ANKARA: In a country where anybody over 22 has lived through at least one military coup, a general’s comments that Turkey could turn to Iran and Russia rather than embracing the European Union cannot be ignored.
Opinion polls regularly show around 70 per cent of the population in Muslim Turkey want to join the EU and the government says it wants a date set by the end of this year for the start of membership negotiations.
But a chorus of dissent is growing, led by the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), part of Turkey’s coalition government. The “EU question” is taking its toll on government unity.
Conservatives in the MHP, and some in the military, say Turkey is being pushed into making too many concessions that will serve only to promote separatism among the Kurdish population and blunt the state’s ability to fight terrorism.
More surprising were comments from General Tuncer Kilinc that the EU had done nothing for Turkey and that Turkey might turn to Iran and Russia. They stirred a hornets’ nest here. While the powerful army may not be “anti-European”, it has its concerns.
“This is a message to the EU — the message that Turkey is not about to say yes to every demand with no objections,” commentator Fikret Bila wrote in the newspaper Milliyet.
“Turkey expects flexibility, understanding and support from the EU. This is an approach to make the EU ponder about Turkey and consider that it also has its bargaining chips.”
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit himself has said that EU membership was “Turkey’s undeniable and indispensable right”. Many are convinced the EU would gain as much as if not more than Turkey if the marriage ever came to fruition.
DOES THE EU REALLY WANT TURKEY?: Professor Hasan Unal of Ankara’s Bilkent University, however, says it is clear the EU has no intention of letting Turkey join and is just stringing it along for its own benefit.
“Europe wants to get things like Cyprus out of Turkey in return for hopes of accession one day,” Unal said.
Peace talks under way on the divided island of Cyprus have been given added urgency by the rapidly approaching prospect of EU membership for the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the southern, Greek Cypriot, half of the island.
Cyprus is expected to be among the first wave of new members as soon as 2004 and Europe wants to avoid what one EU diplomat said would be the “cataclysmic” consequences of doing so without an agreement to reunite the island.
Turkey, which has threatened to annex northern Cyprus if EU accession goes ahead, would find itself with 30,000 troops stationed in an EU member.
A major breach would be unavoidable and Turkey’s own EU ambitions would be scuppered.
“Whatever we are supposed to do, whatever we can achieve within a year, or two or five or 10 years, Europe is not ready for Turkish accession,” Unal said.
He cites three reasons: size — a population of 65 million and growing would make Turkey among the largest member states; geography — Turkey
borders Syria, Iraq and Iran, countries the EU may be reluctant to have as neighbours; and religion — Christian Europeans don’t really want Muslims in the club.
His comments are at the end of the spectrum of opinion in Turkey but there is widespread mistrust of Europe’s motives, and even EU diplomats admit privately that taking in Turkey would be a challenge not all member states want to take on.
A quip among the more jaded in Brussels plays on a workers’ joke in the old communist Soviet Union that “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”. “They pretend to be striving for membership,” runs their version, “and we pretend to want them.”
MUTUAL BENEFITS FOR TURKEY AND EU: Yet at the other end of the spectrum in Turkey, there is widespread understanding of the benefits both economic and political that EU membership could bring.
Turkey, which has just seen a year of financial turmoil and where GDP per capita is less than a third of the EU average, has watched EU members Spain and Portugal surge ahead economically over the past 20 years after starting from a low level.
A customs union with the EU has already allowed Turkish exporters to take advantage of a huge market for products such as textiles and white goods, and business groups are firmly in favour of EU membership which they say would help stability.
“What lies at the basis of Turkey’s decision to join the EU is the fact that the EU is one of the world’s most important economic blocs,” said Meral Gezgin Eris, chairwoman of Turkey’s Economic Development Fund (IKV). “There may be differing views which should be respected, but Turkey’s fundamental choice is very obviously integration with the EU,” she said.
Spanish Ambassador to Ankara Manuel de la Camara said bringing Turkey into the EU would help stability in a volatile region of crucial interest to the bloc as well as opening up a huge market for European businesses.
But in order to join, Turkey needs to improve its human rights record and meet the EU’s democratic standards.
The EU wants the death penalty abolished. It wants Turkey to loosen curbs on minority cultural rights, an issue particularly poignant among its 12 million Kurds. And it wants the military to loosen its grip on civilian politics.
“It’s a question of whether you share with Europeans the values and the vision, or not,” said de la Camara, whose country currently holds the EU presidency.
“If you share these views, if you’re convinced this is the way you want to move, then you can do it. But if you do not share the same views, the same vision, then you will never do it,” he said. “It’s very clear, it’s black or white, yes or no.”
“I don’t think anybody in Turkey is against joining the EU but what many of them think is they can get into the EU on their own terms,” he added. “But this is not going to be possible.”
Turkey’s government is a coalition of Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP), Devlet Bahceli’s nationalist MHP, and the pro-European Motherland Party led by Mesut Yilmaz.
A deep gulf divides Bahceli and Yilmaz on Europe.
Yilmaz is trying to push through the reforms needed to start negotiations and is using as a spur the first anniversary of Turkey’s National Programme — a document laying out the government’s plans to put its house in order for the EU.
That anniversary on Tuesday (March 19) will provide an occasion for all sides in Turkey’s most fateful debate to take stock and for the EU itself to send its own signals to Ankara.—Reuters