2009: Beginnings and anniversaries

For Turkey and for the world, 2008 was a bad year in any sense and rapidly turned out to be the messenger of 2009. This year will be the beginning of a period where we will pay the price for the past mistakes that have been piling up for years.

Political consolidation since late 2004 in Turkey hit the roof in 2008. Its architect is the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has fallen into a position of an ordinary political party that will try to remain in power no matter what. The AKP will keep the government as long as it gets along with the military and doesn’t scare away people. However, the ruling party’s way of administering the country will without doubt get tougher. A single man government, economic crisis, drifting apart from the European Union, chronic political issues are the current elements to speed up authoritarianism. Those who want to remain optimistic expect a return to the reform process of 2003 to 2004 with the potential votes the AKP to gain in the March local elections. It is impossible to understand why an AKP that has failed to show a commonsense of returning back to the reform process following the Apr. 27, 2007 e-memorandum and overwhelming victory in the July 22, 2007 elections should do this now. If the AKP had done it, it could’ve done it in 2007 and benefited from in 2008 and had a stronger hand today. The party preferred to stick with the good old political ways, until wherever it takesÉ

Anniversaries
2009 is the foundation anniversary of key institutions and concepts that have appeared after the World War II. NATO was, being at the top, established on April 4, 1949 as one of the most important initiatives of that formidable hostility between the East and the West, or between as described then the Communist block and the Free World. Wretched at the end of the war, Europe this time had a nightmare of having a renewed war with the Soviet Union when NATO was established as a military/political structure under the U.S. leadership. NATO ratified membership of Turkey with that of Greece on Feb. 18, 1952. Today, it is a huge organization active in Eurasia with 26 members and 24 partners. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an institution that is serving away of the operation area of the Cold War; for instance in Afghanistan, but is unclear for whom it is in service. Next April, Albania and Croatia will become NATO members. Last August, memberships of Georgia and Ukraine were immediately brought on the agenda after Russia attacked Georgia. But we have seen no sign of progress in this direction so far. The issue still remains unresolved.

Another institution came to life in the aftermath of the war is the Council of Europe. Established on May 5, 1949 the council today has 47 members and five observers. This humongous structure is not functioning properly either. Intergovernmental structure of the council imposes that decisions should be made in the least common ground although they are non-binding. Its only function is the European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR. Turkey is not a founding member of the council, to the contrary of what is known. Turkey became a member of the council, together with Greece again, on Aug. 9, 1949! 2009 is the 50th anniversary of Turkey’s knocking the door of the European Economic Community for a membership in July 31, 1959. For instance Slovakia and Slovenia are two countries that hadn’t existed then. But today they are member states of the the European Union. 2009 is probably the year of destiny for our EU bid.

Another anniversary is the 20th year of the fall of the Iron Curtain; the end of a 44-year-old era where a conceptual and philosophical frame has been introduced since then for the defacto division of Europe and of the world. 1989 marked the closure of a long parenthesis opened in the Crimean city of Yalta in 1945, the reunification of Europe and the beginning of a new period of uncertainties in the world. It prepared today’s unipolar turning multi-polar world full of dangers against the bipolar world of yesterday about which the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had said "You will miss us a lot." Coincidentally, it is also the 30th anniversary of the recognition of China, as one of the main actors of the multi-polar world, by the United States.