The source and future of European values

Germany, Austria and the Netherlands have openly taken their places on the "no" side in the referendum process in Turkey. This partisanship of theirs, shown at first timidly but by openly favoring the "no" side, has gradually turned aggressive. For the sake of this partisanship they are trampling underfoot all the European values and democratic criteria they claim to uphold.

Why they are doing this can of course be dwelt on at length. What business could these countries have on the opposition side against a change of system that would make Turkey's system of government more effective, ensure more stability and, without doubt, make the decision-making process more efficient? Are we to believe that by doing this they want something better, nicer, more for Turkey?

If so, what kind of good could it be that it wants for Turkey with this campaign it is pursuing alongside every kind of terror and sedition element, from the PKK to FETÖ to the DHKPC, which have displayed every kind of hostility and aggression, from terror to coups, against Turkey's democracy, peace, unity and security?

In the end, there is a matter put to the vote of the people of Turkey. The people of Turkey will decide whether the system of government will change.

And there is every kind of campaign opportunity and freedom, within legal limits, to persuade them toward the "no" option.

The European countries in question, moreover, by invoking European values even more, think that the change in the system of government in Turkey would constitute a deviation from these values. If they only thought it, there would be no problem; but they prevent contrary views from expressing themselves. In an environment where every kind of propaganda for "no" is free, even encouraged, the wildest restrictions are imposed on propaganda for "yes." Hall permits allocated for meetings organized in favor of the change are canceled at the last minute. Meetings that are to be held in alternative venues are openly obstructed.

The images displayed while all this is being done put Europe in a position that fully deserves all the criticisms it has so far directed at Turkey or other countries on the basis of democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and demonstration, but that is at the same time inconsistent and insincere.

At this stage, the first thing that inevitably becomes a subject of questioning is what is called "European values." European values, that is, the values Europe has presented to the whole world as if its own property, under the names of democracy, multiculturalism, freedom, freedom of expression and human rights. It is plain as day that Europe at this moment regards all these values like the idols that are eaten when hunger strikes. But how European these values actually are is also, frankly, being questioned anew.

Colonialism in Europe's history has made seizing all of the world's material values by force a trait of character. The history of European colonialism has also been the history of the massacres, inhuman practices and genocides it carried out in non-European countries. It is very clear that this history was also decisive in the formation of European values.

Europe has managed to ignore the history of the whole world and present its own history as world history.

Having made the whole world adopt a Eurocentric perspective and presented its own history of philosophy as the whole world's history of philosophy, it thus

forced on non-European people, again by compulsion, a sense of "nothingness" about themselves. As if nothing at all had been lived anywhere else throughout history in the name of philosophy, thought, wisdom, hikmah.

Europe was able to reach the point of human rights and multiculturalism only in the EU process, but it brazenly sold that too to the whole world as a "European value," as if it had itself discovered it. Yet Europe is the name of a savage history and geography in which, only seventy years ago in World War II, and a hundred years ago in World War I, a total of 50 million people killed one another out of the intolerance of different races and religions.

The EU Project it undertook after World War II is in fact the sum of what these bitter experiences taught Europe4.

These bitter experiences taught it the value of multiculturalism, brought it to the secularism solution as the state's regulating principle, and brought it to the point of human rights and democracy. But they also made it forget one thing. That all these values or solutions have existed among other nations, especially in the Islamic world, for centuries.

While Europe in its own Middle Ages lived through a darkness in which one denomination, unable to tolerate another, subjected it to genocide, and witch hunts, inquisitions and mass deportations took place, the Islamic world had found and was applying the golden formula that kept 72 nations living together in peace and tranquility, in harmony.

Had Europe forgotten this, or was it knowingly appropriating, as if it had found it itself, a value it has only now been compelled to adopt? The answer to this question should not be hard for us, as the victims of the age of Eurocentric arrogance.

These bitter experiences Europe lived through enabled it to discover multiculturalism as a value, but it is not possible to say that it has applied it successfully or done it full justice.

Multiculturalism as a value is tested when it encounters a truly different culture. The real examination of European multiculturalism was to be with Islam. Indeed, this examination has taken place, and Europe is currently falling apart in it.

Yet for Europe, which with the EU project has embraced humanity's values, even if by making them its own property, Islam is as much an opportunity as an examination.

Islam is a philosophical, humane and cultural possibility that provides Europe the opportunity to truly apply the values it found with the EU project and to improve itself.

Let us not overlook that the racist far right rising today within Europe against Turks and Muslims is radically opposed not only to Turkey but also to the EU project.

Europe, by distancing itself from Turks and Muslims, is distancing itself from the EU project too.

The reasons for this, though they of course require long analyses, are not hard to understand.