IN LINE FOR THE EU
By Timothy Garton Ash,
Los Angeles Times
Oct 6 2005
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European Studies at Oxford
University and a Hoover Institution senior fellow.
THE EUROPEAN Union opened membership negotiations with Turkey this
week, but the upshot was not to ensure that Turkey will quickly become
a member. That may, in fact, take 10 to 15 years, if it happens at all.
Rather, the chief outcome was to ensure that the rest of southeastern
Europe will come into the EU – and probably well before Turkey.
There’s a nice historical irony here. Turkey, which in its earlier,
Ottoman form occupied much of the Balkans, and therefore cut them off
from what was then the Christian club of Europe, is now the European
door-opener for its former colonies.
Bulgaria and Romania are joining the EU in 2007 anyway. What was
Austria’s price for finally agreeing to the opening of negotiations
with Turkey? A similar promise for Croatia! One thing leads to
another. When those Balkan countries are in, they will immediately
start agitating for their neighbors, just as Poland is now agitating
for a promise to Ukraine. No matter that those neighbors are former
enemies, with bitter memories of recent wars and ethnic cleansing.
The mysterious alchemy of enlargement is that it turns former enemies
into advocates. Germany was the great promoter of Polish membership;
Greece remains one of the strongest supporters of Turkish membership.
When Serbia or Macedonia come knocking at Brussels’ door, they will
exclaim: “What? You have said yes to Turkey, but you say no to us,
who are closer to you and obviously more European than Turkey?”
Because these countries are for the most part small, and because the
EU already takes responsibility for much of southeastern Europe’s
security and reconstruction as a quasi-colonial post-conflict power,
the reluctant older members of the EU will sigh: “Oh, what the hell,
one or two more small countries won’t make that much difference anyway
– our big headaches are Turkey and Ukraine.” So they’ll slip in.
The result is that, whether or not Turkey achieves membership over
the next decade, by 2015 the European Union will cover most of
what has historically been considered to constitute the territory
of Europe. And it will have 32 to 37 member states, for Switzerland,
Norway and Iceland may eventually choose to come in too. The frontline
cases will then be Turkey and Ukraine.
I don’t want you to think I’m ducking the question of Turkish
membership. If we were starting from scratch, I would say that the EU
should have a special partnership (Angela Merkel’s term) with Turkey
(rather than offering full-fledged membership). Why? Because at its
eastern and southeastern borders, Europe does not end, it merely
fades away. It fades away across the great expanses of Turkey and
Russia. Somewhere between Moscow and Vladivostok, somewhere between
Istanbul and Hakkari, you find yourself more in Asia than in Europe.
This partly European character suggests that a special partnership
is in order, because the sense of belonging to a geographical and
historical unity is important for any political community of Europe.
However, we are not starting from scratch. We have promises to keep.
For more than 40 years we have assured Turkey that it will belong to
our European community. We have repeated, strengthened, made concrete
these promises over the last decade.
Besides, the example of Turkey, which must reconcile a mainly Islamic
society with a secular state, is vital for the rest of the Islamic
world – and not insignificant for the 15 million to 20 million Muslims
living in Europe. When I was recently in Iran, a dissident mullah
told me: “There are two models, Turkey and Iran.”
Which should we support? The answer is what Americans call a
“no-brainer.”
Before it happens, however, we have to ensure two things. First,
that Turkey really does meet the EU’s famous “Copenhagen Criteria”
– having a stable liberal democracy, the rule of law (with full
equality for men and women), a free-market economy, free speech
(even for intellectuals who say there was a Turkish genocide against
the Armenians) and respect for minority rights (notably those of the
Kurds). On those, Turkey still has a long way to go.
Second, and just as demanding, public opinion in existing member
states, such as France and Austria, must be prepared to accept
Turkish membership.
Between those two requirements, we have at least 10 years’ work ahead.