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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Word met Turkije Europa het nieuwe Amerika?



GeenKritiek
18-12-04, 15:43
Thanksgiving for Turkey
Europe moves east, and Turkey moves West.
by Mustafa Akyol

Istanbul
WITH LAST WEEK'S vote in Brussels, the admission of Turkey to the European Union has come one step nearer. Yet some still suspect that the accession of an overwhelmingly Muslim nation to the E.U. will signify an alarming new intrusion of Islam into a continent already uneasy about its Muslim minorities. Some fear--to put it more provocatively--that Turkish membership in the E.U. will turn out to be an Islamic Trojan horse.
Indeed, if one sees Islam as a monolithic faith, and reckons its influence simply by counting its adherents, the doubters could well be right. If, however, the reality is more complex, it may be that Turkey's accession to the E.U. will help remedy, not aggravate, Europe's Muslim problem. To see this, it is necessary to appreciate the distinctive nature of Turkish Islam.
Compared with the Arabs, the Turks were latecomers to the Muslim faith. The former were politically and intellectually more advanced until the 13th century, when the Arabs' brilliant civilization was nearly destroyed by one of the most devastating conquests ever, the Mongol catastrophe. The Arabs never recovered, and the leadership of Islam passed to the Turks. The Turks flourished, especially under the Ottoman Empire, the global superpower of the 16th and much of the 17th centuries. Although it then entered a steady decline, the Ottoman Empire survived as a powerful state until World War I.
The political power of the Turks, and their continual interaction with the West, gave them an important insight: They learned to face facts. While the
Arabs stagnated in their closed tribal universe, the Turks had to rule an empire, make practical decisions, adopt new technologies, and reform existing structures. This praxis helped them develop new religious perceptions, too. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), for instance, the sultan's head of Islamic affairs, Ebussuud Effendi, authorized the charging of interest by foundations working for the betterment of society. This is still a revolutionary idea in the Islamic world, where banking is generally associated with the usury denounced in the Koran. To this day, legal and theological gymnastics are required to make Western banking and investment acceptable to most Muslims.
During the 18th century, the Ottomans started to reform their age-old sharia laws. A big step was the abolition of slavery. While this was a nonissue in many parts of the empire, there were strong reactions from the Arab Middle East, whose tribal social structure still relied on slaves. The fiercest resistance took the form of a revolt in the Arabian peninsula--led by none other than Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the eponymous founder of Wahhabism, the fanatical sect that is breeding most Islamic terrorists today.
After World War I, Turkey became an independent nation. Here again, its experience differed from that of the Arab world, which was colonized by the British and the French. The colonial experience of the interwar period gave rise to an anti-Western nationalism in nearly all the Arab states, to which Turkey was immune. After World War II, when most Arab states became allies of the Soviet Union, Turkey again took a different path and aligned itself with the United States and NATO.

ALL THIS HISTORY infused Turkish Islam with a far more friendly outlook toward the West. During much of the 20th century, the No. 1 enemy for Turkey's pious Muslims was "godless communism," and the United States was perceived as a valuable ally against that hated threat. Probably the most influential Islamic sage in Turkey in the last hundred years, Said Nursi, repeatedly called for an alliance between Christianity and Islam against communism and its underlying materialist philosophy. Some of his followers proudly joined in the Korean War.
Turkish Islam has been free of anti-Semitism, too. The Ottoman Empire welcomed the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, and ever since, Jews have lived peacefully in Turkish lands. The Arab-Israeli conflict, although it has generated sympathy among Turks for the plight of the Palestinians, never created widespread hatred of Israel, let alone Jews in general.
Despite all this, it is true that Turkey has had its own radical Islamist movements, especially since the early 1980s. But they were not homegrown. Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian ideologues of radical Islam--such as Sayyid Qutb, Sayyid Abul-Ala Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati--inspired a generation of Islamists, who found their Turkish Islamic past too pacifist. The political Islamism that would carry Necmettin Erbakan's Refah ("Welfare") party to power in 1996 was also of foreign origin: It was modeled on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and exploited the radicalism of the aforementioned Islamist youth. But in the late 1990s, this movement lost steam. Its more liberal faction gave birth to the AKP,
which has been in power since November 2002 and is leading Turkey's E.U. effort more successfully than any previous Turkish government.
Some Westerners, along with some hard-core secularists in Turkey, fear that the AKP's move toward democracy could be a taqiyyah, a tactical deception allowing the party to carry out a secret Islamist agenda. Yet there is not a shred of evidence to support that conspiracy theory. Some recent "evidence," such as the AKP's attempts to make adultery illegal and give religious-school graduates greater access to secular universities, should more properly be seen as the party's effort to appease its conservative voters.
In fact, the decline of radical Islamism in Turkey is no superficial defeat; it is supported by many Islamic thinkers, including some who have renounced a radical past in favor of democracy. Furthermore, Turkey has many modernist theologians who envisage a comprehensive renewal in Islam, and they find considerable support among the public.
In short, Turkey is the archetype of what is called "moderate Islam." Thus, its entry into the E.U. should be seen as an antidote to the radical misinterpretation of Islam, not as a religious threat to the West.
SOME WESTERNERS see a catch in this argument. They think that Turkish Islam is moderate only because it was marginalized and suppressed during the early Turkish Republic, under the one-party rule of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This line of reasoning leads to the suspicion that if Turkey deepens its democracy to satisfy the E.U., it will only unleash the previously marginalized Islam and invite a fundamentalist backlash.
The moderation of Turkish Islam, however, is not a product of the Kemalist period. Rather, it is the product of a long process of modernization of which Kemalism was just one phase. An important phase, to be sure, but still a phase.
Turkish modernization began at least a century before Kemalism. In the 19th century, the Ottomans produced a new secular civil law, a constitution, a parliament, and Western-style schools and universities. They also encouraged sophisticated intellectual debate. Even Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), the most "Islamist" sultan of the later empire, launched an extensive modernization program that included the founding of modern schools where the Young Turks would flourish. In 1895, Descartes's Discourse on Method was translated into Turkish under the auspices of the sultan. Many other Western classics, as well as the political debates of the day in Europe, became part of Ottoman intellectual life. And this was embraced not just by the secular Young Turks, but also by more open-minded Islamists.
That heritage makes Turkish Islam--along with the Islam of the Balkans--a unique manifestation of Islamic modernity. Turkey would introduce this modern Islam into Europe, which is currently troubled by an undesirable version of the same faith. The E.U., then, would be wise to welcome the Turks for its own sake.
Whatever the arguments for Turkish ties to Europe, of course, many Turks attach greater importance to an even more fundamental alliance with the United States.
Actually, Turkey is closer to the United States than it is to Europe in many respects--most notably, the role of religion in public life. Many Turkish conservatives, including me, find the spirit of a "nation under God" much more appealing than the bluntly secular European ethos. It is unfortunate that when the Europeans recently decided to exclude any mention of God from the E.U. constitution, Turkey's liberal intelligentsia, including some public officials, expressed the view that such a secular union would be a better fit for Turkey than one that acknowledged any religious allegiance. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (whose objections to Turkey's accession had earlier alienated many Turks) was wiser when he commented, "It has been said that the European Constitution could not mention the Judeo-Christian roots so as not to offend Islam, but what offends Islam is contempt for God." Conservative Turks couldn't agree more.
As to the Mars/Venus dichotomy between the United States and Europe, we Turks would line up with the Americans on the Martian side. Notwithstanding the controversy over the Iraq war, we realize that, in the grand scheme of things, "Old Europe" has displayed a lack of vision and initiative that is not commendable. We well remember that the same Europe did nothing to save our ex-Ottoman Muslim brethren in Bosnia during the 1990s, and it was the United States that halted the Serbs' ghastly ethnic cleansing.
But the United States is not inviting us to join its Union. Besides, there is an ocean between us. Rather, Turkey's destination is Europe. And if we reach it, the effect will be to change the world. Europeans remember with distaste the Ottoman siege of Vienna. Once the gates of Vienna are open to the Turks, however, and the gates of Istanbul are open to Europeans, the age of sieges will be well and truly over.

Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish political scientist and columnist, is director of the Intercultural Dialogue Platform, based in Istanbul.

GeenKritiek
18-12-04, 15:57
Uit "The weekly standard", de "elsevier" van Amerikaanse neo-conservatieven:


The Turkish Letter
To get into the European Union, Turkey had to face questions about adultery. Are the Turks right to think it's wrong?
by Steven E. Rhoads
12/17/2004 12:00:00 AM

TURKEY is to join the European Union. That is big news. Next to Germany, Turkey will be the largest of the E.U. nations. More significantly, it will be the first Muslim nation to be a part of the European Union. The hope is that Turkey can show the world that Islamic values are not incompatible with liberalism, pluralism, and democracy.
Turkey is well on the way to doing this. Before the formal accession process could be begun, the European Union required that Turkey make its laws congruent with European standards. Turkey passed 218 laws which reformed its penal code. Among them were laws making marital rape a crime and treating honor killings of adulterous wives as seriously as other cases of intentional murder.
But as we celebrate, it is worth remembering that Turkey almost didn't make it. Through much of the summer and fall there was one big sticking point. Turkey's government wanted to pass a law that would make adultery by either spouse a crime.
Europe was outraged. The E.U. Commissioner for Enlargement, the German Guenter Verheugen, said the proposed law "can only be a joke." He proclaimed that a law banning adultery would suggest that Islamic law was entering Turkish law, and his spokesman said such a proposal was "alien" to the European way and would indicate "a fundamentalist mentality that the state runs your bedroom."
Other E.U. officials warned darkly of violations of Article Eight of the European Convention of Human Rights. The article guarantees every European rights to "respect for his private and family life," but it explicitly allows governments to intervene in private matters to protect "morals" and the "rights of others."
Throughout Turkey, and Europe more generally, feminists led the charge against the law. But women commit less adultery than men and are generally more supportive of laws condemning it. A recent South Korean poll, for example, showed that their law against adultery was supported by 55 percent of men and 84 percent of women. Support for the law among Turkish women was also widespread.
FOR SOME REASON the Turks find the West licentious and have no desire to imitate our culture. Moreover, as it happens, the Turkish countryside has been invaded by leggy, blond prostitutes from the former Soviet Union. A Scottish history professor, now living in Turkey, reports in the Wall Street Journal that small Cappadocian towns can have as many as 50 of them, and they have led to the dumping of wives and to hollowed out marriages.
Turkey may have had reasons to make adultery unlawful. What are the costs and benefits of adultery? Might a civilized society choose to use the law to help enforce marital vows?
Adultery always brings deception, frequently brings guilt, and sometimes brings venereal disease. With its discovery comes shame, sadness, distress, and anger spurred on by a sense of betrayal and injustice. In its aftermath comes divorce (and sometimes violence). In cross-cultural surveys, adultery is a leading, often the leading, cause of divorce. Shirley Glass, a researcher and family counselor, finds that only 10 percent of her clients separate when neither has been unfaithful, but 35 percent do when adultery is involved.
Sixty percent of divorces leave minor children without a biological father in the home. The added risks to children in homes without biological fathers are multiple and alarming. Family income goes down. Education and health outcomes sink. Teenage male crime rates double in single parent homes and triple if moms marry their lovers. Correspondingly, teenage female pregnancy rates double.
Clearly, many of these results affect all of us, not just those families with the problem children. As one review notes, "time and again in the literature family structure explains more about crime than does race or low income." The effects start early--with 2-year-olds showing more emotional and behavioral problems than children in married families, and with pre-adolescents lying and destroying property more frequently. And the effects last. A study following a sample of academically gifted children for 70 years finds that parental divorce reduces a child's life expectancy by four years even after controlling for childhood health status, family background, and personality characteristics such as impulsivity and emotional instability. Forty-year-olds who grew up in divorced but otherwise advantaged homes are three times more likely than their peers to die prematurely.
Results like these pop up in studies from all over the world. Recent Swedish studies, for example, find that children of single parents are twice as likely or more to develop psychiatric disease, to attempt suicide, or to have an alcohol-related disease. Swedish boys in single families are four times as likely to develop a narcotics-related disease, and girls are three times as

likely. The risk of dying in youth is more than 50 percent greater for boys in Swedish single-parent families than for boys living with both parents.
Even for the lovers benefits are slight. When the adulterer is male, he is often perfectly happy with his marriage. Glass finds that adulterous men "tend to have extramarital sex regardless of their satisfaction with their marriage." They often see their dalliances and affairs as meaningless fun, and stray when presented with a low cost opportunity.
Their liaisons, however, often think something else is a foot. They typically have a lower socio-economic status than the men they sleep with. These star-struck partners may not know the man is married and even if they do, they are often led to believe that he is unhappy and will leave his wife for them. In fact, prominent men forced or allowed to choose, overwhelmingly choose their wives over their lovers. Even when divorce ensues, one study found that only 3 percent of 4,100 prominent men ended up marrying their lovers.
When the wife is the one who strays, she is far more likely to do so because she is unhappy with the marriage. She thinks that she at last has found someone who is understanding and affectionate. But these love affairs don't usually last, and, regardless, female adulterers are far more likely to feel guilt and shame. Moreover, the latest evidence from Linda Waite at the University of Chicago shows that when spouses stick with marriages that they describe as unhappy, five years later, two thirds of them report that they are now happy. And when unhappy spouses divorce, five years later they are no more likely than those who stuck it out to say that they are now happy. This is true even if they have remarried Many of those loving mothers who divorced must now watch the decline of their children, who have been left without a biological father in the home; and the children will fare worse if the mothers marry their lovers than if they do not.
ADULTERY LAWS are mainly about deterrence, not punishment after the fact. If men tempted by adulterous opportunities knew that yielding to temptation could put them in court, they would not so often stray. If their lovers knew as much, they too would more often resist temptation.
I am confident that among the Turkish men who support laws against adultery are residents of Cappadocia who indulge with the leggy, blond immigrants. The South Korean poll that showed 55 percent of males supporting laws against adultery also found that 75 percent of the men admitted to adultery. These results no doubt give Herr Verheugen something else to laugh about. What hypocrisy!
Still, hypocrisy remains the tribute that vice pays to virtue. And it is not necessarily irrational for someone to want laws forbidding behavior that he could avoid without them. We are stuck with mixed natures, with some parts of our brains warring with other more distinctively human parts. We may want the law to help us do the right thing. In any case the predictable effects of adultery on children give governments reason enough to concern themselves with adultery.
Europe is in no position to lecture anyone about sexuality whether in or out of marriage. It seems incapable of creating families and societies that meet the most rudimentary criterion for good health--reproducing themselves.
BUT WE MAY have here an opening for America. A 1998 survey of 23 nations by the University of California at Irvine's Eric Widmer found the United States more disapproving of adultery than 15 European nations. Eighty percent of Americans said adultery is always wrong. Only Ireland and Northern Ireland seemed as adamant.
So we can tell Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world that we would never wish to rule out of the company of civilized nations a country whose only offense was taking marital vows seriously. We can remind them that the Bible--as well as the Koran--has something to say on the subject. And we can pledge to work together toward creating societies with laws that strengthen families.
Steven E. Rhoads is a professor of politics at the University of Virginia. In June, Encounter Books published his Taking Sex Differences Seriously.

GeenKritiek
18-12-04, 16:11
Uit de twee artikelen (beide te vinden op www.weeklystandard.com, het vakblad voor conservatieven van William Kristol) , blijkt dat Amerikaanse Christelijke conservatieven, in Islamitische Moslims de ideale partners zien voor Europese normen en waarden. Jawel, hoe vreemd het ook mag klinken Conservatieven Amerikaanse Christenen staan aan de kant van Europese Moslims als het gaat om normen en waarden. Ik weet zelf niet helemaal wat ik moet denken van deze liefde voor Turkse Moslims van de neo-cons, daarom ben ik nieuwsschierig wat jullie ervan denken. Wat vinden moslims hier bijvoorbeeld van? Wat vinden ook atheistische liberalen die geloven in stricte scheiding tussen kerk en staat hiervan? En de conspiracy-theoristen? Wat geloven zij? Zien zij in de regering Erdoghan die dikke vriendjes met George Bush is als een onderdeel van het Amerikaanse CIA complot? Zijn de zionisten haters tegen toedreding van turkije? Zijn zij ook tegen de turkse staat, de enige moslim staat die enigzinds bestempeld kan worden als democratie?

Ikzelf? Ik zie mijzelf nu als atheistische liberaal, maar ik ben voor toedreding van Turkije. Ik zit absoluut niet te wachten op morele wetgeving gebaseerd op geloof, maar aan de andere kant zie ik dat de toedreding van Turkije belangrijk is voor het welzijn en de toekomst van de wereld. In die afweging vind ik het laatste dus belangrijker.

F.