AMID DISQUIET, TURKISH SUPPORT FOR EU MEMBERSHIP WANES

Middle East Times, Egypt
Sept 29 2005

ANKARA — Turks are losing their enthusiasm for EU membership amid
increasing doubts on whether their mainly Muslim country will ever
be welcome in the bloc and mounting pressure on Ankara to tackle its
most nationally explosive issues, analysts say.

Ankara’s four-decade drive to join the European Union has always
enjoyed strong public support, but the latest polls suggest a
significant drop as the country gears up for long-craved accession
talks on October 3.

A survey released in early September by the US-based German Marshall
Fund of some 1,000 Turks showed that only 63 percent believe that EU
membership would be a good thing, compared to 73 percent last year.

“I have no faith in the EU, they will never allow us in,” said Cengiz
Aybar, a 34-year-old lawyer. “Even if membership talks begin they
will go on forever with no result.”

Hulya Aslan, a 41-year-old retired banker, was just as pessimistic,
arguing that Turkey would never be welcome because of its Muslim faith.

“They are only playing with us,” she said. “They will try to extract
as many concessions as possible before selling us off.”

The main reason for the sour mood is a mounting debate in Europe on
whether Turkey should actually become a member of the bloc. This is
giving Turks the feeling that they are being badly treated, Cengiz
Aktar, director of the EU center at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University,
said.

Rejection of the EU constitution in referenda in France and the
Netherlands earlier this year, influenced in part by opposition to
Turkey’s membership, has taken its toll on the euphoria in Turkey that
followed the EU’s commitment at a December 17 summit in Brussels to
begin accession talks.

In Germany conservative leader Angela Merkel, whose Christian Union
bloc narrowly won the September 18 general elections and is aiming to
lead a ruling coalition, has long wanted to offer Turkey a “privileged
partnership” rather than full membership.

In France another political heavyweight, Nicolas Sarkozy, president
of the ruling UMP party and a possible successor to President Jacques
Chirac, argues against opening membership talks with Turkey for the
immediate future.

“These are not the expressions of new partnership but of new animosity
– Turkey is presented like a bitter enemy of Europe,” Aktar said.

“This has created a bitter and negative environment of which even
the most pro-EU circles in Turkey have had enough,” he added.

Adding to what appears to Turkey like a U-turn on the EU’s commitment
is increasing pressure on Ankara to take steps that many would
consider betraying the country’s basic policies, said Cigdem Nas,
of Marmara University’s European Community Institute.

Tensions have flared over the divided island of Cyprus since July,
when Turkey extended a customs union agreement to the bloc’s 10 newest
members, including Cyprus, but insisted that the move did not amount
to recognition of the island’s internationally acknowledged Greek
Cypriot administration.

The EU hit back by insisting on proper recognition.

Another hot topic is the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire during World War I, the forerunner of modern-day Turkey.

Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their people were slaughtered
in an Ottoman “genocide”, a claim that Turkey strongly rejects.

“Turkey is being gradually pushed into an internal settling of accounts
and this creates a backlash in a country where nationalism runs high
and the EU has come to symbolize all the foreign pressure on Ankara,”
Nas said.

The past few months have seen the rise of several new civic
organizations that take their names from armed resistance groups
that fought against allied occupation during Turkey’s 1919-21 War of
Independence, and which say that their aim is to save the country from
“treasonous collaborators”.

“Even though there is an ideological anti-EU movement in Turkey,
many know that the EU will be to the country’s benefit. So support
of EU membership will once again increase,” Nas predicted.

“But cornering Turkey on national issues such as Cyprus and the
Armenian massacres would lead to a further backlash,” she warned.