Keeping Turkey out of Europe
More than 22 years after it first applied, Turkey’s entry to the EU is
still blocked by human rights concerns – and subtle prejudice

David Cronin
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday 6 January 2010 13.00 GMT

Istanbul is haunted by a unique type of melancholy, Orhan Pamuk writes
in his wondrous book on Turkey’s largest city. Known as hüzün, "the
black mood shared by millions of people together" is particularly
dense on cold winter mornings "when the sun suddenly falls on the
Bosphorus and the faint vapour almost rises from the surface".

Many Turks must be overcome by a comparable weariness (this one not
mitigated by beautiful scenery) when they hear of their country’s
never-ending quest for membership of the European Union. More than 22
years after Turkey first applied to join, the prospect of its EU entry
seems as remote as ever, even if formal accession talks began in 2005.

With progress in those negotiations already sluggish, primarily
because of unresolved questions over the future of Cyprus, there is
now a new hurdle to be overcome. Bulgaria has indicated it will block
Turkey’s membership unless compensation is paid for the expulsion of
Thracians by Ottoman forces in the early 20th century.

It is only right that Turkey should be required to improve its human
rights record in order to join the union. The aforementioned Pamuk is
among those to have fallen victim to its restrictions on free speech;
the Nobel laureate was prosecuted over a 2005 interview in which he
discussed the genocide perpetrated by Ottoman forces against 1.5m
Armenians nine decades earlier. While charges against him were
eventually erased on a technicality and while important gestures of
friendship towards Armenia have been made by the present Turkish
leadership, the Ankara authorities continue to muffle voices of
dissent. This has been illustrated by a ruling from the Turkish
constitutional court last month, banning the Kurdish Democratic
Society party.

Such curbs on expression, however, have nothing to do with the
antipathy directed at Turkey by Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Angela
Merkel in Germany. Rather, their opposition to Turkey’s bid for EU
membership is explained by what a columnist in the Turkish newspaper
Hürriyet accurately described as "basic facts not pronounced openly"
on Monday. "Turkey is a Muslim country," Mehmet Ali Birand wrote. "And
Europe is not ready yet to accept a Muslim country in the EU."

This anti-Turkish bias is tantamount to racism. Even though the EU
institutions officially claim to cherish diversity, there is a tacit
agreement among some of their most powerful leaders that the union
must remain predominantly Christian. Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s new
president, is one of the few to have voiced this desire in a public
forum (and that was long before his recent elevation in status). "The
universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also
fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of
a large Islamic country such as Turkey," he told a meeting at the
Belgian parliament in 2004.

As a Christian myself (albeit not a devout one), I am not sure what
teachings of the poor Nazarene that Van Rompuy professes to follow
provide a justification for slamming the door on adherents to another
faith. If a golf club adopted a similar policy of exclusion, there is
a strong likelihood it would be sued for breaching equality laws. The
EU is nominally a club of democracies; why is it allowed to
discriminate on religious grounds?