Tag Archives: turkey

Opening the Sublime Porte just a crack

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The European Commission won’t release its report on the possibility of opening accesion talks with Turkey until 6 October. But after expansion commissioner G?nter Verheugen’s comments yesterday, the report will not be much of a surprise. ‘There are’, said Verheugen, ‘no further barriers‘ to beginning talks.

(All the links to outside sources in this post, incidentally, are to German-language sites. At the moment there’s nothing about this on the FAZ English-language site, but you might check there later in the day if you can’t read German.)

In the comments to my recent post on the NPD’s electoral gains in Brandenburg, Otto suggests that the German CDU step up its resistance to a possible Turkish entry. Apparently the Union is paying attention to Otto, for party chief Angela Merkel was prompt to announce that she will seek allies elsewhere in Europe to keep the Turks draussen vor der T?r. And taking up most of the front page of the print edition of today’s Die Welt — the reliably right-wing sister paper to the Bild-Zeitung, but unlike Bild intended for those who can read words of more than one syllable — are ‘Ten Reasons Why Turkey Should Not Be Allowed to Join’.

Strangely enough my first reaction to this all-out onslaught by the Union was one of compassion and concern. ‘Bloss keine Panik, Leute!’, I wanted to say, giving their well-coiffed heads a reassuring pat. For you see, Turkey is not about to join the EU after all. All that the Commission has done (and indeed, officially it hasn’t even done that yet) is to say it’s all right to start talking with the Turks about the possibility of an eventual accession. In those talks Europe will, among other things, negotiate with the Turks the conditions and timeline for a possible entry. There is no guarantee that Turkey will accept (or fulfil) the EU’s conditions. And accession, if it comes at all, will not be for many years.
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Oh What A Tangled Web!

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Whilst noting that the EU Commission is trying to gently nudge Turkey on the criminalisation of adultery issue – European Commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a Brussels news conference that the proposed law “could trigger confusion and damage the perception in the European Union of Turkey’s reform efforts” – this post is not an attempt to re-open the useful and interesting exchange of views that took place around a previous post.

What I would like to do today is focus on another dimension of the same problem – the Turkish state’s relations with its own Kurdish minority – and how this relationship could become increasingly complicated depending on how the internal stability of Iraq evolves.
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Negotiations For Turkey’s Entry About To Begin?

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Not if people like single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein gets his way they aren’t. According to the FT the European Commission is expected to say on October 6 that Turkey has reformed enough for membership negotiations to begin. If this happens EU leaders will then decide in December whether to endorse those conclusions and when to start the talks with Ankara. Mr Bolkestein seems to have problems with this:

A senior European commissioner has warned against the “Islamisation” of Europe, casting doubt on Turkey’s drive to join the European Union at a crucial time for its campaign for membership.

Frits Bolkestein, the outgoing single market commissioner, made the comments as his colleague G?nter Verheugen, the enlargement commissioner, visited Turkey ahead of a key Commission report next month on the country’s preparations for joining the EU.

In his comments, circulated by the Commission yesterday, Mr Bolkestein said Europe would be “Islamised” because of demographic and migration changes. He added that if this occured, “the liberation of Vienna [from the Turks] in 1683 would have been in vain”.
Source: Financial Times

Mr Bolkestein’s problem would therefore not appear to be connected with the legitimate question as to whether Turkey is, or is not, complying with EU criteria on human rights, treatment of minorities etc, but with something which sounds remarkably like an objection in principle. In this sense it is noteworthy as it is clearly a somewhat crude expression of a much broader popular sentiment which Europe’s responsible political leaders need to do much more to combat. My interpretation of the above statement is not altered by the clarification from a spokesperson that the commissioner does “not oppose the accession of Turkey to the EU”, which I take to be spin in the face of what must otherwise be considered in Commission terms a diplomatic gaffe, since if he is not opposed to membership then what the hell is he talking about?

And, oh yes, don’t miss the point about demographic trends. I hazard to suggest that this is going to be the topic of the decade, both economically and politically.

Time To Smell The Coffee

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You can smell the coffee now: this is the opinion of Morgan Stanley’s Serhan Cevik referring to the nearest thing to an ‘economic miracle’ that we have in or around the EU at the present time:

“It?s time to smell the coffee ? Turkey?s disinflation process is not a temporary phenomenon. Though currency movements play a notable role in driving inflation mechanics of highly dollarised economies, disinflation in Turkey has not been just a by-product of exchange-rate valuation. We believe that it is unfair to take currency appreciation for granted and overlook fundamental factors driving both exchange-rate and inflation dynamics. First, the favourable pass-through effect is a result of fundamental improvements such as a rebalancing of residents? portfolio allocations and productivity-driven export growth. Second, monetary discipline assisted by fiscal consolidation and structural reforms has played a critical part in improving institutional credibility. Third, productivity gains that have resulted in a remarkable drop in unit labour costs help lower the rate of price increases. And last, but not least, economic slack as manifested by the cumulative output gap and labour-market developments has accelerated the pace of disinflation.”

But if this is how things look to some (even if the looking is done not from Turkey but from Serhan’s London window) this is not the way they seem to EU single market commissioner Frits Bolkestein:
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Cyprus and Iraq

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I’m certainly no expert on the Cyprus question. But John Quiggin at Crooked Timber has made the claim that the upcoming referendum on the reunification of Cyprus is of monumental importance for the future of Europe, the EU, and the Middle East–so much so that the eventual fate of Iraq (very likely “an imperfectly democratic Islamist government dominated by Shiites,” in John’s opinion) will “fade into insignifance” in comparison. This has sparked a bit of a flame war between commentators, which I don’t intend to wade into. But it’s interesting to think about, nonetheless, and I’d be delighted to hear from Europeans who might have a different grasp on this issue than idea do. From my perspective (perhaps unconventional for an American), Turkey has of course always been more important, for the future of the Middle East, than Iraq or any other of the regions many deplorable criminal states. If the settlement of the Cyprus issue removes one of the most significant–perhaps the most significant–roadblock to Turkey’s joining the EU, then the referendum is of vital importance, because Turkey is more culturally locked into either working out or rejecting some sort of fusion of Islamic institutions and European secularism than any other state with a significant Muslim population (more than Egypt, more than Algeria). Turkey, in other words, is important not just strategically, but historically (if I may wax Hegelian), and anything done to help that history along is worth doing, even if the result isn’t at all what EU boosters might hope it to be. Whereas Iraq, whatever becomes of it, has gone from extremes of tyranny through war to colonization, neither of which provide much grounds for trusting in the “organic” authenticity of whatever innovations or failures historically emerge. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons many of us who study the politics and culture of East Asia are more interested in ideas and arguments about political life which come out of South Korea, Taiwan, China or Singapore, rather than Japan: the latter was an outright colony, with a constitution written for it by occupying powers, whereas the others, despite the many historical particularities, more or less worked out their current polities on their own.)

Anyway, for additional insight, this article on Turkey and Islamic democracy from the New Yorker last year is one of the best things I’ve ever read on the subject. It’s long, but worth it.

Flirting on the west-?stlichen Divan

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Joschka Fischer, visiting Ankara, comes out strongly for (eventual) Turkish accession to the EU, reports the S?ddeutsche:

Europa werde ?einen hohen Preis? daf?r zahlen, wenn es die T?rkei aus der Europ?ischen Union heraushalten wolle. F?r Europas Sicherheit sei die T?rkei wichtiger als ein ?Raketenabwehrsystem?…

[Europe will pay a high price if it wants to keep Turkey out of the European Union. For European security, Turkey is more important than a missile defence system]

But there are not a few hurdles in the way. In an interview with H?rriyet, the German foreign minister noted that, in Germany as well as other EU lands, there are ‘rational as well as emotional objections’ to a Turkish accession, and that these will need some serious wrestling.
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UEFA: Home of the cliche

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Earlier today, the draw took place for next year’s European Football Championships (Euro 2004), placing the sixteen teams into four groups:

Group A: Portugal, Greece, Spain, Russia
Group B: France, England, Switzerland, Croatia
Group C: Sweden, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy
Group D: Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Netherlands

The BBC Sport website has a good page detailing all the fixtures for the tournament.
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Istanbul, again

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More bombers struck in Istanbul, killing the British Consul General and, at present reports, 25 others, with more than 450 injured.

Will there be more bombings in Istanbul?

Turkey already withstood suicide attacks by the PKK during that group’s campaign for Kurdish independence, and later after the capture of PKK leader Ocalan. Political and criminal bombings are also all too common in the country’s recent history.

Still, Istanbul is a vulnerable hinge between east and west. Turkey’s borders with the heartlands of jihad are porous. Home-grown Islamists may be more likely to take up arms, now that a government with Islamist roots is energetically pursuing Turkey’s European vocation.

Turkey is a living refutation of the fundamentalists’ belief that the only Islam is a medieval vision of Islam. Every step that Turkey takes along the path of modernity, democracy and liberality is a step away from superstition, fanatacism and mayhem.

Though the hardest work will have to be done by the Turks themselves, Europe should do all it can to help. Now more than ever.

Like You, Like Me: Like Me, Like You

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I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but it was only while talking with a colleague this afternoon, and being asked what I thought about the unwillingness of the candidate countries to reform that it came to me: with all this coming and going on the Pact, what kind of message is being sent to the new members? Obviously if you give the impression that agreements are not to be complied with, you can get reactions you aren’t expecting, and that you don’t like. The Financial Times article you can find below, begins to give an idea of the size of the looming problem, whilst this one informs us that Standard and Poor’s has just downgraded the Polish currency rating because of concerns about deficits and rapidly growing government debt.
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