[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Turkey's Future
Oct. 26th, 2005 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast week, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nhw kindly forwarded me a link to the July 2005 Ethnobarometer report "The Dual Revolution in Turkish Politics and the Role of the European Union", written by Mario Zucconi. "The Dual Revolution" is an interesting study indeed, arguing that the massive urbanization and industrialization over the past quarter-century has made Turkey's political structure irrelevant. Kemalism was indeed a modernizing ideology, one of the more moderate mutations of early 20th century populist nationalism, but the top-down centralization that worked when Turkey was mostly rural by population no longer works for the relatively advanced and globalized Turkey of the early 21st century. Stepping into the gap left by Kemalism's failure, Zucconi argues, Turkey's Muslim traditionalists have been forced to renounce their former radicalism and accept the legitimacy of the Turkish Republic, further accepting the European Union to try to outflank nationalist conservatives of Kemalist and other ideologies. One might profitably compare the AKP to Europe's Christian Democratic parties, which emerged from a similar tentative engagement with the secular state by Roman Catholics in the early part of the 20th century.
Where Zucconi's analysis fails is in its policy recommendations. Yes, I quite agree that Turkish membership in the European Union has the potential to transform Turkey quite radically and for the better; yes, I provisionally agree with the Independent Commission for Turkey in that Turkish membership won't necessarily make the European Union dysfunctional. This analysis assumes that Turkey won't end up evolving into an illiberal democracy, and that the consequences of Turkey's regional sabre rattling--the blockade of Armenia, the threats made to Iraqi Kurdistan, and the impasse on Cyprus--can and will be resolved. I would have been much more sanguine about the chances of Turkey's membership, and the sense in extending Turkey recognition as a potential member-state once negotiations began, if the young people of the new populist and democratic Turkey hadn't begun to echo, in disturbing lockstep, the same old tired and worrying rhetoric about the Armenian genocide (there was no genocide but the Armenians deserved something).
Yes, Turkey was traumatized by the First World War and its flirtation with national extinction. So what? If no one in the Turkish establishment is willing to break from the old tired cycle of threat and counterthreat, paranoiac conspiracy after paranoiac conspiacy, why should Turkey have an automatic right to European Union membership? If it does anyway, then we should stop pretending that the Union serves any moral purpose. Dragan Antulov recently argued that the drive to continue the expansion of the EU to the south and east, "even when the cost includes lowering and ignoring the cultural, democratic and other standards EU was supposed to embody," risks bringing the EU down to "the lowest common denominator - in other words, countries like Croatia, Turkey - and in very foreseeable future, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo." If a seachange in mentalities isn't required of Turkey to qualify for EU membership, why bother pretending that the EU serves any lofty purpose?
nhw kindly forwarded me a link to the July 2005 Ethnobarometer report "The Dual Revolution in Turkish Politics and the Role of the European Union", written by Mario Zucconi. "The Dual Revolution" is an interesting study indeed, arguing that the massive urbanization and industrialization over the past quarter-century has made Turkey's political structure irrelevant. Kemalism was indeed a modernizing ideology, one of the more moderate mutations of early 20th century populist nationalism, but the top-down centralization that worked when Turkey was mostly rural by population no longer works for the relatively advanced and globalized Turkey of the early 21st century. Stepping into the gap left by Kemalism's failure, Zucconi argues, Turkey's Muslim traditionalists have been forced to renounce their former radicalism and accept the legitimacy of the Turkish Republic, further accepting the European Union to try to outflank nationalist conservatives of Kemalist and other ideologies. One might profitably compare the AKP to Europe's Christian Democratic parties, which emerged from a similar tentative engagement with the secular state by Roman Catholics in the early part of the 20th century.Where Zucconi's analysis fails is in its policy recommendations. Yes, I quite agree that Turkish membership in the European Union has the potential to transform Turkey quite radically and for the better; yes, I provisionally agree with the Independent Commission for Turkey in that Turkish membership won't necessarily make the European Union dysfunctional. This analysis assumes that Turkey won't end up evolving into an illiberal democracy, and that the consequences of Turkey's regional sabre rattling--the blockade of Armenia, the threats made to Iraqi Kurdistan, and the impasse on Cyprus--can and will be resolved. I would have been much more sanguine about the chances of Turkey's membership, and the sense in extending Turkey recognition as a potential member-state once negotiations began, if the young people of the new populist and democratic Turkey hadn't begun to echo, in disturbing lockstep, the same old tired and worrying rhetoric about the Armenian genocide (there was no genocide but the Armenians deserved something).
Yes, Turkey was traumatized by the First World War and its flirtation with national extinction. So what? If no one in the Turkish establishment is willing to break from the old tired cycle of threat and counterthreat, paranoiac conspiracy after paranoiac conspiacy, why should Turkey have an automatic right to European Union membership? If it does anyway, then we should stop pretending that the Union serves any moral purpose. Dragan Antulov recently argued that the drive to continue the expansion of the EU to the south and east, "even when the cost includes lowering and ignoring the cultural, democratic and other standards EU was supposed to embody," risks bringing the EU down to "the lowest common denominator - in other words, countries like Croatia, Turkey - and in very foreseeable future, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo." If a seachange in mentalities isn't required of Turkey to qualify for EU membership, why bother pretending that the EU serves any lofty purpose?
