With the words we choose to utilize we change the color of the actual reality; the words we use are never innocent. With them we sacrifice a part of the reality -- to this or that extent -- to the gods of our linguistic worlds: ourselves.If we are speaking about the intentions of a particular political party in adopting this or that political position we are speaking from the linguistic aspect of an actual policy. Thought is internal speech, in the end. Peoples think and speak collectively. The media is their mouthpiece. The language of a media outlet about a particular issue reveals the mental processes governing any intellectual production about that issue among the people represented by that media outlet.
The “shift of axis in Turkish foreign policy” talks have already become a part of the EU accession discussions. In my understanding both the “axis” and the “shift of axis” is a part of the linguistic -- and inescapably constructed and subjective -- worlds of the minds who believe that the West is “the” axis and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has been unfaithful to this axis of fate -- if not faith.
On Tuesday, the 18th EU-Turkey Conference of Journalists took place in İstanbul. I was one of the participants and tried to brief the others on my ideas about the linguistic side of Turkey’s EU accession process. There I didn’t have enough time, here I lack sufficient space. I have to list my points in short:
1. The whole European Union membership of Turkey issue is a linguistic issue for the majority of the Turkish people. A dominant majority of the Turkish people has never seen the European Union. In fact, the EU is a linguistic construct you cannot see. You can feel it, but you cannot see it. And a feeling becomes comprehensible and deliverable only when it is “poured” into the mould of words.
2. Turkish and European positions about Turkey’s EU membership can be tracked through a purely linguistic study. An example: In the 1990s a classic sentence of support for EU membership was “We want to enter Europe.” Later on this sentence changed into “I support Turkey’s EU membership.” The subject changed from a protectionist “we” to an individualistic “I.” The subject was no longer directly influenced by the act supported. The public realized that it was not us becoming a member -- a far more neutral term than entering -- but the state and that the EU was not identical to Europe. In times of a surge in nationalistic honor we heard sentences like: “Europe needs Turkey” and “Without us Europe will never be a global player.”
3. Accession is a biased term. It refers to what is “accessed to” as the primary and to what accesses as the trivial. It is probably because of this biased nature of the word that we don’t have a Turkish translation of that term. Turks prefer “to enter” probably because it prioritizes whoever enters and not whatever is entered into. This term is also biased and has all kinds of imperial connotations. The term negotiation is also wrong. There is no negotiation or bargaining going on in the process. Turkey has set itself a target of attaining certain standards. This is not a negotiation or bargaining.
The linguistic aspects of Turkey’s EU membership are, in fact, a part of the actual membership itself. The EU is not only an economic union, it is a linguistic union also. Whatever language you may be using, there is a European way of speaking about Europe.
