DESPITE THE CHORUS OF PIOUS HOPE, TURKEY IS NOT GOING TO JOIN THE EU
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The Guardian , UK
Dec 18 2006
There will be no place at the table for Ankara in any foreseeable
future, and the most profound reason is geographical
Of all the temptations of journalism, prediction is the most
dangerous. Soothsayers in our trade are usually made to look foolish by
events. The best answer was given by the fabled correspondent in some
distant spot who, asked by an importunate foreign desk (in the days
of abbreviated cablese) to file "soonest,fullest,whatnext happens",
responded succinctly: "Myballs uncrystal."
After that, let me say something simply and confidently: Turkey is
not going to join the EU. "Not" does not mean "never" but in any
foreseeable future, although you wouldn’t know that from Tony Blair.
He visited Turkey last Friday at the beginning of his latest forlorn,
not to say fantastical, mission to bring peace to the Middle East,
intoning the words: "It is important that we continue the process of
accession with Turkey."
Nor would you know it from other exalted Euro-personages. Chancellor
Angela Merkel has just joined the Social Democrats, her German
coalition partners, in saying that full membership "would be
worthwhile", one fine day. Erkki Tuomioja, the Finnish foreign
minister, whose country’s EU presidency is just coming to an end,
says that "the door is still open", while Carl Bildt, the foreign
minister, continues ardently to favour Turkish membership.
All these pious hopes are expressed at the very moment negotiations
between Turkey and the EU have just hit one more pothole, with
Brussels suspending talks as a punishment for Ankara’s refusal to
open its ports and airports to Greek Cyprus. This suspension was a
"serious mistake", Blair says, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish
prime minister calls it "unacceptable".
By now the Turks should have learned that there is much they must
accept whether they like it or not, and they have come to feel, not
without reason, that when one obstacle is surmounted Europe will
always find another. Turkey became an associate member of the EEC
or Common Market as long ago as 1963, and in 1987 Ankara applied for
full membership of the EU.
During the lengthy interlude came the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in
1974 and in 1983 the creation of a Turkish Cypriot state, which no
one but Ankara recognises. Turkey has a much better case over Cyprus
than in other matters, and the despicable behaviour of the Greek
Cypriot government – and electorate, when they voted against the
reunification of the island once EU membership could not be revoked –
has made Cyprus the least loved member state of the EU.
More serious objections are the patchy Turkish record (to put it
mildly) on human rights. Turkey still does not enjoy what European
countries consider a true rule of law or freedom of speech, and has
not come to terms with its history, notably the fate of the Armenians.
Even then, the continual European hesitancy and changing of the tune
might suggest bad faith. But that is not really so, and a better way
of seeing it is as a kind of social embarrassment. Far from having
embarked on an elaborate deception, Europe said something with good
intentions but without really thinking it through, only to recognise
slowly how grave the practical difficulties are. As a result, Turkey
waits for church bells that never ring, while Europe, as one French
diplomat puts it, is like a man with a mistress he doesn’t want to
lose, but doesn’t want to marry, either. The trouble is that a moment
passes, after which it’s no longer easy or even possible to say this
thing can work without causing pain.
For their part, the worst mistake the Turks have made is invoking US
support. During yet another crisis between Ankara and Brussels a little
more than a year ago, Erdogan rang Condoleezza Rice and asked for her
help, to which the secretary of state duly responded by expressing yet
again Washington’s ardent support for Turkish admission to the EU –
and thereby further enraging the Europeans.
As usual Blair takes the American line, arguing for Turkish admission
on strategic grounds: it "has an importance not just in respect to
Turkey but with wider relationships between the west and the Muslim
world". Shutting the door will alienate Muslims everywhere, letting
Turkey in will build a bridge between the west and the Islamic world.
But another way of putting it is that Europe is being asked to make
a huge sacrifice to gratify American strategic interests. Whatever
Blair may think, this doesn’t meet with universal favour. As the
former European commissioner Chris Patten has sarcastically said,
it is very good of the Americans to keep offering Turkey admission
to the EU, but this is a question on which Europeans might want to
have some say themselves.
Neither Blair nor his American friends have noticed that there has
scarcely been a less propitious moment for Turkish admission in these
40 years. Turkish sensitivity about being excluded from a "Christian
club" is quite misplaced: Europe today isn’t a Christian anything, and
even fear of radical Islamism is not the main factor. More important
is the hangover from previous EU expansion – and the Turkish question
also illustrates the gulf between "the soi-disant elites", as that
contrarian French politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement calls them,
personified by Blair, Tuomioja and Bildt, and the actual peoples
of Europe.
In May 2004, eastern European countries that had been sundered from
their neighbours by 60 years of war and cold war were admitted to
"our common European home" and very moving it was. After the elation,
Europe woke up to realise that its 10 new member states now comprised
a quarter of its population while providing a 20th of its economic
product, and that’s before Romania and Bulgaria join in the new year,
let alone Turkey, with a per-capita income one-tenth of the British,
and a child mortality rate 10 times the French.
A year later, the French and Dutch referendums, which turned down the
new EU constitution, were a hostile response to that expansion, and
by implication to Turkish admission. For all Blair’s high-sounding
platitudes, that new mood has been caught by other European
politicians. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister who is
almost certain to be the conservative candidate – and favourite –
in May’s presidential elections, is an open opponent of Turkish
membership, and is "happy to see that these ideas are gaining
ground". As he might say, building bridges between the west and Islam,
and sapping the roots of terrorism, are doubtless worthy objectives,
but since when did they become the purpose of the EU?
In the end, the problem is less cultural or economic or religious than
simply geographical. This is something we have only slowly woken up
to, but it explains why Turkey will not join for a very long time,
if ever. Bildt says, solemnly and dubiously, that "there is no doubt
that Turkey is a part of Europe", but a French politician has put it
another way: can we really have a Europe that extends to the borders
of Iraq? Many ordinary Europeans seem to know the answer to that
better than their rulers.
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