Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's vision for an executive presidency promises to continue his country's slide toward authoritarianism.

It wasn't so long ago that the Turkish leader was seen as a model democrat in the Islamic world. What happened?

Sabina Frizell is a research associate in the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week alone, Turkey jailed two journalists on trumped-up terrorism charges, threatened to sue a professor for insulting President Erdogan, and pushed forward the same construction project that sparked massive anti-government protests in 2013. As Turkey’s democracy deteriorates, German-Turkish relations have gone from tense to outright hostile. Chancellor Angela Merkel is vacillating on whether to hold firm to core European Union (EU) values of democracy and human rights or appease Turkey. She can either continue to waver, tacitly accepting Erdogan’s behavior, or send Turkey a strong signal that its human and civil rights violations are unacceptable. Germany and Turkey are bound by over fifty years of migration. Starting in the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Turks began immigrating to Germany under its supposedly temporary Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program—but many stayed beyond the intended one-to-two years, bringing their families and settling for good. Today Germany has over three million citizens and residents of Turkish descent, making Turks the country’s largest immigrant group. Amid the ongoing refugee crisis, migration again ties the two countries together. Germany and Turkey were the primary negotiators of the EU-Turkey migrant deal, which set up a one-for-one trade of asylum seekers for Syrian refugees. The EU also pledged €6 billion for Turkey to help settle migrants, and raised the possibility of visa-free travel for Turks. Though widely declared a human rights catastrophe (and rightly so), the deal is critical to Merkel’s already-waning popularity at home—and its success in stemming the flow of migrants hinges on Turkey’s cooperation. As a result, Merkel’s government developed some degree of dependency on Turkey, despite Erdogan’s many affronts to democracy and ever-tightening grip on power. In this context, Germany has at times compromised its own values rather than strain its relationship with Turkey, as in the case of the charges against German comedian Jan Böhmermann. After Böhmermann read a crude poem insulting Erdogan on television, the Turkish government filed a criminal complaint demanding that Germany charge him for violating an archaic German law from the 19th century that prohibits slander of foreign heads of state. Though the law leaves some room for interpretation—it applies to slander, but not satire, riding a fine and subjective line—Merkel approved a criminal prosecution against Böhmermann, and even apologized for the poem. With Turkey extending limitations on free speech beyond its borders, many Germans were outraged, saying Merkel was kowtowing to Erdogan for fear that he might back out of the migrant deal. But the Bundestag has also proved ready to challenge Turkey. This month, the parliament voted almost unanimously to officially recognize the Ottomans’ slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as genocide. Germany follows over twenty countries that have passed similar resolutions, but its voice is especially significant given both its own history, and its complicity with the Armenian genocide as a then ally of the Ottoman Empire (which the resolution acknowledges, calling Germany “partially responsible.”) The Turkish government, which vehemently denies the killings constitute genocide contrary to almost all historical assessments, called Germany’s vote a “test of friendship” and within hours recalled their ambassador to Turkey—warning the move was just a first step. Judging by Turkey’s short memory of other countries’ rulings on the genocide, the threats will likely die down. But the episode nevertheless rattled the countries’ fragile bond. Germany is attempting a precarious balance with Erdogan, and should adopt a more coherent stance—one that recognizes his government’s transgressions consistently, not selectively. To start it should make aid, not just visa-free travel, contingent on Turkish respect for human rights, especially those of the migrants. With a wave of far right parties gaining momentum across Europe and the refugee deal falling apart, Merkel’s center right Christian Democratic Union party may be in jeopardy. Recent polls show support for the bloc is at an all-time low, while distrust of Turkey is rising. Merkel’s ability to manage relations with Ankara will be one crucial piece of maintaining public support.

The Turkish presidency is seeking to clarify President Erdogan's recent remarks in which he favorably compared his vision of an executive presidency with Nazi Germany. This is not the first time he has said outrageous things only to walk them back.

What can anyone say about Turkey’s new presidential palace that has not already been said? It is enormous. It is gaudy. It is expensive. I am not sure what was wrong with the old place, which is nestled into a hillside in the Cankaya area of Ankara. Inside, it was a tasteful blend of republicanism with a subtle nod to Ottoman greatness, but it was altogether understated. The aura of the old palace seemed consistent with the restraint and above-politics powers that were built into the Turkish presidency. I guess it was no longer right for the times. In many ways, the new building’s size and ostentation befits the castle’s current resident—Recep Tayyip Erdogan—whose charisma, fearlessness, malevolence, and political cunning have made him the most important person in Turkey. He is, in effect, president, prime minister, foreign minister, mayor of Istanbul, and moral conscience to the nation. And therein lies the symbolic importance of this neo-Ottoman monstrosity that has risen in a forest that was once Ataturk’s private property. The new palace is a physical representation of what the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has sought to do since it came to power 12 years ago: Bury Ataturkism, rendering it a historical artifact—a fossil—all the while aggrandizing the new great man, Erdogan, who the faithful refer to as the “Great Master.” The AKP has always paid lip service to Ataturk, but they never had any actual commitment to him. They came to power in antipathy to the “six arrows” of Ataturkism—republicanism, secularism, “revolutionism,” statism, nationalism, and a particular kind of populism. In this opposition, Erdogan and his followers are not wrong. Strict adherence to these principles—or at least the way Ataturkism’s true believers interpreted them after Ataturk’s death in 1938—demanded a political conformity that was not just secular, but irreligious and openly hostile to piety. It was also built on an ethnic chauvinism that could not accommodate Kurds in the Turkish midst. In order to maintain control over pious Turks and the country’s sizeable Kurdish minority, the political system that Ataturk built had to be authoritarian. Ataturkism’s supporters and apologists would vehemently protest this claim, citing the advent of multi-party elections in the 1950s, the dizzying array of coalition governments in the 1970s, and the energetic opposition press, but Turkish politics during those years was played within a narrow band acceptable only to the General Staff. Whenever politics strayed beyond what the officers perceived to be a threat to the republican order the military responded, most famously in the four coups d’états between 1960 and 1997 but also in countless other routine interventions through channels of influence the commanders placed strategically throughout the system. The military’s interventions reveal in and of themselves the weakness of Ataturkism. It never became embedded in the minds of Turks in a way that made Ataturkism “common sense.” Consequently, it was always vulnerable to political challenge, meaning the military always needed to be vigilant in shoring it up through force and coercion. It was a losing proposition, though. Ataturkism was bound to fail. In the nine decades since the implementation of Ataturk’s reforms, Turkish society has become more complex, differentiated, and linked to the world beyond Anatolia. Despite its negative consequences for Kurds and religious Turks, perhaps Ataturkism was necessary at that moment after WWI when Turks found themselves at their greatest peril. Now it just seems irrelevant, which is why Erdogan’s new palace—more a mix of the worst of Dubai and Turkmenistan than Mimar Sinan—is so gratuitous. Ataturkism was already dead; there is no need to bury it again.

There is a lot that seems inexplicable about Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent conduct.  In the last few years, the Turkish prime minister has squandered the good will of many of his citizens and his counterparts around the world.  Erdogan once represented a kind of Turkish “third way” (as cliché as that sounds) in which political reform and compromise were combined with economic liberalism and a consciously Muslim identity, but now he is mostly  known for bluster, intimidation, and the reversal of the impressive political reforms of 2003 and 2004. The prime minister’s routine bullying of his opponents seems rather unnecessary given his mastery of the Turkish political arena. That said, the most recent head-scratching episode came a few weeks ago upon the Turkish leader’s visit to the grieving people of Soma—the site of Turkey’s worst mining disaster ever.  Erdogan, who was ostensibly there to express sympathy for the families of the 305 dead miners, ended up slapping a protester unhappy with the government’s handling of the catastrophe.  If that was not enough, the ”Great Master” as his adoring press refers to Erdogan, reportedly called the poor man, “Israeli semen” as he stole away. Astonishing, to say the least.  Recently, Michael Weiss of FP.com and Now Lebanon—a keen observer of events in Syria, Turkey, and Russia—asked whether Erdogan is a “poached egg.”  Weiss’ work is always interesting and provocative, yet behind Erdogan’s sometimes curious behavior is a brilliant politician who deftly manipulates Turkey’s past greatness and humiliations, to powerful political effect. It is easy for anyone who has ever been within five feet of Erdogan to conclude that he is among the best politicians of his time—only Bill Clinton seems better.  The Turkish leader has an innate ability to reach a lot of Turks at their core.  It is not just that he understands what makes his constituents tick, but it is almost as if he represents every dream, wish, and desire they have ever had for Turkey and themselves.  For many, Erdogan is the ultimate expression of a new Turkish man—strong, emotional, pious, confident, and clear-eyed and unapologetic about Turkey’s greatness.  This gives him a significant reservoir of support to do the kinds of things that the prime minister has been doing. Take the much-discussed Twitter ban, which was lifted by court order in April.  As I discussed in a previous post, the attacks on Twitter and the continuing YouTube blackout are winning political tactics for Erdogan.  The same goes for the AKP’s efforts to exert control over the Supreme Council of Judges and Public Prosecutors, the threats directed at the Gulen movement, the criminalization of first aid under certain circumstances, the gerrymandering of electoral districts, and the intimidation of the Turkish media.  This runs the gamut from distasteful to frightening, but it is both entirely rational and a winning political strategy. Erdogan’s seemingly thuggish approach to politics works so well because it is framed in a way that evokes a simplified version of Turkish history in which a great country and people were debased  by the manipulation and double-dealings of outside powers and their local agents.  Hammering away at the “interest rate lobby,”  “international bankers,” “Zionists,” and “Pennsylvania”—Erdogan’s shorthand for the Gulen movement’s leader, Fethullah Gulen, who resides in a gated compound in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania—as the prime minister does so often, seems deeply strange and profoundly paranoid, but the historical record has bequeathed Erdogan a wealth of material that makes his current tale of Turkey-under-siege plausible to large numbers of Turks. Americans and other observers may have a hard time remembering what took place almost a century ago during and immediately after WWI, but Turks do not.  Here is a refresher:           The recently much discussed (inaccurately) Sykes-Picot Agreement was actually the Sykes-Picot-Sazanov Agreement.  There is some debate about the extent of Russian (Sergey Sazanov was the Tsarist era foreign minister) participation in negotiating the agreement, but it was enough that it imagined a post-war settlement in which Moscow controlled Istanbul and the Turkish Straits (the Dardenelles and Bosporus).             When Hussein Rauf met Admiral Arthur Calthorpe aboard the British warship Agamemnon on October 28, 1918, the British commander assured Rauf that the allies would not occupy Istanbul.  Of course, the British (and French, whom Calthorpe was also in theory representing) immediately went back on their word.  As Margaret Macmillan wrote in her wonderful book, Paris 1919: “In London, the British cabinet received the news of the armistice [with the Ottoman Empire] with delight and fell to discussing how Constantinople ought to be occupied…”             Then there is the Treaty of Sevres (1920), which not only brought the Ottoman Empire to a merciful end, but also made provisions for an independent Armenia and Kurdistan in Anatolia and granted Greece control over islands in the Aegean close to the Dardenelles as well as control over territory along the west coast of what is now Turkey and Eastern Thrace (now known as European Turkey or the Marmara region).   One might reasonably wonder what these distant events have to do with Erdogan’s conduct.  Everything. When the Turkish leader spins conspiracies about foreign plots and parallel states, he is reminding Turks of a painful past, and telling them that he will never allow what befell the Ottoman Empire—which has been celebrated in the AKP era—to happen to Turkey.  This is not to condone what Erdogan and the AKP’s leaders have done. Rather it is important to grasp the Turkish historical context in order to understand how  the prime minister has manipulated it for his own political ends  It also provides a clearer picture of Erdogan.  The Turkish prime minister may seem off, but there is every reason to believe that he knows exactly what he is doing.  

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a stunningly gifted politician.  He can be thuggish, high-handed, painfully arrogant, but he also seems to have an innate sense of what makes many Turks tick and how to connect with them.  The Gezi Park protests that began last spring—and never really ended—brought tens of thousands of people out into the streets in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, as well as smaller demonstrations in other cities to denounce the Turkish leader and his AK Party, but Erdogan was able to muster hundreds of thousands of supporters in response.  At the time I wrote that Erdogan was weak and vulnerable precisely because the prime minister felt compelled to stage rallies to prove his popularity.  That piece seems to dovetail well with more recent articles wondering if the current corruption scandal roiling Turkey means the “end of Erdogan” or whether his days “are numbered.” I stand by everything I wrote in “The Strong Man at His Weakest,” but Erdogan is not going anywhere.  He may even be the prime minister again. That does not mean that the apparent slugfest has not damaged Erdogan, it certainly has. Yet these injuries (mostly self-inflicted) are offset by the fact that the prime minister’s opponents have some significant political disadvantages and constraints of their own.  It may not seem that way, but upon close inspection Tayyip Bey may very well ride out this scandal. It seems that everyone in Ankara and Washington is waiting for Turkish president Abdullah Gul to exploit the prime minister’s current problems and wrest control of the AKP.  This makes sense, Gul is an enormously appealing personality.  Like Erdogan, he is charismatic, but in an altogether different way.  Gul is the quieter, confident, more thoughtful and statesman-like of the two. I have met President Gul on a number of occasions and after each encounter, I’ve wanted to stay at the Cankaya Palace so that some of his wisdom and what can only be described as that inner Gul-ian centeredness and self-actualization could rub off on me.  (Those who have also had the privilege of meeting the Turkish president know exactly what I am talking about.) By all measures, Gul is popular among Turks.  Large and enthusiastic crowds turn out to greet him whenever he travels around the country, leading some observers to speculate that Turkish voters might be tired of Erdogan’s bombast in favor of a more understated leader like Gul. Finally, the president has signaled, albeit mostly implicitly, that he disapproves of Erdogan’s decidedly illiberal turn domestically and his undisciplined approach to the world. When the Gezi Park protests kicked into high-gear last spring one of my Turkey yodas wondered aloud whether the president had the stomach to fight Erdogan.  It’s a good question, though I suspect Gul’s been in a fair number of political brawls in his time.  Whether the president has guts is not the problem.  Gul is an important figure in Turkey and in the AKP—he was among the party’s founders in August 2001 and served as Justice and Development’s first prime minister while Erdogan remained banned from politics—but one wonders how broad and deep his support runs in the party.  Of government ministers, I count only one who has remained solidly in the Gul camp while others became Erdogan men and the party’s parliamentary caucus belongs to the prime minister. There have been stories coming out of Ankara about a steady stream of AKP notables making their way to Gul’s office to encourage him to enter the political arena when his term is up this summer and take on Erdogan. That is good news for Gul boosters, but I am not sure this pilgrimage adds up to that much politically.  It is true that leaders tend to wear out their welcome after a decade—give or take a few years—and there is a noticeable uptick in Erdogan-fatigue of late, compounded by the corruption scandal. Yet the prime minister’s eleven years in office combined with both his particular political style and the fact that Gul’s position places him above politics gives Erdogan a certain advantage. The AK party is vertically and horizontally integrated into political and economic life of the country.  Erdogan’s patronage networks have taken a hit recently and the press is getting a bit braver, but these are not necessarily fatal problems for the prime minister.  I do not mean to minimize his political problems nor the very real challenge that the corruption investigations pose to Erdogan’s mastery of the political arena, but the prime minister still has considerable resources at his disposal that Gul does not have, if only because the president by dint of the apolitical nature of his office has not been pulling the levers and making things happen since 2007 when he was elected to the post. In addition to weighing his chances in a fight with Erdogan, Gul has to calculate how much damage it would do to the AKP.  The party may have become an expression of Erdogan, but it is also Gul’s baby and the vehicle for the president’s own success and Turkey’s transformation.  More than anything else an Erdogan-Gul fight for political supremacy will do considerable damage to the AKP and up-end both men’s ambitions.  Some observers do not think this is necessarily a bad idea and that it might be good for Turkish democracy if the inevitable result of an AKP clash of titans is a second center-right party.  It could be, but these observers are not Abdullah Gul, who has an entirely different set of issues, incentives, and constraints to consider.  And anyway it is important to remember that the last time there were two viable center-right parties in Turkey—Dogru Yol and Anavatan—it did not have a salutary effect on democracy. Speaking of parties, there is a conventional wisdom emerging that the Republican People’s Party (known by the Turkish, CHP) may be able to take advantage of Erdogan’s troubles in the March 30 local elections, especially in Istanbul.   There is a ton of buzz about the party’s candidate for mayor of the Greater Istanbul Muncipality, Mustafa Sarigul.  I am perfectly willing to believe that Sarigul is a more viable candidate than the false political saviors of Turkey’s past, but I still have reservations that he has as much appeal in Istanbul as is widely assumed.  It seems that DC and European-based Turkey watchers are thinking like DC and European-based Turkey watchers instead of trying to understand how an average Istanbuli might look at this race. Let’s remember that the CHP’s left-of-center, European-style social democracy is a meaningless label. It’s primarily an elite affair that does not have much to offer anyone beyond its core 25 percent constituency that is located primarily along the coastal rim roughly running from Istanbul to Anatalya. The party made some sputtering attempts to make an issue of the growing divide between rich and poor in the last national election, but it is clearly the party of the upscale districts of Istanbul like Sisli—where Sarigul serves as mayor of the local municipality. If your average Turk of modest means surveys the last decade, they will no doubt point out that they now have running water, healthcare, transportation, and some money in their pockets.  While the CHP was fighting internally and complaining of the perfidy of Erdogan, the AKP was providing services that Turks need and in the process broadened its constituency. Why would average Istanbulis who have benefitted from the AKP years vote for Sarigul and a party that has been contemptuous of them for years?  The fact that the AKP and people close to the prime minister were recently revealed to be corrupt is not likely to be enough to throw the election to the CHP candidate because of Siragul’s own well known problems with corruption. All things being equal then, the AKP’s candidate—who is not Erdogan, but might as well be—is likely to get the nod from voters.  The wild card here is Fethullah Gulen, the cleric and theologian who commands a huge following in Turkey (from Pennsylvania).  The corruption scandal is widely believed to be part of a larger battle between Gulen and Erdogan over who is the biggest man in Turkish politics: Gulen is rumored to have struck a deal with CHP leaders to throw his support behind Sarigul in the elections. It would be a setback to Erdogan if he loses Istanbul, his hometown. A symbolic blow to be sure, but in order to divine the prime minister’s political future, analysts are going to have to take a hard look at the local elections returns from all over the country.  Even then, it might not tell us very much.  In 2009, AKP candidates for local positions collectively garnered 38.9 percent of the vote, which was an 8-percentage point decrease from the party’s totals in the 2007 national parliamentary election. It did not tell us anything about the AKP’s prospects because the party came roaring back in the 2011 parliamentary elections with 49.95 percent of the vote—the most ever for a Turkish political party since 1954. I can hear the screaming of every Turkey watcher from Washington to Brussels.  I can assure them, I recognize the significant differences between 2009/2011 and now.  My only points are that no one has any inkling about the likely outcome of a Turkish election until about 2 or 3 weeks before the polls open and don’t count out Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  He is too good a politician and his opponents have more challenges going into these elections than people realize. No one should be surprised if they wake up on March 31 and it is Erdogan for the win.  

In what the Turkish press is building up to be a “historic” trip, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be visiting Washington next week.  Much has changed since he was last here in December 2009.  In particular, Turkey’s position in the region has, despite its strong economic performance and rising diplomatic stature, deteriorated markedly:   Iraq is teetering on the brink of another round of civil war; Iran’s nuclear program has proceeded apace; Turkey’s ally in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi is dead; and Bashar al Assad, in whom the prime minister invested so much time, has killed somewhere between 70 and 80 thousand of his own people and has made millions of others refugees.  The only recent geo-political bright spot has been Israel’s apology for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident.  That is not saying much given that bilateral ties between Ankara and Jerusalem are likely to remain strained. In a region that is in turmoil and where some of Washington’s partners are gone or under political pressure, Prime Minister Erdogan stands tall as an important partner.  That is at least what the two governments would like everyone to believe, but even as American and Turkish interests align, there are significant differences about how best to achieve them.  Nowhere is this more the case than in Syria and Iraq. In the spring of 2011, Prime Minister Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sought to convince Bashar al Assad to negotiate with his opponents and undertake significant political reforms.  They failed, miscalculating their own ability to influence Assad’s decision-making and underestimating how much, despite their best efforts, the Syrian leader relied on Iran.  Since they were rebuffed and Syrian refugees began pouring over the Turkish border in increasing numbers, Turkish policy has moved 180 degrees.  Giving Assad time to reform morphed into “Assad must go” and, in the process, Ankara has tried to enlist a deeply reluctant Washington to play a role in helping to topple the Assad regime through stepped up support for the rebellion, the establishment of safe zones within Syria’s territory to relieve pressure on Turkey, and a No Fly Zone.  For Turkey, the Syrian civil war has all kinds of effects on its national security ranging from the challenges of playing host to anywhere between 325 and 450 thousand refugees and the complications the conflict has on the nascent peace process with the PKK and Ankara’s relations with Erbil.  There is a broader issue at play as well.  Ankara now finds itself in a proxy war with Iran in Syria and would like Washington’s help rolling back Iranian influence.  Turkish policymakers are confounded that Washington does not see Syria as a place to deal Tehran a blow.   Although it seems that some change in U.S. policy is in the offing, Washington is clearly wary of a Syrian quagmire and does not believe that the end of Assad means the end of Iran’s role in Syria.  Under these circumstances, whatever the Obama administration has to offer Prime Minister Erdogan, it is likely to fall short of what Ankara believes it needs. If the Syrian civil war had never happened, Iraq would likely top the U.S.-Turkey agenda.  From the perspective of the Turks, Washington’s Iraq policy is, well, nuts. To Ankara, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is an authoritarian pursuing a sectarian policy in Iraq and has become increasingly aligned with Iran.  They point to the pressure on Iraqi Sunni politicians and leaders, notably the case of Tariq al Hashimi, Iraq’s Sunni vice president who is enjoying safe haven in Turkey after being charged with terrorism and sentenced to death.  More generally, Maliki is clearly favoring the Shi’a, which has only stoked frustration among the Sunnis.  This is giving al Qaeda of Iraq material with which to work, threatening to undermine a lot of the hard work—political and military—that the United States put into keeping the country together during and after the surge.  Yet from Ankara’s perspective, it cannot understand why Washington has done precious little to pressure Maliki or arrest the decline in Iraqi security.  Ankara also is not quite sure of what to make of Washington’s policy regarding Turkey’s relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government.  Everyone applauded as Turkey went from being the “most likely to invade” northern Iraq to a diplomatic and economic partner of the Kurds in the service of a unified, federal Iraq.  Yet Ankara is dismayed at the growing tension between Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad and lack of U.S. attention to the problem.  Of course, Ankara contributed to these strains when, over Iraqi and American objections, they signed a gas deal with Erbil.  Still, the deal itself was indicative of the fact that neither the Turks nor the Kurds had much faith in Maliki’s faith in a unified Iraq.  Add to this mix Turkey’s charge that Iraq is complicit with Iran in Tehran’s efforts to arm the Assad regime.  Ankara was stunned in early April that there were no consequences for Maliki when he rebuffed U.S. requests that Iraq inspect Iranian aircraft destined for Syria traversing its airspace and Syrian aircraft on their way back from Iran.  More recently, the Iraqis have conducted the inspections, but have generally allowed the planes to continue to their destinations, claiming that no weapons were found.. The Turks have a point: Maliki is no democrat, he is pursuing sectarian policies, and he has aligned Baghdad with Tehran on important issues.  Of course, Iraq is far more complicated than Turkish complaints suggest, but that does not mean that Ankara is wrong.  It is time for Washington to rethink its approach to Iraq.  That said, for the moment Washington is stuck with Maliki and seems to have very little in the way of leverage to influence the direction of Iraq’s politics.  Consequently, President Obama is unlikely to have much to offer Prime Minister Erdogan on Iraq other than platitudes about American commitments and engagement. One area where Washington can deliver is on trade.  As the United States and Europe undertake free trade agreement negotiations, the Obama administration should make sure that Turkey can benefit from the massive new free trade zone of almost a billion consumers that will result.  Beyond that, the Erdogan visit will be important, but heavier on symbolism and positive rhetoric than it is on substance.

Last week brought some seemingly good news for Turkey’s long moribund effort to join the European Union. At a joint press conference in Berlin with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that "The EU is an honest negotiating partner" and that Brussels would pursue Turkey’s membership in "good faith." In a way, there was reason for Turks to celebrate Merkel’s forward leaning statements.  Both she and former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, have been the most vocal and public proponents of what they call a "privileged partnership" for Turkey in lieu of full EU membership, which is a nice way of saying the status quo.  Merkel’s willingness to energize the accession process is no doubt more apparent than real, however.  European opposition to Turkey’s membership in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs is pretty wide and deep even among European leaders who give lip service to the notion. It goes without saying that Turkey isn’t ready for EU membership.  Ankara still needs to address a host of political problems including human rights issues, freedom of the press, the quality of the judicial system, and the generalized backsliding on the ambitious democratic reforms the Justice and Development Party began in 2003.  There is also, of course, the state of relations between the Republic of Cyprus--an EU member--and Turkey, which has tens of thousands of troops on the island protecting the  orphaned and illegitimate Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.  Resolving these issues will be daunting and require political leadership, but one can imagine ways in which they can be solved. No, the problems with Turkey’s EU membership are not technical-political-foreign policy related, but rather are directly related to the Europeans’ fundamental inability to agree on what "Europe" is and what it means to be "European." If the EU is geographic, co-terminus with predominantly Christian countries, Turkey’s bid for membership continues only because Brussels doesn’t want to be tagged as anti-Muslim and the Turks don’t want to let the Europeans off the hook for promises that were made to the Turks about integration with Europe dating as far back as the 1964 Ankara Agreement.  If, however, Europe is based on a set of common ideas, norms, and principles about rule of law, transparency, tolerance, and consensual politics then Turkey could clearly be an EU member one day. My sense is that when a lot of Europeans pull their covers up at night, they regard the European Union in geographic terms and recoil at the idea that Europe could one day border Iraq, Syria, and Iran.  Moreover, imagine your average Frenchman or German who think of themselves and their countries as the most important members of the largest economic bloc in the world. It must be jarring that one day they may wake up to find that 75 million Turks have joined the Union and now have the largest representation in the European parliament, the biggest military, and most dynamic economy in Europe. That thought can’t sit well and Turkey’s membership is clearly political freight European chauvinism is not likely to bear any time soon. Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Erdogan have clearly decided to let Turkey’s minister for EU Affairs, Egemen Bagis, continue burning jet fuel in his quixotic mission rather than let some of these well-known, but rarely spoken ugly truths out in the open.