[A-List] A Turkish neoliberal's open letter to d'Estaing

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A while ago I forwarded another article by the same person. As
was advanced by a formerly socialist columnist in Turkey, there
are two Turkeys: a Denmark and a Bangladesh. This person is from
the Denmark section of Turkey. I happen to be from the Denmark
section too but I take my stand with the Bangladeshies.

I am sending this for information purposes not because I agree or
disagree with Mehmet Ogutcu.

Sabri

+++++++++++++++

Open Letter
to Monsieur Valery Giscard d'Estaing and His Fellow Mentors

By
Mehmet Ogutcu


I cannot thank you enough for reopening the Pandora's Box in your
recent Le Monde interview about Turkey's European credentials in
the run-up to the 13 December Copenhagen Summit. This will compel
European leaders to face squarely the Turkish reality and give a
unambigious response, thus abandoning the hitherto evasive
attitude that marred the Turco-EU relations over the past 40
years. It will no longer be possible to comfortably hide behind
the well-known Greek objections because improvement in the
Turco-Greek relations has removed the first line of opposition.

Monsiuer, I feel that your remarks should not be left unanswered
because of the weight you carry as the chairman of the European
Convention that is drafting a future constitution for an expanded
EU. If the Copenhagen summit fails to give a definitive date,
particularly after your remarks, for commencing the accession
negotiations with Turkey, then I am afraid that it will be
confirmed that the EU has no desire to forge a multi-religion,
multi-cultural structure. The whole matter will be viewed in the
context of cultural-religious differences. Frankly speaking, I
would not like to be in the shoes of EU diplomats who will have
to draft the right wording on Turkey at the night of the
Copenhagen summit declaration.


Yes, Europe will change considerably

It is true that, with EU membership rising to 28 Turkey included,
the Union's nature and modus vivendi will considerably change. As
you prophesised this may even be the end of the EU -- but only as
you have known it. Europe is no longer the Europe of the
1978-1981 period when you were at the helm of France. It has
considerably changed since then and your remarks
show that today you are simply out of touch with the new Europe
whose capitals are much more ethnically, culturally and
religiously varied than during your term of office. Your
convention is supposed to put forth creative solutions on how
such a diverse Union can function and move forward in the world
league.

It is true that the Turks are 95 percent are Muslims and this
somehow influences the way they think and behave. But unless the
EU is going to say that its membership is confined only to
nations of Chris-tian faith or, even more oddly, to people born
on one side of the dotted line that separated Hero from Leander,
this does not automatically disqualify the Turks. To me
it seems that you support the minority group within the EU which
still considers the grouping as a Christian club. It is also
interesting that these remarks follow your visit to Vatican,
which insists on the inclusion of the Christian heritage in the
new EU Constitution. If Europe becomes increasingly defined by a
common mix of Occidental culture and Christianity, then Turkey's
exclusion would be more pointed and I assure you that I would not
like my children to live in such a Europe. For me Europe is a
secular, inclusive and open entity based on common values.


Turkey : European or What ?

You may be surprised to learn that the Turks are Europeans
because they chose to be, even before Ataturk set their face
westwards nearly eighty years ago and not because you or the
Copenhagen Summit will accept or decline its accession to the EU.
Turkey's European credentials have already and repeatedly been
established. You should perhaps read again the EU's Helsinki
summit decision of 10 December 1999, which declared explicitly,
after 40 years of acquis between the two parties, that Turkey "is
destined to join the EU on the basis of the same criteria as
applied to the other candidate States". That was an agreement by
unanimity, which has helped Turkey very much to evolve in the
right direction, with economic, political reform and human rights
reforms.

None of us say that putting this decision in practice will be
easy. We are all aware that Turkey's entry will have profound
consequences for both the future evolution of Turkey and that of
the European Union in many ways. By throwing open its doors to
Turkey, the EU has unequivocally accepted a frontier well beyond
the borders of what used to be called Christendom. Even
if this "historic move" was made for the sake of realpolitik, it
still represents a major leap forward in the European strategic
thinking. No doubt many Europeans including yourself will
continue to oppose Turkey's membership on cultural and religious
grounds--indeed, such opposition will further intensify if
Turkish membership becomes a more imminent reality.

Turkey has good claim to be a candidate-member of the Europe of
history, ideas, economy if not the Europe of formal geography.
The country was put on its present path towards European
integration in the 1950s, when it joined the then OEEC, the NATO
and the Council of Europe. Turkey was among the first countries,
in the post-Second World War period, joining all the movements of
European integration. And in August 1959, only two years after
the signing of the Treaties of Rome, it presented its request to
the EEC for a special associate status with the eventual goal of
full membership. The negotiations between Turkey and the EC began
on 28 September 1959, but took two years longer than the Greek
negotiations, culminating in the Ankara Association Agreement on
12 September 1963--something that you recommend Turkey to do now
on a par with Ukraine and Morocco.

History lessons

But I am sure, Monsiuer, you do not need history lessons, but let
me remind you of one or two facts. It is true that,
geographically, Turkey is not in the middle of Europe, but it is
undoubtedly at the hub of the growing economic, political and
cultural interdependence. Turkey is the successor of the
Byzantine and East Roman Empires in the life of Europe . Out of
the past 2500 years much or all of the place now called Turkey
has been politically, economically and cultural-ly an extension
of Europe for roughly two-thirds of the time, and under the
control of a people who came out of Asia for only a third of the
time . The Turks who came out of Asia a millennium or so ago were
altered by what they found when they got to Anatolia. In Ankara,
for instance, the Temple of August stands back to back with the
mosque of Haci Bayram; Cappadocia is dotted with Byzantine
chapels; the west coast has probably more classical Greek ruins
than Greece itself; and Mount Ararat has important associations
for the great monotheistic religions.

None of the present member-states of the EU have let themselves
be inhibited by any disparities of culture or of religion from
allying themselves with Turkey whenever their inte-rests
coincided. France led the way in 1535 when King Francois I
concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Sultan
Suleyman the Magnificent. Then came Britain, France and Italy in
1854, Germany in 1914, Britain and France in 1939, Greece in
1938, 1954 and 1960, NATO in 1952. Turkey's sacrifices during the
1991 Gulf War are still vivid in minds. Nor should it be
forgotten that the Ottoman Empire, at a low point in its history,
was called the sick man of Europe; not the sick man of Asia.

From the vantage point, the Ottoman Turks looked with disdain and
amusement upon their European neighbours, who seemed backward in
their religion which contained shocking traces of polytheism and
anthropomorphism, underdeveloped in the arts and sciences,
regrettably fanatical in their perennial squabbles among
Orthodox, Catholic, Bogumil, Lutheran, Calvinist and Unitarian.
But by 1683 the Ottoman advance in Europe had been halted and by
1774 plainly reversed. The first serious attempt for reforms
began way back in 1718, when the Sultan of the time agreed that
Turkey must have a better army and sent an envoy to Paris to see
how the French did it. It was resumed in the Tanzimat period of
the mid-19th Century (the word means
"changing the structure", exactly the Gorbachev's Perestroika).


A cultural synthesis of Europe and Asia

I would advise you to sit in an Istanbul café, if you ever
overcome your deep-seated prejudice, and observe people passing
by. The mixture of Turkish new comers with the already assorted
population of Anatolia and later with the Balkan peoples has
produced a collection of faces and a variety of cultures visibly
different from anything else in Asia. Turkey has a unique
mix of Western and Eastern cultures. Because the culture of the
modern Turks still retains precious elements from their past,
what it has to contribute to the EU is not only conformity but
also originality, "a new and richly coloured strand in the
tapestry" . I am very proud of my country's distinct identity
straddling between Europe and Asia, though you may of course have
your own preferences for a homogenous EU.

The first-time Western visitor to Turkey is likely to be
unprepared for what he finds. His mental images of the land and
the people are coloured by such words as "oriental" or "Middle
East". History has told him/her of the "Terrible Turk" who under
the Ottoman Empire ruled large parts of the Mediterranean, the
Middle East, the Eastern Europe and the Holy Land and finally was
driven back into the Asia Minor during the nineteenth century.
The collective memory in Europe was that of the "Barbarian Turks"
who had not only ruled over southeastern Europe and the Balkans
for centuries, but also had carried the banner of Islam to the
heartland of Christian civilization .

You are neither the first nor will be the last to question
Turkey's European identity, which has always been a controversial
matter of discussion, not only among scholars, politicians and
ordinary people in Europe, but also among those in Turkey. But in
order to communicate on the same wavelength please tell me what
you mean by the word "Europe". The word "Europe" has been often
used and misused, interpreted and misinter-preted, as almost any
word in any language. There have been many Europes: the Europe of
Greek mythology; the Europe of geographers - the two extreme
western peninsulas of the Asian land mass; the Europe of the
Carolingian Empire; the Europe of Byzantium; the old definition
of "capitalist" Europe and "socialist" Europe;
the Europe of self-styled national states and of disaffected
national minorities. That is not certainly an exhaustive list.

The basic European territory was the former Holy Roman Empire of
Charlemagne. Gradually this neo-Carolingian Empire has been
extended, but with increasing pontifications as each new member
country was added. Attitudes to the concept of Europe today have
striking similari-ties to those of the distant past. The two
dichotomies of lands of civilization and barbarism and lands of
the true believers and the infidels reappear under new names. As
old concep-tions are fading away and enlargement process gains
momentum once again, Europe is moving on towards a new type of
definition, determined not only by geographical, religious and
cultural con-siderations. Many believe that universal values will
hopefully prevail over narrow national, religious and cultural
limitations, if Europe is to have a future.

If so, it will be extremely difficult to digest your
racially-tinged argument that the "Turks are not Europeans", as
if there is some special "European" ethnicity that overrides the
distinct Teutonic, Gallic, Hispanic and other ethnic strains that
are part of Europe's cultural heritage.

Islam and the EU

One has to admit that there is a certain degree of anxiety about
a Muslim state joining the EU because of the above mentioned
misconceptions about Turkey and Islam. It is also worth noting
that your remarks come as anti-immigrant political parties are
experiencing a resurgence in some European countries including in
France. Many European government officials say that anti-Muslim
sentiment may be growing because of increased illegal
immigration, much of it from Muslim countries, and because of
revelations about terrorist cells in Europe following the 11
September 2001 attacks on the United States.

Some Europeans are concerned that they are surrounded by the
'Islamic Crescent' , a crescent that extends from the former
Ottoman Empire and the soft underbelly of the former Soviet
Union, from the Maghreb in the west to Pakistan, Indonesia and
the Philippines in the east and down south into the heart of
Africa. But let me remind you that Europe, not only encircled by
Muslim neighbours, also hosts millions of Muslim immigrant
population. Muslims constitute three to five percent of the total
populace in Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. In your
country Islam is the second largest religion. Over the past few
years, as the economic hardships started to bite, attacks by
racist, fundamen-talist groups on Muslim immigrants in Europe
have steeply risen across the Continent. A xenophobic upswell has
delivered new support for the far right in your own country and
elsewhere.

The main problem here is that most Europeans tend to associate
almost all Islamic countries with the Taliban-style militant
Islamic fundamen-talism and view Islam generally as a major
threat targetting at the very foundations of the Western
civilization. This is a grave mistake. The implications of this
need to be considered very carefully. If the price to be paid is
to make every Muslim resident in the EU feel that (s)he is at
best a tolerated alien and every neighbouring Muslim state feel
that it is looked on by Europe as an enemy, then that price,
needless to say, is too high.

Samuel Huntington's « clash of civilisations » theory should not
be allowed to come true. Europe should learn how sensitively to
handle its relations with the Islamic world, abandon its
religious-oriented and "narrow-minded expectations" and accept
that it faces a new challenge. Vilification of Islam asserting
that this religion is synonymous with backward-ness, terrorism
and authoritarian regimes serves no purpose, but only deepens the
mutual mistrust. Most Islamic countries have a serious governance
problem.


A model ?

Before or if such a cleavage outbreaks, Turkey as the "only model
of a European state, which combines modern capitalism and secular
democracy with a moderate brand of Islam", could find a credible
role for itself as a bridge between the two communities. Turkey's
chief value is to be an example to the region around it - a
living demonstration of the proposition that a Muslim country can
become a prosperous democracy, a full member of the modern world.
But, even a former statesman like you do not realize that Turkey
is a secular state in which religion remains excluded from state
affairs, although 95 percent of its population is Muslim; and
that Turkey considers the spread of the Islamic fundamentalism as
a great threat to its own security and strives, to the best of
its ability, to curb its growth in the region.

The recent Turkish elections marked nothing less than a silent
revolt by voters. An angry electorate, reeling under economic
hardship inflicted by two economic crises in the last two years,
booted out the three coalition parties, and with them old-guard
politicians, that it held responsible for their economic plight.
It was people's way of saying 'go away' to an entrenched
political establishment. The two parties that came out
victorious, Justice and Development Party (AK Party), led by
Tayyip Erdogan, and Republican People's' Party (CHP), led by
Deniz Baykal, were marginal entities until recently. AK Party,
garnering 34.3 percent of the vote, picked up 363 seats in
Parliament, and CHP, receiving 19.4 percent of the vote, won 178,
out of a total of 550. Despite its religious roots, AKP says it
is not Islamist. In all, a colorful political scene in Turkey
lies ahead, that will be watched closely by friends and foes
alike. Almost certainly, the country will head in a new
direction, and it is hoped it will be the direction we can all
cheer.

To dispel any doubts about its credentials, I know that Turkey
needs to project its secular and modern image more forcefully
because prejudices and misperceptions are deep rooted in Europe.
People's perceptions of one another take quite a long time to
change. Turkey should continue to build up a network of fairly
knowledgeable, sympathetic constituency in the EU member
countries, which it currently lacks. A Turkey firmly anchored in
the EU would most tellingly disprove the stereotype notions that
"there is an inherent incompatibility between Islam and values
such as democracy, modernity, secularism and free market economy"
and confirm that the EU is not based on religious conceptions,
but is a community of secular nations. It would, in the final
analysis, constitute a concrete case for demonstra-ting that the
Western ideals and values are universal.


Turkey - a permanent part of Europe

You recognise or not, Monsieur, today the Turks are a permanent
part of the European scene. This is beyond dispute. Millions came
in the 1960s and 70s to work. There are today nearly four million
Turks living and working Europe. Those in Germany have probably
affected the outcome of the recent election in favour of the
Greens and the Social Democrats. They regard where they live as
their home rather than as a temporary place of abode. Sixty
percent of the German Turks have been there for more than ten
years. For the second generation, the tendency to regard Germany,
and therefore Europe, as their home is naturally even stronger.
They no longer have language difficulties and are increasingly
better educated. More and more Turkish immigrants build up
independent businesses and become employers. They are
increasingly becoming an important factor in the economies of the
EU countries and of Turkey, representing an organic link between
Turkey and Western Europe which did not exist a few decades ago.

One of the biggest obstacles to Turkey's membership of the EU is,
in my opinion, connected to its economy. Turkey is heavily in
debt owing nearly $200 billion to domestic and foreign lenders. A
very large part of the state budget is used up to pay the debt
off and as a result there is little money left to stimulate
production as well as for education, health and infrastructure
programs. Interestingly, whilst Turkey has been receiving much by
the way of loans from the IMF and the World Bank, it has been
attracting very little private foreign investment without which
it would be difficult for Turkey to catch up with Europe. Turkey
ranks 44th in the world in terms of foreign capital investment
behind Bolivia, Angola and Vietnam.

Deterioration of the economy has led to a growing gap between the
rich and poor in society. The wealthy are getting wealthier. The
poor are getting poorer because of high levels of unemployment
(17 percent) and inflation, which, though falling is still very
high, at 37 percent. The minimum wage is set at just $100 a month
and even the income of the average Turk is around $3,000 per
annum. Poverty forces a lot of young people to forego education
and to work. If Turkey is to join the European Union it will only
be after taking giant strides aimed at catching up at least with
Greece and Portugal.
The EU has a self-interest in helping this process.


Last Word : Judge Turkey with a 2010 vision

Let us face it. There are serious economic and political problems
to be addressed. But Turkey's major handicap in Europe is in part
a kind of prejudice, which has deep roots. The Turks quite often
complain that "Europe does not understand us". You might righly
ask "To what extent do the Turks know or understand Europe ?".
This lack of understanding is fuelled by the
centuries-old image of the Ottoman Turkey as a conquering,
'barbaric', Islamic threat to Europe and also the mere lack of
appreciation in Europe of modern Turkey.

European history textbooks still perpetuate a negative and
distorted image of this country. The 'guest' workers, who, mostly
from the backward areas of Turkey, had been invited to contribute
to the post-war reconstruction of Europe, certainly did not
inspire a favourable thought about Turkey. And the 1980 military
intervention, the resultant inflow of political asylum-seekers to
Europe, the anti-Turkey campaign of the Kurdish activists and
Greece's persistent efforts to blacken Turkey at every possible
opportunity have all contributed to the further deterioration of
Ankara's image in the eyes of
most Europeans.

The European public needs to receive the key message that Turkey,
if acceded one day with its economic, political and social house
in order, is not going to be an economic and political liability,
but is a modern, secular, economically fast growing, culturally
rich country, which will contribute its own share to the Union.
The creation of a sympathetic constituency to
this effect in every corner of Europe - from business world to
mass media, from universities to parliaments, from cultural
circles to trade unions - remains a precondition if Turkey is
resolute in its ultimate goal to attain the EU membership in the
next decade. Its resultant implications will help pave the ground
for a smooth accession.

Through such increased interaction, mutual understanding between
the EU and Turkey would increase. This may allow Turkey to be
considered in a manner that is perhaps less filled with
misunderstanding than the manner in which Turkey is perceived
today. Turkey fully expects to achieve its goals on its own
merits. The notion that membership will be possible eventually is
itself a catalyst that will act as a spur to improvement not only
in terms of democracy and human rights, but also in respect of
the economy. Europeans' attitude, however, fails to take this
side of the coin properly into account.

Thus, a re-assessment of the added value of Turkey for the EU
becomes imperative in the context of the current enlargement
debate. Perhaps the first issue is to count the cost. Just how
much importance do both sides attach to the relationship? How
much sacrifice will they accept to strengthen relations? It is
primarily the answer to these questions which will determine the
future course of action. The EU will understandably have great
difficulty in its endeavour to formulate a clear-cut and feasible
position, which has to respond, at one stroke, both the Turkish
ambitions and the express worries of the member states as well as
those of the EU institutions.

But this threshold has already been passed with the crystal clear
decision in Helsinki in 1999. Or you wish to turn the clock back
and disregard the 40-year long acquis communutaire that determine
the basis of the Turkish-EU relationship. Monsiuer, this is not a
blackmailing or coercion: if Turkey cannot get a realistic date
for the accession negotiations-- even
conditional -- that falls before January 1, 2004 at the
Copenhagen Summit on December 13, the consequences for both sides
are likely to be very profound.


Our Europe of declining birth rates will need the youth and
dynamism Turkey brings. Our bravest new world is multi-cultural
and multi-ethnic. With the Turkey of 2010, the EU will gain not
only a rich cultural diversity, but also considerable
manufacturing capacity and better foreign policy outreach to the
key regions of the world. Monsiuer, thank you again for allowing
me to put the record straight and animating such a useful debate
on Turkey.