By Yusuf Kanli
TDN- Speaking with a group of German colleagues the other night, I realized that there is indeed a huge discrepancy between the way we Turks and the Europeans perceive developments.
One wants to believe that Europe, a continent which has fought many wars and experienced such huge catastrophes -- most recently in the Balkans, following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia -- must have been alert against xenophobia, discrimination and any sort of racism, be it ethnic, cultural or religious based.
After all, didn't the founding fathers of the European Union establish the organization to bring an end to war on the old continent?
Naturally everyone wants to avoid remembering the bitter days and atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust despite the fact that a future cannot be established without reference to the past.
Turkey was not -- at least not until the final days of the war and purely for reasons of formality -- one of the participants of the World War II. Not only did it manage to stay out of the war, it opened its borders to many people fleeing the barbarism and extermination mercilessly being committed in their homeland. Many of the institutions of modern Turkey were established with the help of the people who were given refuge in this country. We owe them a lot.
Haven't we made mistakes? Indeed, there were many mistakes made by the Turks, mostly due to a slow response or a failure to be attentive enough to suffering. But at the same time there are stories of courageous Turkish diplomats in European capitals who risked their own safety to help innocent people escape the extermination they faced simply because they belonged to a race or culture unwanted by “elected” rulers who had become ruthless dictators.
One might say, “But why are you so bothered by all this? It wasn't you -- it was the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals who were targeted.” It’s not that simple. Besides the moral responsibility of all mankind to remember those who perished during those dark years, everything that happened at that time is part of our collective history, which we have to remember in order to have a better future devoid of such tragedies.
One could say, “Well, but those tragedies were experienced more than half a century ago.” Right, but the Bosnia and Kosovo tragedies occurred yesterday, and it was the same kind of death machine at work: ethnic cleansing.
Individual attacks on Turks, Arabs, Moroccans and other “aliens” in European cities, skinheads, swastika armbands and rallies reeking of racial and cultural hatred may not alarm people who prefer to forget their recent history, but it must be remembered that Europe's last tragedy started through provocation as well.
German Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel may proudly declare that Europe must progress on a Christian-influenced culture because efforts to create a multicultural society are doomed to failure. She and other conservatives in Europe such as the Ratzingers and d’Estaings may continue preaching some sort of a new racism fed by cultural and religious rejection. But the wise people of Europe must wake up to the growing challenge. Tomorrow the target might not be just the unborn baby of a Turkish guest worker killed in a Munich street.
Can you imagine the barbarism reflected in the Munich police report? One of the youths hit her (the pregnant Turkish woman) in the back with a dog chain and held her arm while another hit her in the belly with a baseball bat and knocked her to the ground.
And our European friends say that when they look towards Turkey from Bonn, Berlin, Paris or Copenhagen they see honor killings, discrimination against women, poverty and the like.
Fine. We are aware of our problems and are trying to overcome them as effectively as possible. We are very much aware of the problems of civil society as well as of the government and have been trying our best to build a national awareness on these issues. What are you doing?
We want to believe the European Union is a collection of norms that we have been aspiring to acquire, not that it's a Christian club closed to Muslims...