Turkey and the European Union. An image problem

The government is not doing enough for Turkey's international reputation

MARC GROSSMAN, a former American ambassador to Turkey, would frequently complain that Turkey lacked "the PR gene". Prickly, proud and fiercely nationalistic, the Turks are decidedly bad at the art of public relations. A popular adage has it that "the Turk has no other friend than the Turk." Yet this will have to change if Turkey is ever to join the European Union. Despite a blizzard of reforms that helped Turkey win its prized start of EU membership talks in October, opposition is on the rise. France and Austria have pledged to hold referendums on Turkey's accession. Polls suggest that, right now, both would be lost by wide margins.

One factor is undoubtedly a general enlargement fatigue within the EU. But another is Turkey's image. Yet Turkish leaders seem neither to understand nor to care. That was certainly the impression that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, gave on a recent trip to Copenhagen. He attacked a Danish newspaper that ran cartoons of Muhammad, saying that "freedom of expression is important, but what is holy to me is more important." He then boycotted a press conference with his Danish counterpart, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, because Mr Rasmussen had declined to kick out a journalist from Roj TV, a Kurdish satellite channel that is a pulpit for separatist PKK rebels. Turkish nationalists were delighted, but relations with Denmark have cooled.

Political gaffes may be forgotten, eventually. More lasting harm comes from the handful of repressive laws that have earned modern Turkey its bad reputation. Consider the case of Orhan Pamuk, a bestselling novelist. He will appear in court on December 16th on charges of insulting the Turkish identity, by making remarks (in Switzerland and Germany) not just about thousands of Kurds who have been killed, but also about the mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915. A slew of similar thought-crime cases launched against academics and writers has prompted warnings from the EU that Turkey's membership talks might be interrupted.

Ali Babacan, the finance minister who is now leading the EU talks, rules out more changes to the penal code to stop such cases. He says that their results should be awaited first, implying that there are unlikely to be any convictions. But this, comments one EU ambassador, is to miss the point, which is " that [the cases] should not be launched in the first place."

Government bumbling has prompted Turkey's main industrialist lobby, Tusiad, to mount its own campaign to burnish Turkey's image, stressing the country's recent economic progress. Many Europeans think of Turkey "as an agrarian backwater, even though farming accounts for 11% and services for 55% of GDP", says Oya Unlu, a top executive at Turkey's biggest conglomerate, KOC, which controls some 7% of the white-goods market in Europe. Tusiad's strategy also involves persuading Europeans that secular Turkey's moderate brand of Islam "can be part of the solution rather than an added cause for anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe", says Umit Boyner, who is in charge of the project.

European diplomats point out that, if Turkey is to disprove the popular talk of a "clash of civilisations", it should start to treat its own non-Muslim minorities better. It could begin with one of the most eminent figures in the Christian world, the Orthodox patriarch, Bartholomew I, who by a quirk of history resides in Istanbul. A loyal Turkish subject, he has lobbied hard for Turkey's inclusion in the European Union. But far from cherishing Bartholomew I, the Turkish state keeps him on a tight rein, and continues to resist his demands to reopen the Orthodox Christian seminary at Halki, near Istanbul. Reopening Halki, Mr Grossman also used frequently to note, was "a no-brainer" that could earn Turkey invaluable brownie points not just in Europe, but in America as well.

Article suggests that the Turkish government does not do enough to promote Turkey's international reputation.

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