TURKEY'S FUTURE IN NATO- OR ANY OTHER SECULAR ORGANIZATION? NOT A CHANCE!

Submitted by JKF (United States), Apr 6, 2009 at 16:18

Turkey in its past was a good fit and a proper ally for the West. Turkey' s fundamental principle of secularism, as established by its modern founder. K. Attaturk , made Turkey and its people a very good fit with Europe and the Western democracies. THe hope was that Turkey would resolve all its oustanding issues in a business like way. Turkey has slowly shifted away from secularism, and its current leader, Erdogan, has embraced a disastreus way ahead for Turkey.

Erdogan's initial campaign for leadership was deceptive, for he appeared/portrayed himself as a very progressive potentiial leader for Turkey. Once in power, the true face of Erdogan has been displayed. Erdogan's continuous and accelerated purges of the Kurds; his failure to come clean with the Armenian genocide; his support for the implementation of islamists' principles; his slow errosion of secularism; his failure to resolve the ilegal invasion of Cyprus by a full unconditional withdrawl from the island; his support for Hamas; his verbal attacks on the State of Israel and its governmet; his attempted negative cohersive pronouncements, wrt the EU membership, over the gas pipeline project; his severe failure to address human rights; his failure to address the Turkish economy; and other ill tempered/ill conceived pronouncements/ projects are in fact rapidly pushing Turkey away from any EU partnership, never mind membership in the EU. I no longer see Turkey as a reliable NATO ally.

There are some very fundamental deep, negative issues, that Turkey needs to resolve with Greece and Cyprus. Ancestral European lands, taken from the Greeks need resolution. I do not think that Greece got a very good promotion of its ancestral historical interests, with respect to the lands that Turkey witheld from Greece on the European mainland. The conversion of the most sacred Christian Orthodox church into a museum, can not seat well with any Orthodox Christians. Erdogan has done absolutely nothing to lessen the areas of friction with the Europeans.

Erdogan needs to resolve all these issues, before he/Turkey can get a realistic chance of further integration with/into Europe. Erdogan once again demonstrated a very high level of ignorance, by his cohersive approach to the Rasmussen issue; he fails to understand and is unwilling to recognize that EU countries are secular, democratic, and they have a free press, not like Turkey. I think that Erdogan is nearing the tipping point wrt the EU accession and even potentially remaining in NATO. Bottom line, Turkey, under Erdogan is a very divisive entity.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".