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The uncertainty deepens
The uncertainty deepens
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Yusuf KANLI
He was sad but confident. “I just wanted you to know that I have submitted my resignation from the position of secretary-general of the European Union General Secretariat. I have requested retirement as well. I've had it up to here. Someone goes, another one comes, and the work of the state continues. I've done my share!”
He was determined not to make a further statement and keen to avoid potential controversy. “I can't say anything more. It wouldn't be appropriate. As a friend, please understand my concern and my efforts to avoid getting into polemics. Naturally I will speak, but not now; at a later date.”
We agreed we would talk about the developments that led him to resign not only from the prestigious “conductor” post of “Turkey's EU orchestra” but also from public service all together.
Why?
Ambassador Murat Sungar has been mulling his resignation for some time. Back in early June, talking in the lobby of a hotel in Washington, where both of us were participants at a three-day Turkish-American Council annual event together with some 40 other prominent speakers from Turkey and the United States, he appeared to have almost made up his mind to quit public service.
After serving in prestigious posts and representing Turkey in many countries and organizations, devoting a large part of his life to the realization of this country's EU bid, Sungar appeared quite pessimistic at the time about the prospect and seriously upset with off-the-cuff statements made by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders accusing him and the Foreign Ministry people involved in the EU process of being “conservatives.”
For a disciplined person with a life-long, built-in respectability, walking in mehteran style was not becoming.
Frustration with letup in EU efforts
It took the AKP government months to appoint a chief negotiator -- State Minister Ali Babacan -- after the Dec. 17, 2004 summit of EU leaders at which they gave Turkey a date to start accession talks. Then, without any consultation with the mechanism that had striven for so long to bring the Turkey-EU train to the Dec. 17 point, the EU General Secretariat was cut off one night from the Foreign Ministry and tied to the Prime Ministry. It was a good step, perhaps, facilitating progress and achieving better coordination in preparation for the talks and later for a successful negotiations process.
But since that move, neither has a negotiating team been forged nor have policy priorities been established, and everything has once again been left in limbo. A minister with extreme goodwill and proven capability was named chief negotiator, but all decisions still had to be made personally by the prime minister, and he was busy with something more important than the EU. With the exception of a few steps he had taken inside Greek territory, when together with his Greek counterpart, Constantine Karamanlis, he inaugurated a new border gate with Greece, the prime minister's first official or non-official visit to an EU country since Dec. 17 was the recent trip to Britain.
More uncertainty now:
As if the latest problems stirred up by the French were not enough, Sungar's resignation from the key post has added further uncertainty over this country's EU bid. Of course, someone else will be appointed to the post and the work of the state will continue, but a change of that caliber at such a delicate time is bound to create confusion and uncertainty, which we already have more than enough of...
The uncertainty deepens
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Yusuf KANLI
He was sad but confident. “I just wanted you to know that I have submitted my resignation from the position of secretary-general of the European Union General Secretariat. I have requested retirement as well. I've had it up to here. Someone goes, another one comes, and the work of the state continues. I've done my share!”
He was determined not to make a further statement and keen to avoid potential controversy. “I can't say anything more. It wouldn't be appropriate. As a friend, please understand my concern and my efforts to avoid getting into polemics. Naturally I will speak, but not now; at a later date.”
We agreed we would talk about the developments that led him to resign not only from the prestigious “conductor” post of “Turkey's EU orchestra” but also from public service all together.
Why?
Ambassador Murat Sungar has been mulling his resignation for some time. Back in early June, talking in the lobby of a hotel in Washington, where both of us were participants at a three-day Turkish-American Council annual event together with some 40 other prominent speakers from Turkey and the United States, he appeared to have almost made up his mind to quit public service.
After serving in prestigious posts and representing Turkey in many countries and organizations, devoting a large part of his life to the realization of this country's EU bid, Sungar appeared quite pessimistic at the time about the prospect and seriously upset with off-the-cuff statements made by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders accusing him and the Foreign Ministry people involved in the EU process of being “conservatives.”
For a disciplined person with a life-long, built-in respectability, walking in mehteran style was not becoming.
Frustration with letup in EU efforts
It took the AKP government months to appoint a chief negotiator -- State Minister Ali Babacan -- after the Dec. 17, 2004 summit of EU leaders at which they gave Turkey a date to start accession talks. Then, without any consultation with the mechanism that had striven for so long to bring the Turkey-EU train to the Dec. 17 point, the EU General Secretariat was cut off one night from the Foreign Ministry and tied to the Prime Ministry. It was a good step, perhaps, facilitating progress and achieving better coordination in preparation for the talks and later for a successful negotiations process.
But since that move, neither has a negotiating team been forged nor have policy priorities been established, and everything has once again been left in limbo. A minister with extreme goodwill and proven capability was named chief negotiator, but all decisions still had to be made personally by the prime minister, and he was busy with something more important than the EU. With the exception of a few steps he had taken inside Greek territory, when together with his Greek counterpart, Constantine Karamanlis, he inaugurated a new border gate with Greece, the prime minister's first official or non-official visit to an EU country since Dec. 17 was the recent trip to Britain.
More uncertainty now:
As if the latest problems stirred up by the French were not enough, Sungar's resignation from the key post has added further uncertainty over this country's EU bid. Of course, someone else will be appointed to the post and the work of the state will continue, but a change of that caliber at such a delicate time is bound to create confusion and uncertainty, which we already have more than enough of...
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