Newsweek
Oct 2 2005
The Enemies Within
Not all Turks want to join the European Union.
By Owen Matthews And Sami Kohen
10, 2005 issue – It looked like the bad old days when Turkey’s
universities were hot-beds of political strife. On one side of the
police barriers were dozens of young students, many with their mouths
taped shut to symbolize their support for free speech. On the other
was an older crowd of about 200 ulkucu – mostly mustached
ultranationalists waving Turkish flags and banners. Slogans were
chanted, then abuse; a few missiles sailed through the air. In
between, some rather bewildered international historians scuttled
into a conference hall amid shouts of “Traitors!” Their subject? The
fate of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenians during World War I.
In truth, it wasn’t 1915 that roused such passions last week at
Istanbul’s Bilgi University. The real issue is what kind of country
Turkey will become. There are those who want Turkey to openly examine
its past, rid itself of the legacy of military rule and become truly
European. And there are others, mostly conservative nationalists, who
cling to the past and fear that interference from Brussels will
change their way of life and undermine Turkey’s independence.
It’s no coincidence that the Armenian flap erupted just days before
the start of Turkey’s formal negotiations to join the European Union.
It was, in fact, a well-orchestrated plan, set in motion by a man
named Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer with links to the Nationalist Action
Party, who filed a complaint that a conference on the Armenian issue
would violate Turkish laws on insulting the state and its founder,
Kemal Ataturk. A panel of like-minded judges agreed, and banned it.
“Those at home and abroad who want to obstruct us are making their
last efforts,” railed Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a
leading advocate of joining the EU, when he heard of the court’s
order. Citing the damage the banning would do to Turkey’s image at
such a sensitive moment, Gul and his government quickly circumvented
the ruling, and the conference went ahead – but not without
accomplishing exactly what the obstructionists had hoped.
This was not the only such incident. Over the last two months,
Turkish nationalists and their sympathizers in the judiciary and
state bureaucracy have done their utmost to sabotage Turkey’s efforts
to present itself as a modern European nation. They have succeeded in
lodging criminal charges against a prominent publisher, Ragip
Zarakolu, for allegedly “insulting Turkish identity and the security
forces,” because he was about to publish translations of two American
books on the Armenian massacres. And last month prosecutors filed
similar charges against Turkey’s leading novelist, Orhan Pamuk, for
“insulting the state” after he told a Swiss magazine that “a million
Armenians were killed” in 1915. Though few expect him to be thrown in
jail, the case brought back memories of military rule, when tens of
thousands of intellectuals were imprisoned. “Right or wrong,” says
Pamuk, “don’t people have the right to express their ideas peacefully
in this Turkey?”
All this is fodder for skeptics who say Turkey is not ready to join
Europe. Almost unwittingly, “the rejectionists in Turkey and in the
EU seem to have formed an unholy alliance,” says Dr. Can Baydorol, an
EU expert at Bilgi University. And though Turkey’s ultranationalists
are on the political fringe, there’s a danger that their views could
become mainstream. Gripes about Europe are already common. One is
that the EU is all take and no give: “We have a monster in front of
us,” complains Emin Colasan, a columnist at the popular centrist
daily Hurriyet. “Whatever we give does not satisfy it.” Another is
that the EU does not keep its word. Negotiations for full membership
were supposed to begin without conditions. Now various EU members are
trying to renege. No issue is more touchy than divided Cyprus. Ankara
bent over backward to promote a U.N. unification plan, only to see it
defeated by the Greek Cypriots – who are now using their position
inside the Union to lobby against Turkey.
Two thirds of Turks still want to join the EU, according to a recent
poll by the German Marshall Fund. But that’s down from 73 percent
last year, and EU foot-dragging will push those numbers down further.
And for all their pro-Europeanism, top officials in the ruling
Justice and Development Party say they could well walk away if the EU
continues to erect new obstacles to Turkey’s membership. Even if it
doesn’t, the rigors of accession may well dampen Turks’ enthusiasm.
Complying with Brussels’s 80,000 pages of EU law (covering everything
from air quality to street-food hygiene and the strength of
cigarettes) will not be easy – or popular. All that’s grist for those
who want the project to fail.