Turkey not fit for membership
10/10/2005
The Daily Texan
Opinion
By Matthew Nickson (a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas International Law Journal.)
[...]
Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials, eager to counter the world community's outdated image of a thinly veiled military dictatorship. But time and again - despite progress in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU expansion - the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country, Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia and Cyprus.
The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, of insulting the "Turkish identity" by writing about the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out. Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.
Ironically - and in a sign of the Turkish court system's perversity - Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his admonition that Dink - who received a suspended six month sentence - was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past.[...].
Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors. The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River, which Turkey has diverted for a massive - and environmentally risky - development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19 power plants. [...].
[...]
All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms in its quest for EU membership. [...].
But Turkey's reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain, Germany and Spain.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
The Daily Texan
Opinion
By Matthew Nickson (a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas International Law Journal.)
[...]
Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials, eager to counter the world community's outdated image of a thinly veiled military dictatorship. But time and again - despite progress in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU expansion - the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country, Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia and Cyprus.
The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, of insulting the "Turkish identity" by writing about the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out. Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.
Ironically - and in a sign of the Turkish court system's perversity - Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his admonition that Dink - who received a suspended six month sentence - was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past.[...].
Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors. The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River, which Turkey has diverted for a massive - and environmentally risky - development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19 power plants. [...].
[...]
All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms in its quest for EU membership. [...].
But Turkey's reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain, Germany and Spain.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 7:33 AM
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