Sultan Ahmet neighborhood. "You remember those days?" he asked his colleague, Rasheed, who snickered at the memory. "Now Romania can join the EU ahead of Turkey," Hassan lamented. "Why?
"I don’t believe Romania, or even Bulgaria, are something better than Turkey. They are also nice countries, but it is only because Turkey is Muslim that the EU treats us like this." That’s not the only reason, European officials say. They have questioned Turkey’s other vulnerability; its bloody massacre of Armenians — mostly Christians — at the end of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago, which some historians describe as genocide.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed dismay in May about the draft of a proposed French law which would make it a crime — punishable by a year in jail, plus a $57,000 fine — to deny Turks massacred up to 1.5 million Armenians. Many of the Armenians died in 1915 during forced "resettlement" deportation death marches.
When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently described the killings as genocide, Erdogan ordered Turkey’s pull out from NATO’s military maneuvers in Canada. Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, viewed the aftermath of the Turks’ slaughter of Armenians as proof that the world forgets atrocities.
HITLER POLICY
According to historians, Hitler told his army commanders in 1939: "Thus for the time being, I have sent to the east only my Death’s Head Units, with orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?"
Some Turks, however, insist their country is being singled for EU criticism, while other nations avoid similar censure. Yet, schizoid Turkey, physically split between Europe and Asia by the Bosphorus Strait, flaunts a bizarre response to such cynical outbursts.
At Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, atop a stone entrance, the European Union’s flag with its circle of yellow stars, flaps alongside Turkey’s Islam-inspired flag with its white crescent moon and white star on a red background. The isolated pair of snapping flags may give the false impression that Turkey is a full EU member. Rueful Turks express confusion over the hoops their nation still needs to go through, to join the grouping and some question the need for membership.
NOT SURE
"I am not sure if it will be good, or bad, to join the EU," said a Turkish chemical engineer from the capital, Ankara, dining with his librarian wife. "It will be bad because we will lose much of our culture in the rapid modernization when we join the others and become more like them. It will be good because we will have a better chance to import and export."
Supporters of EU enlargement claim Christian-majority Europe can win friends throughout the Islamic world by using the "soft power" of generously accepting Muslim-majority Turkey.
It would also extend Europe’s influence to Turkey’s frontiers with Iran, Iraq and Syria.
EU expansionists compare this with the "hard power" America brandishes through its worldwide war against Islamist insurgents, and Washington’s liquidating, caging or monitoring anyone perceived as suspicious.
Embracing Turkey in the Union. supporters say, would be a unique method of defraying fears of discrimination among many of the world’s Muslims — in a way America cannot, because no Muslim nation can ever become a US state.
KURDISH FIGHTERS
EU membership, however, also depends on a solution to problems raised by the minority
Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The secessionist guerrillas have been waging a bloody war against Turkey’s repressive military for more than 20 years. More than 30,000 people have perished on all sides. Local Christians are also attacked and the EU is closely watching how Islamist extremists, often through random terrorist attacks, are influencing Turkey’s government, described as "moderate Islamist."
Many Americans, Europeans and others, meanwhile, find this country safe and friendly, BosNewsLife established. For example in Goreme, in the heart of Turkey 750 kilometers (470 miles) southeast of Istanbul, two blonde teenage girls confidently shopped for souvenirs in a sleepy street market while wearing sweatshirts emblazoned: "Incirlik High School Class of ’08".
Incirlik American High School, for US Defense Department dependents and others, is located at Incirlik Air Base, a key NATO base and home to the US Air Force’s 39th Air Base Wing in southern Turkey. "While there is no specific targeting of US personnel or resources in Turkey, there are active terrorist groups throughout the country," wrote Lori B. Alves, 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs officer, on the Incirlik Air Base’s website.
NOTABLE EXAMPLE
"A notable example of this was in the summer of 2005, when a bomb threat was received regarding a beach where Americans frequently visited. “After an investigation, "two terrorists were killed when the bomb prematurely went off," Alves said. Although terrorist activity was greater in the cities of Istanbul and Mersin in 2005, there were 65 incidents of terrorism in the city of Adana [near Incirlik], according to Turkish National Police data," the Incirlik officer said.
Turkey was one of several nations which helped the CIA "in the unlawful practice of renditions" for secret flights of Islamist suspects, according to London-based Amnesty International.
Turkey earlier allowed Americans to use its territory in hair-trigger brinkmanship against the Soviet Union.
Incirlik launched a U-2 espionage plane flown by Francis Gary Powers over Soviet airspace, which was shot down by the Russians in 1960, resulting in the pilot’s imprisonment for 21 months as a CIA spy.
NUCLEAR MISSILES
Turkey also hosted America’s nuclear Jupiter missiles until 1961 when a near-apocalyptic "Cuban missile crisis" forced Washington to yank its Jupiters from Turkey in exchange for the Russians taking their missiles out of Cuba. While the American High School teenagers shopped alongside their family — including two men with blonde buzz-cut hair — several Turkish men pointed and chuckled.
When gossip turned to Turkey’s EU membership, their mood was less cheerful. "The EU won’t happen, that’s definite," insisted businessman Mehmet Dasdeler while watching the teens inspect woven cloth illustrated with Whirling Dervishes. “America is [governed by] a Christian religious party. England is becoming a Christian religious party. The EU will never accept Turkey because Christians are getting closer together, deciding to help each other. And Muslims are getting closer to help each other.”
"Also, Turkey is a very young country, but Europe is old and retired already, so I would have to work and pay tax to them," to fund retirement and other benefits for elderly Europeans.
"Turkey has a big population. The EU is getting many countries from East Europe, but they do not have the population of Turkey. Remember, whoever has more population, has more power in the EU," Dasdeler said.
ISLAMIST PARTY
Prime Minister Erdogan, leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, favors EU membership and endorses a secular regime for his country of 73 million people, though he was imprisoned for several months for reading an Islamist poem at a political rally.
Turkey’s other vulnerability, its bloody massacre of Armenians, shouldn’t be a reason not to allow the country to join, suggests Erdogan and at least one ordinary Turk speaking to BosNewsLife.
"The West keeps talking about how Turkey killed the Armenians. They should give up on this subject," Dasdeler said after the girls from Incirlik passed. "We never talk about what happened to the American Indians. We don’t bring this subject up again and again."
(Award-winning reporter, photojournalist and author Richard S. Ehrlich has covered Asia for 28 years for a variety of media, including as staff correspondent for United Press International from 1978 to 1984, based in Hong Kong and New Delhi. He also co-authored the non-fiction best seller "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" — Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. The book, reviewed by Time magazine and other leading publications, looks beyond the red light of Thailand’s nightlife, and gives a rare insight in the often tragic and difficult relationships between prostitutes and their clients. Ehrlich, who was born in the US and is currently based in Bangkok, received the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Foreign Correspondent’s Award in 1978. He speaks some Mandarin, Hindustani, Urdu, Thai, Spanish and French. Ehrlich can be reached for assignments and/or more information via website: http://www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent/news.html
