Europe Should
End Its Planned Marriage with Turkey
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Lightly edited excerpt of article originally published under the
title "Turkey: Lies, Cheap Lies and Cheaper Lies."
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Visiting Minsk, the capital of Belarus, in the first week of November for
the opening of a mosque in a dictatorial country where there are 100,000
Muslims, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Western Europe of "intolerance that
spreads like the plague."
Erdogan described Belarus, which Western countries describe as
a dictatorship, as "a country in which people with different roots
live in peace." In Erdogan's view Belarus is tolerant and peaceful,
but Western Europe is not. Merely because Belarus's dictator, Alexander
Lukashenko, agreed to open a mosque to lure some Turkish investment.
Back in Turkey, things look more Belarusian than Western European, a
culture Erdogan despises. In August, an Istanbul court ordered Asli Erdogan, a prominent author and journalist,
arrested on charges of membership in an armed terror organization. Asli
Erdogan, a peace activist and novelist, worked for Ozgur Gundem, a
pro-Kurdish newspaper. She has remained in prison since her arrest. The
prosecutors demand an aggravated life sentence plus 17.5 years in
jail for her.
How did the novelist "support terror"? This is from the
indictment: "[I]n an understanding of a novelist, [the accused]
portrayed terrorists as citizens in her columns." The prosecutor's
"evidence" is four columns by Asli Erdogan. Mehmet Yilmaz, a
columnist, suggested that Turkish law faculties, after this
indictment, should be closed down and converted into imam schools.
Turkey's incompatibility with the
democratic culture of Western Europe is now too visible to ignore.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crackdown on dissent goes on at full
speed. The opposition pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party announced that
it would suspend its legislative activity after a dozen of its lawmakers,
including its co-chairpersons, were arrested on terror charges.
Meanwhile Erdogan accuses Europe of "abetting
terrorism" by supporting Kurdish militants as the Turkish government
tries to suppress them.
German lawmakers, including leading representatives of the Social
Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party, announced an initiative to
"adopt" their Turkish colleagues after Erdogan's government
rescinded the legal immunity of 53 of 59 Kurdish members of parliament and
arrested dozens of lawmakers, party employees, and journalists.
"In the history of the program, there has never been such an
extraordinary situation where I think we can say that a democracy is
threatening to turn itself into a dictatorship," said German Social Democratic lawmaker and human rights
expert Frank Schwabe. "We have a lot of Turkish opposition
parliamentarians under threat, so we had to apply the parliamentary
sponsorship program in an extraordinary way."
In another speech, Erdogan said that Turkey was ready to abandon its EU
candidacy if "Europe told us they do not want us." ...
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From
left, Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil, Austrian Foreign
Minister Sebastian Kurz, and Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn.
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But the incompatibility between the democratic cultures of Western
Europe and Turkey is now too visible to ignore or tone down in diplomatic
language.
There are signs, albeit weak, in Europe that Islamist Turkey does not
belong to the Old Continent.
Austria's defense minister, Hans Peter Doskozil, told the German daily, Bild, that "Turkey
is on its way to becoming a dictatorship." Past perfect tense instead
of present may have described Turkey's case better, but there is a European
"awakening" on Turkish affairs.
Austria's foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, said: "Over recent years Turkey has moved farther
and farther away from the EU, but our policy has remained the same. That
can't work. What we need are clear consequences."
He is right: "That" cannot work.
Europe's unpleasant game of
pretension with Turkey should end at once.
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A tiny EU state was bolder in calling a cat a cat. Speaking of Erdogan's
increasingly savage crackdown on dissidents, particularly after the failed
coup of July 15, Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said: "These are methods, one must say this
bluntly, that were used during Nazi rule ... And there has been a really,
really bad evolution in Turkey since July that we as the European Union
cannot simply accept."
Europe's unpleasant game of pretension with Turkey should end at once,
with Brussels and Ankara admitting that the planned marriage was an awfully
bad idea from the beginning and that Turkey does not belong to Europe, as
its leader proudly says.
Let Turkey go on its voyage to become another peaceful Belarus.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle
East Forum.
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