TURKEY CREEPS FURTHER TOWARDS EU
Paul Harrington

Agence France Presse
Dec 20 2009

Turkey will take another small step towards EU membership on Monday,
despite its abiding failure to deal openly with Cyprus and some
European reticence to accept a large, mainly Muslim nation.

Meanwhile Croatia, which began accession talks at the same time in
2005, will push forward with its own, more advanced, claim to become
the 28th EU nation.

The European Union will open formal talks with Turkey on the
environmental issue, the 12th of 35 policy chapters which any candidate
nation must successfully negotiate prior to membership.

But for some analysts this is more wheelspin than progress.

"The rhythm of the accession talks remains singularly slow,"
said Didier Billion, researcher at the Institute of Strategic and
International Relations in Paris.

Michael Emerson, analyst at the Brussels-based Centre for European
Policy Studies, is even less impressed.

"This is an unreal exercise," he told AFP.

"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," he 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, that of science and research.

Eight chapters remain totally blocked due to Ankara’s failure to open
its borders to EU member Cyprus.

The island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey occupied
the north in response to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed
at uniting the island with Greece.

On top of that there are the more fundamental issues at play, with
France, Germany and Austria among the EU nations which 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 the lobby which doesn’t 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 normalisation of relations with
Armenia.

"Progress is now expected without further delay," the foreign ministers
warned in a joint statement.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou displayed his country’s
frustration by announcing that Ankara 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 pro-Kurdish DTP party.

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

Its path towards the EU has not been all plain 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.

However Llubljana has not yet ratified the deal and is continuing
to block three chapters — on environment, fisheries and foreign and
defence policy.

The EU also wants to see fuller cooperation from Zagreb with the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
and more progress in the battle against corruption.

Nevertheless the European Commission has said that it would be possible
to complete the accession negotiations next year and fulfill Croatia’s
ambition of joining the EU in 2011.