In the book of Diet, the late Mehmet Ali Birand mentions a section during the NATO Summit in Washington in 1978, in which then-Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit displayed the inconsistencies of the then Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis in front of the leaders of other NATO member countries and smashed them to the ground. As Birand finished that part, he said, “No matter what party you are from, you will sympathize with Ecevit”. During the 12 hours I spent in Prague on Thursday, this sentence came to my mind as I felt the weight of the name Turkey. We have long passed the issue of sympathy for politicians we do not vote for when they do something good for our country. It’s been a long time since our political hatreds invaded every corner of our brains and destroyed sympathy-like feelings. This situation is not only valid for President Erdoğan, in case CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu had an important meeting for Turkey during his visit to the USA, if he gave a good exam in that meeting, we would reach the same result.
I think it’s best to start from the end. Imagine a press conference room. Journalists from Armenia, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Cyprus ask about their relations with Turkey. A journalist from Ukraine asks about his contacts with Putin, a TV channel broadcasting in Arabic from Albania, Syria. The French media are asking about the meeting with Macron, and the Italian media are asking their thoughts on the newly elected government. This table is an important piece of data that shows both that Turkey has complicated files and that it is the determinant actor in those files. Another numerical data is that 6 of the 10 seats in the first row reserved for President Erdoğan’s delegation were left to foreign media members who could not fit in the hall, and most delegation members watched the meeting standing up.
Czechia, in its capacity as the EU Term President, arranged the oldest royal palace in use in the world as the summit center. I have followed many EU Summits over the years, the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, where Denmark was the Term President, and the summits in Brussels in December 2004, where Turkey’s decision to start membership negotiations with the EU was decided, were the summits where the name of Turkey was spoken the most in the press center. It was not an EU Summit in Prague on Thursday, but again Turkey was the most talked about. Everyone knew about Erdogan’s meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan. Only Greek and Albanian journalists were aware of the Greek and Albanian Prime Minister’s speech to go to The Hague Court of Justice for maritime jurisdictions.
Czechia hosts around 300 thousand immigrants from Ukraine. These immigrants were placed in vacant houses by the country administration, they did not have a direct effect on the rents, and since the unemployment rate in the country was around 2.5 percent, they were also used as a pool of workers. When you add the reaction to Moscow due to the 1968 Prague Spring, you might think that no one is bothered by immigrants. However, the opposite situation exists on the streets of Prague, and the anti-immigration trend is rising. There is a lot of contrast in nice Czechia. The leader of the most extreme anti-immigrant and nationalist party in the country is Japanese father and Czech mother. With this weather on the street, the Greek Prime Minister gathered at Prague Castle, which overlooks the city, and was talking to the EU leaders about the migration from Turkey and the heroic struggle of the Greek Coast Guard ships. No one asked Mitsotakis what is the heroism of pushing people back, bursting their boots and leaving them to die?…
At the dinner held in honor of the leaders, the Greek Prime Minister, who was disturbed by President Erdogan’s speech and tried to respond even though it was not in the program, talked about good neighborliness as always. Greece is a country that can talk about armed struggle from time to time against three of its four neighbors. They still have a valid decision we can fight with Albania, they forcibly renamed Macedonia North Macedonia and we already know the problems with Turkey. Athens is a master at selling the ladle out of a tripe soup cauldron like a white spoon out of milk. While acting diplomatically in Tirana and Skopje, they once again hid behind France against Ankara. The Greek newspapers published yesterday were full of headlines such as giving a dialogue message to French President Erdogan.
To be honest, French President Macron couldn’t really enjoy the idea of the summit, which he stole from former President Mitterrand. Of course, he was annoyed that a summit, which was supposed to meet every six months, was the scene of discussions at the first meeting, let’s meet once a year instead of every six months. The photograph and body language in his dialogue with President Erdogan are also important for Macron’s situation. Macron, who plays the role of the lion of the Western society against Turkey in the podiums where he is alone, was not happy with President Erdogan’s statement “Take your wife, we can’t get along with you, but the ladies get along well” and that this word is known by everyone. Despite this, we can be sure that he will come to Turkey with his wife in the autumn.
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