Those who see Turks as prone to a Gandhi-style inner revolution rather than violence or the assimilation of non-Turkish, non-Muslim peoples in the country as a way of maintaining peace and order must be blind. That is why it does not make any sense why Turkey is accused of annihilationist or assimilationist policies in the 20th century and at the present. With universal values and political and legal standards that respect the rights of every individual citizen and cultural group, Turks expect that the EU should decide to join Turkey as an exemplary country that can change their decadent ways and undemocratic practices. Turkey has summarized what it expects from the EU should the latter join her and end its unnecessary existence:1. In order for the EU to join Turkey, the citizens of all EU members should consider themselves proud Turks and forget who they were in the past.
2. Turkish should become the only official language of all the EU member states; other European languages may be spoken at home and be used in musical lyrics.
3. The EU should exalt the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and see it as the guarantor of the regime. Democracy should never be preferred to republicanism.
4. While Turkey practices capitalism, it values statism as the source of power of the bureaucracy and the provider of the poor, who should look into the hands of the state to feed and protect them.
5. The EU would immediately abandon separation of powers and adopt union of powers in order to end the infighting between the basic institutions of the government. The executive should have the upper hand, and all others should be supportive of the former provided that Kemalists control the executive.
6. All EU member states should adopt Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which stifles freedom of speech (called freedom of thought in Turkey) that is subversive in character to any form of government.
7. NATO command should be handed over to Turkey in the European theater. All other armies would be rendered a branch of the TSK, which has been the most dependable institution in Turkey since the inception of the republic.
8. The press should be kept under scrutiny; otherwise, media bosses will control the political realm as bankers, business tycoons and political brokers, as they have so far done in Turkey.
9. Detention for months before due interrogation, torture and assassination in the name national security should not be opposed as it is an effective method of deterring dissidents.
10. The EU member states may have had different forms of secularism, but they must adopt the Turkish version whereby the state imposes one creed in the shrine, the school and the public administration by running all religious institutions. This is a better way of safeguarding secularism provided that the government does not change hands. Hence, it must be made sure that the government does not change.
It is reported that, being a paradise as it is, Turkey is the EU’s first priority to join in order to avoid its fiscal and moral decadence; however, there are several slight reservations.
A. Will the ex-EU citizens pray five times a day as the Turks do and fast for a whole month?
B. Will there be mass circumcision operations, organized as public festivities?
If it weren’t these final worries, it could be said that the EU countries are ready to join Turkey.
On the other hand, there is a reciprocal debate in Turkey over whether to take this large mass with different cultures who eat pork and drink wine and with women who claim equality with men in. No one knows how the debate on the Turkish side will end, but the Europeans seem to be more eager than the Turks.
