EU ACCESSION FOR TURKEY WITH BRITISH HELP?

 

No doubt with American blessing, if not active support, the United Kingdom has been extending effective support to Turkey in its efforts for European integration. The joint Anglo-American effort to work out a consensus between Turkey and the EU about ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) is a case in point. The other is the British coordinator Lord Hanney’s suggestion to Denktas to use the United Republic concept for Cyprus, instead of the outmoded confederation idea. Last Monday (27^th) The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was up with an important statement in Berlin to subtly win over Germany to Turkey’s EU accession. It coincided with Mesut Yilmaz’s words over the TV that Turkey faced a rebuff from the EU at the Luxembourg Summit in December 1997 and enjoyed a breakthrough on the same issue two years later at the Helsinki summit. Both these contradictory moves were the German doing, he said. Will the UK now be successful in winning over Germany to Turkey’s EU membership at this critical point? More important still, Jack Straw’s Berlin address was a good indicator of who was behind the vault-face on the part of Germany between December 1997 and December 1999.   

Amidst serious concerns over Turkey’s number one preoccupation in the foreign policy field, i.e. the negotiations for accession to the EU, the Ecevit Government marked on Tuesday (28^th) its third anniversary in power. While PM Bulent Ecevit exerted serious efforts to show to the world that he was well enough to hold a press conference on that occasion, his first deputy and the MHP chairman, Devlet Bahceli, cast a slight shadow on this effort by putting forward five conditions on the EU’s political requirements of Turkey for accession. From far off China where Deputy PM Bahceli was paying an important official visit, he suggested, among other things, that the sentence on terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan be brought to Parliament, regardless of what the European Court of Human Rights ruling may be on that issue. Invited to comment on his party leader Bahceli’s statement, the Speaker of Parliament, Omer Izgi (MHP-Konya) said that it was not possible. Turkey had to wait for the ECHR’s verdict on Ocalan.

ANAP Chairman and the second Deputy PM Mesut Yilmaz, with his usual staunch support for EU accession, said that no one of any official capacity had any right to make Turkey’s task difficult about its European integration efforts at such a critical crossroads with the time running out. PM Ecevit expressed the hope that the MHP would not oppose the fulfilment of the EU’s requirements. President Sezer took the initiative, for the first time in his nearly two years in Cankaya, to hold a meeting with the political party chairmen represented in Parliament to discuss the EU accession questions. The official opposition leader, Tansu Ciller of the DSP, surprisingly but gratifyingly, said that if they had to make a choice between executing Ocalan, which they favoured, and the EU membership, their choice would be the second. She was probably trying to offer Ecevit and Yilmaz an alternative for a government without the MHP as the ANAP leader seems determined to go all the way not to miss this opportunity for Turkey’s European integration.

As things stand on the eve of the Cankaya summit on June 7^th, Turkey will be able to transcend one more difficulty and abolish the death sentence to leave behind the biggest hurdle in its way to EU accession. This will be done either by the MHP’s softening up its irrational resistance to abolishing the death penalty or passing such a bill despite the MHP. And it will all be in the month of June before the parliamentary recess.

British support to EU expansion with particular importance for Turkey

On these critical days for Turkey, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made an important statement in Berlin on Monday (27^th) on “A New Mission for Europe” and it was of particular importance to Turkey in its struggle to catch up with European integration. What Straw said about Turkey was not so important. He only named Turkey once in passing by saying that at the Copenhagen summit in December, they hoped to conclude negotiations with 10 countries allowing them to join in the Union. “Alongside that decision, we shall want to give new impetus to the negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania, to give further consideration to Turkey’s candidacy, and to send a signal that the door remains open to new candidates,” he said.

What was important for Turkey in Jack Straw’s Berlin address was the fact that it contained convincing facts and figures about the benefits for everyone of the expansion of the European Union. By “addressing voters’ fears about loss of sovereignty”, he said that the EU is founded on the concept that, in many areas, “sovereignty pooled is sovereignty gained …In today’s interdependent world, pooling sovereignty, when we choose to, is the way to strengthen our freedom of action rather than weaken it. At the supranational level, we can achieve policy goals – and therefore outcomes for our citizens – which are quite beyond us as individual countries.”

The British Foreign Secretary stressed that there has been no erosion of national identity because of EU membership. “Europe has now retained their different historic, constitutional arrangements and political identities. I have noticed no diminution of the Italian, French or German sense of national identity as the EU has developed.”

Straw’s arguments about the merits of enlargement

The British Foreign Secretary pointed out the following justifications for expanding the European Union:

• “Of course, we have to deal with the immediate abuses of our immigration and asylum systems. But we have also to deal with the causes – principally the huge imbalances in the quality of life and the standard of living between the countries in the EU and those some way to the east…The ten new applicants in 2004 will add 23% to the EU’s land area, 20% to its population and just 4% to its GDP.” He said they needed more partners, more countries working in the EU against illegal immigration; more resources to tackle global terrorism, more cooperation to shut down people and drug smuggling resources and disrupt the networks of organised crime. Jack Straw’s words were indicative of why Turkey has, in recent months, become an effective barrier to illegal immigration, while it was soft pedalling this issue, if not becoming a tool in it, when the European support of Turkish terrorists were in full swing until very recently. Only last week a shipload of illegal migrants were arrested by Turkey on their way to Europe.
•  “An enlarged EU should also be a buttress against extremism.” He said the Copenhagen criteria including support for the rule of law, human rights and respect for minorities provided an essential impetus to the transformation of the EU applicants from former members of the Soviet bloc to the threshold of EU membership. “In the process, they have helped to exercise the ghosts of the past, and to turn electorates away from extremism. The preparations for enlargement are already delivering results. UK and Czech officials stopped a major drug-related money laundering operation in 1999. Bulgarian customs officials, with support from EU partners, seized around 2 tonnes of heroin between 1999 and 2000,” said the British Foreign Minister. For two reasons, Turkey’s EU links were not as effective in this regard as the above two cases. One of it is that Turkey is trying to purge infiltrations of drug lords into its Administration as is the case with the Susurluk trials and thereafter. The other is the justified complains of Ankara about the EU support to Turkish terrorists including their role in drug trafficking in Europe. Only two days ago General Yasar Buyukanit, the Deputy Chief, TGS, voiced these complaints. “Europe has not given enough support to Turkey in its fight against terrorism and has even been an obstacle at times,” complained Gen. Buyukanit. Still even in Turkey there are signs that the EU membership may help curbing racial and religious fundamentalism, such as the PKK and Hizbullah, in this country.
• “Previous experience shows how much the EU has gained from expansion…For example, since its accession to the EU in 1986, Spanish trade with the UK has increased by over 400%; and it has led to considerable migration – but more from the old member states to the new, rather than the new to the old. In 1986, when Spain joined the EU, there were 109,000 Spanish workers in France; by 1994 this had fallen to just 35,000. And there are hundreds of thousands British people living in Spain. Ireland has been similarly transformed since joining the EU from a country of large emigration to a country of net immigration,” said Straw. Would this rule also apply to the Turkish workers in Europe is not certain, but given the fact that the EU membership would trigger off a foreign capital flow into Turkey, from its present level of insignificant amounts, it most definitely would hold good for Turkey too. In any case Europe is not including migration in its Customs Union arrangements with Turkey since the beginning of 1996 and certain reservations about it are sure to be included in the final accession arrangements with Turkey. The Customs Union has resulted in a more than $10 billion/year surplus in Europe’s favour in its trade with Turkey, but tourism and other invisible items such as worker remittances have worked in Turkey’s favour.
• “Some worry that enlargement will put the breaks on European economic growth. Another myth. Independent studies suggest that enlargement should create up to 300,000 jobs in the EU,” said Straw. It is a fact that with or without EU membership for Turkey, Germany is preparing to import skilled labourers such as computer operators from Turkey and other non-EU countries. The Turkish presence in Europe has already surpassed three million and they are a serious economic force in these countries. Their savings, investments and work potentials are constantly increasing even before the full membership and the opportunities of globalisation are bound to give them a boost within 2-3 years.
• The British Foreign Secretary goes beyond the 13 applicants for the first two lots of new members and suggests the accessions to the EU of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia in the Balkans and Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and the Russian Federation further east.
• Jack Straw concludes his very interesting statement by saying, “One of my favourites comes from Pope John Paul II: ‘Europe has two lungs. It will never breathe easily until it uses both of them.’” This observation is especially the case for Turkey. Its two lungs are the EU and Eurasia. Deputy PM Devlet Bahceli was in China at the time of these developments on the Western Front to set the second lung in motion. While the majority of the Turkish people welcome his efforts in this direction, preparations were in full swing in Ankara to prevent him from falling into the mistake of neglecting the European side of the lungs. uras@ada.net.tr - May 30^th, 2002