The Age , Australia
Dec 10 2004
Reluctant welcome mat for Turkey
December 11, 2004
Some members of Old Europe are nervous about the likelihood of Muslim
Turkey joining the EU. Peter Fray reports in Ankara.
Politicians don’t come much more surprising, or anxious, than
Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Having served a jail
term eight years ago for inciting religious hatred, he has
re-invented himself, his Islamic-based party and his nation.
After 40 years of courtship, Turkey, once better known for its
torture of prisoners and the undue political influence of its
generals, is now on the point of acceptance by the European Union.
But, just days before the EU decides whether and when it will start
talks aimed at Turkey’s eventual accession, signs are gathering that
may render Erdogan’s political gymnastics futile.
The problem isn’t so much with Turkey, which has undergone a radical
reform of its economy, police, judiciary and human rights record,
especially its treatment of the Kurds, but with Western Europe.
Europe, it seems, has only just woken up to the implications of more
than 70 million Muslims – 95 per cent of whom live in Asia – joining
what some still prefer to see as a solely Western, if not Christian,
club.
Having repelled the invading Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in the
late 17th century, Western Europe has set the scene to again stall
Turkish mass migration – this time for the thousands of young Turks
whose dream is for better jobs and education. EU leaders will decide
at a summit on Friday whether to open accession talks with Turkey.
With several European nations struggling to deal with their own
expanding Muslim communities, most notably in France, Germany,
Austria and Holland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, the
Turkey acid test has arrived at an inopportune time.
Divisions on Turkey are becoming the fault-line in European political
discourse, often pitching senior figures of the same party or
persuasion against each other. In France, President Jacques Chirac
supports Turkey’s bid while his Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin
and, more importantly, his would-be nemesis and successor, Nikolas
Sarkozy, say neither Turkey nor Europe is ready.
“What is at the heart of French concerns is (Turkey’s) size and it is
Islam,” says Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French Foreign
Affairs Institute.
“We have 5 million Muslims in France and we see Turkey and we
spontaneously think of the difficulties in French society. It is
(about) fear, stereotypes, prejudice. We have failed to integrate 5
million Muslims – how can Europe succeed in integrating 70 million?”
says Moisi.
While Turkey’s possible accession to the EU is likely to be over a
decade away, events over coming days will be a watershed for both
Turkish aspirations and the EU’s future. EU leaders meeting in
Brussels must resolve the question of how big the 25-nation union can
become. If they agree that Turkey, a NATO member, can enter, they
will acknowledge that Europe can legitimately extend its borders to
Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Armenia and Syria. For some European MPs, this
will render the EU simply too big, too diverse and too ineffective.
As a senior aide to Germany’s Conservative opposition told The Age:
“You can’t decide such a far-reaching decision to start negotiations
with Turkey without having had a debate about where are the borders
of Europe, not only geographic borders but also the political and
cultural borders. If Turkey comes into the EU in 2015, they might
have more inhabitants than Germany. It might be 80 million or more,
it might well become the biggest member, with mostly Muslims. This is
not a question that we don’t want Muslims here and so on, but it is
another culture.”
Turkey has sought to turn its potential as a bridge to Asia and the
Middle East, not to mention its 600,000-strong standing army (the
largest in Europe), to its advantage. Turkish Foreign Ministry
officials note the country’s military has taken a lead role in
bringing stability to Afghanistan and was able to talk to influential
Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Sistani when no other Western country could
get in the room. It also has a long-standing and close relationship
with Israel and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “We can talk with
everybody,” says a senior Turkish diplomatic official, who declines
to be named. “They all talk to Turkey. We are not going there to get
a piece of the existing cake. We will make the cake bigger and then
we get a piece from the cake.”
But desperate as it is to gain access to Europe and realise the dream
of its founding father, Kemal Ataturk, for his nation to face
westwards, Turkey will not prostitute itself for Europe. Nor will it
wait forever.
The country’s ambassador to the EU, Oguz Demiralp, has warned in
recent days that Turkey will not remain in the EU’s orbit if it is
blocked from membership.
Though Demiralp’s comments were seen as mainly a diplomatic
one-upmanship, the country does have other options. In the late
1990s, then Prime Minister Necmetin Erbakan started the so-called D-8
group of Islamic nations that included Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria,
Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran, a potential market of hundreds
of millions of people. As the EU talks get harder, Erbakan’s Islamic
party, Saadet, from which Erdogan’s AK Party was formed, is starting
to push D-8 again.
Even if Brussels agrees to set a date, as most commentators believe
will happen, there is little doubt that many Turks will be
disappointed. As with the 10 new nations that joined the EU countries
in May, there will be restrictions on Turkish workers travelling to
Europe for permanent jobs for several years after eventual accession,
despite the fact that fresh labour will be needed to supplement
Europe’s ageing workforce. Access to welfare benefits in the EU is
also likely to be curtailed.
Erdogan and his officials accept such restrictions, but what they are
now becoming agitated about is a host of other demands not made of
other joining nations. These include the thorny issue of recognition
of Greek Cyprus, which joined the EU in May, and the idea that the
accession talks will be open-ended and might result in something less
than full membership.
Polls show about 75 per cent of Turks support their country’s
membership of the EU, and those with first-hand knowledge speak in
glowing terms of its benefits. About an hour south of Ankara, the
rural town of Kulu, population 30,000, has seen about 35,000 of its
residents leave for jobs in Europe since the mid-1960s. Nearly all of
them have ended up in and around the Swedish capital of Stockholm,
where, say the Turks, there are up to 500 Kulu-run restaurants.
“People in Sweden who don’t know Turkey at all think that Kulu is the
capital,” said retiree Hamza Akdal, whose four children live in
Europe, three in Sweden.
But as the demand for Kulu labour has dried up, the locals have
starting pinning their economic hopes on EU membership. Local chemist
Tayer Budak believes Turkey will get a date from the Brussels talks
and the Kulu-way will be experienced in his country many times over.
“We are not so excited about joining the EU because we have already
experienced it. We want Turkey to see what we have.”
But as Erdogan is discovering, the Turks may be in for a long wait.