• English Site
• > Under the Scope
• > Turkey

Turkey and the EU

Is Europe Giving Ankara the Cold Shoulder?

With the European Parliament demanding an admission from Turkey that it committed genocide in Armenia in 1915, and Austria demanding a clause that Ankara will get a "privileged partnership" instead of full membership if talks fail, the mood in Turkey right now is one of frustration and anger. Many Turks fear the European Union is abandoning them.

A joke is making its way around Istanbul, and more often than not, it's told by European Union supporters, usually with a resigned shrug of the shoulders. The joke goes like this: At Bulgaria's EU-entry negotiations, Bulgarian representatives were told that the entrance exam consisted of one question: What year did World War I begin? Surprise, surprise: Bulgaria gets in. The Romanians were next; their question was, "What year did World War I end?" The Romanians answer and walk away with a cordial invitation. The Turkish representatives stepped up next. Their question: "How many people died in World War I and what were their names?"

After this week's debate on Turkish accession talks in the European Parliament, according to prominent Turkish foreign policy commentator Semih Idiz, the punchline ought to be modified. In the new version, Turkey also gets asked to recite the addresses and the telephone numbers of World War II victims.

Turkey has been deeply irritated by recent developments in EU negotiations. On Wednesday the European Parliament voted to impose stringent new conditions on Turkey's entry into the EU -- including an admission that it perpetrated genocide against the Armenians and a recognition of the legitimacy of Cyprus's Greek government. Meanwhile, Austria continues its refusal to accept the EU Commission's guidelines for the latest round of negotiations. Vienna is demanding that the guidelines include the option of a "privileged partnership" for Ankara if membership talks fail.

A justified accusation of racism?

"When is Europe going to wake up again and start showing Turkey a minimum of fairness and reason?" asks Idiz, an staunch supporter of Turkey's EU membership. More and more people in Turkey are beginning to doubt that time will ever come. Indeed, allegations of European racism against Turkey are gaining ground - justified, in part, by the fact that prominent EU representative Daniel Cohn-Bendit recently raised the same allegations on the floor of the European Parliament.

There are prevailing doubts in Turkey over the chances of the EU giving the country a fair shot. Isahak Alaton, one of Turkey's best-known Jewish businessmen and long-time EU-supporter, made extremely bitter statements on Wednesday evening in response to Europe's recent diplomatic manoeuvres.

The European Parliament's recent declaration that Turkish recognition of the Arminian genocide would be a pre-condition to the accession was, according to Alaton, a completely counterproductive move. "Taboos are just starting to be overcome in Turkey. The European demands are poisonous to an honest debate about the past," he said. Alaton was referring to the fact that last weekend, for the first time in Turkey's history, the country held an unprecedented conference in which critics were permitted to publically challenge the country's official position on the matter. Just getting to the point of being able to hold the conference required a political tug of war which took months to resolve.

The conference was originally scheduled for May, but the rectors at Bosporus University were initially forced to cancel it following massive protests by Turkish nationalists. The second attempt also seemed doomed to failure. The night before its scheduled opening, an administrative court issued a temporary injunction against the conference after a right-wing legal association filed a petition to stop it.

The event did, in fact, take place, but it happened a day later than planned and at a different location. But it was only made possible because Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sharply criticized the court's injunction, saying it contradicted the spirit of democracy and the freedom of opinion, thereby backing the organizers of the Armenian conference. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, who was at the United Nations in New York at the time, made a point of sending a welcoming statement to be read at the opening of the conference. In it, he made a plea for Armenians and Turks to improve relations.

The result, however, has been that those in Turkey who for years have supported an honest examination of what, exactly, happened with the Armenians in 1915 now feel snubbed by Brussels. The European Parliament, they feel, is not as interested in finding out the truth -- and indeed the events 1915 are highly contentious -- as it is in having its own viewpoint accepted as fact.

Will Turkey show up at the negotiating table?

All of this puts wind in the sails of the nationalists, who, since the European constitution referenda in France and Holland, have been able to credibly argue that putting trust in the European Union will ultimately be fruitless. Even though Ankara discounts the European Parliament's resolution as legally nonbinding, it also has to take seriously the threats coming from Schüssel's government in Vienna and the German Christian Democrats -- both of which would rather not have Turkey as a member of the club. Just two weeks ago, Gül once again emphasized that Turkey would not accept any negotiations that did not have Turkey's full membership in the European Union as their stated goal.

Now, more and more people are wondering whether, instead of flying off to Luxembourg on Monday, Gül should remain at home instead. If the EU should follow the Austrian demand and include a "privileged partnership" clause as a possible outcome of accession negotiations, then the Turkish side of the negotiating table will remain empty, Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said on Wednesday. Indeed, Ankara is beginning to wonder if such a non-member partnership is the real goal of the EU. "I have the impression," said Bülent Arinc, president of Turkish parliament and, along with Erdogan and Gül, a central figure in the governing AKP party, "that the majority of EU states are hoping to provoke Turkey long enough that it will withdraw from accession negotiations on its own."

For the AKP leadership, this point has almost been reached. Indeed, Mehmet Ali Birand, television moderator, newspaper columnist and one of the most aggressively pro-European personalities in the Turkish media, beseeched his government not to fall into this trap. "Keep your nerves; don't do Turkey's enemies this favor. Once the negotiations have finally begun, everything will look different."