Who will understand the state of the Swiss who fell from the minaret?

Europe does not have a history with brilliant pages on multiculturalism. Its history is virtually a history of intercultural bigotry and genocides. As for the multiculturalism it took a fancy to in modern times, it has been fond of behaving as if it had been its homeland from the start. Indeed, it can be said that in recent times it has been engaged in a special search and effort to develop the possibilities of a multicultural society. Since it is generally accepted that secularism can ultimately be realized only within a multicultural society, the subject naturally receives special attention. At the very least, after the catastrophe of the Second World War caused by extreme intolerance toward different cultures, all political quests in Europe were conceived as a precaution against falling into the same situation again. The measures taken soon made values such as secularism and multiculturalism the founding values of the project of a united Europe. Meanwhile, as Europe embraced these newly discovered values, it managed to place other worlds, especially the Islamic world, under the accusation of cultural intolerance.

Yet if it has managed to cover a positive distance so far on multiculturalism, and even on secularism, this is largely due to the fact that it has never had a genuine experience of a different culture until now.

In the West, it is possible to tolerate in some way the different cultures that appear with certain nuances. However, since the day it tragically brought cultures like Judaism or the Gypsies to an end, the experience of a "truly different culture" has been possible properly only through Islam. It cannot yet be said that Europe is passing the test successfully in this new experience either.

As they have more genuine experiences with Islam, for example as they see people from the Islamic world in the flesh together with their problems and encounter these people's religious or cultural demands, people in the West begin to approach the word multiculturalism with increasing suspicion. The great test of multiculturalism is of course not in the face of people who eat sushi instead of hamburgers or Chinese food or lahmacun instead of pizza. The real great test emerges when it confronts the reality of Muslims as a truly different culture.

As Muslims become more visible, it turns out that people in the West are still not ready to see a culture that is "truly different." Modern society, which in theory welcomes and extols multiculturalism, responds to the increasingly visible Muslim populations with growing conservatism, nationalism and withdrawal. This is not a situation that has emerged only with the reaction displayed against minarets in Switzerland. In the latest elections, the rise of conservative votes in most European countries is largely thanks to Muslims. The presence of Muslims becomes the easiest and shortest explanation for all the negative things being experienced. This means that more realistic approaches to problems are increasingly replaced by ideological explanations, which in turn means that Islam fulfils the function of a kind of "scapegoat" that allows Europe to avoid confronting its real problems. Right-wing parties, without promising anything other than a bombastic hope against the further strengthening of the Muslims who have been turned into a scapegoat in Europe, win social favor with this hope alone.

The minaret case gives signals that Europe has not taken adequate precautions against the most fragile point of the European ideal. It has serious problems in terms of measures that would prevent Europe from returning to the fascism of before the Second World War.

The paradoxical aspect of the matter is that hostility to Islam in the West is based not so much on Christian piety as on Christian nationalism. As in Turkey, in Europe too, as secularism develops, religious bombast combines with a nationalist discourse and is increasingly gripped by a cultural intolerance.

Hostility to Muslims neither stems from the rise of Christian values nor in any way feeds those values. On the contrary, it increases Christian fanaticism further on a secularist basis; just as it does with us. When religion becomes the expression of a national identity on a secular basis, it gradually moves away from religion as well, but this distancing also reinforces fanaticism in the name of religion all the more.

If you like, imagine for a moment a symmetrical form of the incident that occurred in Switzerland for Turkey. What will you see?..

How are we to interpret the Turkish press, which has never held back from opposing the headscarf for years, suddenly moving against the opposition to the chador in Switzerland because it has found an opportunity to oppose Switzerland and the EU? The interest in Islam that those who have devoted their existence to the struggle against irtica display through hostility to missionaries is a very close relative of the hostility to minarets in Switzerland. They too have fallen from the same minaret not a few times before. That is why we expect them to understand the Swiss, but I fear we will wait for that a long time.

In short, the bombast of anti-EU sentiment produced on the occasion of this incident by those who would go so far as to defend even the veil when necessary, if it serves to attack the EU, is by no means a good omen.