Turkey and rising racism in the EU

The EU, which is considering integrating Turkey with the union, is expected to support a government fighting against a new kind of gladio that leaked into the state within the limits of the law, as the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 operations clearly revealed. The claims and the revealed data are hard to swallow. It was unveiled that the Gülen Movement, which has a major network in both Turkey and the world, led this parallel structure, and many state officials involved in unlawful actions and judicial and police-based targeting had affiliations with this organization, which seemingly confused people. The recent operation launched on Dec. 14 involved a total of 31 people, three of whom were journalists. Only one of those journalists was arrested. If only he had also been questioned without being arrested. But we do not exactly know the contents of the file yet. EU Minister Volkan Bozkır made a remark on the sharp reactions given by EU figures even when ministers in Turkey did not know the details of the incident.

"All the aspects of the announcements from the EU regarding the latest operation are wrong. They explicitly claim that there is no press freedom in Turkey, which is not true. And they urge that those who were detained to be immediately released. If Turkey could do that, it would be the point that should have been criticized. The developments after Dec. 14 could actually be regarded as a portrayal of what is not desired between EU-Turkey relations. This operation began at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Beginning from noon, I saw that EU authorities issued many press statements expressing the same phrases. These statements are neither acceptable nor helpful. Besides, they are not true. We met the Enlargement Negotiations Commissioner Johannes Hahn on Monday at 6:00 p.m. During the meeting, I saw that he barely had any information on the incident. Even when neither many of our ministers nor I could fully comprehend the incident yet, he combined some factors with an approach basing on rough estimations."

How can we evaluate these impetuous reactions of the EU and U.S., which are based on double standards and do not accord with their own political culture? The classic arrogant Western perspective that looks down on the Middle East comes to mind here. There is a crowded Eurocrat group in Europe that does not favor Turkey's full membership in the EU since it is populous, dynamic and Muslim. The suspicions rose over the possibility that these Eurocrats might have been previously informed since the operation was leaked with exaggerated information to the public three days beforehand by a popular Twitter user affiliated with the Gülen Movement. The Gülen Movement has a serious lobby in Brussels.

The problem is not the reaction given by some influential figures of the EU. It is not possible for a judicial practice to cause a serious problem between Turkey and the EU. When they receive the case files, they will see the severity of the issue.

The problem is in the West's short-sightedness in its perspective on Turkey and the Middle East. This perspective is critical for the West itself rather than the Middle East. The West, which contradicts its own democracy by sympathizing with the massacres and coups of dictators in Egypt and Syria only because they are in a "secular" guise, would bring the greatest harm to the West itself in the medium and long term.

Just as the Middle East was turned into a bloodbath due to organizations such as the Taliban that were supported to fight the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan , the West also associates this only with Islam as if it has no role in it. As long as the same policies continue without any responsibility or self-criticism, we will see other examples of racist groups such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident (PEGIDA), who lately staged demonstrations with thousands of people in Dresden, Germany. And let's add the segregationist policies for immigrants and the causes of the participation of Europeans in the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) into the picture. In other words, this arrogant view based on double standards and unethical realpolitik not only harms the Middle East, but also undermines the cultural and social values of the West. At this point, it must be said that it is a great security requirement for the West to show respect and equal treatment to Turkey, which deserves it since it has established a unique democracy that could contact both worlds. The West undermines itself with this behavior. And it does not have the power to design the world according to its wishes and monopolize the perception of reality anymore. Moreover, this situation is not ethical, either. Any idea, ideology or regime cannot maintain its claim of democracy without ethical superiority.