Over the years, as Turkey’s European Union (EU) membership process stalled, I have seen plenty of blame placed on both sides. Ultimately, I never believed Turkey would become a full EU member, as the process was full of insincerity from both Ankara and Brussels. Now, it is over.
In all these years, I never criticised the EU membership process out of some nationalistic impulse. But I do believe that the goals of democracy, rights and freedom cannot be achieved by way of foreign pressure. I also believe that the EU is not merely a union of political principles and requires a minimum level of cultural proximity. I still believe this is true. I am not among the Turks who believe that somehow “democracy is alien to our culture”.
What I mean by cultural proximity is based around the way our daily lives are lived. France may be the most secular example of the West, just as Turkey is of the East — but one has Christmas and Easter and the other has Ramadan and Eid as official national holidays.
We never had time to discuss these things thoroughly. We could not, because the pro-EU camp in Turkey was labelling anybody with the slightest objection as an “ultranationalist”, while another camp was clinging tight to the EU as a way to eliminate the hold of ultrasecular Kemalism.
Now, the issue is being seen through new lenses. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had managed to eliminate Kemalism and the hold of Turkey’s Ataturk foundation, so it no longer needs the backing of the EU. At the same time, Europe viewing Turkey as an “Islamic democracy” is over.
Recently, the EU has suddenly stopped ignoring the threat of authoritarianism in Turkey. But in the end, the discussion of who is right is overshadowed by the bald insincerity of each side. This doesn’t, of course, mean that we shouldn’t be asking what will come of the relationship between Turkey and Europe.
Even if Ankara never becomes a full member of the EU, it has serious political and economic ties with the Continent. Cutting these ties would be the wrong path to take. And this goes beyond diplomacy or even foreign business opportunities: In the end, it is about what kind of leadership Turkey will have at home as well.
Values of democracy
We see the attitude of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling establishment towards the West and the EU. They do not consider the values of democracy and freedom as universal, but rather cultural. And, it may be, that the cultural values of the West don’t fit with those of the Turks’. This means that we will eat our yoghurt in our own way, as the Turkish saying goes. At the root of democracy is the goal of encouraging different groups to peacefully coexist and securing the rights of individuals.
Is the real reason for the current standoff with the EU their approach to the Kurdish issue, their support of “terrorism”? Who would have intervened on this issue if we could have handled it on our own? We saw this problem with the secularist regime of the past, as we see it today.
Both the secular nationalist and the political Islamist camps have always kept their distance from true democratic politics and the values on which they are built. The diffidence to these values clashes with their own respective claims to legitimacy via the “voting ballot” and “national will”.
Why are these concepts not “alien” or somehow “western values” while others are? They have no good response because the starting point is always a yearning to run an authoritarian regime. Indeed, we have seen that in the West as well. So we can rightfully say that the EU cannot impose democracy on Turkey.
But we also know that democracy will be totally lost by cutting ties with the EU. It is the proof that the Turkish ruling party’s fight with the EU is actually a fight against western values themselves.
— Worldcrunch 2016/New York Times News Service
Nuray Mert is a Turkish political scientist and columnist.
