Southeast European Times, MD
April 2 2007
For Turkey and the EU, another bend in the road
02/04/2007
Last week, the EU said it would open a second chapter of accession
talks with Turkey, injecting new momentum into a process that has
been stalled over Cyprus and other issues.
Nearly 18 months after the official launch of Turkey’s membership
negotiations, the EU agreed Wednesday (28 March) to open talks with
Ankara on enterprise and industrial policy, the second out of 35
chapters a candidate country must complete to join the 27-nation
union.
Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, Ali Babacan, told reporters
that the move is an "important indicator that Turkey’s EU process is
on track". The negotiations, which ran aground in December because of
the dispute involving Cyprus, have "restarted in an appropriate way",
Babacan said.
So far, Ankara and Brussels have completed talks on one chapter –
science and research. Under an EU decision taken in December 2006,
eight other chapters — free movement of goods, right of
establishment and freedom to provide services, financial services,
agriculture and rural development, fisheries, transport policy,
customs union, and external relations – remain frozen. The decision
allows the remaining chapters to be opened, but none can be
provisionally closed.
The EU wants Turkey to open its ports and airports to Cyprus, a
member of the bloc. Before its accession talks started, in October
2006, the Turkish authorities signed a protocol extending the
country’s 1963 customs union agreement with the EU to all its new
members, including Cyprus.
However, it also issued a declaration stating that this did not
amount to recognition of the Greek Cypriot administration, with which
it has no diplomatic relations. Since then, it has declined to
provide Greek Cypriot vessels and planes access to its ports and
airports, insisting that the EU must first make good on a pledge it
made in 2004 to end the economic isolation of Turkish Cypriots in the
north of the divided island.
The bloc’s foreign ministers have since reiterated that pledge, and
member states agreed in January to work towards opening direct trade
links with the Turkish Cypriot community, whose breakaway republic is
recognized only by Ankara.
The dispute over ports is not the only issue that has dogged Turkey’s
accession process so far. Another sticking point is a controversial
penal code article that has opened the door for prosecutions of
journalists and writers. Article 301 of the code makes it a crime to
"insult Turkishness", and has been used to target scores of
intellectuals, including Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize
for Literature, and Hrant Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian editor.
On January 19th of this year, Dink was assassinated by a young
ultranationalist.
The next 24 months will be devoted to discussions on a date for
Turkey’s entry into the bloc, Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU
Ali Babacan said. [Getty Images]
"The prosecutions and convictions for the expression of non-violent
opinion under certain provisions of the new penal code are a cause
for serious concern and may contribute to create a climate of
self-censorship in the country," the European Commission (EC) wrote
in its latest report on Turkey’s accession progress, issued in
November 2006.
"This is particularly the case for Article 301 which penalises
insulting Turkishness, the republic as well as the organs and
institutions of the state. Although this article includes a provision
that expression of thought intended to criticise should not
constitute a crime, it has repeatedly been used to prosecute non
violent opinions expressed by journalists, writers, publishers,
academics and human rights activists," the EC said.
Turkey has indicated its readiness to amend the controversial
legislation, rather than abolish it altogether as rights groups and
officials in Brussels have suggested it should do. Since the country
is in an election season – with a presidential vote in May and a
general election in November – the climate may not be right for a
substantial change in the law, political analysts warn.
The Article 301 controversy is one of several human rights issues
about which the EU has raised concerns. Others include the treatment
of minorities, particularly Kurds. Although Ankara has passed a
number of sweeping reforms aimed at meeting the EU’s political
criteria for membership, critics say that implementation has been
lagging and that onerous restrictions remain in force.
Despite the hurdles that have come up, officials in both Turkey and
the EU continue to voice optimism about the accession process. Even
as Brussels moved in December to partially freeze the talks, Turkish
and EU officials sought to contain the impact.
"There has been no train crash — the train is still firmly on
track," British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, whose country is
one of the strongest supporters of Turkey’s EU membership bid, said
after the December meeting. "Eight chapters have been suspended — 27
out of 35 are not frozen, and there is every prospect that things
will work steadily and effectively to make Turkey, in the fullness of
time, a member of the EU."
Ankara, meanwhile, has stressed that is determined to continue down
the path of reform. After the partial suspension, Turkish officials
drew up their own reform plan, broken down into the 35 negotiating
chapters, and based on the country’s own priorities.
"If the goal is to reach European standards, then we will do it
ourselves without the EU asking for it," Turkish Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul said at the time.
The programme, covering the period 2007-2013, is to be implemented
before 2012. The last 24 months will be devoted to discussions on a
date for Turkey’s entry into the bloc, Babacan said during a European
tour in March.
Turkey was officially recognised as an EU candidate country in 1999
— 40 years after it first applied for associate membership of the
European Economic Community, established in 1957 by six of today’s 27
EU members. It was given a starting date for its accession talks in
December 2004.
Prior to the start of the process, some member nations, such as
Germany, suggested that Turkey should not be offered full membership,
but only a "privileged partnership". Some nine months after the
launch of the negotiations in October 2005, the first chapter in the
talks was opened and provisionally closed in June of last year.
Turkey is now hoping to open three more chapters before the end of
Germany’s six-month presidency of the Union, which expires on June
30th.
(SOURCES: AFP, AP, Bloomberg, EUobserver, Zaman, Sabah – 28/03/07;
AP, AFP, Zaman, Turkish Daily News – 27/03/07; The Guardian, Journal
of Turkish Weekly – 25/03/07; EurActiv – 21/03/07; AFP, FT, Reuters,
DPA, BBC, EUobserver – 11/12/06; European Commission)