Turkey still on course to join EU, says Gul
By Haig Simonian at Gottweig Abbey, Austria

Published: June 5 2005 18:05 | Last updated: June 5 2005 18:05

Turkey-EU

Turkey believes it is still on track to become a full member of the
European Union, in spite of last week’s referendum defeats for the
constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands.

In the first comprehensive comments by a senior official, Abdullah
Gul, Turkey’s foreign minister, said potential Turkish membership
had not played a big role in the emphatic No votes.

“Turkey wasn’t the reason for a No in these referendums. It wasn’t
about full Turkish membership of the EU,” he said.

By contrast, the leaders of Austria and Slovenia, two EU member
states with the biggest doubts about Ankara’s accession, showed clear
reservations in the wake of last week’s decisions.

At the annual European Forum organised by the Lower Austria state
government, Wolfgang Schussel and Janez Jansa, the Austrian and
Slovenian leaders, were conspicuously silent about Turkey, while
stressing the need for the EU to embrace Romania, Bulgaria and the
western Balkans.

The idea of Turkish membership is deeply unpopular in Austria and
Slovenia, partly because of the predominantly Islamic state’s relative
proximity to countries on the EU’s eastern fringes.

Mr Schussel had been among those expressing caution in the run-up
to the decision to open accession talks with Ankara next October. “I
think we should go forward unemotionally, professionally and step by
step,” he said.

Mr Jansa said Turkish membership should be made subject to a
referendum, and criticised the French government for not grasping the
degree of anti-Turkish sentiment, which had helped swing the No vote
in France.

Mr Gul said: “We will continue to live up to the expectations of our
people and deliver on further reforms.”

He argued that Ankara remained committed to encouraging free speech
and addressing difficult issues in Turkey’s past, in spite of the
cancellation of an academic conference on the alleged genocide of
Armenians under the Ottoman empire.

Mr Gul said the conference, organised by Istanbul’s Bosphorus
University, had been “postponed” and that the importance of the meeting
had been exaggerated abroad, as such issues had already been widely
discussed in Turkey.

The conference, bitterly attacked by Turkish nationalists and a senior
minister, had been widely seen as a breakthrough on what has been a
taboo subject.

Armenians, backed by a number of governments, describe the events
of 1915 as a genocide in which up to 1.5m people were killed. Turkey
recognises large numbers died, but alleges atrocities took place on
both sides and puts these in the context of the chaos of the first
world war and the twilight of the Ottoman empire.