No to right wing parties in Europe, says the Turkish right

in several public rallies to protest the State of Israel. In further irony, it is the same state to whose president Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan reminded in Davos that "when it comes to killing you know it too well."Â

We can always find more ironies in such scenes of first class absurdity. Was it not Mr ErdoÄŸan himself who always advocated "the will of the nation?" Yes, the election results were the will of European nations, just like July 22, 2007 was that of the Turks. Now a bitter Mr ErdoÄŸan says the EU must honor its pledges for an eventual Turkish membership. Causing shy smiles in European capitals Mr ErdoÄŸan argues that Turkey is fit for accession.

Singing a similar tune, Murat Mercan, chairman of parliament’s foreign relations committee and a senior figure in Mr Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has said that "the tendency in Europe toward the extreme right is worrisome." Why should the European nations’ will be worrisome, in the first place; and since when have the French UMP, the German CDU or the British Conservatives been cataloged as "extreme right?"

And who is complaining about extreme right? Let’s seeÉ According to a survey by Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University, 81 percent of Turks believe that the EU’s goal is to spread Christianity. Research has also found that 52 percent of Turks would not wish to have Christian neighbors; and religion (Islam) is the most important thing for 62 percent of Turks Ğ while only 13 percent cited democracy as their sine qua non. Furthermore, 76 percent of Turks believe that the EU intends to divide their country. All that points to the trouble twins: religious and ethnic xenophobia.



Xenophobic Turks accusing Europe

And that’s exactly where the picture becomes complete black humor: Xenophobic Turks accusing Europeans of xenophobia! That, of course, does not mean that Europe is genuinely and wholly about the values it stands for. But at least we can empirically tell that democracy should be more important for the average European than religion.

According to the same survey, 57 percent of Turks still favor Turkish accession to the EU. Here the picture, ostensibly, gets a bit more complicated (ostensibly, because in reality it does not).

So we can conclude that a majority of Turks wish to join a club they believe aims to spread a religion they do not wish to Ğ physically Ğ co-habit with, a club which aims to divide their country. Do the Turks have a fetish for sleeping with snakes? They probably don’t.

The explanation is the anticipation of fat-salaried jobs and free travel and other potential benefits related to welfare suddenly pouring in after membership.

What are the other "alluring" features of "Turkey in the year 2009" that Mr Erdogan thinks make our country fit for membership? For example, the Global Peace Index puts Turkey 115th in a list of 144 countries. The EU member state that comes nearest to Turkey is Bulgaria which ranks 57th.

Any more Turkish jewels? Yes. The European Court of Human Rights has for the first time ruled against a state for failing to protect someone from domestic violence Äž the ruling has said that Turkey denied a woman her "right to life" by failing to protect her murder by her son in law.

But the case of journalist Nedim Şener is darker than any black humor. Mr Şener wrote a book revealing with substantial evidence how the giant Turkish state apparatus toyed with events that eventually led to the murder of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. You might think Mr Şener’s book has been banned.

Here is a little bit more than that. The prosecutors are demanding a prison sentence of 20 years for the murderer, Ogün Samast, and 28 years for Mr Şener for writing a book that tells about the "darker side of the moon." Well, neither Nikolas Sarkozy nor Angela Merkel should worry. With another decade of political engineering under Islamist rule the Europeans will not have to think about a future Turkish membership with probably 90 percent of "neo-Ottoman Turks" favoring jihad against continental Europe.

No to right-wing parties in Europe, says the Turkish right