By: Jesse Stuart, Staff Writer

Just before his death, Osman Hamdi Bey painted a portrait of an old man attempting to train tortoises and succeeded in indirectly depicting the inherent deficiencies of a dying government. Bey was the preeminent artist during the Tanzimat, a time when the Ottoman Empire was struggling to adopt the technological innovations of Europe while preserving their sense of identity and culture. In his 1906 painting, The Tortoise Trainer, Bey displays the simple scene of an elder (who bears a resemblance to the painter himself) using a flute and vegetables to train the tortoises at his feet.

The image is a satirical one; regardless of who the man and the reptiles are meant to represent, he is an antiquated figure in antiquated garb and using antiquated techniques to coach creatures for a pointless purpose (tortoises were once used as living decorations but certainly no longer by 1906), rendering this entire moment an anachronism: there is no reform or action that the Ottoman government can take to salvage itself, as the political structures by which it operates are the very nooses slowly tightening around its neck.

You can look at The Tortoise Trainer and think of the Ottoman Empire, ‘destined’ to fall and fracture after World War One, but I see the United States in every brushstroke, a comparison quite evident not just by the candidates of the 2020 election but attitude of its voters.