The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East
also why a number of secular commentators now insinuate that they would rather not have him
solve the Kurdish ‘problem’, as they see a Turkish-Kurdish, pious-Sunni Muslim coalition then
taking over of what little they still possess today.
But this is only one possible scenario. What alternatives can we think of? One could argue that a
resolution by the AKP of the Kurdish conflict would in part, albeit implicitly, be inspired by the
inclusive and flexible domestic geometries of the US and Europe (including federalism,
decentralisation, localism, multiculturalism and minority rights) even though the politics of
tolerance and inclusiveness are still clearly wanting on both side of the Atlantic. Such a new
configuration would open the way for an invigorated ‘western’ Turkey, at least as far as the
West’s perception of itself is concerned. Only that the referent here would not be the
authoritarian, hegemonic and colonial Europe of the 1920s on which the Kemalist Republic was
founded and rests still today, but the post-nationalist, potentially post-hegemonic West that is
much less sure about itself, its history or its model, and that needs to position itself in an
increasingly multi-polar world. There can be no doubt that such a context of shifting global
power cannot provide the certainties of the Cold War era, and still many in Turkey, Europe and
the US would like to ignore this fact. But beyond those suffocating certainties lies the promise of
a new global deal that is truly post-colonial and post-Eurocentric. The triangle between Turkey,
the EU and the US might be one of its most intriguing laboratories.
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