Joseph Muscat is urging the EU to engage more closely with Turkey but, as of this week that position will find even fewer takers than before. To the increasing repression within Turkey, already a source of tension with Europe, the Turkish government has added diplomatic sanctions against the Netherlands, claims that Germany’s Angela Merkel is harbouring terrorists, and a threat to ‘review’ the refugee deal struck with the EU a year ago. Not a bad week’s work.

The immediate events that have led to the Turkish escalation concern a referendum to be held in Turkey on April 16. But there are long-term pressures, too, and Europe would be foolish to ignore or misunderstand them.

The referendum is about whether Turkey should shift from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. If the change occurs, it would be the most fundamental political transformation in the republic since almost a century ago. It would centralise power, officially constitutionalise strongman politics, and possibly pave the way for Erdogan to remain in power till 2029 (a run of over 25 years in power, should he manage it).

The referendum is looking tight. Erdogan needs every vote he can get. He certainly cannot ignore the Turkish citizens living in the EU (1.4 million in Germany alone). Turkish ministers have been scheduled to address Turkish voters in various EU states. But, while some visits have gone ahead (say, in France), Germany and the Netherlands have refused permission on grounds of public order.

Erdogan and his subordinates have retaliated by calling out Germany and the Netherlands for their ‘Nazism’, threatened to take them to the European Court of Human Rights, and denouncing the attack on Turkey’s ‘honour’ when Turkey’s foreign minister was refused permission to land in the Netherlands and another minister, who defied the Dutch government by driving into the country to address a meeting herself, was escorted back to the border with Germany.

This is one of those cases which is easier to evaluate than to explain. There’s no doubt that Erdogan’s behaviour is unacceptable.

Of course a country has the right to assess whether a meeting could jeopardise public order. In the case of the Netherlands, the meeting was going to be held a few days before a general election in which one of the issues was immigration and the perceived loyalty of Muslim Dutch citizens.

In the case of Germany, a general election is still several months away. But there has long been resentment in Germany of political meetings in German cities, held in Turkish, which effectively excluded other German citizens.

You could argue this in both directions but, within Germany’s political system, the city administration has the final decision. In fact, Merkel stood up for the democratic rights of two cities to decide as they saw fit but declined to issue a blanket ban of such meetings in the country.

To be called a Nazi by an authoritarian who is ruthlessly clamping down on free speech in his own country isn’t just irony. As Merkel has pointed out, it trivialises the horrors of the real historic Nazis.

Beyond the insult, there is the underlying attitude. Erdogan defines sovereignty and democracy as he sees fit, derides the democracy and sovereignty of others, and decides that’s it’s only his country’s honour that counts. Such an attitude would lead to a breakdown of the EU’s manner of shared governance. He obviously can’t be trusted with a veto.

Some European commentators have observed that, effectively, Turkey’s EU membership bid is over. True, but it’s important to get the sequence right. It’s not over because of Erdogan’s behaviour. It’s the other way round. Erdogan is behaving this way because he must have already decided there is no future – or, at least, no future he likes – in the EU.

In other words, those commentators who are explaining Erdogan’s behaviour simply in terms of his immediate needs are mistaken. It’s true that the current spat suits Erdogan’s immediate needs. He must hype outside hostility to Turkey to justify the need for a strongman system with voters.

But it’s simply a mistake to put down the current situation, as some do, simply to Erdogan’s personal ambition and voter gullibility.

It’s also a mistake to see the current crisis as a sign that they were right all along to say that Turkey was unsuited for EU membership because it is a Muslim country.

Erdogan’s rhetoric about national honour and retaliation is scarcely distinguishable from that of his secularist predecessors – say, Tansu Çiller, the Kemalist (woman) prime minister who served in the mid-1990s. Let’s remember: Erdogan is stoking nationalist sentiment, not a pan-Islamist one (in the Arab world he is sometimes mocked as a would-be Sultan).

It is true that the Erdogan era has seen a flourishing of nostalgia and pride in the Ottoman period (and that does have some religious overtones given which Sultan is held up as hero and who is not), the main emphasis has been on Turkish ambition as a regional power. It’s a geostrategic ambition that is as rational and secular as you can get.

From a European perspective, the late Ottoman period is one where Turkey was ‘the sick man of Europe’.  (Not for nothing that Turkey’s foreign minister a few days ago called Europe ‘a very sick man’ – a comeback retort waiting to be made for the last 150 years.) But for a long time it was also a period where the Middle East, under Ottoman influence, was largely stable (at least by comparison with today).

Turkey today is not just the world’s largest Muslim economy; it’s one of the largest economies in the world, period. It’s a founding member of the G20, with a diversified economy, and possibilities of expanding in multiple geographical directions. It may be slowing down at the moment but its long-term prospects are excellent.

Yet, it finds itself in an increasingly turbulent world. It has borders with Syria, Iran and Iraq (among others). It has a current rapprochement with Russia but, historically, their geostrategic interests have been in conflict. It cannot be excluded that relations with Russia will deteriorate in the medium term (say, if a declining economy forces Russia to be more aggressive around Turkey’s borders).

In such a turbulent world, the attractiveness of strongman politics cannot be discounted. On Europe’s eastern boundary, we see Hungary and Poland being tempted along the same direction.

To explain and understand is not to justify, let alone forgive. Much of Erdogan’s behaviour, within his country and with the EU, has been reprehensible. But, an intelligent response could do with proper understanding. For too long, Europeans have treated Turkey as alien and patronised as inferior. In fact, it’s a cultural cousin and regional power whose weight is set to grow in the medium and long terms.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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