REFORMS FALTER AS EU PROJECT COMES UNSTUCK
David Gardner
FT
May 4 2010 16:27
After more than four decades kicking its heels in Europe’s ante-room,
Turkey became a candidate member of the European Union five years ago.
To meet the criteria of the club, the government of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan carried out a constitutional revolution: deepening and widening
democratic freedoms, introducing minority rights for the Kurds and,
above all, starting to subordinate Turkey’s army to civilian authority.
The European project worked as a powerful engine of reform and helped
glue together Turkey’s political tribes.
The Kemalists and the military saw the EU as a fulfilment of the
country’s western destiny foreseen by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder
of the modern republic, while Mr Erdogan’s neo-Islamist Justice and
Development party (AKP) saw the EU’s democratic rules as a shield
against the generals.
Put another way, Europe managed to hold the rivalries of these two,
competing establishments in precarious but real alignment.
The EU was working as the load-bearing bridge for Turkey’s transition.
But once EU negotiations stalled – partly because reluctant partners
such as Germany and France think Turkey is not European enough and
too big, too poor and too Muslim to absorb – Turkish reform ran out
of steam.
The shield against the generals was removed. The glue of political
cohesion dissolved. Clashes between the new AKP elites and the old
elites grouped around the overmighty generals became a feature of
political life, enabling EU naysayers to paint this as an identity
crisis.
Mr Erdogan and the AKP are also to blame. In 2007, after a stand-off
with the army over the election as president of Abdullah Gul, then
foreign minister and a former Islamist, Mr Erdogan called an early
election and hugely increased the AKP’s share of the vote, from 34
to 47 per cent on an 84 per cent turnout.
That was the golden moment to relaunch reform. Instead, the government
and its opponents have devoted their energies to fighting culture
wars and battling for political hegemony through the judiciary.
That makes it easier for outsiders to forget Turkey’s extraordinary
success in coming up with a modern but identifiably Muslim politics –
a marriage between Islam and democracy blessed by EU vows.
Indeed, the government’s foreign policy towards its eastern "near
abroad" has emboldened some in Europe to argue Turkey has changed
its strategic orientation. But there is no necessary contradiction
in facing east and west at the same time.
Turkey has a clear interest in fostering stability to its east and
south-east. So does the EU.
At one level, the expansion of Turkish influence, including with Syria
and Iran, is not just about stability. Turkey is reasserting itself
as a regional power and trying to demonstrate it has alternatives to
the EU.
But this also highlights the value of having Turkey inside the union,
its creative use of "soft power" contrasting with the feebleness of
the EU’s efforts in the region.
Turkey has not just mended fences with Syria, it has flattened them:
abolishing visa restrictions. In 1996 Ankara was suspected of planting
bombs in Damascus, as retaliation for harbouring Kurdish separatists.
Turkey has also embraced post-war Iraq, which it had threatened to
invade, also over the perceived threat from the Kurds. It has started
to address the rift with Armenia, over the mass murder of Armenians
in the dying years of the Ottoman empire, and started devising the
first real policy of reconciliation with its own Kurdish minority.
Turkey has at the same time fallen out with Israel over Gaza, and
cosied up to Iran, where Mr Erdogan has said the west is treating
the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme "unfairly".
Yet, the turn east, seen by some as neo-Ottoman, is driven by interests
more than ideology. Trade with the Middle East is fast expanding to
take up the slack of the EU downturn, while Turkey wants to become a
hub for energy from the Caspian and Egypt. All this could be turned
into a strategic asset for Europe, and for the broader Middle East.
Turkey is the most successful country in the region, with a big foot
in Europe. The ability of its secular republic to accommodate (so far)
a governing party with Islamist roots, and embed constitutional reform,
mesmerises the Arab world.
"Since the end of the cold war, Turkey has been shifting its
foreign policy priority from hard security concerns to soft power
and commercial interests, and moving away from being a Nato-backed
regional gendarme to a more independent player determined to use a
plethora of regional integration tools in order to be taken seriously
on its own account," says Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group.
"Turkey’s US and EU partners should support these efforts towards
stabilisation through integration." But Brussels needs to come up
with something to unblock the accession talks.
Six years ago, two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots voted for a United
Nations plan to reunify the island but three-quarters of Greek Cypriots
– whom the EU had foolishly guaranteed entry – voted against.
With the Greek Cypriot government exerting pressure from inside,
the EU has failed to deliver on its pledge to open up trade with
isolated Turkish Cyprus, and Ankara has responded by refusing to open
its ports to Greek Cypriot ships and aircraft.
Under the new Lisbon Treaty, however, the European Parliament jointly
decides with the council of ministers on trade treaties and the direct
trade regulation for the Turkish part of the island may be revived
in a way that bypasses the Greek Cypriot veto.
It may even nudge aside a new obstacle: the recent election in northern
Cyprus, in which nationalist DerviÅ~_ Eroglu replaced President Mehmet
Ali Talat, who supported a federal solution. Mr Erdogan could use
his visit to Athens next month to present a package with his Greek
counterpart, George Papandreou.
Getting past the obstacle presented by Cyprus would be a good place
to start reviving Turkey’s fraught relationship with the EU.