French socialist's unfair report on Turkey

Abdullah Bozkurt

I have been writing extensively on the Council of Europe (CoE) and the works of its institutions, including the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and others in recent years. I believe the concerns raised in the CoE, the largest intergovernmental organization in Europe with 47 members, have helped Turkey usher in reforms that were demanded by Turks as well.

But frankly, I was surprised with the level of intense criticism that was raised by Ms. Josette Durrieu, who has drafted one of the harshest reports yet on Turkey as the PACE rapporteur in connection with the post-monitoring dialogue with Turkey. Some of the assertions included in this report were simply disconnected from reality at times or based on hearsay without offering any evidence to substantiate these claims.

Durrieu's report on Turkey, which is a radical departure from one written by her predecessor Serhiy Holovaty, Ukrainian deputy and former chairperson of the Monitoring Committee, represents an unfair characterization of the Turkish democratic transition from a military-dominated, coup-laden era of politics to a civilian-controlled one that truly reflects democracy, the rule of law and fundamental human rights, all key pillars of the CoE. It is true that there are many shortcomings in Turkish democracy that need to be addressed, but the state of affairs is definitely much better today, with many significant accomplishments having been recorded since 2004, when Turkey graduated from the CoE monitoring stage to the post-monitoring stage. Hence one would expect that the post-monitoring report should be written in a way to show that pattern of progress. What is more, Ms. Durrieu decided to focus on issues that were not even within the scope of the 12 benchmarks that Turkey needed to fulfill to get out of the post-monitoring dialogue process as mentioned in Resolution 1380, adopted in 2004. This has prompted Nursuna Memecan, the chairwoman of the Turkish delegation to PACE, to raise her dissention with the findings and descriptions on 17 separate points included in Durrieu's report.

For example, she said the report labels her governing party as being dubbed “Islamo-conservative” by its opponents and objects to the inclusion of this term in the report. I agree with Ms. Memecan because there is no such political discourse or terminology in political science literature, at least not in the general sense that is accepted by the mainstream scholars of political theory. The term invoked by Durrieu actually recalls fringe labels like Islamo-fascism or Islamo-terrorism that Islamophobic marginal groups and websites try to promote all over, dealing a blow to a fair characterization of Islam and stigmatizing and stereotyping Muslims all over the world. I suggest the socialist deputy take another look at the June 2010 Islamophobia report adopted overwhelmingly in PACE by over 100 deputies, including two of her socialist friends, Jean-Claude Frecon and Maryvonne Blondin. I was there to watch the debate on the floor in the morning session of PACE on June 23, 2010, and listened to Ms. Durrieu's intervention on the floor during which she surprisingly associated religious extremist groups with the popular populist movements that won elections in different countries. When the voting came up on the resolution, she was absent from the floor.

Touching on the recent educational reform in Turkey, the socialist deputy also raises the issue of imam-hatip high schools, which are a type of secondary education institution in Turkey. These schools have existed in Turkey since 1924 in different forms until the National Security Council (MGK) shut down the middle school section of imam-hatip schools after the Feb. 28, 1997 military postmodern coup. The recent reform simply restored this abnormal and abrupt change adopted by the government at the time under the pressure of the junta in the army. These schools are actually the equivalent of Catholic schools widely available in the US or in Europe and most people send their kids not because of extra religious courses taught there but in fact for their children to learn social codes and good manners. These schools have produced very successful politicians, academics, journalists, writers and businesspeople from all walks of life. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself is also a graduate of this school system. A recent survey revealed that these schools are well respected in Turkish society.

By claiming that “the slow process of the strengthening of Islam could undermine the principle of secularism” based on the fact that the position of imam-hatip schools was restored to pre-1997 coup status, Durrieu has in fact aligned herself with the coup mentality in Turkey that has no respect for religious pluralism, cultural diversity, the rule of law and fundamental rights. That claim has no business whatsoever in the post-monitoring report that was supposed to identify shortcomings on the benchmarks promoted by the CoE. Durrieu was either grossly misled to believe in that ridiculous assertion by her own researchers on the team accompanying her during the drafting stages or by some interlocutors she met in Turkey. She disregarded explanations offered to her by Nabi Avcı, the then chairman of the National Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Commission in the Turkish Parliament and current education minister during a meeting held on June 2012. By the way, in case Ms. Durrieu is not aware, the experience Turkey has accumulated through these religious schools is now in high demand in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where governments there see them as a panacea to religious radicalism and fanaticism and in countries where the Arab Spring is taking place in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Durrieu seems to have taken a side with the marginal view regarding the landmark coup trials in Turkey, describing them as “purging.” While many in Turkey, including non-Muslims and minority groups, hail these cases, which are the first of their kind in the Republic of Turkey's history that brought perpetrators of coups and plots to trial, the French socialist deputy has given an impression that she wants to support these neo-nationalist figures that conspired to kill leaders of Christian minority groups in Turkey just to wreak havoc in society, while embarrassing the civilian government they hate in international forums, including PACE. They were hoping that the ensuing chaotic environment would ripen the conditions for a military takeover. Durrieu has amplified claims expressed by Ergenekon suspects she met for six hours on June 18, 2012, in Silivri Prison, as well as opinions of another suspect who sent an unsubstantiated complaint letter about Turkey to her a month later.

On some points, like the high 10 percent election threshold, I agree with Durrieu. Even former PACE President Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who is now in charge of the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) external relations, called on several occasions for the reduction of this threshold to a more reasonable level. But there are other issues that made it into the report that have in fact nothing to do with what the post-monitoring dialogue process entails. Due to space considerations, however, I will highlight one last one which surprised many. For reasons unknown, the French rapporteur decided to add an old and refuted claim that “the Gülen movement has infiltrated public institutions in Turkey.” She says she had obtained this information from people she had talked to in the last two years without offering any evidence to substantiate this claim. That may explain her lack of knowledge about Fethullah Gülen, the well-respected Muslim scholar who is admired by millions both in Turkey and abroad. There is a mass amount of information on public record about this 72-year-old Muslim scholar whose work has been extensively scrutinized because he has written and spoken on many issues for decades.

The claim Ms. Durrieu raised in the report did not surface in the last two years but in fact have been there for many years. In fact, there was even a legal case brought against him on similar charges, under the pressure of a military junta that orchestrated the 1997 postmodern coup, that resulted in his acquittal in 2006. The decision was later approved by the Supreme Court of Appeals. Instead of respecting the court's decision, Durrieu rehashed these old claims and made the PACE report part of extrajudicial and ill-founded defamation efforts propagated by neo-nationalist groups in Turkey. Unfortunately, Mr. Gülen, unlike national delegations represented in the Parliamentary Assembly, does not have the power to speak on his behalf to respond to Durrieu's manifestly ill-founded claims and make his case to PACE deputies. That by itself should be reason enough to drop this one-sided argument against him from the draft report. I should also mention that millions who subscribe to Gülen's interfaith and intercultural dialogue efforts are not aliens in Turkey and do not need to infiltrate their own government agencies. As citizens, they have the right to apply for government jobs, which require merit-based screening for qualification rather than ethnic, religious, ideological or any other affiliation and identification.

The report will be discussed on April 24 during the second PACE session of the year. Let's hope that other committee members and the Parliamentary Assembly will make necessary amendments to alter the draft report in order to reflect the true nature of post-monitoring dialogue. As it stands, some parts of the report are not a dialogue but Ms. Durrieu's monologue. On a side note, Durrieu's harsh report on Turkey can have a chilling impact on French President François Hollande's bid to repair the rift between the two countries in his upcoming visit to Turkey. Who could have imagined that a socialist deputy from the same party would deal a blow to what her former party boss and country's current leader has been trying to accomplish with Turkey?

Published on Today's Zaman, 15 April 2013, Monday