THE "TURKISH QUESTION" REMAINS
By Allen Wolfe
City on a Hill Press, CA
May 31 2007
In early May, the streets of Istanbul were filled with tens of
thousands of protestors. The walkways were flooded with red as Turkish
secularists waved their country’s flag. This was the third largest
secularist protest in a month that contested the Republic’s religious
fanaticism. Carrying portraits of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder
of modern day Turkey, protestors sent a message to the government
that they say is upholding increasingly more Islamic values. Mass
mobilization of Turks from rural areas into the secularist urban
centers has raised concern among the predominantly secularist citizens
that already occupy most large cities. They are concerned that lack
of religious freedom in Turkey is the reason why the country was
recently excluded from the European Union (EU).
Turkey formally applied for admission into the European Community
on April 14, 1987, but was officially recognized as a candidate for
accession on December 12, 1999. But the elongated accession process
for the Muslim based country has been a point of conflict. Some see
the delay as the EU’s reluctance to allow a country with a 99 percent
Muslim citizenship into their predominately Christian association.
Others refer to the fact that Turkey has denied the Armenian genocide
-estimated at 1,500,000 deaths – that was due to religious fanaticism.
In addition to the recent protests in Istanbul, the murders of three
Christian missionaries in the east of Turkey add to the tale of
religious intolerance that is hard to ignore and far from over.
As to of the recent deaths of Christian missionaries in east Turkey,
Hans A.H.C. de Wit, country representative of Turkey/Greece for the
Public Relations sector of Maussen Communications, cites European
public opinion as a possible reason for why Turkey has not been
admitted to the EU.
De Wit offered the following hypothetical response the EU may have
toward Turkish membership: "If [the Turkish government] can not
even protect a tiny minority of less than one percent of all kinds
of other faiths, while we [Europeans] have to tolerate a minority
up to 10 percent of Muslims in Europe, how can we accept them into
our association?"
De Wit said that the "if we can why can’t they?" mindset is also
a common sentiment among Europeans in regard to the problem with
religious tolerance and Turkish accession to the EU. He also suggested
that Turkey’s accession is being delayed because of their history of
denying the Armenian genocide and refusing to recognize the Republic
of Cyprus as a sovereign state. If, as a country, "they [the Turkish
government] cannot accept the fact that great atrocities have been
committed in the name of religion in the past, then how can religious
freedom be achieved in the future?," de Wit asked.
The Armenian Question
During the formation of the modern Turkish nation-state, from 1919 to
1923, there were certain questionable wartime actions surrounding the
removal of Greeks and Armenians from Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an
army official who founded Republic of Turkey, had the task of creating
a unified Turkey at a time when the country was ethnically diverse.
University of California, Santa Cruz Sociology Professor Paul Lubeck
said, "Mustafa Kemal led a movement for a modern secularized state.
He literally imported the civil code of Switzerland [in their removal
of the Greeks and Armenians]." Lubeck is also the Director of the
Global Information Internship program and the Center for Global,
International and Regional Studies at the University of California,
Santa Cruz.
Lubeck, having done extensive research on Turkey, attributes Turkey’s
actions to the western European tactics of ethnic cleansing they
adopted when forming their republic.
"They used a western European script and notions of ethnic purity
and nationalism," he said, adding that the very notion of nationalism
"is in essence a western European invention that was exported around
the world."
In this sense, it was the creation of the nation-state that elicited
the removal of the Armenians and the Greeks from the area. However,
people still debate whether or not it was in fact genocide. The Turks
do not use the "dreaded ‘G’ word" for many reasons: to associate the
removal of ethnic groups from the area through genocide is almost to
equate Turkish identity with genocide, according to Gabriel Brahm,
UCSC professor of American Studies.
"It would mean putting what is thought of as the moment of
ultimate Turkish pride [the formation of the state by Kemal], into a
categorization that is detrimental to Turkish identity," said Brahm,
thinking back on his days of teaching in Ankara.
He said that for the Turks to even theoretically admit to genocide
would potentially put the formation of the republic into question.
"It isn’t just a horrible crime that the country committed; it was
a crime they committed in order to create the nation-state," Brahm
said. "[It was, in a sense] a ‘necessary crime,’ [and] I put that
in quotation marks. It was required that it happen by any means in
order to be able to imagine Turkey as an ethnically unified nation,
in a region that was actually ethnically diverse."
According to Lubeck, the republic of Turkey, at its formation in the
1920’s, used western European tactics of modernization and administered
a "revolution from above." A "political class that realized the
threat from the west and said we must modernize or else we are going
to be conquered" governed the new nation-state. It was this western
European assimilation, and in turn the removal of Armenians and Greeks
from the area, that brought about the main controversy surrounding
Turkey’s EU accession.
Brahm summed up the Armenian question with an anecdote about a Turkish
friend trying to talk to her father about that period of Turkish
history. Refusing to admit what happened in the past, the father
stubbornly stated, "it never happened, there was no genocide and if
there wouldn’t have been this genocide, there would be no Turkey."
What About Cyprus?
According to to Murat Ersoy, Counselor to the Turkish Embassy in
Washington, D.C., another problem Turkey has to face is the fact that
the country does not formally recognize the Republic of Cyprus.
"One of the more visible issues in that regard is Cyprus," Ersoy said.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was created in the
northern part of the island of Cyprus following Turkish invasion
in 1974. The TRNC declared its independence in 1983, however Turkey
remains the only country to recognize the TRNC as a sovereign state.
Turkey did not recognize the Republic of Cyprus as a separate country
until 2004 when Cyprus was accepted into the EU and remains the only
country not to respect the sovereignty and independence of Cyprus.
In terms of the conflict with Cyprus hindering Turkey’s chances of
getting into the EU, Professor Lubeck said, "they are going to have
to settle that before they are let into the EU." There are forces,
from both sides, aggravating a smooth transition, but according to
Lubeck the "hard-line nationalists are using the Cypriot issue to
stir up nationalism to strengthen their position within Turkey and
also to reduce the likelihood of entry into the EU."
Turkey, contrary to its beliefs, has let the situation permeate and
grow. Ersoy explained how the Turkish government "allowed the issue
to become an impediment regarding the Turkish EU membership" by not
dealing with the topic at the appropriate time.
According to a US diplomat in Ankara, the capitol of Turkey, there
will be no maintaining of relationships between the EU and Turkey
until they learn to accept the past for what it was and move on with
the acceptance of the Armenian question and Cyprus.
The U.S. diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, made it clear
that the EU "will not officially open negotiations on those chapters
until Turkey implements the ‘Ankara Protocol’ which requires Turkey
to recognize Cyprus as an EU member," which can be done by opening up
the sea and airports to the Republic of Cyprus for traffic and trade.
The diplomat said that when Turkey does not allow trade in Cyprus
they step on many economic toes in Europe.
Groups like the influential Christian Democratic Union (the CDU) of
Germany, of which Chancellor Merkel of the EU is a dominant member,
believe Turkey should not be a part of the EU. Having elicited the
Armenian genocide and the recent slaughter of Christian missionaries
in Turkey, Ronald Pofalla, General Secretary of the CDU, believes
there is abundant religious intolerance in the region.
"The CDU holds the opinion that Turkey should not become a member
state of the EU," he said.
Although Turkey is not opening its ports to the unrecognized nation
of Cyprus, the main emphasis of EU debate appears to be the religious
intolerance of Turkey, past and present. According to Pofalla and the
CDU, "the recent killings of Christians [in east Turkey] show again
that freedom of religion is not respected in Turkey."
Issues of human rights and religious tolerance are only a few of the
issues that Turkey must comply with the standards the EU has created
for admission.
EU Standards
Even with major reforms in the Cyprus dilemma, religion and the
freedom of expression in Turkey are still major issues in the
accession process.
"The EU will not accept Turkey as a member until it harmonizes all its
laws," said the U.S. diplomat in Ankara, citing freedom of religion and
expression as EU standards all other member countries have had to meet.
"[If they] want to join the EU they have to meet European standards
of human rights and European standards of human rights would allow
religious parties, much like the Christian Democrats of Germany," said
Lubeck about the immediacy of Turkey’s continued liberalization process
as being a step in the right direction. He spoke of out-of-control
police and the Turkish army [more like a political party] as other
ways that Turkey continues "to commit enormous human rights abuses."
Ersoy believes the Turkish people have lost faith in the EU and what
they believe to be their exclusive admittance policy.
"Nowadays, Turkish people think that the EU does not treat Turkey
equally," said Ersoy. While he does note recent lack of Turkish
enthusiasm for the EU, he also sees other factors going into the
distorted accession process.
"There have been, and still are, attempts by some members of the
EU to misrepresent the negotiation process on the basis of certain
political excuses," Ersoy said.
Brahm, however, believes the accession of Turkey to the EU is probable,
especially because of the country’s recent attempts at adhering to
the union’s policies.
"It could happen," he said. "There have been a lot of reforms recently
because of the EU pressure."
He believes that in order for Turkey to see a future in the EU, it
must own up to the past and make certain changes. Brahm said that
if Turkey’s accession comes about and "they do so in part because of
many other reformations that are needed, like admitting the genocide,
it is a demon they are going to have to face."
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
