The pope's recent visit to Turkey and his call for the nation's acceptance into the European Union has added an interesting element to the debate about Turkey's inclusion into the EU. It is now more difficult to pitch the issue as one between the West and the Middle East, or Christianity and Islam, because the most Christian and Western of institutions — the Roman Catholic Church — has embraced the notion of Turkish membership in the ever-more powerful EU.
And yet this approach, as good intentioned as it may be, misses a crucial component of the issue: Turkey's non-Christian and non-Western essence equates to fundamentally non-European values and is thus not suitable for EU membership. This differing system of values has concrete political and cultural implications, making it inapt for Turkey and European states to exist under the umbrella of the same supranational political and economic organization.
The Europe of 2006 is by no means a perfect society, as it is plagued by, among other things, unemployment, racism and the steady erosion of the welfare state. Still, the European ideals of community-based politics, a social safety net, universal education and cooperation have made the continent the world leader of progress. The relative equality and justice of European society are the envy of countries all over the world, including the United States (the 35-hour work week, for example, is something that American workers can only dream about). The state of Europe today goes hand-in-hand with its seemingly paradoxical Christian foundation (including the emphasis on human solidarity and equality) and a strong commitment to secular humanism.
This makes quite a contrast to Turkey. Despite the country's reputation as a liberal, Muslim state, its acceptance into the EU would still stand out like an ink blot on the organization's map. One notable difference between Turkey and the rest of Europe is the power of the military, which has staged four coups since 1960. In recent years, the armed forces has succumbed to EU pressure and limited its meddling in political affairs. However, this has been only a mixed blessing, as the secular military serves as the only bulwark against the growing power of the Islamic fundamentalists, whose representation in the country's legislature has, alarmingly, been steadily increasing. The reality is that many secular progressives in Turkey actually see the military as a lesser evil to the threat of Islamic extremists. This pessimistic political dynamic amounts to a lose-lose situation for those who believe that Turkish political practices can be reconciled with those of Europe's.
Turkey's suppression of human rights is yet another problem. Its abuse of the Kurdish minority has caused worldwide condemnation. In the struggle against separatist rebels, like the Kurdistan Workers Party, it is estimated that more than 30,000 people have been killed since the 1980s. The brutality of the military's treatment of the Kurds has manifested itself in the use of poison gas and mass bombings of villages.
Free speech is also lacking. While Europe has arguably gone to one extreme in criminalizing the act of denying the Holocaust, Turkey has made it a crime to even acknowledge its own history of genocide against the Armenians. The Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Orhan Pamuk, was brought up on charges of "insulting Turkishness" after he remarked that, "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody dares to talk about it." International outrage ensued, and the charges were later dropped.
The relative backwardness of Turkish political institutions is only one deterrent to EU membership. The cultural attitudes of the people, which are at least partially responsible for the existence of such institutions, are another. The anti-European attitudes of the Turkish people were recently exemplified in a poll conducted by the Milliyet newspaper Oct. 24, which showed that two-thirds of the Turkish people don't even want to join the EU. Government prosecution of Christian converts and recent plans to construct female-only parks have, similarly, been greeted with support by most Turks.
Such sentiment is the product of a country that has lived under military rule for decades and continues to be held back by reactionary religious ideas. It is all too clear that Turkish institutions and Turkish ideas are clearly not European ones. Once this is realized, the foolishness of admitting a non-European nation into the European Union becomes all too obvious.
Kyle Szarzynski ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in Spanish and history.
