SPEAKING
FREELY Turkey's EU membership hits a
wall By Emanuele Scimia
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
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Turkey started talks
about joining the European Union back in 2005, but
the process has been suspended since June 2010.
The stalemate stems from Brussels' refusal to
start negotiations on visa-free travel before
Ankara signs a pact for the readmission of illegal
migrants coming from its territory (those
registered in 2011 by FRONTEX - the EU agency for
external border security - were over 55,000,
mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and
the Northern Africa).
While EU countries
like the United Kingdom and Sweden have over the
years sponsored Turkey's bid to join the EU, the
European continental
hard-core - led by France and Germany - keeps on
showing resistance to Turkish membership.
London's overture to Ankara are part of a
long-desired plan to transform the European club
into a great free-trade area rather than a single
political and economic entity. Paris and Berlin,
on the other hand, would prefer to set up with
Turkey an enhanced strategic partnership in place
of full accession.
According to the
European Parliament Resolution on Turkey's 2011
Progress Report (which regards Turkish request for
membership), discussed on March 28 and 29, Ankara
must still comply with several EU criteria on
enlargement (the so-called Copenhagen Criteria).
The EU's legislative body voiced its
concern about women's rights, the large number of
lawsuits filed against journalists writing on the
Kurdish issue and the detention of many Kurdish
politicians, lawyers, activists and human rights
defenders.
It also expressed worry about
opposition parties' freedom of expression, by
forgetting that, as for people's involvement in
the European democratic processes, even the EU has
its own skeletons in the cupboard. In this
regards, on April 12 the EUobserver website
reported the allegations about Brussels'
commitment to curb public access to internal EU
documents: a marked breach of the Lisbon treaty
(the EU's constitutional pillar) according to
London-based NGO ClientEarth.
The EU
parliament praised improvements in the civil
oversight of the military, even though it raised
alarm over the judicial handling of two alleged
coup plans (the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases),
which see high-ranked military officials awaiting
trial. Such controversies would arise from the
political rift between the government of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish
armed forces (in modern Turkey, after the rise of
Kemal Ataturk's vision of state, the military has
always claimed its role as the guarantor of
country's secularist institutions).
Opponents of the Euro-Turkish marriage
fear the ruling party in Ankara, the
Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party
(AKP), is trying to reduce the military's clout so
as to carry out some form of Islamization of
Turkish society. In dismissing this concern, the
backers of the pro-Turkey stance within the EU
underscore the liberal-democratic record of the
Erdogan's government in fields such as the
property rights' restoration of non-Muslim
religious foundations and communities.
Yet
another bone of contention in the Euro-Turkish
dialogue is the Armenian genocide perpetrated by
Ottomans during the World War I. The socialist
candidate and current front-runner in the French
presidential vote, Francois Hollande, has declared
that should he win his government would draft a
new law criminalizing denial of the Armenian
genocide. The French Constitutional Council
rejected last February a bill approved by the
parliament and backed by the incumbent President
Nicholas Sarkozy, which spawned a harsh diplomatic
row between Paris and Ankara.
The memory
of the "impious alliance", by which from the early
sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century the
Kingdom of France and the Ottoman Empire had
forced the Habsburgs-led Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation to fight on two fronts at the same
time, has by now vanished. However, flashpoints in
the relations between Turkey and the EU still
remain over Ankara's tensions with Greece and the
related problem of the reunification of Cyprus.
Athens questions the condition of the Greek
minority in Turkey and the Turkish military
occupation of Northern Cyprus since 1974.
EU leaders have recently urged Turkish
counterparts not to boycott the European meetings
when the (Greek-Cypriot) Republic of Cyprus takes
over the EU rotating presidency in 2013, as well
as not to hamper drilling operations for oil and
gas by Greek-Cypriots in a section of the
Mediterranean Sea which the Ankara-backed Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) also claims.
In light of continuing poor economic
performances of EU countries, coupled with the
slow rhythm of membership's negotiations, within
Turkey is mounting the disaffection over the
European integration. Turks wonder why their
fast-growing country should join a giant with feet
of clay, which can hardly give lessons to them
like in the past.
The answer could be in
the Euro-Turkish economic interdependence. The
Turkish economy grew by 8.5% in 2011, but it
slowed to 5.2% in the fourth quarter of the same
year. Turkey is the EU's sixth-biggest trade
partner, while the Union is Turkey's main trading
partner: Turkish trade with the EU accounts for
42% of its total. Europe's share of foreign
investments to Ankara is 80%. Then, it is worth
noting that 70% of tourists visiting Turkey come
from European countries. Ankara is also the only
country which has formed a customs union with
Brussels before its accession.
The Turkish
Parliamentary Speaker Cemil วi็ek, during a
conference of EU parliament heads in Warsaw on
April 20, emphasized the political and economic
advantages of Turkey's accession to the EU.
"Turkey's EU membership would help Europe overcome
the recession as well as bring the Union's
political, economic and social strength to a vast
geography", วi็ek was quoted as saying by the
Anadolu Agency.
Turkey's geopolitical
importance for Europe is evident in many respects.
The Turkish candidate might indeed offer a
successful model (of Muslim democracy) for those
Arab States experiencing a twisted political
transition. The strategic depth of Ankara in the
Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia could also
help EU pursue more briskly its Neighborhood
Policy. And, since "the vast geography" wants what
it wants, the European governments and energy
companies look to Turkey as a stable corridor for
Caucasian, Caspian and Iraqi oil and gas
resources.
Over the past two years, Turkey
has been calling on the EU to revive a structured
dialogue on foreign policy, but in vain. In
forwarding such a demand, the Erdogan's cabinet
has probably recognized that a go-alone policy in
the Middle-Eastern powder keg would drain plenty
of political and economic resources away from the
country.
With its huge population of 78.7
million, its GDP per capita remaining low compared
to most EU member states and with its Islamic
soul, Turkey is still seen in the European
mainstream as an "alien body". The litmus test of
this negative perception is in Turkey-obsessed
Greece: notwithstanding its dramatic economic
situation, Greece spent US$7.5 billion for defense
in 2011 (2.3% of its GDP, one of the higher ratios
in Europe, according to a recently released report
by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute) and that is ready to waste $7.2 million
to build an immigrant-repelling barrier on its
border with Turkey.
Emanuele
Scimia is a journalist and geopolitical
analyst based in Rome.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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