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Mountains still to climb

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  • Mountains still to climb

    The Economist, UK
    May 12 2005

    Turkey and the European Union

    Mountains still to climb

    May 12th 2005 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
    >From The Economist print edition

    (Caricature)

    There remain formidable obstacles to Turkish membership of the
    European Union, not least in Turkey itself


    THE Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is cross with
    critics who attack his government for doing too little to prepare for
    accession talks with the European Union, due to start on October 3rd.
    These critics claim that, whereas big reforms were introduced in the
    months leading up to December 17th, when Mr Erdogan secured the
    precious October date at an EU summit, nothing has been done since.
    Some even point to an upsurge in Turkish nationalism as a sign of a
    backlash against the idea of joining the EU.

    In a recent interview with The Economist, Mr Erdogan dismissed such
    criticism as unfair. He talked darkly of a `campaign against us'. He
    said his government would do `whatever is required of us, take
    whatever steps are necessary', insisting that `we are fully committed
    to the EU process.' He conceded that a big test would be implementing
    the reforms, as this requires `a change of mentality'. As for
    critics' gripes that he has failed to appoint a top EU point man, he
    claimed that there was no rush, as he himself would be in overall
    charge of the negotiations.

    So all is set fair for October 3rd? Not quite. Formally, Turkey must
    fulfil two more conditions. The first is to bring into force its new
    penal code, which should happen in June. The second is to sign the
    protocol extending the EU-Turkey customs union to the ten new EU
    members that joined last year - including Cyprus. This Turkey is now
    ready to do, despite fretting that it may imply some recognition of
    the Greek-Cypriot government.

    Yet other problems are sure to appear. The December summit almost
    foundered over the precise wording on Cyprus. Everybody is aware that
    Croatia lost its promised date of March 17th for the start of
    membership talks, because the EU decided it was not complying with
    The Hague war-crimes tribunal. They also know that Cyprus will haunt
    negotiations with Turkey far beyond October. As the Greek-Cypriot
    president, Tassos Papadopoulos, gleefully noted in December, he will
    have many opportunities to veto Turkish entry: the negotiations could
    last for ten years or more.

    Two more immediate problems are the French and Dutch votes on the EU
    constitution in two weeks' time. Mr Erdogan protests that Turkey
    should not have been dragged into the debate on the constitution,
    since the two issues are quite unconnected. But the fact is that, in
    both countries, Turkey's putative membership has been a significant
    weapon for the no campaigns. The leaders of France and the
    Netherlands favour opening talks with Turkey. But if either country
    votes no, their governments will come under pressure at least to
    postpone, and possibly to call off, the negotiations with Turkey.

    The odds still favour the opening of talks, if only for fear of the
    fallout from not opening them. No country that has begun negotiations
    with the EU has not been offered membership. Yet the obstacles to
    Turkey will remain huge even after talks begin - and they go well
    beyond Cyprus.

    Public opinion within the EU is mostly hostile, for a start. France's
    president, Jacques Chirac, has promised to consult French voters in a
    referendum before admitting Turkey, and other countries may follow
    suit. In Germany, the opposition Christian Democrats are against full
    membership for Turkey, although they will not block talks once they
    have begun. The new (German) pope is on record against Turkish
    entry - though, as Mr Erdogan sardonically observes, the Vatican is not
    an EU member. That his AK party is in the Christian Democrats'
    umbrella group, the European People's Party, seemingly counts for
    little.

    Yet, as one EU diplomat in Ankara says, the biggest obstacle to
    Turkish membership is not the EU: it is Turkey. In part, this is a
    question of understanding. The Turks see EU accession as a matter of
    genuine negotiation: if they make concessions, they expect
    concessions in return (eg, on northern Cyprus, see article). In
    reality, the talks are just about assuming the obligations of the
    EU's acquis communautaire. These include not just boring
    single-market measures but such broader concerns as human rights, the
    treatment of minorities and religious and democratic freedoms.

    Mr Erdogan insists that none of these is any longer a problem for
    Turkey. His reforms over the past year included scrapping state
    security courts, cementing civilian control of the army, allowing
    Kurdish-language teaching and broadcasting, and shaking up the police
    and judiciary. Yet negative incidents happen too often: Christian
    churches are harassed, the Greek Orthodox seminary near Istanbul
    remains closed, a new military crackdown has begun against Kurdish
    PKK terrorists (and civilians) in the south-east. The prime minister
    talks of `provocations', a word he uses to describe a women's protest
    in early March that was broken up violently by police in front of the
    television cameras.

    As for rulings against Turkey by the European Court of Human Rights,
    he says the government disputes most of them. This week the ECHR
    ruled that the 1999 trial of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was
    `unfair'. Mr Erdogan says that he cannot interfere in Turkey's
    independent courts. In response to broader concerns of human-rights
    groups for Kurds, he wonders where they were when he was jailed in
    1999 for reading an Islamist nationalist poem in public, before they
    rushed to Diyarbakir to back local mayors.

    Turkey has clearly improved in its observance of human rights and its
    treatment of Kurds and other minorities, but it still has a lot more
    to do to match European standards. This makes a recent speech by
    General Hilmi Ozkok, the army's chief of staff, interesting and, in
    some respects, troubling. The general observed that Turkey had a
    security interest in northern Cyprus, that allegations of genocide
    against Armenians in 1915 had no basis and that the Americans were
    not doing enough to stamp out PKK terrorists in northern Iraq. He
    also stressed that secularism was the driving force of Turkey's
    democracy, and that the Turkish state must remain an indivisible
    whole.

    It might seem odd that a general should say any of these things
    publicly now, but in Turkey the army still plays a key role in
    upholding Ataturk's secular legacy. In effect, the generals have
    embraced the country's EU aspirations, but only on the basis that EU
    membership will support and not undermine that legacy. Yet a strand
    of Turkish opinion clearly frets that support for religious and
    minority freedoms may conflict with Ataturkism; and that acceptance
    of more autonomy for Kurds may threaten Turkey's territorial
    integrity.

    General Ozkok's conclusion was that saying yes or no must be a right
    not only for the EU, but also for Turkey. It would be an irony if,
    after working so hard to overcome European hostility to their joining
    the club, the Turks themselves came to decide that the rules were too
    onerous - but it is not impossible to imagine.
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