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TURKEY NOT FIT FOR MEMBERSHIP
By Matthew Nickson
Daily Texan, TX
Oct 10 2005
Last Monday at a ministerial conference in Luxembourg, the foreign
ministers of the European Union agreed to begin membership talks with
Turkey. The decision to open "adhesion negotiations" - taken after
overcoming an Austrian counter-proposal for a "privileged partnership"
- is a blow to the democratic goals of a unified Europe.
Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member
in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials,
eager to counter the world community's outdated image of a thinly
veiled military dictatorship. But time and again - despite progress
in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU
expansion - the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling
or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country,
Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and
oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an
ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia
and Cyprus.
The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when
a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist,
Hrant Dink, of insulting the "Turkish identity" by writing about
the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and
its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians
who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the
Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish
guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out.
Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but
inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian
traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey
continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.
Ironically - and in a sign of the Turkish court system's perversity
- Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should
rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his
admonition that Dink - who received a suspended six month sentence -
was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.
The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has
made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past. The Turks
have been unable, notwithstanding decades of co-membership in NATO,
to arrive at a truly permanent peace with Greece. As late as 1996,
the two countries nearly fought a war over the Imia islands in the
Aegean Sea. Furthermore, the Turkish government adamantly refuses to
recognize the independence of the Greek portion of Cyprus and the
sovereignty of the government in Nicosia. Although Turkey signed
a July 29 protocol extending its customs union with the European
Union to the 10 members admitted in 2004 - among them the Republic
of Cyprus - Turkey obstinately refuses to open its ports and airports
to Cypriot commerce.
Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors.
The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of
siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River,
which Turkey has diverted for a massive - and environmentally risky
- development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19
power plants.
The Southeast Anatolia Development Project has been touted as an
economic boon for Turkey's minority Kurdish population. Yet Turkey
has engaged in a long-standing policy of political and cultural
warfare against the Kurds who live in southeastern Turkey, near the
Iraqi border by imprisoning Kurdish political figures and limiting
classroom instruction in Kurdish. As recently as the early 1990s,
Turkey conducted a Central American-style scorched earth campaign
against Kurdish villages suspected of harboring separatist guerillas,
killing as many as 30,000 people.
All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms
in its quest for EU membership. The country has abolished the death
penalty and retreated from its once total censure of Kurdish culture.
In the economic realm, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repealed subsidies favoring the textile industry. If admitted to the
EU, Turkey holds out the promise of revitalizing laggard European
economies with its growing consumer market, cheap labor (an augury
of massive emigration) and increased trade.
But Turkey's reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved
insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the
political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and
a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend
the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat
alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain,
Germany and Spain.
Nickson is a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas
International Law Journal.
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2005/10/10/Opinion/Turkey.Not.Fit.For.Membership-1014864.shtml
By Matthew Nickson
Daily Texan, TX
Oct 10 2005
Last Monday at a ministerial conference in Luxembourg, the foreign
ministers of the European Union agreed to begin membership talks with
Turkey. The decision to open "adhesion negotiations" - taken after
overcoming an Austrian counter-proposal for a "privileged partnership"
- is a blow to the democratic goals of a unified Europe.
Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member
in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials,
eager to counter the world community's outdated image of a thinly
veiled military dictatorship. But time and again - despite progress
in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU
expansion - the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling
or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country,
Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and
oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an
ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia
and Cyprus.
The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when
a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist,
Hrant Dink, of insulting the "Turkish identity" by writing about
the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and
its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians
who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the
Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish
guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out.
Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but
inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian
traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey
continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.
Ironically - and in a sign of the Turkish court system's perversity
- Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should
rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his
admonition that Dink - who received a suspended six month sentence -
was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.
The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has
made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past. The Turks
have been unable, notwithstanding decades of co-membership in NATO,
to arrive at a truly permanent peace with Greece. As late as 1996,
the two countries nearly fought a war over the Imia islands in the
Aegean Sea. Furthermore, the Turkish government adamantly refuses to
recognize the independence of the Greek portion of Cyprus and the
sovereignty of the government in Nicosia. Although Turkey signed
a July 29 protocol extending its customs union with the European
Union to the 10 members admitted in 2004 - among them the Republic
of Cyprus - Turkey obstinately refuses to open its ports and airports
to Cypriot commerce.
Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors.
The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of
siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River,
which Turkey has diverted for a massive - and environmentally risky
- development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19
power plants.
The Southeast Anatolia Development Project has been touted as an
economic boon for Turkey's minority Kurdish population. Yet Turkey
has engaged in a long-standing policy of political and cultural
warfare against the Kurds who live in southeastern Turkey, near the
Iraqi border by imprisoning Kurdish political figures and limiting
classroom instruction in Kurdish. As recently as the early 1990s,
Turkey conducted a Central American-style scorched earth campaign
against Kurdish villages suspected of harboring separatist guerillas,
killing as many as 30,000 people.
All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms
in its quest for EU membership. The country has abolished the death
penalty and retreated from its once total censure of Kurdish culture.
In the economic realm, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repealed subsidies favoring the textile industry. If admitted to the
EU, Turkey holds out the promise of revitalizing laggard European
economies with its growing consumer market, cheap labor (an augury
of massive emigration) and increased trade.
But Turkey's reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved
insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the
political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and
a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend
the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat
alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain,
Germany and Spain.
Nickson is a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas
International Law Journal.
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2005/10/10/Opinion/Turkey.Not.Fit.For.Membership-1014864.shtml