No to Turkey, again

AS expected, the European Union has once again let Turkey down. On Friday, the EU summit at Copenhagen declared that entry negotiations with Turkey would not begin until December 2004, and that too only if Ankara fulfilled the usual “criteria.” The decision also means that 10 other countries, which applied for membership much later than Turkey, will become EU members much earlier. Turkey applied in 1987, when eight of the 10 who have been given entry negotiation dates were members of the Warsaw Pact. In rejecting the Turkish bid to get a date, the EU has insisted that Ankara must remove “shortcomings” in fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria for membership. Last August, the Turkish parliament passed a reform package, which gave greater political freedoms to the people and granted cultural rights to the Kurdish minority. However, the EU summit communique was blunt. It said Turkey must implement the reforms, implying that these had largely remained unimplemented.

The EU rejection is a blow to the new Turkish government, which has a reformist agenda. It also constitutes a rebuff to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK), which swept the polls last month. During the election campaign, Mr Erdogan had pledged to maintain Turkey’s European orientation and to actively pursue its EU membership. Immediately after the polls, he visited a number of European countries to plead his country’s case. He had also denied that the AKP was “Islamist”, insisting that his programme and party were only conservative. The fact is that a strong European lobby is working actively against Turkish membership. Germany has been particularly opposed to the idea of Turkey joining the EU, fearing that this could open the floodgates of a tide of immigrants from that country. Opinion polls in many European countries have also shown a negative bias. More tellingly, a man like Giscard d’Estaing, who is head of the reform commission preparing a constitution for the EU, has said that there is no place in Europe for Turkey and that Turkish membership will mean “the end of the EU”. But in Copenhagen, it was President Jacques Chirac who played a major role in blocking Turkey’s membership. In fact, Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul pointedly accused Mr Chirac of “blackmail” and said he was “very disappointed” at the French president’s role.

The EU dithering on the issue is giving rise to serious doubts in Turkey about Europe’s future orientation. Most Turks now suspect that the EU wants to keep Turkey out because it is a Muslim country. It is now for the EU leadership to prove that it does not want the EU to remain an exclusive Christian club. The extent of EU feeling over the issue is demonstrated by the fact that it is standing up to American pressure. Washington favours Turkey’s membership but the EU has made it clear to the US that this is a European issue and does not concern America. For the Turks, the issue is not just EU membership but the very course of Europeanization which the country has followed since the founding of the republic. A final rejection of Turkish membership will send the wrong signals to the entire Islamic world and perhaps serve to strengthen the forces of extremism and intolerance.

Credit for low-cost housing

ACCORDING to a recent report released by the World Bank, Pakistan has a shortfall of nearly five million proper housing units. Supporting the finding, the Economic Survey of Pakistan says that there is a need to build some 500,000 housing units every year if Pakistan is to overcome the existing shortfall in the next 20 years and avoid overcrowding in living conditions. The report goes on to say that, given financial constraints, nearly 65 per cent of Pakistani households have no hope of building a livable pucca house in the near future if the present trend continues. This indeed is a dismal state of affairs.

An overwhelming majority of the people are denied the basic need of housing because their means of livelihood and opportunities to better these are limited. The continued migration of rural people to the cities in search of jobs is part of the problem. Today, nearly 35 per cent of Karachi’s estimated 12 million people live in shanty towns and slums where basic amenities like water and power are not legally available. Overcrowding in the existing housing units is another major problem; the national average stands at over five persons per room, as opposed to a more acceptable average of three per room.

The World Bank report and experts agree that there is need to launch micro-credit schemes offering loans to people at affordable rates for building basic housing units. The government should take up the issue seriously so that a more sustainable and long-term national housing policy is formulated and implemented to help bridge the existing need versus supply gap in the housing sector. Since micro-credit schemes do not yield huge commercial profits, the private sector is unlikely to find it a very attractive proposition. This calls for action by the government, which must step in and support lending schemes in the public sector that provide affordable housing loans to the general public.

Traffic perennials

FOR the umpteenth time an order has been issued by senior police authorities to “streamline” the flow of traffic in Karachi. The problem is compounded by the city’s ever-increasing volume of traffic, its badly maintained and aging road network, and a traffic police that seems more interested in fleecing drivers than in implementing laws and rules meant to keep traffic smooth and orderly. As the inspector-general noted in his directive, the situation has been made worse because many of the city’s major roads have been dug up, all at the same time. Common sense would require that if repair work was needed at all, it should be staggered so that traffic could use alternative routes. Moreover, there is little coordination between those doing the digging — usually government utilities — and the traffic police. In fact, in most cases, repairs are carried out in such a haphazard manner that debris is left lying in the middle of the road with not even any warning signs or lights.

Then, there is the problem posed by the motorists themselves, many of whom are more than willing to jump signals, suddenly change lanes, drive rashly, and in general defy every traffic law. Add to this the fact that most buildings in the city’s commercial areas do not have any space for parking, and the traffic chaos we see is inevitable. Karachi also suffers from a uniquely Pakistani phenomenon, that of the so-called ‘VIP movement’. In fact, it reared its ugly head again just this week with impromptu traffic diversions and no-parking zones created all over Karachi’s commercial district because of the presence of political dignitaries from Islamabad. Directives issued by the IG will have a discernible impact on Karachi’s traffic mess only if there is coordinated planning and the police attempt to enforce the law instead of remaining busy harassing motorists.