EUROPE IS GOING TO NEED TURKEY ; EU MEMBERSHIP
by Giles Merritt

The International Herald Tribune, France
October 10, 2005 Monday

Brussels

In most European countries there are issues too sensitive to be
left to the voters; capital punishment is one, Turkey’s membership
of the European Union is another. In both cases there is a discreet
consensus between the main political parties that their electorates
would, if consulted, make the wrong decision.

Capital punishment is a good example of how this benign despotism
by Europe’s political elites eventually pays off. Public opinion
across Europe has been steadily coming round to the view that
judicial execution is morally repugnant. Similarly, the case for
bringing Turkey in and extending the EU’s borders to Iraq, Syria,
Armenia and Azerbaijan will no doubt also slowly win the approval of
today’s skeptics.

Across Europe, opinion on Turkey ranges from lukewarm to downright
hostile. In EU newcomer countries like Poland and Hungary, narrow
majorities welcome Turkish membership. In Spain, Portugal and Britain,
although something like a third are against, more than 40 percent
are in favor. At the other end of the spectrum, only a tenth of
Austrians want Turkey in, with four-fifths adamantly opposed. In
Germany three-quarters are in the no camp.

It’s never easy to tell whether politicians who declare themselves
against Turkish membership are motivated by objective considerations or
by opportunism and demagoguery. In any case, they were wrong to oppose
the opening of negotiations that will most probably last for 15 years.

Back in the mid-1980s, I was skeptical about Turkey’s case for joining
the European club. The consensus view then was that Turkey’s NATO
membership should be complemented by an enhanced economic relationship
with Europe, but no more.

When the Berlin Wall fell, my views changed entirely. In the uncertain
post-Communist world, I became convinced that Western Europe’s security
and prosperity depended on bringing stability to the former Soviet
satellite countries by admitting them to the EU.

The new situation clearly made it essential to bring Turkey into the
European bloc.

A glance at a map says it all. Turkey lies at the center of some of
the world’s most volatile regions the Black Sea and the Caucasus
republics and the hot spots of Central Asia, not to speak of the
Middle East. Turkey is already a regional power that exerts a strong
stabilizing influence on neighboring countries, so it is in Europe’s
long-term interest that Turkey should become firmly anchored in the EU.

Twenty years ago, the case against Turkish membership was chiefly
cultural and religious. Jacques Delors, the Frenchman who headed the
European Commission in its glory days, spoke of the difficulties of
admitting Turkey to “our Christian club.” Such deeply held prejudices
still lie at the heart of public hostility, even if nowadays political
realists see the religious issue in very different terms.

One of the great attractions of Turkish membership is that it could
create a bridge between Europe and the Islamic world.

Turkey is generally portrayed as a poor country whose many peasant
farmers will place intolerable financial strains on the EU. Yet the
economic advantages of bringing Turkey in are far more persuasive. By
2020, Europe’s active work force will be less than half the population,
whereas Turkey’s will be two-thirds. Europe needs Turkey’s increasingly
well-educated workers, and could do with the growing economic and
industrial muscle of a country that will soon be as populous as
Germany.

People who complain that the EU wouldn’t be the same with Turkey as a
member are living in a bygone age. In 15 years’ time, the Union will
by then have shrunk to less than 5 percent of the global population.

Europe is going to need as much new blood as it can get. Hard as it
is for Europeans to construct new democratic structures, such as its
doomed constitution, the truth is that the EU needs to be bigger and
more heterogeneous if it is to defend its citizens’ interests.

If Turkey’s European aspirations had to be abandoned, the outlook
would be worryingly uncertain. On the one hand, Islamic extremism
might feed on Western rejection. On the other, Turkey’s powerful
generals, always more popular than its politicians, who command a
million-strong army, might reverse the present trend and begin to
call the tune. Turkey as a loose cannon in one of the world’s most
geopolitically sensitive regions doesn’t bear thinking about.

*

Giles Merritt is secretary-general of Friends of Europe and editor
of the new policy journal Europe’s World.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress