Habemus Babam... After Erdoğan becoming President, we have a new Turkish Prime Minister: H.E. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Davutoğlu. Yes, an academic, and one who wrote a 298-page dissertation on the intellectual traditions of two civilisations (largely Western secularism and Islamic tawhid, oneness of god) and how it plays out today as an irreconcilability of Western norms and institutions within Muslim societies. Europe is concerned with Turkeys recent moves, and not just because of an academic thesis. One would be Turkeys explosive ties with Syria and Iran, not to mention its double stance towards Israel. foreignpolicy/articles/2010/12/02/hiding_in_plain_sight Bülent Aras, Senior Scholar at IPC (where I worked before) and former (?) academic advisor to Davutoğlu, already tried to smooth out the cracks in EU-Turkey relations by stating in his report in 2013: Davutoğlu suggests a more dynamic and functional framework of relations with the EU, which will make Turkey a full member in due course and contribute to the EU’s transformation into a more effective actor in world politics. He argues that Turkey offers something unique to the EU as it could give it an enlarged geopolitical imagination and staging, which will allow the EU to be a global player by consolidating Europe’s multicultural characteristics and providing access to Asia. ipc.sabanciuniv.edu/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/GTE_PB_08.pdf Yet I cannot but agree with a former student of Davutoğlus that Turkeys current socially polarised state - after Erdoğans ongoing rants and electoral campaigns via the media - will not be solved by someone who has argued for more than two decades for the irreconcilability of Turkeys Muslim part and its European direction, while his political statements - be it theoretically or practically addressing EU policy - have been preaching nothing but Turkeys expansionism in the region: The new prime minister is mistaken in believing that the clock in the Middle East stopped in 1918 — the year the Ottoman Empire was destroyed — or that Turkey can erase the region’s borders and become the leader of an Islamic Union, ignoring an entire century of Arab nationalism and secularism. What Mr. Davutoglu needs to do, above all, is to accept that his pan-Islamist worldview, based on archaic theories of expansionism, is obsolete. nytimes/2014/08/29/opinion/ahmet-davutoglu-and-turkeys-imperial-fantasy.html?_r=2
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 08:25:25 +0000
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