HOW THE DREADED SUPERSTATE BECAME A COMMONWEALTH
Timothy Garton Ash

The Guardian, UK
Oct 6 2005

The question to ask is not what Europe will do for Turkey, but what
Turkey has done for Europe

This week, the European Union did something remarkable. It chose
to become an all-European commonwealth, not the part-European
superstate of Tory nightmares. You see, the main effect of the
bitterly contested opening of membership negotiations with Turkey
is not to ensure that Turkey becomes a member of the European Union,
which it may or may not do 10 or 15 years hence. The main effect is
to set the front line of enlargement so far to the south-east that it
ensures the rest of south-eastern Europe will come into the EU – and
probably before Turkey. There’s a nice historical irony here. Turkey,
which in its earlier, Ottoman, form occupied much of the Balkans,
and therefore cut them off from what was then the Christian club of
Europe, is now the European door-opener for its former colonies.

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Bulgaria and Romania are joining the EU in 2007 anyway. What was
Austria’s price for finally agreeing to the opening of negotiations
with Turkey? A similar promise for Croatia! One thing leads to
another. When those Balkan countries are in, they will immediately
start agitating for their neighbours to join them, just as Poland
is now agitating for a promise to Ukraine. No matter that those
neighbours are former enemies, with bitter memories of recent wars
and ethnic cleansing. The mysterious alchemy of enlargement is that it
turns former enemies into advocates. Germany was the great promoter of
Polish membership, and Greece remains one of the strongest supporters
of Turkish membership.

When Serbia and Macedonia come knocking at Brussels’ door, they
will exclaim: “What, you have said yes to Turkey, but you say
no to us, who are closer to you and obviously more European than
Turkey?” Since these countries are mainly small, and since the EU
already takes responsibility for much of south-east Europe’s security
and reconstruction, as a quasi colonial post-conflict power, the
reluctant older members of the EU will sigh: “Oh, what the hell, one
or two more small countries won’t make that much difference anyway –
our big headaches are Turkey and Ukraine.” So they’ll slip in.

The result is that, whether or not Turkey achieves membership over the
next decade, by 2015 the European Union will cover most of what has
historically been considered to constitute the territory of Europe. And
it will have some 32 to 37 member states -for Switzerland, Norway and
Iceland may eventually choose to come in, too. The frontline cases
will then be Turkey and Ukraine, while Russia will have a special
relationship with this new European Union.

Now only someone possessed of the deliberate obtuseness of a Daily
Mail leader writer could suppose that such a broad, diverse European
Union will ever be a Napoleonic, federal (in the Eurosceptic sense of
the F-word), centralised, bureaucratic superstate. That’s why those
who do still want something like a United States of Europe think
Monday was a terrible day for Europe.

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the main author of the EU’s stillborn
constitutional treaty, was in despair, while Britain’s Jack Straw
was grinning ear to ear. Roughly speaking, the British hated the
constitution because they thought it would create a French Europe,
while the French hate enlargement because they think it will create a
British Europe. Thus Giscard laments that these further enlargements
“are obviously going to transform Europe into a large free-trade
zone”. That is what continental Europeans classically charge the
British with wanting.

Indeed, that is what some Brits do want Europe to be. That’s one reason
Margaret Thatcher loved enlargement. I recently heard a leading member
of the Conservative shadow cabinet say explicitly that he likes the
prospect of further widening because it will make the EU what it
should be, a large free-trade area. But they do not represent the
thinking of the British government; and anyway they are wrong.

This larger Europe will be much more than a free-trade area, or
it will be nothing. It already is much more. And most of these new
members care passionately that it should be. To be just a free-trade
zone, the EU would have to take a large step backwards even as it
takes a large step forwards, and that it will not do. The prospect,
rather, is of an entity that is as far beyond a free-trade zone as
it is short of a centralised superstate. For want of a better term,
I describe this unprecedented continent-wide political community as a
commonwealth – but I have in mind something more like the early modern
Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth than today’s British commonwealth.

Meanwhile, I don’t want you to think I’m ducking the question of
Turkish membership. If we were starting from scratch, I would say
that the European Union should have a special partnership (Angela
Merkel’s term) with Turkey, as also with Russia. Why? Because at its
eastern and south-eastern borders Europe does not end, it merely
fades away. It fades away across the great expanses of Turkey and
Russia. Somewhere between Moscow and Vladivostok, somewhere between
Istanbul and Hakkari, you find yourself more in Asia than in Europe.

This only partly European character of the two countries’ geography
and history suggests a special partnership, for the sense of belonging
to a geographical and historical unity is important for any political
community of Europe.

However, we are not starting from scratch. We have promises to keep.

For more than 40 years we have assured Turkey that it will belong
to our European community. We have repeated, strengthened, made
concrete these promises over the past decade. The example of Turkey,
reconciling a mainly Islamic society with a secular state, is vital
for the rest of the Islamic world – and not insignificant for the 15
to 20 million Muslims already living in Europe. When I was recently
in Iran, a dissident mullah, who had been imprisoned for 18 months
for criticising his country’s Islamic regime, told me: “There are
two models, Turkey and Iran.” Which should we support? The answer
is what Americans call a “no-brainer”. And so the European Union,
although it has no brain – that is, does not take decisions like
a nation-state – has made the right choice. Turkey is an exception:
not a precedent for Morocco or Algeria. For good reasons, the European
Union has just decided to include a chunk of Asia.

Before that happens, however, we have to ensure two things. First,
that Turkey really does meet the EU’s famous Copenhagen criteria,
having a stable liberal democracy, the rule of law (with full
equality for men and women), a free market economy, free speech
(also for intellectuals who say there was a Turkish genocide against
the Armenians), and respect for minority rights (notably those of
the Kurds). Turkey still has a long way to go. Second, and quite as
demanding, public opinion in existing member states, such as France
and Austria, must be prepared to accept Turkish membership. Between
those two, you have at least 10 years’ work ahead.

So, characteristically, the European Union has done something very
important this week, without itself really understanding what it has
done. It has not decided to make Turkey a member. It has decided that
Europe will be a commonwealth and not a superstate.