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  • A proud Turkey hesitates at the EU crossroads

    A proud Turkey hesitates at the EU crossroads

    The ins and outs of joining Turks are growing angry at the tight conditions
    being imposed on their entry into Europe. As support for joining wanes,
    Jason Burke reports on the divisions besetting Istanbul

    Sunday October 2, 2005
    The Observer

    Just off the bustling Istiklal Street on a hill above the Golden Horn is a
    small art gallery. With its open space and whitewashed walls, it is an
    island of peace in a teeming, noisy city. At its centre is what looks like a
    straightforward piece of contemporary art - four huge fibreglass horses and
    a set of flat-screen video displays.

    Yet, in fact, the artwork is more nuanced, revealing more about Turkey's
    complex love-hate relationship with the continent to its west and with
    modernity than any number of surveys. The horses are replicas of Roman works
    looted by Crusaders from Istanbul, then Byzantine Constantinople, 800 years
    ago and symbolically brought back to the city by the artist, a Turk.

    'I like it very much,' said Shirin Karadeniz, 24, a music student selling
    tickets at the gallery door. 'Having the horses back in my city makes me
    feel proud. And it's a really cool installation too, just like the ones in
    Paris or London.'

    Tomorrow, assuming last-minute negotiations overcome all hitches, Turkey
    will formally start negotiations to bring its 70 million-plus citizens into
    the EU some time between 2015 and 2020.
    Yet in Europe and in Turkey there are signs that a backlash might have
    started. Polls show that support for EU accession has slumped from 75 per
    cent in December last year, when the EU set the date for the start of
    negotiations, to just over 60 per cent now, and the opposition is becoming
    increasingly vocal. The major reason, say analysts, is the conservative
    reaction in many EU nations against Turkish entry which has led to
    increasingly tough entry tests and statements that imply, or even explicitly
    declare, the 'Christian' roots of Europe and fears of being 'swamped' by
    immigrants. This weekend the Austrian government is still insisting that
    Turkey should be offered 'privileged partnership' instead of full membership
    of the EU.

    Such demands are keenly resented in Turkey. 'It's like telling someone you
    love them and being asked to go away and come back when you've lost some
    weight,' said one analyst. 'It's insulting and humiliating. Eventually you
    just lose interest altogether and look elsewhere.'

    Though the reforming pro-European Justice and Development party (AKP) of
    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a majority in parliament, the
    reluctance of many EU members is strengthening a ragtag alliance of
    right-wingers, hardline patriots, conservative bureaucrats, military men and
    ultra-left-wingers, who see opposition to Europe as a potential platform for
    a bid for power.

    Their views are emotional, inchoate and rooted in an increasingly
    anachronistic vision of Turkey's past and its destiny. However, they are
    tapping into a vein of resentment that could derail the accession. A whole
    range of issues underpin the reaction, and most of them, according to Halil
    Berktay, professor of history at Sabanci University, are beyond Western
    politicians with limited understanding of the Turkish national psyche.

    Though still limited, anti-European feeling, Berktay said, could easily
    spread: 'There is a grave danger of a much broader nationalist backlash, led
    by retired soldiers, intellectual poseurs, political opportunists and
    journalists who pander to a conservative, quasi-fascistic nationalism.'

    Such men are not difficult to find. For Emim Emir, of the Great Union party,
    which polled 2 per cent in Turkey's 2002 election, it is the 'Kurdish
    question' that is most important. Speaking in his office at the top of a
    malodorous apartment block in a working-class suburb of the city, Emir, 44,
    said the demand that Turkey end discrimination against the Kurdish minority
    of around 15 million people would lead to the disintegration of the country.
    'No one can accept this internal interference and meddling. It is our duty
    as Turks to resist,' he said.

    Many right-wingers like Emir believe the EU wants to see both the Kurds in
    the south-east of Turkey and the small Christian Armenian minority
    concentrated in the north-east, in effect granted independence. The evidence
    for this, they say, is the call by the EU for Turkey to recognise that the
    massacres of Armenians in 1915 amounted to 'genocide'. The call, said
    Berktay, played directly into the nationalists' hands.

    In another low-rise block in another working-class suburb, Kemal Kerincsiz,
    chief executive of the Turkish Lawyers' Association, explained why he had
    led legal moves to ban a historians' conference on the Armenian killings two
    weeks ago. 'Our aim was to stop discussion of claims of a genocide that did
    not take place. This is the first battle to stop the partition of Turkey,'
    Kerincsiz, 46, said. 'I am acting as a patriot to stop the disintegration of
    my nation.'

    In the offices of the Turkish Workers' party, portraits of Marx and Mao hang
    near those of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. According
    to Erkan Onsel, the party secretary, the EU is the 'club of rich,
    imperialist' nations while Turkey is one of the 'oppressed'. He said: 'All
    we would do in the EU is provide cheap labour for the capitalists. America
    wants to redraw our borders and is using the EU to do it. We should be
    looking east.'

    Fuelling the rhetoric are columnists such as Emin Colaan, who writes in the
    mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper. He constantly refers to the
    'humiliation' of the Turks by the EU, which he says considers itself a
    'Christian club'.

    The demands for Turkey to recognise Cyprus are a particular insult. Last
    week he claimed, falsely, that Andrew Duff, a British MEP, had called for
    the portraits of Ataturk, seen everywhere from schools to teashops, to be
    taken down. Duff said he had been the target of thousands of abusive emails,
    some threatening violence, after Colaan's article. Despite calls to his
    office, Colaan was unavailable for comment.

    Little is further from the reactionaries' vision of Turkey than the new
    Istanbul Modern. The gallery, built with private finance in a warehouse by
    the Bosphorus, has had nearly 350,000 visitors since it opened last
    December. Its current exhibition features work by major world artists such
    as Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Jeff Koons, its permanent collection
    explores the relationship of Western and Turkish modern art and it even
    sports a chic, expensive new restaurant where Istanbul's literati gossip
    over coffee. The gallery - along with the thriving bars and clubs scene -
    has earned Istanbul a cover in Newsweek magazine as 'the coolest city in
    Europe'. 'This is a flamboyant, 24-hour city,' said Oya Eczacibasi, 45, the
    director.

    One of the key backers of the Istanbul Modern was Recep Tayyip Erdogan
    himself. 'Without the Prime Minister's personal support, the museum would
    not exist,' Eczacibasi said. 'Many of the visitors we've had from the art
    world in America or elsewhere can't believe how helpful he has been.'
    The visitors had presumed that Erdogan, a devout Muslim who leads a socially
    conservative party with a political vision that draws heavily on religious
    values, would oppose the museum. Instead, the former street vendor
    recognised both the museum's cultural significance and its value in
    promoting his nation as a modern state in the West.

    Erdogan, who won a landslide victory in 2002, sums up the paradox of
    Turkey's situation. It is a secular state with an overwhelmingly Muslim
    population. Its Prime Minister leads a moderate 'Islamist' government that
    is more reforming, democratising, pro-Western and European than the secular
    opposition. He has forced through a series of civil and human rights reforms
    which, though still seen as inadequate by many, have been radical.

    He has repeatedly rejected force as a means to crush a recent upsurge of
    Kurdish separatist violence. Backed by much of Turkey's business community,
    Erdogan, who once served a jail sentence for making radical Islamic
    statements at a rally, has presided over the implementation of an
    International Monetary Fund financial stability programme that, after years
    of economic chaos, has helped growth rates rise to 9 per cent. He has also
    campaigned against corruption. 'Erdogan's a pious Muslim and a social
    conservative but very open to modern ideas,' said Fadi Hakura, a specialist
    at Chatham House think-tank in London.

    Other analysts say it is easy to over-stress the pace of reforms. Human
    rights groups last week criticised the closing of a gay and lesbian group by
    one local administration and the minister for women's affairs called
    Turkey's record on sexual harassment 'a national shame'. A recent row over a
    law against adultery caused controversy. The famous Turkish writer Orhan
    Pamuk is facing trial for talking to journalists about the killings of
    Armenians. He, like many others contacted by The Observer, was unwilling to
    talk for fear of unspecified consequences.

    Much depends on Erdogan and the reformists maintaining their strong
    following. But it is clear that could easily waver. Fatih is a suburb
    overlooking the Bosphorus that is known for its Islamic conservatism. Here,
    around two-thirds of women wear headscarves, and the tight T-shirts and
    jeans favoured by young women elsewhere in the city are rare.
    Eighty-year-old Saphi, sitting in the courtyard of the main mosque, said
    that he would oppose the accession because 'a lifetime of experience' had
    taught him the Europeans could not be trusted. Religion was not a factor, he
    said, 'at least not for us, though it seems to be for the Europeans'.
    Another worshipper said that he wanted to be part of Europe but 'not if we
    have to go begging'. Yet most agree that Turkey's future lies in closer ties
    with the West. In the narrow lanes outside the mosque, Nazim Kalag, 30,
    slicing chicken for kebabs, said that the Turks really want to be part of
    Europe: 'We want a nice, orderly, prosperous life here. All neat and tidy.
    No problems for anyone.'

    Turkey, all analysts agree, is 'on the cusp' of enormous changes that could
    take it further towards a European-style secular, pluralist modernity or
    into something else, possibly based in a more aggressive Islamic identity or
    on a retrograde conservative statist radicalism.

    'It is a case of what sort of identity can be created and what works,' said
    Berktay. 'Turkey is creating an entirely new relationship with the West...
    The process is ongoing.'

    Is Turkey ready for the EU?

    Not yet. Economic growth is strong - around 8 per cent a year - and there
    have been major reforms in recent years in politics, economy, law, human and
    civil rights. But the largely rural country of 73 million has an average
    income of about a third of Western levels. Literacy rates are low, the army
    remains powerful and free speech is stifled.

    Won't Turkey be a black hole for EU subsidies?

    It will not join the EU for a decade at least, by which time it is likely to
    be much more prosperous and the EU subsidy system, currently facing reform
    following recent enlargement, will be far less generous.

    What about the size of Turkey?

    Critics say Europe will be swamped with poor Turks. Supporters say Europe,
    with its ageing population and low economic growth, needs a massive infusion
    of youthful energy and cheap labour. Turkey would be a new market for
    Western goods and capital.

    Isn't this really about what sort of Europe we want?

    Yes. Conservatives in France, Germany and especially Austria have relied on
    populist rhetoric, implying that the EU is a wealthy, white Christian club.
    Supporters of Turkey's accession say that the membership of a Muslim country
    will promote Europe as an example of diversity in an increasingly polarised
    world.

    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1582950,00.html
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