TURKEY’S NATIONAL IDENTIY CRISIS
For the past 40 years, Turkey’s ruling elite has been painfully trying to become part of a less than enthusiastic Europe. Last week, Turkey finally opened membership talks with the European Community after last-minute objections by Austria. Turkey’s effort desire to join Europe comes at a time when the EU is deeply conflicted over its nature and direction, rent by indecision and discontent, and worried that expansion has already gone too far.These talks will drag on for a decade before Turkey’s 72 million citizens will hopefully become full EU members, and will demand Turkey undergo a social and legal revolution to comply with over 800 pages of EU laws. Turkey’s popular, capable prime minister, Racep Erdogan, a moderate Islamist, and foreign minister Abdullah Gul, have already implemented important political and legal reforms to prepare Turkey for EU admission, including curbing many human rights abuses and making a peace of sorts with rebellious Kurds. The EU’s influence over Turkey has so far thus been most positive. But Turkey is not yet a full, European-style democracy. The powerful 580,000-man armed forces, NATO’s second largest, remains dangerously politicized. Its bullying, hard line, anti-Islamic generals are a constant menace to democratic governments, whom they have repeatedly threatened to overthrow. Erdogan was even once jailed by the generals for daring to recite an ancient Islamic poem. Turkey’s generals, allied to big industrialists and bankers, consider themselves guardians of the 1930’s semi-fascist ideology of dictator Mustafa Kemal, a great national hero turned dictator and oppressor of Islam in his later years. The cults of Franco, Mussolini, and Peron are gone, but Ataturk’s dour ghost still rules Turkey through the army.
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