BY SEMIH IDIZ
MILLIYET- As you can see from my interview with European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, Rehn is trying to take an extremely balanced position on the issue of secularism in Turkey. But while doing this, his statements show that he actually favors the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). His visit this week shows that a symbiosis is developing between the European Union and the AKP. Signs that this relationship was strengthened by the closure case against the AKP are also rising. We can even say that the AKP is under the EU's protection, because it thinks the AKP is Turkey's only guarantee of democracy. The EU has also defined its enemies in Turkey. In Rehn's words, these people are extreme secularists and autocratic nationalists. He evidently means the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and its supporters. Similarly, recent verbal sparring between the CHP and EU Joint Parliamentary Commission Co-Chairman Joost Lagendijk and the CHP's salvos against EU Commission Head Jose Manuel Barroso show this enmity.
The EU also clearly considers the Constitutional Court, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Kemalist bureaucracy to be against it. In addition, due to recent killings of priests, the violence in Malatya, last year's Hrant Dink assassination and the Ergenekon probe associated with the Nationalist Movement Party's (MHP) Idealist Hearths, the EU considers the party a potential criminal. Likewise, Rehn's response to the way Cumhuriyet daily columnist Ilhan Selcuk was taken into custody showed this to some extent. Although Rehn said that he understood the humanitarian concerns over Selcuk's detention, he then immediately emphasized the importance of the Ergenekon probe. He said that this would show the work done by the legislative branch and security forces. In short, he didn't say that Selcuk's human rights were violated.
It was also strange for a person who tried to paint himself as knowledgeable about Ergenekon to say that the EU has no intelligence agency and so can't know about every development in Turkey. In sum, his answer about Selcuk also reflected his bias. In addition, I found his suggestion of setting up an ombudsman system to deal with problematic issues like the headscarf to be naïve. He said that this would be the best way to solve certain 'small problems' about secularism, which showed that he hasn't grasped how deep this conflict is. This enmity between the EU and extreme secularists and autocratic nationalists show that if the AKP is closed down, Turkish-EU relations will suffer serious turbulence. Of course, meanwhile, all sorts of bad things happen to Turkey's liberal and secular democrats, who consider themselves neither extreme secularists, nor autocratic nationalist. Rehn, who says that EU reforms aim to ensure that liberal democracy and democratic secularism in Turkey flourish, fails to see this.