TURKEY MAY BE REGIONAL POWER, OUT OF EU IN 2030
Hurriyet
May 3 2012
Turkey
Turkey is likely to be a regional power in 2030 but it’s not certain
whether it would be an EU member by then, says a recent report
commissioned by the European Parliament. Report advises Turkey to keep
up with its EU commitments Turkey will maintain and even bolster its
status as a medium-sized power in demographic, economic, territorial
and military terms as of 2030, says the report. DAILY NEWS photo,
Hasan ALTINIÅ~^IK Turkey is likely to become a pivotal regional
power by 2030, but it is not clear whether it will be a European
Union member by that date, according to a recently released report
conducted by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)
upon a European Parliament request.
“Turkey is likely to become a pivotal regional power. Turkish citizens,
capital and institutions will continue to integrate with the global
economy and network society; and ties with the EU and Turkey’s
immediate neighbors and other regions will become deeper and denser,”
said the Global Trends 2030 report, released on April 27. The report
looks at the impact of an increasingly empowered global citizenry on
the international system and is produced for the European Strategy
and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS).
Turkey’s global role depends on its ability to pursue its interests
within international groups and by membership of inter-state
organizations such as NATO, the G20, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), and by eventual accession to the EU, said the
report. However, it also said it was “difficult to predict whether
Turkey will join the EU by 2030 as there are both push and pull
factors are work.
“The division of Cyprus could be mitigated by greater convergence
between Turkey and the EU, but the difficulties attending the process
of enlargement to Turkey may persist and render the solution to the
Cyprus question more problematic,” the report stated.
The report recommended that Turkey balances its recently-discovered
role in the Middle East by awareness of its relations with the EU,
the Balkans, the Black Sea, Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the
Mediterranean and the U.S., as well as its evolving and newly-emergent
links with the rest of Asia, Africa and the Americas. The report
said Turkey may want to work with different countries “to further its
interests in the Middle East,” but stressed that this was “unlikely
to become an alternative to EU integration.”
Turkey to bolster its power
Current trends suggest Turkey will maintain and even bolster its
status as a medium-sized power in demographic, economic, territorial
and military terms, said the report, but it also urged the country to
address key weaknesses in order to be able to pursue this position,
“including Kurdish and Armenian claims and rights issues, energy
dependency, an environmentally unsustainable development model”
In 2030, there will be no single hegemonic world power, but the U.S.
and China will be the most influential actors, according to the
report. It also predicted an economic power shift toward Asia, with
China projected to be the largest economic power with a 19 percent
share of total world gross domestic product (GDP) and India continuing
to rise. However, Russia and Japan will lose the great power status
they enjoyed in the 20th century, the report said.
The U.S. is likely to remain the world’s major military power, but
Chinese military capabilities are very likely to increase. A group of
rising middle powers, including Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa,
will become ever more prominent, the report said.
With regard to social media, the report said its use was growing
everywhere. “Indonesia has experienced the fastest rate of development,
and Turkey now accounts for the third highest number of Facebook
users after the U.S. and the U.K.” In the OECD, the richest ten
percent earned nine times as much as the poorest ten percent of the
population. This income gap is particularly pronounced in Mexico and
Chile but also in Israel, Turkey and the U.S.