from the May 17, 2006 edition

-woeu.html

Missteps hobble Turkey-EU waltz

A French proposal to ban any suggestion that Armenians did not suffer
genocide is just one of the sour notes.

By Peter Ford and Yigal Schleifer

PARIS AND ISTANBUL, TURKEY – Barely six months after the European
Union ended years of indecision by starting talks aimed at allowing
Turkey to join the club, doubts about the wisdom of that move are
coming to the fore on both sides of the table.

A series of well-publicized court cases, including one Tuesday,
against Turkish writers has made Europeans wonder anew whether Ankara
really shares their understanding of freedom of speech. Many Turks,
meanwhile, see a double standard over head scarf bans and a proposed
French law that would ban any suggestion that the Armenians did not
suffer genocide in 1915.

The dubious mood clouding the “talks about talks” that Turkish and EU
officials have been holding since the beginning of the year indicates
just how long and bumpy the process of turning Turkey into a
full-fledged European nation will be, say observers on both sides of
the Bosphorus.

“There is a sense that the political will in Ankara is not as strong
as it was, if there’s any left at all, to invest in this process with
Europe,” says one EU diplomat in the Turkish capital, who asked to
remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The
commitment … that they are still professing is less convincing
because it is not being reflected by their actions on the ground.”

Especially worrying to the Europeans is the way prosecutors have used
a controversial article of Turkey’s revised penal code against writers
accused of insulting state institutions or Turkish identity. A number
of these cases, such as the one against author Orhan Pamuk, have been
dropped after sharp EU criticism. But Tuesday, the trial began of an
Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor who is charged with “attempting to
influence the judiciary” against the penal code. The editor, Hrant
Dink, was met with shouts of “traitor” as he entered the courtroom.

Rights activists also fear that a planned anti-terror bill, which
would allow the imprisonment of journalists found guilty of
“propagating terrorism,” might be used against anyone expressing
support for Kurdish separatists. A recent upsurge in violence in the
majority-Kurdish southeast of Turkey, meanwhile, could lead the
military to reassert itself in domestic affairs.

The EU last month urged the Turkish authorities “to make sure that the
security forces show the necessary restraint” in the wake of street
clashes that left 16 people dead and 36 children in jail, some facing
24 years in prison.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has brushed aside charges of
“reform fatigue,” insisting recently that “our reform efforts aimed at
raising standards and practices in all areas of life to the highest
contemporary standards will resolutely continue.”

But the approach of elections next year, coupled with a drop in public
support for EU membership to 50 percent from 80 percent two years ago,
means that leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)
“don’t want to take risks,” says Mensur Akgun with the Turkish
Economic and Social Studies Foundation, a think tank in Istanbul.

The government “is focusing on elections and on the mood in the
country, and that mood is very inward-looking,” says the European
diplomat. “Instead of showing the way and leadership, the government
is listening much more to these ghosts that have been haunting Turkey
for decades.”

“There is a rising nationalism in the country,” adds Mr. Akgun, and
the AKP “has a constituency that is rather conservative in a
nationalist sense, and they have to reciprocate to their feelings.”

That nationalism has been fed by two rebuffs from the EU.

Ankara is galled that the Turkish-populated half of the divided
Mediterranean island of Cyprus remains under economic embargo even
though Turkish Cypriots accepted a UN plan to reunite the two sides.

Late last year, religious Turks were upset when a European Court of
Human Rights ruling upheld Turkey’s head scarf ban in public
universities.

Turks have also been angered by a vote next Thursday in the French
Parliament on a bill that would criminalize any statement casting
doubt on the Armenians’ claim that they suffered genocide at Turkish
hands in 1915. The bill would impose jail sentences and a fine on
historians, journalists, or others who challenge Armenians’ version of
events, in the same way French law punished revisionists who deny the
Holocaust.

The bill is unlikely to pass, but it reflects longstanding mistrust of
Turkey in Europe. That mistrust is fed by freedom-of-expression cases
being brought against writers, says Joost Lagendijk, who heads the
European Parliament delegation to the joint EU-Turkey parliamentary
committee.

“The mood in Europe is that nothing has happened in Turkey since
October except setbacks,” warns Mr. Lagendijk.

Quietly, Turkish and EU civil servants have been reviewing the 35
“chapters” of Turkish legislation that will have to be brought into
line with EU law, and have agreed on negotiating points for 19 of
them, officials say. Substantive negotiations on education and science
are due to begin next month.

Nobody expects Turkey to join the EU until 2015, even if things go
well. That, says Lagendijk, is a good thing, since EU citizens are
displaying doubts about the union’s future and purpose.

“We have some time ourselves to solve our own problems before we have
to deal with Turkey,” he says. “In the meantime, the negotiations will
continue behind the scenes.”

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