FRANCE’S BLOW TO TURKEY’S HOPES
By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

Gulf News, United Arab Emirates
May 7 2007

Turkey’s hopes of admission to the European Union have been damaged
by the heated contest for the French presidency between the right-wing
Nicolas Sarkozy and his Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal.

The campaign has revealed a virulent strand of anti-Turkish feeling
in French opinion which could have serious consequences for Turkey
and for its turbulent Middle Eastern neighbours.

Throughout the campaign, Sarkozy’s opposition to Turkey’s EU membership
has been blunt, categorical and frequently repeated.

Turkey, he says, is not a European country. It lies in Asia Minor.

Its entry into the Union would reduce the EU to a mere trading bloc,
robbing it of political clout.

It would prevent the emergence of a "political Europe" – that is to
say a politically cohesive continent able to make its voice heard in
the world, on a par with the United States, China, Russia, India and
other emerging powers.

Sarkozy’s political objections to Turkey’s membership have been
reinforced by an apparent concern for France’s cultural identity.

He has made little effort to conceal his distaste at the thought of
Europe being swamped by a Muslim country of over 70 million people,
40 per cent of whom are under the age of 15.

As Minister of Interior for the past four years, Sarkozy’s restrictive
policy on immigration – essentially from North Africa and Black Africa
– strongly suggests that he believes there are already enough Muslims
in France, without an influx of Turks.

In her speeches, Royal has been less hostile to Turkey’s admission
into the EU. Her position is that a process of negotiations with
Turkey has begun and should be allowed to proceed.

Once the process is complete in 10 years or more, the French public
will have the opportunity to give its verdict by referendum. This
is the policy to which Jacques Chirac, France’s outgoing president,
has given his word. To change course now would be a betrayal.

She did hint, however, that the EU might grant Turkey something less
than full membership, on the lines of the "privileged relationship"
proposed by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Turkish
government, however, has adamantly rejected the idea. It wants full
membership or nothing.

Both candidates – and especially Sarkozy – have shown a woeful
insensitivity, if not outright ignorance, of the impact of their
policies on Turkish opinion, already deeply offended by European
hesitations.

A rejection by Europe will have adverse consequences for Turkish
domestic and foreign policy; for Turkey’s neighbours – Iraq, Iran and
Syria; and for such unresolved conflicts as those between Israel and
the Palestinians and between the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus.

The paradox

Surprisingly, issues of foreign policy were almost totally absent from
the contest for the French presidency, with both candidates evidently
more at ease debating such questions as unemployment, health care,
pensions and law and order.

It is unfortunate that the French presidential election has
coincided with a crisis in Turkey between, on the one hand, the
secular establishment, backed by the powerful armed forces and, on
the other, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
his moderately Islamic AKP (Justice and Development Party).

With the seven-year term of the arch-secularist President Ahmet Necdet
Sezer coming to an end on May 16, Erdogan proposed his close colleague
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for the post.

Secularists were immediately up in arms at the thought that Islamists
would then control the presidency – traditionally a secularist
stronghold – as well as the government and the parliament.

When the constitutional court, citing the lack of a parliamentary
quorum, annulled the first round of elections which would have put
Gul in the presidential palace, Erdogan called early elections for
July 22. His AK Party is likely to win an even greater majority than
at present.

The Turkish paradox – which Sarkozy clearly failed to grasp – is
that the drive for EU membership, for democracy, for free markets,
individual liberties and a vibrant civil society has come from the
AKP and not from its secular opponents. Erdogan’s government, which
came to power in 2002, has carried out a major economic and political
transformation.

His AKP government has reined in the powers of the military, promised
greater rights for the Kurdish population, improved relations with
Greece, shown flexibility over the Armenian question and over Cyprus,
proposed mediating between Israelis and Palestinians, and has consulted
with all parties in Iraq in a bid to stabilise that country and
preserve its unity. Above all, by demonstrating that democracy and
Islam can be reconciled, Turkey has provided an example to the whole
Middle East.

Slamming Europe’s door in Turkey’s face, as Sarkozy has recommended,
must inevitably set back these highly promising developments, and
reawaken in Turkish opinion a proud and prickly nationalism hostile
to the West, and inclined to settle quarrels by military force rather
than democratic dialogue.

Whatever Sarkozy may think, Turkey is a unique bridge between the
West and the world of Islam. To rebuff Turkey at this critical moment
would be a strategic error of the first importance. Turkey’s bid for
EU membership must be encouraged, not disappointed.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle
East affairs.