Oct 21st 2010
Courtesy Of "The Economist"
TURKEY’S involvement with the European project has a long and chequered history. The country expressed interest in a link with the original six-strong European Economic Community as far back as 1959, the first non-member to do so. In 1963 it signed an association agreement with the EEC. Walter Hallstein, a German Christian Democrat who was the first president of the European Commission, hailed this as explicit recognition that “Turkey is a part of Europe.” Sadly that view is not shared by many in his party today.
The Turks did not formally seek membership until 1987, when the ebullient Turgut Ozal, a modernising prime minister and European enthusiast, submitted an application even though he had been warned off doing so. The European Commission advised against it in 1989. Turkey’s dreadful 1990s put paid to any idea of reviving it quickly. Instead a later prime minister, Tansu Ciller, negotiated a customs union with the EU that took effect in 1996, securing unfettered access to the European single market for the first time.
By then the newly liberated countries of eastern Europe were also queuing up to join. At an EU summit in December 1997 European leaders decided to invite no fewer than ten countries from eastern Europe, plus Cyprus and Malta, to open membership negotiations. Turkey was left out. Turkish generals started to mutter that they might have done better in Brussels if they had joined the Warsaw Pact, not NATO.
European leaders made amends two years later by declaring that “Turkey is a candidate state destined to join the union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to other candidate states.” When the AK government took power in 2002 it proclaimed its goal of EU accession, just as its predecessor had done. And it passed enough reforms to persuade EU leaders unanimously to agree to begin membership talks in October 2005.
Sadly, despite diplomats’ doctrine of pacta sunt servanda (treaties and promises should be kept), that has proved the high point of Turkey’s European dream. In Germany the Christian Democrat Angela Merkel was about to replace the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder as chancellor. Less than two years later Nicolas Sarkozy took over from Jacques Chirac as French president. Mrs Merkel has long opposed Turkish EU membership, advocating a “privileged partnership” instead. Mr Sarkozy has consistently opposed Turkish entry on principle. Public opinion in Austria, the Netherlands and some other countries has become more hostile.
Three things have made matters worse for Turkey’s EU aspirations. The first is Cyprus, which joined the EU along with the east Europeans in May 2004. As a prelude, the then UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, tried one last time to reach a deal on unifying the divided island. But although the Turkish-Cypriots overwhelmingly said yes to the deal in a referendum, the Greek-Cypriots even more overwhelmingly said no. As a consequence the (Greek-Cypriot) republic joined the EU as the legitimate government with the acquis communautaire of EU legislation, suspended for the (Turkish-Cypriot) north. Cyprus is now the biggest single obstacle to Turkey’s EU hopes.
The second problem has been domestic political upheaval as the secular establishment and military top brass have battled against the AK government. A series of coup threats, conspiracies and constitutional court cases have created the impression of a country in political turmoil, helping to stoke European opposition to Turkish membership.
Third was the economic crisis that began in 2008 and hit Europe especially hard in 2009. Recession and rising unemployment have put paid to most thoughts of further EU enlargement. As it is, the deteriorating economy, the recent troubles of the euro zone and a backlash against immigration from the east have all lent force to widespread complaints that the central and eastern European countries were let into the EU too early.
Turkey’s membership negotiations have all but ground to a halt. Of the 35 “chapters” into which the talks are divided, as many as 18 are blocked by the EU as a whole, by Cyprus or by France. They include areas where Turkey might be expected to have a lot to offer, such as external relations and energy. Only one chapter, on science, has been closed. So far this year just one new chapter, on food-safety standards, has been opened. Next year it may prove impossible to open any at all.
Not surprisingly, the Turks are getting fed up. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, back in 2005 some 68% of Turks favoured joining the EU, with 27% against. Now the numbers are 54% in favour and 40% against. Eurobarometer polls show similar results. In September a German Marshall Fund survey found that, whereas in 2004 some 73% of Turks thought joining the EU would be a good thing, in 2010 only 38% did (see chart 4).
Both Egemen Bagis, the Turks’ chief European negotiator, and Stefan Fule, the enlargement commissioner in Brussels, gamely insist that the talks are proceeding normally. Mr Bagis trots out two lines that have become familiar to observers. The first is that “the process is more important than the end-result.” The AK government says it is making reforms for their own sake, not just to satisfy Brussels.
That is sensible. Most things a country has to do to qualify to open membership talks and then to join are desirable in themselves (it would be a sad comment on the EU if they were not). When the new members from central and eastern Europe joined, the biggest reforms were those introduced before accession. Afterwards the EU loses much of its leverage.
Yet even if the journey is the most important thing, it is harder to persuade the Turks to undertake it if they believe they will never reach their destination. Why should businessmen welcome the opening up of Turkey’s public-procurement market to more competition from European companies, for example, if they are not sure that they will one day be rewarded with membership?
Mr Bagis’s second line is that “every day that passes Europe needs Turkey more and Turkey needs Europe less.” In the same vein, Mr Davutoglu likes to argue that his visionary foreign policy is making Turkey ever more valuable to the EU. Once again, there is something in this. A rapidly growing Turkey that acquires greater economic, military and diplomatic clout ought to be a bigger prize for the Europeans to catch. But the argument can still be taken too far, in two respects.
The first is that, despite the rhetoric, joining the EU does not really involve any negotiation at all. An applicant country is simply required to adopt and implement all 160,000-odd pages of the European acquis. To assert that the EU needs Turkey more than the other way round sets the wrong tone, making it sound as though the supplicant is Brussels, not Ankara.
Second, an enterprising foreign policy of the sort that Mr Davutoglu is pursuing can jar with the EU’s own policy. This is not just a matter of saying no to sanctions against Iran or uttering tirades against Israel. The Turkish goal of visa-free access for almost all its neighbours could easily contradict the EU’s own plans for tighter border controls. No wonder some in Berlin, Paris and even Brussels maintain that Turkey is too wilful and unreliable ever to sit comfortably inside the EU.
Can anything be done to get Turkey’s EU aspirations back on track? No country has ever begun entry negotiations without eventually being offered full membership, but plenty have encountered big problems on the way. Britain’s application was twice vetoed by France’s Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s. Spain took nine years to get in. Norway was twice offered membership, only for voters to turn it down in referendums.
The best way to promote Turkey’s membership now would be to resolve the Cyprus problem, but the prospects of that look shaky (see article). It is also possible that, after the Turkish election next June, a new constitution and a renewed enthusiasm for reform may inject fresh life into the negotiations. The rising possibility that Mr Sarkozy will lose the presidential election in France in 2012 is also a good omen for Turkey.
But it may not be enough just to sit and wait. Hence another idea, suggested by Heather Grabbe of the Open Society Institute in Brussels, among others: to incorporate Turkey into the EU’s foreign and security policy now, without waiting for it to become a full member. This would make the country more familiar with the give-and-take of finding a common position and bolster the EU’s security. Turkey has a presence in places like Iran and Syria where the EU’s influence is weak. Mr Davutoglu might be reluctant to trammel his dream of an independent foreign policy. But the Turks might accept a strategic dialogue so long as it supplemented rather than supplanted its membership talks.
Another idea, promoted by Cengiz Aktar, a seasoned Turkish foreign-policy commentator, is to set a target date by which the negotiations should be wrapped up and membership achieved. He has suggested 2023, the centenary year of the founding of Ataturk’s republic. It is sufficiently far off to be tolerable to opponents of early Turkish accession, but close enough to encourage doubters within Turkey. Yet setting a date would make a difference only if people really believed in it, and the precedents are not encouraging. The EU guaranteed entry in 2007 on a fixed timetable to Bulgaria and Romania. Both countries joined before they were really ready, and the results have been messy.
Other suggestions include agreeing now that Turkey will never enjoy free movement of labour in the EU, to reassure European workers fearful of hordes of Turks stealing their jobs; or limiting Turkey’s voting weight in the EU’s institutions to stop it becoming the most powerful single country. But all of these would look like a form of second-class membership, which would be hard for the Turks to accept. In the end there may be no alternative to plodding on with the membership negotiations and just hoping for a change in the climate on both sides. Nobody has any reason to stop the talks now.
Yet this poses problems of its own. One is how to keep the negotiators on both sides busy. When they run out of chapters to open and discuss, what will they do? And even if something can be found to occupy them, there is a second and bigger problem: how to sustain the Turks’ interest in joining. Much will depend on what happens next in Turkish politics, now at an unusually critical moment.
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