YES TO TURKEY!

Patrick Seale

Dar Al-Hayat
Nov 20 2008
Lebanon

Michel Rocard, a towering figure of the French left, has emerged
as an eloquent and powerful advocate of Turkey’s membership of the
European Union. He has thus thrown down the gauntlet to President
Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made no secret of his diehard opposition to
Turkish membership.

In terms of French opinion, Rocard seems to be scoring points and
winning young people to his views, judging from the enthusiastic
attendance at his public lectures, including one in Paris last Monday
at France’s National Foundation of Political Sciences (known familiarly
as Sciences Po), where speaker after speaker rose in support of him.

The subject of Turkish membership is an important one as Europe
wrestles with its identity, with its place in a multi-polar world,
with its institutions, and with the role it hopes to play in the
conflict-ridden Middle East, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and
in its relations both with a newly- assertive Russia and a troubled
America, now in the process of reinventing itself under Barack Obama,
its new President-elect.

Rocard, 78, is a lifelong socialist. He served as Prime Minister
(1988-1991) under the late President Francois Mitterrand, and has been
an outspoken deputy of the European Parliament for the past fifteen
years. His long interest in Turkish affairs has now found expression
in a campaigning book, Yes to Turkey (In French, Oui a la Turquie),
which argues, on its very first page, that Europe’s future must involve
Turkey, and that Turkish membership of the EU is nothing less than a
‘life insurance policy for Europe.’

In making this claim, Rocard is not unaware of Turkey’s many problems
– its patchy human rights record; its uneven democratic experience,
interrupted by military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980; its ongoing
clashes with Kurdish separatists; its difficulty in coming to terms
with the legacy of the Armenian massacres of 1915; and its continued
occupation of northern Cyprus.

Above all, modern Turkey remains split down the middle. On the one
hand are the hard-line Kemalists, backed by the army and an urban
elite, anxious to protect its privileges. Aggressively secular and
ultra-nationalistic, these Kemalists behave as if the state belongs to
them. Ranged against them is the ruling AKP — Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s Development and Justice Party — whom the Kemalists
attempted, but failed, to get banned from public life last July.

AKP’s voters – a clear majority in the country — tend to be
conservative and Islamic in life-style and tradition, but they have
embraced the party’s reformist and democratic platform, its pro-Europe
orientation, and the economic prosperity which its policies have
brought the country. The AKP has survived in power but the often
violent opposition of some Kemalists makes for unstable politics.

Notwithstanding these problems, Rocard boldly asserts that Turkey
should become a full member of the European Union by 2023 – the one
hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic by
Kemal Ataturk, after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat and dismemberment
in the First World War.

He suggests that the fifteen years until 2023 should be devoted
to the ‘gradual integration’ of Turkey into the EU by means of a
succession of association agreements, which would serve to harmonize
various Turkish practices with European norms, beginning with such
subjects as education, culture, research, and the protection of the
environment. In the meantime, Turkey could be associated from the very
start with Europe’s external security policies, thus contributing to
the EU’s immediate geostrategic goals.

In order to reassure European opinion about the dangers of embracing a
partly-backward Muslim country of 80 million people, Rocard proposes
a number of safeguards. First, the EU’s borders would not be open to
the free movement of Turkish workers until 2023, and even then only
in a controlled manner; secondly, there would be no Turkish claim on
the EU for structural funds until the 2021-2027 budget; and thirdly,
Turkey would have no right of veto in European institutions until 2023,
although it could send observers to the EU’s Council of Ministers,
to the European Commission and to the European Parliament, and thus
take part in the EU’s democratic debate.

What then are the main arguments in favour of Turkey’s EU membership?

Perhaps the most compelling reason is the need for Europe and the
West to rebuild bridges to the Islamic world. Christians and Muslims,
Rocard argues, are at present living in a period of grave mutual
incomprehension. A billion Muslims feel that they are accused of
complicity with terrorism by one and a half billion Christians! The
policies of America’s outgoing President George W Bush, he says,
have deeply offended Muslim countries, driving them into a tragic
and dangerous anti-Westernism.

Europe cannot afford to be seen as an exclusive ‘Christian Club’. That
would be a defeat for secularism and would encourage the rise of
religious identities -such as plagued Ireland for generations, one
might add, and continues to plague a country like Lebanon. In any
event, Europe has within its boundaries some 15 to 20 million citizens
of Islamic faith. Many of these Muslim citizens feel alienated and
excluded from the tolerance for which Europe prides itself. Are they
forever to be considered foreigners?

To bring a major Muslim nation like Turkey into the EU would be the
best way to prove that Europe was seeking a true understanding with
the world of Islam.

Rocard believes that Turkey can play a crucial role in making peace
between Arabs and Israelis, since it has managed to have balanced
relations with both sides for years. It has recently been brokering
indirect talks between Israel and Syria. Turkey has also offered its
services as an intermediary between Iran and the United States.

Another of Rocard’s arguments is that Turkey is the key to the Central
Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizstan
and, beyond the Caspian, to Azerbaijan. These former Soviet republics
speak a Turkic language and are culturally influenced by Turkey. They
contain vast quantities of oil to which Europe needs access. Turkey’s
membership of the EU, Rocard believes, would make a European presence
in Central Asia more acceptable.

In spite of the EU’s success in providing a model of democratic
government, economic coordination and respect for human rights,
Rocard is skeptical of Europe’s ability to develop into a strong and
cohesive political power. The tug of rival national sovereignties is
still too strong, he believes, as is the reluctance of member states
to increase defence spending.

But, with a combined strength of over one million men, Turkey’s
armed forces are the second largest standing force after the United
States. The inclusion of the Turkish armed forces into the European
Military Framework would enable the European Union to become a true
global player – even a superpower. This would certainly be a valuable
asset in an unstable world.