Bridging east and west
The Toronto Star, Canada
December 19, 2004 Sunday
MÖDLING, Austria — A sure way to get the blood boiling when an icy
wind blows in this historic town is by mixing red-wine punch with
talk of Turkey joining the European Union.
Otto Kapper serves up both from an outdoor kiosk in the main square.
“The Turks have nothing to do with our culture and our way of life.
They’re much more Oriental than European,” says Kapper, 65.
“I have nothing against religion – it’s a personal choice. But they’re
mainly Muslim and we’re mainly Catholic. They just don’t fit in a
European world view.”
He then plops another steaming cup of Christmas-season punch on
the counter.
“There’s already a high percentage of Muslims all over Europe, in
France, in Germany. Look at Holland: It was such a calm country and
now it’s full of unrest because of the Muslims.
“And Austria certainly has enough. Our schools are full of them.”
Were it not for opinion polls indicating that 75 per cent of Austrians
oppose Turkey’s entry into the EU, some might chalk up Kapper’s
rejection to M‹dling’s history.
In 1683, an invading Ottoman army rampaged through the town on its
way to lay siege to nearby Vienna.
Most townsfolk took refuge in a 12th century ossuary next to St.
Othmar church. But the Ottomans burst in and slaughter ensued.
The ossuary, with bearded stone faces decorating its arched entrance,
still stands. Metres away, pinned to the church’s exterior wall is
a white plaque put up in 1933.
“On this place in July, 1683 almost the whole population of the market
town of M‹dling was massacred by hostile hordes when Turks were moving
towards Vienna,” it says.
Further commemorating the event is a wooden model of sword-wielding
Ottomans on horseback, made 50 years after the attack, on display in
the town’s only museum.
Two months after the M‹dling’s sacking, a Polish-led force routed
the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna, ending their 61-day siege of
the Hapsburg capital.
The upside of the invasion is that the Turks left behind coffee
beans, giving birth to a habit the Viennese embraced with a passion.
But a less savoury legacy has them eyeing Turkey’s EU membership bid
with suspicion.
Having stopped the Muslim push into the European heartland 320 years
ago, Austrians seem determined to defend the ramparts again. And
they’re not alone.
Last Friday, leaders of the 25 European Union countries took the
historic decision to begin negotiating Turkey’s entry into the
political and economic union next October.
The deal was struck after Turkey agreed to limits on migrant workers
allowed in member states, and promised to take a step towards
recognizing the Greek Cypriot half of the divided island of Cyprus,
which is an EU member.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey
has done much to meet the EU’s democratic and economic criteria for
membership. But reforms haven’t been fully implemented, and entry
talks are expected to last at least a decade.
If successful, a largely Muslim country of 70 million people will
join what has so far been an exclusively Christian club. The European
Union would stretch from Ireland in the west to the borders of Syria,
Iraq and Iran in the east.
U.S. President George W. Bush, a strong supporter of EU membership
for Turkey, says its entry would show the “clash of civilizations”
between Islam and Christianity to be nothing more than “a passing
myth of history.”
But Turkey, with 97 per cent of its landmass in Asia, remains a
tough sell.
Despite an economy growing at 6 per cent a year, its status as a
long-time NATO member and as an officially secular state looking
westward since 1923, its membership bid raises deep anxiety across
Europe.
While most European leaders back its entry to the club, many Europeans
see Turkey as too big, too poor and too Muslim.
Resistance is strongest in Austria, France, Germany, and the
Netherlands, while support is highest in Spain – the only place one
poll found a majority in favour – Italy, Ireland, and Britain.
Complicating the debate is a growing sense of cultural insecurity among
white, Christian Europeans unaccustomed to the hybrid or “hyphenated”
identities common in North America.
Some 15 million Muslims live in Europe, but suspicion of “the other”
remains strong.
In a recent speech, the former EU competition commissioner, Frits
Bolkenstein of the Netherlands, warned: “Europe is being Islamicized.”
Left unchecked, he added, referring specifically to Turkey’s membership
bid, “the liberation of Vienna in 1683 will have been in vain.”
With few exceptions, most European governments spent decades using
Turkish and North African immigrant “guest workers” as a source of
cheap labour. Neglect, and a belief that immigrants would one day
return home, meant they got little help to integrate.
When workers instead brought over their families, and when many more
arrived clandestinely in boatloads, right-wing populist parties made
inroads in the 1990s by declaring their countries “full.”
Incidents such as the Madrid train bombings last March and the murder
of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh last November by a man of Moroccan
background have raised fears that Islamic radicalism is taking hold
in Europe.
Van Gogh’s murder sparked dozens of tit-for-tat attacks against mosques
and churches that shattered the Dutch self-image of tolerance. An
Islamic elementary school was burned to the ground.
Adding to the fear is a widespread sense, fuelled in the media, that
Muslims reject European values such as secularism and women’s equality.
In France, a relatively small number of Muslim girls wearing
headscarves was seen as a threat to the secular pillars of its society
and banned by law last spring.
Governments that never practiced multiculturalism are now blaming it
for their integration woes.
“Multiculturalism has failed, big time,” says Angela Merkel, leader
of Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats, a group that opposes
Turkey’s membership.
Never mind that Germany, home to 2.2 million Turks, granted citizenship
until recently only to those deemed German by blood.
In today’s climate, warning of the hordes to come is seen as a
vote-getter.
Says Ronald Sorensen, head of the Rotterdam branch of the List Pym
Fortuyn, named after the murdered right-wing politician: “The way to
win the next election is with the slogan, ‘No to Turkey.'”
Xenophobia aside, some fear Turkey’s membership could bring down
the whole EU project, born in 1951 when historical rivals France
and Germany joined in a coal and steel trade agreement with four
other countries.
Erich Hochleitner, former Austrian ambassador to Portugal and Belgium,
argues Turkey will drain EU of subsidy funds, trigger a never-ending
demand for membership from other countries and make political cohesion
impossible.
That, he believes, is what the U.S. and Britain had in mind when they
spearheaded Turkey’s membership bid.
The U.S. fears a cohesive EU would eventually challenge its global
political dominance, he argues. As for Britain, long opposed to giving
up national sovereignty to EU bodies, it hopes to reduce the union
to a free-trade block, he adds.
“Quite frankly, people in Austria are thinking of how to get out
of the EU in order to protect what they’ve got,” says Hochleitner,
director of the Austrian Institute for European Security Policy.
Turkey’s bid has become the magnet for a long list of complaints
about the EU.
In M‹dling, on the outskirts of Vienna, Emmerich Bagi warms his hands
over the barrel he uses to roast chestnuts and rants about price hikes
due to the euro currency, the Egyptian who set up a competing chestnut
stand nearby, the Austrian butcher shop next door now transformed into
a Turkish-owned vegetable store and what he describes as organized
immigrant beggars on the streets.
All of it, it seems, is the fault of the EU.
A struggling economy, a cumbersome Brussels-based bureaucracy and
divisions over the Iraq war had already dampened support for the
union when it expanded last May.
The addition of 10 central and eastern European countries, all but
two of them former communist states, created a political entity of
450 million people. The move was hailed as the historic unification
of a continent with a blood-soaked past.
Next in line to join are Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.
Crucial to making this expanded EU work is a new constitution that
streamlines decision-making, creates a full-time EU president and
foreign minister, and allows for a more integrated foreign and
defence policy.
At least 10 countries, including France and Britain, will hold
referendums to approve the new constitutions beginning next year. But
resistance to Turkey’s entry bid has raised concerns of a backlash
that could see those referendums defeated in protest.
A single referendum defeat is enough to veto the reforms and throw
a wrench in Turkey’s entry talks by leaving the EU with a structure
that won’t work for its existing members.
This risk pushed French President Jacques Chirac to demand that
negotiations with Turkey begin only after the referendum on
constitutional reforms he plans for next spring.
Chirac is a strong supporter of membership for Turkey. But 67 per cent
of French citizens, according to a recent poll in Le Figaro newspaper,
oppose it.
The xenophobic National Front party warns of massive Muslim immigration
to France, where 5 million Muslims already live.
More problematic for Chirac is opposition from the leader of his own
political party, former finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy, widely seen
as a likely candidate in the next presidential elections.
On Wednesday, Chirac requested a television interview in which he
insisted that Turkey’s membership is not guaranteed. Turkey must make
“considerable efforts” for the next “10, 15, 20 years” before it can
meet the criteria to join the club, he added.
At any point in negotiations, any European country has the right to
“stop everything” and end all talks, he said. He then stressed that
French citizens will have the final word in a referendum.
As if to demonstrate how demanding France would be, Foreign Minister
Michel Barnier said Turkey will be asked to acknowledge its role in
the mass killing of Armenians in 1915. But he stopped short of making
that a condition for joining.
In Austria, Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel makes clear he prefers
giving Turkey some kind of “special relationship” deal rather than
full membership. He also promises to give Austrians the final say on
Turkey in a referendum.
Schussel heads a right-wing coalition government. But in Austria,
even the opposition socialist party is against Turkey’s membership.
The anti-immigration Freedom Party, once led by Jorg Haider, saw its
support drop to 10 per cent in elections two years ago but remains
an important member of the ruling coalition.
“Austria has no more capacity to take in foreigners,” says Harald
Vilimsky, secretary-general of the party’s Vienna branch.
“If Turkey were to enter the EU, it would be a signal that our door
is open to countries like Morocco, Algeria and even Israel,” he adds.
In this country of 8 million residents, 9 per cent of the population,
close to 750,000 people, did not have Austrian citizenship in 2003. A
further 330,000 people, most of them from the former Yugoslavia and
Turkey, were born outside of Austria but at some point became citizens.
Three weeks ago, the government announced it was lowering the
already-tight immigration quota for non-EU citizens next year from
8,050 to 7,500. Almost all of the places will be reserved for family
reunification and senior managers needed in companies.
After decades of leaving immigrants to find their own means of
integrating, the government began obligating new immigrants 18 months
ago to enrol in German-language courses or risk being deported.
Two weeks ago, life suddenly got tougher for asylum-seekers,
says Elizabeth Freithofer, an official at the non-governmental
Integration House. The government quietly stopped giving social
benefits retroactively, from the day they entered the country, to
asylum seekers accepted as refugees, she adds.
A recent report by a government agency paints a portrait of a host
society that keeps non-native residents on the margins.
Non-European immigrants tend to work in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs,
live in segregated neighbourhoods, and are four times as likely to
suffer “acute poverty” than native Austrians, the report found.
Their children make up 9 per cent of the student population but 25
per cent of those in special education classes, says the report by
the International Centre for Migration Policy Development.
By analyzing survey data, the report concluded that “one-fourth to
one-third of Austrians can be classified as being tendentiously
xenophobic.” Foreigners most often felt xenophobia through a
native-Austrian’s “refusal to greet, to communicate and to take up
any form of contact.”
After so much rejection, it starts cutting both ways.
In M‹dling, a 20-year-old Turk describes how his parents insist he
find a bride in Turkey even though he’s spent all but two years of
his life in Austria.
“I feel like I’m between two worlds,” says Recep Ekilmis.
A teacher at the local high school complains that Turkish parents
don’t value education, and refuse to send their girls to school
outings. Turkish boys, meanwhile, refuse to listen to female teachers,
adds Christine Krone. “If you live in Austria for such a long time
you also have to try to take some of this country’s customs, just to
respect us,” Krone says.
Accommodating voices can still be heard, like shoe-store owner Iris
Lindner, who hopes Turkey’s membership in the EU would “produce more
understanding” between two cultures.
But at the start of this historic process, they’re being drowned out
in an EU with at least as many challenges to overcome as Turkey if
the union of Islam and Christianity is to occur without a clash.’The
Turks have nothing to do with our culture and our way of life.’
‘If Turkey were to enter the EU, it would be a signal that our door
is open to countries like Morocco, Algeria and even Israel.’
–Boundary_(ID_UA2P5imFy955g+6Zh/LBmA)–