By Can Öztaş
Nasreddin Hoca, the wise and witty Turkish folk hero, once arrived at a dinner in his ordinary clothes and discovered that nobody thought him worth much attention. He went home, put on his finest fur coat and returned. This time he was welcomed warmly, seated at the table and offered the best food. So Hoca began dipping the sleeve of his coat into the dishes.
“Eat, my coat, eat” (Ye kürküm ye) he told it.
Centuries later, the joke has acquired a diplomatic sequel.
Turkey’s new ambassador in Stockholm, Korhan Karakoç, presented his credentials to King Carl XVI Gustaf on Sept. 16, wearing white tie: tails, waistcoat, gloves and top hat. Photographs from the ceremony created a small storm back home. The outfit was criticized by some parts of the conservative media as alien to Turkish tradition, even as evidence of a bureaucracy estranged from national values.
There was one detail: Swedish state protocol explicitly lists diplomatic uniform, traditional national dress and precisely this form of white tie among the alternatives for the ceremony.
A few days later, Copenhagen joined the discussion. Turkey’s ambassador there, Burak Özügergin, had also presented his credentials to King Frederik X, wearing a tailcoat. Two ambassadors, two kings, two coats, and suddenly a question of ceremonial dress had acquired the weight reserved for questions of national identity.
Somewhere in the discussions over what the ambassadors were wearing, we lost sight of the ambassadors.
THE GUEST AND THE COAT
Last week, these pages asked what makes a diplomat when machines can increasingly translate, summarize, analyse and imitate much of the language of statecraft. This week, the question has acquired an unexpectedly sartorial sequel.
Appearance offers an extraordinarily convenient shortcut to judgement. A coat is visible. Judgement, discretion and trust are not, and diplomacy rests on exactly what a photograph cannot show. Much of its most important work happens away from ceremonies and cameras.
We have become remarkably confident in reading allegiance from clothing.
And perhaps remarkably willing to mistake visibility for substance.
CRAFT AND SILENCE
Diplomacy has always involved ceremony. Flags, cars, residences, receptions, handshakes, carefully arranged photographs: social media has merely given all of them a permanent audience. An ambassador can now display an impressive range of activity: visits, dinners, meetings with community organizations, encounters with workers and businesspeople, ceremonial occasions, photographs beneath the obligatory flags.
Much of this is useful diplomacy. Representation is indispensable. Visibility can matter too.
The difficulty begins when appearing becomes confused with doing. A succession of meetings, visits and photographs can create an impressive record of activity without telling us very much about what any of it achieved. A camera records presence much more easily than consequence.
The craft of diplomacy is accumulated slowly, understanding when to speak and when not to; knowing whom to call before a problem becomes public; recognizing what matters beneath what is being said; earning enough trust for somebody to tell you something they would not put in an official statement. It is rarely glamorous and much of it cannot be posted online.
Visibility is among the easiest parts of diplomacy to imitate.
The controversy over the tailcoat is more revealing than the tailcoat itself. Those who look at an ambassador’s clothes and infer his cultural loyalty are allowing appearance to replace substance. But diplomatic life can fall into the same trap when activity is measured through photographs, ceremonies and public display.
The mistake is remarkably similar. We begin judging what diplomacy looks like instead of what diplomacy does. And so, it turns out, does Ankara.
A bit more than a week on, nobody who gave these men their titles has said a word in their defense. Silence, here, is not neutrality. An ambassador following an explicitly prescribed form of host-country protocol found himself accused of betraying his country for it. Correcting that misconception would have required little more than a sentence.
Nasreddin Hoca fed his coat because everyone at the table had mistaken the garment for the guest. Centuries later, we inspect the clothes, count the photographs, admire the ceremonies and quarrel over the symbols, while the person inside becomes strangely difficult to see.
The coat, once again, is getting most of the dinner.
