BY SEMIH IDIZ
AKSAM- The other day I met with an ambassador from an EU member country. He was wondering what had happened to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, someone who Time magazine recently praised as a leader who will shape the 21st century, because a sharp contradiction has emerged in Erdogan’s reputation as a reformist. One day Erdogan was stressing the need for changes, then the next he began digging up all sorts of old prejudices about Turkey. The ambassador told me that Erdogan and he had done some brainstorming and that the conclusion that they had reached wasn’t very bright for a Turkey following in Ataturk’s footsteps. Stating that his whole embassy was trying hard to get Ankara a date for EU membership negotiations, the ambassador said, ‘We looked at legal reforms carried out by the Justice and Development Party [AKP]. We wondered who would be pleased with the implementation of these reforms. Then we saw that reforms were for extremely secular people who support Kemalism. So, have these reforms been carried out for the sake of the EU?’ Erdogan has been praising the EU as a ‘project of civilization,’ but now he says that it’s not a sine qua non. In other words, he put the issue of criminalizing adultery among the sine qua nons. If Erdogan can run the risk of derailing a 40-year project of improvement and meeting of civilizations, not only the ambassador, but also everybody who wants Turkey to move to modern standards thinks along these lines.
He will be in Brussels and Strasbourg this week to answer questions at the European Parliament. This time he will no longer be considered ‘someone who can accomplish things which not even supporters of Ataturk can do’ or ‘one of the most influential persons of the 21st century.’ Instead, he will be seen as a Muslim fundamentalist with a hidden agenda. The most difficult questions will be posed by European Christians opposing Turkey’s EU membership, who feel emboldened by this trump card at a critical moment. We don’t know what sort of a ‘political adultery’ this is. However, it’s clear that the atmosphere is pregnant with negative consequences for Turkey.