Make or break year for the EU and Turkey
By Hugh Pope

Cyprus Mail
21 Dec 2008

AN ABRUPT and unusual word buried in a European Union declaration on
December 8 showed the mounting risks of a breakdown in Turkey’s EU
membership talks. Ankara’s need to solve its problems with Cyprus,
foreign ministers warned, has become "urgent". Thanks also to Turkey’s
failure to meet EU reform benchmarks since negotiations started in
2005, a showdown looks inevitable over the next year.

Failure to reform and deep political polarisation have led to a sense
of lost direction in Turkey. Nationalism and human-rights violations
are again on the rise. As the adoption of EU norms looks more distant,
ethnic tensions between Turks and Kurds have risen. The EU anchor of
Turkey’s economic miracle this decade, and the great progress made in a
golden era of reform from 2000 to 2004, are at risk.

For Europe, the costs of losing Turkey are higher than it thinks.
European access to one of the biggest and fastest-growing nearby
markets would become more difficult. The souring EU relationship has
helped slow the EU’s first effort to diversify away from Russian gas
supplies with the planned Nabucco natural gas pipeline across Turkey.
What’s more, an EU that proves unable to work on an equal basis with
Turkey will deepen a belief in the Islamic world that the West rejects
Muslims.

In Cyprus, this situation shows how wrong the Greek Cypriot leadership
would be to believe that Turkey will do anything to get into the EU, or
that EU pressure can ever force Ankara to accept its demands; instead,
it must do all it can to bring Turkey closer to itself and the EU,
through avoiding conflicts over contested territorial waters at home
and ending the practice of blocking Turkey-EU negotiating chapters in
Brussels.

For its part, Turkey has long been wrong in its belief that the Greek
Cypriot position is the result of an EU policy; but fading EU-Turkey
ties would make it even more mistaken to expect that the EU could or
would impose anything on the Greek Cypriots. The only way forward for
Ankara is through actions to win Greek Cypriot trust, like keeping its
navy out of contested waters, and doing all it can to reform and show
itself to be a good partner in future normalised Turkey-Cyprus
relations.

There are many reasons for this damaging EU-Turkey divergence. EU
populations and politicians are cooler to enlargement than ever before.
Sound arguments about Turkey’s long-term contribution to the EU are
losing ground to nostalgia for an idealised vision of a homogenous
European past, along with fears about radical Islam and the potential
loss of jobs to Turkish immigrants.

In Turkey, disillusionment began with the EU’s 2004 admission of Cyprus
as a divided state run by Greek Cypriots, when it was the Turkish
Cypriots who had accepted, and the Greek Cypriots who rejected, the
EU-backed United Nations peace plan. French and German attacks on
Ankara’s right to join the EU further demotivated Turkish leaders, who
slowed the adoption of EU law to a crawl. Additionally, half of the 33
negotiating chapters are now frozen for political reasons by the Greek
Cypriots and the French. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily
dressed down EU diplomats at an Ankara dinner in September, telling
them the EU had got the "bucket stuck in the bottom of the well".

In such an atmosphere, Turkey-sceptic EU states, or perhaps Turkish
politicians angry with Europe, may try to suspend the negotiations
altogether. One pretext could be Turkey’s promise, made in order to win
the opening of negotiations in 2005, to normalise relations and trade
with Cyprus. When Turkey had failed to do so by December 2006, the EU
said it would study the issue "in particular in 2007, 2008 and 2009".
Brussels’ new warning that the issue is "urgent" implies that this
ambivalent wording is now seen as a deadline.

Paradoxically, this cooling of relations comes just as Turkey is
showing how much it can do to complement EU goals. Ankara has played
key roles in representing the EU point of view over Iran’s nuclear
policy and nudging Lebanese factions toward compromise on a new
president ` actions which Brussels acknowledged in its 2008 Turkey
progress report. This year it has mediated talks between Syria and
Israel, and opened up dialogue with both the Iraqi Kurds and even an
old enemy, Armenia. In recognition of Turkey’s responsible foreign
policy, the country was elected to a two-year seat on the UN Security
Council.

EU politicians must do their share to avoid a crisis. They should
recognise their past mistakes on Cyprus, engage even-handedly in
support of the promising new Cypriot talks in progress since September,
and publicly commit funds to a future Cyprus settlement. The dangers of
failure were highlighted last month when the Turkish and Greek navies
and Greek Cypriot-chartered oil-prospecting ships sparred over
territorial rights in the Mediterranean.

Since 1963 the EU has repeatedly promised Turkey full membership once
it meets all criteria. Now would be a good time to reaffirm this
promise. Also, the EU would win by following the call of pro-Turkey EU
states to deepen strategic dialogue with Ankara.

Turkey should do its utmost to give arguments to the pro-Turkish EU
presidencies of Sweden and Spain in 2009/2010. The government and
opposition should overcome their mutual hostility, implement the
long-delayed reform program, and relaunch work on a new, more
democratic constitution. Unfortunately for Ankara, EU politicians care
more about the anti-enlargement mood at home than about Turkey’s
geostrategic role. Only a full adoption of European norms can prove
that Turkey truly wishes to be part of
the EU family.

n Hugh Pope is Turkey/Cyprus project director for the International
Crisis Group and author of Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey.
The Crisis Group on December 15 published its new policy report `Turkey
and Europe: the Decisive Year Ahead’, available on