| Mehmet Murat BEKDİK | |
| Editor-in-Chief |
|
THE EU NORMS, OR THE NORMS OF BEING HUMAN? |
Today, people who understand what it means to be "European" and that taking place in the EU requires accommodation to a series of regulations and behavioral patterns constitute a serious minority. Consequently, for the EU membership not to be evaluated falsely and insufficiently as in the westernization processes in the past in our country, we need to understand europeanization very well and also the internal dynamics have to create much down-to-earth analysis. Thus, when asking for the EU membership, one has to understand not only the EU, but also, and even more importantly, being European.
In this context, not doing anything that we do not want to be done to ourselves to anybody else, leaving the places we walk through and the things we use just as the way we would like to find them, waiting in a line, passing a class without cheating in the exams, obeying the traffic rules, objecting to injustice and appreciating kindness regardless of the person who does them, rewarding productivity and diligence, respecting the rights of others, having the ability to apologize, solving our conflicts not by the strength of our fists but by the strength of law, penalizing the politicals who do wrong in the elections, learning to listen as well as talking, EU norms or the sine qua non rules and behavioral patterns of being human? Turkey’s goal of full membership at the end of EU processes depends on its answer to these questions.
Turkey will need to question its socio-cultural structure as well as its social structure even more through the EU full membership processes. Furthermore, accordance to globalization and the requirements of economical integration with the EU will conflict with the requirements of the political, social and economical model the EU adopts. A model such as the European community model will be laid before Turkey and its accommodation to this model will be expected. But, because of today’s pressure of globalization as well as its own structural inadequacies, it will not be easy for our country to implement this model. For example, while the government has to adopt the understanding of social welfare and provide a solid solution to the problem of economy and distribution for the social and political standards to ascend, as a requirement of accordance to globalization and neo-liberal politics, it will be asked not to permit national and social politics and solutions out of the market. But at this point, the obligation of economical, social and cultural problems to politics with rationalistic and realistic approaches and the effective implication of democratic politics in solving the problems will solidify Turkey in terms of problem solving.
In short, if Turkey does not invent models and understandings according to itself as in the past, and, on the contrary, can combine today’s conditions and requirements with the experiences from the past, it will come closer to not only being European and a member of the EU, but also being a social and regional power with self-confidence.
