ISTANBUL – So far Turkey has weathered the storm of the Iraq war. Its prow remains pointed towards Europe but its sails are still open to catch a helpful wind from America which, for all its present estrangement from Europe and its differences with Turkey over the war and its aftermath, has long been a fervent supporter of Turkish membership of the European Union. More than ever before, the Turks, in many ways historically an anchor of the oft turbulent Islamic world, want to be part of Europe. For an intellectual minority this has been a long cherished goal. Now it appears to be becoming a country-wide aspiration.
If Turkey were just Istanbul, union with Europe would probably have happened already. Istanbul has been for centuries among the most metropolitan of all cities. It has served as the capital of three empires, the only one to astride two continents, the meeting place of East and West, Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam. It was Napoleon Bonaparte who said, “if the world were a single state its capital would be Istanbul”.
But Turkey is not yet Istanbul, although the city has swelled from 1 million to ten million in a generation. Most of Turkey still lives in small towns and villages and it is the people there that the sophisticates of the city have had to wait for- not just economically but politically too. It was the hinterland’s long time support, albeit passive, for the traditional nationalistic political parties that allowed them the freedom, playing on the populace’s instinctive distrust of foreign criticism, to delay much needed judicial and political reform- in the practice of torture, capital punishment and severe prison regimes, and, not least, in the brutal treatment dealt out to the minority Kurdish population.
But Turkey over the last two decades has been transformed in a way that all but the most optimistic could never have anticipated. By 1996 the World Economic Forum was signaling out Turkey as the bright star of the European east. Even then, seven years ago, it was ahead of long time EU member Greece as well Poland and Hungary, two countries set for entry next year, in such indicators as economic strength, financial prowess, standing in science and technology and the soundness of governmental economic leadership, not to mention the advancement of women.
Despite subsequent economic upheavals- the economy badly crashed three years ago-Turkey has kept and improved upon most of its advantages and now, with the coming to power at the end of last year of the Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party, Turkey has taken another giant step forward. In August the new government steered through parliament two important bills. One was to weaken the power of the military whose leaders have long had the last say in important affairs of state. The second was an amnesty- although a limited one- for the Kurdish guerrillas that, until the ceasefire in 1999, were engaged in a bloody dual with the Turkish army.
The government appears to have achieved what was considered unachievable- a parliamentary majority for a single party and that an Islamic one and to be truly seized of a modernizing mission that involves pushing the country rapidly forward to meet contemporary western European standards. With only an occasional modest nod to the Islamic hinterland and its own conservative roots- such as suggesting it favors girls and young women wearing headscarves in school and university- its policies are more in the style of enlightened social democracy. There is simply no evidence that the party has “a hidden Islamic agenda”.
Despite an EU promise to open negotiations for Turkey’s entry into the Union at the end of next year it is inevitable that Moslem Turkey is going to meet a degree of opposition that the Christian east Europeans have largely avoided. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the Union’s president of its constitutional conference and a former president of France, has said that if the Moslem state gains entry “it will be the end of the European Union”.
It will indeed demand a great leap forward of the mind, giving Europe borders that front on Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus, in many ways an awesome prospect. Yet surely Turkish membership will not be a Trojan horse for the hobgoblins of Islamic militancy or “oriental intrigue”. On the contrary many Turks, looking back to the Ottoman Empire which bestowed so much tolerance and freedom on its constituent parts, instinctively feel at ease with the notion of a political entity that isn’t homogeneous. Moreover, Turkish Muslim influence should, if anything, exert a pacifying effect on the twelve million or so Muslims who live within Europe’s present boundaries and who have been unsettled by the unstable politics of Algeria, Morocco and Al Qaeda.
At the moment informed opinion talks of Turkish entry in 2015. That is too slow a timetable. Europe must take this historic leap sooner rather than later. Turkey would then be Europe’s very useful eastern beacon of democracy and social well-being, setting a standard that the East would probably feel pressured to emulate.
