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Turkey is on a winning streak

Simon Tisdall

It seems to have plenty to complain about, yet the country is doing rather well.

THE TURKISH soccer team's 4-1 away defeat of Greece in the European championship at the weekend came as welcome balm to ruffled feelings of national pride. Vanquishing those old enemies, the Greeks, on the eve of the latter's national day celebrations marking independence from the Ottoman Empire, was particularly satisfying.

Turkey needs a boost. In the league of international politics, it is struggling to stay in the game. Feelings were especially wounded by the European Union's decision not to invite the Ankara government to its 50th birthday celebrations at the weekend. Newspaper commentators point out that the country's membership application is almost as old as the Treaty of Rome. Turkey put its name down for the club in 1959. It may not have been blackballed — but it certainly feels like it.

Turkish amour propre is also threatened by a series of disagreements, of varying seriousness, with the U.S., the country's long-term ally. Most disturbing is the attempt by Congress to hold Turkey responsible for genocide against the Armenians in 1915. If Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House (whose California constituency contains numerous Armenian-Americans) pushes the resolution through, the damage to bilateral relations will be significant and long-lived.

Many Turks are frankly amazed at American presumption in judging historical events from such a distance and, in the case of many Congressional representatives, such chronic ignorance. It is the equivalent, they say, of Turkey's parliament condemning George Washington and the Founding Fathers for complicity in the extermination of Native Americans.

Turks are also upset at the way the U.S. appears to disregard their concerns over the activities of Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) guerrillas based in northern Iraq. Turkey's abiding feeling of not being loved is compounded by the continuing focus of activists in Europe and the U.S. on its human rights record, and especially the limits it imposes on free speech.

Most Turks were as appalled as the rest of the world by January's murder in Istanbul, by ultranationalists, of the outspoken ethnic Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink. But they tend to justify restrictions on Kurdish spokesmen, for example, on the grounds that their subversive comments may undermine national unity. The last week has thus brought further arrests of Kurdish politicians who allegedly spoke respectfully in public of the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Even more bizarrely, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under fire from the opposition for supposedly using, seven years ago, an honorific meaning "the honourable" or "the esteemed" before Mr. Ocalan's name. This, his critics claim, makes Mr. Erdogan an unfit choice for president should he decide to stand in next month's election.

Yet in many important respects, for all Turkey's belly-aching and paranoia, the country is doing rather well these days. Its economy is booming, living standards are rising, its regional leadership clout is strengthening, and vibrant Istanbul is showing signs of regaining its ancient place as one of the world's foremost cities. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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