The Irish Times
September 28, 2005

EU offer would boost reform in Turkey

Although recent events in Turkey raise concerns, there are grounds
for believing a firm promise of EU membership can help advance
reforms, writes John O’Brennan.

After a fraught and difficult year, the European Union is faced with
the extremely contentious issue of whether to proceed to substantive
membership negotiations with Turkey. In advance of the European
Council decision, expected on October 3rd, it is worth examining what
is at stake for the EU.

The internal EU debate about Turkey revolves around two distinct
issues. The first is identity and culture. There are many within the
EU who see Turkey as an Asiatic rather than a European country, or at
best a “Eurasian” country, a bridge between Europe and Asia. Turkey’s
population of 72 million is overwhelmingly Muslim and thus seen as a
threat to Europe’s increasingly secular value system. Although the EU
is manifestly not a religio-cultural entity, this does not prevent
those opposed to Turkish membership, including Pope Benedict XVI,
alluding to the weight of cultural difference as the key barrier to
Turkish accession.

The second key issue is the political power Turkey would potentially
wield within the EU. Under the complex weighted voting system used by
the EU Council of Ministers, Turkey would command a similar voting
strength to Germany, France and the UK. That is something that
worries Paris and Berlin especially. Turkish membership, say the
critics, would paralyse a decision-making system that is already
creaking in the wake of the eastern enlargement and the inefficient
institutional architecture recalibrated through the Nice Treaty.

In the run-up to the European Council summit, the Turkish negotiating
hand has been significantly weakened. On the one hand the EU
enthusiasm for further enlargement has receded significantly in the
aftermath of both the 2004 eastern enlargement and the antipathy to
expansion demonstrated in the constitutional treaty referendums in
France and the Netherlands.

Recent events within Turkey have not helped its cause either. The
decision to prosecute the country’s greatest living writer, Ohran
Pamuk, for allegedly “denigrating the nation” by making public
reference to the 1915 mass murder by Ottoman forces of Armenians was
followed last week by another judicial decision to ban a proposed
academic conference dealing with the same issue. Although the Turkish
government had nothing to do with these decisions, they have enabled
EU obstructionists to argue that Turkey’s value system is
fundamentally incompatible with the liberal norms which lie at the
core of the EU’s identity.

What then can the EU hope to achieve in proceeding to negotiations?
The answers can be found in the mechanisms used by the Union to
incorporate future member-states. In short, the offer of membership
to outside states and the management of enlargement processes has
proved the most effective foreign policy tool the EU has employed in
its efforts to stabilise, modernise and democratise a whole range of
states on its southern and eastern borders over the past two decades.
Just as earlier accession processes helped transform Greece, Portugal
and Spain from authoritarian, economically backward states into
vibrant and dynamic liberal democracies, so too can the accession
process help Turkey’s modernisers effect the transition they (and the
EU) so desire.

More recently, the EU’s experience of eastern enlargement
demonstrates how effective are both the membership criteria and the
pre-accession process as instruments for reshaping the applicant
state’s public administration, judiciary, and economy. In effect, the
EU transposes its norms on to applicant states in advance of their
accession. The process is completely asymmetrical, with the applicant
state having no option but to accept the changes recommended by
Brussels.

In Central and Eastern Europe the transposition and implementation of
EU laws helped consolidate fragile democratic institutions, open up
previously moribund economies, strengthen administrative capacity,
reduce corruption in public life and stabilise relations between
neighbouring countries. The benefits this has brought the EU include
a vast increase in intra-European trade and the stabilisation of its
external borders.

At a more micro level, my own research into the eastern enlargement
demonstrates that for EU policy to work a “good cop/bad cop” strategy
works best. This revolves around a firm promise of membership coupled
with the credible threat of exclusion (in the case of failure
adequately to transpose EU legislation and norms).

Prospective member-states must have sufficient incentive to carry on
domestic reform programmes, which bring them closer to EU norms, but
they encounter significant local opposition as more and more
legislative measures are adopted. The actions of the Turkish
judiciary in recent weeks constitute just such an example of domestic
contestation of EU standards and have been condemned by the Turkish
prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan.

Those within the EU opposed to Turkish membership should look at the
record of reform of the AKP government since it won a landslide
victory in the 2002 election. It has pushed through four major reform
packages, some of which required significant changes in the Turkish
legal code.

Significant though these reforms have been, there is still a
fragility about Turkey’s engagement with modernisation and
Europeanisation. The EU needs to act on the commission’s
recommendation to open talks. If it does it will accelerate the
Turkish reform programme and ensure its eventual success. There is a
lot at stake at next week’s summit. The EU should not shirk the
challenge.

Dr John O’Brennan is IRCHSS post-doctoral fellow in the department of
politics and public administration at the University of Limerick. His
book on the Eastern enlargement of the EU will be published by
Routledge in February.