16 March 2017
Erdogan’s Anger
Europe stumbles in Cologne, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
by Neil Tidmarsh
Last month Emmanuel Macron came to England to address the ex-pat French community in London. He was rallying support for his En Marche! movement and his candidacy in the forthcoming French presidential election. Nobody thought that this was odd or out of line or tried to stop him. Free country, free speech. No laws were broken. Any British views about him and his manifesto were irrelevant. The French election is a French matter for French people, and the UK recognised that it has no business poking its nose into it.
This month a number of Turkish ministers travelled to Europe to address ex-pat Turkish communities, hoping to rally support for the president in next month’s referendum which proposes constitutional changes to increase his powers. But the rallies were cancelled and the ministers were banned. In Germany last week, the Turkish economy minister was prevented from holding a rally in Cologne, and the Turkish foreign minister’s rally in Hamburg was called off (twice). In Holland this week, the government refused permission for two Turkish ministers – the foreign minister and the family minister – to attend a rally in Rotterdam, and banned them from entering the country. The family minister drove to Rotterdam but was escorted by Dutch police back to the German border; the foreign minister tried to fly into the city but was denied entry.
Other European countries followed suit. Austria cancelled a number of pro-Erdogan campaign events, and the chancellor Christian Kern called on the EU to ban Turkish cabinet ministers until after the referendum. The Turkish foreign minister voluntarily withdrew from an event in Switzerland. In Sweden, a rally in Stockholm was cancelled. The Turkish prime minister was due to visit Denmark this week, but the Danish prime minister has asked him to postpone his visit.
The authorities have put forward various reasons for these bans and cancellations, including ‘security’ and ‘fire regulations’, but these excuses sound lame and ring hollow, and other less savoury reasons have been suggested. With elections to take place in the Netherlands this week, prime minister Mark Rutte has been rattled by the lead which Geert Wilders (the leader of the ultra-nationalist, populist, anti-Muslim, eurosceptic Freedom Party) has gained in the polls by calling for a ban on mosques, the Koran and Muslim immigration; Mr Rutte’s hard-ball anti-Turkish bans have been criticised as a morally shameful ploy to steal Mr Wilder’s anti-Muslim clothes, a distastefully pragmatic attempt to seduce some of Mr Wilder’s far-right support away from him. It’s a dangerous tactic which risks inflaming already volatile sensitivities within his country, and almost certainly plays into Mr Wilder’s unsavoury hands – he is now demanding the expulsion of all Turkish diplomats from Holland.
The fact is that European leaders don’t approve of Turkey’s President Erdogan or the way he does business. They disapprove of his intolerance of opposition and criticism, his attacks on the media and academia in his country, and of the extreme and heavy-handed measures introduced after the recent failed coup d’etat. They particularly disapprove of the constitutional changes proposed in next month’s referendum, changes which will give him much more power by transforming the current parliamentary system into a presidential one. Their disapproval may well be justified. But whether they are right or wrong to disapprove is irrelevant here. Erdogan is the democratically elected leader of his country, and is pursuing those changes constitutionally, via a referendum. The Turkish election is a Turkish matter for Turkish people, and other countries have no business poking their noses into it by taking sides. What is relevant here is the question of liberal freedoms. Shutting down rallies, peaceful demonstrations and campaign events is no way to defend European values, especially the fundamental one of freedom of expression – it is to undermine them. It is dangerously close to the very behaviour which they disapprove of in President Erdogan. Self-righteousness is no excuse for intolerance or lack of respect. Pro-Erdogan or anti-Erdogan should be all the same to European authorities who take pride in free speech. Peaceful demonstrations by any faction should be equally tolerated.
The reaction from Turkey has been predictable enough. President Erdogan has accused Germany and Holland of behaving like Nazis, and has repeated the claim that the inactivity of Dutch soldiers was to blame for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. He has threatened sanctions, including the possibility of ceasing to co-operate in controlling migration into Europe (he has suggested that Turkey could stop policing the land-route through the Balkans). The Dutch embassy in Ankara and Dutch diplomatic missions in Istanbul have been closed down by Turkish police. Anti-Dutch demonstrations have taken place in Turkey, and Turks have protested in Rotterdam, where 12 people were hurt in clashes with the police.
This is just the latest – though the most serious – chapter in the sorry and puzzling series of squabbles which Europe and Turkey have been indulging in for the last two years. (See Germany v. Turkey, Shaw Sheet issue 57, June 2016.) These squabbles are worse than pointless – they are self-destructive on both sides. Turkey needs Europe, and Europe needs Turkey. Turkey needs as many friends as possible, faced as it is with a three-fold external war in Syria against the Assad regime, Isis and an embryonic Kurdish state, with an internal war against Kurdish separatists, with terrorist attacks by Isis and others, with political and social turmoil following the failed coup d’état, and with the ever-growing migrant crisis. Europe needs Turkey to police the Aegean and Balkan migration routes, and to stop the flow of jihadists between Europe and the Middle East.
What President Erdogan wants from Europe as much as anything else is respect. Isn’t it worth showing him respect if it will secure the help which we need? Isn’t it what we owe him anyway, as the president of a valuable military ally and trading-partner, an elected head of state and the leader of a fellow member of Nato?
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