Writing Off Turkish Liberty



Girls at the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul. Will the European Union be in their future?

Boston Herald

The trial lasted only minutes. The long-awaited courtroom ordeal of Turkey’s most famous author, Orhan Pamuk, was abruptly postponed last month until February. Pamuk dared tell a Swiss newspaper that Turkey had indeed massacred 1 million Armenians in 1915 and 30,000 Kurds since the start of that civil war in 1984. For these statements, he is accused of the “public denigration” of Turkish identity and faces three years in prison.

The actions taken by Turkey’s angry, right-wing judiciary could not come at a worse time for that nation. As Turkey emerges from a century of post-Ottoman malaise and eagerly asserts its legitimate desire to enter the European Union, it continues to wrestle with the ghosts of its darker past. The Pamuk case and other public defamation actions against those who dare to speak truth are predicated on the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. These cases are once again - needlessly and recklessly - placing Turkey itself on trial in the court of world opinion.

Turkey is a land of extraordinary contrast and contradiction - a European nation bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria, a largely Islamic culture housed in a secular state, and a NATO member in the Middle East that enjoys an effective, long-term relationship with Israel.

Turkey is expected to jump through many hoops as part of the 10-year EU accession process, now under way. It is also expected to continue undertaking needed economic and political reforms to achieve membership. It’s clear that the country is on the move, however, opening wider to outside influences while justifiably refusing to sell its rather remarkable soul.

Turkey’s real growth rate exceeded 8 percent last year, making it the economic envy of EU stalwarts France, Germany and Italy, whose economies have been growing at a 1 percent or 2 percent clip annually.

Still, it is the Pamuk trial and other reactionary tendencies that have the potential to undermine Turkey’s EU application. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says it is helpless to stop the judiciary’s actions against Pamuk and others. It must realize, however, that growing numbers of politicians in Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere will cravenly use these cases to declare that Turkey has not changed its prison stripes.

The Erdogan government must certainly understand that these judicial actions provide Turkey’s legion of critics in nationalist parties across Europe with a convenient cover to sell the fear, xenophobia, racism and religious intolerance that constitute their real opposition to Turkey’s membership in the European Union.

Turkey must understand that fear, not economic growth rates, will determine the outcome of its EU bid. Only 40 percent of Europeans now support Turkish EU membership, down from 45 percent earlier this year. A meager one-third of French and German citizens support Turkey’s EU accession at a time when fear of crime, job loss and terrorism are so high.

Just watch the jockeying now under way between Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin to become France’s next prime minister and you will see how fear of racial, ethnic and religious differences is being used to divide and conquer, whether it’s in a Paris suburb or an EU bargaining table. The same can be said about the ways in which the new Merkel government in Germany, a weak coalition from the start, will pander to racist elements on its right flank to retain power. Listen to those who talk about preserving Judeo-Christian traditions in Europe and ask what they really mean.

The “us vs. them” politics of fear will work well in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere to frustrate Turkey’s ambitions. So instead of labeling Pamuk and others who speak truth to power as traitors and unpatriotic, Ankara should simply rise above it and deny fear merchants more ammunition than they deserve. Indeed, it is the brittleness and pettiness of some of Turkey’s top politicians and judges that may well be the undoing of its EU bid. Turkey is a great nation that can make a substantive case for becoming part of the European Union. However, it must first make the case that the ghosts of its past are gone but not forgotten.