Hishammuddin’s got Turkish ancestry? 3 fun facts about Malaysia-Turkey relations

With a friendship spanning back 500 years, Malaysia and Turkey (now officially known as Türkiye) are planning for even closer bilateral cooperation for the near future. Most notably, Türkiye are planning to launch their self-produced vaccine Turkovac in Malaysia.

And thanks to our long-standing relationship with the Turks, we’ve had our fair share of BFF stories from not just the past, but present day as well. To start things off, perhaps the most amazing one would be:

1) Hishammuddin Hussein’s great-grandmother was a woman from the Turkish Sultan’s court

Believe it or not, back before Malaysia was even a thing, Johor was such good friends with Türkiye (back then the Ottoman Empire), that they even supposedly shared the same flag. Just take a look:

Ok, to be completely honest, we couldn’t find any definitive sources that can say without a doubt that that’s where it was taken from, but Johor and the Ottomans were indeed very close. Beginning in 1866, Sultan Sir Abu Bakar (aka Albert Baker; nope, we didn’t make that up) made a number of diplomatic trips to the Ottoman Empire, exchanging gifts and fostering ties with Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz.

But perhaps the strongest indication of the relationship between the two sultanates was the fact that Sultan Abdulaziz offered two Circassian women of his court to Sultan Abu Bakar: Rukiye Hanim and Hatice Hanim. Hatice became Sultan Abu Bakar’s wife, while Rukiye married his brother Ungku Abdul Majid, and then Syed Abdullah Syed Mohsin al-Attas (grandfather of Malaysian philosopher Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas) after Ungku died.

Later on, she married Johor Chief Minister Jaafar Muhammad, and gave birth to Dato’ Onn Jaafar. Yes, that Onn Jaafar, Hishammuddin Hussein’s grandfather.

But beyond just marriages, the Ottoman-Johor relationship also involved exchanges of culture, knowledge, and Islamic law; it’s said that the reference books in Johorean religious schools were translations of Ottoman works. Such was Malay interest in Turkish culture and history that there’s even a Malay-produced manuscript on the Eighth Russo-Turkish War, entitled Hikayat Perang Setambul, which was written in extreme detail despite the great distance of the Malay world from Ottoman lands.

And this Malay interest in Turkish culture seems to have stayed on well into the 20th century, as can be seen from the next example…

2) In the 1920s, Malay magazines defended Türkiye’s founding father who banned headscarves

Ok, for context, it’s important to understand one thing about Türkiye: despite having a rich Islamic history spanning centuries, they are a secular republic, according to their constitution. And they have one man to thank for that: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Atatürk (literally, ‘Father of the Turks’) was the only undefeated Turkish general in WWI, who later became their first president and brought about a wave of reforms to Turkish politics and culture. Most notably, he removed the Islamic Caliphate, changed the Turkish alphabet from Arabic script to Roman script, and banned displays of religious symbols or clothing in public institutions.

“If one day, my words are against science, choose science.” – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Despite his revered status as founding father among Turks (it’s illegal to insult his name or image in Türkiye), he’s not too popular among the rest of the Islamic world (including Malaysia), for obvious reasons. Which makes it even more remarkable when you consider that some Malay magazines actually argued on Atatürk’s side during the time of the revolution.

Around 100 years before Malaysian Instagrammers started going at each others’ throats online, it turns out local magazines were doing it with the power of pen and paper. The publications Al-Ikhwan and Saudara (part of the Kaum Muda movement; basically the ‘Zoomers’ of the early 20th century) came out in support of Atatürk’s reforms, with Saudara even going so far as to claim that Atatürk was ‘God’s chosen Imam Mahdi (the Islamic Messiah)’.

This, of course, did not sit well with the so-called ‘Boomers’ of the time, Kaum Tua, represented by the publication Pengasoh, who published content criticizing Atatürk’s reforms. Things got ugly when Kelantan’s state government banned Al-Ikhwan and Saudara, which led to some name-calling and Pengasoh daring Al-Ikhwan to call the Turks ‘kafir’, which they refused to do.

Good thing publications don’t really do this any more. Imagine if we started trolling other publications too… oh wait, we’ve done that.

3) Türkiye could help bail us out of our food shortage

Fast forward to present day, and it seems that Türkiye has very much still got our back. Because of the food shortages caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, PM Ismail Sabri says that Malaysia will look to Türkiye as a wheat source:

“I have proposed that Turkey allows Malaysian companies to make reverse investments in the food sector, especially wheat and bring back the products. President Erdogan has no objection to this proposal.” – Ismail Sabr

But this trade partnership is anything but one-sided, as Türkiye ranks as the third largest importer of Malaysian palm oil after India and China. In fact, Malaysia is Türkiye’s largest trade partner in the ASEAN region; despite the 2021 pandemic, the trade volume between the two countries increased by 50 percent that year.

What’s more is that Malaysia and Türkiye recently signed 7 memorandums of agreement (MoUs) to strengthen cooperation in various fields, so hey, we could well be on our way to a renaissance of the close friendship we enjoyed during the Johor-Ottoman days.

We’ve had hiccups in the past, but the Malaysia-Türkiye partnership is here to stay

Like any relationship, Malaysia and Türkiye too have had their fair share of problems, like that one time in 2008 that Malaysia accused Türkiye of siding with the opposition for allowing Anwar Ibrahim to take shelter in the Turkish Embassy in KL because of his sodomy accusations. But in the bigger picture, that’s a really, really minor thing.

But the bottom line is that Malaysia-Türkiye relations remain strong as ever, and that doesn’t look like changing anytime soon. Perhaps Malaysian Interior Minister Hamzah Zainudin summed it up best:

“In the current situation where the world economy is changing, when superpowers are playing into their own agenda, we in Malaysia feel that we also need to work closely with not only other countries but also with Turkey, as the two brotherly countries have been working for the last 500 years.” – Hamzah Zainudin