Turkey was once on course to join the EU. The desperate refugees trapped on its border reflect a broken relationship
To understand Europe, we need to look more carefully at its borders. Too often, the debates on the future of Europe focus on a few leading nations and overlook the periphery. Yet the fate of the continent is deeply and inevitably connected with what’s happening along its fringes. And there is no bordering country that has as complex and confusing a relationship with Europe as Turkey – it was, after all, the Ottoman empire that was first referred to as “the sick man of Europe”.
The answer to what Europe means for Turkey has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. As the country slid backwards and tumbled into nationalism, Islamism and populist authoritarianism, and even further misogyny and sexism, so did the Turkish perception of Europe systematically deteriorate.
Looking back, it is important to remember there was a time not that long ago when things seemed more promising. In 2004, the European commission concluded that Turkey had “sufficiently” met the political criteria to start accession talks for joining the European Union. Meanwhile in Turkey, every credible poll indicated that the majority of the population had a positive view of Europe and supported the country’s prospects of joining the EU. Historically, culturally, economically and politically, generations of Turkish citizens were used to seeing themselves more as part of Europe than as part of the Middle East.
As time went by, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP turned increasingly anti-western, populist, Islamist and out-and-out authoritarian. The AKP failed to fulfil EU criteria for membership, walked away from democratic reforms, destroyed pluralism, and became more inward-looking and jingoistic. It is important to underline that under the governing People’s Alliance, the AKP is in cohorts with the Nationalist Movement party, a far-right ultranationalist party.
Turkey today is ruled by the worst ideological combination possible – ultranationalism mixed with Islamism mixed with populism mixed with authoritarianism. With an entrenched patriarchy too. No wonder, then, that in the last years there has been much talk about joining the Shanghai Pact instead of the EU, going eastward rather than westward. No wonder that the ruling elite have been looking for “alternative political models” wherein human rights, freedom of speech and rule of law can all be deftly swept aside. In a TV interview in 2019 Erdoğan said, referring to a handful of European parliamentarians after the EU voted to freeze accession negotiations: “They advise to stop accession talks with us. I wish they did such a thing …They are the enemies of Islam.”
Under these circumstances, Turkey’s EU membership remains a shattered dream no one takes seriously any more. So when the organisers of the leave campaign in the UK decided to put up those scandalous billboards claiming that Turkey was joining the EU, and 76 million of “them” were about to come to Europe, they knew they were not telling the truth; they wanted to stoke fear as if barbarians were at the gates.
While I criticise the leave campaign’s incendiary rhetoric, I am also critical of the EU’s inconsistencies and failures, especially when it comes to the humanitarian question of refugees. The 2016 deal between Brussels and Ankara – which led to infamous scenes of asylum seekers being turned away from Greece and repatriated to Turkey – pledged, among other things, 3bn euros, visa-free travel for Turkish citizens to the EU, the revival of the accession talks, and a humanitarian roadmap that would help the resettlement of large numbers of Syrians.
But in a recent tweet, Kati Piri, the Turkey rapporteur of the European parliament, who has always been rightly critical of human rights violations in Turkey, condemned the EU for failing to keep its promises . Only 25,000 Syrians have been resettled in three years across the EU. There are close to 3.5 million refugees in Turkey.
The European Union was built on values. Liberal, democratic, pluralistic and progressive values. For democrats outside Europe it was the promise of enshrining liberal rights that mattered the most – freedom of speech, checks and balances, a free media, independent academia, the rule of law, women’s and minority rights. In its relations with Turkey and in its approach to refugees, the EU has lost the moral ground. Everything became transactional, a barter.
What does Europeanness mean to a country where 180 media outlets have been shut down, more than 150 journalists have been arrested, and more than 1,100 academics have been sued, fired or put on trial for signing a peace petition? What does Europe mean to a country where murders of women increased by 1,400% between 2002 and 2009, where legislators try to reduce the sentences given to rapists of underage victims should the rapists agree to marry their victims? What does Europe mean in a country where Osman Kavala, a leading philanthropist and civil society activist and one of the most decent people I have met in my life, has been kept in prison on the most ridiculous charges, released after more than 800 days in jail and then, a couple of hours later, rearrested in the most cruel way?
As Erdoğan sabre-rattles in Syria, the situation effectively turning into a war with the Assad government, his government keeps drumming up a cult of martyrdom so scary that people find it harder and harder to question its rulers for fear of being seen as “traitors”. Following last week’s tragedy, when dozens of Turkish soldiers were killed, Erdoğan opened the borders to refugees to cross from Turkey to Europe in order to pressure European countries to change their dealings with Turkey. “It’s done, the gates are open now. You will have your share of this burden,” he said. Authorities in Greece have announced they have stopped 24,000 attempted crossings.
As always, it is children who suffer the most. A boy died on Monday when a dinghy capsized near a Greek island. Hundreds of refugees are stuck in a no man’s land, a patch of soil where imaginary boundaries have been drawn. While politics between Turkey and the west continues to sour, an enormous humanitarian crisis is unfolding, once again, on the periphery of Europe.
• Elif Shafak is a novelist and political scientist
Source: Guardian
