The Kemalist wrath on the EU has been in the making for quite sometime. Actually in the distant past, EU membership was attractive for them. It implied visa-free trips to Europe and abundant French wine and cheese in Istanbul restaurants. But when the Kemalists realized that EU membership would actually bring terrible results such as freedom of thought and religion, civilian supremacy over the military, or the equality of all citizens, they freaked out. This was the obliteration of the very anti-democratic system they enacted in the 20s and 30s, and have protected for decades from “internal enemies.”

CHP’s ‘Anti-Imperialist Genes’

What made the matters much worse was the cooperation between the incumbent AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the EU. The “Islamists,” who represented the “internal enemies” of the Republic, were in power, and they were using the EU leverage to democratize Turkey. Now we know that this AKP-EU axis made some generals so upset as early as 2004, so that a few of them planned a military coup, which, obviously, did not realize. But there are 50 ways to not to leave your power. These days, as you know, it is the judiciary that is taking care of the problem.

But these annoying EU officials just don’t leave the Turkish autocrats alone! Along with Mr. Rehn and Mr. Lagendijk, many EU voices, including José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, noted or at least implied that the closure of the AKP is not in line with EU norms and, Turkey’s self-styled secularism, which is the mother of all craziness, needs to be liberalized. (In his yesterday’s column, fellow TDN columnist Mehmet Ali Birand was arguing that these European commentators “fail to really understand us.” I rather think they understand us very well.)

Just recently, both Mr. Rehn and Mr. Lagendijk drew Turkish autocrats further crazy by their right-to-the-point comments. In his speech at Oxford University on May 1, Mr. Rehn said that the political tension in Turkey is between “extreme rather than liberal secularists” and “Muslim democrats”. And Mr. Lagendijk, at a speech at İzmir’s 9 Eylül University, said that headscarves should be free in universities, and, as a “leftist,” that he feels “shame” about the illiberal stance of Turkey’s so-called-social-democrat-but-actually-Kemalist main opposition party, the CHP.

The response to Mr. Lagendijk came from Kemal Anadol, one of the top figures of the CHP. He was furious. “Lagendijk sounds like colony governor,” he said, “and if he continues to attack, we know how to teach him some manners.” He underlined that the answer the CHP will give to this “arrogant foreigner” would be “very bad.”

Moreover, Mr. Anadol thoughfully informed us about the ideology which lies beneath his stance. “They want the CHP to become a light social democratic party,” he unapprovingly said. But, he added, that’s not going to happen: “It is in the genes of the CHP to be anti-imperalist.”

This “anti-imperialist” rhetoric has actually become the main theme of the Kemalists in the recent years. They argue that Turkey is under a lethal threat. The “external enemies” (EU and the U.S.) and “internal ones” (conservative Muslims, Kurds, and liberals) are united, in their view, to destroy the Republic. That’s why they have stopped referring to the Westernizing reforms of Atatürk. They rather focus on his early period, the 1919-22 era, in which he led Turkey’s War of Liberation against the European powers. It is no accident that the posters of Atatürk they now use are often the ones in which he wears the “kalpak,” a fez-like but a bit inverted headgear that he wore in those war years. His later photos with bowler hats, which clearly imply Europeanness, just do not fit into the “anti-imperalist” zeitgeist.

Baykal’s Liberation Army

Deniz Baykal, the leader of the CHP, has just added yet another dimension to this hype. (Unlike the Palestinians, he is famous for not missing any opportunities.) This week, on May 6, he spoke highly of “the three brave human beings, which we lost in this day, in 1972." The three names he were referring to were Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan, who had formed the Marxist-Leninist “People's Liberation Army of Turkey,” (PLAT) and initiated an armed struggle to establish communism. In 1971, they robbed a bank, kidnapped four American soldiers in Ankara, and later were arrested following an armed stand-off with security forces. They were executed after a trial, and that’s of course too bad, but this does not change the fact that they were criminals, and, in today’s jargon, perhaps terrorists.

To date, these three musketeers of the PLAT, and especially Deniz Gezmiş, have been an icon of Turkish radical left, which believe in saving Turkey from “imperialism” by abandoning the whole Western alliance. And it is not meaningless that Mr. Baykal has decided to honor these iconic anti-imperialists this year – something he didn’t do before.

The fact is that Kemalism is becoming a more and more reactionary and isolationist force, which sees the EU membership as a threat to its existence. If Turkey’s becomes an EU member, Kemalism will inevitably cease to be the official ideology, and become just one of the many competing ideas in the public square. But for its devotees, apparently, this is just too big a risk to take.