PUSHING TURKEY TO THE EAST
Zeynep Gurcanli

New Anatolian, Turkey
April 13 2006

The location of Turkey at the crossroads of Europe and Asia has had
a huge effect on the political issues and direction of the country.

Depending on how international winds are blowing, Ankara is driven
sometimes to the West, and sometimes to the East.

Two years ago, due to the critical decision of the European Union
about whether or not to start membership negotiations with Turkey,
Ankara’s main overarching issue was how to harmonize the country with
the West. But when the talks were granted and Turkey felt secure over
the continuation of its relations with the EU, the Turkish public
immediately shifted its attention to other issues, like the future
of Iraq or a possible American attack against Iran or Syria. During
the latest get-together of Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul with
the Turkish press last week, the main focus of the journalists was a
concrete example of this trend: None of the reporters present used
the opportunity of an open floor to ask questions about relations
between the EU and Turkey. The only EU question came at the very end
of the meeting, as the last issue of interest to ask the country’s
top diplomat, after covering all the other foreign policy and domestic
issues like the future relations of Ankara with Teheran, the rise in
the terrorist activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the
possible effects on Turkey of the failure to establish a government
in Iraq, etc.

The statements and activities of Cabinet members of the ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP) also helped this shift of
attention. Despite his busy schedule full of visits to European
countries during the early years of his premiership, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan seems to have changed his focus to the Eastern hemisphere,
mostly the Muslim part of the globe. When you look at the recent
foreign contact “balance sheet” of the Turkish prime minister, you
can’t help but notice the predominance of meetings with Muslim leaders,
both at home and abroad.

But this fact of lost public interest in EU relations can’t be
explained only by the Turkish government’s policies. The Europeans
also had a big effect in the change of focus of the Turkish people
with their attitudes.

Both Turkish and European politicians “sold” EU membership to the
Turkish public by saying that Turkey is a “civilized society.” All
the legal reforms carried through on the way to this were strictly
related to this aim. And the Turkish public accepted this painful
transformation to attain the goal already put by the founder of
modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to reach the level of modern
civilization.

But while trying to transform themselves for the sake of EU membership,
the signals coming from the West created confusion in the minds of
the Turkish people. The main condition for being included at the
“European Club” was the democratization of the existing regime,
especially the legal system of the country.

But while Turkey shortened its custody period for suspects, Great
Britain changed its law to extend it after last summer’s terror
attacks against the London subway.

One of the main conditions of starting accession talks with the EU
was changing the Turkish Anti-Terror Law. But steps taken by the
Turkish government to democratize its anti-terror law coincided with
the resurgence of terrorist activities of the PKK. The terrorists,
openly getting directives from a TV channel, Roj-TV, broadcasting from
Denmark, an EU country, extended their sphere of activities from the
mountains and rural areas to the boulevards of big cities like Mersin
or Istanbul.

To fulfill another EU condition, Turkey opened the way for television
broadcasts in languages other than Turkish, namely in Kurdish. While
Ankara took this painful step, an interesting debate began in the
Netherlands about banning the use of foreign languages in the public
sphere – and one of the main foreign languages used in the Netherlands
is Turkish, due to the huge Turkish minority at this country.

To please the Europeans on the freedom of expression issue, Turkey
used every legal trick to free famous Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk from
charges about his words on the so-called Armenian genocide. But while
the Justice Ministry bent over backwards to get the suit dropped,
some European countries, like France, attempted to try an offense
against the Turkish consul general in Paris due to texts posted on
the official website of the Turkish Consulate General denying the
genocide accusations of the Armenians against the Ottoman Empire.

All the signals coming from the public clearly show that Turkey is
sliding towards the East. To change this tendency, the Europeans
should help their Turkish friends to take necessary steps to revive
membership enthusiasm within the Turkish public.