Spiegel Online, Germany
Sept 22 2006

Positive Signs from Turkey?

Turkish author Elif Shafak was acquitted on Thursday by an Istanbul
court on charges of "insulting Turkishness." A good move given that a
progress report on Turkey’s readiness to join the EU is due out soon.

AP
Turkish author Elif Shafak was acquitted on charges of "insulting
Turkishness" on Thursday.
The charge is not one you’d see in most European Union countries:
"Insulting Turkishness," it is called. But that’s what Turkish
novelist Elif Shafak, one of the EU aspirant’s most popular writers,
had been charged with. On Thursday, though, an Istanbul court
acquitted Shafak following a one-and-a-half hour session, concluding
that she had committed no crime.

The case had drawn a lot of attention from the EU and has highlighted
Turkey’s difficult road to membership. The 25-member club, which
appears set to accept Romania and Bulgaria in January, has repeatedly
criticized elements of Turkish law such as the one that provided the
basis for the charges against Shafek. A report on Turkey’s progress
toward joining the EU will be presented in mid-October.

While Turkish nationalists protesting outside the court building had
to be contained by riot police after the verdict was announced, many
in Turkey have expressed relief over the verdict. "We want a country
where people are not interrogated because of their novels," said Muge
Sokmen, Shafak’s publisher, according to the Associated Press. The AP
also quotes Shafak’s husband Eyup Can as saying that the trial is "a
shame not just for her but for Turkey."

Even if the trial did not receive much coverage in the German press,
the verdict had a few of Friday’s commentators heading for their
keyboards. An editorial in the center-left daily Berliner Zeitung
notes with satisfaction that "the court in Istanbul needed only a few
minutes to acquit the Turkish writer Elif Shafak," stressing that the
trial was "absurd" in so far as the accusations were not based on
statements made by Shafak "in essays or on discussion panels," but
rather on words uttered by the protagonist in her new novel. "It’s a
good sign that the court reached a decision so quickly," the
commentator notes. She immediately adds, however, that Turkey
shouldn’t get too smug: What is ultimately needed is for the Turkish
government to eliminate the law that made the trial possible in the
first place. The law in question, paragraph 301 of the Turkish penal
code, has a history of being used to silence debate over "Turkey’s
attempted extermination of the Armenians" during the years before the
First World War, the commentator points out. Such legally sanctioned
censorship is incompatible with EU membership. "The European Union
has rightly demanded changes to the Turkish penal code," the piece
concludes.

The trial against Shafak comes at a time when many Westerners are
convinced that predominantly Muslim countries are bastions of
religious fanaticism and intolerance. Notwithstanding the recurring
calls for a "dialogue with Islam," many seem already to have made up
their minds that such a dialogue cannot be conducted in a fruitful
way. This, in any case, is the position of a commentary in Friday’s
center-right daily Die Welt– one that takes a look back at the
Muslim outrage over the comments on Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI
last weekend. The much-invoked "dialogue with Islam," the paper
writes, is nothing but a "farce." The paper claims that the words "We
need to show more respect for Islam" have become a catchphrase in the
West and that this formula is always used when "criticism of Islam
triggers Islam’s violent reflexes." The "feelings" of Muslims — the
commentator himself places the word in quotation marks — are
"nothing but a modern form of religious dictatorship," the piece
argues. Islam is compared by the commentator to medieval
Christianity. "Just as, during the Christian Middle Ages, only church
members were considered human, orthodox Islam considers no one human
but those who are Muslim," the paper says. The commentator then
claims that "strongly religious Muslims" are in fact nothing but
"mental clones" and victims of "indoctrination." After waxing
eloquent on Islam’s "problematic history" and accusing Muslims of
"refusing to confront it," he concludes that "we can expect a
renaissance of religious dictatorship in which every so-called
prejudice and every putative lack of respect is responded to with
threats and attacks."

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Left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung warns against precisely this kind of
rhetoric and makes a plea against painting all Muslims with the same
broad brush. After all, even if there has been a resurgence of faith
in the Muslim world since September 11, 2001, they’re not all
fundamentalist, the paper writes. "The majority of … Muslims have
not discovered a blueprint for bombs in the Koran," the commentator
writes, "but rather a manual on how to lead a better life." Many
young Muslims have found ways of reconciling their religion with
Western popular culture. Instead of treating "reborn Muslims" as if
they were all bigots and potential terrorists, Europeans need to
understand that "the struggle is not one between religious faith and
the tradition of the Western Enlightenment, but one between
terrorists and their enemies."

— Max Henninger, 12:30 p.m., CET

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Hungarian Unrest Raises Questions About The EU’s Future

An estimated 10,000 people gathered outside the Hungarian parliament
on Thursday in what became the fifth consecutive night of protests
prompted by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s admission that he had
lied to voters about the catastrophic state of the Hungarian economy.
The protests followed the example of those on Wednesday night by
being largely peaceful. The chaos and street battles witnessed in
Budapest earlier in the week appear to have died down for good.

But aside from the civil unrest it has prompted in Hungary,
Gyurcsany’s admission that he "lied morning, evening and night" also
raises questions about the pressures that European Union membership
entails for new member states from Eastern Europe. Hungary was one of
10 states to join the EU on May 1, 2004 — two more Eastern European
countries, Bulgaria and Romania, look set to join the club in a
little over three months. A number of commentators are scratching
their heads about Europe’s future as a result.

"Budapest is burning," the center-left daily Suddeutsche Zeitung
observes, adding that "these flames are not just a symbol of public
outrage — the unrest also shows that the road ahead for the EU’s
prospective member states is more painful than expected." In other
words, similar scenes are to be expected in Bulgaria and Romania:
"The expansion of the EU will lead to further crises. That’s why it
would be a good idea not to force the entry of Bulgaria and Romania
into the EU," the paper says. In the 1990s, the paper recalls, the
idea was that new members would reform themselves under EU
supervision — "a risky game," the commentator insists. A tough love
approach might be better. Indeed, the paper calls for "applying
especially strict standards to Bulgaria and Romania," forcing them to
battle their problems of "corruption and organized crime" by
"tightening the thumbscrews." Such a policy may seem harsh, and
"Bulgarians and Rumanians may find it unfair," but the EU has "no
other choice," the paper concludes.

— Max Henninger, 14:10 p.m., CET
From: Baghdasarian