Freedom of expression in TCS

My considered thoughts on freedom of expression, as summed up for TCS:

It has been a sad week for freedom of expression. Hrant Dink, a prominent journalist convicted last year of insulting Turkish identity in an article about the Armenian genocide of 1915, was shot in Istanbul. Brigitte Zypries, the German minister of justice, announced that Germany would be using its current presidency of the European Union to push for an EU-wide ban on Holocaust denial and the display of Nazi insignia. There is obvious gulf between these two cases, and it might be considered crass to compare the killers of a man who fought for the recognition of a genocide with a government intent on making denial of another genocide a crime. But the death of Hrant Dink is a sickening illustration of the dangers of government enforced versions of the past.

Dink was the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, which published a series of articles examining the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians during World War One. One of these contained a line in which prosecutors claimed Dink denigrated the purity of Turkish blood, and in October 2005 he was convicted under article 301 of the Turkish penal code - an article which makes it an offence to insult ‘Turkishness’ - and given a six-month suspended sentence. With the state having declared his guilt, Dink began receiving an increasing volume of threats and feared for his safety, a fear realised on Friday with a bullet to the back of his head.

The intentions of those seeking to criminalise Holocaust denial are admirable. To distort the past and accuse a people who suffered so much of the greatest fraud in history is a loathsome and dangerous act, and it is already illegal to do so in nine EU member states. But by claiming the right to silence contrary opinion the state empowers individuals to do the same, and silence their opponents as Hrant Dink was silenced on Friday. Free debate in Europe will not undermine the factuality of the Holocaust, but across the Bosporus a frank discussion of the events of 1915 might reconcile modern Turkey with a fuller account of its recent past. As part of Turkey’s stalling accession talks, the EU is pushing for legal reform. If it wants article 301 written out of the statute books, member states should argue from a position of enshrined free speech and not hypocrisy, and instead of extending the illegality of Holocaust denial, abandon attempts to cosset the past.

Turkey and free speech

"A bullet has been fired at democracy and freedom of expression": the reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the assassination of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, the prominent editor of Agos, a bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper. Dink’s death further underlines the dangers of government-sponsored versions of the past; if the state claims the right to silence contrary opinion, individuals are empowered to arrogate this right too. Convicted in October 2005 of insulting Turkishness under article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, Dink was of Armenian descent, and wrote fearlessly about the genocide of Armenians which occurred at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, a genocide which is denied by Turkey’s nationalist community. The EU is seeking reform of the Turkish justice system as part of its application for membership, but by having laws against Holocaust denial it is arguing from a position of hypocrisy, while French flirtation with criminalising denial of the Armenian genocide last October served only to inflame and entrench Turkish nationalist opinion. Far better for a free debate on all topics and all sides, and truth will out. Prime Minister Erdogan has been courting the nationalist vote in the run up to elections this year. But if he is really serious about freedom of expression, it is time to dismantle 301.

Pax Europa

As the Finnish EU presidency struggles to thrash out a compromise between Turkey's refusal to open trade with Cyprus and the EU's embargo on the Turkish-occupied north of the island, the lastest to emerge is a Turkish offer of a tit-for-tat deal. Ercan airport and the port of Famagusta would open to EU trade as simultaneously Turkey would open a sea and airport of its own to Greek-Cypriot trade. Cyprus is likely to veto the deal, as its people vetoed the flawed reunification Annan Plan in a 2004 referendum. But larger EU powers should put pressure on Cyprus to accept and sign up themselves. The continued economic isolation of the north will only make eventual reunification that much more difficult as attitudes harden and wealth disparities widen even further, and the opening of trade with a large and increasingly rich neighbour can only be in the Greek-cypriot community's long-term interest. It is impossible to envisage a unilateral capitulation by either side; only negotiated concessions and compromise of the like proposed yesterday will ever solve this intractable dispute, and it is better for all parties to start on the path to a solution now, rather than wait first for the messy derailment of Turkey's EU bid.

Should compromise be reached and ultimately lead to reconciliation over the Turkish north, it would only be the most recent of manifold EU successes in employing the lube of its lucre to smooth intractable political conflict. The EU's trade and aid can prove to be a guarantor of stability in the western Meditteranean just as it is proving in the Balkans, and as it has long-since proved in western Europe. It is arguably the Communities' greatest achievement that one has to look back to the Romans to find a similarly prolonged period of peace in what is the most violent corner of the world in recorded human history. Turkey and Cyprus are unlikely to slip back into war, but without a little Cypriot reciprocation of Turkey's limited flexibilty relations are not going to normalise any time soon either. Cyprus' status as both party and judge in the dispute complicates the issue, but the money has to be on an eventual resolution to the cypriot question that is both inspired and underwritten by the EU.

The idea of 'Europe'

Turkish attempts to join the EU stumbled this week as first on Wednesday the European Commission recommended freezing aspects of its accession talks and then on Thursday Cyprus threatened to veto them altogether. The dispute stems from 1974, when a Greek-coup on Cyprus precipitated a Turkish invasion of the island which ultimately split it into an internationally-recognised Greek south and a Turkish north which only Ankara continued to back. 32 years later neither Turkey, nor the EU to which Cyprus (technically the whole island) acceded in 2004, is backing down, and the impasse remains the single biggest threat to Turkey's EU ambitions.

It is the not the only one, however. Issues of free speech (the case against Turkish author and recent Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk for declaring "30000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares talk about it" was only dropped in January on a technicality) would be resolved as Turkey accepted and absorbed European norms and the acquis communautaire. Of greater import are the noises which periodically emanate from European capitals expressing doubt over Turkey's suitability as a member of the EU, and the souring of public opinion (both in the EU and Turkey itself) against any eventual accession. To have doubts over specific issues of compatibility is of course legitimate, responsible and healthy. But to declare, as the Bavarian minister-president Edmund Stoiber did last week, that "Turkey is not a European state", and to thus dismiss its bid for full membership on the grounds of its supposed 'extra-European' culture or geography, is both vacuous and naive.

What is Europe? It is an idea with competing and contested definitions. The European football’s governing body UEFA's competence has extended to Israel since 1994 and Kazakhstan since 2002. Morocco, as a member of the European Broadcasting Union, was able to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest as long ago as 1980, while Armenia first took part only this year. One oft-cited geographic definition bounds Europe by the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Black Seas, and the Ural and Caucasian Mountains. But to define the 'European' in the 'European Union' in terms of such raw geography would be to ignore French, Spanish and Portuguese territories across the globe as well as those countries within 'Europe' which wish to remain beyond the EU, and grant undue weight to the historical but false ascription of 'continent' to what is merely a peninsula of a greater and much more clearly defined Eurasian or even Africa-Eurasian land mass. Cultural definitions are even more diffuse. One cannot delineate a 'European' culture that does not transude into other continents and countries: the UK has much more in common with liberal America than, say, Bulgaria. One could talk of a 'common heritage', but European history has been played out on a global stage since the renaissance, and the Mediterranean has been more often a naval highway of integration than a barrier - the writ of Rome ran to North Africa in the 2nd century BC as in the 20th AD. Of course, North Africa has, since the fall of Byzantine Carthage in 698, been a land of Islam, and the former president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, famously once described the EU as a "Christian club". Yet to exclude the non-Christian world would omit Bosnia and Albania, mainly Muslim countries at the heart of the Balkans, and ignore the 15 million Muslims who already reside within the EU.

Article O of the Treaty on European Union (or Maastricht Treaty) stipulates that "Any European State may apply to become a member of the Union", without giving any clearer indication of how to define the key term 'European'. In practice, however, this has been worked out on a case by case basis by the European Council. In 1987 Morocco applied to join the then Communities, but was rejected on the grounds that it was not a European State. It has also been suggested that Israel too is not 'European' enough for full membership. Turkey, by contrast, has been promised the prospect of eventual accession since the Association Agreement it signed with the Communities in 1963, and has since had its eligibility confirmed by the European Parliament, Council and Commission. Yet 97% of Turkey lies beyond the Bosporus in Asia; the term 'European State' is above all a criterion based upon political assessment.

It is thus obtuse to cling to a geographical definition of 'Europe' when discussing the EU. If we turn to the 'Copenhagen criteria' drawn up a year after Maastricht, we find no mention of geography or culture. The key section of the Copenhagen Presidency's conclusions reads:

"Membership requires that candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and, protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union."

This, along with the acceptance of the acquis communautaire, is the only meaningful definition of 'European' the EU needs. If Turkey, or Morocco, or indeed any other state beyond the EU wishes to embrace 'Europe' - i.e. democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights and a robust market economy - there is no reason why the EU should not embrace such states in turn. It was after all the prospect of eventual EU membership that led the 8 former Communist countries which joined the bloc in 2004 to pursue the reforms and 'Europeanise' as they have. Why should geographical chauvinism deny others, from North Africa to Central Asia and beyond, the carrot of EU membership to encourage the adoption of 'European' rights and political and economic norms?

The issues currently holding up Turkish negotiations are not, at least officially, rooted in any supposed extra-European character - they result instead from the intractable fallout of the partition of Cyprus. It is to be hoped, nevertheless, that European capitals do not seek to exploit the hiatus to dash Turkey's hopes of accession, in order to protect spurious notions of the idea of Europe.