There is an old Turkish saying, “Tell me who your friend is, and
I’ll tell you who you are.” Turks today must be very confused about
their identity. On the one hand they are ardent allies of Europe,
Israel, and America. On the other, they remain firmly ensconced
inside the mind-walls of the Islamic world.
Modern Turkey is a land of numerous nations and countless
cultures where traditional Muslims occupy the countryside and
pro-Europe urbanites inhabit the cities. Not to mention the Kurds,
Jews, even a few Orthodox Christians. The only secular republic in
the Islamic world, it suffers alienation of affection from both its
Islamic co-religionists and mistrustful Europeans.
Now the Turks hope to take another step closer to her Western
neighbors by joining the European Union. In October 2004, Turkey
got the green light to begin negotiations for EU membership. Turkey
is the largest, poorest country ever invited to start talks. And
the most troubling. An overwhelming majority of Turks favor
membership, but it will take at least a decade before Turkey can
become a full-fledged member.
Ankara’s European supporters, like Britain’s Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw, believe Turkey is a model for other Muslim societies: a
pro-Western republic with a secular multi-party democracy. Turkey’s
EU candidacy, Straw said in a recent speech reported by the BBC,
will be the “acid test” of whether people of different faiths and
origins are doomed to remain divided or can be united by their
universal values. Among Turkey’s supporters are Germany, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Greece, the Czech Republic, Poland,
Estonia, Latvia, and its biggest champion the UK. Greece has also
promised to get on board once Turkey recognizes the Greek Cypriot
government of Cyprus. Turkey steadfastly refuses to do so.
The U.S. discreetly supports Turkey’s bid, but considers it an
internal issue of the EU. Like its European supporters, the Bush
administration believes EU membership will create an even more
stable and democratic Turkey. A recent editorial in the
Economist agreed: “An ever closer partnership between
Turkey and the European Union, culminating in full Turkish
membership, can only be good for relations between Islam and the
West. It will show that western nations have no insuperable
prejudice against Islam — and it will confirm Turkey’s role as a
nation whose Muslim heritage is fully compatible with
democracy.”
IT ALL SOUNDS LOVELY, but supporters are taking on faith the notion
that the Turkey that joins the EU a decade from now will be a much
different Turkey, a born-again Turkey. Among the skeptics are the
governments of Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, France and the
Netherlands. The BBC reports that Dutch EU Commissioner Frits
Bolkestein has warned of the “Islamisation” of Europe if Turkey
joins, noting that EU membership will in effect negate the defeat
of the Ottoman Turks during the 1683 siege of Vienna.
Currently only about a quarter of Austrians favor Turkish
integration into the EU. Besides the costs of integration,
Austrians fear the inevitable wave of job-seeking immigrants and
the eroding of traditional Christian values through
multiculturalism. Likewise France expects Turkey to acknowledge the
1915 Armenian genocide before it begins EU negotiations. That’s not
likely to happen.
Another concern is that Turkey is a ticking religious time bomb.
Often the harder an Islamic country is pushed to secularize, the
greater the fundamentalist reaction. Skeptics wonder what would
happen if once inside the EU Turkey began to slide towards Islamic
fanaticism or commenced suspending human rights. Of course,
European countries could, conceivably, slide toward fascism or some
totalitarian equivalent too, particularly if Muslim immigration
continues and those immigrants include anti-Western, bomb-wielding,
threat-making fanatics.
Opponents, meanwhile, point to a long shopping list of problems
with Ankara. Today’s ruling Justice and Development Party
government is essentially the lap dog of a military that has shown
little tolerance for human rights or religious freedom. On the
other hand a strong military may be needed to prevent an
Iranian-like Islamic revolution. Not surprisingly, the military
views current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a latent
Islamist, not unlike the first Islamist prime minister Necmettin
Erbakan who was quickly forced from power in a 1997 coup.
Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights has blamed the
current Turkish government for the “destruction of (Kurdish) homes,
crops and livestock, extrajudicial execution and disappearances.”
And Human Rights Watch notes that “just ten years ago torture was
pandemic with deaths in custody running at about one a week. State
forces committed extrajudicial executions and disappearances, or
political killings through their proxies, almost daily. Security
forces burned villages in intense conflict with the Kurdish
Workers’ Party and in the early 1990s drove more than 380,000
Kurdish farmers out of their homes. Courts often branded writers or
politicians, who mentioned Turkey’s minorities, as terrorists and
imprisoned them.” Police torture remains common today, and most of
the displaced Kurds remain just that — displaced.
European opposition is strongest from countries with large
Muslim populations like Austria, France, and The Netherlands. It is
also an unpleasant fact — but a fact nonetheless — that as Muslim
immigration increases so does the popularity of far-right parties.
(Recent high-profile murders, threats, and violent attacks by
fanatical Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere have also been a
boon for the far-right.) The free movement of labor is a basic EU
principle, so Europe will have to brace for wide streams of Turkish
immigrants.
But it is not just the influx of poor workers that concerns
opponents, it is their belief systems too. And this has led to the
inevitable charge of discrimination by Turks. Prime Minister
Erdogan recently told the Economist that “If the EU has
decided to be a Christian club rather than one of shared values,
then let it say so now.” But Europe is not a Christian Club, but a
collection of largely secular nations with similar traditions,
values, and freedoms. Citizens of Mr. Straw’s homeland are less
likely to believe in God than those in any other country, according
to a recent BBC-commissioned global survey of religion. The
World Almanac and Book of Facts notes that there are between
23 million and 40 million atheists in Europe. And Europeans guard
their secularism jealously. Muslims, however, are notorious for
ignoring the line between Church and State. Indeed to many Muslims
there is no line. The Sharia is the law and Allah is the ruler.
Period.
There is another yet Turkish saying that may be apropos: “What a
man is at seven is also what he is at seventy.” One reason the
military suspects Erdogan of latent Islamicism is that just a few
years ago the Prime Minister planned to take the retro-medieval
step of criminalizing adultery. After this sparked criticism from
the EU and would-be Turkish homewreckers, Erdogan backed off. Such
flip-flops reinforce suspicions that Turkey will say or do anything
to gain membership, but will not fundamentally change its
ideology.
Critics also charge that legal reforms, such as allowing
prisoners legal counsel, were not enacted until the EU recognized
Turkey as viable candidate in 1999, though reports persist that
prisoners continue to be refused legal aid. And even when torture
cases do go to court, which is not very often, few result in
convictions.
THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT IS ALSO widely criticized for providing lip
service regarding the issue of displaced Kurds, while most remain
crowded into urban slums, discouraged from returning home by a
brutal village guard corps. Many Kurdish villages continue to lack
medical facilities, schools, electricity and phones, things they
had prior to 1990, but were destroyed or torn up by the Turkish
army.
Similarly, the Turkish government is often accused of
interfering with academic freedom, particularly through its
military-created Higher Education Council that keeps a close eye on
what professors write and say, while the military’s ban on
headscarves keeps most women out of the universities. (Human Rights
Watch argues that the state should neither require nor ban
religious symbols or dress in universities.) The government
counters that it only wants to protect women who choose not to wear
the scarf, and in this way protects the public order, and that
giving in on the headscarf ban will lead to more demands by
religious parties until secularism is all but eliminated. It is
hard to say who is right, but the overriding concern must be that
Turkish women are able to make their own choice whether to wear the
headscarf.
Eighty-two years have passed since Ataturk created the modern
democratic Turkey. Mr. Straw and his supporters say that this is
proof that Turkey is a legitimate European partner, one that
respects democratic principles and “universal values.” But it is
only recently that religious fundamentalism and fanaticism of the
Iranian, Jihadian, Talibanian variety have come into being and
developed a popular and radical following. Many Muslims insist that
Turkey is a traitor to Islam, one that has chosen wealth and power
over religion. And Ataturk remains reviled by many fundamentalist
Muslims who abhor the separation of church and state. Europe, for
many Muslim fanatics, remains synonymous with Christianity, and is
thus the breading ground for heresy. Indeed until the modern era,
Muslims were strictly forbidden to visit Europe, and the ban was
later lifted only as a way of acquiring military and technological
secrets. So far the military has kept a lid on jihadism, but once
the EU puts a muzzle on the army, all bets are off.
Meanwhile the French government is considering putting the
Turkish question before the French voters in a referendum. Austria
and the Netherlands may do the same. France is also floating the
possibility of a third-way for Turkey, which would mean not quite
full EU membership, something Ankara flatly rejects.
Throughout modern history Turkey has been given the unflattering
epithet of the “sick man of Europe.” Today much of Europe seems to
think she is out of danger, if not well down the road to recovery.
Some may want a second opinion.
