[A-List] Turkish/Europe tensions: Turkey's territorial integrity

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is a translated summary of an article from the Turkish
daily Milliyet by the "Turkish Radio Hour of San Francisco."
Milliyet is one of the newspapers of the Dogan Media Empire in
Turkey. Dogan Holding is the Turkish media monopoly, for all
practical purposes, that is. Millliyet is one of their
"establishment" newspapers. I view this as one more evidence of
the Europe-Turkey divergence. Most of Turkey's neighbors used to
call Turkey "Little America" or "The 51st State of the US". By
the looks of it, this is about to become "official".

Sabri

+++++++

UNITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EUROPE FOR TURKS

BY HASAN PULUR
MILLIYET, May 27, 2002

Columnist Hasan Pulur writes on a letter Turkey's Ambassador to
Sweden Kuneralp wrote to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, which had
mistakenly labeled a region in Turkey as Kurdistan. A summary of
his column is as follows:


Recently a Turkish map published by a Swedish newspaper caused a
great furor as it showed a region of Turkey under the name of
"Kurdistan." The person who was most harshly criticized in the
ensuing flap was Turkey's Ambassador to Sweden Selim Kuneralp.
However, Mr. Kuneralp sent a letter to the newspaper the map had
appeared in and the newspaper published the article without
editing a word of it. The ambassador began his article by
comparing the societies of Sweden and Turkey. He said that Swedes
had never had to fight against separatist forces, as no such
thing existed on their land. However, he pointed out Turkey had
lived with this concern for centuries, and the PKK terrorist
campaign had deepened this fear. Mr.
Kuneralp noted that Turkey had taken important steps to comply
with the Copenhagen criteria in order to be able to be admitted
to the EU, but also stated that complying with the Copenhagen
criteria didn't mean establishing minority groups. He added that
Turkey viewed all its citizens as being equal. "In fact, as the
presence of a minority means that there is a "second-class"
citizenry, it is not something to be envied for that minority" he
wrote. The important issue for all citizens is to have equal
rights, including those of education and broadcasting in their
own languages. That is what Turkey is trying to provide.

Ambassador Kuneralp also commented on what Turkey considered to
be more important, the unity of the country or membership in the
EU. He said, "If the EU and Sweden would like to help these
efforts, they must not give the impression that they don't
respect the territorial integrity of Turkey." Since territorial
integrity is more important for the Turkish nation than EU
membership, if there is a concern that this membership will be a
threat to its territorial integrity, Turkey will immediately turn
away from this target. Such a reversal in policy will not benefit
Turkish citizens, whatever their ethnic origin, nor will it
benefit the EU. Therefore, that is why the map published by
Aftonbladet showing Turkey as divided is wrong. I hope such maps
will not be published in the future. Let's underline this
sentence by the ambassador: "Territorial integrity is more
important for the Turkish nation than EU membership."