Vincent Boland: Ankara Stands On The Threshold
Last Saturday morning, a few hundred protesters gathered outside Istanbul Bilgi University and threw eggs and insults at a group of historians and human rights workers as they rushed between riot police into the sanctuary of the university's main building. Amid the shouts of "treason" and "lies", it seemed that, despite many indicators to the contrary, the battle between progressives and reactionaries that has been such a notable characteristic of modern Turkey has not yet been won.
The cause of the most recent outbreak of hostilities was a conference on the mass killing of Armenians that took place as the Ottoman empire broke apart in 1915. A court ruling banning the conference forced its relocation and sparked a ferocious row over free speech at an especially sensitive moment, barely a week before Turkey begins the long and arduous process of joining the European Union. It is little wonder that Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, was moved at the height of the controversy to observe that "no country can shoot itself in the foot like Turkey can".
The incident was revealing of the sour mood that Turkey is in as it stands on the threshold of Europe. The country was desperate to be asked to join the EU; now that the invitation has been extended, it seems unsure whether to accept. In this, Turkey differs from the former communist countries of eastern Europe. For Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, accession to the Union was a moment of destiny, the righting of a wrong caused by the second world war.
There is no comparable feeling in Turkey. The country was the vision of one man - Mustafa Kemal Atatu
It is because so many Turks are suspicious of what the EU wants from Turkey, and of what it is prepared to offer in return, that there seems to be so little enthusiasm for the accession process. In a public opinion survey published this month, the German Marshall Fund of the US found that the proportion of Turks who believed that EU membership would be a good thing had declined in a year from 73 per cent to 63 per cent.
Onur Oymen, a veteran diplomat who is now a senior official in the opposition Republican People's Party, sums up the ambivalence of many Turks. "The day Turkey joins the EU as a full member will be a historic day," he says. "It would be premature to celebrate anything before then." Ural Akbulut, rector of Middle East Technical University, adds: "I believe the accession process will succeed but I am less optimistic now than I was a year ago."
For many Turks, the experience of the EU since December 17 last year, when the Union's leaders invited urkey to join, has not been happy, involving too many concessions for too little gain. Cyprus has bedevilled relations between Ankara and Brussels throughout 2005, as European governments put pressure on Turkey to recognise the Greek Cypriot administration in the south of the divided island while, in the eyes of many in Turkey, ignoring the isolation of Turkish Cypriots in the north.
That has been a gift to opponents within Turkey of EU accession. Many Turks also complain that Europeans put too much focus on the plight of Turkey's ethnic Kurdish minority. Amid an upsurge in Kurdish separatist violence in recent weeks, these issues have fuelled a rise in nationalism and euroscepticism. These were the sentiments that Saturday's protesters against the Armenia conference undoubtedly sought to exploit.
The cause of the most recent outbreak of hostilities was a conference on the mass killing of Armenians that took place as the Ottoman empire broke apart in 1915. A court ruling banning the conference forced its relocation and sparked a ferocious row over free speech at an especially sensitive moment, barely a week before Turkey begins the long and arduous process of joining the European Union. It is little wonder that Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, was moved at the height of the controversy to observe that "no country can shoot itself in the foot like Turkey can".
The incident was revealing of the sour mood that Turkey is in as it stands on the threshold of Europe. The country was desperate to be asked to join the EU; now that the invitation has been extended, it seems unsure whether to accept. In this, Turkey differs from the former communist countries of eastern Europe. For Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, accession to the Union was a moment of destiny, the righting of a wrong caused by the second world war.
There is no comparable feeling in Turkey. The country was the vision of one man - Mustafa Kemal Atatu
It is because so many Turks are suspicious of what the EU wants from Turkey, and of what it is prepared to offer in return, that there seems to be so little enthusiasm for the accession process. In a public opinion survey published this month, the German Marshall Fund of the US found that the proportion of Turks who believed that EU membership would be a good thing had declined in a year from 73 per cent to 63 per cent.
Onur Oymen, a veteran diplomat who is now a senior official in the opposition Republican People's Party, sums up the ambivalence of many Turks. "The day Turkey joins the EU as a full member will be a historic day," he says. "It would be premature to celebrate anything before then." Ural Akbulut, rector of Middle East Technical University, adds: "I believe the accession process will succeed but I am less optimistic now than I was a year ago."
For many Turks, the experience of the EU since December 17 last year, when the Union's leaders invited urkey to join, has not been happy, involving too many concessions for too little gain. Cyprus has bedevilled relations between Ankara and Brussels throughout 2005, as European governments put pressure on Turkey to recognise the Greek Cypriot administration in the south of the divided island while, in the eyes of many in Turkey, ignoring the isolation of Turkish Cypriots in the north.
That has been a gift to opponents within Turkey of EU accession. Many Turks also complain that Europeans put too much focus on the plight of Turkey's ethnic Kurdish minority. Amid an upsurge in Kurdish separatist violence in recent weeks, these issues have fuelled a rise in nationalism and euroscepticism. These were the sentiments that Saturday's protesters against the Armenia conference undoubtedly sought to exploit.