“Minarets are our bayonets” was one line in the famous poem Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recited at a public rally several years earlier, earning the future prime minister a minor prison term. I was never able to fully understand the merit of the metaphor; why, after all, should a symbolic structure of a holy building be likened to a weapon? But sending someone to jail just because he had recited a poem was more ridiculous than the bizarre verse, probably long forgotten.
The Swiss vote and its aftermath have reminded us once again that the “minarets are our bayonets.” The wisdom of the Swiss people’s choice to ban minarets can always be debated, possibly with more of us disagreeing with the Swiss. All the same, just as Erdoğan’s sentence was more ridiculous than the poem itself, the Turkish reaction to the Swiss referendum has been more ridiculous than the ban itself. Shame, disgrace, Swiss racism, victory of Islamophobia, illiberal decision... You name it. We are heading fast to say “One minute!” to the Swiss. Soon some genius Islamist may argue that the Swiss vote should be blamed on the Kemalist imitation of French rationalism, or on the Turkish military – which, by the way, has a ban on buying Swiss-made weaponry. Oh, but that should be the cover for the conspiracy!
It’s funny how the Turkish Foreign Ministry expects a “corrective action,” or how the “Turkish democrats” queue up to condemn what was essentially a foreign nation’s democratic choice, right or wrong. It was even funnier how Islamist Turks gave long lectures on Switzerland’s ailing democracy. Here, the rule is simple: We love democracy only as long as it serves political Islam. Ironically, on the exact same day Turkish government big-wigs condemned Swiss democracy, their boss, Erdoğan, publicly said that “the less columnists wrote, the more peaceful Turkey would be.” They may be right to dislike Swiss democracy. With Swiss democratic rules and values, half the cabinet might have to go to jail.
Turkey is 10 times bigger than Switzerland in population and nearly 10 times poorer in per-capita income. All the same, Turkish lawmakers earn 10 times more than the country’s average income, while Swiss lawmakers earn just on the average. Swiss lawmakers cannot possibly spend most of their office hours meeting hordes of people from their contingency cantons asking for jobs, government contracts or other personal favors. Just try to imagine a delegation of merchants from Argovia, or farmers from St. Gallen, showing up at the offices of their fellow deputies to ask for government loans or jobs for relatives. In the land of the Crescent and Star, lawmakers enjoy the finer things in life – secretaries, armies of advisers, free telephone calls, travels to exotic territories, lifelong health care and much more, in addition to a de jure shield that protects them from prosecution if they offend. In the land of lakes, mountains, chocolate, fine watches and numbered bank accounts, lawmakers cost each taxpayer less than 10 francs a year – and no de jure shield to protect them from prosecution.
The hypocrisy is always there when political Islam is speaking. In a country where synagogues and churches have been bombed and priests killed, where locals have slit the throats of Christian missionaries and 50 to 75 percent of people refuse to have Christian, Jewish and atheist neighbors, we surely cannot be talking about putting to vote whether we should have church bells ringing. But it looks grossly absurd to talk about democracy and tolerance when observant Muslims can not even tolerate less observant Muslims.
We can always safely guess the results of a Turkish referendum on whether to ban churches and synagogues, or Jewry and atheism, as a whole. Again, the unspoken rule is simple: Interfaith tolerance is a one-way street.
It wasn’t a surprise to hear Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, Egemen Bağış, calling on “our Muslim brothers to withdraw their money at Swiss banks,” and adding the vulgar opportunistic note that “Turkish banks would always welcome their money.” That call for boycott was merely a seal that we are going through a clash of civilizations, not an alliance of them. The message is clear: If you offend Muslims, even through democratic means, we will make you pay for it. That’s hardly the dynamics of an alliance. So, Minister Bağış, you want economic sanctions against a country because its people made an “undemocratic choice through democratic means?” Think about Iran and Sudan, both of which are on your government’s “most-preferred nations” list for trade. But in the dictionary of political Islam, Iran and Sudan can always be perceived as more democratic than Switzerland.
Hurriyet-Turkey's English Daily
