The Importance of Turkish Accession to the European Union
by Soli Özel

The EU has been intensely debating the issue of Turkish accession. The topic incites passion and prejudice. Influential circles in France and Germany, most notably the leader of the German CDU Angela Merkel, are increasingly vocal in favor of a "privileged partnership" for Turkey instead of membership. The debate has also taken an irrational and emotive turn, particularly in France and Austria. Exaggerated claims about the burden Turkey would be for the Union have been supported with arguments concerning Turkey's "otherness." "The demons that have so fatally tormented European history," as Vaclav Havel called them, appear to be back in full force, ignoring legal commitments, strategic considerations, political principles in favor of an exclusionary, fear-engendering discourse.

In that context, the British Presidency should be considered an extraordinary chance for EU-Turkey relations. Britain's commitment to Turkish membership, informed as it is by strategic considerations as well as by Britain's vision for the future of the Union, will help avert a breakdown in the accession process. In fact, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw suggested after the heinous attacks in London that the EU's borders ended in eastern Turkey. He therefore left no doubt that the British Presidency was not willing to entertain a postponement of the start of accession negotiations scheduled for 3 October this year.

After the turning point
On December 17, 2004, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey. The decision was based on the recommendation of the Commission that found Turkey was in compliance with the EU's Copenhagen political criteria. The sections of the Summit conclusions on Turkey included many hitherto unknown conditions and an explicit reference to the open-endedness of the negotiation process. This intimation of a negotiation process that might not end with membership, along with the last-minute but unsuccessful machinations to force Turkey to accept a number of Greek Cypriot demands during the summit, disillusioned the Turkish public as well as the government.

On the European front, those who were unhappy with the decision or were intent on using anti-Turkish feelings for domestic political purposes reacted immediately. In France the constitution was changed so that the Turkish accession would be decided by a referendum. During the campaign for the French referendum on the Constitutional Treaty both the supporters and opponents used Turkey as a good reason to vote their way. Increasingly, the language emanating from some political circles in specific countries about Turkish membership turned to vitriol. The results in the French and Dutch referenda led many pundits to declare the end of Turkey's accession aspirations despite the fact that a Eurobarometer survey found that Turkey's share among the reasons as to why people voted no was well below 10 percent in both countries.

The new era for the EU
The French and the Dutch referenda brought the Union to a dangerous spot. On the one hand, the Union jeopardized its chance to be an equal partner with the United States in the construction of a new world order. On the other hand, the nature of the debate and the rhetoric of the campaigns cast a doubt on the liberal attributes of the European publics. The Union in its present stage undoubtedly faces a crisis of legitimacy. This crisis of legitimacy may be more acute for the member countries whose national politics are more troubled in most cases than the Union itself. We know that stagnant economies, bulging ranks of the unemployed, and irresponsible politicians who convert matters of political economy into matters of culture mean trouble politically. Under such circumstances democratic politics are invariably influenced by the impulsive reactions of the citizenry. In an environment of great insecurity caused as much by the uncontrollable forces of an uncaring globalization as by the grave concerns of old age, irrelevant skills, and unneeded labor power, many people are guided by fear in their political choices. The turn of the debate within the Union about Turkey from one that dealt with principles of democracy and liberal politics to one that deals with culture, in this context, is a dangerous one that we should all be wary about.

Turkey-EU relations go back forty-five years; over the years a sentiment developed that established unequivocally Turkey's eligibility for membership. The Union repeatedly promised to hold Turkey to the same basic criteria as other eligible countries too. Therefore it behooves the Union and its members to look at EU-Turkey relations from the perspective of institutional processes and objective criteria whose fulfillment is verifiable and measurable. The fulfillment of the criteria will take a long time. It may be best then to make sure that the environment in which the process takes place ceases to be an inflammatory one, for the fact remains that the accession of Turkey is also a strategic matter and a matter of security for the EU just as all the previous enlargements were. In fact, in the post-Cold War era as before the expansion of the EU's liberal zone of peace was the Union's main security strategy. It is, in this context, perilous to shift the argument about Turkish accession into the realm of religion. This is truly a vision of Europe that is anachronistic if not altogether belonging to an unmissed past.

The European Union is fated to get over its current crisis. When it does and begins to lift its head above the water, its strategic challenges and its security agenda will still be around. It will still need to have a secular, stable, and sound Turkey that sees its interests as common with those of the West in general and the EU in particular. This Turkey will continue to be an important energy corridor, an economic hub and a political magnet for the regions surrounding it. In ten years' time a politically and economically stable Turkey will make quite a contribution to European economic vitality. Without Turkey, peace and stability in the eastern Mediterrannean would be difficult to achieve and sustain; without Turkey, the Middle East will not find its bearings in terms of legitimacy, political stability, and peaceful cohabitation. On that score it is imperative that more attention be paid to the fact that Turkey has had an ambassador in Iraq since the war ended, that it received the Iraqi Prime Minister in Ankara and that it has substantively changed its Iraq policy particularly regarding the status of the Kurds.

At a time when the strategic landscape of the world is being transformed and most countries of any note are trying to position themselves for the next quarter century, it would be blind of the Union and its members to downplay the strategic dimension of Turkish accession. The strategic argument is not a substitute for bona fide liberal democratic criteria, nor should it ever be considered by the Union as such. But it is and will remain a fact of political life on a world scale. In fact, Turkey's strategic value is no longer just a function of its geopolitical location or the might and professionalism of its military. Equally as important are its attributes as a secular, democratic, market-oriented country that has a Muslim majority.

What is Turkey to do?
In an interview he gave to a national newsaper in April, Prime Minister Erdogan said that "a chord was broken in his soul" in the wake of the Brussels summit of December 2004. Unkept promises on Cyprus, last minute surprises in the wording of the Presidency conclusions, the venomous diatribes emanating from eminent politicians in important member countries all played a part in that disillusionment and disappointment. In his turn the Prime Minister began to weigh the costs of staying the course in domestic political currency. The result has been a sluggish commitment to the reform process, an inexplicable delay in appointing a chief negotiator and the waning of the government's leadership role in the pursuit of EU membership. The result was predictable. A public that grew increasingly suspicious of the EU's intentions paid more attention to political discourses than processes and began to lose faith in the secular promises of the Union.

Turkey will have to sign a protocol that extends its customs union with the EU to the new member states, including Cyprus, without recognizing the latter. This is the final condition for the start of accession negotiations. But before the negotiations begin, Turkey too will have to go through some soul searching. The perceived snub by the Europeans and the American policies in Turkey's neighborhood that are seen as victimizing fellow Muslims lead to rising anti-Western feelings in the country. Faced with such pressures and unsure that the European Union will honor its commitments in the final stage of the process, the AKP government faces a dilemma. As suggested earlier it is reluctant to spend huge sums of political capital in a project that may fail to deliver.

On the other hand both its own political future and the peace and prosperity of Turkey are highly dependent on the harmonization of Turkey's administrative and political structures with those of the EU. In that context the government has two choices. One is to stay the course despite the efforts by European politicians to force Turkey to throw in the towel. The second alternative, that of getting off course, represents a slide into the abyss. This could be caused by the choice for an ethnic nationalist line in politics that would be disastrous both for the government and Turkey. In this context, the resurgence of PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) terrorism and the shadow the organization casts on Kurdish politics and politicians ought to be mentioned. Unless the Kurdish political elite manages to free itself from the PKK, unequivocally condemn terrorism and take a strict distance from violence for whatever ends, the political space for solving Turkey's Kurdish problem will shrink. Unless that elite drops its Kurdish ethnic nationalist line, it will play into the hands of those who favor a Turkish ethnic nationalist line domestically and an anti-EU/anti-Western line internationally.

A final word on privileged partnership is also in order. Privileged partnership is a hollow concept; if anything, it already exists because of the customs union. It is a condescending proposition and in fact may be considered an anachronistic one that reminds a Turkish diplomat of the limes of the Roman Empire: "The Romans considered the territories beyond their borders as the lands of the barbarians and had a strategy of defining zones called limes to protect themselves. Turkey would not wish to be assigned the role of limes."

Just as the EU will have to make a decision that its long-term associate is indeed a European country, Turkey will have to make a final determination that it is in strategic terms a Western country. It must determine that the transatlantic alliance is the world it primarily belongs to. This does not obviate the fact that Turkey is at the same time a Middle eastern, a Caucasian, and a Balkan country that acts as a political and economic magnet for the surrounding regions, is a mediator between the West and the non-West and the beneficiary of a cosmopolitan Muslim empire. As such it has things to say: from the future strategic landscape of the Middle East to the issue of alienated Muslims in European countries to freeing Islam as a religion from the grip of well-funded sectarian bigots.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer once likened the decision to start accession negotiations with Turkey to D-Day in World War II; the statement made a crucial point. In the post-September 11, post-Iraq war world Turkey's association to, alliance with, and participation in Western efforts to reorder the world system are critical issues. The December decision reflected a recognition on the part of the decision makers that the continuation of Turkey's accession process was imperative for such a critical actor to pull its weight on the side of the West. This was also a fundamental principle of U.S. foreign policy. The interest of all the parties concerned lies in the deepening of this understanding.

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Soli Özel is a frequent contributor to AICGS.

This essay appeared in the July 14, 2005 AICGS Advisor.