/extended/turkey_in_europe/

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Our Opinion

“Turkey in Europe”

By The Editors

As we draw closer to October 3, the start-date for the `final’ course
of negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, the
debate on Turkish membership is intensifying – which, if nothing else,
betrays an odd sort of Western European panic (arguably more racist
than not), given that these negotiations, as everyone knows (most
obviously, the Turks themselves), will last anywhere from one to two
decades (give or take a couple of years). Hardly a day goes by without
some pontification on `Muslim’ Turkey’s attempt to join the
predominantly `Christian’ EU – as if the Union had an official
(super)state religion, or its constitutional model was closer to that
of Charlemagne (or Süleyman the Magnificent) than to those of Kant
and the Framers of the US constitution. For every practical argument
in support of Turkish membership, there seems to be an ideological
argument against it. Every confirmation of concrete progress made by
Turkey to meet EU standards and demands – which, lately, has almost
invariably dictated fundamental Turkish constitutional reform – is
countered by criticism that Ankara is failing to fulfill all of the
so-called Copenhagen criteria (set by the EU in the Danish capital in
1993 for all future candidate countries). It seems that Turkey’s
critics either do not understand how utterly radical the effort to put
the country on a permanent path to democratic government and, above
all, the rule of law is, or they, in fact – and we believe this to be
much closer to the truth – want to see Turkey fail, if only to
validate their own prejudices about the `incompatibility’ between
Turkish society and European `civilization.’

Meanwhile, back in Turkey itself, the country is slowly and painfully
– if not nearly as thoroughly or honestly as needed – facing up to a
series of profound historical issues. Last Sunday marked the ninetieth
anniversary of the Armenian massacres of 1915 – an event that was
officially celebrated in a number of European capitals. These
massacres, which, until recently, were ritualistically (and
incredibly) denied by the Turkish state, have now, as The Economist
reported earlier this month, become the subject of an `unprecedented
debate…in intellectual and political circles and the mainstream
Turkish press.’ On the other hand, just 10 days ago (April 17),
Turkey’s state archives released `research’ declaring that 523,000
Turks were killed by Armenians between 1910 and 1922 (thus obviously
placing the issue of the mass murder of Armenians within the context
of Ottoman civil war rather than genocide). In a similar manner,
recent reports on modest improvements in the government’s treatment of
Turkey’s large Kurdish minority have been followed by news of
intensifying activity by the Turkish army against Kurds. Finally,
perennial assurances by Turkey’s government on the importance it puts
on a strong and close relationship with Greece are just as
persistently belied by the unabating violations of Greek territorial
waters and airspace by the Turkish armed forces.

Anyone who considers all these manifest contradictions to be strategic
machinations, or the typically cynical ploys of a shamelessly cynical
government, is actually misjudging the real conflict within Turkish
society over these fundamental moral and social issues – as well as
related ones, many of them directly linked to the generally awful fate
of minorities in Turkey in the twentieth century. A central reason
that so many Turkish right-wing nationalists and Islamic
fundamentalists are opposed to their country’s accession to the EU
(or, as they call it, to `Turkey’s humiliation’ by Europe) is
precisely because they understand its consequences: Turkey will never
enter Europe until Europe is allowed to enter Turkey. It is hardly
ironic – it is indeed utterly predictable and congruent – that
Europe’s extreme right and its religious fundamentalists are in utter
accord with Turkey’s extreme right and its religious fundamentalists
in opposing Turkish entry into the EU: they all understand the dangers
of such a democratic and liberating expansion to their respective
visions of Europe and the world.

Yet, the Euro-punditocracy and various Europols ceaselessly exploit
Turkey’s contemporary contradictions to test Europeans’ perceptions of
the country and their attitude toward its membership in the EU. But
why? These are the unsurprising `contradictions’ of any nation
wobbling from arbitrary rule to self-government, and they are easily
explicable since they reflect historical and social oppositions, and
political antagonisms, that are amenable to analysis and rational
debate. greekworks.com has repeatedly supported Turkey’s accession to
the European Union, and we continue to do so. The truth is that every
passing month reinforces our considered judgment that Turkey is the
natural extent of European society (and, lest we forget, history), and
that Turkey itself will prove that in the end in the only way
possible: by unalterably committing itself to all those covenants and
democratic self-restrictions that bind a state to protect the civil
and human rights of its citizens, who are, by that fact, free(d) to
participate actively in every aspect of civic and public life.

Indeed, the problem is that nobody takes Turkey seriously enough to
engage with it openly, without subterfuge. The issue, in other words,
as we see it, is not whether one is `for’ Turkey, but the kind of
Turkey that one is for. We believe in a democratic, self-critical,
transparent, conciliatory, secular, and, above all, just
Turkey. greekworks.com will soon be publishing The Mechanism of
Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the
Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul by the eminent
historian, Speros Vryonis, Jr., to commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary of the Septemvriana, the government-organized and -abetted
pogrom that decimated the then-thriving Greek community of Istanbul
and marked the beginning of the end of Istanbul’s Greeks. When we
undertook the publication of this book, we had already editorialized
in support of Turkish entry into the EU. Many people will undoubtedly
see this as the height (or depths) of incoherence. We have always
thought otherwise, and we’ve never believed that there is any
contradiction between reconstituting the historical truth and using
that truth to help a nation reconcile itself not only with its
victims, but with its own history. To put things as simply as we can,
while Turkey’s road to EU membership undoubtedly goes through
Copenhagen, it also goes through Van and Smyrna and Diyarbekir and all
those villages, hamlets, towns, and cities, famous or obscure, where
corpses were left to rot in the sun, churches were turned into
stables, and speaking one’s mother tongue was prima facie `evidence’
of high treason.

In the event, there are Turks – many, many Turks – who believe as we
do. greekworks.com knows from first-hand experience that Turkish
scholars, writers, and journalists are fighting a relentless battle to
recover their nation’s history, and to restore it to their fellow
citizens, regardless of the judgments to be drawn from it (two of
these scholars, among the most engaged, have already embraced
Prof. Vryonis’s book, even before its appearance). In the end, this is
why we support Turkey’s entry into the EU. Some of the issues that
Turkey will have to address on its way to (re)joining Europe are so
deeply embedded in the modern Turkish state’s mythology that it will
be impossible to deal with them without provoking almost pathological
reactions. Yet, the very fact that the Armenian genocide as such is
being debated today in Turkey is both remarkable and highly
important. The same is true for Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish
minority. If one is unfamiliar with the decades-long repression of
Kurdish identity – which essentially goes back to the very foundation
of the Turkish republic and is, therefore, identified with the
national testament of Atatürk himself – one cannot begin to
understand why even the most modest compromise with the Kurds on
minority rights constitutes a previously unthinkable `concession.’

Time is also running out on the military’s defining presence in modern
Turkish political life, and the sooner, the better – for Turkey’s
citizens, above all. The violation of Greek territorial waters and
airspace has for many years constituted a given of Turkey’s military
`presence.’ It is an idiot’s gambit. Which is why no Greek prime
minister has ever been intimidated by it, and why we think that it has
now degenerated into a pathetic (and patent) case of genital
exhibitionism. The continuation of this policy is hardly proof that
the military continues to play a significant role in Turkey’s
political landscape today. It is, quite the opposite, an unambiguous
sign that the military is desperate to `assert’ itself wherever it can
(and regardless of how stupidly it does so) because it knows that its
days are numbered as an entire nation’s judge, jury, and executioner.

Monumental changes are occurring almost daily in Turkey, mostly
because of the European Union, but massive societal change breeds
contradiction – at least until the change has been institutionalized,
and `naturalized,’ and integrated into the everyday reality of a
people. In a few days, the French will vote on the so-called European
constitution. There is a very good chance that they will reject it,
opposed as so many of them are (and, in our opinion, rightly so) to
the currently proposed version. The French, of course, are not the
only ones in the EU who have serious reservations about the Union’s
current form and function, and thus seem, lately, to be of two,
contradictory, minds about where it is headed. Such contradictions,
however, are an inherent dynamic of what has truly become a European
community, and they are a necessary part of constructing the Union’s
framework and future architecture. For the last half century,
contradiction – or, more accurately, creative destruction – has seemed
to be the motivating force behind Europe’s ever-steady union (and
unity). In the same way, the EU should recognize and accept the
extraordinary and very difficult historical process that today
inevitably characterizes Turkey’s efforts to merge its contradictions
with those of Europe.