A fateful coincidence
The latter has adopted the Charter of Fundamental Rights as a whole rendering of the European legal system to be the guarantee of a regime built on the rights of the individual. For example, Article 22 of the European Constitution stipulates that the European Union respects cultural, religious and linguistic differences and thus ends the distinction between minorities and majorities. What about the Turkish Constitution and the political system built around it? Let us take a short walk in history to answer this question.
The declaration of the republic in 1923 was also the founding of the modern state in Turkey. This is a rather late period in the process of nation-state formation and is heavily laden with nationalism that was forged between two world wars. That is why the Turkish Constitution, although revised several times (all by the military except the last changes that have taken place since 2001), bear all the apprehensions, taboos and excesses of the period. Its authoritarian character, suspicious of diversity and civic initiative, led to the concoction of laws that protected the state from its people. But then anti-liberal policies were shared by almost all the states in the world. Liberalism exalted liberties, the autonomous individual and primacy of the market system whereas anti-liberalism emphasized collective interests and communal values. Any initiative that may have hampered national solidarity and the power and unity of the state was looked upon as subversion. Cultural, social and political differences or their expression were deemed to be betrayal of national unity and the integrity of the nation-state. The basic actor in international relations was the state and the states of the world were divided sharply by law and sovereignty.
The end of World War II marked a gradual but steady change in this state-dominated format. Civil society grew and managed to gain its autonomy from political society, alias the state. The rules of the state were basically replaced by the operational logic of the market place. The growing power of civil society allowed the reflection of the social reality it harbored as cultural and political diversity. Politics ceased to be a top down state prerogative and became a matter of civic initiative based on bargaining and reconciliation. The world rediscovered the optimist philosophy of the 18th Century that focused on the individual or human being that is born equal and for that matter should have the same rights. Out of this philosophy grew human rights that could not be relinquished to state sovereignty or to any other supreme authority. The European Union is the summation and end result of this evolution. Europe by and large has become a supra state.
On the other hand, while Turkey had learned to live with the legal and political principles of the inter-war period, the world changed and this change brought to bear unavoidable pressures on the Turkish nation-state and its practices, not to mention tensions between the state and society. Turkey’s quest for EU membership further exacerbated these pressures. Now all actors, state or social entities bear the brunt of pressures that emanate from the differences which the Turkish and European (Union) constitutions and political culture and institutions that lie behind them. While Europe has become a supra state, Turkey still persists and in general insist in remaining a nation-state. Unavoidably this creates tension between the expressed desire of being in Europe without being European in the political and legal sense of the word.
The republican form of government was not only a modernization project for the Turks, it was also a move toward Europeanism, which they thought symbolized "contemporary civilization." In the early days of the republic, one could often hear the following rhetoric: "We have overcome Europe, Europeanism triumphed." What this meant was that the Turks had won the war against occupying western powers (allies of World War I in what was called the War of Independence, 1919-1922) and now they could Europeanize by their own free will.
Indeed, this wish has gained a new momentum and meaning to day with the prospect of EU membership. The ethos, laws and institutions of the nation-state built on the primacy of the state over society and the individual has to be changed. This is not impossible but it is hard and will take time. The fulcrum of this systemic change must be the rewriting of the meaning of republic.
For the founders of modern Turkey, republic meant sovereignty of the state, not of the nation, gained from hostile states (independence) and the hegemony of dynastic rule (emancipation from traditional authorities i.e. the Ottoman Empire). Sovereignty was symbolized and used by the state. The state as the basic actor took on the rule of the modernizer and builder of a modern nation. This project has succeeded to a great extent. Now there are new actors in politics and economy whereas there were almost none in the earlier decades of the republic. These new actors no more need the patrimonial role of the state, which they believe is dwarfing their initiative and creativeness or denying their (cultural) existence in the name of national security.
Now, sovereignty needs a new interpretation that must encompass primacy of popular will and rule. This means democracy whereby the state would acknowledge the rights of the individual/citizen and pluralism as a cultural reality to be reconciled rather than suppressed. When this is done, the Turkish Republic and the EU will meet at the gates of a new Europe that is not afraid of harboring the diversity that it has advocated respect for. This gate will open to a new world where Europe, strengthened with a transformed Turkey, will be the beacon of a new civilization project larger than Europe inviting others to join in. Only then Europeanism will cease to be an exclusive club serving only its members rather than all of humanity as it has promised in its constitutive philosophy.
