EU and Turkey: A Win-Win Proposal

By December 2004 the European Union (EU) is expected to reach a decision on whether to extend a firm date to Turkey on which to start the full-membership talks. To help shape the discussion on the pros and cons of Turkey's membership, Turkish veteran journalist Mehmet Ali Birand has published a list of reasons why Turkey's membership makes sense not only for Turkey but for the EU as well. I present them here in full since I believe the English-speaking observers and decision-makers in Europe should be aware of these arguments as well.

What will Turkey gain from her EU full-membership?

******** Turkey's political and strategic gains:

-- EU membership will end Turkey's centuries-old national identity problem. After her EU membership no one will ask if Turkey “is actually a Middle Eastern country” or not. Turkey will cease to be the “other” for the Europeans.

-- Turkey will reach Atatürk's target of “contemporary civilization” and as a European country will realize Atatürk's civilizational vision.

-- Multi-party secular and democratic regime and the Republican fundamentals will be secured. Neither there'll be the threat of a theocratic system in Turkey, nor the concern to protect the secular regime. Thus, the era of military interventions will be over. Instead, civic society organizations will gain importance. The duty to protect the state will be delegated to the laws and the police, prosecutors and the judges.

-- Turkish Armed Forces will play a very important role both through NATO and the United States and as a part of the European Security and Defense Initiative (i.e. The European Army). TAF will become an important component of the European Army.

-- Since she will participate in the EU decision making organs, Turkey will play a role in the formation of European policies. Such a Turkey will have more weight in the Middle East, Central Asia and South East Asia. She will have a very privileged place within the Islamic world. Turkey will have more chance to effect the developments in these regions.

-- The Aegean will turn into a peace lake. The Cyprus issue will be resolved for good. Turkey's external security will be bolstered.

******** Turkey's economic gains:

-- Turkish economy will change drastically. State's role in the economy will diminish per force and a more competitive Turkish economy will jump to a new level. Economy will be administered according to EU rules instead of the policies of different governments.

-- EU is Turkey's most important resource and trade partner. Half of its imports and exports is with the EU. Most of the foreign investments and the largest numbers of foreign tourists come from EU. By entering the EU market, Turkey will secure her exports to a 25-country 600-million-consumers common market, increase the foreign investments by multiple folds, will gain guaranteed access to the most advanced technologies and capital goods, at affordable prices.

-- First the Turks currently living in Europe, then certain professionals in Turkey, and lastly all Turkish workers will gain the right to free circulation in EU. Two-and-a-half million Turks living in Europe will benefit from equal rights and equal payment with the rest of their fellow Europeans.

**** A new life-style and jurisprudence for Turkey:

-- With the EU membership, the Turkish legal system that has been criticized for so long will go through new reforms and Turks will enjoy a new legal era.

-- Fundamental human rights and social rights will be implemented in Turkey just like they are now applied in Europe. Turkey will rapidly leave behind the current deficiencies in that regard.

-- New educational venues will open up for the Turkish youth and they'll be able to participate in the EU educational opportunities.

What will EU gain from Turkey's full-membership?

-- EU will transform into a true global actor. Turkey's participation will open new vistas for EU and expand EU's vision. Today EU looks mostly like a club of rich merchants. After Turkey's membership, EU will gain a great strategic depth around the globe by using her political and military weight. Turkey's contribution to such strategic extension will be considerable.

-- EU will enjoy new guarantees on her energy sources. The Caspian Sea basin is home to one the world's largest proven oil and natural gas reserves. After the completion of the Baku (Azerbaijan)-Ceyhan (Turkey) oil pipeline, Turkey will guarantee the EU meet her energy needs in a more consistent way.

-- In the years ahead, most of world's conflicts will take place in the Iraq, Middle East and the Caucasus regions. For the EU which wants to increase her strategic weight in these regions and become a more decisive player, there cannot be an ally more important and effective than Turkey. An EU-full-member Turkey, with her armed forces and geographic location, will contribute immensely to EU's role in such conflicts.

-- When she becomes a full member of EU, Turkey's status within the Islamic role will undergo a significant change. That will mitigate much of the post-9-11 hypothesizing about a “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and the Muslim East. Through Turkey's membership, EU will prove that it is not a “Christian club” prejudiced against the Muslims. On the contrary, EU will then be able to show that it has the depth and flexibility to accommodate cultural diversity. EU will then prove to the world that Islam and contemporary values and democracy can actually co-exist. Turkey's membership will change the Islamic world's approach to Europe in particular and the West in general as well.

-- Within 25 years, Turkey is expected to reach a population of 85 million and an income per capita of $10,000. Such a large, dynamic, purchasing-power-on-the-rise and young Turkey will become a very important market for the EU. Turkey has signed a Customs Union with the EU in 1995. In the post-customs-union period (1995-2002) Turkey's trade with the EU has increased by more than 100%. Turkey's exports to EU jumped by 138% while her imports went up by 80%. According to the year 2002 figures, Turkey ranks EU's 11th largest trade partner with 2.2% share in EU exports and 2.4% share in EU imports. EU, however, is Turkey's number one trade partner with 51% of the exports and 42% of the imports.

-- The population of the EU is progressively getting old. Within the next 20-25 years, EU will have an even older demographics. In contrast, Turkey's young population will meet EU's manual labor demand. In addition to this, when Turkey become a full-member, the majority of the first and second generation (aging) Turks who are now living in Europe will return to Turkey (since they can enjoy the same EU rights and privileges back at home) and will leave their place to a younger population.

-- EU is running out of land to establish new large factories and integrated industrial sites to boost the EU economy. Especially in Central Europe, such congestion and land scarcity is reaching crucial dimensions. Turkey, however, still has plenty of large open spaces that will be available for the use of both the EU industry and the EU armed forces (for training and joint exercises).

A Great Slide Show on Turkey

Watch this Flash slide show and forward it to your friends and acquaintances.

Highly recommended.

Buy a New York Times

because I am told that NYT will publish a Turkey Supplement today...

The Night of July 10, 1919

May 19 is celebrated by all Turks around the world as the Turkish National Day of Youth and Sports. On that important day back in 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha has landed in the Black Sea town of Samsun as the Inspector of Ottoman 9th Army (which was shortly after revised as the 3rd Army Inspectorship).

What has started as an official assignment from the Sultan, turned out to be the beginning of a three year struggle to defeat the occupying enemy forces, abolish the Sultanate and create the modern Turkish Republic.

Every May 19, though, there is another date that I can't help but remember: July 10, 1919. In my mind this date is as significant as May 19. I somehow tend to believe that Mustafa Kemal's long journey towards leading a whole nation towards its miraculous salvation began not on May 19, 1919 in Samsun, but actually on the night of July 10, 1919 in Erzurum.

After landing in Samsun, Mustafa Kemal made his way to Erzurum through Havza, Amasya and Sivas. Every step of his journey was fraught with uncertainties and threats. Sultan Vahdettin in Istanbul, after realizing Mustafa Kemal's real intention of igniting a war of resistance in Anatolia, has sent his henchmen after him, setting up many traps to ensnare and capture the 38-year old hero of the Dardanelles. None of the attempts to capture Mustafa Kemal worked and he arrived in Erzurum in early July with his small staff and colleagues, including Rauf Orbay.

Erzurum was then home to General Kazim Karabekir's 15th Corps and Mustafa Kemal knew he could rely on Karabekir's backing. But still... when push came to shove, who would stand by him? And who would jump ship and obey Sultan's orders given the fact that many around him applauded his decision to resist the enemy but still made it clear that they grew up “eating Sultan's bread” and thus would never “betray their master.”

Ottoman Minister of Interior Ali Kemal had already issued a proclamation on June 23, 1919, announcing that Mustafa Kemal's commission was declared null and void, and he was basically fired from the Army. However the implementation of the proclamation was postponed after a strong protest by Ali Fuat Pasha, one of Atatürk's strongest allies in the years to come. But, the writing was on the wall for all to see...

Would the national resistance end before it began? Or would a miracle happen? What would happen next? No one knew the anwers to these questions yet in the early days of July 1919.

The inevitable final confrontation between Mustafa Kemal and the Palace arrived on the night of July 8, 1919. On that night, Mustafa Kemal is invited to the Erzurum post office by the Palace. On the other side of the telegraph line is none other than the Sultan himself.

At the conclusion of an electrified exchange, just before the Sultan fires him from his commission, Mustafa Kemal tells the Sultan (at exactly 22:50 hours) that he is resigning all his official titles and positions and “returning to the bosom of my nation.”

The Mustafa Kemal who leaves the Erzurum post office late July 8, 1919 night is a civilian, with no official authority to do anything, with no home, no address, and not a penny to his name. He has nothing but his ideals and vision to save a nation on the brink of annihilation.

July 10, 1919 does not start too well. In the morning, his Chief of Staff Kazim (Dirik) Bey stands up before him and says: “My dear Pasha, you've resigned from the Army. Thus from now on it is impossible for me to serve you in my current position. To whom shall I turn over our official documents?”

Rauf Orbay, another hero of WW1, who was in the room when this exchange has taken place, wrote in his memoirs that he had never seen Mustafa Kemal as depressed as on that day when Kazim Bey told him that he was quitting his service.

Everybody knows that the Palace had ordered Kazim Karabekir Pasha to arrest Mustafa Kemal and immediately dispatch him to Istanbul for a certain execution. Mustafa Kemal and his friends wait for Kazim Karabekir to arrive and announce his decision.

Hours tick away nervously... long tense hours, pregnant to momentous developments in one way or another...

If Karabekir Pasha obeys the Sultan and arrests Mustafa Kemal, it is the end of the story for those who are hoping to gather around Mustafa Kemal and launch a nation-wide campaign of resistance despite Istanbul's complicity with the occupation forces.

After a long wait, way into the night, Kazim Karabekir Pasha shows up at the head of a cavalier company. He enters the room where Mustafa Kemal is staying. He salutes Mustafa Kemal sharply and then makes the following historic pronouncement:

“We are in your service, my dear Pasha! I, my officers, my troops and the 15th Corps, we are all in your service from this moment onward!”

I believe that was the crucial moment when Turkey's independence was really won. That was the precise cosmic moment when all the stars have lined up, tilting the incredible odds in favor of the modern Turkish Republic.

That's why to this day whenever someone mentions “May 19,” the date “July 10” also immediately flashes at a warm spot in my memory. That spot is a shrine in time decorated with the memories of some extremely courageous men and women who gathered around Mustafa Kemal for the “mission impossible” that prevented the Turks of Anatolia from being wiped out from the surface of the earth.

NYC Turkish Day Parade, May 15, 2004, Photos ~ Part 2

Scholars: The Real Wealth of Turkey

Scholars and scientists are the real wealth of a nation. The Institute of Turkish Studies of Georgetown University, under the leadership of its Executive Director Prof. Sabri Sayari, has done an admirable job by publishing the Directory of Scholars from Turkey in American Universities.

As mentioned in the foreward, this remarkable and unique directory is "the first systematic effort to list the names, academic disciplines, and addresses of Turkish scholars in the U.S."
The 75-page directory, which is organized alphabetically and includes an index by specialties, "does not include scientists and scholars from Turkey who work outside the American academia in various research centers, laboratories, think-tanks, NGOs, and government agencies." That's why it should be taken as a "conservative" guide in the sense that the real number of Turkish scientists in the U.S. is obviously a lot more than reflected here.

But this is an excellent start.

Let's hope that the future editions will include the best and brightest minds that Turkey has produced who call non-academic research centers their home as well.

Click here to learn more about the ITS.

Kemal Dervis in AKP?

The rumor has it that Mr. Kemal Dervis, the former World Bank Manager and social-democrat CHP deputy, is getting ready to become a member of the ruling AKP...

Can this be true? If so, what will his role be?

I am inclined to dismiss it as just that, a rumor. But then on the other hand, knowing the ease with which things change on the Turkish landscape...

It's worth waiting and seeing...

From Turkish Day Parade, NYC, May 15, 2004

First Batch of NYC Turkish Day Photos

Turkish American Parade in New York City!

What a day! Photos and text coming up ...

Majority, Legitimacy, and Representation

The YOK “education reform” draft bill, which includes a special provision for helping the vocational high school graduates with the Turkish university entrance exams, has passed the Turkish Parliament after a grueling 18-hour session at the General Assembly.

If it becomes the law of the land, it will provide the Imam and Preacher School (IPS) graduates with special “affirmative action” advantages at the standard college entrance exams.

Now the bill will be sent to Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer who, in all likelihood, will veto the bill and send it back to the Parliament for a review.

The AKP-dominated Parliament, as a response, will most likely send the same bill back intact to the President who does not have the right to veto it for a second time.

Thus he will end up putting his signature under the bill with one hand while sending it to the Turkish Constitutional Court with the other.

The chances are the Constitutional Court will declare the bill unconstitutional (according to a number of Turkish mainstream commentators) and that will be the end of both this bill and the long controversy that pitted the AKP government against the Turkish universities, Armed Forces, and the mainstream media.

The issue flared up this quickly because what started as an argument about an “education issue” quickly escalated to a wholesale confrontation about the definition of political legitimacy in Turkish politics, and its relation to national sovereignty and electoral majority.

A practical policy matter thus has climbed to risky theoretical heights in no time due to AKP's defiant and ill-timed insistence on passing this bill in a hurry and the secular establishment's ever-present paranoia about AKP's “real agenda.”

AKP basically drew “a line in the sand” about its absolute right to legislate any law it deems necessary since AKP won a legitimate election and thus was accorded the mandate to exercise political sovereignty in the name of those who elected AKP to do precisely that. Doesn't the huge inscription on the wall of the General Assembly Hall at the Turkish parliament state that “Sovereignty Belongs to the People Without Any Conditions”? Why should AKP shy away from exercising that sovereignty in the name of the people and opt for YOK (Higher Education Board) or the universities or some other non-elected body exercise it instead?

The opposition, on the other hand, argued that the sovereignty indeed belongs to the “people” (millet) and not to the Parliament (meclis). Parliament is just one of the state organs through which the national sovereignty is exercised in the name of the people -- but not the only organ. The Constitutional Court, for example, is another actor which (while having no power of its own to legislate or execute) determines the constitutionality of the Parliament's legislation. Thus political legitimacy does not derive simply and directly from a parliamentary majority but rather emerges from the matrix of compromises established among the values and interests of different political actors in a democracy, whether they are elected by popular vote or not. This is more or less the argument of the other side in a nutshell.

Here I would like to mention a recent commentary by Hurriyet's Sedat Ergin which examined the premise that the composition of today's Turkish Parliament does represent the true choices of the Turkish people. Because all arguments that question the AKP government's “rights” or “legitimacy” sooner or later end up also questioning this main premise of “true representation,” or “who represents whom at the Parliament.”

Here is how Mr. Ergin analyzed AKP's electoral performance and reached very interesting conclusions indeed.

When AKP won the November 3, 2002 elections single-handedly, there were 41.4 million registered voters of which only 32.7 million cast their votes. 8.6 million registered voters abstained from voting. Thus 20.86% of the registered voters did not vote in 2002 general elections. This corresponds to the lowest rate of electoral participation since the 1983 elections.

Of the 41.4 million registered voters, AKP has received the votes of 10,808,000 voters, or 26.1%.

That is, only 1 out of every 4 registered voters has voted for AKP.

Thus for every voter that chose AKP, 3 either opposed it or did not go to the polling booth. Thus in 2002 when AKP won 34.2% of the votes, only 1 out of every 3 Turks who actually voted has voted for AKP.

However, AKP has captured 66% of the Parliamentary seats.

That's how Ergin reaches the conclusion that “there is a problem of political representation in the Turkish Grand National Assembly.”

AKP has won 363 of the 550 Parliamentary seats in 2002, which went up to 367 with subsequent “transfers.”

The glaring non-correlation between the percentage of the votes received (1 in 3) and the percentage of parliamentary representation (2 out of 3) is clear, thanks to the high electoral threshold of 10%, rarely seen in European Union countries, Ergin continued.

DYP, for example, with 9.5% of the votes, could no enter Parliament due to that 10% threshold. 3.8 million voters who voted for DYP are not represented today in the Parliament. Similarly, 2.6 million voters who voted for MHP can also consider their votes going down a black hole.

Sedat Ergin calculated that almost 16 million Turkish voters (46.5% of total votes) could not see their political choices translate into parliamentary representation. 16 million is greater than the total populations of Israel (6 million), Ireland (3.8 million) and Finland (5.2 million) combined.

Thus Ergin concludes that, although AKP's legitimacy is beyond reproach, there does exist an issue of representation in the Turkish parliament.

In the March 2004 local elections, the number of voters went up to 43.5 million while the percentage of those who abstained from voting also rose from 20.8% to 23.7%. In 2004, 10.3 million voters did not vote.

AKP has garnered again an impressive victory by increasing its total local votes to 13.4 million in the Province General Assembly elections.

AKP has won 41.6% of the votes actually cast, but only 30.8% of those who actually have registered to vote.

Thus Ergin concludes that 70% of the registered voters did not choose to vote for AKP in March 2004.

This might go some ways in explaining the wide-spread resistance to AKP's “education reform bill” although AKP enjoys two-thirds of the Parliamentary seats.

The explanation may lie in the fact that the same AKP does not also represent two-thirds of the voters.

A parliamentary majority without an electoral majority sometimes translates to such questioning of political legitimacy by the opposition forces.

(This also reminds me of the situation after the 2000 U.S. Presidential elections... President Bush has won the Electoral College votes but not the popular vote (which went to Al Gore)... and ever since questions about his administration's "legitimacy" have hounded Mr. Bush, even long before the Iraqi debacle.)

See You in New York, Saturday, May 15 !!!


(Ahmet Bey, thanks for the link!)

MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND RESERVE YOUR SEATS ON THE ATA–DC BUS TO NEW YORK FOR THE ANNUAL NYC TURKISH DAY PARADE

Saturday May 15, 2004

$ 40.00 per person – Space is limited

A few tickets are still available!

For reservations please e-mail: nyctrip@atadc.org no later than 5 PM on Friday May 14, 2004.

Guilty as charged

A friend whose intellectual prowess I do respect sent me this note:

"Talk about Turkish! -- what's "imam and preacher schools (IPS)?" "

He is right. I actually still debate myself whether "Imam Hatip Okullari" (IHO) should be called just that in English, or "Imam and Preacher Schools" (IPS) as I ended up saying, or "Priest and Preacher Schools" (PPS)? Not easy.

All I know is, an "imam" is not a "priest" and there is a perfect word in English for the "hatip" -- a "preacher." Hitabet -- Preaching. Hutbe -- Sermon. There used to be a "Hatip Cayi" in Ankara when I was growing up -- "Preacher Creek" ?

I'm glad I don't translate anymore for a living.