Meeting the Turkey Skeptics

PHOTO from Today's Zaman

Prime Minister's Erdogan's recent meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have brought the Turkish government into meetings with Europe's top two leaders opposed to Turkish membership in the European Union.

In France last week, Erdogan participated in festivities closing Paris' 9-month Turkish Season in Paris. Sarkozy did not attend the festivities, widely interpreted here as yet another snub. Yet, after a meeting with Sarkozy, the French president accepted Erdogan's invitation to come and see Turkey's progress for himself. Sarkozy has not visited Turkey since he was a small child, and Erdogan highlighted this point before embarking to Paris. However, unlike his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy remains opposed to Turkish membership, and is unlikely to be turned anytime in the near future. Erdogan also said he hoped to boost trade between Turkey and France from 10 to 15 billion euros. The two leaders differed on sanctions for Iran, Erdogan making headlines when he referred to Ahmadinejad as his "dear friend." Adding a historical perspective to Franco-Turkish relations, Today's Zaman columnist Ibrahim Kalin takes a look at the ties between the two countries.

The Preceding Week

Repeating her "offer" of "privileged partnership," Merkel visited Turkey in an official state visit encompassing a variety of issues, most focused on of which was the issue of Turkish-language schools in Germany. In an interview with Die Zeit before the visit, Erdogan proposed that Turkish-language high schools be established for Germany's Turkish minority. The issue is, of course, highly-sensitive in Germany, and was interpreted by some in the Turkish press as a call for Turkish-language education as an alternative to German. In making his argument, Erdogan pointed to German high schools in Turkey's largest cities, which oftentimes only the richest and most elite students attend. Merkel responded that there is nothing to prohibit the establishment of private schools teaching Turkish in Germany. Declaring education in one's mother tongue to be a bsic right, Erdogan made no reference to minorities whoare native in his country (and not immigrants) who do no receive public education in their own tongue. This point was not missed by some figures in the German press. Issues related to dual citizenship for German/Turkish citizens were also discussed, as well as visa-free travel for Turkish citizens. There are approximately 3 million people of Turkish descent living in Germany, and approximately 500,000 of them are German citizens. For more on the debate, see this piece in Der Spiegel, which also documents German press coverage, as well as this interview with former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder in Bildt. Merkel repeated her previous calls for privileged partnership, but reiterated that talks were open-ended. In an interview with Milliyet, Merkel said 27-28 chapters of the acquis could be opened. For news coverage of the visit, see coverage from Today's Zaman and this from the BBC. Also of interest is Der Spiegel's interview with Turkish-German intellectual Necla Kelek.

Turkish Representation in Germany

From TDZ:

Cem Özdemir tells public audiences how he was wrapped in a towel in a Turkish bath when a German woman walked in naked. So he dropped his towel "to show that I was well integrated at home in Germany."

The story is Özdemir's way of showing that even though he's an ethnic Turk, he is comfortable with German ways. And the message is all the more important now that he will be named co-leader of the influential Green Party this weekend. The appointment will make him the highest-ranking ethnic Turkish politician in a country that still tends to keep its Turkish minority at arm's length.
On a continent that has struggled to produce leaders from minority communities even as it celebrates the triumph of Barack Obama in the United States, Özdemir stands out as a rare politician who has broken racial barriers to win national prominence.

Born to Turkish Muslim parents in Swabia, a culturally proud region in a heavily Roman Catholic state, Özdemir, 42, often finds himself straining to prove that Germany's 2.7 million ethnic Turks are invested in society. He also takes pains to quell Turkish suspicions that Germans are conspiring to keep them out of power. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the one who translates and explains how the others behave, think, dream," he says.

Relations between Germans and Turks are generally civil but not warm. Germans fret over the divide between their secular values and Islamic culture, while Turks struggle for access to quality schools and positions of power. Five Germans of Turkish origin serve in Parliament, but none has joined their party's leadership or Cabinet. And while Turks have found success in independent businesses and the arts, they have little presence in the management of major German companies.

German Mosque Raises Questions About EU Integration

From TDZ:

The opening of the Duisburg Merkez Mosque on Oct. 25 in Germany was a great day for the country’s Muslims, as it provides room for more than 1,200 people to pray and is currently Germany’s largest Muslim place of worship.

With a highly decorated main central dome (measuring 23 meters in diameter) and a number of equally impressively decorated half-domes as well as a 34-meter-high minaret pointing up to the sky, the mosque was built in classical Ottoman style in the western German federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia and is reminiscent of İstanbul’s famous Hagia Sophia. But it was not only the extraordinary size of the house of worship that made the event so important. Rather, what stood out was what preceded the inauguration of the building and the three years of construction as well as the absence of accusations so often used to undermine other mosque building plans in Germany. So what made the difference? Can Duisburg be called a prime example of successful integration? Sunday’s Zaman decided to find out.

For full article, click here.

Mosques for Germany's many Turkish communities are often the subject of various zoning disputes, a source of tension between native Germans and Turkish immigrants. In hopes to allay those tensions, some have suggested finding more amicable approaches to mosque construction, e.g. constructing mosques that fit more naturally with German architecture, integrating Turkish and German design.

German Efforts Attempt to Stem Islamophobia

A further look at integration of Turkish immigrants in Germany from Fulya Özerkan at TDN:

With an overall population of about 82 million, Germany is home to about 15 million people of immigrant backgrounds, including 3.5 million Muslims – the majority of who are of Turkish origin. However, linking the immigration problem just to the size of the Turkish community could lead to unhealthy results. International developments may shape these perceptions.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. were a turning point, according to Bekir Alboğa of the Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, or DİTİB.

“The situation for Muslims in Europe has been deteriorating since 9/11,” he said.

In the post-9/11 era, yet another development has fed the rising anti-Islamic sentiment worldwide. The killing in 2004 of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh after his film “Submission” triggered outrage among Muslims in the Netherlands, added to anti-Islamic sentiment and bolstered the tendency to associate Islam with violence. Van Gogh's murder opened the question of integration of around 1 million Muslims living in the Netherlands.

“The failure of integration in Holland has forced the German government to review its policy in that area,” said Oğuz Üçüncü, the secretary general of the Islamic Association Milli Görüş, or National View.

“Since then, the German government has started taking steps to center its integration policy on the maintenance of domestic security and assimilation,” said Üçüncü.

Despite the criticisms, the German government's better-late-than-never efforts to change perceptions of immigrants are inspiring people to keep searching for a solution to problems of integration.

For full article, click here.

The Long Path to Avrupa

From Der Spiegel:

Cem Özdemir is a good person to ask when it comes to explaining Turkey to the West. The Green Party politician, born in 1965 in Bad Urach in southwestern Germany, is both a bridge-builder and a self-starter. He was the first member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, of Turkish descent. On talk shows, he liked to refer to himself as the "Anatolian from Swabia," a region in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemburg. He had the misfortune of accepting a donation from a dubious PR consultant, a scandal that made Özdemir front-page news. To clear his name, he resigned and ran for a seat in the European Parliament, but he may soon experience a roaring comeback -- as the national head of Germany's Green Party.

Özdemir is participating in a public discussion forum in Bonn. Turkey is the focus of this year's Bonn Biennale, a theater and cultural festival. The panel is discussing the modern and European characteristics of a country whose 74 million citizens are almost all Muslim. Is democracy taking hold? Is there a risk that Turkey could slide into Islamism?

There are no easy answers to these questions, as Özdemir explains with the nuanced picture he presents. But there are trends and developments, and there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. The politician, who calls Turkey his "second home," points to the reforms of the last 10 years: laws banning forced marriages, honor killings and marital rape, the relaxation of taboos relating to controversial issues like the Kurdish question, Cyprus and the Armenians.

"Whenever I appeared on Turkish television in the past," Özdemir says, "I would ask the interviewer, before an interview began, which topics we could not discuss. Sometimes it was so absurd that it boiled down to a choice of words. For instance, a journalist would say: We don't refer to the 'Kurds.' 'Okay, what are you calling them now?' I would ask. The journalist would respond by referring to something like the 'Southeastern Anatolia question.' That was Turkey. And this wasn't even that long ago."

There was a period in the 1990s when Özdemir was Public Enemy No. 2 for some Turkish media outlets. The tabloid Hürriyet had a penchant for printing his photo next to that of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdish separatist group PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), the implication being: Look, two traitors! But Özdemir's supposed infractions amounted to nothing more than condemning the Turkish military's war against the Kurds and upholding democracy. He became the subject of vile threats, and bodyguards soon became a part of his daily life.

But things change, and Özdemir is convinced that they will continue to. "The fundamental issue is that we accept others, and that includes their religion or atheism, their Kurdish or Cherkessian language, their Alevi 'cem evi,' or meeting house, Jewish synagogue or Greek Orthodox church. That's all," he says.

Is this a vision? Of course it is. Özdemir believes that visions don't necessarily have to be harmful in politics. He's also a realist, though. "Unfortunately, Turkish society is deeply divided and, sadly, a large segment of the political elite is failing." His hopes rest on those who are not part of any camp: not the diehard Kemalists, who see every woman wearing the headscarf as the advance guard of a theocracy, and not the religious fundamentalists, who dream of infiltrating the state.

Özdemir gesticulates energetically on the podium in Bonn, and then he leans back to discuss the subject from a broader perspective. "From the Arab standpoint, Turkey was a colonial power first, then the West's listening post in the Cold War. Nowadays, Arab intellectuals look to Turkey because it presents the historically unique opportunity to achieve a democracy, with all its trappings, in a majority Muslim society." For the Arab world, says Özdemir, this is an alternative to the model of Islamism and to the authoritarian models of government in Tunisia and Egypt.

Özdemir's next sentence is a political one, meant to bring everything together: "Turkey must take this third approach." It sounds a bit mysterious, but perhaps this is the best prediction a politician can make when it comes to a country like Turkey.

For full article, click here.