“In recent decades, the elites have embraced the European Union and have sought to cobble together a ‘European identity’ that might inject some meaning into public life. However, the elitist and managerial project that is the EU has, not surprisingly, failed to inspire the public.” - Spiked
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efore it gets any better, there will be more of this;
"We don't want a clash of cultures and we don't want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe,"
-Joerg Haider, governor of Carinthia, Austria
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Couple of months old but here are some basic challanges discussed in a short video concerning another issue, Turkey and EU;
Some of that 70 cents can certainly help here.
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I agree with Frank Furedi, at the end;
"Blaming Europe’s decline on the fertility rates of fecund immigrants misses the point that the continent is politically, not physically, exhausted."
Interesting post that North Americans 'think' it doesn't concern them.
First paragraph of my comment should read;
Before it gets any better, there will be more of this;
"We don't want a clash of cultures and we don't want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe, Muslims have of course the right to practice their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques and minarets as centers to advertise the power of Islam"
-Joerg Haider, governor of Carinthia, Austria
ahh, haider.
a model nazi-er citizen. his parents were "party" members, and he inherited a large sum of his wealth from land effectively stolen from a jewish family. throw in his ties to the schutzstaffel and the picture only gets better.
ironically, he is one of the few members that supported allowing turkey into the e.u. but probably influenced by the thinking it would force turkey to become a more secular state.
i find it interesting europe is politically exhausted, especially since i fell the politically, the u.s. is flatlining in a major way.
Gul's recent electoral win will likely complicate Turkey's EU accession hopes. His roadshow will definitely be interesting to watch.
Accession perspectives
Political exhaustion is sometimes good for the body politic. Despite the charmless hyperbole in Rem's plea, Haider's pathetic sideshow and the obvious technocratic snafus, I'm not prepared to ignore Europeans' capacity for resilience.
That Roma outreach really surprised me. Especially given the long history of antipathy. I wonder if India could do the same with its untouchables?
actually, gul's, and more importantly his previous party's sounding election win is the best hope for turkey's negotiations with eu, for the both sides. with a majority pro eu parliament and a president, this will be probably most fruitful 4-5 years between turkey and eu.
however, ak party will face pro nationalist army.
mend relations between kurdish population and the nationalists, a difficult task in itself. negotiate opening ports (per free trade aggreement) to pro greek republic of cyprus, the only eu country with unresolved border dispute, who by referandum rejected the unification with the island's turkish community, (making it hard to explain any negotiations to turkish hawks to pull out 30,000 troops currently stationed on the island, in theory, protecting the turkish cypriots against hellenistic expansions.) maintain and continue the democratic and civil reforms and continue the pro free market reforms, and keep the growth rate up.
and the list goes on.
the only easy aspect of all this lies within the negotiations with the european union itself, since the turks mainly have their road plan drawn for them in copenhagen (sort of like set of working drawings for a building handed to the contractor.)
i agree with denis chaibi, in the 'accession perspectives' link above, when he says " turks and eu have to move above from bartering methods to make genuine progress in the integration of turkey to eu."
i really don't think the eu citizens fully understand the monumental implications of turkey's inclusion to eu. it is as indicated over and over, is the most challenging task to make people see the implications of such inclusions for the both peoples, which has more to do with the future societies than the immediate regional politcs.
Orhan,
I hope you're right about Gul's chances.
"He has vowed to be apolitical, but army-backed secularist forces have deep misgivings over his and the AKP's Islamist past, and point to his wife and daughter's habit of wearing the headscarf."
Is there not a risk that the above may harm accession efforts, despite the favourable parliamentary configuration? Gul will try to serve two masters after all, the internal constituency and the wider EU. And as you pointed out the EU citizens have yet to grasp the complexities at work. And then there's Sarkozy...
gul has all to gain remaining secular. the brass know the people have elected ak party. and they also know the days of full scale intervention is history and people would eventually come after them in the case of international isolation due to military take over. one of the first things in the newly elected parliament's agenda is to reform 1980's military backed constitution and passing a 100% credible civil constitution. ak party will have easy passage on that with the backing of kurdish members and even from some socialists.
this will be looking real good in front of eu and jump start the talks.
actually turks are not hinging everything on eu. they keep saying the reforms are needed anyway and if europe is not going to accept turkey as a full member, they will just call the 'copenhagen criteria' 'ankara criteria' and keep moving on to future as a regional power that has the capability of tipping scales in times of east west conflicts.
there is the turkic speaking, muslim and oil producing central asian republics card on the table as well. the transportation of petrolium through turkish ports is a huge deal.
sarkozy will soon understand that it is not the best interest of france to pick on turkey as merkel did for germany.
my position is that turks reject europe on their own, unless there is a just and mutual acceptance and co-operation from european partners. turks know the value of the real estate they have been sitting on for last ten centuries or so, and i think that is a powerful thing and much bigger than 'a' sarkozy.
Right. New constitution - check. Good optics.
I guess what's missing from the press I've read is the psychometrics of the electorate. In my country strategic voting occurs frequently and acts as a wedge against the normative governing ethos or incumbent party.
So I guess I'm wondering about that here. Was Gul a strategic choice? If the answer is yes and this new constitution is passed, thereby loosening the military's grip, what incentive is there to keep Gul in power when the EU whining increases in pitch?
Right. The oil connection is well understood. Nevertheless, I'd like to hear your elaboration of this "capability of tipping scales". I'm not convinced that's plausible, at least not while Kurd nationalism remains unresolved, along with poor US relations. But I do think there are better chances of this potential "capability" emerging in a 'privileged partnership' scenario, especially with Putin strutting around pimping his pipeline.
Sarkozy has already softened his line since being elected, going from "I don't want a Europe, which will be neighboring Iraq or Iran" to "I don't want to be a hypocrite. Everybody knows I'm only favourable to an association." Not much of an evolution but indicative of a prise de conscience about energy security, and economic growth, not to mention the internal relations with muslim constituency.
The links I attached to this story prove that there's little that is "just" about EU membership, at least for now. I hope Turkey's efforts between now and 2020 can help change this lamentable situtation.
b,
regarding the plausability of tipping scale; a good example would be sarkozy's and some other locally needy european politicians' nightmare rhetoric about eu being neighbor to iran, iraq and syria (lets give the due credit to our favorite evil axis player from damascus!) and, after turkey rejecting to be the 'privilaged bumper-no jihad -safety to our holy cross zone', and, suddenly that neighboring situation appearing in further west next to greece and bulgaria with black sea allready under the control of troublesome navies who, by then, also have much more friendlier ports of call in eastern mediterannian sea down below where it really matters.
sort of more dangerous hot/cold war with reconfigured sides containing denser explosives per capita, for visuals.
these are avoidable doomsday scenerios caused by unfriendly spheres.
i prefer rem's optimism. to me, without turkey, europe remains an incomplete project. short of it's potential of truly being a revolutionary new way of living for billions of earthlings.
but that very big idea and possibility will probably remain invisible to many, perhaps until the 2020's (your reasonable estimation). yes, eu needs to increase the funds to 70 cents or to one full euro per person per year. if 200 roma can cause trouble, one can imagine the impact of 100 million on the east of adrianopolis.
correction;
yes, eu needs to increase the funds to 70 cents or to one full euro per person per year for cross cultural understanding and mutual acceptance and artful flowering. if 200 roma can cause trouble in bulgaria, one can imagine the impact of 100 million plus unhappy less understood on the east of adrianopolis and beyond.
I prefer optimism too, though Rem's is not to my taste when pushed outside the hermetic space of a manifesto; facts are inconvenient that way.
I like the ethics of that big idea. Not just for what it means to Turkey and the EU but for the rest of the world, saturated as it is with fear. But maybe this idea is not universally shared. Which is why I asked about the nature of the Turkish psyche. Here are the antipodes:
“The pro-Western elite that has shaped Turkish foreign policy since the end of World War II is gradually being replaced by a more conservative, more religious, and more nationalist elite that is suspicious of the West and has a more positive attitude toward Turkey's Ottoman past. The ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (known as the akp), headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has managed to tap into rising popular nationalism by fusing it with Islam.” - F. Stephen Larrabee
AND
“Over the past five years, the AKP has stood for a new style of governing, one that refrains from using the language of the bourgeois elites. It continued the path of reform taken by Turgut Özal, but more decisively and with more success. That was one major reason for it being so overwhelmingly returned to office.
But can you trust the people? This question is all the more crucial when it concerns a Muslim people who have elected a Muslim party. But how Muslim is the Turkish people? Aren't a quarter of all Turks Alevis – a free-thinking variant of Islam that has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with the Islam of the Sharia? Has not a vast majority of the Turking people made peace with the idea of secular society? Turks have a more pragmatic attitude towards religion than most of their brothers and sisters in the Islamic world.” - Zafer Senocak
I can already hear your rant about Rand. ;)
But honestly, which is it Orhan? Or are they both right and/or wrong?
And where is Turkey's 2016 Olympic bid? What do you make of their absence?
i just los a 2900+ word post i wrote last hour or so and not realizing 2500 worg limit. and pushing the back button ate it up the what i thought was a great post...
\ basically tied larrabee back to rand contracts where they fullfill their clients jobs with info/analysis/ and security data for the pentagon/wall street/and empire building field reports and can employ bunch of brilliant people turned boring rand researher who later retires somewhere with nice salary. flat information collected from elites and used by elites.
senocak touches on some issues that in reality exist but can be digested fairly well.
the issue is economics... i am lately switched my turkish reading mainly onto economy and that is where the answers are.
today erdogan read his program for next term and simply he centered on increasing the gdp to 10K, doubling it from existing 5K. this is the success of his crew/team.
akp knows how to close deals and they apply that to everything they take on. their rivals are dump founded but they won't admit.
ikmb (istanbul exchange) went from 18,000 to 50,000 in volume in couple of years and finally turkey have crises riding economy first time in its history. that is where the magic is located.
i am no longer interested in peripheral arguments involving headscarf, cocktail party attire, general's internet statements etc. etc.
the economy is the program.
erdogan figured it out. and his support base is not necesserily is the devout muslim crowds that word press love to mention everyother sentence. it is the free market privitization and globe reaching fresh and capable turkish businessmen and vast number increasing consumers who can now shop at ikea adjacent to FOA built shopping mall and the likes. driving there in their own cars.
i check this paper more often. dunya
sorry my first one was much more readable and contentful. always safe or write the post elsewhere instead of in this small bow if you are writing something more than a short spot.
Ouch.
Ok, sure. A paper tiger on the Aegean/Med will certainly get Brussels' attention, and maybe even sway a few voting plebes. 'Course it wouldn't hurt to add an Oly bid to the mix once the mint's wheels are greased. Maybe once Istanbul FC is flush with new cash they can haul Becks back from the states and add some ticky tacky Posh to the scene. ;)
;.)))
sure, more paper armadas brussels build for border patroling, more paper tigers will go for the pirots cut, a related example out of many.
posh would love the scene
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