Hurriyet, Turkey
Dec 20 2009

Turkey edges further toward EU

Sunday, December 20, 2009
BRUSSELS – Agence France-Presse

The European Union is set to open formal talks with Turkey on a new
chapter amid growing skepticism and dismay over the EU reforms and
policies toward Greek Cyprus. Some experts say the accession talks
need to be speed up
Turkey will take another small step toward European Union membership
Monday despite its much-criticized policy on Greek Cyprus and some
European reticence to accept a large, mainly Muslim nation.

The EU will open formal talks with Turkey on environmental issues, the
12th of 35 policy chapters that any candidate nation must successfully
negotiate prior to membership. But some analysts say this is more
wheel spinning than progress.

`The rhythm of the accession talks remains singularly slow,’ said
Didier Billion, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic and
International Relations in Paris. Michael Emerson, an analyst at the
Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, is even less
impressed.

`This is an unreal exercise,’ he told Agence France-Presse.

`Some good spirit in the European Commission has decided to keep the
process going along, but fundamentally it is blocked politically at
the highest level and in the most fundamental way,’ Emerson added.

Since Turkey officially opened membership talks in 2005, it has opened
the 35 EU policy chapters at a rate of three per year. During that
time, it has managed to successfully negotiate and close just one of
those, the one dealing with science and research.

Eight chapters remain totally blocked due to Ankara’s stance over not
opening its borders with Greek Cyprus, an EU member. The island of
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey intervened in response
to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island
with Greece.

`Privileged’ offer

On top of this, there are more fundamental issues at play, with
France, Germany and Austria among the EU nations that would prefer to
give Turkey some kind of `privileged partnership’ status rather than
full-blown membership, an option rejected by Ankara.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has led this lobby, which does not
see Turkey as a European country. `We want Turkey to be a bridge
between East and West,’ Sarkozy declared in June.

Europeans are also very critical of the slow pace of internal reform
in Turkey, which, unlike the Western Balkans nations, has no guarantee
of eventual EU membership.

EU foreign ministers early this month stopped short of imposing
further sanctions, though it was a very mixed scorecard with
acknowledged progress in some areas, notably the normalization of
relations with Armenia. `Progress is now expected without further
delay,’ the foreign ministers warned in a joint statement.

Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou displayed his
country’s frustration by announcing that his government would attach
new conditions to five more unopened policy chapters, making a total
of six.

Days later, there was more controversy when Turkey’s Constitutional
Court banned the country’s pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or
DTP. The bloc has expressed concerns over the court’s decision, and a
senior EU official has said the ban might also sabotage the Ankara
government’s recent initiative aimed at giving more rights to the
country’s Kurds.

Meanwhile, Croatia, which is much farther along the accession track
than Turkey, will take another step Monday by successfully closing two
more of the negotiating chapters, tipping it toward the halfway mark,
with 17 of the 35 successfully completed and just a handful left to
open.

Croatia’s path toward the EU has not been all smooth sailing, either.
Slovenia blocked its progress for almost a year over a border dispute.
The talks have started moving recently after the two nations agreed to
put their dispute to international arbitration.

But Ljubljana has not yet ratified the deal and is continuing to block
three chapters ` on environment, fisheries and foreign and defense
policy.

The EU also wants to see fuller cooperation from Zagreb with the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, or ICTY,
and more progress in the battle against corruption. Nevertheless, the
European Commission has said it would be possible to complete the
accession negotiations next year and fulfill Croatia’s ambition of
joining the EU in 2011.