The EU’s Turkey test
Who would have thought in the years since 2005, when much of the Muslim world erupted in fury over a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, that this facile experiment would set off a chain reaction that would undermine the Western world’s values of free speech and tolerance? And yet, after a four-year hiatus, the cartoon furor is back – this time not as farce but as tragedy. On Friday and Saturday, the eve of a visit to Ankara and Istanbul by the new US president, Turkey’s Islamist-inspired government went eyeball-to-eyeball with its NATO allies, rejecting the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the Western alliance’s new secretary general because of his country’s support of free speech. Once, in more optimistic times, we might have expected that Turkey’s stand would lead to Ankara’s isolation among its NATO allies and be taken as proof that the Turks are a long way from being ready to join the European Union. Turkey would have been pressed to change its position. But we are living in a new world now, one in which even the most sacrosanct values of Western democracies can be thrown out for the sake of a transitory political compromise. Turkey finally agreed to Rasmussen’s appointment only after Barack Obama met with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, for an hour before the NATO summit. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had received «guarantees» from Obama that one of Rasmussen’s deputies would be a Turk and that Turkish commanders would be present at the alliance’s command, according to the Hurriyet Daily News. The New York Times reported that Ankara was assured that talks on two chapters in its European Union accession talks would resume. These are among eight chapters that were frozen in December 2006 due to Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the existence of the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member which has been under partial Turkish military occupation since 1974. It’s the timeless lesson of politics: The weak, even if they have justice on their side, are repeatedly trampled over by the mighty. In this case, Turkey will move closer to joining the EU while doing nothing to recognize the existence of Cyprus. Obama went a step further yesterday, calling on the EU to accept Turkey as a member. To rub in the magnitude of Turkey’s triumph, Rasmussen is expected to «address the concerns» of the Muslim world – as The New York Times put it – regarding the cartoons. In other words, the new leader of the Western alliance is expected to say he is sorry for having upheld the principle of free speech in his country. (A frightening footnote: London’s Daily Mail revealed on Friday that the BBC is sitting on an interview with a Danish cartoonist who is at the heart of the controversy, apparently too scared to broadcast an opinion that might anger Muslims.) For Greece and Cyprus, it was already bad enough that Obama is in Turkey today and tomorrow, highlighting that country’s importance to the United States in the region. If the European Union is indeed planning to cave in to an ever-more-assertive Turkey’s demands, rather than forcing Turkey to adapt to the EU’s principles, then the whole world will come to regret the Europeans’ and Americans’ selling out their core values and principles in order to appease a nation that has never shown any ability to compromise nor cooperate on anything but its own terms. Well-meaning people everywhere – including in Greece and Cyprus – have supported Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, on the understanding that when Turkey meets its commitments to the EU, it will be a Turkey that will have changed radically for the better, to the benefit of its neighbors, its partners and its own people. If the EU now chooses to dilute its principles in order to appease Turkey (and its backers in the United States and Britain), then the current leader of the EU will have managed to destroy the most democratic, the most just, the most progressive social, political and economic experiment the world has seen. That seems a monumental and unforgivable loss for the sake of very short-term gains.
