TURKEY AND FRANCE: CALM AFTER THE DEMAGOGUERY
By Ahmet O. Evin
Daily Star – Lebanon
Oct 3 2007
Nicolas Sarkozy’s oft-repeated and blunt statements throughout his
presidential campaign brought the Turkish issue into the center of
French politics and reinforced it as one of the predominant concerns
of European integration. Both the Turkish public and leadership have
become accustomed to voices raised against Turkey’s membership in
the EU by, for example, Valery Giscard d’Estaing and, more recently,
by almost the entire spectrum of Austrian political leaders. But
Sarkozy’s obsession with Turkey in the context of French domestic
politics appeared to have been driven more by personal convictions
than policy considerations. Many Turks, in short, came to view Sarkozy
as an unrelenting Turcophobe.
Some observers, however, thought that a somber consideration of
issues would replace the inflammatory rhetoric of the campaign once
elections were over. After all, Germans Chancellor Angela Merkel,
who had been staunchly opposed to Turkey’s full membership of the
union, had to accept, even if half-heartedly, the dictum pacta sunt
servanda, or promises must be kept, after taking office. It is true
that populism was a motivation to cater to the anti-Turkish membership
sentiments of the French public, but that Sarkozy’s stand continued
unaltered after the elections points to deeper resistance in France
to Turkey’s membership.
The broad opposition in France to Turkey’s membership in the EU
is linked to a range of concerns, attitudes and perceptions. One
is the French unease with enlargement, particularly its perceived
economic and cultural consequences. Enlargement is seen as a threat
to the domestic labor market and capital investments, and to the EU’s
coherence and efficiency.
Second, France, which hosts the largest Muslim population in Europe,
feels more acutely the frustration of having failed to integrate
even the second- or third-generation Muslims born locally into French
citizenship. Not only are Turks, who represent less than 5 percent of
Muslim residents of France, considered in the same category as those
Muslims who have placed a wall of animosity between their culture and
essential French values; but Turkey’s membership is also associated
with the dire consequences, socially and culturally, of bringing into
the EU a country of over 70 million Muslims who are perceived to be
waiting to migrate to Western Europe but remain strangers there.
The third and politically most significant factor is the existence
of an elite consensus in France that Turkey does not belong to Europe.
In this respect the old guard is in full agreement with Sarkozy;
business interests and investment in Turkey are ignored in the face
of strong "statist" economic culture. Opening the French economy to
global competition, as Sarkozy claims he will do, might ironically
reduce French apprehension toward Turkey’s membership, but only if
cultural apprehensions are also addressed by the political leadership.
Turkey, on the other hand, has unwittingly been sending mixed
signals that tend to confirm rather than defuse French concerns. The
reformist, pro-EU ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) seems
not to have overcome its obsession with allowing a certain type of
women’s headscarf to be worn in schools and other public places,
despite even European Court of Human Rights decisions to uphold the
ban. A battle over public projection of religious preferences serves
only to confirm French and other European suspicions of Turks being
different from Europeans.
On the other hand, the French also tend to wince upon hearing time
and again from adherents of secularism that Turkey’s modernization was
based on the French model. The French political agenda, they are quick
to point out, has changed since World War II and the perceived need in
Turkey today to mobilize official support to protect secularism only
serves to show how far Turkey’s Muslim cultural environment is from
European social values. Turkey’s difference comes into even sharper
relief when it turns out that the strongest secularist actor is the
armed forces.
If particular features of Turkey’s political dynamics prove to be
baffling to outside observers, the variety of ways in which the French
would identify and call attention to the "otherness" of Turkey has
been a source of frustration to Turks of all political leanings.
Turkish observers take Sarkozy’s statements to mean "anything but
Turkey’s membership of the Union." Such views are reinforced by
Sarkozy’s idea of a special role for Turkey in the Mediterranean that
appears to have been floated without adequate consideration of its
policy implications. It will arguably lead nowhere, if lessons are
drawn from the Barcelona process.
Whither, then, relations between France and Turkey given this grim
outlook? There have been some surprising developments of late. On the
Turkish side, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent meeting
with Sarkozy in New York was a positive sign of engagement, in keeping
with the "EU way of doing business." On the French side, Sarkozy,
in a recent unexpected turn of phrase, said France would not oppose
opening new chapters in Turkey’s accession negotiations, although he
reiterated his personal reservations about Turkey’s full membership.
Other significant developments have been the proposal to re-amend
the French Constitution to drop the requirement, introduced under
President Jacques Chirac, to have a public referendum on future
enlargements. (This initiative appears to have been motivated by
reasons completely different from facilitating Turkish accession,
namely Sarkozy’s support for the Nabucco project and his wish to
ensure French involvement in it, articulated in his visit to Budapest
in mid-September. Turkey, as one of the principals as well as the
transit hub, had earlier vetoed French involvement in the project in
response to the introduction of legislation in France to criminalize
negation of Armenian genocide). Even more surprising is the recent
news that France might wish to return to NATO’s military wing,
an entirely credible shift of policy, given Sarkozy’s priority to
mend fences with the United States. In order to be able to do that,
however, France would need to secure Turkey’s approval.
The key issue is that France cannot be expected to override or reverse
decisions made by the European Council regarding the conditions and
procedures in respect to Turkey’s accession. Quid pro quo, Turkey has
to resolve its own democratic deficits to qualify for accession even
while fully protecting secularism. Exceptionalism, of the French or
of the Turkish kind, will not work in the EU, but peculiarities of
founding member states are tolerated for a longer period than those
of accession countries.
Ahmet O. Evin is founding dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences at Sabanci University. He teaches political
science at Sabanci and is a member of the board of directors of
the Istanbul Policy Center. This commentary first appeared at
bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
