“Turkey: absolute majority for the moderate Islamists”. That’s the front-page headline of Le Monde (5/11), dedicated to the victory of the AKP, the neo-islamic “Justice and Development” party in the recent elections in Turkey. The French daily speaks of a “triumph” and dedicates its editorial to what it calls the “ Turkish challenge”. “An islamic party has the means to govern Turkey”, notes Le Monde: “It is a really unprecedented fact ever since the creation of modern Turkey as a secular State 79 years ago. It is also unprecedented in the history of the member countries of NATO of which Turkey, a close ally of the USA, is one of the mainstays. The AKP’s victory represents an enormous challenge for the European Union, which, in these ‘Huntingtonian’ times of the alleged clash of civilizations, is preparing shortly to accept Turkey within its ranks”. On the internal level, notes the French daily, “the AKP has the historic responsibility to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam with democracy. If the AKP succeeds in reconciling Islam and modernity, the lesson will hold good for the whole of the Arab world“. A “tranquil nation” after the electoral victory of the Islamists is commented on by Herald Tribune (4/11), pointing out that “there were no panic reactions (…), but rather politeness in judging the new Turkish leaders, a party with a strong islamic identity“. the success of the AKP is also analysed with great attention in the German press. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Faz) of 5/11 contains an interview by Christian Geyer of the historian Hans– Ulrich Wehler, who comments on the result as follows: “ I see clearly confirmed the position of the critics of Turkey’s possible entry into the EU, who have judged with great coldness the admission of an Islamic country in which Islamism has spread so widely in recent years“. In Wehler’s view, we need to understand “ whether it is desirable in the European interest and in the interest of the defence of Europe’s identity for the EU to burden itself with the enormous dead weight of a great islamic State“. In Germany various reactions have been aroused by the government’s measures in the area of family policy, including the systematic growth of kindergartens and full-time schools, perhaps financed by abolishing tax relief in favour of well-to-do single-income families. The Faz of 4/11 dedicates an article to a statement by Olaf Scholz, new general secretary of the SPD (social-democratic party), who hails the projects of the executive as “a cultural revolution”. “ Complete parity between matrimonial unions and de facto unions in previous legislation comments the Faz was the beginning of the end of the constitutional protection of marriage. Now, the SPD is clearly not satisfied with having discredited marriage” but shows its “ firm intention to ruin the ‘bourgeois family’, considered (together with marriage) another relic of the distant past“. Writing in the Faz of 6/11, Heike Schmoll adds: “ Full-time schools are an instrument not of education policy, but of social policy for working parents. That’s why full-time school provision must exist, promoted by the State, but it’s up to the parents to decide whether they should be used. Parents cannot be forced to entrust their own children to full-time institutions, if they are willing to look after them themselves“. The weekly Der Spiegel of 4/11 also devoted a report to the numerous criticisms voiced against the government on account of the provisions it has announced in various sectors: “ Rarely has a government been attacked so ferociously immediately after the elections or have there been such vehement protects by the population: builders, patients, investors, farmers, construction workers, middle classes, all are irritated by the increased taxes being introduced by the red-green coalition that no one announced during the electoral campaign“. “God in the European debate” is the title of a dossier published by La Croix (2-3/11) in which discussion is focused on the claim that “the drafting of a new European Constitution is re-igniting controversies on the insertion of a reference to the role of religion in official texts of the Union (…). If it is improbable that there will be any recurrence to the reference to the spiritual heritage in the European Charter, the question of religions is being posed anew in an enlarged Union”. Another emerging issue, in La Croix‘s view, is that of the “debate on the lay state”, given that “the diversity of religious references in the current Constitutions of the member states leads to relativizing the debates on the lay state and to raising the question whether such matters should not rather be left to the individual countries”.
