BY SEMIH IDIZ
HURRIYET DAILY NEWS- We always talk about Turkey in terms of human rights, but it is time we also talked about what is happening in Europe in this respect. What Nicolas Sarkozy's France is doing to the Roma, or the Gypsies as they are popularly known, carries overtones of a sinister period of European history that is still part of the continent's living memory.
It also portends ill for other groups in Europe - mostly Muslim - who are already seen increasingly as "undesirable," and who will no doubt be affected by this sinister development in time given that no one knows where this ball will stop once it starts rolling.
The persecution of the Roma in Europe is of course nothing new. While the Holocaust has been turned into an exclusively Jewish affair, the fact is that the Roma were also chosen by Adolf Hitler for annihilation just because of their race. Most local authorities in Nazi-occupied Europe went along with this, just as they did with the deportation of the Jews.
Like the Nazis, French authorities are today using arguments which are aimed at making people believe that the Roma are subhuman, have no respect for European culture and values, and are criminally inclined, to boot. Sarkozy's minister for family affairs, Nadine Morano, is a clear case in point.
Morano went so far as to accuse some Roma mothers of drugging their infants to keep them sleepy while families sit begging by the roadside, telling Europe 1 Radio "We should not accept this kind of behavior."
France is not unique in this respect since it was Italy that first started expelling Roma back to Romania, the European Union member from where many of these people originate. In countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, on the other hand - and we can include Romania itself in this list - the Roma have traditionally been persecuted.
There is naturally an outcry from human rights groups and politicians across Europe over this nasty development. Even the Vatican - perhaps still burdened by its indifference during World War II toward the plight of the Jews - has spoken out.
"One cannot generalize and take an entire group of people and kick them out," Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the papacy's Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, said Friday.
In France itself, Socialist politician Arnaud Montebourg did not mince his words when he said Morano's comments about Roma drugging their children was an attempt by the state to smear a minority in much the same way as French Jews had been stigmatized in the 1930s before World War II.
"We're coming to a kind of official racism that says: 'These people are the cause of all our woes, please have a go at them and forget our own failure in the fight against crime,'" he said.
So today it is the Roma "who are the cause of all the woes," but it is clear that tomorrow it will be migrants from North Africa, and so on. It is also clear that this mentality, while it may be castigated by human rights groups and politicians, is spreading across the continent where each country has its own "undesirables" to be used as scapegoats for populist reasons.
Opinion polls conducted on the subject indicate that there is much tacit support for this form of racism even if people do not openly reflect it, since being dubbed "racist" or "fascist" goes against the grain in terms of bourgeois sensibilities. Some Europeans are nevertheless coming out and laying it on the line with their abhorrent views.
One such person is Bundesbank Board member Thilo Sarazzin - a supposed social democrat - who claims in a recent book, whose title roughly translates into "Germany Eliminates Itself," that "immigrants are a burden on German society." Sarazzin adds that those that come from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa are making Germany "dumber."
He also maintains that inviting guest workers to Germany in the 1960s and afterwards was a grave mistake, although he conveniently overlooks the fact that these workers contributed to the enrichment of the country after it was leveled by the allies in World War II and had a serious labor shortage.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is naturally annoyed over Sarazzin's remarks, which she has castigated through her spokesman. But she must know that these remarks, in the final analysis, represent the logical conclusion of the line she and Sarkozy have taken on Turkey's full membership in the EU.
When you talk to about this matter, as I have done during many visits to Europe over these past few months, many people are quick to suggest that "we as outsiders don't understand the menace involved." When I hear such remarks I imagine myself in the Germany of the 1930s, and that my interlocutors are speaking about Jews (and the Roma of course.)
Most Germans then would also be telling me that "I don't understand the menace." But the menace today for Europe is not the Roma, the Muslims from North Africa, Turkish immigrants or those coming from the subcontinent. The menace is the mindset that is currently represented by Sarkozy, and which has a lot of tacit popular support across Europe, even if this mindset left the continent in ruins a mere 65 years ago.
In the meantime the sad fact for Europeans is that the world has changed and Europe has started losing its place in the world both economically and politically. Therefore things cannot be as they were in the 1930s even if some are trying to drag it there.
There are new centers of financial and political power emerging and these will be the new centers of attraction in the future, even for many Europeans. In the meantime Europe continues to age and will have a serious deficit in terms of its professional workforce over the next decades, as official European statistics indicate.
Rather than take it out on the Roma, and others groups deemed subjectively as "undesirable," Europeans should listen to what respected Europeans are saying about their future in the light of some stark facts, rather than secretly admire the ranting of someone like Sarazzin.
Walter Laqueur is one such historian and his latest book carries the telling title of "The Last Days of Europe," No doubt the title is exaggerated for effect, but it should still be essential reading for those concerned with the future of the Old Continent, since it provides a lot of food for thought for those wondering where their continent is headed.