Dictatorship in Turkey & the problems with the mined borders
The accession of Turkey to the European Union
2. Picture: https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/20739-Kurdish-Friendship-Group-to-be-established-in-European-Parliament
The working group on Europe, Foreign and Security Policy of the CDU Bonn invites you to a panel discussion:
Turkey joins the EU
On the consequences for Turkey and the EU Member States
With
Helmut Wiesmann, Representative for the middle East of the Secretariat of the German Bishops’ Conference
Dr Akram Naasan, Chairman Internationale emergency aid e.V
Ruth Hieronymi (CDU) MEPs from Bonn
Peter Rondorf, Head of Department Extension Foreign Office Berlin
Moderation: Jochen Rohlinger, Bonner Rundschau
23rd November 2004, 7.30 pm
Uni Club Bonn, (Konvikstr. 9, 53113 Bonn)
Thank you for your participation
Axel Voss
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Revised on Tuesday 2nd February 2016
Turkey and EU accession draftsman: Akram Naasan medical director of emergency services
akram@naasan-bicerek.de www.naasan-bicerek.de
Author: Dr. Akram Naasan
Translated into English by Hülya Finnigan on 9th February 2021
Table of contents
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………….…3
1. The uneven weight of the development of the EU and Turkey……...........4
2.1 Turkish nationalism………………………………………………………...5
2.2 Unsafe borders………………………………………………………..…..9
2.2.1. The borders between Turkey and Iraq………………………………....9
2.2.2. The borders between Turkey and Syria…………….……………......11
2.3 Great desires against their neighbours…………………………………..13
3. The political underestimation of Turkey………….……………………....…15
3.1. The consequences…………………………………..…………………….17
4. Suggestions and goals………………………………………………….…..18
1. Introduction
Even after the EU summit conference in Brussels, public interest in the negotiations for the accession of Turkey to the EU is intense, emotional, and controversial. The debate is being carried on with the same emotionality not only in Europe but also in the Islamic world. This public discussion is to be welcomed and should be made more objective. One must not and should not be afraid to mention fundamental problems by name. Since this did not take place when Turkey was admitted to NATO, it is an expression of Turkey’s lost geopolitical position. The perception of the public discussion shows that we are overlooking fundamental political complexes:
2. The imbalance in the development of the EU and Turkey
3. The political underestimation of Turkey
2. The development imbalance between the EU and Turkey
The discussion of the accession of Poland – EU and the Baltic States countries to the EU did not trigger reactions like this at the time. It cannot be because of the population alone because Poland has roughly the same population as Turkey. If we look in detail at the development of Western Europe over the past eighty years, we will find that France has now reached the fifth republic. Spain was able to overcome the wounds of civil war and the Franco dictatorship and even Italy defeated fascism. In the last fifteen years, Germany has experienced massive developments, from reunification and division to the fact that three currencies have now found their way into East Germany.
Even in Eastern Europe, the Iron Curtain, which for some was more difficult to overcome than the Alps, could be overthrown with a peaceful systemic transformation. We must recognize with great admiration and respect the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These came about through a referendum alone.
All these peaceful system transformations arose of their own accord and did not require the leverage of “joining the EU”. Europe was able to focus on preserving its values and concentrate on more peace, more democracy, more human rights, future-oriented projects, and education. This is a clear rejection of any kind of racism and nationalism.
2.1 Turkish nationalism
The ideology of the Turkish state that supports the state is shaped by nationalism. The core of this Kemalist-nationalist ideology is the well-known sentence:
“How happy is someone who can call himself a Turk.”
picture: Pülümir a village in Kurdistan Bakur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_happy_is_the_one_who_says_I_am_a_Turk
picture: Mountains in Nothern Cyprus with Cypriot flag https://www.indyturk.com/node/174101/haber/yeni-%C5%9Fafak-yazar%C4%B1-p%C3%BCl%C3%BCm%C3%BCr-da%C4%9F%C4%B1na-bin-y%C4%B1ll%C4%B1k-bayat-bir-kemalist-refleksle-%E2%80%9Cne-mutlu
picture: http://siyasetimilliye.blogspot.com/2014/08/ne-mutlu-turkum-sozu-kime-soylendi.html
picture: https://www.elbistanpusula.com/haber/4841058/ne-mutlu-turkum-diyene-yazisi-yeniden-daglarda
picture Giresun Belediyesi: https://www.giresunileri.com/ne-mutlu-turkum-diyene/
Every turk borns as a Soldier!
A Primary School in Islahiye - Gaziantep, Altınüzüm village, but the Kurdish name of this village is Xolto.
Balikesir Belediyesi Turkey https://odatv4.com/o-tabelayi-tekrar-astilar--1312141200.html
Hürriyet Newspaper, look on the left side with the word's Turkiye belongs to the Turk
This ideology speaks of the Turkish race as the ruling one. All others have a function: to act as slaves or servants of this race. This kind of Turkish nationalism not only rejects everything that is not Turkish, but also demands self-denial from non-Turkish peoples and relies on the media and education, as well as heavily on the military in carrying out its goals.
As a result of this primitive racism, more than seven cultures of Mesopotamia have been wiped out by genocide in the last 70 years after the establishment of the Turkish Republic: the Aramaic, Assyrian, Syrian, Armenian, Yazidis, Greek, Pontic and Kurdish cultures.
The destruction of Kurdistan was carried out with all brutality by the Turkish generals. While Saddam Hussein destroyed 4,000 Kurdish villages in Iraq, Turkey has now destroyed over 4,500 villages.
In order to maintain the military expenditure for around one million soldiers, the state has demanded a lot from the Turkish people. The economic situation got worse and worse. Compared: With roughly the same population, Germany has “only” about 250,000 soldiers we would like to quote. Regardless of the Turkish claim, democracy, and human rights, we would like to quote the Turkish newspaper Milliyet of August 10th, 1930:
“None of us doubts that such demand (what is meant is the independence of Kurdistan) on the part of wild herds and barbarians, everything is just a joke because the only place for building autonomy for a people, whose language does not contain more than 200 words, is in the middle of Africa or one of its deserts, were human-like and ape-like life….But Asia, the cradle of civilization and cultures, cannot accept such demands. And whoever dares to make such a claim should be destroyed.”
With the help of Soviet and Iranian troops, the Turkish Minister of Justice said the following in 1936, after the Kurdish uprising in Ararat was suppressed with help of soviet and Iranian troops:
“Anyone who has the right to live in Turkey is one whose veins run pure Turkish blood. And whoever is not like that has only one right to live like a slave or servant. And the mountains should hear me.”
It is interesting that during the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, Greece and Armenia donated blood, but these were rejected by the Turkish Minister of Health on the grounds that it was not “Turkish pure” blood.
The call of the Kurds for Turkey to join the EU is understandable, they promise themselves a cultivated solution to their situation and hope, that the EU will rein in Turkey and that the times of genocide will be over. Educational dictatorship school education (see picture), explanation: In elementary schools in Kurdistan Kurdish children must say the following:
“We are Turks, and we swear to stand up for Turks and Turkishness”
(Quote from The legal status of the Kurds in the Ottoman Empire and in modern Turkey, Celalettin Kartal 2020) Media Hürriyet, “Turkey belongs to the Turks…..photo
The genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, Aramaeans, Greek on the Black Sea coast, and the Kurds was inevitably the result of this ideology. The decline in values can be seen in the fact that PKK members murdered by the Turkish army were initially buried in a mass grave, only to be bulldozed and three days later presented to the population as a trophy.
It is also interesting to look at the relation between Kemalist and religion. While Turkey prides itself on secularization (separation between state and religion), we note that Atatürk used the communist method in secularization and not the European Enlightenment idea, in which religion is not rejected but is viewed as a private matter.
Here Atatürk focused on the secularization of Islam and not that of the state. In doing so, he had been guided by vengeance, not by far-reaching reforms of society. (Atatürk’s secularization is rightly also referred to as caricatural secularization, e.g., the introduction of the European dress code, abolition of Arabic script, etc. …..)
In addition to nationalism, religion plays an important role in Turkey. The current Prime Minister of Turkey has Islamist-fundamentalist roots and still dreams of the great Ottoman Empire. The mixture of Turkish and Kemalist nationalism, wrapped in a religious cloak, is a highly explosive mixture.
1.1 Insecure borders
The geopolitical order of the Middle East according to The Versailles Conference and the subsequent Server and Lausanne Agreement has left several sources of conflict with uncertain borders.
2.2.1 The borders between Turkey and Iraq
In order to understand today’s problems, we have to look at the time after World War I (the phase in which the states were founded after the fall of the Ottoman Empire). Because this phase was accompanied by interference by the League of Nations and negotiations between England, Russia, and France, in which many peoples were not satisfied or lost in the end. In 1921, by a British decision at the Cairo conference, Faisal I was appointed king of Iraq, and the Iraqi state was established.
This state was formed from the provinces of Baghdad and Basra. Five years later, South Kurdistan (Mosul Province) was attached. The Brussels line recommended by the delegation of the League of Nations was recognized as the northern border of the state. The League of Nations had the task of settling the dispute over the Mosul province between the British, the Turks, and the Kurdish side.
After the disappointment of the Kurds with the international community, especially in the 1923 Lausanne Agreement, which buried the Treaty of Sèvres Agreement from 1920. Paragraphs 62, 63, and 64 of the Treaty of Sèvres Agreement aimed to establish a Kurdish nation-state on an equal footing with the other states.
For this, the population should determine their own fate through a referendum. This referendum never took place. After the liberation of Iraq by the Allies in 2003, the residents of southern Kurdistan were able to collect 1.7 million signatures for a referendum and hand them over to the UN.
The relationship to the Christian religion has been disrupted since 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople. Turkey started a large-scale propaganda thesis by claiming that they lost the battle on a diplomatic level, in a period of political weakness. The Christian peoples of Mesopotamia became the plaything of superpowers and were exterminated through genocide and deportation. Around 40,000 Assyrian refugees have found refuge in newly formed Iraq and were not allowed to return to Turkey. Britain has relocated these people to different areas of Iraq.
The Assyrians did not accept the reality that had arisen and demanded that England fulfill their promises during World War I in order to find an Assyrian homeland. A battle ensued between the Assyrians and the Iraqi royal army in 1933. Here the Assyrians lost the war. These events reveal the role Turkey has played in preventing the Assyrians from returning to their homeland. Likewise, the extremist-exaggerated sensitivity to those who think differently, especially followers of Christian religions, is evident.
The Iraqi-Turkish border was disregarded by Turkey itself and its military invasion of Iraq was always justified with the protection of the Turkmen, although there is evidence that the Turkmen minority in the Kurdish administered areas enjoy all political, cultural, and administrative rights. Turkey was able to get some of the Turkmen on their side, e.g., by founding an association called the “Turkmen Front.” They have offered passes, grants, and salaries to lobby.
Tansu Çiller, the former Prime Minister of Turkey from 1993 to 1996, spoke of the protection of the three million Turkmens in northern Iraq. After the 2nd Gulf War, Turkey began to provide food and humanitarian aid to the refugees through the Turkish Red Crescent.
Each recipient had to be entered in a list, where he had to state “Turkmen” as his nationality. The refugee situation was exploited (for example, by the fact that people fleeing from Saddam Hussein were exposed to snow and cold. Turkey sees itself as responsible for the Turkish minorities at each border, for example in Cyprus or Bulgaria. Now she has reached out her “protective hand” to the Turkmens in Iraq. Who is responsible for the Turkish population in Germany?!
2.2.2 The borders between Turkey and Syria
After 1939 Syria held on to the two cities, Antakya (Antioch) and Iskenderun (Alexandretta), two cities that France had left for Turkey. Later these cities were attached to the province of Hatay (Turkey). You can read more about it here: Syria’s “Lost Province” The Hatay Question Returns https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54340.
The borders stretch to a length of more than 600 km and a width of 500 km and have been sealed off with barbed wire since the 1960s. Turkey is one of the states that signed the Ottawa Agreement. She has committed to clearing the mines.
Since the Turkish military claims that the plans have been “lost”, the farmers are only allowed to cultivate their land at their own risk. The Turkish army’s massive threats to Syria have been the order of the day since the 1960s. The above examples clearly illustrate the extent of the trouble spots on the Turkish borders. Similar conflicts also exist with Armenia and Greece.
2.2. Great lust for power over her neighbours
The admission of Turkey also means the EU’s expansion into the Middle East – a region which, in addition to its cultural wealth, also has enormous resources. According to experts, the oil in this area is of the best quality in the world and is the easiest to develop. Oil was and is always one of the main causes of conflict for the European powers in the last century, long before the Americans became involved.
A look at the map shows that apart from the Nile, there are no major water resources in the region from Morocco to Iraq, except for the Euphrates with its length of 2900 km and the Tigris with its length of 1970 km and its numerous tributaries. Due to the mountainous landscape and the thawing snow, it is evident that water is also a cause of conflict.
About 99% of the inhabitants of Turkey are Muslim, for the most part Sunni. As the successor to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has always represented an Islamic direction with a Sunni character, based on opposition to and hatred of the Shiites. This is traditionally based on the Ottoman-Sunni wars against the Persian-Shiite state.
The regional powers Turkey and Iran have always fought their wars in the Kurdish area in between. By joining the EU, Turkey will want to permanently secure Kurdish territory. There is a risk of final division in Kurdistan. The expansion of the EU to the east will rekindle massive resentment towards Europe.
There used to be a certain division of the spheres of interest, now there is a risk of giving the impression of renewed colonization. Even if an Islamic-Sunni Turkish state is involved, the existential fears of for example the Shiite-Islamist world are no less. Instead of fighting terror, we will provoke a clash of cultures and not a dialogue of cultures. The EU must be aware that by accepting Turkey it will give up its mediating role in a possible conflict and may even be viewed as a hostile party.
3. The political underestimation of Turkey
Turkey made use of its geopolitical and strategic location to assert its interests. Two phases can be observed here: While in the 1920s, that is, in phase 1, their program of annihilating the peoples of Mesopotamia with the introduction of “modernity” (i.e., the introduction of the European dress code, separation of state and religion, abolition of the caliphate establishment of the republic).
It could be sure of the sympathy of the European superpowers. Later she used her role as a bulwark against communism and offered the West an army of one million soldiers, for which she was accepted into NATO without any problems. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey sought a new role from its geopolitical position.
At first, the argument was used that she was the one
“Bridge between Europe and the Central Asian states of the former USSR.”
However, these did not need Turkey to catch up with Europe. Now this argument was no longer relevant either. Turkey now speaks of its role as a “bridge between the Orient and the Occident.” However, a bridge can only do its job if both pillars are on SAFE ground. The lack of balance between the parts to be connected makes a bridging function impossible.
Now the argument “democracy” had to serve.
Turkish diplomats like to refer to their state as the only democratic state besides Israel in this region. However, it overlooks the fact that it is far from a democracy. How else would it be possible for Turkey to ban the mother tongue of 20 million Kurds? Turkey is now looking for a new political role. After the arguments mentioned above no longer earned any sympathy for Turkey, it fell into the politics of threats along the lines of:
“If we are not admitted to the EU, the Islamists will come to power!”
The West got its first taste from the Islamist Necmettin Erbakan, Prime Minister of Turkey from 1996 to 1997. Now we have a Turkish prime minister with a nationalist coat and Islamist roots.
3.1 The consequences
Transmission of the conflicts to Germany a vivid and terrifying example of the transmission of conflicts to the EU, especially to Germany, it provided by the former domestic policy spokesman for the Bundestag and current European MP for the Greens, Cem Özdemir of Turkish origin in the magazine Focus No. 49, 30.11.1998 under the title “There would be war here.” When asked why the red-green government does not want to take over Abdullah Öcalan (founder of PKK):
“We want to prevent Kurds from getting burned, occupying highways, or taking revenge on Turkish fellow citizens.”
Integration turns out to be very difficult, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s (founder of the Republic of Turkey) greatest crime was the falsification of history and the abandonment of Turkey’s oriental-Islamic culture, and the exchange of Islamic for national-racist backwardness.
Turkey’s uprooting from its culture, there is talk of an identity conflict.
4. Suggestions and goals
There are only tendencies on the part of the Turks to want to join the EU, this is based on reciprocity. The sick man on the Bosporus is still sick (what is meant here, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan). Not through isolation, not through a new order, help only through geopolitical reorganization (e.g., “Versailles Peace Treaty” for the Middle East).
The question: will Turkey join the EU and will it bring peace?
Objective: The right to live in peace, democracy, and dignity.
Proposals:
1. Peace Conference for the Middle East
2. Demilitarization of Turkey
3. Correction of the education system
Various:
- Kurdish problem
- Mafia structures
- Reform ability of Turkey and your credibility, terror in Erbil
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