Full of eastern promise

"Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600", is a spectacular exhibition of world art in London's Royal Academy. The Guardian calls it beautiful, curious and hedonist as well as serious. Jonathan Jones describes the Ottoman empire as one of the mightiest the world has ever known. He recounts how Elisabeth I linked Malta to Europe's survival and asks, can the Royal Academy's new exhibition do justice to the Ottoman empire?:

Five hundred years ago Turkey stood poised to crush Europe on behalf of Islam.
Even before Sultan Mehmed II took Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman rulers had established themselves as the world's leading Islamic power. They seized Egypt
and Syria, pushed into Hungary and Transylvania, and to the gates of Vienna.
Mehmed's descendant Suleyman the Magnificent drove the Christian warrior Knights of St John out of Rhodes and then, in 1565, chased these last Crusaders to
Malta. From the far side of Europe, Elizabeth I declared that in the siege of
Malta the survival of Christian Europe was at stake....

Where it all went right lay in the Turks' ability to travel and assimilate and learn without, somehow, losing track of who they were. Tough and adaptable, they were born survivors. And yet, they didn't quite get to where they were going. The Knights of Malta repelled Suleyman's besieging army in 1565. Suleyman died leading his
army in Hungary. In 1571 a combined Christian force defeated the Ottoman navy at
Lepanto.

None of this ended Ottoman power, which only disintegrated at the end of the first world war. So, what about the question this exhibition avoids by ending when it does - what went wrong? Nothing, with respect to Bernard Lewis, inherent to Ottoman culture. The same changes that doomed Istanbul eroded Venice, Florence and Rome - religion was not the problem, but trade. The Portuguese discovery of a sea route to India in the late 15th century - followed by the discovery of a western Atlantic continent - sidelined the Mediterranean. The 1,000-year journey of the Turks had them poised to become masters of a sea that was no longer the centre of the world. Highlights of Exhibition in pictures.

The Times reports on the divergent views expressed by Maltese students during a debate on Turkey's EU membership. A Canadian student was present for the debate and gives an account here.

From the Weekly Standard: Islamic Europe? When Bernard Lewis speaks.... (thanks to Mario Azzopardi)

The future of Europe