EU enlargement

Time to talk to Turkey

Leader
Friday September 30, 2005
The Guardian

Turkey has already waited more than 40 years to join the European
mainstream, but there are still a few more tense days left before there can
be certainty that its ambition will eventually be realised.

The hope is that last-minute hitches will be resolved by EU foreign
ministers on Sunday, allowing the accession talks to begin the following
day, as promised. Since the rules require such big decisions to be agreed by
all 25 member states, Austria alone has been able to block this one,
demanding that instead of negotiating full membership like every other
country seeking to join the club, Turkey should be offered only a “special
partnership”. Ankara rejects such an approach as discriminatory. So, to
their credit, does everyone else, including the governments of France, the
Netherlands and Germany, despite the strong anti-Turkish feeling that played
a big role in the paralysing rejection of the EU constitution this summer.

Austrian opposition to Turkish membership is a toxic blend of historical
prejudice and contemporary fear, of Ottoman janissaries at the gates of
Vienna, of Habsburg nostalgia, and Muslim gastarbeiter flooding in from
deepest Anatolia. Wolfgang Schüssel, the conservative chancellor, does not
say openly that the EU is a Christian club, but has signalled that he will
only back the talks if there is a parallel launch of accession negotiations
with neighbouring – and Catholic – Croatia. That process has rightly been on
hold because of Zagreb’s failure to cooperate with the UN war crimes
tribunal. If as expected, prosecutors report cooperation has improved, then
it can resume.

Next Monday should be a big day, but even a positive result is unlikely to
end rancour over double standards. Turkey, once plagued by military coups,
torture and hyper-inflation, has met the EU’s criteria for membership –
democracy, the rule of law, human rights, protection of minorities, a market
economy and the capacity to manage competition. Even if implementation of
new laws has been patchy in Kurdish areas the very prospect of EU membership
has been a powerful spur to unprecedented reform. More will take place and
the country will become richer in the 10 or more years it will take to
complete the negotiations. Outstanding issues over Cyprus should not block
them. It is to be hoped too that calls on Turkey to recognise the Armenian
genocide of 1915 will at least promote a more mature attitude to the
country’s past. But Turkey’s secular Muslim democracy has demonstrated that
it is ready to join a tolerant, multicultural Europe. Let the final deal be
done and the talks commence.

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