Obstacle Before EU: Racism
By NEVVAL SEVINDI

Zaman, Turkey
Dec 16 2004

[Francois] Bayrou of France had said: “Turkey has shown time and
again that it is not European.” Indeed, the French have also shown
time and again how cruel they are to all their colonies.

Besides, they could even boast of killing so many people when they
bombed the Ivory Coast recently.

Wolfgang Schussel, on the other side, got stuck with money: “Turkey
will cost the EU 25-30 billion euros annually, moreover, there are
human rights violations.” I wonder whether or not he can still
remember today what Spain and Greece cost the EU? Or the money spent
on new member, the Czech Republic? It has turned retired civil
servants into civil police officers and has made them sentries
guarding metros. Their job is to hunt tourists and then rob them.
When I complained to the police, they told me, “the state is always
right.” I heard similar remarks last week from a German train station
officer wearing an earring. When I said, “It is not written on this
train that it is going to Neumunster, but you say it is,” his answer
was: “I am a civil servant of the German state. What I say is right,
okay?” Of course, Edmund Stoiber’s statement is meaningful in the
light of these words: “We will do whatever we can to prevent Turkey’s
membership. We shall accomplish this when we come to power in 2006.”
There are Nazis, who are now carrying out the signature campaign
initiated by Angela Merkel. With the other big reaction against EU
enlargement coming from Austria, it is evident that the
insurmountable obstacle facing Turkey and the EU is German racism.
The obstacle within Europe itself is the intolerant Hitler spirit,
sauced up with this superiority complex! The person who committed
murder in the Netherlands is a Moroccan, but since the only subject
on television channels is the situation of Turks, degraded Muslim
Turks, the hatred in the German society’s subconscious has now
appeared on the surface. There are many humiliating acts against
Turks in the books of Martin Luther, who is being marketed as the
“greatest humanist.” Frankly speaking, his books have nothing to do
with humanism.

Racism is the most talked about and most topical subject on the
German agenda. Enmity against foreigners and Muslims is dangerously
on the rise This monster that previously resided only among
low-income groups, is now dancing in high society saloons. The result
of a three-year research has been published by Bielefeld University.
Research Director Wilhelm Heitmeyer says that xenophobia is on the
rise in 2004, so is intolerance towards homosexual. It is assumed
that foreigners ruin the German cultural identity. 58 percent do not
want to live in the same neighborhood with Muslims. It is really
striking that hostility against women, Islam and foreigners go hand
in hand! This is male-dominant hostility.

While Germany, which for 40 years has not admitted that it is a
country of immigrants, cannot find any fault in itself, it views the
Turks as completely at fault. Beware! Isn’t this the phenomenon
called projection mirror? Are Turks the mirror in which they reflect
their vulgar instincts? Films depicting the torture of millions of
people or those killed, bringing before us the so-called Armenian
genocide or the Cyprus issue, have not still ended, even though they
have been made over and over again for 50 years. A law on foreigners
for the first time will come into force in January 2005.

Germans advocating the mother tongue right for Kurds have not even
found a place in their curricula for Turkish mother tongue courses.
It is not ways to develop the mother tongue, but ways to make it
forgotten that are always being sought. Another example of egregious
double standards: Besides its failure in not solving any problems,
the German Teachers’ Union (GEW) does not even have any project
whatsoever on this issue. Moreover, the union also approved low
incomes for Turkish teachers! Turkish mother tongue teachers have
been turned into social advisers or translators. Their main job is to
solve the problems of German managers and teachers and to teach their
mother tongue in the remaining time left. Look at what a German
teacher said to a Turkish teacher: “What will you do with our
children after educating all the workers’ children? If you had the
chance, you would make all Turkish children have higher education.
Then what will become of our children?”

This teacher, who defends not the bright students, but the German
children, while encouraging class superiority, is also sowing the
seeds of racism. What do you think he/she teaches these students? The
racism tree growing right in front of Germany overshadows the ideals
of Europe. Are the Europeans sleeping?

December 14, 2004