EYE ON EUROPE: EMBRACING TURKEY, EU STYLE
By Gareth Harding

UPI – United Press International
October 4, 2005 Tuesday 11:31 AM EST

It may have been messy, over 40 years in the making and in the teeth of
widespread public skepticism, but the decision to open membership talks
with Turkey Monday is one of the boldest and potentially far-reaching
ever taken by European leaders.

“We have just made history,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told
reporters after clasping Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul in a
bear-hug at the end of a 30-hour negotiating session of EU diplomatic
chiefs in Luxembourg.

Referring to the marathon talks on Turkey — and the decision by
foreign ministers to start membership negotiations with Croatia —
a weary-looking EU Enlargement Commissioner Ollie Rehn said Tuesday:
“After a long night, there is a new dawn for the western Balkans
region and it is a European dawn.”

Turkish commentators were also ecstatic the four-decade wait to start
accession talks was finally over.

“A new Europe, a new Turkey,” gushed the Milliyet daily newspaper,
embellishing its front page with the yellow stars of the EU flag and
a picture of Kemal Ataturk, the West-leaning secular statesman who
founded modern Turkey in 1923.

Politicians — and journalists — have a tendency toward hyperbole,
but for once they are not exaggerating. If Turkey joins the European
Union in 10-15 years time — and it is a big if given the strength of
public opposition and the reticence of certain “old” European member
states — the EU will undergo possible its biggest change since it
was founded in the 1950s. The geopolitical map of the world will also
never look the same.

By 2015 — the earliest the country is likely to join the bloc,
Turkey’s population is expected to jump from 71 million to 82 million,
boosting the number of EU citizens to almost 600 million after the
entry of Bulgaria, Rumania and Croatia later this decade.

As voting strength in the Council of Ministers and the EU parliament —
the club’s two legislative bodies — is based largely on population,
Turkey would overtake Germany to become Europe’s largest and most
powerful state.

The EU, a small, prosperous clique of Western European states
for almost half a century, would also see its point of axis shift
radically eastward. With the entry of Turkey, the bloc would share
common borders with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan,
become a major player in the Caspian Sea and south Caucasus regions
and increase its clout in the Middle East. A European club of nations
would have a member with 95 percent of its landmass and 90 percent of
its population in Asia — reason enough for many to oppose Turkey’s
EU ambitions.

The entry of Turkey will also strengthen the EU’s fledgling defense
arm, increasing the club’s ability to carry out global peacekeeping
operations and acting as a buffer zone between a stable Europe and a
volatile Middle East. Turkey, a NATO member for more than 50 years,
has the largest armed forces in Europe and spends more of its budget
on defense than any other EU state — both great assets for a union
with big defense ambitions but pitiful resources.

But the biggest change will be in terms of Europe’s self-perception and
outside image. For centuries, Europe has defined itself as a Christian
continent whose borders end at the Bosporus Straits. If membership
negotiations succeed, the EU — which is increasingly synonymous with
Europe — will have a Muslim population approaching 100 million and
frontiers stretching to the Middle East and the southern Caucasus.

“Until we can get over the idea of Europe as a Christian club, whether
in the minds of Europeans, or more importantly within the Muslim world,
we are not going to be able to get on top of this problem of a clash of
cultures,” Graham Watson, leader of the European Parliament’s Liberal
grouping, told United Press International. “But once the Islamic
world can see the EU has allowed in not just a Muslim country but
a large Muslim country, then I think the perception of the European
Union changes.”

For all the fears and anxieties it creates among many Europeans,
the prospect of Turkey taking its seat in the family of EU nations
is still a very long way off. First, Ankara will have to spend over
a decade imposing the Union’s 80,000-page rulebook into national law.

Then, at the end of the process, both Turks and Europeans will have
to consent to the membership agreement. This is looking increasingly
unlikely on both sides. In Turkey, support for joining the EU has
plummeted from 75 percent to 60 percent in a year and is likely to
fall even further as Brussels Eurocrats make huge and often humiliating
demands on a big and proud nation.

With the Union suffering from enlargement fatigue after the entry of 10
largely ex-communist states last year, there is also little enthusiasm
for Turkish entry among EU voters. In a recent commission opinion poll,
52 percent of Europeans said they were against Turkish membership,
with only 35 percent in favor. In France and Austria, which both plan
to hold referendums on Turkish accession, over three-quarter of the
public are opposed.

For the time being, though, there is palpable relief in Brussels —
not because the EU has taken a historic decision to reach out to the
Muslim world, strengthen its military might and boost its growth and
population, but because a humiliating failure to agree a common stance
on opening talks was narrowly avoided.