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EU stands firm in face of US
pressure
By Hooman Peimani
On
December 3, American Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz visited Turkey as part of his government's bid
to ensure its full cooperation with the American
envisaged war on Iraq. As the summit of the European
Union (EU) dealing with its enlargement will be held in
Copenhagen next week on December 12, during his stay,
his statements made clear the American interest in
Turkey's EU membership. Thus, he described as
"unthinkable" its continued exclusion from that
organization. But despite the repeated American appeals
to the EU to accept Turkey's membership, German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's recent rejection of the
American say in this regard has indicated, among many
other indicators, the depth of the EU-US schism.
Over the past four decades, Turkey has sought to
join the European club of nations. However, the European
leaders have systematically refused to grant membership
to or even set a date for beginning negotiations with
the Turks. About a month ago, the released recommended
list of countries to join the EU in 2004 was yet another
disappointment for Ankara as it did not include their
country. The four-decade-long rejection of Turkey by the
Europeans, despite its playing a vital role in defending
the southern flank of Europe with its second largest
NATO military force, has created grounds for an
anti-European sentiment, which could easily evolve into
an anti-Western one to endanger American interests as
well.
Turkey's November parliamentary elections
removed almost all the traditional mainstream parties
from the political scene to catapult the Justice and
Development Party to power. Its leaders have expressed
commitment to secularism to ally anxiety of all those
fearful of a religious government in power both in
Turkey, first and foremost the Turkish military, and
abroad, including the United States and the EU. However,
the party has religious tendencies as a offspring of
then disbanded Welfare (Refah) Party, which briefly came
to power in 1996, only to be removed in about a year
under the pressure of the Turkish military, the main
defender of secularism in the country.
Such
tendencies, though they are not yet translated into
government policies and may never be translated, have
created grounds for concern because of certain
realities. Firstly, since the sudden collapse of its
economy in 2001, Turkey's continued severe economic
problems reflected in high unemployment have created a
very strong social ground for the rise and expansion of
radical and extremist ideologies, including religious
ones. Secondly, the recent electoral results clearly
demonstrated the disillusionment with and the rejection
of the traditional political elite, right, left and
center, by the majority of the Turkish voters. The
inability of most political parties to secure the
minimum 10 percent of the popular vote to qualify for
entering the parliament made this point clear.
In such a situation, the EU's refusal to open
its door to Turkey, while letting 10 new European states
in, will surely have a discouraging impact on the Turks.
Undoubtedly, most of them will interpret it as a clear
case of their rejection and a major source of national
humiliation, after their country's compliance with many
EU requirements, such as the abolition of the death
penalty. Needless to say, the likely resulting rise of
anti-Western sentiment in a NATO country in charge of
securing southern Europe will have grave implications
for NATO, the EU countries of which most are NATO
members and for the United States, a NATO country with
strategically important military bases in Turkey.
Having these concerns in mind, Wolfowitz hinted
at a predictable deterioration of Turkey's ties with the
Western countries, with long-term implications for the
latter, if next week's EU summit in Denmark refused to
decide in favor of Turkey's EU membership, or at least a
date to discuss the issue. He elaborated on the
significance of the relationship between Turkey and
Western countries. To describe the EU summit's important
impact on this relationship, he emphasized that it was
"impossible to overstate how decisive" the next two
weeks would be, a reference to the period between his
speech and the EU summit. In short, Wolfowitz sought to
make it clear that a positive response to Turkey's
membership request would secure the latter's needed
collaboration with Western countries, whereas a negative
response would ensure its hostility towards those
countries, an undesirable scenario, especially for the
Europeans.
Although the timing of Wolfowitz's
appeal to the EU made it especially important, his
appeal was not the first American effort in that regard.
In fact, the latter made a few days after the clear
statements of German Chancellor Schroeder in the Prague
summit meeting of NATO in November when he reacted to
previous American appeals. He therefore stated that
Turkey's EU membership, if it ever happened, would be
only in recognition of Europe's interest in
strengthening the Turkish secular forces.
Unlike
what many Americans hoped during the October 2002 German
elections, Schroeder's "anti-American" statements,
including his clear opposition to an American war
against Iraq, were not mainly a vote-winning tactic. On
the contrary, his comments in Prague made within the
context of his talk on "Europeanizing" decision-making
on international issues revealed the growing rift
between the EU and the US over an increasing number of
regional and international issues, and not just on Iraq.
Over the past few years, the two sides have
found themselves on the opposite sides of many
political, economic and military/security issues. The EU
has gained self-confidence in its dealing with the US as
a result of its gradual consolidation, enabling it to
act more as a rising powerful bloc and not just a simple
grouping of nations. Consequently, the two sides have
experienced major conflicts over trade issues, over
relations with countries such as Iran, and over NATO's
role in the post-Cold war era.
For example, the
latter became evident in the NATO Prague summit when
Schroeder rejected the American view of turning NATO
into a vehicle to deal with terrorism. He argued against
considering the use of military force as the only means
to deal with that multi-dimensional phenomenon. Instead,
he proposed a package of measures of which military
force was only one measure. Other necessary measures,
according to Schroeder, included helping the developing
countries overcome their underdevelopment and reduce
their poverty by providing them with more development
aid.
Germany's rejection of Wolfowitz' hinted
warning about the predictable security threat of another
disappointing EU decision for Turkey - ie, its likely
future loss to anti-American/European extremists - is
yet another sign of widening gap between the EU and the
US. Given the pattern of surfacing conflicts in their
bilateral relations, as the EU gains more
self-confidence caused by its enlargement, its
integration and its expanding political and economic
ties with certain dissatisfied regional powers (eg,
Russia and Iran), one should expect more clashes of
interests in the future.
Dr Hooman
Peimani works as an independent consultant with
international organizations in Geneva and does research
in international relations.
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