THE EUROPEAN UNION STILL ELUDES A TURKEY CULTURALLY APART
Handan T. Satiroglu
World Politics Review
Aug 30 2007
French President Nicolas Sarkozy once made headlines with the remark,
"If Turkey were Europe, we would know it." In July, European
Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso gave voice to similar
European sentiments in a Greek newspaper interview: "Let’s be honest,"
he said, "Turkey is not ready to become an EU member and the EU is
not ready to accept Turkey as a member. Neither tomorrow, nor the
next day." Despite the overwhelmingly positive European response to
Erdogan’s recent triumph at the polls, and calls to revamp Turkey’s
political and economic reforms by European leaders, one fact remains
clear: Turkey’s membership in the EU is as elusive as ever.
Would a Muslim nation of 72 million joining the EU serve to create a
dichotomy of two distinct civilizations? Turkey’s membership hinges
upon introducing an array of political reforms in the areas of civil
rights, free speech, and gender equality, as well as changes in its
acceptance of general European values. Starkly different in a number
of social and political arenas, Turkey stands worlds apart from Europe.
Freedom of Speech and Press
As a country aspiring to become part of the EU, Turkey is obliged
to observe laws spelled out by the Charter of Fundamental Rights
of the European Union. But as Josh Calder, an analyst at Social
Technologies, a Washington, D.C.-based forecasting firm, points out,
"Turkey and Western Europe exist in different eras," when it comes
to civil liberties.
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Battle for Turkey’s Future More by Handan T. Satiroglu Indeed, if
the defining line between a civilized and uncivilized nation is the
degree to which it accords freedom of speech to its citizens, then
Turkey fares poorly. Since shortly before the establishment of modern
day Turkey in 1923, one journalist has been assassinated on average
every 1.5 years. According to a report released earlier this year by
the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists, in the past 15
years alone, 18 journalists have been murdered in Turkey for merely
voicing an opinion contradicting the status quo. Furthermore, up until
the 1990s, only China had more "prisoners of thought" than Turkey.
Although there are no reliable government-issued statistics on the
number of unfolding prosecutions for speech-related offenses, the
most recent quarterly report of Istanbul-based media monitoring news
service Bianet reveals that 132 individuals and seven media organs
had trial hearings from May to June in 2007. Twelve of these pending
cases involve charges brought under the infamous Turkish penal code
article 301, making it a crime to insult "Turkishness."
The penal code was thrust into the international spotlight with the
January murder of Armenian-Turkish writer Hrant Dink. The case of Dink
illustrated with harsh clarity the potentially deadly consequences
of speech-related prosecutions.
Women in Politics
Standing before the 1935 meeting of the International Women’s Congress,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic, dared to declare in
Istanbul: "I am convinced that the exercise of social and political
rights by women is necessary for mankind’s happiness and pride. You
can rest assured that Turkish women together with [the] world’s women
will work towards world peace and security."
Fast forward to 2007, and politics in Ankara is still a man’s game.
Although Turkish women were granted the right to vote in 1934, well
before European countries such as Switzerland, France, and Belgium,
efforts to involve women equally in politics have since stalled. The
average level of women’s representation at the parliamentary level
has hovered around 2-4 percent since 1935, and recently shot up to
10 percent with the July elections. According to critics, this small
increase in women’s participation is a calculated tactic to refute
criticisms of the winning party’s Islamic agenda. Especially telling of
the general attitude toward women in Turkish politics are the recent
statements of Devlet Bahceli, head of the secular nationalist party
Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (MHP), who instructed his MPs to respect
the women parliamentarians, and "avoid major confrontations with them."
By comparison, Europe’s Nordic countries boast female representation
rates of 40 percent or more, while in Bulgaria and Poland, relative
newcomers to the EU, women constitute 22 percent of the parliament.
Many European countries, including Spain, Germany, France, and England,
have implemented quota systems to ensure women’s representation in
elected bodies. Calls to implement a similar quota system in Turkey
have thus far gone ignored by the government.
Undoubtedly, Turkish women enjoy greater freedoms than those in
the vast majority of Muslim countries, including the right to vote,
the right to divorce, and the right of abortion. Yet, by current EU
standards, Turkey clearly lags behind.
American-Style Religiosity
Then there is the issue many Europeans consider most emblematic of
Europe — aversion to religion. The sharp decline in church attendance
is often seen as testament to secularization’s grip on the European
public sentiment. A 2004 Gallup poll found that just 15 percent of
Europeans, compared with 44 percent of Americans, attend a place of
worship weekly, and only 21 percent of Europeans say religion is "very
important" to them. And, despite last minute campaigning by Poland,
Italy, and Ireland, the EU constitution omits any mention of God.
By contrast — as in the United States — religiosity is fully
embraced in Turkey. In an Angus Reid Global Monitor poll in 2006,
51 percent of Turks — and a surprising 63 percent of Americans —
defended the importance of religion. Interestingly, in a recent
survey of public acceptance of the Darwinian theory of evolution,
Turkey also came in last, just behind the United States. According to
Mustafa Akyol, a prolific and pious author based in Istanbul, "Turkey
is closer to the United States than it is to Europe in many respects —
most notably, the role of religion in public life." He adds that "many
Turkish conservatives find the spirit of a ‘nation under God’ much more
appealing than the bluntly secular European ethos." So appealing that
Turks in 750 different mosques in the capital city of Ankara, which
is suffering from a severe water shortage, prayed for rain this month.
Europeans are fearful of Turkey’s Islamic influence on the European
social policy and culture. Recent surveys indicate that only 35
percent of Europeans favor Turkey’s membership in the EU. Turkish
membership would multiply the number of Muslims living in Europe more
than five-fold, to an estimated 90 million.
Freedom of press and speech and attitudes toward women and religion
in the public domain reflect an overall problem for Turkey: "When
it comes to values and general outlook on the world, Turkey and
Western Europe are decades apart," says Calder. "This phenomenon,
which might be called dyschronicity, is even more acute if you compare
certain parts of Europe to Turkey’s Anatolian heartland: the time-gap
between Sweden and some rural areas of Turkey is something like three
or four centuries."
Kemal Ataturk, who died in 1938, conceived Turkey’s destiny as a
modern European state, but its lagging social and political reforms
and cultural disposition continue to cast a dark shadow over the
41-year-old EU-Turkey courtship. Calder takes this line of thought to
a harsh conclusion: "The European Union has come to see itself as a
community of values. Turkey may be qualified for the Europe of 1950,
but Europeans have progressed to other values, and are alarmed by the
perceived gap." Turkey’s entry into the EU is still an elusive dream.
Handan T. Satiroglu is a sociologist and writer who divides her time
between the United States and Europe.
Photo: EU President Jose Manuel Barroso and Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Brussels, Dec. 12, 2004 (European Commission)
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