Turkey and the hypocrisies of Europe
By Fred Halliday
Open Democracy, UK
Dec 16 2004
Fred Halliday dissects four underlying arguments against Turkey’s
admission to the European Union – and finds them all wanting.
The European Union is attempting to create common European
institutions and policy: a worthy and desirable project, if a pale
reflection of the original, liberal-internationalist aims of the
1950s. It has agreed two momentous decisions in 2004: the inclusion
of ten new member-states, and the foundation of its legal identity
embodied in a new constitution. Now, at a summit in Brussels on 16-17
December 2004, it faces a third: whether to open negotiations with
Turkey that will lead to that country’s membership of the European
Union.
There are, however, few sights so undignified as that of European
states in a condition of moral indignation, and the unseemly debate
over this major strategic issue has not just divided but shamed many
Europeans. While some states – led by the United Kingdom and Spain –
wish to proceed with serious negotiations with Turkey, and others
take a more ambiguous or even hostile stance, the argument reveals
more about the European “community” than about the Turkey it has been
preparing to judge.
Europe’s moral foundations
A rhetorical device favoured by opponents of Turkish entry is to
affirm the “Christian” (or “Judaeo-Christian”) foundations of Europe.
The former French president, Giscard d’Estaing; the current Italian
prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi; the European Union commissioner
for the internal market, Fritz Bolkestein; leaders of the opposition
CDU in Germany, Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber – are just some of
those who invoke this alleged religious-historic identity.
The argument ignores three basic realities. First, the cultural,
political and linguistic origins of European lie in Greece and Rome,
and long predate Christianity (the word “democracy” is found nowhere
in the Bible). Moreover, Christianity and Judaism are in their origin
not European at all, but – itself a testament to 2,000 years of
interaction – religions that originated and have long flourished in
the middle east.
Second, Muslim empires – and in particular the Ottoman, precursor of
the Turks – have a record of historic tolerance of Jews and other
minorities that (while open to considerable criticism) is far
superior to that of Christian Europe. Indeed, the permanent Jewish
population of around 50,000 in modern Turkey, descendants of those
expelled by Christian Spain in 1492, is testimony to one of the best
records of toleration of Jews of any country.
Third, the contemporary culture of Europe is not in any meaningful
sense Christian; it is, rather, secular in tone and content if not
actually hostile to religion.
The prominent European political figures cited above may concede
these points, but then shift the argument to the defence of certain
basic European principles like equality between men and women. Yet
here, no one examining the record of the Vatican, for example – from
its 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae to the letter to Catholic bishops
on 1 August 2004 and its catastrophic policy on contraception and
Aids – can believe that this variant of Christianity is compatible
with core modern, human, values.
History’s shadow
Many opponents of Turkish entry to the European Union question
whether Turkey (or Islam) is part of Europe. The truth is that in
terms of its cultural and religious presence Islam has been integral
to Europe for over 1,000 years – including 800 years in Spain and at
least 600 years in the Balkans and Russia.
What is true of religion is equally so for power politics: the
Ottoman empire was a component of the European great-power system,
variously allied with Britain and France (against Russia in the
Crimean war of 1853-56) and with Germany (against Britain and France
in the first world war).
Even more important, in the past century Europe has been unable to
insulate itself from the process of politics in Turkey itself. Turkey
played the key role in detonating the explosion of 1914 – one that
destroyed the old European order and led to the European civil war of
1914-1991 from which we are just emerging. Its precedent lay in a
fundamental event of modern European and middle-eastern history, the
Young Turk revolution of 1908. This event led to the Balkan wars of
1911-1913, from which emerged the radical Serbian nationalism that
killed Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914.
This is a reminder that the modern politics of Europe are
inextricably shaped not by the fantasies of Brussels – capital of a
country that has pioneered a radical form of ethnic-political
separatism – but by the condition of the middle east. There are many
illustrations of the point: the impact of the Algerian war on France
in the late 1950s, of Afghanistan on the Soviet Union in the 1980s,
and of Morocco on Spain in the 1920s and again on 11 March 2003.
Whether or not the EU opens the way to Turkish membership, intimate
bonds tie Europe to events in its neighbouring region.
Does Turkey qualify?
The discussion of Turkish membership of the European Union is
dominated by the legal and constitutional requirements Turkey is
expected to meet in order to qualify. Where these reflect progress in
implementing the rule of law, ending torture, ensuring the rights of
women, and creating a reasonable federal solution to the Kurdish
question, then – as the Turkish writer Soli Özel has written – many
Turks welcome the changes.
The Turkish state’s deficiencies over human rights and the rule of
law explain its civil society’s enthusiasm about Europe. This civil
society wants to accelerate a democratic process in the country.
Europe should help it – but Europe (witness Berlusconi’s great escape
from corruption charges and the illegalities of party funding in
France) has little moral authority to lecture the world about
political standards.
Indeed, it could be said that in key respects Turkey is too European,
in that it shares with France a rigid and (for human rights)
lamentable concept of state secularism. The French proclaim
themselves defenders of secularism as if their 1905 legislation had
patented the idea, but forget that clothing bans (as in the country’s
new law forbidding the wearing of religious apparel in schools) are
valid under international law only if they relate directly to
national security – certainly not the case over the hijab. There is
only one consistent, universalist and secular position on the wearing
of religious headwear – for Muslims, Catholic nuns, or Orthodox
Jewish haredim alike: to be against it, but to defend the right to
wear it.
The argument over whether Turkey qualifies for the European Union
often spills over into other important areas: Cyprus and the Armenian
genocide.
The Cyprus question remains unresolved but to hold Turkey of all
countries responsible for the current impasse is grotesque. Turkey is
certainly responsible for abuses in the years after the island’s
independence in 1960, but its main agonies lie in the conflict and
partition of 1974, when Greek Cypriot nationalists helped by Athens
organised an illegal coup that provoked a Turkish invasion. It is
that intransigent and manipulative Greek nationalism which in early
2004 blocked a reasonable settlement proposed, after lengthy
negotiations, by Kofi Annan. The Turks are right to say that the
United Nations, not the European Union, must find a solution to
Cyprus.
The issue of the Armenian genocide is one that Turkish nationalism
has refused to acknowledge. The best way to proceed in resolving it
is not through inter-state confrontation but to work with those
Turkish historians and writers who are prepared to recognise what
happened on developing a common, and documented, account of the
events of 1915.
A focus on the genocide serves, moreover, to absolve Europe
(including Russia and Turkey itself) from a comparably grave injury
to the Armenians – their confinement in the aftermath of 1918 to a
landlocked mini-state around Yerevan. In any case, Europe cannot
easily make official recognition of the Armenian genocide a condition
of Turkish entry without exposing its own hypocrisy: Germany’s record
in Namibia in 1904 and Europe in the 1940s, Italy’s in Libya after
1911, Belgium’s in the Congo in the 1900s, Spain’s in the Americas
and Portugal’s in Africa after 1500, are sufficient evidence.
A modicum of post-imperial self-criticism – including the Turks as
inheritors of the Ottoman empire – is in order here. This would
encompass two further issues that are currently less discussed than
Cyprus or Armenia: Kurdish rights in Turkey, and Turkey’s role in the
Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.
A question of culture
All sides in the debate over Turkey and the European Union seem to
want to invoke a fixed – “essential” or “true” – version of European
culture to which Turks, and Muslim immigrants in general, should
adhere. Proponents of Turkish entry see this culture as open and
cosmopolitan; opponents see it (or its Leitkultur (“leading
culture”), as espoused by the CDU) as incompatible with Islam.
The argument that every society and political system needs a
Leitkultur is not in itself invalid, and most people in Turkey would
agree with its presupposition. What is in question is how this
Leitkultur is defined. European culture is no more frozen in time
than are Europe’s external frontiers; rather, it is a set of
possibilities that modern society and politics can define. All
cultures (including Muslim ones) can be open or closed, and all can
and do change.
European arrogance over Turkey is a definite barrier to the deeper
opening that the 17 December decision should register. This is
evident too in the comprehensive ignorance of Turkey among many of
Europe’s politicians, commentators and intellectuals. How many
pontificating voices know the basic facts of Ottoman and Turkish
history, including repeated violations inflicted by the country’s
Christian neighbours over the last three centuries, culminating in
the attempted subjugation of the country by Britain, France and Italy
after the first world war? How many know the tiles of Iznik, the
films of Yilmaz Güney and Handan Ipekci, the poems of Nazim Hikmet
and Orhan Veli Kanik, the novels of Yasar Kemal and Orhan Pamuk – or
even the joys of Imam Bayildi? Such historical and knowledge might
teach a lot about politics also.
In short, Europe’s decision over Turkey – and the wider issues of
coexistence, multiculturalism and different values it signifies – is
not for Turkish citizens and Turkish immigrants to learn German or
English (which they or their children will anyway) but for Europeans
to learn Turkish – and perhaps eat köfte at least once a week. The
more Turks and Europeans mix and mingle, the more the truths of their
shared past, present, and future will emerge.
–Boundary_(ID_ZAhjc4qUOpNtgt6kXzkL7g)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress