Islamophobia’s chill sweeps Turkey.

As the nation vies for membership in the European Union,

support for the move among the populous is waning Peter O'Neil writes.

Millions of Europeans arrive here each year to visit historic sites like the Blue Mosque; to savour the aromas of roasting kebabs, barbecued fish and apple-flavoured water pipe smoke; and to haggle with merchants at the energy-oozing Grand Bazaar.
But Turkey is increasingly unwelcome in Europe as the rise of Islamophobia crushes much of the optimism that this economically and militarily powerful Muslim country will fulfil its long-standing dream of joining the 27-nation European Union.

Far-right parties have gained ground in numerous European countries in recent elections, with anti-Muslim Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders declaring during his recent breakthrough campaign that Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is "a total freak."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has insultingly dismissed Turkey — which is claiming Istanbul as Europe's 2010 "capital of culture" — as not being a legitimate European country since most of its land mass is in Asia.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel fed into the growing anti-immigrant mood by lamenting last week that Germany has "utterly failed" to integrate its 2.5 million Turkish minority.

"Ten years ago, the majority of Turkish people were for membership in the European Union, but now it's the opposite," said Kamil Park, a businessman here in one of the world's most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities. "They don't believe it. They say Europe cannot accept us."

Support for EU membership has indeed plunged to just 38 per cent in a recent poll by the German Marshall Fund think-tank, down from 74 per cent of the population in 2004.

Some Turks argue that Europe is correct in questioning the candidacy of this country of 77 million people that straddles Europe and Asia.

The harshest of these critics are usually among the large minority who voted against Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor who some see as a threat to the strongly secularist tradition established in 1923 by the founder of the republic, former war hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan, whose Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) first formed government in 2002 and is on track for its third straight mandate next year, was once jailed for reading aloud an Islamic poem that states: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers."

A Turkish court came within one vote in 2008 of banning the AKP, and courts also overturned his attempt to remove a ban on women wearing head scarves in educational facilities and other public places.

More alarming for Turkey's allies, especially in Washington, is Erdogan's cozying up to some unsavoury leaders in the Islamic world. Erdogan is developing warm relations with Iran and Syria, has downplayed the threat of Iran's nuclear program, and recently united with Brazil to thwart a United Nations Security Council bid to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.

He has also built links with the anti-Israeli political groups Hamas, in Gaza, and Hezbollah, in Lebanon. He famously said last year that he was more comfortable meeting Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, indicted for war crimes in the Darfur region, than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"A Muslim can never commit genocide," Erdogan said in 2009 to back up his claim that Bashir is innocent. "It's not possible."

Erdogan's hostility toward Israel culminated in the May incident in which nine Turks were killed when Israeli commandos boarded a relief ship headed to Gaza to provide aid for Palestinians.

Some Turkish opposition politicians, members of the military establishment, and western commentators, frequently warn that Erdogan has a barely hidden agenda to destroy the principles of Turkey's secularist republic.

Those charges were voiced here last month after Erdogan easily won a referendum supporting constitutional reforms that would reduce the power of the military, a vanguard of secularism.

The referendum supported constitutional proposals to give Parliament more say in nominating judges.

Was the referendum, as former Turkey-based Canadian diplomat Harry Sterling suggested last month, a "back-door coup by Prime Minister Erdogan to advance his Islamic goals?"

Three young female university students nodded their heads in agreement here this week, saying Erdogan has an anti-democratic, anti-women's rights agenda to turn Turkey into another Iran.

"That is what I'm afraid of," said Oykum Taner, a 19-year-old psychology student at Bilgi University here, as her friends nodded.

But others ridicule any suggestion Turkey is about to turn its back on the West.

"Whatever the personal warmth of some of these leaders in Ankara might feel about their Muslim brothers, that doesn't commit the whole country in a fundamentally new direction," said Hugh Pope, an Istanbul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group and co-author of Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey.

"If you look at trade and investment figures, Turkey's engagement is overwhelmingly with the West. Economically, and in people-to-people relations, Turkey remains unavoidably and inextricably entangled in Europe."

Egemen Bagis, Turkey's chief negotiator and minister for EU affairs, noted rhetorically that his country was a predominantly Muslim country when it first applied for EU membership in 1963, when it was accepted as a candidate in 1999, and when negotiations finally started in 2005.

"If the EU wants to prove that it is not a Christian club … then it should take the necessary measures to prevent the threat of rising Islamophobia throughout Europe," he told Postmedia News in an interview.

"Joint communication efforts are needed to overcome fears, concerns and prejudices."

He said Turkey's efforts to boost relations with its Middle East neighbours — which many analysts here say is driven less by ideology and more by a bid to find new trade markets — should enhance Turkey's strategic role as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

Turkey, which he described as a committed secular and democratic state, "is a vital asset for the EU."

Ilter Turan, a prominent commentator and Bilgi University professor, said he believes Turks are accepting that "the general anti-Islamic mood in Europe" is a short-term event.

Both he and analyst Hugh Pope also argue that aging Europe will need Turkey's large supply of unskilled workers.

"The decision about whether Turkey is really going to join is going to be taken by the next generation of politicians, in both Turkey and Europe."