{"id":28036,"date":"2016-04-15T22:44:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T22:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=28036"},"modified":"2016-04-15T22:44:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T22:44:53","slug":"time-for-a-reality-check-on-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/time-for-a-reality-check-on-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a reality check on Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

For too long, Turkey\u2019s foreign policy has been conducted on the basis of delusions of grandeur.<\/p>\n

First, embraced by the west and the Arab world alike as a beacon of Islamic democracy in the Middle East, later as an indispensable ally and gate-keeper for keeping refugees away from Europe, Turkey has had an easy ride.<\/p>\n

Pragmatic leaders of Europe and the USA, in pursuit of short term political and security goals, have chosen to turn a blind eye to warning signs of Turkey\u2019s authoritarian drift.<\/p>\n

The more they indulged, the more unpalatable and costly their co-operation with Mr. Erdogan and his AKP government has become.<\/p>\n

But gone are the days when public opinion was easily swayed with justifications of trade and security interests taking priority over core values.<\/p>\n

Governments may not acknowledge the depth of the moral swamp they found themselves in. Their voters are increasingly becoming questioning and sceptical of those policies.<\/p>\n

In Germany, Angela Merkel is facing strong opposition for allowing an investigation into satirist Jan B\u00f6hmermann for writing an insulting poem about Mr Erdogan. The private defamation case launched by the Turkish president has stirred strong resistance among parliamentarians and the media.<\/p>\n

The controversy gains an additional poignancy thanks to stern warnings given separately to Turkey by The European Parliament<\/a> and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Mui\u017enieks<\/a>\u00a0 over deterioration of rights and democracy.<\/p>\n

In its resolution<\/a>, approved on Thursday in Strasbourg, The European Parliament expressed deep concern for serious backsliding on respect for democracy, the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and respect for human rights.<\/p>\n

Members of the European Parliament also criticised the European Commission for delaying its Progress Report for political reasons until after the general election in Turkey last year. \u201cThe EU should not be trading away values for an uncertain outcome,\u201d MEP Marietje Schaake \u00a0said, adding: \u201cHow did we end up in a situation in which Turkey is exporting authoritarian tendencies to the EU instead of the EU enabling freedom of speech in Turkey?\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the end of a nine- day visit to Istanbul, Diyarbakir and Ankara, and prior to his full report, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Mui\u017enieks, also criticised Turkey\u2019s deteriorating respect for human rights. Referring to 1845 criminal proceedings concerning the offence of insulting the President, Mui\u017enieks said he had not encountered \u201csuch abusive application of a similar provision in any of the other 46 member states of the Council of Europe, including those where insulting the president is still considered a separate criminal offence\u201d.<\/p>\n

For the second year running, Turkey rejected the EU progress report, with the European Union Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir declaring it \u201cnull and void\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Great Britain, too, the government is coming under fire for deprioritising human rights. A Foreign Affairs Select Committee report<\/a>\u00a0suggested that behind closed doors criticism of the repressive regimes of the Middle East gave a perception of putting trade and industry much higher than human rights concerns.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, at a special meeting in the House of Commons, organized by the Chairman of the South Asia and Middle East Forum, Khalid Nadeem, titled \u201cTurkish Foreign Policy Aims in the Middle East\u201d, The Liberal Democrat Party\u2019s Foreign Affairs spokesman Tom Brake repeated this criticism; this time specifically in relation to Turkey. Tom Brake said that human rights problems were accelerating in Turkey and it should not be ignored by the UK government which seemed to be increasingly prioritizing trade over human rights. He also expressed his party\u2019s great concerns about the EU refugee deal with Turkey.<\/p>\n

The Conservative government rejects these suggestions and claim that human rights issues are raised with governments at every available occasion.<\/p>\n

As for the main opposition Labour Party, the priority right now seems to be getting a favourable result at the June 23rd<\/sup> referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union.<\/p>\n

Labour Shadow Foreign Minister Diana Johnson MP told the South Asia & Middle East Forum that Turkey\u2019s membership for the EU was an important issue at the referendum. She was well aware of the British public\u2019s unease about the possibility of Turkey joining the union and for this reason, her party was reluctant to talk too much about the issue until after the referendum. \u201cOur priority is for the UK to remain in the EU\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even though the non-Schengen member UK is not party to EU\u2019s refugee deal with Turkey, British politicians can no longer avoid the unpalatable truth about Turkey which is fast becoming one of the determining factors in the UK-EU membership debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For too long, Turkey\u2019s foreign policy has been conducted on the basis of delusions of grandeur. First, embraced by the west and the Arab world alike as a beacon of Islamic democracy in the Middle East, later as an indispensable ally and gate-keeper for keeping refugees away from Europe, Turkey has had an easy ride. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28038,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions\/28038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}