with the legitimate administration in Syria and find a solution to this problem.”

Following the signing of their agreement, Özdağ said Kılıçdaroğlu’s messages about sending refugees home had resonated with him. Both leaders cited vastly inflated figures for the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers currently in Turkey, estimated to be around 4 million, including at least 3.6 million Syrians under a temporary protection order imposed by Erdoğan.

Just 2.2% of Turkish voters say refugees are the country’s biggest problem when polled, compared with more than 56% concerned about a profound economic crisis that saw the lira lose half its value in one year alone.

Source: The Guardian

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Preliminary results in Turkey’s presidential runoff vote on Sunday showed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of his rival as the leader fights to stretch his rule into a third decade.

With 71.45% of the ballots counted, Erdogan received 54.37% of the votes, according to unofficial preliminary results published by state-run Anadolu agency, while opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 45.63%.

Voter turnout is 85.07%, according to Anadolu.

Earlier on Sunday, Erdogan asked his supporters “to stay at the ballot boxes until results are finalized.”

“Now is the time to protect the will of the people which we hold in the highest esteem,” Erdogan wrote on his Twitter account.

Every Turkish citizen has a right to watch the vote count at their ballot boxes, and doing so has become something of a tradition in Turkey.

Spokesman for Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Faik Oztrak, seemingly warned Erdogan against carrying out any speeches to supporters until the official election results have been announced.

“No one should muddy the waters with balcony speeches,” Oztrak said on Sunday, referring to Erdogan’s traditional election-night style speech. “We’re sending a clear warning: No one should try to make this into a ‘fait accompli’ until the results are final.”

“I say this with emphasis: we’ll protect the will of the nation until the end and we will win,” he said.

Erdogan is going head-to-head against Kilicdaroglu, a 74-year-old bureaucrat and leader of the left-leaning CHP.

In the first round of voting on May 14, Erdogan secured a nearly five-point lead over Kilicdaroglu but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to win. 

The president’s parliamentary bloc won a majority of seats in the parliamentary race on the same day. 

Erdogan cast his vote at a voting center in Istanbul on Sunday. “This is a first in Turkish democratic history,” he said.

“Turkey, with nearly 90% participation in the last round, showed its democratic struggle beautifully and I believe it will do the same again today,” he added.

Kilicdaroglu cast his vote in Ankara, telling reporters: “In order to get rid of the oppression and to get rid of this authoritarian leadership, to bring real democracy and freedom, I call on all citizens to go vote and to stand by the ballot boxes after.

“Because [the] election was held under hardships, all sorts of black propaganda and slander was used but I trust in the common sense of the people.”

Electoral authorities said voting was passing “without any issues” and that results should come sooner than in the first round.

Last week, third-place candidate Sinan Ogan, who won 5% of the first-round vote, publicly endorsed Erdogan, further boosting the strongman leader’s chances of winning Sunday’s second and final presidential round. 

Many polls had incorrectly predicted that Kilicdaroglu would lead in the May 14 vote, which saw a high turnout of nearly 90% across the country. 

Six opposition groups had formed an unprecedented unified bloc behind Kilicdaroglu to try to wrest power from Erdogan.

The opposition has described the election as a last stand for Turkish democracy, accusing Erdogan of hollowing out the country’s democratic institutions during his 20-year rule, eroding the power of the judiciary and repressing dissent.

Erdogan also faces headwinds from a floundering economy and a shambolic initial response to a catastrophic earthquake on February 6 which claimed more than 50,000 lives in Turkey and neighboring Syria.

The government acknowledged its “mistakes” in its rescue operation and apologized to the public. 

Erdogan’s critics also spotlighted loose construction standards presided over by the ruling AK party, which turbocharged a construction boom since the early 2000s, and exacerbated the death toll. They also argued that the earthquake response underscored Erdogan’s alleged hollowing out of government entities in his bid to consolidate power. 

The country’s financial crisis — which saw the currency plummet and prices soar — is also partially blamed on Erdogan’s policies. The president suppressed interest rates leaving inflation unfettered, critics argued.  

But electoral results on May 14 showed continued support for the president in his conservative strongholds, including in the devastated earthquake zone.

In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson last week, Erdogan vowed to double down on his unorthodox economic policies, arguing that interest rates and inflation were “positively correlated.”

He also hailed his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin as “special” and said he would continue to block Sweden’s access to NATO, despite Western criticism that he was obstructing a unified front against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Erdogan, who controls the second-largest army in NATO, accused Sweden of harboring Kurdish terror groups and has preconditioned Stockholm’s accession on the extradition of wanted individuals. Sweden has refused Turkey’s repeated requests to extradite individuals Ankara describes as terrorists, arguing that the issue can only be decided by Swedish courts.

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Turkish strongman has emerged as a key powerbroker, adopting a crucial balancing act between the two sides, widely known as “pro-Ukrainian neutrality.”

He helped broker a key agreement known as the Black Sea Grain Corridor Initiative that unlocked millions of tons of wheat caught up in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, averting a global hunger crisis. The agreement was extended for another two months last Wednesday, one day before it was set to expire.

Source: CNN

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During his trip to Turkey, Mr. Karzai has also met with a number of Afghan politicians in Turkey including Mohammad Mohaqeq and Abdul Karim Khalili.

Turkey maintained its embassy in Afghanistan after Western countries withdrew following the Taliban takeover, and has urged those countries to step up engagement Turkey maintained its embassy in Afghanistan after Western countries withdrew following the Taliban takeover, and has urged those countries to step up engagement.

The country said to fully work with the Taliban only if they form a more inclusive administration.

Ankara also called on the Taliban-led interim government in Afghanistan to allow girls of all ages to attend school after the decision to suspend education for female students after the sixth grade – Aghanstan times

Source : The Pakistan Observer

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Turkey has decided to change its name this year in order to stop people from associating it with the bird that’s popular during the festive season as well as the negative connotations linked to the word.

In June this year, the United Nations accepted a formal request by the country’s government to rebrand as “Türkiye,” pronounced “toor-kee-yeh.”

Türkiye was first used after the country’s declaration of independence in 1923, so this is the way Turks already spell and pronounce the name of their country but the anglicised version “Turkey” is also used too.

“Together with our Directorate of Communications, we have been successful in preparing a good ground for this,” Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wrote in the letter request.

The push for the name change began last December where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested people in every language to refer to the country as “Türkiye.”

“We have made it possible for the UN and other international organisations, countries to see this change to using Türkiye,” Erdogan said at the time.

“Türkiye is the best representation and expression of the Turkish people’s culture, civilisation, and values.”

Türkiye’s English-language state broadcaster TRT World has made the change, and say Turks prefer “Türkiye” in “keeping with the country’s aims of determining how others should identify it.”

(Though there are some occasional slip-ups from journalists who say Turkey while adjusting to the change).

The broadcaster explained in an article the decision to use Türkiye, as “Turkey” conjures up “a muddled set of images, articles, and dictionary definitions that conflate the country with Meleagris – otherwise known as the turkey, a large bird native to North America – which is famous for being served on Christmas menus or Thanksgiving dinners.”

It also noted another unfortunate meaning for the word “turkey.”

“Flip through the Cambridge Dictionary and ‘turkey’ is defined as ‘something that fails badly’ or ‘a stupid or silly person,’ the article read.

Exported products will also be branded with “Made in Türkiye,” while there’s a tourism campaign surrounding the country’s new pronunciation where an advert has tourists from across the globe say “Hello Türkiye.”

Source : indy100 News

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The Turkish Cypriot president on Friday slammed statements by US Sen. Bob Menendez that said the Turkish side has been occupying the Island of Cyprus, reports Anadolu Agency.

The admission of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) as an observer member of the Organisation of Turkic States (TDT) and the visit of Gambian Vice President Badara Joof drew great attention across the world, the presidency stressed in a statement.

That is why the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo made various attempts to block the TRNC’s progress toward recognition. The EU, the US and some other forces also took action, it said.

Turkish Cypriot President Ersin Tatar underscored that the chairperson of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under the guidance of the Greek-Greek Cypriot lobby, made a claim of “Turkish occupation in Cyprus” with a pro-Greek attitude.

“First of all, the chairperson of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the whole world should know very well that the occupier who exists in Cyprus is the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo who turned the Republic of Cyprus, in which the Turkish Cypriot people are equal founding partners, into a Greek state by force of arms, and this occupation still continues,” Tatar said.

He noted that supporters of the duo, who could not digest the steps to recognise the TRNC, continued their attacks, expressing satisfaction that Menendez lifted the arms embargo imposed by the US on the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus and expressed that his support for armament could not be accepted.

Menendez touched on the Cyprus issue during an online event organized for the 39th anniversary of the unilateral declaration of the independence of the Turkish Cypriots, organized by the Coordinating Committee of the Cyprus Struggle (PSEKA).

Source : MiddleEastMonitor

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