BY MEHMET BARLAS
SABAH- Why has Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed since December 17? Although he was the one who managed to get a date for our country’s European Union membership talks, his remarks and attitudes on the EU have done a complete turnaround since that pivotal date. Why?
I wonder if he started to believe that the EU would never accept Turkey after seeing Brussels’ vexing pressure on Ankara about the Cyprus issue. Or whether he’s beginning to see his party’s future lying in a ‘nationalist’ discourse. Maybe he’s quite upset about our media’s recent comments? Maybe that’s why he has yet to appoint a chief negotiator? Or maybe that’s why he’s not tackling the rise of nationalism but choosing to neglect it in silence? Is this a metamorphosis in a Kafkaesque sense?
The change he’s undergone is obvious. ‘The Intellectuals Warning Declaration’ bearing 200 signatures underlines this situation very clearly and warns the government about recent trends.
‘Recent developments concern us greatly because they could constitute significant obstacles to our country’s democratization efforts,’ the declaration said. ‘The new penal code has oppressive articles to restrict the freedoms of the press and expression. The reaction against the Newruz incidents has taken a turn into racial and ultra-nationalist attitudes. The rise of such extremist movements could result in tension and violence. We’re concerned that our country will be plunged into a new spiral of violence and conflict. A district governor overstepped his authority and launched a campaign against a novelist [Orhan Pamuk] to confiscate his books, echoing the Nazi reigme’s suppression of freedom of expression. The issues of a so-called genocide and minority rights which are being debated in the international arena could also raise this tension in Turkey.
‘We believe that under these circumstances peaceful policies are necessary and they should be regarded not as concessions, but rather indispensable for rationality and common sense. We cannot allow a separatist, oppressive mentality to dominate our country, which is why we’re calling on all state officials to act with common sense and do their utmost not to dim our hopes for democracy and human rights’.