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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (58958)	11/27/2002 3:37:09 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

We have spent a good bit of time discussing Turkey's entering the EU. Here is a good article on the problem. I agree with the French that they should keep them out. From "NRO" The Eastern Questions Turkey and the EU. The Eastern Question" was the name given in the 19th century to the threat posed to European stability by the extensive but tottering Ottoman Empire. Much has changed since then, but many Europeans still see the Turkish republic, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, as threatening European stability. And though they are probably wrong about that, they are probably right that the "Eastern Question" cannot be answered in a purely European context. Any cure will require bold and imaginative U.S. involvement. To understand why, we should realize that today's "Eastern Question" is really three questions rolled into one: Is Turkey a European country? Is Turkey an Islamic nation? And is Turkey a vital strategic asset for the U.S. and the West? Take each one in turn: Is Turkey a European country? For the last 30 years Turkey has been seeking to join the European Union, and for the same period, the Europeans have been promising to consider the matter favorably sometime in the distant future. Just recently, however, former French president Giscard d'Estaing, the lordly figure in charge of shaping a hypothetical new EU Constitution, declared simply that Turkey was "not a European country" and that its entry would mean "the end of the EU." Though an EU spokesman more or less disavowed Giscard's remarks, he was supported by commentators and politicians from several European countries. Unspoken until now, opposition to Turkey's EU membership is nonetheless strong and deep in Euro-elites. What lies behind this opposition, of course, is the fact that the Turkish population is about 95 percent Muslim. European countries already host approximately 15 million or more immigrant and native-born Muslims. (The statistics differ.) They worry that these communities may be indifferent or hostile to Europe's secular liberal democracy and so a potential threat to public order and national unity ? not wholly unreasonably given the spread of radical Islamism through Europe via Saudi-financed Wahhabi mosques. They are nervous of adding another 66 million Muslims to the EU population. And these fears are aggravated by how Turks may be answering the second question: Is Turkey a Muslim nation? Until recently the official Turkish answer to this question was a definite "No." One of the principles of the modern Turkish state founded by Kemal Ataturk was secularism. And Turkey's Kemalist political establishment interpreted secularism very rigidly to mean not just the separation of mosque and state ? i.e. non-Islamic laws that apply equally to believers and non-believers alike ? but also the elimination of all expressions of Islamic belief from public life. In the 1930s people were executed for wearing the fez in public because it was regarded as Islamic headgear. (Otherwise it would be merely comic that Ataturk then hailed the fedora as a symbol of modernity and progress.) Even in recent years women have been prohibited from wearing headscarves in the Turkish parliament for the same reason. Such extreme secularism ? a fundamentalist secularism, really ? was accepted for many years because of the personal prestige of Ataturk (rough translation: "Father of All Turks.") But it eventually ran up against the social reality that 95 percent of the Turkish population is Muslim ? and they naturally resented these anti-Islamic prohibitions. In last month's elections Turkish voters rejected all the establishment parties in favor of a pro-Islamic party. Some members of this Justice and Development party hanker after radical Islamism. Others are merely Islamic conservatives who would like to see their religion given some public recognition ? in the way that America's traditional "civic religion" is a kind of diluted non-sectarian Protestantism. The party's leaders have pledged themselves to moderation, democracy, the Turkish constitution, support for NATO, entry into the EU and all good things. But some observers ? including Giscard and other Europeans ? naturally fear that a radical Islamist wolf is hiding behind all these woolly assurances. Which gives rise to the third question: Is Turkey a vital strategic asset for the U.S. and the West? Yes, Turkey is a stable state, a longstanding ally, and an important regional power. It has a young population, a large and well-trained army, links to the Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and a long-standing diplomatic orientation to the West. And it would be a necessary component of any U.S. coalition of forces invading Iraq, or of any NATO or U.S. action in the Middle East or Central Asia, or of any stable structure in the Eastern Mediterranean. But is Turkey a reliable asset as well as a vital one? Most of the above advantages rest upon the fact that the Turkish political identity is a unique one that joins Islam to a strong sense of being "European." In Kemalist Turkey the European identity was uppermost. That is now visibly changing. In what proportions will Islam and Europe combine in the Turkish political soul in future? Plainly the best outcome would be one in which neither Islam nor "Europe" predominated ? but both commingled so that the Turks gradually found themselves living in a modern secular democracy that was nonetheless sensitive to the cultural and moral tastes and opinions of the Muslim in the street. Such a polity might be a democratic model for other Islamic countries in a way that Kemalist secularism never could be. And it probably represents the nearest thing to the underlying political consensus of most Turks in a post-Kemalist polity. Unfortunately, this is not the only possible outcome. It is easy to imagine a vicious circle whereby the Europeans reject Turkey with contempt; the Turks are offended and in turn reject the "European" half of their identity; the Islamists gain ground politically as a result; Turkey's diplomatic orientation gradually shifts to the Middle East and the Islamic world; and the U.S. finds after an interval that Turkey has become a sort of Islamic France, at best grudging, at worst hostile. For these reasons, the U.S. is pushing the EU to admit Turkey in the relatively near future. So is Britain. But France, Germany, and much of Europe are quietly but implacably opposed for the reasons cited above; the French in addition see Turkey as another American "Trojan Horse" within the EU like the British; and the final outcome is highly uncertain. The U.S. therefore needs a fallback plan in case the EU says no. Washington might propose a transatlantic free trade area (TAFTA in the jargon) that would unite the U.S., the EU, Norway, Switzerland, such central and eastern European countries as remain outside the EU ? and, of course, Turkey. TAFTA would include all the trade and economic benefits offered by the EU except for free movement of labor. That would reassure those Europeans nervous of Muslim immigration such as Giscard. And though the EU under strong French pressure rejected TAFTA a few years ago, it might now see such a TAFTA as a price worth paying to avoid full EU membership for Turkey. From the Turkish standpoint TAFTA would be an economic counterpart to NATO. As such it would strengthen both the Turkish economy and Turkey's pro-Western orientation. But that new Turkish identity would be would be Atlanticist rather than the country's previous narrowly European commitment. And from the American standpoint, whether Turkey stays in the West by EU entry or through an enlarged TAFTA, the U.S. would gain another ally in the forthcoming struggles. The struggle against radical Islamism? Well, yes, but also as the French rightly foresee ? the forthcoming struggle against the central EU powers.