Associated Press Worldstream
December 16, 2004 Thursday 10:15 AM Eastern Time
Turks anxiously await historic EU membership decision, but worry
about possible conditions
LOUIS MEIXLER; Associated Press Writer
ANKARA, Turkey
Jeweler Murat Tekcan said he’ll be happy if EU leaders realize his
country’s decades-long dream by opening the door for Turkey to become
the bloc’s first Muslim member, but quickly added that he has no
plans to celebrate.
Like many here, Tekcan fears that EU membership conditions will be
too demanding and negotiations too drawn-out.
“I hope that they won’t ruin this dream,” Tekcan said as he sat in
his small jewelry shop in an Ankara mall.
EU leaders are widely expected to decide at a dinner late Thursday
night whether to open accession talks with Turkey, but are also
likely to impose tough conditions. Public opinion in many EU
countries is against accepting a poor Muslim nation of 70 million
people that would bring EU borders to unstable nations like Syria,
Iran and Iraq.
Those conditions will almost certainly include a demand that Turkey
carries out more democratic reforms and take moves toward recognizing
the divided island of Cyprus, which became a member in March.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament also urged Turkey to
acknowledge “the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians,” an
extremely sensitive issue in Turkey.
The Ottoman Empire has been accused of killing as many as 1.5 million
Armenians during a 1915-1923 campaign to force them from eastern
Turkey. Turkey says the number is inflated and that many people were
killed during the collapse of the empire when Armenians rose up
against Ottoman rule.
“They’re going to put forward conditions like the Armenian genocide
or Cyprus,” Tekcan said, pointing to a television behind him that was
airing a live press conference by EU Commission President Jose Manuel
Barroso.
Like many Turks, Tekcan fears that could just be the first in a long
list of hurdles.
“We’re afraid of what we’ll face if we enter the EU,” Tekcan said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Brussels Thursday
lobbying EU leaders but also making it clear that Turkey is willing
to walk away if conditions are too tough.
“Putting a text on the table that we can’t accept means a collapse,”
Erdogan told reporters. “I hope they don’t.”
But walking away would be a disaster for both Turkey and the European
Union.
For Turkey, membership would be the realization of the dream that
began in 1923 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk helped create a secular,
pro-Western Turkish republic from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
Entering the EU would not just give a huge boost to the Turkish
economy, but would also reinforce the country’s pro-Western
orientation and be seen by many Turks as the stamp of approval that
Muslim Turkey, already a long-standing member of NATO, is a
full-fledged member of the West.
“Tonight will be the moment of truth,” editor in chief Yusuf Kanli
wrote in the Turkish Daily News.
The newspaper’s headline – “The Longest Supper” – described the
feelings of many Turks.
Erdogan has largely staked his party’s future on a successful EU bid,
and leaving the talks could be a disaster for his Justice and
Developments Party, which has an absolute majority in parliament, but
is made up of several different factions, including a strong
pro-Islamist group.
For Europe and the United States, accepting Turkey would help cement
the country’s Western orientation at a time of great instability in
the Middle East and would show the Islamic world that Muslims can be
accepted as part of Europe.
In Ankara’s posh Karum shopping mall, Taner Eksioglu said he was fed
up with EU demands and Turkey’s forty-year quest to join the European
bloc.
“They show us the carrot and then take it away and then they show us
the carrot and take it away again,” said Eksioglu, a retired civil
servant. “I don’t trust the EU and I don’t want to be part of it.”