DAR AL ISLAM - TURKEY: ATATURK'S DISAPPEARING TURKEY...NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, EUROPE SHOULD NOT PERMIT TURKEY TO ENTER THE EUROPEAN UNION

Turkey's militant Muslims should worry West
By Con Coughlin

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, was no friend of Islam. Late at night, and in his cups, Turkey's iconic leader would often refer to the nation's Islamic past as "a necklace of corpses" that defiled the new state he was trying to create from the ruins of the Ottoman empire.

The 15 years he governed the country is most remembered for the almost obsessive purge he undertook of the country's Muslim identity as he sought to create a society more attuned to the ways of modern Europe.

The Caliphate, the body that had governed the Muslim world for four centuries under the Ottomans, was unceremoniously abolished within months of the creation of the modern Turkish state.
The minarets of the country's mosques were silenced by a ban on the muezzin broadcasting their daily prayers, and the more radical madrassas were closed.

Anyone who turned up at Ankara's city walls in dress deemed to be too Islamic in nature was unceremoniously sent back to the provinces. Sharia law was replaced by a penal code modelled on that of Switzerland and the emancipation of women was encouraged by laws that banned the wearing of veils. Arabic script was replaced by the Latin alphabet, and the centuries-old ban on alcohol was lifted.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the crowds of demonstrators who have been protesting at the country's creeping Islamisation should carry banners bearing Ataturk's intimidating features.
The crude attempt by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's crypto-Islamic prime minister, to secure the presidency for a practising Muslim, Abdullah Gul, the current foreign minister, has provoked such outrage that the nation's military elite, who regard themselves as standard-bearers of Ataturk's legacy, threatened to stage yet another military coup.

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The mounting polarisation between Turkey's devout Muslims and its secular, mainly urban, elite should be a matter of grave concern for the West, which has often sent Ankara conflicting signals about its value as an ally.

In military and strategic terms, Turkey has long been regarded as a key asset, particularly after the September 11 attacks put it on the front line of Washington's various campaigns to root out Islamic terrorists and confront rogue states.

Yet Turkey's enthusiastic attempt to join the European Union has received a decidedly lukewarm response, with many member states expressing strong reservations about welcoming 70 million Muslims into an alliance whose population is more familiar with the tenets and traditions of Christianity.

The various delaying tactics Brussels has employed to postpone Turkey's entry, from doubts over its economic viability to Ankara's obstinacy about opening its ports to Greek Cypriot vessels, has not only succeeded in dampening the Turks' excitement about the whole venture, but has encouraged an upsurge in nationalistic fervour that underlies the country's current travails.

Accusations that the West's Islamophobia is responsible for blocking Turkey's entry to the EU have, perversely, increased support for Islamic groups that seek to accentuate the country's historic Muslim character.

Brussels' procrastination has also seen a revival of the ultra-nationalist groups that regard Cyprus as their cause célèbre, and are not afraid to use violence against anyone accused of "insulting Turkishness".

January's murder of Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist who accused the Turks of committing genocide against the Armenians during the First World War, is symptomatic of the paranoia and isolationism that is sweeping the country, and now threatens the long-term stability of a key Nato ally.

The EU's patronising treatment of Turkey's membership application has certainly not helped to placate this siege mentality, and explains why so many Turks now seek to invoke the spirit of Turkish nationalism espoused by Ataturk. But these are dangerous currents.

The generals, not the politicians, are the true keepers of the Ataturk flame and, like the country's founding father, they will not stand idly by if the Turks attempt a return to their old Islamic ways.


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