A sense of betrayal

Where is Europe? Where are those European parliamentarians who held placards voting “Oui/Evet” to Turkey in 2004 ? What happened to our dream to enter the European Union in the coming years ? Many pro-European Turks are asking this question of themselves.

We are often on the intellectual defensive with our counterparts in various countries, because they have difficulty understanding what has happened. Is not a bit more attention warranted to a country such as Turkey during such difficult times ?

Looking back at what transpired during the last three years, a number of questions come to mind.

Why would France and some others begin to meddle with the charged Armenian issue as soon as we started to negotiate ? When everyone knew that Greek Cyprus would be a spoiler vis-à-vis Turkey, why would the major countries of the European Union not take necessary precautions and put appropriate pressure on Nicosia ? And, of course, why did we waste so much time in identifying a chief negotiator ? I think most of us know the answers to those questions. Yet they are not convincing. Nor are they responsible.

“Left to our own”

What we feel, as staunch pro-Europeans in Turkey, is a distinct sense of betrayal. The charges of Turkey’s nationalists : that Europeans cannot be relied on, that they are simply playing for time, that Europeans have no intention of accepting Turkey, all painfully echo in our ears. We feel abandoned and left to our own in what promises to be a very difficult and complicated domestic fight.

Most of us are plagued by a sense of severe injustice and maltreatment. We have difficulty in understanding the behavior of some European states which choose to hide behind the irresponsible policies of Greek Cyprus. What kind of shortsightedness has overtaken Europe’s ailing political leadership ?

And yes, where are Europe’s pro-Turks ? Why are they not showing solidarity with us during our relentless intellectual battle with those who want a closed, inward-looking and isolated Turkey ? Where is the sense of common destiny, the bonds that links Europeans together ? Why are we not seeing more Europeans stand up and support Turks who want Turkey be part of a whole and united Europe ?

A very peculiar European silence

Indeed we are going through momentous days in Turkey. What we would have expected is the open expression of solidarity with Turkey’s democratic forces rather than the peculiar silence that has lately prevailed in Europe. Yes, we are currently buying time with the two elections and the uncertainty of the French election. Yet we would have thought that Europe’s elites could keep the Turkey debate going. It is very hard to comprehend how much the debate has changed over the four decades we have been engaging with one another on an institutional level. When we first started out, namely on Sept. 12, 1963, Walter Hallstein (CDU), the president of the then-European Economic Community, noted that “Turkey is part of Europe. That is the deepest meaning of this process: it is, in the form most appropriate to our times, the confirmation of a truth, which is more than the abbreviated expression of a geographical statement or a historical observation, valid for a few centuries.”

Now tell us, can we still believe in this?