Turkey and Greece were invited at the same time to join the Common Market, which later became the European Union (EU). Greece accepted the invitation and is now one of the states of the EU. Bulent Ecevit, a Social Democrat, was the Turkish Prime minister at that time. He declined, saying that “Turkey is not yet ready”. In more recent times other Turkish governments thought that they were ready and applied for membership. This time EU set unbelievable stumbling blocks before Turkey, conditions that were not asked from the other applicants. It was obvious that Europe had changed its mind about inviting Turkey. But for some inexplicable reason, Turkish governments did not want to see that.
E u r o p e’ s V i e w s:
Most of the EU states leaders have been officially supportive of Turkey’s membership application. Only Germany’s conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel wants that a partial membership be offered to Turkey. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy is also against granting full membership. But the European populations are generally opposed to full membership. Unofficially, Europe is dead set against Turkish membership but could not say so openly, diplomatically. In stead of saying “no” they put such conditions, so that Turkey says “no”.
Here are statements of top EU leaders, after they retired:
Tom Spencer, Head of EU Foreign Affairs Committee, said in 1999: “I think that we did not behave correctly by promising to the Turks for 30 years that some day they will become a part of the EU. Because the truth is, that EU has no intention to accept Turkey as a member. Turkey is squeezed between the words that the Fundamentalists and we will not keep. It would have been a more correct attitude for us to explain our true intentions.”
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former Republic President of France, said in 2000: “Turkey will have no place in the European Union. Today no leader in Europe wants Turkey inside Europe. They do not have any such intention for tomorrow, either. One is doing injustice to Turkey. Because Turkey is being deceived by the EU. To make it a candidate at Helsinki was to give it an empty hope ”
Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of Germany said in 2000: “What ever may happen, Turkey has no place in Europe. We cannot allow to let 70 million Turkish citizens to walk freely inside Europe. We cannot accept that Europe becomes neighbors with countries like Iran, Syria, and Iraq across European borders. We should continue our economic relations with Turkey. We should benefit from the purchasing power of the young and
fast-growing population. However, we should see that this country does not have the fundamental principles of Globalization, and does not accept the international brotherhood.”
[The above statements have been translated from Turkish, that were in turn translated from English, French , or German.]
Although the EU is very much pro-secularism, in the case of Turkey they criticized the attempt of the courts to close the religious party for breaking almost every secularism rule. That was unbelievable.
T u r k e y’ s D e s i r e t o be c o m e a E U m e m b e r
Secularist Turkish governments before 2002 were insistently asking to become a EU member, and the EU systematically asked that they fulfill undesirable conditions. Some Turkish representatives claimed that it was Turkey’s right to become a member. That was obviously not true. Many Turks felt terribly insulted that they had defended the West during the Cold War, that former Soviet puppet countries were now easily accepted as EU-members, while their country was not. While the three statements reported above happened in 2000 and before, Turkish governments did not take them seriously, because they did not like to hear that the EU does not want them.
On November 2002 there was an important election in Turkey. The Turkish people had enough of the incompetent and corrupt secular coalition of parties and voted them out of office. A religious party, the AKP, promised during the election campaign that they are not a religious party, they are just a conservative party of Muslims, that they will respect the secularism (Laicism) clause of the constitution and would manage better. They also promised to carry Turkey in to the European Union. That was odd, but the Turkish voters wanted to give them a chance. The AKP won a majority of seats in the Parliament..
Of course by 2002 the real intentions of the EU were known, and AKP’s promise to carry Turkey to the EU was just a ruse. They knew that Europe will eventually say ”no” but mean while they would curb the capabilities of the military to prevent their planned Islamization. While it is downright immoral in Western culture to lie and cheat, it is just called “Takkiye” in Islam and is alright as long as it helps Islam. Thus, by Western standards EU’s behavior is immoral.
AKP kept one promise: they managed the government much better than the socialist secularists. They brought the inflation rate from 50 – 75 % down to single digit. The per capita income of Turks increased., but they implemented an extensive program of Islamization. Since 1950’s they had started to re-educate the people in religious schools by brain-washing them as fundamentalist Muslims. Those graduates kept on increasing and were the important part of Islamization. The people were changed. Those people were now all voting for the AKP.
Since 2002 AKP has put everywhere its own people, except in the military and the courts. During the last months the courts processed a request of the AKP to lift the ban of head scarves at Universities. The EU had the same problem, mainly in France and the EU did not try to influence the court procedure. The ban was not lifted and AKP lost. Encouraged by this result , the Chief Prosecutor accused the AKP party and its main people to be breaking the laicism (Secularism) clause of the Constitution and wanted to close the AKP. His accusations were clear and many. But meanwhile some people were retired and replaced in the Constitutional Court and the suit was rejected 7 to 6. During this suite, EU heavily interfered by claiming that this suit was “destroying democracy.” If we accept their logic, if a party is once democratically elected, it has a license to break the constitution at will. Europe has become horribly absurd. Now the last hope to get rid of the religious party was lost, even the courts are no more independent.
T h e T u r k i s h M i l i t a r y.
The Turkish Military is a unique institution. It is not only a defender of Turkey, but it is also a defender of the Constitution. I observed, that each time they interfered, they always returned to democracy in very few years. Western critics say that it is not the job of the military to interfere in the political process. That is true for the West, because civilian governments in the West generally do their job right, they do not commit gross violations of their constitutions, so there never is need for military interference. When Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey, Turks’ literacy rate was 7 % and the Turkish Parliament’s occupants were not too much higher educated. The Turkish Armed Forces were always very highly educated. Ataturk left the military as a sort of guardian angels in case the civilians would go off the track. The military had the job of putting things back on the track and returning it to civilians. They always did that. The September 12, 1980 coup was the last full-fledged coup. After that, it was seen that a coup becomes counter-productive. No one expects today a military coup, but some how the people want that they play their role of guardian angel and help straightening things up. Even that is getting increasingly more difficult in a nation with an increasing percentage of fundamentalists.
W h a t c a n t h e S e c u l a r i s t P e o p l e d o ?
Many Secularist people still hope and wish that the military gets the chestnuts out of the fire for them, so, they don’t have to do any thing. But that is now an unrealistic wish. Why don’t they think of doing something themselves? After all, isn’t it their country too, where they would want to raise their children and grand-children?
The politically and legally healthy move should come from the secularist half of the population. They are disorganized, they should avoid the influence of socialists, form a Secular, Nationalist, Free-Market Economics party and engage in true opposition. They should tell the country that the European Membership is a hoax, Europe will never accept Turkey, Turkey should remain friends with Europe, continue its Economic relationship, but remain an independent country. They should convince the Parliament to tell Europe that they are retracting the membership application. Thus, Europe should stop interfering in Turkey’s internal affairs. Ataturk said: “If a nation does not rely on its own effort, only on its own effort, it can became any body’s toy”. The secularist half of the population should definitely avoid fragmenting and should elect themselves a good leader, who will commit himself to oppose the AKP. That can be now the only hope for Turkey.
Source : T H E O R HAN T A R H A N L E T T E R
