TURKEY BATTLES BOUT OF EU REFORM FATIGUE
Yigal Schleifer 5/25/06
EurasiaNet, NY
May 26 2006
Though Turkey is continuing with preparations for the start of
accession negotiations with the European Union, some troubling
developments in recent months have prompted European diplomats and
local observers to question the country’s determination to enact and
adhere to EU-related reforms.
“Watching it from Ankara, there’s 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 a diplomat from an EU
country, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“There’s a perception among international observers in Ankara that
the initiatives that they [Turkish officials] are still announcing,
and the commitment to the EU process that they are still professing
is less convincing because its not being reflected by their actions,”
the diplomat added.
Most troubling from the EU perspective have been a number of court
cases in which writers have been accused of insulting the state and
“Turkishness,” raising concern about Turkey’s commitment to freedom of
speech. Rights activists are worried that a new anti-terror bill that
the government plans to introduce contains several troubling articles,
including one that would allow for the jailing of journalists accused
of “propagating terrorism.” Such a bill could mark a step back in
Turkey’s legal reform process.
There is also worry that renewed violence in Turkey’s
predominantly-Kurdish southeast will prompt the military to reassert
itself in domestic affairs. A revival of the Kurdish separatist issue
could also cause the judicial system to backslide on human rights.
Already, some 36 Kurdish children are currently awaiting trial for
their involvement in violent riots that took place in the southeastern
city of Diyarbakir in late March, some of them facing as much as 24
years in prison.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul tried to brush aside
suggestions that Ankara is experiencing reform fatigue, saying in a
recent statement, “our reform efforts aimed at raising standards and
practices in all areas of life to the highest contemporary standards
will resolutely continue.”
Foreign Ministry officials point out that Turkey and the EU have
already successfully agreed on negotiation points for 19 of the 35
“chapters” on which the accession talks will be based, adding that
actual negotiations on two of those chapters will start in the
coming months.
Despite the Turkish assurances on reforms, EU officials remain
skeptical. Speaking to reporters during a recent visit to Bulgaria, EU
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn voiced dissatisfaction with Turkey’s
reform pace, and strongly admonished the Turkish government to get back
on track. “It is necessary that the Turkish government take immediate
action to restart the momentum of the reforms in the country,” he said.
“This is the best and only way to avoid a train crash later this
year in the negotiations between the European Union and Turkey,”
Rehn added. “It’s really in the hands of the Turkish government,
parliament and civil society to achieve this.”
There is very likely a domestic consideration to the reform slowdown.
While public support for EU membership was close to 80 percent two
years ago, it now hovers at around 50 percent. Many Turks believe
the EU has betrayed Turkey on the Cyprus issue by not rewarding
a successful Turkish Cypriot referendum vote to accept a UN plan
to unify the island. Many also feel that moves, such as a recently
shelved French bill that would criminalize the denial of the Armenian
genocide, are an outgrowth of a wider European unwillingness to see
Turkey join the EU.
With Turkey facing elections in 2007, analysts say the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) is reluctant to be viewed as intimately
connected with Turkey’s EU project. “There is a rising nationalism
in the country and [the AKP] also has a constituency that is rather
conservative in a nationalist sense,” says Mensur Akgun, foreign
policy director at the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation,
an Istanbul-based think tank. “They can do a lot more, if they wanted
to, but they don’t want to take a risk.”
“What [the government leaders] are doing is focusing on elections and
on the mood in the country, and that mood is very inward looking and
with a feeling of vulnerability on several issues,” says the European
diplomat. “Instead of showing a way and leadership, the government
is listening much more to these ghosts that have been haunting Turkey
for decades, and somehow they have been caught up in all of that.”
There is some concern now that growing political tension in Turkey
may further hinder the reform process. The recent killing of a
top judge in Ankara has placed the AKP government firmly on the
defensive. There have been large-scale demonstrations in support of
the country’s secular order and Turkey’s top general, in a rare move,
publicly urged Turks to continue such demonstrations. [For background
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
But some of the reform slowdown might also be attributed to a kind
of disillusionment with the EU within the inner circles of the AKP,
a liberal Islamic party. A European Court of Human Right ruling late
last year supporting Turkey’s headscarf ban in public universities
stunned many in the party, who thought EU membership would lead to
greater religious freedoms.
“Concerning the EU process, it doesn’t seem as if Europe will admit
Turkey together with its Islamic identity,” Ali Bulac, a leading
Islamic intellectual, recently wrote in the daily newspaper Zaman.
“Europe does not accept the existence of any other civilization apart
from its own.”
Adds Fehmi Koru, a columnist with the liberal Islamic newspaper
Yeni Safak, which is considered to be close to the AKP government:
“Of course there are some disappointments, especially in the field
of human rights. Intellectuals who support the AKP had the idea that
with the headscarf issue and other issues related to basic human
rights would be solved by becoming EU members, but of course this
hasn’t been realized.”
Editor’s Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in
Istanbul.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
