{"id":64216,"date":"2013-02-01T07:02:09","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T05:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=64216"},"modified":"2023-04-03T22:31:27","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T19:31:27","slug":"the-european-union-turkey-and-democratic-secularism-tentative-reflections-on-an-emerging-condition-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/02\/01\/the-european-union-turkey-and-democratic-secularism-tentative-reflections-on-an-emerging-condition-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The European Union, Turkey and \u201cdemocratic secularism:\u201d tentative reflections on an emerging condition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00ab Turkey may look East as EU stalemate\u00a0continues<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Turkish_EU_accession_logo2\"<\/h2>\n

January 31, 2013 by Ataturk Society UK<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[\u2026] \u201cTurkey is part of Europe: and here we think first and foremost of the stupendous personality of Ataturk, whose work meets us at every turn in this country, and of the radical way in which he recast every aspect of life in Turkey on European lines. It is an event without parallel in the history of the influence exerted by European culture and politics. I would even say that we sense in it a certain kinship with the most modern of European developments: the unification of Europe.<\/p>\n

Do we not feel the workings of a kindred spirit when we meet this enlightened, rational and sternly realistic attitude; the methodical application of modern knowledge, the importance attached to teaching and education; the progressive and forceful dynamism which we witness everywhere; and the bold pragmatism in the choice of means. What then could be more natural than that Europe \u2013 the part of Europe which represents the free expression of its own character \u2013 and Turkey should show themselves to be as one in their actions and reactions \u2013 in the military, the political and the economic spheres\u201d. by the President of the European Commission, Walter Hallstein, at the signing of the Ankara Agreement in the Turkish capital on 12 September 1963,<\/p>\n

source: Bulletin of the European Economic Community, n. 9\/10 (September\/October 1963): 28.<\/p>\n

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Turkey may look East as EU stalemate\u00a0continues<\/h2>\n

January 30, 2013 by Ataturk Society UK<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Thomas Seibert<\/p>\n

Jan 30, 2013 . \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n

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ISTANBUL \/\/ Frustrated with resistance within the European Union to Turkey\u2019s accession, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has asked the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, for help in getting the country admitted to the Shanghai Five, an organisation of Asian powers that includes China and Russia. Mr Erdogan\u2019s statements, made in a television interview last Friday, appeared to signal a strategic shift for a country that is a long-standing member of Nato, and that has been seeking to join the EU and its predecessors for half a century. Several western diplomats and analysts said the prime minister\u2019s remarks should be seen as a sign of the depth of Turkey\u2019s frustration with the EU, rather than an imminent fundamental policy shift. They said Mr Erdogan may have been trying to scare the EU into a more welcoming attitude towards his country. \u201cHe was sending a message to the EU that said: \u2018We don\u2019t need you\u2019,\u201d said Beril Dedeoglu, a professor of political science at Istanbul\u2019s Galatasaray University and one of the group of journalists and intellectuals who interviewed the prime minister.<\/p>\n

In recent years, especially after Ankara voted against Iran sanctions in the UN Security Council in 2010, western governments expressed concern that Turkey, led by Mr Erdogan\u2019s Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party with roots in political Islam, may end its traditional western outlook and turn east. In that context, Mr Erdogan\u2019s statement \u201cexploded like a bombshell\u201d, Prof Dedeoglu said yesterday. During the interview on Kanal 24, a Turkish news channel, Mr Erdogan said Turkey was not about to \u201cforget about the EU accession process\u201d by itself, but that the EU was trying to discourage Turkey from pursuing its membership attempt. \u201cI told Mr Putin the other day: take us into the Shanghai Five,\u201d Mr Erdogan said. \u201cTake us into the Shanghai Five, and we will say goodbye to the EU, we will leave them.\u201d He was referring to a regional organisation originally grouping China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The organisation was renamed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation after Uzbekistan joined in 2001. Turkey became a dialogue partner of the organisation last year.<\/p>\n

Joining the Shanghai Five would bring Turkey into close military and economic cooperation with China and Russia. Abandoning the EU process would mean giving up a long-held principle of Turkish foreign policy that has the aim of making the country a full member of the club of European democracies. Turkey\u2019s EU accession talks started in 2005 but have made little progress, partly due to the unresolved Cyprus conflict, but also because of the reluctance of several key members to embrace the Muslim Turks as new members. \u201cAs the prime minister of a nation of 75 million, you start looking elsewhere if that goes on like that in a negative fashion, if you want it or not,\u201d Mr Erdogan said. He also said the reason for the EU\u2019s reluctance was because Turkey was a Muslim country, adding that some EU ministers had said so openly. \u201cWhat\u2019s the use of being fobbed off like this?\u201d he asked. \u201cThe Shanghai Five are better, they are much stronger,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A Turkish diplomat underlined that the prime minister had said Turkey was not giving up on the EU. But there is no doubt about Turkey\u2019s frustration with the lack of progress in Brussels, he added. In Washington, the US state department reacted cautiously to Mr Erdogan\u2019s statements. Asked about the possibility of Turkey joining the Shanghai Five, Victoria Nuland, a department spokeswoman, said such a development \u201cwould be interesting, given the fact that Turkey\u2019s also a Nato member. We\u2019ll have to see how that goes\u201d. Page 2 of 2 A European diplomat in Ankara played down the prime minister\u2019s interview. \u201cThe Shanghai Five is not an organisation that would be remotely as important to Turkey as the EU is,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the Turks think they can scare people in the EU with this, they are mistaken.\u201d But Prof Dedeoglu said the remarks should be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

Even if the government did not have any immediate plans to turn away from the EU, it was significant that the prime minister was talking about it openly, because this showed the level of dissatisfaction with the EU in Turkey, she said. According to a poll conducted last month for the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, a think tank in Istanbul, two Tiurkish voters out of three feel the country should abandon its goal of EU membership. Support for EU membership in Turkey, which stood at more than 70 per cent in 2004, has decreased significantly over recent years, as voters and politicians expressed disappointment with the EU\u2019s reluctance to take their country in.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Turkey\u2019s growing economic power has nurtured a feeling of strength and independence that has pushed the EU issue, the most important political subject in Ankara in the first years of the AKP era from 2002 onwards, into the background. Prof Dedeoglu said those factors had given Mr Erdogan the feeling that he could talk about joining the Shanghai Five without angering important sections of the electorate before local, parliamentary and presidential elections next year and in 2015. \u201cHe was relaxed when he talked about it, because there is a mood in the public at large that says we don\u2019t need the EU,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

tseibert@thenational.ae<\/p>\n

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