InsideTurkey/Lara Marlowe:Despite continuing reforms, there is growing impatience with the slow progress on EU accession, and deep resentment at the blocking tactics of France's Nicolas Sarkozy
Turkey has waited a very long time at the door of Europe: 84 years since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern state, declared: "Our place is in Europe"; 48 years since the Turkish parliament first asked to be associated with the EEC.
"Since the accession process started in 1963," says a Turkish diplomat, "joining Europe has been the most important political project of the Republic. It is the core of Turkish foreign policy." In the past five years, Turkey has rewritten one third of its constitution to meet criteria for EU accession. Though much remains to be done, there have been dramatic improvements in human rights, fundamental freedoms, the economy and governance.
Now the patient suitor is growing weary, and fears being jilted at the altar. "About 10 days ago, they changed the map of Europe on the euro coin," says Suat Kiniklioglu, a newly elected member of the Turkish parliament. "Turkey is no longer on the map, but parts of the former Soviet Union are. It was all over the Turkish press. It's a disheartening signal."
Kiniklioglu ran the Turkish office of the German Marshall Fund, an American institution set up to promote co-operation and understanding between the US and Europe, before joining the neo-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) last spring. When I met him in Ankara, he had just come from an iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other AKP parliamentarians. Kiniklioglu plans a public relations campaign to "re-energise" Turkish-European relations. "We will take the discussion to the Europeans," he says. "We want to show our European friends that we own the project, that we're at the table."
Negotiations for Turkish accession started two years ago this week. Since last December, the talks have stalled for three reasons: Cyprus, the opposition of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and legislative and presidential elections in Turkey.
The Greek Cypriot government, which joined the EU in the May 1st 2004 "big bang", has systematically vetoed decisions involving Turkey. Tension came to a head last December when Cyprus and France moved to suspend eight negotiation "chapters" because Turkey will not allow Greek Cypriot aircraft or ships to use its ports. (Turkey says the EU never fulfilled its commitment to end the isolation of Turkish northern Cyprus.) Before the EU votes to accept a new member, 35 "chapters" must be open and shut, which means Brussels must be satisfied that the candidate is up to EU standards in those areas. Turkey has already completed the science and research chapter.
Chapters on financial control, statistics and enterprise and industrial policies remain open. The eight chapters that were suspended last December include freedom to provide services, financial services, transport policy, agricultural and rural development and fisheries.
To add insult to injury, Sarkozy announced this summer that France will not allow five chapters which it deems synonymous with full membership to be opened for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Turkey has established a 2007-2013 reform schedule to do everything it believes necessary to qualify in all 35 chapters - whether Sarkozy likes it or not.
In fact, the EU Commission's delegation to Ankara, along with the Turkish government, continue to lay the groundwork for accession, regardless of the suspended chapters. "The problem isn't technical," says an EU official. "It's psychological. How can you create any momentum if you keep saying, 'We're freezing this', or 'We're freezing that'? We hold the sword of Damocles over their head at all times, and it's very unhealthy."
The EU Commission has set aside €1.8 billion for pre-accession projects, to help bring everything from schools to roads to lorry inspection up to EU standards. (All new members benefit from similar assistance.) For example, 69 middle- and senior-level Turkish civil servants have been trained in government departments in Dublin, and the Irish Revenue Commission is helping to reform the Turkish tax system.
Because a majority of EU governments still support Turkey's EU bid, the government remains hopeful, but there is deep resentment towards Sarkozy. "French leaders approved the 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2005 summit declarations," says a Turkish official. "Governments may change, but a state's commitments do not. France's commitment is contractual. You don't change the rules of the game once it has started. The summit conclusions and negotiation documents clearly state that Turkey's accession process is directed towards full membership."
THERE IS SUSPICION that, no matter how sterling Turkey's performance, the EU will continue to invent new demands. Bulent Aliriza, the director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says today's debate resembles that surrounding Turkey's Nato application in the early 1950s: "The Turks got the shock of their lives when they were rejected twice. The same argument arose - that they were not part of Judeo-Christian civilisation. Then, as now, the US was the main advocate for Turkey. And the British tried to relegate the Turkish to a middle-eastern grouping, much as Sarkozy is proposing a Turkish role in a Mediterranean union."
Before he became editor-in-chief of Milliyet, one of Turkey's leading newspapers, Sedat Ergin spent years covering Washington and Brussels. "This debate is not only about Turkey's accession, but about the identity of the EU," he says. "The Europeans don't agree on what kind of Union they want; if it's a loose federation, that could be a solution for Turkey . . . The southern tier - Spain and Italy - look on us sympathetically. The Scandinavians, for the sake of being politically correct, are supportive, as is the European left."
But when the political right takes power in European capitals, Turkey's chances wane, says Ergin. "The United Kingdom is still very supportive, but we have Angela Merkel in Berlin and Sarkozy - a nationalist who is vehemently opposed - in Paris. The pendulum has swung against us."
EUROPEANS AND TURKS blame those politicians who have needlessly and prematurely inflated the debate over Turkish membership. "Recent Eurobarometer polls show that close to a third of Europeans think Turkey is already a full member," laments a source close to President Abdullah Gul. "Many think that Turkey is the cause of poverty and unemployment in Europe, and European politicians are exploiting this ignorance. It's a stupid debate, and it's polluting the atmosphere."
There can be no significant commitment on Turkish membership for at least seven years, after the next EU budget is completed. Others speak of 10, 15 or even 20 years. With no target dates on the horizon, Turkish discouragement grows.
Emre Gonensay, a former foreign minister who once taught Romano Prodi at the London School of Economics, served as an informal ambassador to Europe for president Gul when Gul was foreign minister. Gonensay was militantly pro-Europe in his youth.
"Now I feel that Europe is not in a particularly strong position," he says. "In five or 10 years, we may wonder whether membership is good for us or not."
In the midst of an economic boom, despite tensions between secularists and Islamists and the low-grade war with separatist Kurds, today's Turkey is amazingly self-confident. "If present-day European politicians had been around in the middle of the last century, instead of Schuman, de Gaulle and Adenauer, I don't there would be an EU," says Gonensay. "These are not statesmen . . . Europe has a lot of unemployment, and their ageing population won't be able to finance their social security systems."
Prime minister Erdogan and president Gul were radical Islamists in their youth, but now both repeat endlessly that they intend to preserve Turkey's secular system of government. "It's an injustice to the [ AKP] party that it is portrayed as Islamist," says Kiniklioglu.
Foreign investors who have placed more than $50 billion (€35.3bn) in direct investment in Turkey over the past two years believe in the country's stability, despite a series of violent incidents, including the assassination of the journalist Hrant Dink and the gruesome murder of three Christian missionaries. European diplomats say the AKP's victory and Gul's election in the face of military opposition strengthened Turkey's democratic credentials.
Turkey is in the midst of the most important changes it has seen since Ataturk founded the state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Ironically, it is the neo-Islamist AKP and not westernised secularists who are most engaged with Europe. "From 1923 until five years ago [ when the AKP came to power], Turkey was ruled by the same Kemalist elite, who were Europeanised to the point of caricature," a diplomat observes. "Now the balance has tipped in favour of the conservative democrats, as the AKP define themselves. They are by far the most democratic force in Turkish politics. It bothers 'white Turkey' [ as the old elite are known] that deepest Anatolia has woken up and is incredibly dynamic."
Erdogan was forced into some reforms, such as language rights for Kurds, to meet the Copenhagen criteria for EU accession. "The EU process is such an important vehicle for modernisation and democratisation that it has transformed Turkey," says Cengiz Candar, perhaps the best-known public affairs commentator in Turkey.
"The journey may be more important than the destination." Candar believes Europe needs Turkey more than it realises, that the EU cannot counterbalance the power of China and India without it. The EU may not want to share borders with Turkey's neighbours Iran and Iraq, "but they need hydrocarbons, and the only route is through Turkey. You need blood for your veins."
"Turkey is on the fault-line of everything that interests the Western world," Candar continues. "The ideological divide between East and West, immigration routes . . . If you exclude Turkey, the perception in the Islamic world will be that even Turkey, with all its credentials, is rejected because it is Muslim. And you will import more violence into your capitals."