Turkey is changing. It is a much nicer, better place than it was when I first visited it forty years ago and for all the recent sabre-rattling, we need Turkey as much as she needs us.
I was visiting the Ankara Parliament on the day of the vote that sanctioned the Turkish Government’s option to take on the Marxist-Leninist PKK terrorists outside Turkish territory in Iraq. Parliamentary support was overwhelming – but not total. Nineteen out of 550 MPs dissented. Nineteen men and women whose pro-Kurdish views put them beyond the electoral legal pale and who had to stand as independents and then form the DTP (the Democratic Society Party).
Twenty percent of the Turkish population is of Kurdish extraction. They don’t all live in the south-east of the country. They have done well in Ankara and Istanbul – and merge into the nation rather like the Welsh and Scots have in England. It is important to distinguish between Turkish people proud of their origins and politically-motivated terrorists and criminals.
The Turkish Government and Parliament are right to take power to defend themselves from terrorism that has killed some 37,000 Turkish soldiers and civilians and who fighters base themselves in ‘safe’ camps in Iraq, untroubled by that government or anyone else, including the USA. And that is where the analogy with the IRA breaks down. In the end the IRA had nowhere to go. The Irish Government was after them too – and after 9/11 funding dried up in the USA.
A major road-block to progress is that most of the Turkish establishment is in denial. They can’t – or won’t – see that taking on the PKK terrorists in the short-term is not the end-game. The long haul means embracing constitutional and social change for one fifth of their people and acknowledging that they may pay lip-service to less discrimination against the Kurdish and other minorities, but they still throw the book at them when it comes to state bureaucracy and the administration of justice.
Turkey is a better place to live because economic growth now ranks it eighteenth in the world prosperity league. They aspire to be tenth richest nation in twenty years time. But although billions of dollars of short-term project spending and long-term investment have undoubtedly been poured into the Kurdish south-east of Turkey (and quite a lot of destroyed by the PKK) economic activity there remains sluggish and the gap between the Kurdish population and the increasingly prosperous majority is widening.
Turkey is a nicer place to live. It really does continue to ‘move West’ intellectually, espousing democracy, the rule of law and religious moderation. But it is still a country that finds it hard to tolerate the degree of personal and political freedom we take for granted.
For example, on the day of ‘that vote’, newspapers carried two telling stories. A Regional Governor was seeking to prosecute a Gay Rights organisation because he believed their existence was offensive and their motives immoral. Elsewhere, a town mayor faced prosecution because in an interview for Danish TV (and the Danes still allow the PKK to broadcast their terrorist message by satellite from Denmark) he had described the PKK as an ‘armed opposition Party’ not a ‘terrorist organisation’.
Having gone to Ankara to explore the Turkish perception of the future of NATO (on which they and we have strong, near-identical views) almost every line of enquiry was subverted into the current obsession with the PKK, the US Congress views on Armenian history and rejection of their aspirations to join the EU. It seemed that all that mattered was the elimination of the PKK by military means – with two exceptions.
First, in a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Commission, we were again lectured about the need for a military solution by MPs of all Parties – except for the brave DPT Member present who, whilst condemning terrorism, wished to flag-up the case (no question of a discussion allowed) for Kurdish co-existence and the needs of that section of Turkish society.
It was Kemal Ataturk’s genius to create a state out of the rump of the Ottoman Empire in which, whatever their differences, all citizens were Turks. Much of the outright discrimination against minority groups is on the way out. But sadly, it is also true that very few voices are heard articulating the tensions that still run so deep under the solid face of Turkey.
I have the impression that minority rights are simply not on the agenda of the Turkish establishment and politicians and journalists have to tread very carefully indeed if they wish to raise them. This is where the UK was forty years ago when I started thinking seriously about politics.
The second exception was the very senior and very wise official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was an intellectual in the great tradition of the Ottoman administrators. He chuckled when speaking of Iraq, Syria and Arabia – “we know these people – we’ve known them for 600 years”. Therein lies hope, for I suspect the Turkish civil service is still the true guardian of Ataturk’s secular constitution and in saying Turkey will move West, so it will.
The Turkish military is changing, too. Fifty years of working alongside NATO military forces used to democratic control, plus their substantial peace-keeping deployments in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Darfur (for which we should be grateful) has given them practical experience of the limits of martial authority. They have also seen the erosion of some of their constitutional privileges. For example they resisted the temptation to intervene in the election and re-election of a Government led by the AKP (Justice and Development party) with its alleged Islamist roots.
I say ‘alleged’ because although the Turkish establishment is suspicious of a Party that does not hide the moderate religious beliefs of its members, there has been no re-introduction of Islamist religious laws. Occasional attempts to do so have been seen off by the Presidency, the Parliament, the Courts and the press.
The current President and PM appear to me to have the vision to quietly pursue a model of democratic government in a moderate Muslim state that could be applied more widely in the Middle East.
The UK is rightly acknowledged as a long-term friend of Turkey. But we should not be proud of our lack of urgency in promoting a way through the Cyprus problem. Turkey has done all that we have asked of her. Yet it is they who are excluded from the EU, whilst by a quirk of the accession process it is the Greek Cypriots who failed to deliver, who are in the club. The current stalemate is not in the British interest let alone the Turkish. As the British Ambassador told us, every day that passes makes it harder to see a way forward.
Meeting the Turkish people on their home ground, observing the fashions and way of life of the middle classes and the coming generations and flicking through the dozens of TV channels cannot fail to convince that Turkey is a European country. It is more culturally mainstream European than Bulgaria or Romania (or Israel which participates in the Eurovision Song Contest).
For the French, German or xenophobic British to deny Turkey a place at the European table is to deny the evidence of history, learning and culture. What of the Alhambra, Perigueux Cathedral or the inheritance left in Austria and Hungary? What of the early science of astronomy, mathematics and horology?
The British now accept most of our former colonies as Commonwealth partners because although their indigenous language, culture and history may be far apart from ours (India, Kenya, New Zealand), they subscribe to the big ideas of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Even Mozambique has been welcomed aboard.
It is in Britain’s interest and in Europe’s interest to welcome into the EU a large, prosperous, stable, democratic nation which must be encouraged to nurture the roots of internal organic constitutional and social change – but which is prepared to deploy its military forces alongside ours and to shed the blood of its young people in pursuit of the values she shares with us.
Robert Key MP
23 October 2007 |
