SPEAKING
FREELY That pesky Turkish
problem By Nadia
Mushtaq Abbassi
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The issue of Turkish entry to the European
Union club has resurfaced again, and this time it is a
point of contention among the trans-Atlantic allies. During
the recent visit of heads of states for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Istanbul
on June 28-29, US President George W Bush urged the EU
to begin talks that would lead to full EU membership for
Turkey.
The decision on whether to start membership
negotiations with Turkey is a sensitive issue facing
EU leaders, and poses a difficult question for the
EU at its December meeting, the climax of the Dutch presidency
of the EU, where it will be decided whether or
not to start accession negotiations with Turkey and whether
Turkey has met the EU's criteria for human
rights and democracy.
If agreed, within a decade
or so Turkey's population of nearly 70 million would
make Turkey the second-largest country in the European
bloc, and the first mainly Muslim nation. With
a new voting system based in part on population size due
to come into effect under Europe's constitution, Turkish
membership would have profound implications for the EU's
power balance.
For almost four decades, Turkey has
sought membership in the European club of nations, which
has changed names, forms and objectives since its creation
in the 1950s. It first applied to join the EU, then
known as the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1959.
It signed a customs agreement with the bloc in 1995
and became a candidate for membership in 1999. Over the
years, Turkey has taken a number of steps to meet the
political accession criteria, especially in the areas
of democratization and human rights.
Their raft of constitutional
changes included the introduction of a national-security court, the abolition
of the death penalty, the removal of
all military representatives from higher-education organizations, and a free
press. It has also lifted some curbs on freedom
of expression, association and religion. It helped reduce
the influence of the military in politics and
increased cultural rights for Turkey's 12 million Kurds. Turkey
also played an important role in urging the populace of
the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to back the
United Nations plan to reunify the island of Cyprus.
The reunification plan was accepted by Turkish Cypriots, but
rejected by the Greek Cypriot majority, which led Greek
Cyprus to join the EU alone this May.
Over the past two
decades the Turks have patiently worked on a package of
economic reforms, starting with a large dose of economic
liberalization under Turgot Ozal. The process has
continued under the current center-right government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan with even greater determination.
The EU concern is that Turkey is not doing enough to
stamp out police use of torture in jails, harassment of
human-rights activists and violations of the rights of
non-Muslim minorities.
To disqualify Turkey as a
member, the EU has mentioned certain factors, including
its weak economy, its inefficient bureaucracy, its
rampant corruption and its poor record of human
rights. Countries with similar problems, such as
Eastern European states, joined the EU club on May 1. One
argument is that Turkey has a large peasantry that could
bankrupt the union by demanding subsidies under the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
But that
argument fades when one notes that the CAP has already
reached a dead end with the admission of new members
from Central and Eastern Europe and mounting pressure
for the removal of farm subsidies as the last impediment
to global free trade. Other arguments are that Turkey is
not democratic enough to enter the union, and the
question of the implementation of the adopted reforms.
This is true. It may take Turkey many more decades
before it can be regarded as a mature democracy. But one
must also note that membership of the EU could
accelerate the process of democratization, as it did in
Portugal and Greece and is doing in the formerly
communist states.
The positive and negative
points of Turkish inclusion for Turkey and the EU have
to be studied in detail in this regard. One cannot
ignore the fact that for almost half a century Turkey
has served as Europe's first line of defense against
Soviet imperialism. (The Turkish army was, and remains,
the second-largest within NATO after the United States.)
If the EU aspires to have a strong military muscle to
complement its political weight on the international
stage, Turkey's inclusion would be a necessity and would
help in complementing European defense. Now that NATO's
European members regard Afghanistan as their top
priority, Turkey can play an important role.
On
the economic front, Turkey has reached the stage where
more economic improvement is to a certain extent
dependent on the launch of formal EU accession talks.
The beginning of negotiations would of itself provide a
"stabilizing anchor" for Turkey's economic policy.
Turkey was the only non-EU country with a full Customs
Union agreement with the EU. Full membership would
enhance its trade and investment opportunities even
further, boosting Europe's competitiveness at the same
time. The start of accession negotiations would draw
foreign investment to the country and help lower yields
on the nation's $204 billion debt. For the EU, access to
energy sources from the Caspian Sea basin could solve
lots of energy problems for the European continent.
Also, the ideological argument advanced by some in
Europe against inclusion of an Islamic state in a Christian
club does not hold water. This argument is rooted
in the historical experience of the Europeans, but
then if historical experience is the driving force, the
Franco-German alliance would not have been possible. To
start with, the claim that the EU is a Christian club is
both false and dangerous. In the 25 member states of
the union, no more than 30% of the population describe
themselves as practicing Christians. If the religion of
one's birth is the yardstick, the union is home to some
20 million Muslims. In fact, Islam is the second-largest
religion throughout the union. There are also almost 2
million Jews and millions of European converts to a
variety of other creeds, from Buddhism to the many
currently fashionable sects.
Europe today is one
big supermarket of religions and political ideologies.
Europe is secular in state practice, and on the other
hand, the Turkish republic has been a secular state for
almost eight decades, much longer than many of the
members of the EU. Turkish entry into the EU seems to be
more of a power-sharing problem then an ideological one
because once Turkey becomes a member of the EU club, it
would have the same, if not more, votes than Germany,
given that its population could rise to 80 million over
the next decade. This signifies that Turkey would have a
big say in European matters. So it is all about
power sharing. It will depend on how the ideological
card is going to be played in this regard to keep Turkey
away from the EU.
There is a whole
spectrum for Turkey's membership to the EU, ranging from
full support from European leaders such as Tony Blair (British
premier), Silvio Berlusconi (Italian premier) and Jan
Peter Balkenende (Dutch premier) to a resistant approach
from Jacques Chirac (French president) and Gerhard
Schroeder (German chancellor), to fears experienced
particularly among the smaller countries, which believe that
European integration could become paralyzed if such a country
as large as Turkey was admitted, to the other extreme,
with countries such as Austria, which believes that Europe would
lose its Christian identity.
The recent EU
parliamentary elections gave the majority of the 732
seats to conservatives and Euroskeptics, both of which
do not want Turkey in the EU. The 732 MEPs will vote in
December on Turkey's accession date. After that, vetoes
from individual countries will be taken into account.
Austria is already threatening a veto, since no party in
Austria wants Turkey in the EU. Opposition is also
visible in other countries such as France and Germany,
and a Cyprus veto is also a possibility, and probably
there will be others in line to adopt the same approach
against Turkey.
Internal opposition in most
European countries and the coming into power of the
conservatives makes Turkey's job even harder. It can be
expected that the October report will not paint a
positive picture regarding Turkey. But if it is the
other way round, it would be a big achievement for the
Dutch presidency to have been able to convince European
leaders to agree on starting negotiations with Turkey.
That would be a win-win situation for both sides.
Nadia M Abbasi, Research Fellow,
Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
