EU AND TURKEY: TALKS LANGUISH, TRADE BOOMS
by CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press
February 21, 2012 Tuesday 10:04 AM GMT
If a project has no deadline, is it really a project? What do you
call a negotiation process in which the partners can’t talk about
key issues? These are existential times for Turkey’s campaign to join
the European Union an ambitious vision that has become increasingly
ambiguous.
At a time when Greece’s survival in the eurozone is in jeopardy,
it seems academic to debate a Turkish entry to European ranks that
some Turks feel won’t happen in their lifetime, if at all. The more
pressing question is whether the suitors should, as with any soured
romance, call it quits or rekindle the flame.
When accession talks began in 2005, the idea was that Turkey’s Muslim
population would enrich the continent, culturally and economically,
with Turkey itself destined to become a European-style democracy that
could serve as an east-west bridge.
More than six years later, doubt haunts hope.
Economic troubles mean that Europe, where skepticism toward the Turkish
bid was already building, has little energy to expand, while in Turkey
reform efforts have slowed and the nation has sought to carve out a
leadership role in the Middle East.
“Without a deadline, without a final aim, there is no process,” said
Cengiz Aktar, a political science professor at Bahcesehir University
in Istanbul. “There can’t be an endless project.”
Aktar, who attended the opening of an EU information office at the
university on Friday, said it was “high time” for a reassessment of
Turkey’s bid. He rejected the argument that EU-backed reform alone
was enough, as though the journey was as good as the destination.
The debate is in limbo partly because France and Germany, which have
spoken against full Turkish membership, hold elections this year and
2013 respectively, and no bold initiatives are expected during the
political campaign season.
Even if those European heavyweights choose governments that are more
sympathetic to Turkey’s candidacy, there is no sign of progress on a
long-running dispute over EU member Cyprus, where the Greek-speaking
south observes European rules and Turkey aids and occupies the isolated
Turkish Cypriot north.
Jean-Maurice Ripert, the EU’s new ambassador to Turkey, said more
joint teams would be formed to lay technical groundwork for accession
in case political conditions improve in the years ahead. He cited
40,000 student exchanges between Turkey and the EU last year, as well
as EU plans to spend 800 million euros ($1.06 billion) this year on
European development projects in Turkey.
“Don’t think that nothing is happening,” he said in a meeting with
foreign journalists. Since his January arrival, Ripert said, Turkish
officials have assured him of their commitment to joining the European
Union and voiced frustration with what they see as European opposition.
In the past decade, Turkey has evolved into a regional powerhouse
whose foreign policy remains in step with, but no longer defined by,
its allies in NATO. Europe, meanwhile, was signaling fatigue with
the idea of expansion well before it sank into recession.
“In Brussels nowadays, you hear very little talk of enlargement,”
said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of EDAM, a research center in Istanbul,
and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in the Belgian capital. “The
main issue is essentially the economic crisis.”
Numbers tell the story of the failure and potential of the Turkish bid,
a legacy of Ottoman sultans who sought to upgrade their crumbling
empire with European ideas, as well as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
national founder who looked westward for inspiration.
Half of the three-dozen subjects, or chapters, in membership
negotiations are blocked. No new chapter has been opened since June
2010. However, Europe accounts for nearly half of Turkey’s foreign
trade, as well as about 85 percent of foreign direct investment there.
Turkey once highly anticipated the EU’s annual report on its membership
progress. Interest has dwindled. European officials have expressed
concern about minority rights, the right to a fair trial and freedom of
expression, and Turkey has slammed Greek Cypriot vetoes of negotiations
and a French bill that would criminalize denial that the mass killings
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was a genocide.
“The Europe that is afraid of speaking and arguing has nothing to
give humanity,” Turkey’s Anadolu agency quoted Egeman Bagis, minister
for EU affairs, as saying. “But the EU that we always emphasize being
the most comprehensive peace project in the history of humanity has
to be more courageous and liberal.”
Andrew Gardner, an Amnesty International researcher, said EU-inspired
legislative reform in Turkey had resulted in fewer reported cases of
torture in police stations and prisons, but warned of a “regression
of the human rights situation” in Turkey, particularly with regard to
free expression. He also cited the negative impact of statements by
EU leaders suggesting Turkey might not be accepted as a full member
even if it fulfills human rights obligations.
Suat Kiniklioglu, a former ruling party lawmaker and director of the
Ankara-based Center for Strategic Communication, captured the ambiguity
that shrouds Turkey’s EU campaign by offering two ways to look at it.
The first: “The process is going nowhere and neither side is willing
to admit it. This is heading toward a slow death.”
The second, which he prefers: “The current impasse is actually not
that bad as Europe needs time to sort out its own problems while
Turkey will continue to grow and reform domestically at its own pace.
The negotiations can be revived any time the two sides feel they
are ready.”
Ulgen, the visiting scholar in Brussels, said a “vicious circle”
had developed, in which Turkey, once praised for its reform program,
loses enthusiasm for a process that it believes is unfair, while
Europe loses leverage over a process that some of its leaders treat
with ambivalence.
“We’re in standstill mode,” he said. According to Ulgen, Turkey and
the European Union must eventually decide what kind of a relationship
they want because: “We cannot continue to pretend anymore that the
negotiations are continuing.”