[BRIEF NOTE] How much will Turkey cost?
Oct. 3rd, 2005 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe decision to start Turkey's membership negotiations with the European Union has today been made, barely. I'm not altogether sure whether this is a good idea. Leaving aside Turkey's questionable political stability, its flawed social pluralism, its aggressive nationalism and its perennially underdeveloped economy, public opinion across the European Union seems broadly opposed to Turkish membership. I'm tempted to say that the European Union will be truly democratic only when its leaders actually listen to the desires of the European public. Never mind.
The problem with Turkey is that it just isn't stable enough. Elsewhere, I compared the opening of membership negotiations with Turkey in 2005 to the opening of negotiations with Poland in 1989 or with Romania in 1990: The reform process is just too early to start making promises. One might as well say that Poland's eventful Second Republic would almost have qualified, despite its constant authoritarianism and its own guerrilla war against the culturally distinct nationless mountaineers in its southeast and its exclusivistic political Catholicism and its hostile relationship with its main diasporic population, but for its underdevelopment. I'm particularly wary of the Turkish government since I've found it made the questionable decision to sign the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam based explicitly in part on shari'a, questionable since the European Court of Human Rights, in a case involving Turkey, declared shari'a to be mutually incompatible with democracy: "The Court concurs in the Chamber's view that sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy." Has Turkish political Islam really come to make the same decision made by political Catholicism early in the 20th century, accepting the existence of a secular state and pluralistic order? Is Erdogan sincere in his renunciation of his infamous statement during his term as Istanbul mayor that democracy was like a streetcar, that "[y]ou ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off." What if, as Christopher Caldwell asked in a recent article in The New York Times, the democratization of the Turkish state requires its Islamization?
We'll find out, I fear.
The problem with Turkey is that it just isn't stable enough. Elsewhere, I compared the opening of membership negotiations with Turkey in 2005 to the opening of negotiations with Poland in 1989 or with Romania in 1990: The reform process is just too early to start making promises. One might as well say that Poland's eventful Second Republic would almost have qualified, despite its constant authoritarianism and its own guerrilla war against the culturally distinct nationless mountaineers in its southeast and its exclusivistic political Catholicism and its hostile relationship with its main diasporic population, but for its underdevelopment. I'm particularly wary of the Turkish government since I've found it made the questionable decision to sign the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam based explicitly in part on shari'a, questionable since the European Court of Human Rights, in a case involving Turkey, declared shari'a to be mutually incompatible with democracy: "The Court concurs in the Chamber's view that sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy." Has Turkish political Islam really come to make the same decision made by political Catholicism early in the 20th century, accepting the existence of a secular state and pluralistic order? Is Erdogan sincere in his renunciation of his infamous statement during his term as Istanbul mayor that democracy was like a streetcar, that "[y]ou ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off." What if, as Christopher Caldwell asked in a recent article in The New York Times, the democratization of the Turkish state requires its Islamization?
We'll find out, I fear.
%20is%20welcomed%20by%20EU%20foreign%20policy%20chief%20Javier%20Solana%20at%20a%20European%20Union%20foreign%20ministers%20meeting%20in%20Luxembourg%20October%204,%202005.%20Turkey%20agreed%20a%20framework%20text%20with%20the%20European%20Union%20on%20Monday%20on%20starting%20EU%20membership%20talks.%20%20REUTERS/Francois%20Lenoir){kind=link}