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Why Turkey and Europe need each
other
By Stephen Blank
On
December 12, the European Union will meet to consider
Cyprus' and Turkey's application for membership. The
former's membership is virtually guaranteed, but
Turkey's application has already produced a minor crisis
in Europe, not least because of its connection to
Cyprus. Once Cyprus becomes a member, not only will
Turkey's leverage over the resolution of that island's
bifurcated Greco-Turkish ethnic rivalry disappear, the
EU will have also shown that it decisively rebuffed
Turkey's efforts to hold Cyprus and the EU hostage to
its own policies and application.
Therefore, the
EU might adopt an even more adamant refusal to take
Turkey's application seriously than was previously the
case. Furthermore, despite the recent support of both
France and Germany for Turkey to receive a certain date
for starting negotiations over accession, it is by no
means clear that the EU will yield to their pressure.
Numerous European elites believe that Turkey
should not and cannot join the EU. They offer many
reasons for this judgment: Turkey's democratic deficit
with regard to the judiciary, discrimination against the
Kurds, the use of torture, and the military's ability to
exempt itself from civilian democratic accountability.
Turkey's economy, which is currently undergoing
its greatest economic crisis in years, also must be
transformed to satisfy the EU's requirements embodied in
over 90,000 pages of its acquis communautaire.
But beyond those stiff requirements and the need for a
total overhaul of Turkey's political institutions to
make them stick, many Europeans argue, as did former
French president Valery Giscard D'Estaing, that a Muslim
state cannot join the EU. Other figures contend that
Turkey is simply too large to be assimilated in the EU,
and would therefore destroy it if it became a member.
Notwithstanding the Turkish democratic deficit,
there are abundant signs that it is diminishing under EU
and Western pressure. Too much Western commentary either
neglects the particular features of the Turkish case,
the present major difficulties, and the major strides
forward that have nevertheless occurred under singularly
inauspicious conditions.
This does not mean that
Turkey should be given a pass. Undoubtedly, if it wishes
to be a European state it must conform to European
standards. However, this can only mean that Turkey
become, as the distinguished historian Norman Stone
observed, "a different country". Therefore, the path to
this outcome will necessarily be a long one that
encounters considerable opposition at every turn.
As long as EU figures give reasons for
validating the prevailing suspicion that EU membership
will never be attained because that organization is a
Christians-only club, Ankara will neither consummate the
necessary reforms nor will domestic Turkish conditions
allow it to do so. This would be a disaster for both the
EU and for Turkey. Turkey would then be cut off from
Europe and thrown back upon the undemocratic Islamic
world without the means or incentive to project Western
values and interests, let alone its own interests, into
the Middle East, Caucasus or Central Asia.
Nor
could it then be a factor for peace in the Balkans. And
it is all too likely that it could not move forward far
enough to break the stultifying paradigm of Ataturkism
that inhibits its progress. Indeed, Turkey arguably
needs another Ataturk or a leader with commensurate
talent and vision to help it break free of the
paralyzing rigidity that Ataturk's paradigm has become.
And this leader, should he arise, needs the EU's and the
West's unstinting support to break that rigid domestic
and foreign policy deadlock.
But whereas Turkey
needs the EU to encourage it to realize its potential
and its true European vocation, the EU also needs to
encourage Turkey to conform to the acquis and the
so called Copenhagen criteria (the city which hosted the
EU meeting that laid down democratic criteria for
applicants).
The EU openly professes its desire
to become a superpower and proclaims security interests
in Europe and beyond. If it cannot deal fairly or
adequately with Turkey, the EU cannot defend any of
those extra-European interests, and even its Balkan
position would be weakened. In that case the EU would
then not be able to realize its own dream and vocation.
For if the EU cannot deal honestly with the most
advanced, democratic and progressive Muslim state, it
cannot then deal adequately with the Middle East or
other areas in the Islamic world.
Certainly it
has already long since shown its utter failure to play a
serious and respected role in the Middle East, to the
point where it is openly regarded with widespread
derision by Israeli political elites due to its
one-sidedness and fatuous policies.
Consequently, if the EU is to become a real
player in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Islamic
world, the December 12 meeting in Copenhagen is the
right setting for a statesman-like decision that
encourages Turkey to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria by
setting a certain date for negotiations and ensuring
that Turkey make good faith efforts to conform with
them.
Those decisions will not only overcome the
irritation generated by the admission of Cyprus to
membership, they will go a long way to beginning a
process whereby both Turkey and the EU can fully realize
their true interests and European vocations.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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