CURRENT AFFAIRS
BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

What is Turkey looking for?
Quarrels with Israel. Tensions with Europe. The murder of Bishop Padovese. As Islamic rhetoric seems to be on the rise, we take a voyage amidst the many souls of a country that has always bridged different cultures and that now finds itself at a crossroads.

by Camille Eid

A new political player has entered the international scene: Turkey. Its geographic position, making it a crossroads between the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Mediterranean, and Europe, has always worked in favor of Turkey’s political role on the international stage. But now Turkey wants to be a lead actor, certain of finding new shores beyond Europe. So it is casting its gaze in all directions, but above all toward the south. Ankara has obtained the status of observer in both the African Union and the Arab League, and it plays an active role in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (also led by a Turk). With some Middle Eastern governments it is discussing the construction of a free trade zone á la Europe, and it is trying to push aside Egypt and Saudi Arabia as the new leader of the Sunni world.

Arm in arm with the Russians. It is also looking northward: Ankara is arm in arm with the Russians, who have promised their aid in building four nuclear reactors, in financing the Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipeline from Russia to the Mediterranean, and in building the Blue Stream gas pipeline in the Black Sea. It is also looking to the East, with its eye on the markets of the Turkophone area of Central Asia, and taking the first historic steps toward reconciliation with Armenia, as well as seeking to carve out a special relationship with Iran.Thus, the Turkish government has demonstrated solidarity with Teheran, signing an agreement on May 17th with Brazil, recognizing Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This dynamism might have passed unnoticed were it not for the tragedy of the Gaza flotilla on May 31st. The Israeli raid, in fact, has sparked a serious crisis between Israel and Turkey, which is destined to drastically change the regional balance in years to come. So, is it legitimate to speak of a Turkey that is turning its back on Europe in order to set itself up as the champion of a “new pan-Islamic, populist rhetoric with neo-Ottoman aspirations,” as some would have us believe? Not exactly. In continuing down the long and difficult path of satisfying the parameters required by the European Union and therefore to join Europe, the ruling AKP party has approved a reform of the constitution that aims at enlarging democratic spaces, subjecting the military leadership to civil courts, and changing the procedures for nominating Supreme Court justices. The text will be voted on in the September 12th referendum, the thirtieth anniversary of the 1980 military coup, although there is still the risk that the Supreme Court might declare the reform null and void prior to that date. Meanwhile, President Obama asserted on July 13th that the US is strongly backing Turkey’s entrance into the EU, underlining that “Turkey has been a resolute ally and a responsible partner...  bound to Europe by more than bridges over the Bosphorous.”

The future in the sky. Many Turks, moreover, see no contradiction between Turkey’s opening up to the West and a renewed interest in the Arab/Islamic world. Kenan Gürsoy, Rector of the Faculty of Letters at Istanbul’s Galatasaray University, is one of them. Above his desk, there is a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, “The Father of the Nation,” with his eyes looking skyward, as if in a mystical trance. “He was actually watching an airplane pass overhead,” Gürsoy says, reading my mind. He then adds: “Ataturk used to say that our future was in the sky. Paraphrasing him, we should say that our future lies in Europe. In recent years, Turkey has headed toward a more liberalized economy, one that leaves space to private initiative and to trade with the Mediterranean. It has sought to take full advantage of its strategic position in order to become an obligatory crossroads of the energy routes that link petroleum - and gas-producing countries with European consumers. But Turkey cannot reduce itself to the role of bridge,” adds Gürsoy, pointing to the majestic Bogazçi bridge that links Istanbul’s Asiatic and European shores. “Throughout its history, Turkey has never limited itself to a defined identity, but rather has been a personality in development and in relationship to a project. We need neither Islamization nor an authoritarian secularism that squeezes people into its pluralistic culture. We live torn away from our culture. We need time in order to heal this division, in order to reconcile ourselves with our past.” It is not so simple. The difficulty of deciphering Turkey is evident when one travels around Istanbul, where the two souls of the country–Western and Eastern–live side by side as elements of the same culture and history. If noteworthy progress has been made in recent years in terms of human rights, freedom of expression, judicial reform, and ethnic minorities, the same cannot be said regarding religious minorities. Rather, the tragic murder of Bishop Luigi Padovese raises the specter of an expansion of fundamentalist and xenophobic sentiments  into environments that until now were beyond the boundaries of such tendencies. Yet there is no lack of surprisingly courageous responses to the situation. At the end of 2009, Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in an interview with CBS, triggered official protests for complaining that the Greek Orthodox “are treated like second class citizens.” In the pages of the daily newspaper Hürriyet, Mehmet Ali Birand came to the defense of Bartholomew in an uncharacteristic way. “For many years,” wrote the journalist, “Turkey has lived on conspiracy theories. The Patriarchate has been considered to be an institution that harbored plans for partitioning Turkey, so that Greece might once again invade the Country [sic!]. People think that if the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch is accepted, the Christians would turn Turkey into another Vatican. This absurd theory was supported by the State, by the military, and by some nationalists.” Birand goes on to criticize the blocked reopening of the Orthodox seminary, closed for over 40 years, based on various and sundry pretexts. “Despite the Treaty of Lausanne and despite the fact that the minority has rights, we have ignored our own signature.”
The seminary has thus become, according to Birand, “a hostage,” to force Greece to accept the election of muftis in western Thrace. Birand defines this blackmail as “our shame, a great injustice, a great despotism,” a pressure “against one of our own, against our own citizens.” “If we do not understand other religions, how can we expect Europe to understand Islam?”

Without cutting corners. This last question is one that the Erdogan government has the duty to answer concretely, in these times of radical revision of Turkish politics. It risks the immediate loss of Turkey’s credibility among its future partners. To use the words of Ruggero Franceschini, Bishop of Smyrne, in an interview published some time ago in Oasis, “Turkey’s entry into the European Union, which we look forward to, must take place without cutting any juridical corners. We are concerned that, if the rules for Turkey’s entry into Europe are not respected to the letter, Europe itself will be seriously harmed under the guise of tolerance and mutual religious respect.”