Winston-Salem Journal, NC
Nov 28 2004

Human-rights rules of EU rankle Turkey
Multiculturalism not an acceptable idea in country of ‘unity’

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, Turkey

As a child, Hrant Dink dreamed of becoming a homicide detective, but
he faced an insurmountable obstacle. In overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey,
Jews and Christians can’t join the police.

Now that unwritten rule, the product of a history of ethnic strife
and distrust of non-Muslim minorities, is coming into heated debate
as Turkey faces up to the reforms it must undertake to achieve its
cherished goal of joining the European Union.

Participants almost came to blows earlier this month at a news
conference by a semi-official human-rights body, when its chairman,
Ibrahim Kaboglu, suggested that Turkey must expand minority rights.

Fahrettin Yokus, a civil-service-union leader, grabbed the papers
from Kaboglu’s hands and ripped them up.

“We don’t recognize this report; it is aimed at dividing the
country,” he shouted.

The EU demands, he charged, “are threatening our unity.”

Kaboglu, whose Human Rights Advisory Council was created by the prime
minister’s office, has asked for police protection. His critics,
meanwhile, have petitioned state prosecutors to file treason charges
against Kaboglu and those who signed the statement that he read.

Tensions have heightened since an EU panel ruled last month that for
Turkey to negotiate its way into the EU, a prosperous 25-nation bloc,
it would have to meet European standards of democracy and human
rights.

It urged Turkey to grant more rights to ethnic Kurds and recognize
Alawites, a religious sect rooted in Islam, as a minority. Jews and
Christians already have minority rights but still suffer such
discrimination as exclusion from the police, Foreign Ministry and
military officers’ corps, the panel said.

But although multiculturalism may be the norm in much of Europe, it’s
an explosive concept in Turkey. Here children open the school day by
saying: “Happy is the one who says ‘I am a Turk,'” and the word
“minority” is seen by nationalists as code for national
fragmentation.

More than a quarter of Turkey’s 71 million people are either Kurds or
Alawites or share both identities. The nation has about 130,000
non-Muslims – Greek, Armenian and other Christians, and Jews.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer says that the debate over minority
rights is “destructive” and that every citizen of the state – Muslim
or other – is a Turk and is bound to the Turkish state.