http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352886/erdogan-exploits-eu-integration-charade-andrew-c-mccarthy
Turkey has never been, and will never be, welcome in the EU.
[On the Corner, Daniel Pipes notes that Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has expressly stated that “Turkey is not part of Europe” and should never be “accept[ed] as a full member” of the European Union. This is a refreshing bit of honesty. It is a commonplace for European elites to hold this view privately while publicly supporting an “integration process.” In shrewd irony, Turkey’s Islamic-supremacist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has capitalized on this phantom process to facilitate his goal of re-Islamizing Turkey — i.e., destroying the secular underpinnings of Ataturk’s state, which looked to Western liberalism, rather than sharia, as its model. In Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, I outline how Erdogan has exploited the EU Integration Charade. This column is adapted from that section of the book.]
In 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Freedom and Justice Party (AKP) won just 34 percent of the vote in Turkey’s national elections. It was only by a quirk in Kemalist law — a quirk that, ironically, was designed to keep Islamic supremacists out of power — that the AKP wrested control of the government. The new prime minister realized he was in no position to challenge head-on the “deep state” — the elite inner sanctum of military, bureaucratic, and judicial officials that has historically served as Ataturk’s secular bulwark against ever-thrumming Islamist ambitions. Erdogan would have to find ways to erode and nullify it. Still, he had cards to play.
The deep state cared passionately about Europe and America. It had been a Kemalist dream to integrate fully into the West: to be accepted into the European Union; to strengthen ties with the United States — with which the Turks, singularly among Muslim peoples, ingratiated themselves by their membership in NATO as well as their warm trade and military relations with Israel.
Ingeniously, Erdogan grasped the brute, unspoken truth of this dynamic: Turkey would never in a million years be admitted into the EU because Europe’s leaders would never tolerate it. But, of course, to say this aloud would be so déclassé, so downright Islamophobic, that the French and German elite would rather be caught sipping California wine. So rather than be forthright, they constructed for Turkey an open-ended European integration “process.” It is a limitless series of hoops for the Turks to jump through, at the end of which Ankara will be admitted to the club, probably right around the time hell freezes over or the euro becomes the world’s reserve currency.
Like all Islamists, Erdogan has contempt for Europe and the West. The objective of Muslim supremacists is to dominate and Islamize Western countries, not emulate them. Yet Erdogan is resourceful enough to exploit to his advantage the Kemalist dream of European integration, and Europe’s responsive gamesmanship. For among the steps Turkey must theoretically climb on the ladder to Euro-worthiness are religious liberty, the separation of religion and the state, and civilian control of the military.
Erdogan has expertly leveraged these metrics to cow the deep state into abiding an Islamic cultural revival. Under the guise of improving religious liberty, he has maintained — even enhanced — governmental supervision of religious institutions, but he has replaced secularist bureaucrats with adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood’s brand of Islamic supremacism. Most significantly, Erdogan has subdued Turkey’s armed forces as a threat to his power. Pointing to Western admonitions against military interference in government, he forced the generals to back down from their threat to block his ally, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, from becoming president. He then used his control over prosecutorial authority to trump up sedition cases that purged his opponents from the military’s upper ranks.
