BY MEHMET OCAKTAN
YENI SAFAK- An organized campaign is being carried out against the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It all began last month when Robert Pollock’s editorial was published in The Wall Street Journal. The motive behind Pollock’s accusations of the Turkish government was obvious. The US is demanding Turkey’s ‘unconditional obedience’ concerning its present and future invasions. On some occasions, the Pentagon sends its messages aimed at ‘disciplining’ Turkey through journalists such as Pollock.
Unless we show ‘unconditional obedience,’ we’ll certainly have more ‘trouble’ in the near future. Surviving in this region of ours is a costly matter.
It’s easy to understand the chill wind between Turkey and the US. As long as our government refuses to participate in the killings in Iraq, it can’t be on good terms with Washington. But why has the European Union turned against our government all of a sudden?
We fulfilled all the conditions laid out in the Copenhagen criteria before last December. We are still making the legal arrangements necessary for our EU membership. However, a ‘wind of despair’ on Turkey’s EU membership has begun to whistle lately. It’s like the government hasn’t lifted a finger to facilitate Turkey’s membership.
The government is being expected to wave a magic wand to resolve long-lasting issues such as Cyprus and the Armenian ‘genocide’ claims. These issues are being deliberately used to wear down the AKP government.
Erdogan is also being criticized for having lost much of his reformist zeal and having slowed down his pro-change policy. But could this slowdown be the result of Erdogan’s unwillingness to act hurriedly on such delicate matters as Cyprus? Yet this government won’t back down from its EU membership efforts, because the AKP knows that even a small detour on our road to the EU would leave Turkey defenseless against ‘disturbances’ from across the Atlantic.