The crisis of European democracy

The crisis of European democracy can be defined simply and briefly as follows. The functioning of democracy increasingly works in a way that severs Europe from the values that make Europe Europe.

Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say "that make Europe Europe these days". Because the values that historically brought Europe together under one roof were in fact not very democratic, humane, universal or human-rights-based. Let us go even further: in history, until the 19th century, the only issue that had brought Europe together under one roof was anti-Islam sentiment.

Anti-Islam sentiment, on a religious basis, reminded Europe of its Crusader identity, set in motion a bigotry around that identity, and this bigotry became Europe's founding identity. It was never possible for this founding identity to carry any humane message or project to the world.

If we take elections as the most important channel through which democracy works these days, whenever and in whichever European country there is an election, xenophobia, Islamophobia and isolationism are seen to begin to pay off far more there. The Europeans, who since the Age of Enlightenment have on one hand sold democracy and human rights to the outside world, also have a history of savagery that, through their colonial experiences, dried up the world they touched and deprived it of humanity.

Even so, one has to admit that Europeans know very well how to speak as if they had no baggage behind them and to act as discoverers of universal human values.. For now we can explain their managing to pull off this brazenness until today by the power they have but which is gradually running out.

Elections are turning into troubled processes in which Europe cannot hide its suppressed racist face, its makeup running. The elections to be held in Germany on 24 September are of course not the only example of this troubled process. But the most important subject of nearly all the debates between the parties in these elections has been Türkiye and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In fact Germany has a host of troubles; there are a host of issues that voters could question and make a subject of debate in an election, and that could be the subject of assessment as to which party could find better solutions. But the politicians, having set all those troubles aside, are debating Türkiye and criticizing Erdoğan. Indeed, someone looking from outside would think that Erdoğan is a party in the German elections, since everyone's rival is Erdoğan and everyone is trying to answer him.

How well does it fit Germany's current reality that the main subject of the debate held live by Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Party, and Christian Democratic Party leader Chancellor Merkel, broadcast jointly by all channels, was almost Erdoğan? What can one hope from the fact that what the SPD leader Schulz promises his people in the name of European social democracy is an anti-Türkiye stance that ends in racism? Populism is always one of democracies' greatest handicaps, but the fact that the subject of this populism is racism, and that all political parties, right and left, can unite in anti-Türkiye and anti-Islam sentiment as their subject of populism, shows that the problem in Europe lies much deeper than supposed.

That both the CDU and the SPD in Germany unite on the basis of anti-Islam and anti-Türkiye sentiment and virtually enter a race with each other on this is of course based on an expectation that hatred of Islam has a serious counterpart in society. But how true is that, really? Ideological populist subjects can sometimes rest on a misreading of the people's feelings. Is it that the people, while expecting a solution to their real problems, are more drawn to such ideological attitudes? This question does not have the same answer in every society and at all times. Indeed, in Germany today anti-Türkiye sentiment may have an ideological counterpart, but however much it may be, it should not be enough to make people forget all their problems.

In fact, that German politicians who act with this mindset today are so far from the rationality that dominates the economy of the country they govern also raises a serious question mark.

The large German firms that act in the world with no aim other than profit carry on their way completely unaffected by their own state's ideological attitudes and political suggestions, paying no heed to them.

This is precisely one of the points at which the crisis of German democracy could erupt. The rationality that dominates Germany's business world can increasingly drop away from its politicians. In Germany the state, instead of responding to the expectations of its own business and investment world, ends up wasting time on ideological debates that target Türkiye and Muslims.

By making Türkiye the scapegoat for their own failures they shake off their own responsibilities. And as they do so, the link between them and industry, the real motor force of German and European society, is severed.

However reluctant politicians in Europe may be about Türkiye's accession to the EU, the German business world has in practice already taken Türkiye into the EU. Or rather, integration between Türkiye and Europe has long since taken place at the level of the business world. So when they wished to call Türkiye's bluff, it was the German business circles themselves that first exposed that bluff.

The elections bring with them Germany's rapid severance from Europe's present values. Otherwise, the matter is no longer Türkiye.

An EU project that has failed to include Türkiye in any case means nothing other than the EU's announcing its own bankruptcy in realizing itself, its claims and its project. That this integration, which is actually taking place in the field, in the economic sphere, is being snagged on politicians' obstacles shows that politics lags far behind developments.