Ms. Özdemir is the “benjamine”-- the youngest member of the local assembly -- and many of her compatriots have easily decided that her bright smile and simple eloquence, plus a commitment to fighting for the rights of her fellow residents in the ethnically mixed neighborhood of Schaerbeek, matter so much more than the headscarf she wears out of religious conviction. Her election from the Centre démocrate humaniste (the former Christian Democrats) is representative of the changing face of European politics and one more step in the battle against prejudice and for the acceptance of cultural diversity. Ms. Özdemir is not the first ethnic Turk in the Brussels Regional Parliament. She joins the talented Emir Kır, 31, a minister from the Socialist Party (PS) who is the son of a coalminer who immigrated to Belgium in the 1960s. Not everyone, of course, is greeting her selection with enthusiasm, and it seems probable she will remain a mildly controversial figure both in Belgian politics, but also in Turkey where politicians of both sexes are expected to show their pates.
At the very least, her life lies ahead of her.
It might seem over-ingenious to compare the treatment afforded Ms. Özdemir to the fate of Neda Agha Soltan, even though the two women were both 26 years old. Ms. Soltan, as the world now knows, was gunned down on the fringes of the demonstrations against what the political opposition in Iran says were shamelessly rigged presidential elections. She was, by all accounts, more interested in becoming a tour guide than a politician, and her excursions took her earlier this year to Turkey, where she met her fiancé. A smiling photograph of Ms. Soltan (without the headscarf she was obliged by law to wear in public) has become a potent symbol of the moral failure of the society in which she was raised. Her death has touched everyone, according to Martin Fletcher, writing in The Times, “everyone except the rulers of her own country, who did their level best to suppress it.” Her family was even made to remove the black ribbons of mourning from the outside of their house.
It is somewhat shameful that those newspapers in Turkey so eager to praise Ms. Özdemir's success have been equally conscientious in trying to avoid any graveside eulogies for Ms. Solton. It was embarrassing to read a report in our sister paper Zaman dismissing her death as a sort of cheap martyrdom because it claimed she was shot not as a demonstrator, but merely as an innocent bystander. “The legend quickly crumbles,” the Turkish headline ran.
I have already complained in this column that Turkey skates on thin ice when it expects other countries to register concern for its own struggle to preserve democracy and yet shows little interest in empathizing with the struggle for democracy in its region. There was a fairly striking example of this in a recent interview that the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, gave to Der Spiegel magazine. Barack Obama, like many European nations, has admitted the counterproductive folly of trying to interfere in a country where his nation's past conduct is deeply resented. His policy has been to talk to Tehran about its nuclear enrichment program, not threaten. Professor Davutoğlu is clearly determined not to isolate Tehran -- and this is sensible, but he appears to have adopted a limbo dancer's posture of bending backwards. Mr. Obama is resisting a political constituency that wants him to take a harder line. Professor Davutoğlu and his government appear to be riding a tide that equates the “green protest” in Iran to the anti-Justice and Development Party (AK Party) “Republican Rallies” in Turkish cities. There emerged “very different interpretations of results after the election,” the foreign minister told his interviewers. “I think that we should take this as a sign that the political process in Iran is very healthy,” he said.
I am not entirely sure that Ms. Solton's family shares this same high opinion. It is one thing not to interfere. It is another to pretend to like what you see.
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