Turkey in the European Union: A Bridge Too Far

Public debate about admitting Turkey as a full member of the European Union has been vague and late, the details of the matter as well as major decisions being taken by the European Commission and the heads of state. This book sets out to set the record straight, and despite occasional flaws does so with a vengeance.

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Chapter 9 concerns itself with the Armenian genocide and others, as well as the ethnic cleansings that took place before and after the founding of the modern Turkish state, as documented by Taner Akcam and others. This problem is particular unsettling, for it concerns the very identity of the Turkish state and Turkishness. Debating this is punishable in Turkey under article 301, and, as in the case of the late Hrant Dink, can have serious consequences.

The Turkish attitude to the Armenian genocide can, in principle, be compared to a hypothetical situation where Germany would officially justify the Holocaust by denigrating Jews, ban dissenting opinion, and praise the architects of the Holocaust as national heroes. Respect for and protection of minorities is an explicit item in the Copenhagen Criteria. The Armenians are not getting either.

Chapter 9 also includes this memorable quote, adopted by the European Parliament in 1987:

The European Parliament believes that the refusal by the present Turkish Government to acknowledge the genocide against the Armenian people committed by the Young Turk government, its reluctance to apply the principles of international law in differences of opinion with Greece, the maintenance of Turkish occupation forces in Cyprus and the denial of the existence of the Kurdish question, together with the lack of true parliamentary democracy and the failure to respect individual and collective freedoms, in particular freedom of religion, in that country are insurmountable obstacles to consideration of the possibility of Turkey's accession to the Community.

Not a single of these problems issues had been solved when Turkey was granted candidate status. Even now, at the end of 2008, no solid solution seems in sight for any of these problems.

"Turkish intellectuals issue apology to Armenians"

"My conscience does not accept that (we) remain insensitive toward and deny the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected in 1915," read the apology. "I reject this injustice, share in the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers, and apologize to them." The apology is a sign that many in Turkey are ready to break a long-held taboo against acknowledging Turkish culpability for the deaths. Historians estimate that, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in what is widely regarded as the first genocide of the 20th century. Armenians have long pushed for the deaths to be recognized as genocide. While Turkey does not deny that many died in that era, the country has rejected the term genocide, saying the death toll is inflated and the deaths resulted from civil unrest during the Ottoman Empire's collapse. Nearly 2,500 members of the public also signed the online apology, giving their support to the intellectuals. Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted after he commented on the mass killings in 2005. Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist was shot outside his Istanbul office in 2007, following his prosecution for comments he made about the killings of Armenians.