Religious and conservative circles were the ones who most strongly harbored this fear of the degeneration of identity and of cultural imperialism; however, today the majority of conservative circles are in favor of EU membership. Otherwise, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) would not have been able to persuade public opinion to accept the EU accession process so easily and to take such radical steps for political reforms today, because a great majority of the AK Party’s voter base consists of culturally conservative and religious people. This is one of the basic reasons why the other parties aligned toward the center right also stand so close to EU membership. The Turkish people, with a Muslim population in majority, do not regard the EU as a “Christian club”; they even think the EU project is important in terms of freedom of religion and faith. The fear of division that the Western states have difficulty understanding stems not only from the Turks’ nationalist sentiments. The Turks in general are not afraid of close relations with the West. They have less concern that they will leave or lose their Islamic identity as they approach the West. As a matter of fact, there are approximately 5 million Turks already living in Europe, mainly in Germany and France. Those living in Turkey know that these Turks have preserved their national and religious identity and observe their faith by building mosques. They also see that they can integrate with the West in a certain period of time and that their children are not necessarily detached from their cultural identity just because they studied in a Western country. Those Turks who manage to participate in commercial, artistic and political life believe they can be successful in the West.
Then why is support for the EU process decreasing in Turkey? There is certainly no single reason for this, but the primary cause is concerns over a possible division of Turkey. Unfortunately, the EU members are one of the most important actors in the creation of this feeling. Several comments and the behavior of the Europeans are regarded by Turks as discreditable and unacceptable. The sense that the Europeans always protect the same circles in terms of fundamental rights and freedoms reinforces this suspicion. For instance, they will support Kurdish claims to the end but keep silent when Muslim girls are not admitted to universities with their headscarves. They will support Alevi organizations but ignore the restrictions for graduates of imam-hatip high schools in admission to universities. These kinds of acts put a question mark on the European states’ behavior.
The fear of division has a historical background. The Ottoman Empire was composed of various ethnic groups and adherents of different religions. They had a society that was pluralist to an extraordinary level given the circumstances of the time, for over 400 years. As the fever of nationalism that rose following the French Revolution reached Ottoman territories, the empire had already entered a process of weakening. Justice, law and rights had become rare things, as in all states in the process of growing weaker. As the Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian, Arab and other ethnic elements were influenced by the storm of nationalism, the world had already started to head towards the nation-state model.
The Ottoman state faced internal riots that erupted all across their territories, witnessed its former citizens’ involvement in a struggle of independence in cooperation with its eternal enemies and had to fight on several fronts simultaneously. The Turks went through great tragedies during the years of collapse. Families broke up, people could not get back to Asia Minor, and they died or became captives... More than 20 states emerged from a vast empire following the collapse. Later, some of them became British colonies; others were colonized by France or Italy. The disasters had come with such devastating force that the Ottoman army was left with almost no soldiers to fight with at the beginning of the 20th century, and the students who had been kept away from war during the 600-year Ottoman period were also sent to fight. The territory that had once stretched 19.9 million square kilometers in the Ottoman era had fallen to 814,578 square kilometers when the republic was established in 1923. It was not only a matter of loss of territory; there were also millions of deaths, thousands of fragmented families, poverty, hunger, etc. This is the root and reason for the fear of division that the Turks still have today. The Turkish people want to integrate with the West on one hand and yet have concerns that the West may write another possible scenario of division on the other. The democratization process most certainly shouldn’t be stopped because of this fear, but Westerners in contact with Turkey must understand this fear correctly and avoid provocations that could increase it because a Turkey that is detached from the West would be a great disappointment, not only for itself but also for the West.
