Once upon a time in Ankara
Civitas, 5 August 2009
Once upon a time, Turkey decided it would like to join an attractive little club known as the EEC, writes Nicola Di Luzio. First it was rejected outright. Then, the club realised it could use membership as a carrot to encourage reform and friendly relations, so it waved membership under the country’s nose… for fifty years, as of last Friday.
You can picture the scene: whoopee, we’re still in just about the same position we’ve been in for half a century! No wonder Egemen Bagis, the Turkish Minister for EU Affairs and Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, said that the country remembers the anniversary but that it is “not a celebration”.
The going has been extremely slow. Fifty years on, and this fairytale has only reached its eleventh negotiating chapter out of thirty-five, which cover anything from fisheries, to free movement of goods, to human rights.
After the initial rejection in 1959, a 1963 association agreement between Turkey and the EU finally mentioned membership prospects for Turkey. In 1999, the country finally acquired formal candidate status. And in 2005, the actual negotiation talks finally began. In light of this apparent lack of haste, one wonders how effective Bagis’ macho assertion that his country “has no longer any tolerance for time wasting and delays” will be at nipping the EU’s heels.
Why so many plot twists? Negotiations were troubled from the beginning by the Cyprus problem; Turkey’s troops have occupied the north of the island since they invaded in 1974, five days after a brief Greek-inspired coup, and the Cypriot and Turkish governments have yet to come to an agreement. In 2006, this failure led to the blocking of eight negotiation chapters by Cyprus, a member state since 2004.
Then there’s the issue of religion. Although the EU has no official religion, its members share a common Christian heritage. In contrast, Turkey, although officially secular, has a population that is 99.8% Muslim. Many Europeans, unsure of the compatibility of Islam with Western culture, are afraid of an influx of Muslim immigrants. Having different religious bases does not necessarily entail different values, but discerning beliefs can be very difficult. For example, a 2006 Eurobarometer poll found that Turkish citizens differ no more than the newer member states did from the original EU 15 in terms of the importance they place on rule of law, respect for human life, individual freedom and other criteria. However, this contrasts sharply with a survey of February this year by Konda, in which 70% of respondents said that a woman needs her husband’s permission to work, and 73% opposed to foreigners owning Turkish land or property.
Still, these reasons are obscured behind the biggest: France and Germany’s fears of losing influence. Were Turkey to join the EU, the big three (France and Germany plus the UK) might become the big four; Turkey would have the second-largest population in the EU after Germany, giving it a large number of seats in the European Parliament and a weighty vote in the Council of Ministers, where population plays a role.
Why isn’t the UK concerned about this? Apparently because Turkish membership would create links with the East and, according to Jack Straw, “demonstrate that Western and Islamic cultures can thrive together as partners in the modern world”. It is certainly undeniable that as the eastern flank of NATO, Turkey played a critical role during the Cold War, helped monitor Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and after the 9/11 attacks became a staging area for coalition forces in Afghanistan. Many also claim that rejecting Turkey could set back domestic reforms and radicalise religious extremists, making Turkey a hotbed of anti-Western sentiment.
For these reasons, Turkey could yet join the European Union. In addition, its importance in the new gas pipe project, Nabucco, might give the EU more incentive to stay in its good books. EU Commision President Barroso’s inspired metaphor for the situation was: “Gas pipes may be made of steel, but Nabucco can cement the links between our people”.
The question is, when? Even Bagis recognises that Turkey will not complete all negotiation chapters before 2014. According to a Transatlantic Trends survey, only 26% of Turks think it likely that the country will join the EU – but 60% of the respondents from the 12 EU countries surveyed held that opinion. Meanwhile, the longer the EU waits, the less euro-positive the Turkish population may become. In fact, the same poll showed 45% of EU citizens seeing Turkey’s accession as a good thing, compared to just 42% of Turks. The course of true love never did run smooth.