Madeleine Bunting | The Hindu | May 23, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/23/stories/2006052305831100.htm
AT THE end of this week, there will be a ceremony in the south-
eastern Turkish port of Ceyhan to mark the first tanker to be loaded
with the oil that has been piped over 1,000 km from Baku in
Azerbaijan. One of the most ambitious and controversial energy
schemes in the world is finally coming to completion. It will
transport the oil wealth of central Asia to hungry world markets,
bypassing Russia.
And this huge pipeline, whose course runs through zones of chronic
political and seismic instability across the Caucasus, is only the
beginning of how Turkey is exploiting its old strategic and
geographic advantages to develop a web of pipelines for oil and gas,
stretching from Asia into the heart of Europe. Plans for a gas
pipeline across Turkey, under the Aegean to Greece and eventually to
Italy, are well advanced. The reserves of Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan will soon be linked to energy-hungry Europe.
Turkey is offering Europe a cornucopia of dazzling possibilities as
the pipelines are laid and the economy booms. Not surprising then
that the Turkish and western European political and economic elites
feasting at last week's Forum Istanbul the Turkish equivalent of
the Davos World Economic Forum are chorusing heartily from the
same hymn sheet. It was a lovefest as participants got giddy on the
dream of a utopian future in which Muslims and secularists happily
co-exist, ancient enmities between Christian and Muslim are
reconciled, and Turkey pioneers a way forward beyond "clash of
civilisations" simplicities.
Sound a bit far-fetched? Plenty of Kurds, Armenians, and Greek
Cypriots would snort with derision. But Istanbul has that kind of
intoxicating impact on many. It is a city whose history is steeped
in the exchange of civilisations as well as their clash. Istanbul
sits on a cultural fault line as well as a geological fault line,
yet that has been a source of cross-fertilisation as well as
conflict.
That cross-fertilisation is evident on the streets and the ferries
criss-crossing the Bosporus. Women in headscarves walk arm in arm
with peers sporting long flowing hair, tight T-shirts, jeans and
trainers, and young women canoodle with their boyfriends or
husbands public displays of heterosexual affection inconceivable
in any other Muslim culture. The promise held out in these
commonplace Istanbul images are of an accommodation between Western
individualistic modernity and religious traditionalism.
This is now part of Turkey's sales pitch for EU membership. "We can
draw on our Ottoman past of a multi-ethnic empire which achieved a
remarkable degree of religious tolerance, to help Europe reach an
accommodation with its 15 million Muslim minorities," runs the
spiel. "We don't just offer to keep your lights on, heat your hot
water and provide young labour to pay for your ageing populations'
pensions. We also offer a thousand years of experience in bridging
cultures, in hybrid civilisations. We hold out Istanbul as a model
for the cities of western Europe with large Muslim populations."
But what slowly dawns is the shrill undertone of this sales pitch
and how it is chorused by Turks to convince themselves as much as
anyone else. For this is a country that spent much of the 20th
century poised precariously between secularism and political Islam.
As both become more globally aggressive, it risks being torn between
them.
That danger was brought sharply home last week when a gunman opened
fire in a Turkish court, killing one judge and injuring four others.
The assailant, a lawyer, subsequently explained his attack as
revenge for the judge's ruling in a recent case that a teacher who
wore a veil outside work should not be promoted to head teacher of a
primary school. The ruling is in line with Turkey's strict
interpretation of secularism. The state rules out veils in any
public building (thus banning even the current Prime Minister's wife
from public functions); yet it has always funded and closely
regulated the country's Islamic worship.
Maintaining the ban, a sacred legacy of the revered father of
Turkey, Ataturk, risks excluding a lot of girls from a university
education and the labour market, while a relaxation of the ban risks
alienating the powerful military, who regard themselves as the
keepers of the Ataturk flame.
This murder will only confirm the fears of the secular Europeanised
elite that Turkey's delicate balance of faith and secularism is
unravelling. They feel beleaguered as the ruling Justice and
Development party promotes the religious into positions of power. A
wife in a headscarf has become an essential attribute for the
ambitious Turk.
The secular elite is clinging to EU membership as the one hope of
reversing this trend. If the process slows down as it might well
do given such incidents as the fracas that has erupted between
France and Turkey over a law proposed in the French legislature
outlawing denial of the Armenian genocide the reaction could
prompt an intensification of Islamism.
The application to the EU is characterised by two ironies, neither
of which is lost on the Turks. Firstly, although Turkey pioneered
secularism in the Muslim world, discussion in the EU of Turkey's
application to join has focussed on its 97 per cent Muslim
population. Secondly, although Turkey has finally resolved its
decades-old identity crisis as to whether it is European or Asian
the majorities in favour of EU accession are substantial Europe
has now plunged into an identity crisis.
Much of the opposition to Turkish EU membership pivots on these
ironies and the questions they prompt: is Europe a geographical or a
cultural entity, and how do you define the boundaries of either?
Nilufer Gole, a Turkish academic working in France, warns of the
grave dangers of a narcissistic European Union obsessed by these
questions of identity rather than motivated by the sense of project
(initially, Franco-German peace) that gave birth to the EU and has
sustained it. It's the project of peace, of economic growth, of
democracy and human rights that appeals to Turkey, not
indeterminate questions of identity.
An EU project that carved out a distinctive European engagement with
Islam in which Turkey was a key partner would trounce Samuel
Huntingdon's specious and self-fulfilling theory of a "clash of
civilisations." Naked self-interest those pipelines and pensions
will help drive this project forward. But I am aware that many would
attribute my enthusiasm to that intoxicating Istanbul effect of a
city prickling with minarets above a sparkling blue sea.
- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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