CRITICAL EU REPORT RISKS FURTHER ALIENATING TURKS: ANALYSTS
by Hande Culpan
Agence France Presse — English
November 6, 2006 Monday
Turkey was Monday bracing for a critical report on its progress
towards joining the European Union which could further reduce the
Turkish public’s dwindling support and trust for the 25-nation bloc,
analysts said.
"We are past the point where the report will be perceived as it should
be," Professor Dogu Ergil, an Ankara-based political analyst, told AFP.
"We are in a climate where Turkey feels besieged and the Turkish public
views every EU requirement as unreciprocated concessions and interprets
them as dishonesty and even ill-will on the EU’s part," he said.
The sour mood clearly showed in a survey carried out by the A Institute
on September 23-24.
Only 32.2 percent of thoe 2,408 people questioned said Turkey should
join the EU while 25.6 percent said it should not.
In a survey by the same institute in 2004, 67.5 percent said Turkey
should definitely join the EU, while 57.4 percent expressed the same
view in a poll in September 2005.
Only 7.2 percent of those questioned in the latest opinion poll said
they trusted the EU, while 78.1 percent said they did not.
The report — to be issued Wednesday by the EU’s executive arm, the
European Comission — is likely to add to the disillusionment of the
Turks. It is expected to issue harsh criticism on several issues,
most notably the divided island of Cyprus.
Ankara is under pressure to open its ports and airports to vessels
from Cyprus, an EU member it does not recognize, under a customs
union agreement with the bloc.
But Turkey refuses to do so until the EU eases the international
isolation of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot community in northern
Cyprus, whose welfare has for years been a cornerstone of Turkish
foreign policy and whose plight is viewed by the Turkish public as a
"national cause".
"The Cyprus issue has inevitably led to tension, with hardening
rhetoric on both sides," Mehmet Ozcan, a senior researcher at the
Institute of International Strategic Studies here, told AFP.
"The Ankara government’s non-concessional attitude on Cyprus, in view
of upcoming presidential and general elections next year, has had a
direct affect on Turkish public support for EU," he added.
The European Commission report is also likely to criticize Turkey
for failing to ensure freedom of expression by modifying or scrapping
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code.
Dozens of writers and authors have been pursued by the courts under
Article 301, including 2006 Nobel literature prize winner Orhan
Pamuk. Most have been brought to court for remarks contesting Ankara’s
official line on the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians, which Turkey
categorically rejects as constituting genocide.
The Commission’s expected request to modify or scrap Article 301
comes amid moves in France to push through a law penalizing anyone
who denies that the killings constituted genocide and the removal of
Turkish-origin candidates from Dutch electoral lists for refusing to
recognize the massacres as genocide.
"The moves in France and the Netherlands have led to the impression
that even if Turkey fulfills all EU requirements, there is no guarantee
that it will become a member," Ergil said.
Ozcan said the report’s expected criticism over Article 301 was
unlikely to go down well in Turkey due to the potentially explosive
nature of the Armenian question.
"The Turkish people cannot take any more," he said.
According to press reports here, the European Commission report will
also chide Turkey on the slowing pace of reforms, the continuing
practice of torture and the military’s influence in politics.
Turkey began membership talks with the European Union last year amid
widespread skepticism as to whether the mainly Muslim nation of some
70 million people has a place in Europe.