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Turks show growing opposition to EU membership

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  • Turks show growing opposition to EU membership

    Media Monitors Network, CA
    June 20 2005

    Turks show growing opposition to EU membership
    by M. S. Ahmed
    (Monday June 20 2005)

    "Interestingly, western politicians and media frequently describe
    prime minister Recep Tayip Erdogan's regime and party (the Justice
    and Development Party) as `Islamist' or `pro-Islam'. Adopting this
    false line clearly enables them to maintain their pressure for
    continued secularism in politics and public policy. But secularism is
    only one part of the EU's many requirements for admission. Respect
    for human rights and ethnic minorities also figure prominently."

    The assumption that it is the European Union's transparent
    unwillingness to admit a Muslim country, rather than the reluctance
    of a Muslim people to join a Christian union, that is mainly
    responsible for the failure of membership-negotiations to make any
    progress is being steadily revised. The EU member-states' undisguised
    disdain for Ankara's application to join, while warmly and
    expeditiously admitting East European countries that, unlike Turkey,
    were until recently anti-western and pro-Russian, is turning Turkish
    popular opinion against the project and against the government's
    commitment to it. Even secular groups that backed the application, to
    get rid of Turkey's past and present as a Muslim country, are now
    criticising the government for its attitude; army generals, who are
    normally keen to disguise their grip on political power and refrain
    from making public statements, have openly taken the EU to task for
    trying to impose foreign values on Turks. The recent ruling by the
    European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that Turkey must grant Abdullah
    Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader, a new trial, has caused a furore.

    Many ordinary Turks - whose country, after all, was once a superpower
    and ruled some of the European countries now being welcomed into the
    EU - feel that Brussels' treatment of their effort to join the EU is
    humiliating, and describe it as only fit for a `banana republic'. For
    instance Sencan Bayramuglu, a retired teacher, was recently quoted in
    an American magazine as using that very phrase. `We can't just do
    everything the Europeans say,' she said. `They behave as if we are
    some sort of banana republic.' It is true that her anger was provoked
    by the ECHR's demanding a new trial for Ocalan, and that her son was
    one of 30,000 victims of the 15-year uprising that resulted
    eventually in the capture and imprisonment of Ocalan in 1999. But, as
    the magazine points out, her fury is not directed only against the
    Kurdish rebel-leader, whom she blames for her son's death, but also
    against the European institutions that demand Turkey conform to their
    standards as a precondition for joining the EU.

    Many nationalists see the court ruling as `playing into the hands of
    Kurdish militants', fearing that it will lead to the division of
    Turkey into `ethnic enclaves'. Many would agree with the warning of
    Talat Salk, who prosecuted Ocalan in 1999, that a retrial would have
    serious implications and play directly into the hands of Kurdish
    `terrorists' by providing them with a pretext to hold demonstrations
    in major cities. One nationalist politician who agrees, and publicly
    expressed his objection to the ruling, is Devlet Bahceli. He said
    that the retrial ordered by the ECHR would be like a `time-bomb' and
    lead to simmering tensions.

    But general Hilmi Ozkok, head of the powerful Turkish military, made
    the most powerful attack on the court ruling even before it was
    issued. He said in April that `outside influences are trying to
    change our national culture by imposing foreign values, fashion and
    language that do not match Turkish customs and traditions.' When the
    ruling was issued, he criticised it as `political manipulation'. He
    also observed that his country had a security interest in northern
    Cyprus, that allegations of genocide against Armenians in 1915 have
    no basis, and that the Americans were not `doing enough' to get rid
    of Turkish terrorists of Kurdish origin in Iraq. It is not strange
    that the general also insisted that secularism was the driving force
    of Turkish democracy, and that the Turkish state must remain united.

    It is part of the EU's requirements for admission that Turkey
    diminish the role of army generals in politics, yet no criticism was
    made of general Ozkok's intervention, and the Americans ignored his
    criticism of their failure to curb Kurdish activists from Turkey who
    operate in Iraq. Both the EU and the US are comfortable with the role
    of the military in politics, which ensures that Turkey remains
    secular and pro-West. It is interesting that though the general is
    critical of the Turkish government's EU programme, he has said
    nothing so far against its outrageous recent plan to rewrite Turkish
    history and retrain imams to comply with EU demands to entrench
    secularism. And although the government's intervention in the
    country's educational system for purely political reasons is far from
    democratic, neither the EU nor the US has objected to this
    totalitarian offensive on another people's cultural and religious
    rights. To their shame, the nationalists who are now rightly
    resisting EU invasion and their government's acquiescence have failed
    to object to its pro-secularism bias and policies.

    Interestingly, western politicians and media frequently describe
    prime minister Recep Tayip Erdogan's regime and party (the Justice
    and Development Party) as `Islamist' or `pro-Islam'. Adopting this
    false line clearly enables them to maintain their pressure for
    continued secularism in politics and public policy. But secularism is
    only one part of the EU's many requirements for admission. Respect
    for human rights and ethnic minorities also figure prominently. But
    nationalists (and indeed others) believe that the EU is not exercised
    about the fate of Kurds, as it is not about the human rights of all
    Turks, and that it is using both issues to keep Turkey out and
    probably to weaken it by causing its division into ethnic states.
    This is becoming increasingly clear to many Turks of different
    backgrounds and beliefs; as a result the government is coming under
    severe pressure to stand aloof. As Turkey should stay out of the EU
    in the higher interests of its religion and cultural values, so the
    pride of the Turkish people will be assuaged if Turkey's exclusion
    from the EU depends on its own decision rather than on a rejection by
    Brussels.
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