TURKS DRIFTING AWAY FROM EU
By Christopher Wade
Gulf Times, Qatar
Dec 26 2006
ANKARA: When Turkey began official negotiations to join the European
Union in October 2005 hopes were high that after years of wrangling
Turkey had a clear target, albeit one far off in the future: membership
of the club it has wanted to join for decades.
By the end of 2006, however, that target seems as far away as ever
with the EU having suspended negotiations on eight out of 35 policy
areas thanks to a dispute over Cyprus.
Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to EU-member Cyprus
until embargoes on northern Cyprus are lifted was the reason behind
the suspension, but Turkey’s relationship with the EU and individual
European countries has been stretched on a number of issues throughout
2006.
One of the biggest outcries from liberals and human-rights activists
both in Turkey and Europe was the trial of novelist Orhan Pamuk on
charges of "insulting Turkishness." Pamuk was charged after telling a
Swiss newspaper that "30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed
in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it." Pamuk was eventually
found not guilty on a technicality, but that hasn’t stopped a group
of nationalist lawyers from bringing charges against other novelists,
writers and journalists whom they perceive to have insulted Turkey.
The cases are embarrassing for Turkey and attract huge criticism,
but by the end of 2006 the government still hadn’t made any move to
get rid of Article 301, the vague law under which Pamuk was tried.
Pamuk’s words on the Armenian issue continued to echo throughout the
year, especially when it was announced in October that he had won
the Nobel Prize for literature.
In a country where any international achievement by a Turk is
normally celebrated by all, there was a certain lack of enthusiasm
for Pamuk’s award with many saying Pamuk had won it for political,
not literary reasons.
On the same day that the award was announced the French parliament
passed a bill that would make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.
Turkey officially denies that a genocide against Armenians during World
War I took place, and it is still a very touchy subject to bring up,
as the charges laid against Pamuk prove.
While the French bill has no chance of becoming law, the move was
seen in Turkey as a direct affront. Anti-France demonstrations took
place and the military cut off ties with its French counterparts.
Turkey is also criticised for its failure to implement further reforms
regarding the Kurdish minority.
Moderate Kurdish political groups claim they are harassed by
prosecutors and complain that it is against the law to address
political gatherings in Kurdish.
Despite calling a unilateral ceasefire during the year, guerrillas
from the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) have continued to clash with
security forces in the south-east.
In a blow to Turkey’s image, and to its tourism reputation, a shadowy
Kurdish group known as the Kurdish Freedom Falcons carried out a
number of bomb attacks during the summer in various tourist resorts
that injured a number of Turkish and foreign tourists.
Turkish tourism bodies are hoping though that the bombings will be
forgotten and are instead now going to use the good publicity that
Turkey received from the visit in November of Pope Benedict XVI.
Fears that the visit would be marked by huge protests proved false,
with the visit going a long way to heal Muslim-Christian relations.
At the end of the year Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that
while Europe seemed to be turning its back on Turkey his government
would continue to implement reforms, and that if the EU completely
spurned Turkey, he had a "plan B and plan C." What those plans are,
the prime minister did not elaborate.
While Turkey’s deficiencies concerning human rights, minority rights,
the role of the military in politics are certainly problems for
Turkey’s EU bid, it remains the issue of Cyprus and the matter
of opening ports and airports that is still the major obstacle in
Turkey-EU relations, and with neither side looking like making any
concessions, it will no doubt continue to be a stumbling block.
The Turkish public may not care in any case: support for EU membership
has fallen in just a year from over 80% to under 30% according to
some polls. Turkey and Europe seem to be drifting apart.