BBC News
Last Updated: Monday, 28 June, 2004, 16:01 GMT 17:01 UK
Turkey’s unrequited EU love
By Oana Lungescu
BBC correspondent in Istanbul
Two years ago, Turkey won the Eurovision song contest with a tale of
unrequited love.
In many ways, it echoed the country’s own unsuccessful bid to woo the
European Union since 1963, when it signed an association agreement that
promised eventual membership of the bloc.
Things began moving in 1999 when Turkey was officially recognised as an EU
candidate, and especially after the election of the Justice and Development
Party (AKP) government in 2002, which quickened political reforms to an
unprecedented pace.
Earlier this month, Turkish state television began broadcasting in Kurdish,
the language of a sizeable minority in this country of 67 million.
On the same day, the government released four Kurdish activists, including
human rights award winner Leyla Zana, who had spent 10 years in jail after
trials deemed unfair by the EU.
Turkey’s new government is working hard on reforming its image
Over the past 18 months, the government has passed nine reform packages,
including a ban on the death penalty, a zero-tolerance policy towards
torture in prisons, and curtailing the interference of the military in
politics, education and culture.
“I am impressed – because starting with the constitution, they’ve changed a
lot of laws,” says Murat Celikan, a human rights activist who writes a
regular column in the daily Radikal.
“To give one example, two years ago, a radio was banned for one year for
airing a song in Kurdish and in Armenian. Now the state television has
Kurdish programmes – so that’s a great change.”
The EU has also welcomed the reforms, but it wants them implemented across
this vast country by local police, judges and bureaucrats. So far,
implementation is uneven, especially in the provinces and the Kurdish areas
in the south-east.
“It will take time because I am sure that the security forces especially are
not yet well informed about those changes. If you want to make a
demonstration in Istanbul or in an eastern province like Diyarbakir, the
procedures are still different – not by law, but because of implementation,”
says Murat Celikan.
Investor wariness
The prospect of EU membership, coupled with IMF-inspired reforms, have also
brought greater stability to the crisis-prone Turkish economy.
Huge shopping centres are full of young people in search of the latest
trends. The economy is growing, while inflation has fallen to single-digit
figures for the first time in decades.
It will be a big, almost the biggest country, it will be pretty much the
poorest country in the EU and it’s located in quite a difficult strategic
security position
Kirsty Hughes
Analyst
But foreign investors remain wary of Turkey. In 2002, they invested only
$300m (£164m), 10 times less than in Hungary, a country whose entire economy
equals that of Istanbul.
Cem Duna, a leading member of the influential Turkish businessmen and
industrialists association Tusiad, has this explanation.
“Hungary is a member of the European Union and has been a candidate for the
past 10 years or so, this was the main reason why this happened. Now Turkey
can easily amass up to $10-15bn (£5.5-8bn) foreign direct investment per
annum once it is on the same track, with the same finality in sight.”
Meanwhile, Turkey remains poorer than the 10 countries of central and
southern Europe that have just joined the EU, with living standards at about
a quarter of EU levels.
Muslim giant
But in terms of population, it is as big as all of the 10 put together.
If it were to join around 2015, it would become the second biggest country
in the EU after Germany.
Is the EU ready to admit such a large poor country, which also happens to
border on Iraq and Syria?
Kurdish rights have improved as Turkey tries to gain EU entry
Kirsty Hughes is the author of a recent study on the implications of Turkish
EU membership.
“It will be a big, almost the biggest country, it will be pretty much the
poorest country in the EU and it’s located in quite a difficult
strategically security position,” she says.
“But when you actually look at what does that mean for joining the union,
what it means for its economic policies, for its budget, for how it votes to
make decisions, then all those things start to look manageable.
“For instance, it would have about 15% of the votes in the EU Council,
that’s slightly less than Germany has today in the say of how to run the EU.
In budget terms it would cost about as much as the ‘big bang’ enlargement
that we’ve just had.
“Now again, that’s not cheap, but it’s about 10% to 15% of the EU’s budget
so it’s not as shocking as if you said it’s going to be half the budget. It
does have a lot of implications for EU foreign policy, but I think those
will have to be taken as they come.”
Strategic
For Guenter Verheugen, the European enlargement commissioner, Turkey’s
strategic position straddling Europe and the greater Middle East is an asset
rather than a drawback.
EU politicians face one of the toughest decisions they have ever had to
take. If they say no to Turkey, they risk alienating a key ally in the
Muslim world with unpredictable consequences. If they say yes, they may
upset many voters at home who are already unhappy about where the EU is
going
At a recent conference in Brussels, he warned that the EU would make a
tragic mistake if it stopped or reversed the process of democratisation in
Turkey by denying it eventual membership.
“The eleventh of September 2001 marks a far-reaching change in our strategic
thinking. Since 11 September, the question of the relationship between
Western democracies and the Islamic world is one of the most important
issues in the first decade of the 21st Century.
“The question – which role will Turkey play in the organisation of that
relationship – can be very crucial. Personally, I am convinced it will be
crucial.
“And the process of reforms in Turkey has a meaning far beyond the borders
of that country. It has a meaning for the whole Islamic world, because it
demonstrates that there’s no contradiction between the universal values of
human rights, democracy, the state of law and a country with a Muslim
population and Muslim background.”
EU decision
In October, Mr Verheugen will issue a progress report on Turkey which will
form the basis for the decision of EU leaders.
While the report is widely expected to be positive, public opinion in
France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere is becoming increasingly reluctant to
accept a further enlargement of the EU, especially to include a large Muslim
nation like Turkey.
Since the Netherlands will be holding the EU’s rotating presidency in the
second half of the year, I asked Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister (and a
former Dutch ambassador to Turkey) how worried he is about the lack of
public support among Western voters?
“Perhaps there has been a lack of proper communication and now there is, I
think, an unjustified fear of Islam, which is perhaps understandable in the
context of terrorism and so on, but which is not justified – because I think
that the situation in Turkey is completely different.
“They also forget that Turkey has been a member of Nato, of the Council of
Europe, that it has helped the West during all these years, also during the
Cold War, has been a staunch ally.
“And so, it’s in itself astonishing that people all of a sudden are against
Turkish participation, whereas we think that Turkey would be a very valuable
member of the EU. It will take a long time, that I agree, it will certainly
take many, many years of negotiations before they fully comply with all the
criteria.”
Indeed, in 10 years or so from now, the EU will be a very different union,
and Turkey will be a very different country.
But come December, EU politicians face one of the toughest decisions they
have ever had to take.
If they say no to Turkey, they risk alienating a key ally in the Muslim
world. But if they say yes, they may upset many voters at home who are
already unhappy about where the EU is going.