Does The EU Need Turkey More Than Turkey Needs the EU?
Excerpts from The Economist (click here for full article):
The hardest case of all is Turkey. Its membership bid is currently in a form of suspended animation. Entry negotiations have been partly frozen to punish Turkey for its refusal to open its ports and airports to traffc from Cyprus. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, remains publicly opposed to Turkish membership but has agreed to put high-level EU debate on the subject on hold until 2010, when a report on the future of the EU by a “group of the wise” (which was Mr Sarkozy’s idea) is due to be delivered. Turkey has serious problems of its own, starting with a court case that threatens to outlaw the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party for threatening the country’s secular order.
Will Turkey ever join the union? There is no shortage of strategic arguments in favour of its accession. It is a large, secular Muslim democracy. It controls the Bosporus, as well as gas or oil pipeline routes that would allow Europe to become less dependent on Russia for its energy supplies. Such arguments mark Turkey out as important. But many Europeans clearly feel that is not the same thing as saying it should join the EU. Any enlargement of the club must be agreed on by all existing members. The most recent Eurobarometer poll on enlargement found that 69% of Germans, 54% of French and a striking 81% of Austrians were opposed to Turkish entry.
Olli Rehn, the EU’s current enlargement chief, likens the EU accession process to a journey that matters as much as the destination. Europe wants Turkey to become more modern, democratic and stable because Turkey has strategic importance as “an anchor of stability and a benchmark of democracy for the wider Muslim world”, he says. The best way of achieving those changes is the process of becoming an EU member. So to him, “importance and membership are inseparable.”
If membership is ruled out as a destination, the journey cannot continue. But a clause in the French constitution (a sop for the anti-Turkey camp from the previous president, Jacques Chirac) obliges France to hold referendums before approving new accessions after Croatia’s. Given French voters’ views, the clause makes Turkish entry talks pretty pointless. Back in April Mr Sarkozy was arguing for the clause to be scrapped. After a parliamentary outcry he is now wavering.
Turkey itself, meanwhile, seems rather disillusioned. When Eurobarometer pollsters asked Turks whether membership was mainly in their interest, the EU’s interest or in the mutual interest of both, the largest block of respondents (34%) thought the main beneficiary would be the EU. Perhaps surprisingly, some senior EU figures agree. “We need Turkey more than Turkey needs us,” says Mr Verheugen.
Such statements may shock Europeans, but they need to hear them. They are too used to seeing enlargement as a charitable gift from a rich West to its poorer neighbours. It is hard work for both sides. But it is also an almost magical tool for stabilising a whole continent, creating new markets and letting free trade and free movement build ties of interdependence.
For these reasons and more, Europe’s most recent expansion was not just a good idea. In retrospect, it will be seen as one of the EU’s most significant achievements. It reunited a continent divided by Soviet oppression and brought into the European fold nations that had previously hovered on the edges of the West. If it were tried now, it would be far harder to pull off. Europeans everywhere should be glad it happened just in time.
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