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  • Turkey ready to fly

    The Gazette (Montreal)
    October 9, 2004 Saturday
    Final Edition

    Turkey ready to fly

    NORMAN WEBSTER, Freelance


    Something important happened this week, and hardly anyone here seemed
    to notice. While our media were covering the U.S. election, fire in a
    submarine and the shutdown of NHL hockey, the European Union in
    Brussels gave the go-ahead to Turkey's application for membership.

    Mind you, it was but a first step in a journey of many leagues. The
    executive of the 25-country EU has recommended only that negotiations
    begin with the Turks. That decision must be endorsed by the leaders
    of all the states at a crucial meeting in December.

    If that hurdle is crossed, the parties will sit down sometime next
    year to begin discussions likely to last a decade or more before an
    agreement on full membership is signed. If it ever is. The obstacles
    to final accommodation with this giant (71 million people),
    grindingly poor, overwhelmingly Muslim nation remain formidable.

    The Turks are not universally beloved. Valery Giscard d'Estaing,
    former president of France, once said Turkish membership would mean
    the death of Europe. The current president, Jacques Chirac, has
    indicated France might hold a referendum on the matter. Other
    European politicians are trying to shunt the Turks aside by proposing
    some sort of association short of full membership.

    Behind these moves lie fears about waves of poor Turks invading
    European economies, not to mention Midnight Express notions about a
    brutal oriental culture that does not fit with Western civilization.
    Such prejudices fade during a visit to bustling, fascinating,
    crumbling Istanbul, one of the great European cities, but not
    everyone makes that trip.

    Then there is the small matter of religion. Given the rise of
    fundamentalist Islam around the world, is there truly a place within
    the EU for a Muslim nation?

    Ironically, Turkey's supporters turn this into an argument for
    admission. At this critical moment, they say, Turkey is treading the
    path of liberal democracy, showing the way to other Islamic
    countries. Acceptance into the European club would send the best
    possible message.

    Conversely, "a no to Turkey could have catastrophic consequences,"
    argued a recent editorial in The Economist. "It would be widely
    interpreted in the Muslim world as a blow against all Islam."

    A significant element in the situation is the fact Turkey is the most
    secular of Islamic countries, a legacy of Kemal Ataturk, founder of
    the republic in 1923 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Even
    today, Turkey proscribes the head scarf for females in schools,
    universities and the public service. A decade ago, it had a female
    prime minister, Tansu Ciller.

    The country's current leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an embodiment
    of Turkish contradictions. A devout Muslim, he leads an Islamist
    party and his wife defiantly wears a headscarf.

    When I last visited Istanbul, in the late 1990s, Erdogan was the
    controversial mayor of the city, charged with inciting hatred by
    reciting this daring poem: "The mosques are our barracks,/the domes
    our helmets,/the minarets our bayonets,/and the believers our
    soldiers." In the end, he served five months in jail and a period of
    banishment from office.

    Yet today, two years after his party won national election, he is a
    liberalizing leader whose package of reforms greatly influenced this
    week's EU decision in Brussels.

    The Erdogan program has included easing up on the Kurdish minority
    (the language of these former "mountain Turks" can now be used in
    schools - imagine), abolishing the death penalty and loosening
    restrictions on free speech (although Human Rights Watch notes an
    individual who states an Armenian genocide took place during the
    First World War can still be jailed for 10 years).

    The military seems more comfortable in barracks, weaned from its
    predilection for coups and dictatorship. Turkey's traditional enemy,
    Greece, has become a close ally. Torture is, if not abolished, at
    least officially frowned upon.

    There was a flap recently when the government proposed to criminalize
    adultery. European officials cried shock-horror, EU negotiations
    teetered in the balance, and the proposal was shelved.

    Clearly, the time is ripe for another trip to Istanbul, where you can
    escape the insane traffic by sipping dark Turkish coffee beside the
    Bosphorus, as boats slip by between you and Asia. With the lira now
    at more than a million to a Canadian dollar, capacious pockets will
    be required.

    It does make the head whirl when you slap down a few million and tell
    the waiter to keep the change.

    Norman Webster is a former editor of The Gazette.
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