[Discussion] Turks at the gates of Brussels

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http://www.eurozine.com/article/2005-06-24-kadritzke-en.html


Niels Kadritzke
Turks at the gates of Brussels
	

Europe, Sèvres, and Kemalism

The Kemalist national liberation movement, which grew
out of opposition to the quasi-imperialism of western
Europe, brought about the conditions for the modern
Turkish state. The Kemalists still see European
federalism as equivalent to separatism; this explains
why the liberal Islamic AKP has made more progress in
delivering the reforms required by the EU. The
eventual accession of Turkey will depend on how
effectively the negotiation of these antagonisms is
steered by Europe in the next ten to fifteen years.

The conqueror rode into the city on a white horse. His
troops took control of the docks, the barracks, the
police stations, and the tram network. It was 8
February 1919; the commander was the French general
Franchet d'Esperey; and the city was Istanbul. The
arrival of British and French troops in the capital
marked the end of the Ottoman Empire. The way it was
staged was supposed to call to mind the invasion of
Constantinople by Mehmed II. He had entered the
Byzantine capital in 1453 -- on a white horse. The
grey on which d'Esperey rode into the Ottoman capital
466 years later was a gift from the Greeks of
Istanbul. Like their compatriots in the kingdom of
Greece, they saw the occupation of Istanbul as the
beginning of the realization of their bold project: a
greater Greek empire in emulation of Byzantium.

Anyone who considers the relationship of modern-day
Turkey to the Europe of today must not forget this
scene, for it is not only the Ottomans' historical
advance into Europe which is once again conjured up
with this reminder of the "Turks at the gates of
Vienna". The role played by Europe and the European
powers on the territory of modern Turkey has been far
more profound, continuous, and momentous.

The "eastern question" had been one of the central
problems preoccupying the great powers since the
beginning of the nineteenth century. They wanted to
strip the "sick man of the Bosphorus" of its European
territories and take away its control over the straits
between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The
empire, overstretched as it was, was under the
economic supervision of European banks. It was
European capital that fuelled the penetration of
Anatolia, along the very railway lines financed by
that capital.

Had this plan worked out, Asia Minor would long since
have belonged to the European economic area as a
quasi-colony. But in World War I, the new Turkish
regime backed the Central Powers -- and so in 1918
found itself once again on the losing side. At
Versailles, the Ottoman Empire was to have come under
the hammer: it was decreed not only that it would hand
over its last European and Arab territories, but also
that its core area of Asia Minor would be carved up.
Istanbul and the Zone of the Straits were occupied by
Allied troops, the Italians in Antalya and the French
in Adana. In May 1919 the Greeks occupied Smyrna. The
European powers had granted them custody of a wide
zone around the most important port in Asia Minor. In
August 1920 the division of Asia Minor was sealed in
the Treaty of Sèvres. The west was to have become
Greek and an Armenian state was to have been created
in the east. Only central Anatolia was to have
remained as a Turkish rump state.

Since then, Sèvres has been a traumatic concept for
the Turkish people. Had the treaty been put into
action, there would be no Turkey today. Greek
sub-imperialism had not only conquered western Asia
Minor, but also penetrated it economically. If the
Greeks had refrained from ethnic expulsions, the
Muslim population would have become the peasant and
servant class of a Levantine state dominated by
European capital, which had -- at least economically
-- also annexed eastern Anatolia.

If the "eastern question" had been answered by one of
these alternatives -- quasi-colonial infiltration or
Hellenization -- the question of whether or not Asia
Minor was part of Europe would never have arisen. The
Turkey of today would be the south-eastern extremity
of the Old Continent. The key geographical focus --
the continental frontier at the Bosphorus -- would
have become geopolitically irrelevant. And the Muslims
of Asia Minor would of course have belonged to Europe.
All the more so considering that half a million Balkan
Turks, who were resettled in Anatolia in the course of
the Greek-Turkish population exchange, would have
remained in southern Europe. Asia Minor and the
Balkans would have formed a huge tract of land whose
Christian and Muslim roots would have changed nothing
of its European character.

In the debate over Turkey's accession to the European
Union, such hypothetical observations are a salutary
lesson. More important still is remembering real
history. On 19 May 1919, four days after the Greeks
had marched into Izmir (Smyrna), Mustafa Kemal
declared a war of national liberation. In August 1922,
the Greek invasion was repulsed. It was the Greeks of
Asia Minor who paid the price; they were driven west
over the sea, along with the Greek army. The treaty of
Lausanne in 1923 formalized an almost total exchange
of populations between the Greeks and the Turks -- the
first forcible displacement of citizens agreed between
two states in history.

Thus, in defence against plans for conquest inspired
and licensed by Europe, Turkey created the conditions
for the construction of a "modern" nation. And even
the nationalism mobilized by Atatürk as "father of the
nation" in a war against a threat to Turkish existence
-- which became the ideological cement of the new
nation -- was a reversion to European models. The
Kemalist "invention of a nation" is reminiscent of the
establishment of other nation states in southern
Europe. In order to create "proud Turks" from a
nationalistically indifferent Muslim population, a
combination of social mobilization, compulsory
education, and the forcible elimination of particular
identities was required. This strategy was one not
unfamiliar to the Europeans either.

Kemalism's particular patriarchal character can be
explained by the fledgling state of Turkey's social
development at the time. But it also goes back to the
model of other "delayed nations": the ideological
blueprint of the Turkish project was shaped by the
fascist era. Even the panicky negation of all
religious and ethnic subgroups and minorities -- a
defining feature of the Kemalist concept of nation --
had a historical justification: that the European
Muslims who had been deported in the exchange of
populations should not feel excluded in their new
country, but at home, as Turks with equal rights.

The most important parameters in the story that
culminates in modern Turkey as the legacy of the
Ottoman Empire were thus set in the process of the
European "eastern policy". It would therefore not only
be unjust, but historically unwise and shortsighted,
to leave the Turkey of today alone on its special
path, shaped and imposed by Europe as this has been.

Yet at the same time there are some insights here for
modern Turkey with which even the political elites
have difficulties. For one, the realization that
Turkish society has by no means already been
fundamentally and irreversibly "Europeanized", as
Kemalist ideology claims. Atatürk did indeed introduce
a strict programme of "westernization" and
accomplished important reforms -- language and
literacy reform, the abolition of the caliphate, and
the neutralization of religion through the state. But
a paternalistic dictatorship of education seldom leads
to democratic conditions. Nor did Atatürk ever define
himself as a "democrat": the ideological combination
of "statism" and "nationalism" left no room for the
fundamental western idea that state and nation should
serve the development of the individual, not the other
way around.

As such, the circumstances in which Kemalism was born
constitute a handicap which has prevented fully
democratic conditions from flourishing in Turkey to
this day. This also explains why the AKP government in
Ankara, a government characterized by Islamism rather
than Kemalism, has made more systematic progress with
the programme of reform required for entry into the EU
than the Kemalist politicians before Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. It also explains why some of the bitterest
opponents of systematic democratization are those
parts of the political elite described by Murat Belge
as "hardcore Kemalists". Their positions of power are
in bureaucratic institutions, in the judiciary, and in
the military; their most effective instrument is the
"deep state", which crystallizes around MIT, the
secret service controlled by the military.

So the two political poles facing each other in Turkey
today at the entrance to the EU are not simply the
supposedly Islamic forces of Anatolia and a
western-oriented bloc. On the issue of how swiftly and
comprehensively the EU's Copenhagen criteria can be
met, the respective fronts are quite different. This
was shown at a conference held by the Green group of
the European Parliament that took place in Istanbul at
the end of October. Intellectuals such as the writer
Orhan Pamuk, and Murat Belge, president of the
Helsinki Citizens' Assembly in Turkey, sat on a panel
discussing the future of Turkish democracy and
criticized their own society and political class.
Pamuk observed that, until recently, many of the
things that were being called for on this platform
could in Turkey have led to imprisonment. He said that
he had felt safer as a Turkish citizen since he had
been under the protection of Europe. The Kemalist
reaction came from the audience: "Mr Pamuk, why do you
hate Turkey? Why don't you love your own country?"
asked an indignant (female) audience member.

The writer replied calmly: "Well, there are people
whose love for their mother country manifests itself
in their use of torture. My love for my country
manifests itself in my criticism of my state." With
this answer Pamuk broke two of the hardline Kemalists'
taboos at once: in front of an international audience
he broached the subject of torture, which until
recently was regarded as a legitimate instrument in
the defence of the Turkish state; and he rejected the
equation of state and nation that constitutes the
centrepiece of the Kemalist creed.

That unity of state and nation was a historically
inevitable doctrine, the ideological foundation on
which modern Turkey was built. That this unity had to
be won in a war of self-defence of course had the
fatal consequence that the army was able to justify
itself as the guarantor of the state: the equation of
state and nation expanded into the unity of state,
nation, and army. With the introduction of a
multi-party system after 1945, the importance of the
Turkish army in this equation increased still further.
The officer class found itself confirmed as the
custodians of the Kemalist inheritance against the
dangers of political pluralism. This manifested
itself, among other things, in the military coups
which took place between 1960 and 1981, and once again
in 1997 in the "soft putsch" which brought down the
Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan.

The political role of the army is even set down in
writing in the Turkish constitution, which entrusts
the army not only with national defence, but also with
the "punctual and accurate identification of threats
to the unity of the land and the nation". Moreover,
the army has the right to act against any "overt or
covert attempt to destroy the indivisible integrity of
the Turkish nation, wherever such a threat may
originate". No doubt hardline Kemalists also see a
similar threat in the excessive demands on Turkey
entailed by accession to the EU. What they disputed
most fiercely at the Green conference were Brussels'
demands that the attested rights of ethnic and
religious minorities be guaranteed. Self-evident EU
concepts such as "federalism" and "a Europe of
regions" are synonymous, on this view, with
"separatism" and therefore a threat to the state. The
Sèvres complex is deep-rooted. And the suspicion that
Europe wants to divide or weaken Turkey if possible is
not far even from the minds of many supporters of the
EU.

The European perspective is the crucial catalyst for
the democratic development of Turkey. The critical
standard is the development and strengthening of civil
society: only when this secures a more important role
will Turkey actually be able to qualify for EU
membership. And only when the individual as a citizen
-- and even as a member of a minority -- can
emancipate themself from the absolute right of the
nation to dispose as it sees fit will Turkey develop
into a fully-fledged democracy.

Whether this happens will be decided in Turkey, above
all in the dispute between statists and democrats.
This dispute will unleash a powerful dynamic whose
outcome is uncertain. The guardians of rigid Kemalism
will attempt to maintain their positions of power. As
for those opposed to the traditionalist camp -- the
earlier accession talks begin, and the more clearly
their goals are defined, the better the Democrats'
chances will be. Conversely, restrictive conditions
that the Turkish people feel to be discriminatory will
be like spokes in the wheels of the democratic forces.
For example, it would be a fatal error for the EU
summit to grandly declare on 17 December that the
talks with Turkey will be "open-ended" -- because that
would be the first time that a candidate for EU
membership has been forcibly reminded of the
possibility of its own failure.

At the same time, all the political protagonists in
Turkey are aware that the outcome of the negotiation
process will of course be "open", in so far as it
depends on the political power balances which will
develop in the country over the next ten to fifteen
years.

And in the process, all participants must realize one
thing: as a full member of the EU Turkey will not be
the same country as the applicant state of today. The
hardline Kemalists accuse their critics of basically
wanting a "Second Republic". This charge of "high
treason" merely reveals the uneasy foreboding that
there is no future for an ossified ideology in a
European Turkey. Yet the transformation will not take
place in the form of a rupture, but as an open
democratic process, via conflicts and compromises.

At the end of this process the Turkish army, for
instance, will no longer be a "state within the state"
whose budget is beyond the control of parliament.
Judicial officials will be trained in accordance with
European standards. Religious and ethnic groups will,
for example, enjoy the right to define themselves
according to the identity which they feel is theirs.
And people will be able to discuss their own history
freely in public, including matters such as the fate
of the Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

The Erdogan government has created the legal basis for
these developments. How they turn out, time will have
to tell; but the EU should avoid anything that plays
into the hands of the wrong forces. In times such as
these, of all times, Europe should not allow itself to
gamble away a great chance to bring peace to a region
on its periphery that has so often been riven by
conflict. Sahin Alpay, one of the shrewdest Turkish
commentators, has described this chance thus: "While
the USA's hard power destroys Iraq, the soft power of
Europe can transform Turkey."



Published 2005-06-24
Original in German
Translation by Saul Lipetz
Contribution by Le Monde diplomatique
First published in Le Monde diplomatique 12/2004
(German version)
© Niels Kadritzke, Le Monde diplomatique (Berlin)
© Eurozine
 

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