Post-Election Plain Talk on Turkey from the EU
By Albert Nekimken, Special to The Turkish Times - The earnestness of Turkey in advancing its candidacy is exposing political fissures in the EU just when Turkish politics achieved what promises to be an unprecedented, new level of stability. Only a few days after the Turkish election that brought the AKP party to power, new alarm bells began ringing in the European Union regarding Turkey's candidacy. Listening to them closely suggests that the EU will have as much homework as Turkey to resolve the issue.

Turkey is too large and important to ignore, but its geography and culture may make it too difficult to admit. Just as the AKP leader, Tayyip Erdogan, in an interview with the Associated Press was reinforcing the party's campaign pledge to continue working toward the goal of Turkey's admission to the EU, French and German politicians insisted on the pages of Le Monde that the very idea was-to tell the truth-preposterous and should be abandoned.

On the Right, François Bayrou (UDF), complained that the idea of Turkish candidacy was a "historic error" on the part of Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac because Turkey was a Muslim country that didn't belong to Europe.

He and asked rhetorically "Can you imagine the largest country in the EU also being the least European?" Alain Madelin (UMP) called the idea "surrealist and unacceptable" because Turkey was not European on the basis of either history or geography.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, currently head of the EU reform commission, complained that Turkey's capital and 95% of its people were located outside of Europe. He fears that Turkey's admission would spell the end of the EU-and he is in a position to prevent that from happening.

In contrast, Alain Juppé (UMP) insisted that no one could say for certain where the borders of Europe were. In his view, there were only three important criteria: political, ideological and geographical. Countries lacking any one of these attributes, such as Turkey, merit a special status. In a newspaper debate with Juppé, François Hollande and other leaders of the Socialist Party rejected the idea that the EU was, or should be, "a Christian club," but agreed on the need to define Europe's geography. Jean-Pierre Ricard, leader of French bishops agreed, saying that, "It would be difficult to close the doors of Europe to Turkey,"

On the Left, Hubert Védrine, former Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, insisted that to continue to talk about the Turkish candidacy was to "play a game of hypocritical masks." He feared that the EU would go from promise to promise and become increasingly embarrassed. Accordingly, he favored special strategic partnerships with Turkey and other states on the EU's frontiers-wherever they may be located. Volker Rühe, head of the foreign affairs committee in the German parliament, agreed, adding, "I can't imagine a European security policy without Turkey."

Giscard d'Estaing criticized fellow Europeans for the lack of debate and importance devoted to the issue of enlargement, warning, "the decision doesn't depend only on Turkish voters." (In the French tradition, he appended an attack on Britain and the U.S., asserting that those who were promoting the Turkish candidacy were the enemies of the EU as an integrated entity.) Like Védrine, he believes it is time to tell the Turks unambiguously what EU politicians have been saying among themselves, i.e., that its candidacy would not succeed. In this spirit of honesty, Giscard d'Estaing also revealed the ultimate French worry: the sheer size of Turkey and its population would make it a dominant member of the EU (and supplant France).

Most important, it would threaten French agricultural subsides under current CAP rules.

Nevertheless, size appears not to be an issue for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister and current head of the EU, who insists that Turkey will be treated in the same way as other candidates that are expected to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria.

Whether Danish optimism is justified remains to be seen. Easier to foresee is a resolution of the geography and culture issues. To admit Turkey would push the European Union's borders to Iraq, Syria and Iran and that, in itself, strikes fear in the European public: the Bosphorus looks infinitely safer as a boundary. More significant is the higher growth rate of Turkey's young population while Europe's population aged and shrinks, trends that only exacerbate the political situation.

Clearly, Europe will have no choice but to admit large numbers of young workers in coming years. The challenge will be to organize this new migration so as to promote assimilation, the learning of local languages, and avoid adding to crime and welfare rolls. Having Turkey as a member could solve the labor problem, not worsen it.

Foretelling trouble ahead, Germany advertised an official welcome to Indian computer engineers, but was unable to fill its quota because Indians find German society inhospitable and the U.S. preferable.

Beyond the imperative of geography, there is the "culture" issue. With the danger of Islamic extremism in mind, a Dutch politician suggested that imams who aspired to work in Holland be required to pass a test in the Dutch language and preach their sermons in Dutch-which would surely douse their fire-without limiting their freedoms. In truth, the issue of religion is not Christianity versus Islam. The real issue is that Europeans no longer take religion seriously in their daily lives while many Turks, and other Muslims, do. This makes European neighbors especially uncomfortable because the type of Islam that they see being practiced most commonly appears to hinge on the suppression of women, which they reject categorically. The most serious crimes are motivated increasingly by attempts of women to adopt European freedoms that the men in their family find unacceptable. Without a commitment to assimilation from both communities, abrasive conflict will continue independent of Turkey's admission to the EU.

The Homework Ahead
Europe's future security and continued prosperity will require ultimate acceptance of Turkish membership in the European Union. For now, the task ahead is to make Turkey's borders on the East less daunting by working earnestly to make Syria, Iraq and Iran less dangerous.

At present, the U.S. is leading this effort by dragging Europe along. While success of the AKP in ruling Turkey will make a huge contribution toward allaying EU fears about the prospect of admitting a Muslim country, more important will be new efforts by the EU to organize and rationalize the entire process for assimilating migrants, perhaps along the lines of Israel's tested immigrant Absorption Centers, where language and culture are taught to facilitate cultural and economic assimilation. Lastly, the EU must resolve its crisis of identity, geography and goals.

The issues are no less urgent whether the Right prevails (less integration, with a special, nonmember, strategic role for Turkey), or the Left (full integration and Turkish membership) now that Turkey has an unprecedented, new two-party government.

AKP leader Tayyip Erdogan, while in favor of membership, reminded foreign reporters after the election that failure of its bid would not spell disaster. While EU candidacy has motivated Turkey to make reforms that it should make in any case, the persistent Turkish bid has also galvanized the EU to pay urgent attention to problems that it, too, should solve for its own sake, independent of Turkey.

Günter Verheugen, the European Union official in charge of expanding its membership, has as much, or more, homework to do than Turkey. Most important, his failure really could spell disaster for the EU.