We recognize this style of politics from somewhere

The rise of the far right across Europe seriously threatens the European project. It is quite natural that an excessive rise of values such as the far right, nationalism, xenophobia and ultra-nationalism threatens Europe, which is a project of togetherness. For xenophobia has no limit or calibration. When it turns toward a target today, it does not stop there, but operates by a rule that gradually reaches every kind of foreigner and turns them too into an object of hatred.

Especially in countries where the economic crisis is deepening, or in countries that feel they have been forced to bear the burden of the economic crisis without having any sin of their own, sins grow too large to be passed over by loading them onto a small scapegoat, for example Muslims. As they grow, even the presence of Muslims or Turks as a "foreigner" may not suffice to carry and make up for those sins.

Unfortunately, once racism begins it is not easy to stop or pause it. On the contrary, especially in conditions of economic crisis, instead of dealing with the real causes of the crisis and producing realistic solutions to it, turning to unreal causes and gathering social support from them becomes the cheap and easy path that politicians favor most. This causes racism or similar populist politics to find followers very easily.

Although the crisis subtly felt among the public has a share in the Islamophobic or xenophobic treatment to which Muslims in general and Turks in particular are exposed in Europe today, these cheap policies in which irresponsible politicians take refuge in order to escape the crisis have an important share.

This is the most important policy to which Sarkozy has resorted lately, instead of accounting for his economically rarely-seen-in-French-history bad management or racking his brains to follow a better policy. Blaming ideology when things in the economy do not go well is a style of politics we too are no stranger to.

We know this style of politics from somewhere. In Turkey, for years the people's bellies were sought to be filled with secularist or rightist ideological discourses. Our polarizations were removed from an economic basis and continually shifted to ideological identity debates. One does not need to succeed on these grounds. By bringing the most archaic level of politics into play, the choice between those who are "ours" and "them" is expected to work.

In Turkey, those who clung to this polarization were generally doomed to lose. Those who fanned this polarization, who wanted to obtain political gain from this conflict, generally never managed to be considered "ours" in the eyes of the people either. Because their base relations of self-interest with the values they wanted to instrumentalize stuck out so much that no politics could come out of it.

This seems to be Sarkozy's problem too. He tried to compensate for his economic failure with the sanction he applied against the Turks and Muslims, together with the far right. Otherwise, he has no particular sensitivity toward the Armenians, let alone toward the sufferings those Armenians lived through a hundred years ago. The grave side of the matter is that he thought the French people would reward this politics.

If the French people were going to reward this kind of politics, the situation would really be grave. Yet the polls published two days ago showed that Sarkozy's politics have no resonance whatsoever among the public. 93 percent of respondents said they were against the French parliament making laws about other countries. Catherina Tasca, a Socialist Party member of the Constitution committee who took part in the television program in which the poll results were announced, said: "The law is contrary to the constitution, such a law is approaching the fire by fanning it, and not only does this law solve no problem, it will create serious problems between the two communities living in France."

According to another finding of the poll, it is also seen that with only three months to go before the elections, Sarkozy is 20 points behind his rival. This is not something that often happens to someone in the presidential office. It is worth asking whether the law denying the Armenian genocide has had an effect on this lag, or whether it is because he is already behind in the race that he turns to such ideological politics (besides the Armenian bill, the earlier burqa ban practice). My opinion is the latter.

Moving to the right is of course a problem, but it is these politicians who confront us with this problem, multiplied. Seeing that the people do not reward these politics is frankly a promising situation for the future of the EU. Although the EU's problems resulting from this still continue, it at least shows that the situation is not that grave.

Meanwhile, it is also important that we, as Turkey, do not fall into the mistake of developing generalizing attitudes against all of France, today's and tomorrow's, because of the attitude of Sarkozy and some politicians attached to him today. Perhaps this is precisely what Sarkozy and his descendants are trying to do: to provoke Turkey's racism or essentialism against their own racism. Although the chronology is reversed, they would thus have provided an excuse for their own racism.

There is always endless benefit in personalizing and localizing mistakes.