WHAT ELSE REMAINED TO BE PUT IN TURKEY REPORT OF THE EP?
Fatma Yilmaz

ISRO, Centre for European Union Studies
Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Sept 26 2006

The membership aspect of the EU is shaped in terms of the criteria
determined by the Union. The Copenhagen and Maastricht criteria are
the well-known ones among them to be carried out by the candidate
countries which are willing to join the EU. A negotiation process,
whose duration depends mostly on the capacity of the candidate
country to adopt the EU acquis, is also performed in order to pave
the way for the full membership. Even tough the process is named as
the ‘negotiation’ one; it is actually far from being a bargaining
process. Instead, it is more one-sided course of action undertaken by
the candidate country. This is mainly because it is not the EU who
invites the countries to be involved in the Union. On the contrary,
those who ask for membership status are the countries outside the
Union. This is then why the EU unilaterally determines the reforms
given under the responsibility of the candidates to be adopted and
has opportunity to monitor their progression progress.

One of the ways to monitor and evaluate the negotiation process
is the ‘Progression Reports’ published by the EU Commission and
Parliament periodically. Considering the EU membership criteria, these
reports determine the points on which the candidates make important
progress and the points on which they are lack of realization of the
progress. In fact, the reports in theory carry the importance for the
candidates to observe how they are close to the membership aspect
and how far they are from the realization of the implementation of
the EU reforms. In short, the EU criteria are a chain of ‘musts’ to
be implemented unilaterally. However, they are also expected to apply
for every candidate in same manner since they are common imperatives
for all. More importantly, it does not give the right to the EU to
adjust the criteria arbitrarily – at least expected to do so.

When Turkey’s membership aspect is on the case, the process
interestingly goes on in different manner. The ‘well-structured’
criteria of the EU of which they are proud show flexible features.

In this sense, adding the ‘good-neighborliness’ policy, the EU firstly
set forth the solution of the Cyprus problem and the problems about
the Aegean Sea with Greece implicitly in front of Turkey to be member –
although ‘good-neighborliness’ criterion was not applied for the Greek
Cyprus. Then, the ‘absorption capacity’ of the EU became the major
issue under discussion. Absorbing, in a short while, ten countries
some of which were in slower progress than Turkey, the EU began to
question its capacity to take in Turkey which has been waiting for
50 years in the EU queue. In order not to offend completely, the EU
opened negotiation process with Turkey but this time it began to
mention the possibility of permanent derogations which have never
been the case for other candidates. It is the fact that there have
been temporary derogations applied for the others in order that the
candidates manage to undertake a smooth transitional period. However,
the EU has never put forward any derogation permanently in front
of its members before. In such case, it would mean creation of
different status rather than the full membership prospect since the
candidate could not be allowed to get benefit from some parts of EU
regulations. In fact, this is possibly the way to give an implicit
partnership status to Turkey under the name of full membership.

What is more, the most striking issue on the agenda of the EU
is opening the Turkish ports to the Greek Cypriot ships for the
continuation of the negotiation process. It seems that the Cyprus
issue would become a constant benchmark for both opening and closure
of each negotiation title. Making connection between the port issue
and negotiation titles relevant to freedom of the movements of goods
can be regarded as reasonable to some extent, but the other way around
can not comply with common sense of the criteria of the Union.

The forthcoming European Parliament (EP) report about Turkey, which is
planned to be approved on 27 September, evaluates the reform process in
Turkey and lists on which subjects Turkey has still things to do. Not
surprisingly, it includes several issues which are mentioned in none
of the criteria of the EU membership. The EP has brought critics for
not only realization of the reforms but also for the issues that are
not relevant to the EU affairs in reality. For instance, it took the
so-called Armenian genocide issue in its agenda. What the most striking
point here is that together with the so-called Armenian genocide issue,
the EP also discussed a made-up genocide about Pontic Greeks. In that
sense, in the report, it reminded Turkey that "the denial of historic
facts such as the genocide of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks and the
infringement of the rights of the many minorities within its territory
can not be reconciled with its European prospects and direction". This
expression was put in the report as an amendment by the proposal
of Greek member of the EP. Actually, recently whoever wants to put
something in the report got an opportunity to do this wish. The latest
one became the insertion of the planned Pope visit to Turkey.

Instead of making evaluations within the perspective of standard
membership criteria, the EP is making up new assessments in accordance
with the orders of the EP members. Accordingly, the amendment about
the Pope visit was inserted in the report, expressing its expectation
about the contribution of the Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey to the
improvement of the intercultural and religious dialogue between
the Muslims and Christians. Thus, the religious affairs suddenly
attracted the interest of the EU’s official documents surprisingly –
actually this is my fault maybe to surprise because Turkey has to be
accustomed to the EU innovations about Turkey’s membership process.

If the EU can find more new issues to put into its official documents
about Turkey until the approval of the report in order to give
its final status at the end of September, I guess it will be its
creativeness and achievements. This is because I could never ever be
such kind of imaginative when there are enough issues to put pressure
such as implementation of reforms, attack to the Council of State,
the PKK terror, threshold of the election, human rights, minority and
the Alevi issues, relations with Armenia, the Cyprus issue…. What
else remained to be put in the EP report about Turkey? Maybe the
latest Greek claim about the Gagavuz Turks about which Greece claim
that they are originally the Greek Christian Orthodox and they are
oppressed under the Turkish propaganda(!) … .