Une farouche liberté
This interview allows us to hear one last time from Gisèle Halimi, who left us on 28 July 2020, on her 93rd birthday. It retraces seventy years of fighting for justice and the cause of women. Written by journalist Annick Cojean, is also a final tribute to “wanted to change the law by making a legal argument” (our translation throughout)
“The law was her instrument, insubordination her stock in trade and her words, which she handled with great eloquence, her principal allies”, Cojean states, adding: “she defended, she accused and she attacked. Laws she considered unfair and archaic, courts martial accused of taking the law hostage, the masculine and macho judicial hierarchy, taboos that were harmful to women. Rebellious, passionate, indefatigable. And free. Fiercely free”.
Gisèle Halimi tells her story with memories, battles, emotions and words, ever since her first rebellion at the injustice facing women. This story takes us back to Tunisia in 1937. She was 10 years old and went on hunger strike in protest at being obliged to serve her brothers and to do household tasks when they did not have to. During the Algerian War, she denounced torture and pleaded for mercy for those sentenced to death. But it was the cause of women and the obstinate refusal to accept a destiny assigned upon her by her sex that would be a common theme through a life of fighting patriarchal culture and a “fundamentally misogynistic justice system”. Her struggles have borne fruit, as at a trial in Aix-en-Provence in 1976, that would lead to the extension of the definition of rape and the acknowledgement of it as a crime, and one in Bobigny in 1972, paving the way for the decriminalisation of abortion. In all these battles, she encountered many famous personalities and made many friendships, for instance with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Here again, memories fill the pages, up until the last family Christmas with Guy Bedos. From her brief time in politics, she seems mostly to remember meeting Simone Veil. This encounter prompted her to refer to this “Europe of people and no longer just of states” in which she placed so much hope, including the hope of building a single European law that would be better for women, on the basis of harmonisation from the top down. “One thing is certain: Europe will not happen without women. But from the future of women, the future of Europe may be born”, she said, before urging women to stop consenting to their own oppression.
Conscious of having been a “pathfinder”, she hopes that someone will pick up where she left off: “combat is a dynamic. If you stop, you’re done for, because women’s rights are always in danger”. “Disunited, women are vulnerable. Together, they have the strength to move mountains and convert men to this profound movement, the most fascinating in the whole history of humanity”.
Olivier Jehin
Gisèle Halimi with Annick Cojean. Une farouche liberté (available in French only). Grasset. ISBN: 978-2-246-82423-7. 158 pages. €14,90
La route des Balkans
With this second novel, the Franco-German writer Christine de Mazières takes us on the Balkans Route, awakening in us the sounds and images that filled our screens in 2015. A graduate of the prestigious French Ecole Nationale d’Administration, like her husband, the Mayor of Versailles, de Mazières is a member of the French Court of Auditors and it is possibly this career path that inspired her need to anchor a narrative in a sequence of historic facts. If so, this does not diminish the success of this breathless account of lives that overlap and then go their separate ways. The writing style is clear, often poignant, with no shortage of poetry. The novel gives names and stories to topical images that are moving, but frequently anonymous and almost disembodied, lending humanity to the tragedies of exile. This is the case with the story of two young Syrian women, “uprooted, invisible, living as fugitives”, meeting other women, men and children on the road, caught up in this “life between two, a life suspended between two lives”. Because there is always a previous life, with its joys, dramas and despair. Because there is always the hope of a better life, there at the end of the road, in an unknown and sometimes imagined Europe, which many of them will never reach. De Mazières also mixes the recent history of migrants together with that of the exodus of German populations fleeing the Red Army at the end of the Second World War, thereby offering us her reading of the enormous upsurge of solidarity offered by the Germans, although the hosting of refugees has also created tensions in Germany. In passing, she sketches a sensitive picture of the Chancellor and the “moment of truth” of her “Wir schaffen das”. A must-read! (OJ)
Christine de Mazières. La route des Balkans (available in French only). Sabine Wespieser Éditeur. ISBN: 978-2-8480-5346-2. 182 pages. €18,00
Nervenkrieg um Energie-Ressourcen im östlichen Mittelmeer
In this edition of the review Südosteuropa Mitteilungen, which also covers the impact of the pandemic in the Balkans and the refugee camps in Greece, political scientist Heinz-Jürgen Axt provides a rigorous analysis of the “war of nerves” currently taking place in the eastern Mediterranean over oil and gas resources (our translation throughout). The principal protagonist in this war is Turkey, which signed two agreements with the Libyan government (GNA) in 2019, the principal one of which aims to establish a common delineation of their continental shelves in the centre of the Mediterranean, with Libya recognising a range that will allow Turkey to encroach on spaces claimed by Greece, Crete and other islands, to the West, and on the continental shelf of Cyprus in the East, giving Turkey a total maritime area of 460,000 km². The second agreement concerns cooperation and military support to the GNA in its fight against the troops of General Haftar and represents a form of “compensation” provided by Turkey in return for the first agreement, according to Prof. Axt, taking note of Turkey’s violation of the United Nations embargo on weapons to Libya. Although he reiterates that the principal motive for the delineation agreement is to hamper cooperation currently developing between Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel on the exploitation of energy resources present in the south and east of Cyprus, Axt also stresses that there is no knowing what the actual exploitable volume is or what it will cost, with very real risks that the pipeline envisioned to export gas via Greece to the rest of the EU will turn out to be nothing but a “pipe dream”. The professor also stresses that the Turkey-Libya maritime agreement raises a number of problems of international law, not least of which is its failure to take account of the interests of neighbouring third countries. “The two agreements between Turkey and Libya have driven up the risk in North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East”, Axt observes, stressing that Turkey has ended up even more isolated. (OJ)
Heinz-Jürgen Axt. Nervenkrieg um Energie-Ressourcen im östlichen Mittelmeer (available in German only). Revue Südosteuropa Mitteilungen. 01-02/2020. ISSN: 0340-174X. 184 pages. €15,00
Greco-Turkish Relations and Cyprus
The latest edition of the bimonthly electronic newsletter In Depth is a special issue given over to relations between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus and devotes a lot of space to Turkey’s hegemonic aspirations, maritime demands and recent provocations with religious overtones, such as the reclassification of the Church of St Sophia. It features an article by Professor Andreas Theophanous and Senior Fellow Andreas Karyos (University of Nicosia), which draws a number of parallels with previous Greco-Turkish crises in 1976 and 1987. In both cases, Turkey used “gunboat diplomacy”, whilst seeking international mediation with a view to negotiations based, at least partly, on Turkish preconditions. The authors argue that the same reading can be applied to the current crisis: “Turkey once again resorts to ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to counter an anticipated event from becoming a fait accompli: the continuation of the Republic of Cyprus’s undersea exploration programme without the participation of Turkey in the decision-making process (through the Turkish-Cypriots). At the same time, Ankara makes use of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to undermine the strengthening of the tripartite partnerships in the eastern Mediterranean (Greece-Cyprus-Israel, Greece-Cyprus-Egypt) and force them to recognise a dominant role to Turkey”. The article continues: “the implications for Greece and Cyprus are clear. These two countries will be successful in achieving an honourable compromise with Turkey if they manage to counterbalance Ankara’s supremacy in the region. If not, Turkey will continue to use military power to impose its will on Athens and Nicosia”.
Constantinos Filis (Panteion University) considers that Turkey is clearly trying, through its constant threats, its constant presence in the region in the form of overflights, violations of airspace, air and naval exercises and, recently, vessels monitoring seismic activity and drilling platforms, to force Greece to come to the negotiating table and to push the Greek Cypriots to accept Ankara’s conditions. The author also flags up violations of international law and a discourse that is aggressive towards the West, the EU and the United States, “with the sole exception of President Trump, whom Erdogan considers as a friend”. This aggression towards the West does not stop him aspiring to “a new rapprochement between the EU and Turkey (…), with specific commitments and terms that include good neighbourly relations with Greece and Cyprus”. Carrots, rather than the stick, will be needed to bring Turkey on board: updating customs union and the joint declaration of March 2016 on migration, increasing financial aid. But the stick may have to be used after all, not “to punish Turkey and its people, but rather to set a framework of rules and pave the way for concrete dialogue based on the provisions of the international law”, Filis adds, noting that “Erdogan gains confidence every time he sees either the EU or the US show their surprising level of tolerance for Turkey’s moves (in Syria, for example)”.
Economics Professor Andreas Stergiou (University of Thessaly) stresses that the production of gas anticipated in the area to the south and east of Cyprus will, in the best-case scenario, supply less than an eighth of EU consumption. He also points out that Turkish Petroleum, which is carrying out drilling work off the coast of Cyprus, has neither the capital nor the expertise to take charge of any exploitation. Taken together, the sole aim of these activities is, he argues, to “stir up trouble and compel the rest of the East Mediterranean to bow to its leadership on energy”. “Turkey has unambiguous aspirations to be recognised as the regional superpower. It cannot join a multilateral cooperation as an equal member. It’s rather a country that dictates terms to others”, Stergiou observes, stressing that should the current crisis degenerate into military confrontation, there will be no winners. For Turkey, it will lead to the “irrevocable end” of its European Union candidacy (which, admittedly, has not yet been officially established), a freeze of its NATO membership and other damaging sanctions. As for Greece, it would suffer a military rout and a further unprecedented economic crisis even before the last one is over, the author predicts, adding that he does not believe that France will be prepared to come to the military assistance of Greece against Turkey. (OJ)
Andreas Theophanous (editor). Greco-Turkish Relations and Cyprus. In Depth. Volume 17, Issue 5, September 2020. The newsletter can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs of the University of Nicosia (http://cceia.ac.cy )
L’antieuropeismo nella politica americana è destinato a restare
In this article, PhD student Francesco Violi argues that there is currently an unquestionably anti-European feeling in the Grand Old Party and that this will continue to be the case even after the end of the current term in office of Donald Trump. This attitude on the part of America’s right wing is the expression of an ideology that is based on opposition to any form of social contract and any public intervention in the economy. Due to its model and pretentions to regulate the economy, protect personal data and even to fight climate change, “the European Union is an obstacle to be eliminated” (our translation throughout). “The fact that such a narrative is so strong in one of the two parties in the US system is a more serious threat to the EU than Putin’s Russian revanchism (…) and the emergence of China”, argues the author, adding that under these circumstances, Europe should no longer allow the United States to play any kind of hegemonic role in the Atlantic system. Quite the reverse, it should become more autonomous and, according to Violi, this can be achieved firstly through a “united security and defence policy” under the control of the European Parliament, with the EU’s own industrial defence policy and a commensurate budget and, secondly, a “constitutional leap”.
The federalist review of Milan also contains an interesting article by biologist Massimo Malcovati, who regards the Green Deal, digital policy and the new industrial strategy as the tools for the economic reconstruction of Europe as it comes out of the pandemic crisis, as long as the European Union is given “at least some degree of fiscal capacity” to pay for the effort. The author also makes the case for better European coordination of national economic policy. (OJ)
Francesco Violi. L’antieuropeismo nella politica americana è destinato a restare (available in Italian only). Revue Il Federalista. Anno LXII, 2020, numero 1-2. ISSN: 1970-688X. 152 pages. http://www.ilfederalista.eu