World Peace Herald, DC
Dec 13 2004
Commentary: Why EU should say yes to Turks
By Gareth Harding
Chief European Correspondent
BRUSSELS — European leaders are set to decide whether to open
European Union membership talks with Turkey Friday, 41 years after
the largely Muslim state first applied to join the Brussels-based
bloc. For political, economic and geo-strategic reasons they should
say “yes” to Ankara, because a EU with Turkey inside its borders
would be a bigger, stronger, safer and ultimately more prosperous
union than without it.
Critics of Turkey’s entry, who include the leaders of Austria and
Luxembourg, France’s governing party, the German opposition and large
swathes of French, German and Austrian public opinion, argue the
country is too big, too poor and too Muslim to join the EU. They also
claim Turkish membership would dilute the union’s values, flood the
club’s 25 member states with migrants, import Middle East instability
to Europe and act as a brake on economic growth.
Most of these arguments are bogus — based on knee-jerk
prejudices rather than rational analysis and steeped in a deeply
reactionary view of Europe as a cozy club of Christian peoples
battling against Muslim hordes from the east.
Take geography first. It is true that the large bulk of Turkey’s
landmass lies on the Asian continent. But a sizeable chunk —
including the country’s biggest city Istanbul — lies on the European
mainland. If geography really were a key factor, Cyprus — a
Mediterranean island lying off the Lebanese coast — would never have
been welcomed into the club in May.
Historically too, Turkey has always been seen as a European
power. Until late in the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire ruled
Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and large chunks
of modern-day Greece, Rumania and Serbia-Montenegro. “Remember: the
Ottomans were called the sick man of Europe, not the sick man of
Asia,” Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a rally in Brussels
Friday.
Even after the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War II,
Turkey was always considered a European player. It is a member of the
Council of Europe, the Organization for Cooperation and Development
in Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and takes part in most European sporting competitions.
Size matters in the EU — as in other organizations. Voting power
in the Council of Ministers is based largely on population and by the
time Turkey joins the EU — in 2015 at the earliest — it would be
the largest country in the club, with some 80 million people. Yet
there is nothing in the union’s treaty that disqualifies a country
for being too big or too populous. On the contrary, Turkey’s size and
geographic position could be major pluses for a bloc that is largely
made up of small states with plummeting populations.
Turkey, a NATO member for more than half a century, has the
largest armed forces in Europe and spends more of its budget on
defense than any other EU state — both great assets for a union with
global peacekeeping ambitions but pitiful military resources. It also
a major power in the Black Sea and Middle East regions, sharing
borders with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The
EU would be safer with a strong, confident Turkey guarding the bloc’s
frontiers against these unstable states than with a weakened and
rejected Turkey sulking on its southeastern fringes.
Opponents of Turkish entry argue the predominantly Muslim state
of 72 million people is too poor to join and that membership would
lead to millions of Turks emigrating east in search of work. The same
fears were raised when Spain, Portugal and Greece joined the EU in
the 1980s and when eight former communist states entered in May. They
have proved unfounded in both cases.
Turkey is comparatively hard up, with a per capita gross domestic
product of $8,300. But it has one of the fastest growing economies in
Europe and both trade and foreign investment are likely to soar as
membership approaches. “When Turkey joins the EU, people will not
migrate to the EU; Turks will come back to Turkey,” said Erdogan
Friday. The idea may seem far-fetched now, but the examples of
Ireland, Spain and Greece show that when prosperity rises, outward
migration goes into reverse gear.
Of all the arguments against Turkish accession, the Muslim card
is the least convincing and the most unsettling. The EU already has
15 million Muslims living within its borders and when Albania,
Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina join next decade, it will take in
states with predominantly Muslim populations.
European right-wing populists and U.S. neo-conservatives claim
Islam and democracy are incompatible and that a “clash of
civilizations” is looming between a Christian “west” and a Muslim
“east.” The very existence of Turkey, a modern, secular, democratic
state for most of the last century, surely debunks this myth. Turkey
has been a democracy for longer than most of the eight former Soviet
bloc states that joined the EU in May, it introduced women’s voting
rights before France and Germany and has a clearer separation of
powers between church and state than almost any country in the world.
The prospect of EU entry has speeded up the reform process. Under
pressure from Brussels, the death penalty has been abolished, women’s
rights have been strengthened, the army’s grip over the judiciary has
been loosened and the country’s sizeable Kurdish minority has won the
right to speak its language in public. Some of these reforms are
cosmetic and have yet to take root — torture and graft are still
widespread and many women’s rights remain on paper only — but it is
difficult to argue that saying “no” to Turkey would advance the cause
of progress in this key geo-strategic country.
Mustafa Kemal, the revered founder of modern Turkey, once said:
“The West has always been prejudiced against the Turks, but we Turks
have always consistently moved toward the West.” On Friday, EU
leaders should shake off centuries of European bias and bigotry
toward Ankara and say “yes” to Turkey in Europe and “yes” to Europe
in Turkey.