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October 13, 2005

Turkey's journey into Europe

By Dimitris Keridis

October 13, 2005 - FORTY-TWO YEARS after Turkey became an associate member of the European Union and following 30 agonizing hours of negotiations, the EU voted last week to invite Turkey to start talks that will likely lead to its becoming a full member of the European Union.

In what Jack Straw, Britain's foreign minister, has properly called "a truly historic day for Europe and for the whole of the international community," Turkey's step toward full acceptance in the EU marks the culmination of Western-style reforms, initiated first by the Ottomans, that go back two centuries.

For all the drama and ambiguity that clouded the start of Turkey's accession process, there is much to celebrate. A democratic and prospering Turkey in Europe will be a pillar of stability in the volatile Middle East, a valuable friend and partner of the West, and a powerful model for Muslim societies around the world.

The European Union was founded in 1957, by a group of European independent nation-states who saw the benefits of enhancing political and economic co-operation. Today, after five rounds of expansion, the EU counts 25 countries as members. However, Turkey's accession is unlike previous EU enlargements because it is a large country, heavily populated, poor, Muslim, occasionally disrespectful of human and minority rights, and with a militant secularist republic guarded by an assertive military. Consequently, the question of Turkish accession has produced deep-rooted anxiety within European and Turkish societies.

Indeed, polls suggest that only one-third of Europeans favor Turkey's accession.

Given these high strategic stakes, European leaders have taken a gamble choosing to engage rather than isolate Turkey in the calculated expectation that Turkey will follow Spain's and Poland's example, countries that liberalized and democratized in the 1970s and 1990s respectively as the way to joining the Union.

The United States has always been supportive of Turkey's aspirations -- hopeful that Turkish accession will provide a link to the Islamic world and increase US influence inside the EU. While Turkey is already becoming more ''European" and less ''Atlantic" in its foreign policy orientation, a stable and cooperative Turkey is essential for the success of US projects in neighboring Iraq.

To be sure, the road ahead will be long and full of bumps -- with full membership taking at least 10 years to achieve. If British accession to the EU was much resisted, Turkey should expect its own fair share of difficulties.

But it's important to remember that once negotiations start, they acquire a certain momentum that is not easy to reverse. In fact, there has been no case in Europe's history where negotiations, once started, did not lead to an offer of full membership. Public opinion is volatile, and there is every reason to believe that by keeping Turkey engaged and reforming, the number of pro-Turkish Europeans will only go up and not down.

For this to happen however, it will require some savvy politicking and diplomacy on the part of the Turkish government. The very term ''negotiations" is misleading. European law is not to be negotiated but adopted. Legalities aside, the process is profoundly political. Europe rests on a post-nationalist pulling of sovereignty that hard-line Kemalist nationalists in Turkey still find difficult to accept.

Moreover, Turkey cannot aspire to full membership without a normalization of its relations with all of its neighbors, but primarily Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia. Being supportive of Turkey's bid, Greece has sent a symbolically powerful message to its fellow Europeans that if Greeks can welcome Turkey anybody should be able to do so.

Ultimately, Turkey must reconfigure the European debate in its favor. It should refocus the discussion on the dynamism of its economy rather than its poverty, its growth, and its catching up potential rather than its size and the gap that separates it from the rest of the EU. In an anxiety-ridden and isolationist-inclined contemporary Europe, Turkey is a great challenge.

In essence, Europe's test is to prove that it remains relevant in an American-dominated world and that there is a Euro-liberal complement to the neoconservative policy of democratization based on persuasion rather than coercion. And that this, depending on local conditions, can be more effective and less costly to the Atlantic community as it tries to ''drain the swamp" upon which instability and terrorism feed.

Dimitris Keridis is the Constantine Karamanlis Associate Professor in Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Posted by jessica at October 13, 2005 03:36 PM