Turkey: The impossible EU dream Asia Times Online

October 19, 2002

By K Gajendra Singh

In early October, Turkey commuted to life imprisonment the death sentence passed on Marxist Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, now in a high security Turkish prison, as another step to bring the country closer to the Europe Union's human rights norms in its 40-year westward journey to enter Europe.

But in the European Commission's 1,000 page annual report, released on October 9, Turkey was not even given a date to commence negotiations for membership, while 10 other aspiring countries will begin talks for entry in 2004. These are Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Malta. In addition, the EC accepted the aspirations of Romania and Bulgaria to join in 2007. These recommendations are most likely to be endorsed at the December EU summit in Copenhagen.

The snub to Ankara comes at a sensitive juncture, as Turkey goes to the polls on November 3, and the issue of the EU has become a key and divisive electoral one which might adversely affect pro-Europe and secular groups and parties, and the matter has already created tension between Ankara and Brussels.

Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, leader of the West-leaning Motherland Party (ANAP- Anavatan Party), one of the three coalition partners in the government, said that the heads of government meeting in Copenhagen might ignore the commission's assessment and announce a starting date for Turkey. He added that Turkey had embarked on an ambitious program to meet the EU's preconditions for membership, including more rights for its Kurdish minority and the abolition of the death penalty.

But Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel was blunt in saying that a failure to get a date would have "a very negative effect on Turkish public opinion". President Ahmet Sezer, speaking in Istanbul on October 11, said, "Reforms ratified by Turkey are the most important reforms in Turkish history. Turkey has a strong will to continue reforms and to implement them." He also mentioned that he had sent a letter to the president of the EC, Romano Prodi, with the hope that the EU would persuade member countries to make the political decision in Copenhagen to accommodate Turkey. The country, he said, had demonstrated its will to access the EU, and expected the EU to show a similar will. In its report, the EC urged Turkey to do more in the human rights field and increase civilian control over the military.

In a remarkable show of unanimity, despite opposition from coalition partner National Action Party (MHP), the Turkish parliament, after marathon sittings, in August passed a clutch of constitutional amendments to fulfill many of the conditions required for entry into the EU. Turkey has been an associate member since 1963, and signed a Customs Union agreement with EU in 1996. But it only became a formal candidate in 1999.

The coalition government is headed by a seriously ill Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of the Democratic Left Party (DSP), and includes the MHP, led by Devlet Bahceli, and Yilmaz's ANAP. The coalition started falling apart some months ago with the departure of many leaders and deputies, including the young and ambitious foreign minister, Ismail Cem, finance minister Kemal Dervis, a former International Monetary Fund employee sent to set right Turkey's troubled economy.

The hemorrhage led to a loss of majority in parliament and the advancement of general elections by 18 months to November 3. Both the DSP and the ANAP are lagging in the opinion polls and struggling to get the 10 percent cut off vote necessary to win any seats in parliament. Even the third coalition member, the MHP, a nationalist fascist outfit, has been struggling to stay afloat. But the EC's report will help it in whipping up and riding on nationalistic jingoism, as it did in early 1999 after a similar EC snub to Turkey's European aspirations. Like Phoenix, an almost moribund MHP rose from the dead to second position - it did not have a single deputy in the earlier parliament.

Turkey's rich past and mixed legacy also known as Anatolia and Asia Minor in the past, Turkey is located at the juncture of Asia (and connected to Central Asia via the Caucasus), Africa and Europe, with the Straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles separating Asia and Europe.

Ruled in the past by Achaemenid Persians; Greeks, Romans and Byzantines; and then by Muslims and Ottoman Turks, the inhabitants of Anatolia have tough identity problems. There is a spiritual and psychological dichotomy between the Europe-oriented elite in the west (many of them are of European ethnic origin) at the head and a conservative Oriental majority forming the body politic of Turkey.

In early 1996, as the electorate voted Refah (Welfare), the largest Islamic party, into parliament, Turkey entered into a Customs Union with Europe.  With its location, mixed ethnic composition, history, culture and civilization, with modernizing and Westernizing reforms during the last century of the Ottoman rule and nearly 80 years after Kemal Ataturk’s sweeping reforms, Turkey's Islamic parties are perhaps the most moderate in the Islamic world, certainly when compared to the likes of the Taliban, Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front and other variants in Pakistan.

Turkish tribes broke into Byzantine Anatolia after Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan inflicted a massive defeat on Byzantine troops at Manzikert, north of Lake Van in 1071 and captured Emperor Diogenese, who was ransomed. With high cheek bones, somewhat slanted eyes, like their present-day ethnic cousins now ruling from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, these simple Central Asian nomads finally overran the whole of the Byzantine Empire. As they moved west they named villages, rivers, forts, mountains; white (Ak), black (Kara), green  (Yesil) and red (Kirmizi). The Black Sea is called Kara Dervis, while the Mediterranean is called Ak Deniz, and the shimmering sea linking the Black Sea and the Aegean, Marmara, like marble.

Yilmaz still uses nomadic phrases such as "I have taken out my sword to fight" (a political battle), while former prime minister Suleyman Demirel would declare, when Turkey or his party faced a political crisis, "We are passing through a narrow pass." (Like Turcoman tribes with their herds of sheep or horses surrounded by enemies). Some dynasties were even named for their white or black sheep - such as the Akkoyunlu and Karakoyunlu. Used to sleeping on horseback and fighting for pastures which required quick thinking and logistic movements with herds in the Central Asian steppes, these nomads were physically very fit, with a sharp strategic perception. After nearly 200 years, Seljuk and other Turkish tribes terminated the Arab dominance in the heartland of Islam in Iraq and Syria. Turkish nomadic slaves, recruited for their loyalty and fighting prowess as Praetorian guards to begin with, took over power and upgraded the minor office of Sultan into a powerful one - the protector of the by now hapless Caliphs.  

The republican Turkish constitution and its electoral system endows political party chairmen with excessive arbitrary powers. Thus, many of them behave like powerful tribal chiefs, branching off with their flocks and clans or persisting with their rigid positions instead of democratic give and take. The country's coalitions since 1983 have not been based on ideology, rather they have been mostly asymmetrical, including the current one. One would expect Yilmaz to team up with Tansu Ciller, the first-ever woman prime minister in Turkey and leader of another rightwing secular formation, the True Path Party (Dogru Yol Party-DYP), which did happen once. But their sibling rivalry, more akin to a tribal vendetta, soon saw their government collapse in mutual recrimination.  

Under the shadows of Istanbul's minarets lie monuments and ruins from its millennium and a half Roman and Byzantine past. Less than six centuries ago, in 1453, Constantinople, the Byzantine capital founded in the 4th century AD by Emperor Constantine, was transformed into the new Ottoman Istanbul, by the addition of minarets to the 6th century St Sophia Church.  

A crucible of over 40 civilizations, Turkey has more Greek sites than Greece and more Roman monuments than Italy. It is the cradle of early Christianity, with churches of revelation - Chalcedon, Nicomedea and Nicea are in Turkey. It was at Antioch that followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians. St Peter gave his first sermon in a cave near Antioch, and St Paul was born at Tarsus nearby. Verily, it was the playground of early Christian apostles, companions and preachers. If early Christians were persecuted by the Romans here, it also became a state religion under Constantine. Turkey was the site of Byzantine power and glory for a millennia. With only around 15 percent of theinhabitants of Turkic origin, there lies buried deep in the Turkish psyche a more persistent tradition of Byzantine intrigue, which seeps through from time to time, especially during elections, more so during presidential elections, much like choosing popes, patriarchs and archbishops.

The role of the military

Here is an example of the military in action - and not on the battle ground. Following the 1971 military memorandum, which had forced then premier Suleyman Demirel to resign, a national government under the military's shadow was in place to conduct the 1973 presidential elections. The pugnacious and ambitious General Faruk Gurler, a major force behind the memorandum, took over as Chief of General Staff (CGS). Gurler then resigned and presented himself as the military's candidate to replace president Cevdet Sunay, also a former retired CGS. Demirel and Ecevit, leaders of the two major political formations with other politicians, in spite of the military brass occupying the parliament galleries, gave a stunning display of Byzantine intrigue, with the parliament going through the motions of voting round after endless round. But each time inconclusively. They wore down the now unsure and somewhat divided military in a virtuoso performance that would have made their Byzantine ancestors proud. Finally, a compromise was reached on a retired and innocuous naval admiral, Fahri Koruturk, who was installed as the new president. A rejected and dejected Gurler died a few years later, forgotten and unsung.

Seven years later, at the end of the bloody 1970s during which intra-religious, intra-ethnic and left-right violence had left thousands dead in Turkey, leaving its polity scarred and divided, Koruturk's term ended in April 1980. But Demirel and Ecevit could not agree on a candidate. For five months over 100 rounds of polls were conducted in parliament without a result. This was another display of clannish obstinacy and total abdication of political responsibility. General Kenan Evren then took over in September 1980, much to everyone's relief, and banned political parties and debarred political leaders. As a measure of abundant caution, the 1983 constitution prepared under the military regime provides for the dissolution of parliament if it fails to elect a new president after four rounds. The Turkish armed forces, though, have always gone back to the barracks after cleaning up the political mess.

It is as if the armed forces, custodians of Ataturk's secular legacy, based on a merit system since the days of the Janissaries, modernized by the French and the Germans during the later Ottoman era and since the 1950s a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, are trying to guide Turkish society towards modernity and Western contemporary values (a phrase often used by Kemal Ataturk).

The November elections will see the exit of the last of the older generation of leaders. The past three decades have been dominated by old timers nearing their eighties, such as president Turgut Ozal, who industrialized Turkey in the 1980s. He died of a heart attack in 1993. Necemettin Erbakan, the first and the only Islamist prime minister (1996/7) in the history of the Turkish republic, was made to resign by the military and legally debarred from politics. Demirel, seven times premier and a great survivor, finally left power, most reluctantly, in 2000. A poll after his retirement showed that few Turks wanted him back in politics. Incidentally, all three men - Demirel, Erbakan and Ozal - were engineering graduates from Istanbul and contemporaries. Alpaslan Turkesh, founder of the nationalistic fascist MHP, died a few years ago. Ecevit, 77, is seriously ill and has announced that he could give up the party leadership after the elections.

In the republic's 80-year history, six heads of state have been military officers, with three civilian politicians. For the 2000 presidential elections, initially at the behest of premier Ecevit and MHP leader Bahceli, ostensibly for political stability crucial for the success of the government's US$4 billion International Monetary Fund-backed economic reform program, parliament went through the motions of amending the constitution to allow a second seven-year term for Demirel, on which he was very keen. Not being a graduate, Ecevit was ineligible to be a candidate. After failing to amend the constitution for Demirel, there was little enthusiasm to attempt to amend it to make non-graduates eligible.

The candidature of Ahmet Sezer, the chairman of Turkey's Supreme Court, was then propped up by Ecevit after the three coalition partners could not agree on a parliamentarian, or even a retired politician. Earlier, the parties had offered many candidates as sacrificial pawns in a game of political chess. Sezer was easily elected, but if the politicians thought that they could manipulate the new president they were soon proved wrong. He is his own man and he has brought a refreshing change from the politics of short-term interests to more emphasis on freedoms and human rights.

Islam in politics

Turkey's constitution describes the country as a laic (secular) state, which, according to many, is more Jacobin than genuinely secular. It is based on the nationalist philosophy of Zia Gokalp, a Kurd, who unfortunately used for laic/secular the words la din, - anti-religion. After the founding of the republic in 1923, the Christian minorities were exchanged with Turks from Greece and the remaining squeezed out later; the few left in the southeast are leaving now. So the concept of secularism in Turkey has somehow become anti-religion and negative, and tends to become anti this or anti that and intolerant. The Sunni-dominated police establishment has regularly harassed the Shi'ite Alevis and the Kurds, who normally vote for leftist secular parties.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fatal belief of the establishment - a curious amalgam of a military-led secular elite and a Sunni-dominated interior ministry, organizations that resolve problems by force as a compromise might be seen as a weakness. The establishment considers Islamic revivalism and Kurdish rebellion as the two major threats to the security, stability and integrity of the state.

But the left of center Social Democrat Party (SHP), then led by Erdal Inonu (who was a deputy premier in Demirel's coalition government of 1991-1995), came to the conclusion in 1990, based on a study, that neither Kurdish nationalism nor Islamic fundamentalism posed a threat to the republican order. Many other subsequent reports have confirmed the same conclusion, underlining that most Kurds want respect for their identity, and the use of the Kurdish language for education and television and cultural freedoms.

Ironically, as many politicians point out, it was mostly the military regimes that gave greater freedoms to religious tendencies. Soon after Turkey switched over to a multi-party system in 1945, president Ismet Inonu, Kemal Ataturk's successor, made religious education optional, to prevent voters from going over to the newly-established conservative Democrat party. Later, during General Evren's regime in the early 1980s, religious education was made compulsory in schools. Further, concessions were added during his presidency under premier Turgut Ozal, who believed in religious-cultural underpinning to counter communism and Western values.

However, it was Islamist premier Erbakan who established parties with religious orientation from the early 1970s. He became deputy premier in coalition governments led by Ecevit and Demirel in the 1970s, and, like others put his cadres and sympathizers in ministries controlled by him.

His first National Order Party was banned in 1972. Undeterred, he formed the National Salvation Party, which was dismantled in 1980 after General Evren took over power. In the late 1980s, he established the Welfare Party (Refah), which won the largest number of seats in the December, 1995 elections. Erbakan became Turkey's first ever Islamist prime minister in 1996, but was made to resign by the military in June 1997. Three years later, the constitutional court banned the Welfare Party on the grounds that it was engaged in fundamentalist activity and was violating the secular principles of the constitution. It barred Erbakan from politics for five years. But immediately a new party, Fazile - Virtue - under his chosen successor, Recai Kutan, was established.

While in the opposition, Erbakan had talked against NATO, opposed the Customs Union with Europe, decried Operation Provide Comfort, which allows the US and the UK to monitor the "no fly zone" in north Iraq to protect Kurds and opposed strategic defense cooperation with Israel. He used to talk of creating an Islamic NATO and an Islamic common market, an Islamic currency and banking based on Sharia law. But during his tenure, although he made noises and gestures, he did nothing as drastic. His major initiative, perhaps, was D-8, an economic organization of eight major developing Muslim countries - Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria, which held its first summit just before Erbakan was made to resign by the military. D-8 then faded away.

When the Virtue Party was outlawed in June, 2001, the Felicity Party (SP) under Kutan was established. According to Kutan, his party wanted to abandon Turkey's economic program" "All the IMF policies would be annulled, and we would instead apply our own program."

But Recip Erdogan and other younger leaders, such as Abdullah Gul, set up a new party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). With a clan image, Erdogan, who was a very successful and popular mayor of Istanbul, has been stressing that they have nothing to do now with Erbakan or his policies. He has not seen Erbakan for many years. He even avoids any mention of Islam. He has promised that he would do all he could to facilitate Turkey's entry into the EU and he has also expressed his backing for Turkey's relationship with the IMF. He was jailed for several months in 1999 for reciting a poem at a political rally that said, "Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers."

Normally, two thirds of the electorate votes for right of center parties, and the rest for leftist parties. But like warring tribal chieftains, secular rightwing parties will not fight the elections together, nor easily form coalitions. Although Erdogan has been recently debarred from contesting the elections (a result of his jail term) his AKP is now the front runner in most pre-election opinion polls. There is a distinct possibility of the AKP and the MHP, Islamic and nationalistic, getting a near majority of seats. But Turks have a habit of turning logical conclusions on their head. The latest distribution of seats among the major parties in the 550-member parliament is: MHP - 125, DYP - 84, ANAP - 71, AKP - 59, DSP - 58, SP - 46, YTP - 58, others - 13, independents - 22.

Kurdish question

The roots of the Kurdish problem lie buried deep in the Turkish psyche. The seeds were sown during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish Republic after World War I. Turks complain that the Christian West used the stick of religion and nationalism in Eastern Europe to break up the empire during the 19th and early 20th century (over 25 states have emerged out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire, of which most of Yugoslavia was a part).

In the late 19th century it was feared that even the Kurds might desert, like the Egyptians. But the last straw was the revolt by Muslim Arabs, for the Ottomans always were Muslims first and Turks second. Hence, Turks manifest a pervasive distrust of any cultural or autonomous movement that might lead to the fragmentation of the unitary republic. To begin with, Ataturk himself had talked of Turks, Kurds, Lazes and others. But a dramatic change came over him in 1923-24, and he opted for a unitary state. In 1924, he abolished the Caliphate and Kurds were just turned into non-persons; their language, music, dress and culture, even the use of Kurdish first names, was made illegal.

The reduction of Ocalan's death sentence to life imprisonment and measures to let Kurds use their mother tongue for education and culture will further ease tensions in Kurdish areas. Ocalan has led the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) rebellion for a Kurdish state in south and east Turkey since 1984, a struggle that has cost over 30,000 lives, mostly Kurds, but the casualties also include over 5,000 soldiers. Thousands of Kurdish villages have been bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated, and millions of Kurds have been moved or migrated. Nearly a third of the Turkish army was tied up in the southeast, costing nearly $6 billion to $8 billion a year. The unrest shattered the economy, and gave rise to charges from the West of police and military brutality and human rights violations.

Unfortunately, the republic, instead of resolving problems politically, resorts to legal measures, such as closing down political parties; not only Islamic ones, but others, even one founded by Ataturk after the 1980 intervention, and military interventions or extra-constitutional means, such as military threats to force out elected governments, as in 1971 and 1997.

Despite the country's serious economic crisis, the Ecevit-led government has shown enough confidence in addressing some of the underlying causes of the rebellion, social and economic, and in meeting Kurdish aspirations for cultural autonomy.

After 80 years, the republic should feel mature and strong enough to resolve problems politically. While the Ottoman Empire was built on loyalty to the house of Osman and Islam, the republic was molded into a secular rigid unitary state by Kemal Ataturk. While some loosening of the state's heavy hand and Jacobin attitudes has taken place since the 1950s, perhaps the time has come for more flexibility in resolving problems politically, through discussion and mutual accommodation.

Many analysts feel that under the pretext of guarding Ataturk's unitary secular state, solutions to problems have been blocked by the vested interests, which have also been cited as the main reason for keeping Islamists out of power. The secular elite does not wish to share the economic cake with the rising conservative commercial and industrial classes from the heartland of Anatolia and elsewhere, who support Islamic parties. Many, including politicians, also talk of the long shadow over democracy of the Turkish military, the self-styled guardians of Ataturk's unitary and secular state, making political solutions difficult.

Turkey and EU report

"It's awful timing and possibly means that a new government won't be very stable in Turkey after the elections," said a specialist on EU enlargement in London commenting on Turkey's rebuff. "The fundamental problem for the Turks now is that they are getting no strong political message from the EU about support for their application or any indication of political willingness to make the relationship closer. All they are getting is a cold shoulder."

The decision to admit (Greek) Cyprus without preconditions is a further blow for Turkey, which has threatened to annex the Turkish northern part of the island if Cyprus joins the EU before a political settlement of the Cyprus problem is thrashed out. The EU had been under Greek pressure to admit Cyprus with the other nine candidates in 2004 or face a veto from Athens over the whole enlargement process. The EU's decision, though, will further polarize Turkey's already fractured polity.

Turkey, a member of the Council of Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and with a Customs Union with the EU, after the collapse of the Soviet Union might be less important strategically for NATO.

But after September 11 it has become vitally important to the US as it guards against Iran, Iraq and Syria and beyond, actual and potential cauldrons of Islamic fundamentalism. Because of Turkey's strategic importance for the Caucasus and Central Asia, the US has said that it would continue to support Turkey's entry into the EU. In any event, the US and the EU will keep Turkey engaged to further strengthen its secular and modernizing forces and parties. Disengagement would lead to an upsurge of Islamic and nationalistic sentiments among Turks.

Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand commented after the EC's report, which had examined the level which the candidate countries had reached in complying with set criteria. He felt that it did not reflect either a pro-Turkey or an anti-Turkey stance. It praised aspects that merited praise, while criticizing norms not reached.

One EC official told him, "We never had something like that with any other candidate country. The moment a country complies with the Copenhagen criteria the accession talks begin. You pressed on before the time came. You asked for the screening process last year and you insisted on getting a date this year. You have been impatient. You have tried to burn your way through these stages. You think it would be enough to take a few steps. Yet there is so much ground to be covered. And then you come up and blame us. You are creating unwarranted public tension and undue public expectations."

The EU believed that the reform laws passed in Turkey had certain shortcomings, and that those that were passed were not being properly implemented. Therefore, the commission decided to send the ball into the court of the EU's leaders at the December Copenhagen summit.

Another reason for the EU stalling was the November elections. If they result in an AKP and MHP coalition, Turkey will not be given a date as the government will not implement the EU laws. However, if a pro-EU coalition wins, it will facilitate Turkey getting a date from the summit. Secondly, if a solution is found to the Cyprus problem, currently at a most critical stage, this will greatly help Turkey's case. Finally, if the Irish say "no" to EU expansion their October 19-21 referendum, the entire EU enlargement program could grind to a halt.

Expectedly, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We think that better relations between the European Union and Turkey are important to us and that's something that we've consistently advocated." Ankara's membership, he continued, "would serve both Turkey's interests and the interests of the European Union as well as the broader overall interests that we have in this very important region." US lobbying was not sufficient though, although some European countries had bristled at US pressure.

In private, many European diplomats make no bones about there being little chance of Turkey joining the EU in the near future. Greek opposition is many times more for internal political gains. The main opposition comes from Germany, which already has immense problems with its over 3 million Turks (out of which 25 percent are Kurds). Germany has also become a possible fertile recruiting ground for Islamists, and funds from nationalist Kurds and Islamists are routinely collected, not always voluntarily.

The Turks were welcomed into Germany as gastarbeiters (guest workers) from the early 1960s, when the booming German economic powerhouse needed more workers. Membership to the EU would entitle nearly 70 million Turkish Muslims to freely travel and work in Europe, with all its attendant problems. The Bosphorus, as Europe's border with Asia, is quite good enough where it is, say the diplomats. With Turkey in the EU, Europe will then have Ali Khameini of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and young Assad of Syria as its neighbors, with their seeping borders.

If one drives west from Antalya along the ancient Lycian southern coastline, now full of holiday resorts and beaches, one reaches Cavuskoy, a small village. There, one can walk up an incline for a few bracing kilometers, and find children trying to dowse methane fires that have issued from crevices since ancient times. And one can gaze out over the shimmering Mediterranean, from where Greek pirates once looked on the burning fires as they glided by at night.

This is the origin of Chimera in Greek mythology, the fire-breathing female monster that resembled a lion in the forepart, a goat in the middle, and a dragon behind. Chimera is now used generally to symbolize a fantastic idea or a figment of the imagination.

When polled, a good majority of Turks have favored joining the EU, but their dream of becoming a full member might just remain a Chimera.

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal.

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