Asia Sentinel

Fed up with decades of delay to enter the EU, Turkey hears the music of the east

It was Kylie Minogue, at a time when Turkey’s schizophrenic cultural heritage bifurcates the country into Asia or Europe and its iconic sea, the Bosphorus, splits the country down the middle between occident and accident, who made me think Turkey and Europe might just about be ready for each other.

There was the pop poppet, well, life-size images of her anyway, flaunting her curvaceous clunes at shoppers in the Agent Provocateur lingerie outlet at Istanbul's Kanyon Mall. On the other hand it was a shocking exhibition of flesh in a country that’s 98 percent Islamic. But the thing was, it was me - there purely for the purposes of research, of course - who was shocked.

Today, with the world teetering between a spavined west, its captains of industry reduced to rowing the lifeboats, and a spectacularly resurgent Asia considering idly how to sink them, I had come to take a look at this country so interestingly caught between the two.

The cultural and religious aspect is never far from the surface. I had been reading press accounts of Turkey’s gathering fundamentalism, how its women had enthusiastically embraced the hijab (while those disinclined to were having it forcibly pulled over them anyway), how Islamist vigilantes were closing down bars and the merest suggestion of décolletage with equal zeal.

Once the Muslim world's secular standard-bearer, Turkey seemed to be fast morphing into Tehran, or so one read. There were even suicide bombings of louche infidels, the remains of the worst visible across from Kanyon in the scorched ruins of the old HSBC headquarters. It was all bad for business in an ancient land that history describes as virtually having invented commerce. Turkey seemed no place for Europhiles and certainly not a brassy, arsey Australian one.

But the only fundament I could see was Kylie’s. The store seemed to have more patrons than the Blue Mosque on a busy Friday than an end-of- Eid al-Fitr at the Bin Ladens. And if any shock was evident apart from mine, it was likely at the near four-figure price being asked - in euros, mind – for a libidinous basque-and-suspender set, though given the clientele that uber-modish Kanyon attracts up there in Levant, Istanbul’s shiny new financial district, customers were probably stunned at how affordable all this Euro-naughtiness was.

Of course, not all 70 million Turks are fanciers of lacy French smalls, just as an increasing number are becoming less enamored of the Europe their government has pointed them toward. More peaceably than its imperial ancestors, Ankara has been at the gates of the EU and its predecessors longer than most of group’s current lineup have been in club. It first applied in 1959, just two years after the Treaty of Rome and a year before Harold Macmillan intimated British membership to the blackballing de Gaulle. But richer now - Greater Istanbul alone would be a Dutch-sized Euro-power, - proud Turks are sick of their membership aspirations being foiled at every turn by Brussels, playing burly bouncer to a Turkey pressing in vain at the red sash while a score of the fashionably-late in-crowd push past it.

If it’s not about religion, which Brussels unconvincingly insists it isn’t, then what’s Europe’s problem with Turkey? Its not as if Turks don’t know capitalism, which is more than can be said for EU newbies like Romania, Bulgaria and, hold on, isn’t that Hungary in the intensive care of the IMF? Turks, be they Ottomans or Byzantines, were enthusiastic accumulators of lucre long before European good manners determined it was filthy.

Literally straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul’s status as an international business centre is measured in millennia; or much of that time it was the world’s only business centre. Today, 75 percent of Turkey’s trade is already with Europe, whose banks control around 40 percent of the country’s banking assets, having profitably arrived in the country after the crippling financial crisis of 2001. That recovery cleansed and energised Turkey, making its financial systems, well, more European, though minus the subprime exposure.

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

Write comment

Name

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment