Europe had the chance to end the chasm between Islam and the West. It chose to be bigoted
Monday, 4 August 2008
Just back from Dalyan in Turkey, a place of such natural beauty and human kindness you almost cry with relief and released joy. A lush river full of fat turtles and thin, dancing water snakes runs through the smallish town (only a hamlet when we last stopped over 15 years ago), making its way to the Aegean/Mediterranean seas, warm and playful. Although tourism is changing the nature of Dalyan, nobody hassles you and you don’t begrudge the inhabitants the economic surge delivered by delighted visitors.
Our compatriots behaved with such courtesy, it made us proud to be British. Most were non-Metropolitan, involved in building, making and selling awnings and blinds, engineering, farming and so on. A few were in public service. Several came back every year because, they said, the people were even warmer than the summer sun. No moody novelists or sulky media types were spotted. At a local fish restaurant (sea bass and bream for £4 with real chips and the sharpest rocket leaves in the world) sat a tipsy, buxom northern English blonde in a red polka-dotted dress. Oh, she loved this place, she said, most of all the Turkish Tommy Cooper in the café, who told bad jokes in his fez.
This goodwill only helped to emphasize the criminal failures of the EU political classes, who have betrayed their own post-war ideals. Western Europe promised to confront its heart of darkness after the war and Holocaust. Zero tolerance against anti-Semitism was the ransom that had to be paid and was, rightly and properly. But other racisms have been allowed to grow and ancient enmities reawakened. Fresh hate victims have been found to fill the continent’s gaping pits.
Black migrants are treated like vermin, including in those EU countries known for easy charm; Muslims have had to accept institutionalised prejudice and Turkey has been treated as an abject and alien supplicant who must be kept that way. An essentialist, Christian definition of Europe has been settled upon, arguably one of the most self destructive of EU ideologies.
Sarkozy says: “Europe must give itself borders … beginning with Turkey which has no place in the EU.” Merkel and others in the enlarged club are even more phobic and Britain’s honourable opposition to such a view has no effect. Patiently waiting to be admitted since 1987, the Turks are no longer asking. Never have I met so many young graduates and older secularists so violently opposed to joining the Union.
They believe a new power bloc of India and some of the more enlightened Muslim states offers them better prospects. In 2002, 70 per cent wanted to go in; in 2006 the figure had gone down to 35 per cent. Today I would guess enthusiasm has dropped to single figures. The Turkish journalist Farina Ahaeuser astutely observes that by keeping Turkey on the edge ( and on edge) relations with Europe “have certainly hit rock bottom”.
This is appalling news for both sides. The EU has admirably democratized nations previously under authoritarianism. Turkey’s ruling Islamicist AKP party has shown better governance because it wanted to impress Europe. The death penalty was abolished, human and minority rights were finally getting somewhere and the PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, agreed to abolish the abominable Article 301 that makes it unlawful to “insult the Turkish nation”. He has reneged on this commitment.
The latest, failed attempt by the Turkish Constitutional court to undemocratically close down the AKP is another sign that the country is abandoning EU principles of politics and justice. Islamicisation is creeping in. Almost all the wives of government ministers are hijabed and “pious” homemakers. It frightens modern Turkish women who have had equal rights for longer than we have in the UK. I used to love meeting these sisters who were as deeply religious as I am but also strong secularists. These days they are depressed and angry.
Europe had the chance to end the ideological chasm between hardline Islam and the west by embracing its Christian and Muslim heritages, to heal the world. It has chosen instead to be injudicious, obtuse and bigoted. Even George Bush understands how dumb this is.
At a bar in Dalyan, the owner, a handsome man with green eyes said some mosque elders would soon close up and come over for a glass of rose wine: “Our God is inside. We are not crazy like those Saudis. We are both west and east. But these people in Brussels don’t understand us and I am afraid they will push us away too far and then who knows what will happen? Only Allah knows.“
y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk
Source: The Independent 4 August 2008