Why I am against Turkish Entry - Forum for Europe submission

SUBMISSION TO THE FORUM ON EUROPE

From: Conor O’Brien

December 2006


My vision for the future of the European Union is for an EU that does not include Turkey. This vision is shared by a significant majority of EU “citizens”, including 67% of the people of Greece, 69% of Germans and 81% of Austrians (Eurobarometer). These numbers highlight the scale of the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU, for if democracy was any concern then Turkish membership negotiations would not be taking place.

Turkey and the Forum on Europe

On 2nd November 2006 the Forum devoted an entire plenary session to the question of Turkish membership. Although 29 speakers were heard not one of them represented the views of that EU majority. The Turkish government representative Mr. Ali Babacan had an easy ride, with one obsequious Fine Gael representative going so far as to declare that
“our party fully supports your entry”.

Encouraged by a succession of servile contributions and undaunted by a few mildly critical remarks, Mr. Babacan felt confident enough to criticise the Greek Cypriot government for the resounding rejection of the Annan plan for the re-unification of Cyprus. It did not seem to occur to any member of the Forum that a “Yes” vote from Greek Cypriots would have represented clear evidence of a death-wish for their own Greek culture on the island. A “Yes” vote would also have legitimised the 1974 invasion of Cyprus while also drawing a veil over the atrocities perpetrated by Turkish troops and colonists from the Turkish mainland.

Mr. Babacan went on to ridicule the circumstances in which Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan received his prison sentence for inciting religious hatred. Turkey’s EU negotiator revealed that his Prime Minister was hard done by in that he was prosecuted for the public recitation of a poem that is included in every Turkish child’s school text. What Mr. Babacan did not tell the Forum was that the poem includes the line “our minarets are our bayonets”. Nor indeed was he asked to explain why such a poem might be on the school curriculum of a “secular” state. That poem by Ziya Gokalp also includes the line “ Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.”

It is mildly ironic that several of the political parties that are falling over themselves to support Turkish membership of the EU would under the Turkish system of democracy have no seats in Dail Eireann.

A number of Irish politicians, former politicians and media commentators do not support Turkish accession but are staying silent on the issue for reasons of political correctness, and also perhaps in the belief that Turkey will never be allowed to join. We need to hear from these people.

Turkey and the European Union

In June 1987 the following statement issued from the European Parliament:

“The refusal of the present Turkish government to acknowledge the genocide against the Armenian people committed by the Young Turk government, its reluctance to apply the principles of international law to its differences of opinion with Greece, the maintenance of Turkish occupation forces in Cyprus and the denial of the existence of the Kurdish question, together with the lack of true parliamentary democracy and the failure to respect individual and collective freedoms, in particular freedom of religion in that country are insurmountable obstacles to consideration of the possibility of Turkey’s accession to the Community.”

Other than the rise of an Islamist Turkish government it is clear that nothing much has changed in twenty years. What is also clear is that the European Union’s obsession with the Copenhagen Criteria is serving to divert attention from the social and cultural issues associated with Turkish membership.

At the Helsinki summit in 1999 Turkey was granted "Candidate" status
in controversial circumstances and after a minimum of debate.
As Commissioner Fritz Bolkestein put it at the time, ".....there was a three-minute debate - very thorough." By December 2004 an unstoppable momentum resulted in Turkey receiving an October 2005 date for the start of EU membership talks, all achieved with the help of countries such as U.K. and Finland whose governments clearly regard Turkey as a client state. The Austrian government did everything possible to represent the views of its citizens by attempting to block the start of those membership talks. As often happens in such cases Austria was isolated by its EU “partners” and ultimately capitulated following threats of "consequences" from the White House.


One of Turkey's regular jibes at the EU is that Europe is a "Christian Club". Not much is heard about Turkish membership of the Saudi-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), to say nothing of Prime Minister Erdogan's appearances at meetings of the Arab League, an outfit that is pleased to support Sudanese government policy in Darfur. There is a naïve but widespread view that if excluded from the EU the Turkish government will “look towards the East”. This view represents clear evidence of a very dangerous delusion, for Turkey under an AKP government will never be looking anywhere else - EU membership or not.

In assessing what Turkish accession would mean for the EU it is important that we do not form an opinion based on our experience of the courteous and westernised members of the Istanbul business community, for unfortunately these people are not representative of modern day Turkey. So where should we look for a sighting of the real Turkey ?
For the answer to that question we can go directly to the top.

At the Brussels summit in December 2004 Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan was given his October 2005 date for the start of EU membership negotiations. He returned to Asia in triumph but not before he had delivered himself of some ungracious remarks to the assembled EU leaders many of whom were taken aback. One view at the time was that the sight of EU leaders having a Christmas drink was just too much for him. Afterwards An Taoiseach gave an interview during which he declared that Erdogan had "put in the bitter pill". The bad news for
Mr. Ahern and for all other EU leaders is that there is a veritable pharmacy of bitter pills where that one originated. If this is how the Turkish Prime Minister behaves when he is getting what he wants then the nature of his response to any perceived slight can be imagined.

Politics in Turkey

The ruling (and politically unassailable) AKP has deep roots in an Islamic movement. In an earlier life and not so long ago Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a noted Islamist firebrand who was imprisoned and then barred from holding public office following that 1998 conviction for inciting religious hatred. Erdogan was precluded from standing in the Turkish general election of 2002. He subsequently entered parliament through a by-election from where he continues to chip away at the foundations of that secular Turkish state established by Mustapha Kemal.
All the while the Turkish army, guardian of that secular state, stands at attention while waiting for its displeasure to be incurred. Ironically the European Union continues to demand that the power of the Turkish military be curbed, thus imperilling what is left of that secular state and playing straight into the hands of an Islamist government. The EU for its part does not seem to appreciate that the military may be all that stands between Turkey and an Islamic Republic. Neither does the EU understand that whereas Kemalism is temporary, Islam is permanent.
As Prime Minister Erdogan himself said, “ One cannot be a secularist and a Muslim at the same time”. Another memorable quote from Erdogan’s time as mayor of Istanbul was his comparison between democracy and a streetcar: “You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off “.

Islamisation

In March 2006 a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers at Salzburg was dominated by Turkish attempts to introduce strict blasphemy laws to the EU. At a time when one would assume that candidate countries might be on their best behaviour, the Turkish government with that well honed sense of grievance sets out to circumscribe the right of non-Muslims to freedom of speech.

The Mohammed cartoon protests were no less violent in "secular" Turkey than across the rest of the Islamic world. After one such protest a Roman Catholic priest was murdered in the Turkish town of Trabzon on the Black Sea. Father Andrea Santoro was shot twice by an Islamist while at prayer in his own church. In recent months there have been several other attacks on Christian clerics and on church property in Turkey.

But these were not the first "cartoon protests" in Turkey because a year earlier Turkey's own political cartoonists marched in Istanbul to protest at the legal action taken by Prime Minister Erdogan following the publication of a number of unflattering caricatures of himself.
The Turkish Cartoonists Association accused Erdogan of trying to stifle freedom of expression after one of their members was convicted on a charge of "assailing the Prime Minister's honour". The cartoonist had given offence by highlighting the encroachment of Islam into public life in a "secular" Turkey where the Prime Minister continues to facilitate the recruitment of large numbers of anti-secularists into all areas of public life, often on the basis of whether a candidate’s wife wears a headscarf.

In recent months we have had the spectacle of internationally renowned Turkish writers being brought before the courts for daring to make reference to the historical fact of the Armenian genocides. The Turkish government is now seeking to tidy away the Armenian issue with that offer of a joint commission of enquiry in conjunction with the Armenian government. Needless to say the Armenians know an approaching whitewash when they see one and have refused to become involved. These events should be setting alarm bells ringing in Brussels and across the European Union.

Those alarm bells have certainly been sounding in the office of Turkish President Ahmet Sezer for in early 2006 we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of increasingly bitter exchanges between the President and Prime Minister Erdogan. President Sezer felt that he had no option but to go public and to declare that Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey was reaching "dramatic proportions." The President went on to say that this fundamentalism "is trying to infiltrate politics, education and the state
- it is systematically eroding values." Commenting on the public row between President and Prime Minister the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet carried the headline " Anti-secular forces are threatening Turkey and its institutions." So there we have it - and the EU has it too.

The inherent cultural incompatibility between Turkey and the European Union will lead inevitably to an unending list of grievances, misunderstandings and perceived slights. The EU Council, Commission, Court and Parliament will forever be walking on eggshells while Turkey continues to bestride the European Union as champion and standard bearer for 100 million Muslims across the continent. All of this is nothing short of a nightmare scenario and the EU has blundered straight into it.

Here in Ireland political honesty on the Turkish question has been in short supply. Only one member of the Oireachtas has had the courage to question the wisdom of allowing Turkey to accede to the EU. Deputy Sean Haughey, while vice-chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs, drew attention to concerns expressed by some EU member states that Turkish membership could lead to the "Islamisation" of Europe. Mr. Haughey also noted concerns about mass emigration from Turkey to Western Europe. In an Ireland where it takes courage to state the obvious Mr. Haughey was rounded upon by the usual suspects and accused of "setting the wrong tone".


Legacy to Future Generations

The fact that Turkish membership may be delayed for a decade or so is of no particular relevance. Turkey will join as one of the largest and most powerful states in the European Union, at which point the EU will share borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria, a prospect that must surely represent the very essence of an appalling vista. The EU will also be relying on Turkey to patrol and secure 2,000 kilometres of borders to the East and South.

The prospect of 75 million Turkish Muslims with freedom of movement throughout the EU is not good news for the survival of our Western European culture and way of life. Already there are about 4 million people of Turkish origin living within the EU, most of them in Germany where in common with Muslim immigrants everywhere else they have failed to integrate, preferring instead to set up parallel societies until such time as changing demographics allow them to make their presence felt.
In that regard most third generation Turkish immigrants are no different to their parents and grandparents.

As we have no parliamentary opposition on EU affairs the "all-party position" in Dail Eireann is that Turkish accession will have a stabilising influence on the Middle East. This utterly simplistic and ill-informed assessment of the situation amounts to nothing less than a dereliction of duty by all political parties. The negative attitude of the people of Europe, as reflected in that Eurobarometer poll, has failed to register anywhere within the Oireachtas. Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has declared that Turkish membership will offer the EU a "bridge" to the Middle East. What he must have in mind is a suspension bridge where we are invited to suspend our critical faculties and historical perspective. The naive expectation that Turkish membership will have a positive geopolitical impact shows a complete lack of appreciation of the forces at work both in Turkey and across the rest of Islamic world.

At accession date the population of Turkey will be greater than the combined populations of all ten EU states in the 2004 enlargement. Turkish citizens have over many years shown their readiness to relocate throughout Western Europe so that on accession to the EU it is easy to predict a massive exodus from that country. If Ireland were to receive Turkish immigrants in numbers that are even a fraction of our East European influx then the entire social and cultural fabric of this small nation would be under threat, if not immediately then within one or two generations.



In 1970 the Muslim population of the Netherlands numbered about 40,000, a figure that is similar to the Muslim population of Ireland in 2006. Today there are more than one million Muslims living in the Netherlands where civil strife is never far away. Anybody who still believes that these demographic changes have no relevance for social cohesion is surely living in a fantasy world. The Dutch people, perhaps the most civilised and tolerant on earth, are in shock at what has happened to their country as they contemplate the reality that several of their elected representatives need "safe houses" and a 24 hour armed guard.

The EU Council and Commission would do well to listen to the words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing former President of France and author of the EU Constitutional Treaty who has declared that "Turkish membership will be the end of the European Union". Although the “No” votes in France and the Netherlands reflect real concerns about Turkey the EU simply refuses to entertain this possibility, preferring instead to rely on the results of highly suspect exit polls. Here at home the all-party position on the Constitutional Treaty is that it can be saved by throwing in a few protocols on climate change and then asking the French and Dutch to vote again - further evidence, if any more were needed, of the total detachment of EU politicians from the real concerns of their citizens.

At a stage when even the Irish Times has been forced to acknowledge a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the western world the prospect of Turkish membership of the EU represents an approaching misadventure of enormous proportions. This is no time for political correctness or misguided multiculturalism. Anybody who may be tempted to level an accusation of "Islamophobia" needs to be reminded that a "phobia" is an irrational fear and that there is nothing irrational about seeking to ensure that the largest and most powerful state in the EU is not run by an Islamist government. In that regard the European Union should respond to any further interference from the U.S. in language that will be readily understood. President Bush should be told to "butt out".

Any public representative who can remain sanguine at the prospect of Turkish accession to the EU does not yet understand the nature and extent of the threat to our Western European way of life and that of our descendants. For those future generations climate change may yet be the least of their problems.