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Tesekkürler. Sözkonusu dergide baskaca da birbirinden ilginc makaleler var.

Quoting murat goc <muratgoc@yahoo.com>:

>
> merhaba
>
> asagida eurozine isimli online dergide yeralan bir
> yaziyi iletiyorum. ayrica yazinin yer aldigi sayfanin
> baglantisini da ekliyorum. ilginizi cekecegini umarim.
>
> saygi ve selam ile
>
> murat goc
>
>
>
>
> 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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