ANKARA SHOWS ITS HAND
Christopher Hitchens

Slate.com
8/
April 20 2009

Turkey’s scheming at the Strasbourg summit proves it doesn’t belong
in the European Union.

The most underreported story of the month must surely be the
announcement by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that he
no longer supports the accession of Turkey as a full member of the
European Union. His reasoning was very simple and intelligible,
and it has huge implications for the Barack Obama "make nice" school
of diplomacy.

At a NATO summit in Strasbourg in the first week of April, it had
been considered a formality that the alliance would vote to confirm
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, as its new
secretary-general. But very suddenly, the Turkish delegation
threatened to veto the appointment. The grounds of Turkey’s
opposition were highly significant. Most important, they had to do
with the publication of some cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005
lampooning the Prophet Mohammed. In spite of an organized campaign of
violence and boycott against his country, and in spite of a demand
by a delegation of ambassadors from supposedly "Islamic" states,
Rasmussen consistently maintained that Danish law did not allow
him to interfere with the Danish press. Years later, resentment at
this position led Turkey–which is under its own constitution not an
"Islamic" country–to use the occasion of a NATO meeting to try again
to interfere with the internal affairs of a member state.

The second ground of Turkey’s objection is also worth noting. From
Danish soil a TV station broadcasts in the Kurdish language to Kurds
in Turkey and elsewhere. The government in Ankara, which evidently
believes that all European governments are as untrammeled as itself,
brusquely insists that Denmark do what it would do and simply shut
the transmitter down. Once again unclear on the concepts of the
open society and the rule of law–if the station is sympathetic to
terrorism, as Ankara alleges, there are procedures to be followed–the
Turkish authorities attempt a fiat that simply demands that others
do as they say.

The implications of all this, as Kouchner stated in an interview,
are extremely serious. "I was very shocked by the pressure that
was brought upon us," he said. "Turkey’s evolution in, let’s say, a
more religious direction, towards a less robust secularism, worries
me." This is to put it in the mildest possible way. It’s not just a
matter of a Turkish political party undermining Turkey’s own historic
secularism. It is a question of Turkey trying to impose its Islamist
and chauvinist policies on another European state–and indeed on the
whole NATO alliance. And if this is how it behaves before it has been
admitted to the European Union, has it not invited us all to guess
how it would behave when it had a veto power in those councils?

For contrast, one might mention the example of reunited federal
Germany, easily the strongest economic power in the European Union,
which painstakingly adjusted itself to its neighbors–to the extent of
giving up even the deutsche mark for the euro–and adopted the slogan
"not a Germanized Europe but a Europeanized Germany." With Turkey, it
seems the reverse is the case. Its troops already occupy one-third of
the territory of an EU member (Cyprus), and now it exploits its NATO
membership to try to bully one of the smaller nations with which it
is supposed to be conjoined in a common defense. For good measure,
it continues to be ambiguous about its recognition of the existence
of another non-Turkish people–the Kurds–within its frontiers.

President Obama’s emollient gifts were on display at the NATO summit,
where he eventually persuaded the Turks to withhold their veto on
the appointment of Prime Minister Rasmussen. Accounts differ as to
the price of this deal, but a number of plum jobs and positions now
appear to have been awarded to Turkish nominees. Much more important,
however, the foreign minister of France has reversed his previous
position and has now said: "It’s not for the Americans to decide who
comes into Europe or not. We are in charge in our own house." Put it
like this: Obama’s "quiet diplomacy" has temporarily conciliated the
Turks while perhaps permanently alienating the French and has made it
more, rather than less, likely that the American goal of Turkish EU
membership will now never be reached. And this is the administration
that staked so much on the idea of renewing our credit on the other
side of the Atlantic. This evidently can’t be done by sweetness alone.

On the question of Turkey’s accession, I used to be able to make
either case. Admitting the Turks could lead to the modernization of
the country, whereas exclusion could breed resentment and instability
and even a renewal of pseudo-Ataturkist military rule. On the other
hand, admission would put the frontiers of Europe up against Iran and
Iraq and the volatile Caucasus, so that instead of being a "bridge"
between East and West (to use the unvarying cliché), Turkey would
become a tunnel.

The Strasbourg crisis clarifies the entire picture and should make
us grateful to have been warned in such a timely fashion. Turkey
wants all the privileges of NATO and EU membership but also wishes to
continue occupying Cyprus, denying Kurdish rights, and lying about the
Armenian genocide. On top of this, it now desires to act as a proxy
for Islamization and dares to waste the time of a defensive alliance
in trying to censor the press of another member state! Kouchner was
quite right to speak out as he did, and the Turkish authorities will
now be able to blame the failure of their membership scheme not on
the unsleeping plots of their enemies, but on the belated awakening
of their former friends.