Just off the bustling Istiklal Street on a hill above the Golden Horn is a small art gallery. With its open space and whitewashed walls, it is an island of peace in a teeming, noisy city. At its centre is what looks like a straightforward piece of contemporary art — four huge fibreglass horses and a set of flat-screen video displays.
Yet, in fact, the art work is more nuanced, revealing more about Turkey’s complex love-hate relationship with the continent to its west and with modernity than any number of surveys. The horses are replicas of Roman works looted by Crusaders from Istanbul — then Byzantine Constantinople — 800 years ago and symbolically brought back to the city by the artist, a Turk.
”I like it very much,” said Shirin Karadeniz (24), a music student selling tickets at the gallery door. ”Having the horses back in my city makes me feel proud. And it’s a really cool installation too, just like the ones in Paris or London.”
On Monday, assuming last-minute negotiations overcome all hitches, Turkey will formally start negotiations to bring its 70-million-plus citizens into the European Union some time between 2015 and 2020.
Yet in Europe and in Turkey there are signs that a backlash might have started. Polls show that support for EU accession has slumped from 75% in December last year, when the EU set the date for the start of negotiations, to just more than 60% now, and the opposition is becoming increasingly vocal.
Conservative reaction
The major reason, say analysts, is the conservative reaction in many EU nations against Turkish entry, which has led to increasingly tough entry tests and statements that imply, or even explicitly declare, the ”Christian” roots of Europe and fears of being ”swamped” by immigrants. This weekend, the Austrian government is still insisting that Turkey should be offered ”privileged partnership” instead of full membership of the EU.
Such demands are keenly resented in Turkey.
”It’s like telling someone you love them and being asked to go away and come back when you’ve lost some weight,” said one analyst. ”It’s insulting and humiliating. Eventually you just lose interest altogether and look elsewhere.”
Though the reforming pro-European Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a majority in Parliament, the reluctance of many EU members is strengthening a ragtag alliance of right-wingers, hard-line patriots, conservative bureaucrats, military men and ultra-left-wingers, who see opposition to Europe as a potential platform for a bid for power.
Their views are emotional, inchoate and rooted in an increasingly anachronistic vision of Turkey’s past and its destiny. However, they are tapping into a vein of resentment that could derail the accession. A whole range of issues underpin the reaction, and most of them, according to Halil Berktay, professor of history at Sabanci University, are beyond Western politicians with limited understanding of the Turkish national psyche.
Though still limited, anti-European feeling could easily spread, Berktay said.
”There is a grave danger of a much broader nationalist backlash, led by retired soldiers, intellectual poseurs, political opportunists and journalists who pander to a conservative, quasi-fascist nationalism.”
‘Kurdish question’
Such men are not difficult to find. For Emim Emir, of the Great Union party, which polled 2% in Turkey’s 2002 election, it is the ”Kurdish question” that is most important. Speaking in his office at the top of a malodorous apartment block in a working-class suburb of the city, Emir (44) said the demand that Turkey end discrimination against the Kurdish minority of about 15-million people would lead to the disintegration of the country.
”No one can accept this internal interference and meddling. It is our duty as Turks to resist,” he said.
Many right-wingers like Emir believe the EU wants to see both the Kurds in the south-east of Turkey and the small Christian Armenian minority concentrated in the north-east in effect granted independence. The evidence for this, they say, is the call by the EU for Turkey to recognise that the massacres of Armenians in 1915 amounted to ”genocide”. The call, said Berktay, played directly into the nationalists’ hands.
In another low-rise block in another working-class suburb, Kemal Kerincsiz, chief executive of the Turkish Lawyers’ Association, explained why he had led legal moves to ban a historians’ conference on the Armenian killings two weeks ago.
”Our aim was to stop discussion of claims of a genocide that did not take place. This is the first battle to stop the partition of Turkey,” Kerincsiz (46) said. ”I am acting as a patriot to stop the disintegration of my nation.”
In the offices of the Turkish Workers’ Party, portraits of Marx and Mao hang near those of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. According to Erkan Onsel, the party secretary, the EU is the ”club of rich, imperialist” nations while Turkey is one of the ”oppressed”.
He said: ”All we would do in the EU is provide cheap labour for the capitalists. America wants to redraw our borders and is using the EU to do it. We should be looking east.”
Fuelling the rhetoric are columnists such as Emin Colaan, who writes in the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper. He constantly refers to the ”humiliation” of the Turks by the EU, which he says considers itself a ”Christian club”.
The demands for Turkey to recognise Cyprus are a particular insult. Last week he claimed, falsely, that Andrew Duff, a British Member of the European Parliament, had called for the portraits of Ataturk, seen everywhere from schools to teashops, to be taken down. Duff said he had been the target of thousands of abusive e-mails, some threatening violence, after Colaan’s article. Despite calls to his office, Colaan was unavailable for comment.
‘Coolest city in Europe’
Little is further from the reactionaries’ vision of Turkey than the new Istanbul Modern. The gallery, built with private finance in a warehouse by the Bosphorus, has had nearly 350 000 visitors since it opened last December. Its current exhibition features work by major world artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Jeff Koons; its permanent collection explores the relationship of Western and Turkish modern art; and it even sports a chic, expensive new restaurant where Istanbul’s literati gossip over coffee.
The gallery — along with the thriving bars and clubs scene — has earned Istanbul a cover in Newsweek magazine as ”the coolest city in Europe”.
”This is a flamboyant, 24-hour city,” said Oya Eczacibasi (45), the director.
One of the key backers of the Istanbul Modern was Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself.
”Without the prime minister’s personal support, the museum would not exist,” Eczacibasi said. ”Many of the visitors we’ve had from the art world in America or elsewhere can’t believe how helpful he has been.”
The visitors had presumed that Erdogan, a devout Muslim who leads a socially conservative party with a political vision that draws heavily on religious values, would oppose the museum. Instead, the former street vendor recognised both the museum’s cultural significance and its value in promoting his nation as a modern state in the West.
Erdogan, who won a landslide victory in 2002, sums up the paradox of Turkey’s situation. It is a secular state with an overwhelmingly Muslim population. Its prime minister leads a moderate ”Islamist” government that is more reforming, democratising, pro-Western and European than the secular opposition. He has forced through a series of civil and human rights reforms that, though still seen as inadequate by many, have been radical.
He has repeatedly rejected force as a means to crush a recent upsurge of Kurdish separatist violence. Backed by much of Turkey’s business community, Erdogan — who once served a jail sentence for making radical Islamic statements at a rally — has presided over the implementation of an International Monetary Fund financial stability programme that, after years of economic chaos, has helped growth rates rise to 9%. He has also campaigned against corruption.
”Erdogan’s a pious Muslim and a social conservative but very open to modern ideas,” said Fadi Hakura, a specialist at Chatham House think tank in London.
Pace of reform
Other analysts say it is easy to over-stress the pace of reforms. Human rights groups last week criticised the closing of a gay and lesbian group by one local administration, and the minister for women’s affairs called Turkey’s record on sexual harassment ”a national shame”. A recent row over a law against adultery caused controversy.
The famous Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is facing trial for talking to journalists about the killings of Armenians. He, like many others contacted by The Observer, was unwilling to talk for fear of unspecified consequences.
Much depends on Erdogan and the reformists maintaining their strong following. But it is clear that could easily waver. Fatih is a suburb overlooking the Bosphorus that is known for its Islamic conservatism. Here, about two-thirds of women wear headscarves, and the tight T-shirts and jeans favoured by young women elsewhere in the city are rare.
Eighty-year-old Saphi, sitting in the courtyard of the main mosque, said he will oppose the accession because ”a lifetime of experience” has taught him the Europeans cannot be trusted. Religion is not a factor, he said, ”at least not for us, though it seems to be for the Europeans”.
Another worshipper said he wants to be part of Europe, but ”not if we have to go begging”. Yet most agree that Turkey’s future lies in closer ties with the West. In the narrow lanes outside the mosque, Nazim Kalag (30), slicing chicken for kebabs, said the Turks really want to be part of Europe.
”We want a nice, orderly, prosperous life here. All neat and tidy. No problems for anyone.”
Turkey, all analysts agree, is ”on the cusp” of enormous changes that could take it further towards a European-style secular, pluralist modernity or into something else, possibly based in a more aggressive Islamic identity or on a retrograde conservative statist radicalism.
”It is a case of what sort of identity can be created and what works,” said Berktay. ”Turkey is creating an entirely new relationship with the West … The process is ongoing.”
Is Turkey ready for the EU?
Not yet. Economic growth is strong — about 8% a year — and there have been major reforms in recent years in politics, economy, law, human and civil rights. But the largely rural country of 73-million has an average income of about one-third of Western levels. Literacy rates are low, the army remains powerful and free speech is stifled.
Won’t Turkey be a black hole for EU subsidies?
It will not join the EU for a decade at least, by which time it is likely to be much more prosperous and the EU subsidy system, currently facing reform following recent enlargement, will be far less generous.
What about the size of Turkey?
Critics say Europe will be swamped with poor Turks. Supporters say Europe, with its ageing population and low economic growth, needs a massive infusion of youthful energy and cheap labour. Turkey would be a new market for Western goods and capital.
Isn’t this really about what sort of Europe we want?
Yes. Conservatives in France, Germany and especially Austria have relied on populist rhetoric, implying that the EU is a wealthy, white Christian club. Supporters of Turkey’s accession say that the membership of a Muslim country will promote Europe as an example of diversity in an increasingly polarised world. — Guardian Unlimited Â