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Bülent Ecevit Quotes
1925–2006 Turkey
Mustafa Bülent Ecevit (28 May 1925 – 5 November 2006) was a Turkish politician, statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime minister in 1974, 1977, 1978–79, and 1999–2002.
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Turkey, is the leader country in democracy and secularism among the countries having a majority of Muslim population.
Yet, whatever the negative effects of such external factors may be, surmounting our deficiencies is primarily our own task and responsibility.
However, democracy has survived and will survive in Turkey because the Turkish society is already well beyond the point of return and because the people would not put up with any alternative regime.
Happy Greece has returned to democracy. Only wish is that the new government should realise the value of close cooperation between Turkey and Greece.
The Turks have been Europeans for 600 years. But the Turks are not only Europeans. They are also Asian, Caucasian and Middle Eastern at once.
The unity of the Turkish nation is based on the fact that ethnic differentiation is alien to the traditional attitudes and social relations of the people of Turkey. Throughout history, ethnic or religious conflicts emerged in Turkey only when there were provocations from outside.
The Bosphorus bridges do not only straddle the two sides of Istanbul but they also unite the continents of Europe and Asia. And this, not only in geographic terms, but in the political and cultural senses of the word as well.
Turkey, through NATO has contributed to the security of Europe and the West as a whole throughout the decades of Cold War. It carried the heavy economic burden of this responsible role with a great sense of duty.
Turkey is, I believe, a model for Islamic countries for the sake of her democracy and modernization. Of course, some circles try to subvert this regime, but it has been solidly entrenched, and I think that its influence is becoming wider in the world.
Some members of the European Union may think that it will take many years for Turkey to become a full-member. But, I am convinced that given the dynamism of the Turkish people and their attachment to democracy, we will achieve this objective in a far shorter period.
In a democratic country at our stage of development, the social feasibility of stabilisation measures is at least as important as their economic feasibility. In such a country a static stability does not work or, even when it seems to work, it backfires at one stage. It has to be a dynamic stability, ensuring a certain momentum in growth and development.
There are, today, a greater number of Islamic countries progressing towards democracy or practicing a degree of, some degrees of democracy than a decade or two earlier. I believe that Turkey's example has played an important role in this respect, because the Turkish experiment has proven that Islam can be compatible with modernity, with secularism, and with democracy.
However, the refusal of the European Union to grant membership to Turkey has played an educative role. It's made us realize that the world does not consist of Western Europe alone, that a country can become strong politically and economically by concentrating, by diversifying its international relations, all the world over, and we have been doing that with increasing success.
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