Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The Enemies Within

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • The Enemies Within

    Newsweek
    Oct 2 2005

    The Enemies Within
    Not all Turks want to join the European Union.


    By Owen Matthews And Sami Kohen

    10, 2005 issue - It looked like the bad old days when Turkey's
    universities were hot-beds of political strife. On one side of the
    police barriers were dozens of young students, many with their mouths
    taped shut to symbolize their support for free speech. On the other
    was an older crowd of about 200 ulkucu - mostly mustached
    ultranationalists waving Turkish flags and banners. Slogans were
    chanted, then abuse; a few missiles sailed through the air. In
    between, some rather bewildered international historians scuttled
    into a conference hall amid shouts of "Traitors!" Their subject? The
    fate of the Ottoman Empire's Armenians during World War I.

    In truth, it wasn't 1915 that roused such passions last week at
    Istanbul's Bilgi University. The real issue is what kind of country
    Turkey will become. There are those who want Turkey to openly examine
    its past, rid itself of the legacy of military rule and become truly
    European. And there are others, mostly conservative nationalists, who
    cling to the past and fear that interference from Brussels will
    change their way of life and undermine Turkey's independence.

    It's no coincidence that the Armenian flap erupted just days before
    the start of Turkey's formal negotiations to join the European Union.
    It was, in fact, a well-orchestrated plan, set in motion by a man
    named Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer with links to the Nationalist Action
    Party, who filed a complaint that a conference on the Armenian issue
    would violate Turkish laws on insulting the state and its founder,
    Kemal Ataturk. A panel of like-minded judges agreed, and banned it.
    "Those at home and abroad who want to obstruct us are making their
    last efforts," railed Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a
    leading advocate of joining the EU, when he heard of the court's
    order. Citing the damage the banning would do to Turkey's image at
    such a sensitive moment, Gul and his government quickly circumvented
    the ruling, and the conference went ahead - but not without
    accomplishing exactly what the obstructionists had hoped.

    This was not the only such incident. Over the last two months,
    Turkish nationalists and their sympathizers in the judiciary and
    state bureaucracy have done their utmost to sabotage Turkey's efforts
    to present itself as a modern European nation. They have succeeded in
    lodging criminal charges against a prominent publisher, Ragip
    Zarakolu, for allegedly "insulting Turkish identity and the security
    forces," because he was about to publish translations of two American
    books on the Armenian massacres. And last month prosecutors filed
    similar charges against Turkey's leading novelist, Orhan Pamuk, for
    "insulting the state" after he told a Swiss magazine that "a million
    Armenians were killed" in 1915. Though few expect him to be thrown in
    jail, the case brought back memories of military rule, when tens of
    thousands of intellectuals were imprisoned. "Right or wrong," says
    Pamuk, "don't people have the right to express their ideas peacefully
    in this Turkey?"

    All this is fodder for skeptics who say Turkey is not ready to join
    Europe. Almost unwittingly, "the rejectionists in Turkey and in the
    EU seem to have formed an unholy alliance," says Dr. Can Baydorol, an
    EU expert at Bilgi University. And though Turkey's ultranationalists
    are on the political fringe, there's a danger that their views could
    become mainstream. Gripes about Europe are already common. One is
    that the EU is all take and no give: "We have a monster in front of
    us," complains Emin Colasan, a columnist at the popular centrist
    daily Hurriyet. "Whatever we give does not satisfy it." Another is
    that the EU does not keep its word. Negotiations for full membership
    were supposed to begin without conditions. Now various EU members are
    trying to renege. No issue is more touchy than divided Cyprus. Ankara
    bent over backward to promote a U.N. unification plan, only to see it
    defeated by the Greek Cypriots - who are now using their position
    inside the Union to lobby against Turkey.

    Two thirds of Turks still want to join the EU, according to a recent
    poll by the German Marshall Fund. But that's down from 73 percent
    last year, and EU foot-dragging will push those numbers down further.
    And for all their pro-Europeanism, top officials in the ruling
    Justice and Development Party say they could well walk away if the EU
    continues to erect new obstacles to Turkey's membership. Even if it
    doesn't, the rigors of accession may well dampen Turks' enthusiasm.
    Complying with Brussels's 80,000 pages of EU law (covering everything
    from air quality to street-food hygiene and the strength of
    cigarettes) will not be easy - or popular. All that's grist for those
    who want the project to fail.
Working...
X