Published by the GLORIA Center,
Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya

 Volume 8, No. 4, Article 8 - December 2004

By Kemal Kirişci

On December 17, 2004, the European Union (EU) made its long-awaited decision on beginning negotiations with Turkey regarding its full membership in the organization. This article analyzes the decision as an important step toward that goal, despite the complications and reservations that it includes.

After two days of nerve-wrecking negotiations, political brinkmanship and typical EU-style diplomacy the European Council, the highest governing body of the EU representing 25 member countries, decided to open membership negotiations with Turkey on October 3, 2005.[1] This decision had been preceded by a series of earlier critical decisions starting with the Helsinki European Council decision in December 1999 to grant candidate status to Turkey.[2]

Subsequently, Turkey had embarked on an ever- expanding reform process to meet the EU's infamous Copenhagen political criteria to qualify to start accession negotiations.[3] In December 2002 the EU produced yet another critical decision when it acknowledged the massive reforms in Turkey but asked the European Commission to monitor closely the adoption of the remaining reforms and to advise the European Council on whether accession talks with Turkey could start "without delay in 2005."[4]

The December 2004 summit had been preceded by a bitter debate in Europe on Turkey's eligibility for membership and its "Europeaness." The resolution of the Cyprus problem also loomed as an insurmountable obstacle in front of Turkey. Nevertheless, the current government with an unprecedented will by Turkish standards proceeded with the adoption of the remaining critical political reforms.

The government was also successful in achieving the seemingly impossible when it persuaded the Turkish political establishment and public to lend its support or at least acquiescence to the Annan Plan on Cyprus. This success was crowned by an overwhelming support that Turkish Cypriots gave to the referendum on the plan in April 2004. The accession of Cyprus to the EU in spite of the rejection of the plan by the Greek-Cypriots cast a dark shadow on Turkey's otherwise successful march to get a date to open accession negotiations. The critical Progress Report on Turkey prepared by the European Commission acknowledged Turkey's successes and concluded that Turkey had sufficiently met the Copenhagen political criteria.[5] It went on to recommend that negotiations could be opened with Turkey "without delay" as soon as some remaining reforms were completed.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdoğan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gül received a hero's welcome after their return from the European Council summit. Most of the media chose to emphasize the "full" part of the glass and termed the outcome as a "success." Yet, there are also many both in Turkey and in Europe who highlight the "empty" part of the glass or at best have received the decision with mixed feelings. This is a function of the recognition that Turkey's road to membership remains paved with a multitude of challenges if not obstacles. Some of these challenges actually stem from the "buts" and qualifications built into the decision to open accession talks; another set stems from Europe and Turkey itself. Yet these challenges or difficulties cannot hide the fact that the European Council is heralding a new era both for Europe as well as Turkey with potential repercussions for the regions beyond Turkey. These give the decision a historic quality.

Background to the December 2004 European Council Summit:

Turkey had embarked on its journey to join the then European Economic Community (EEC) with the signing of the Ankara Association Agreement in 1963. In 1987, under the leadership of President Turgut Özal, an application for membership to the European Community was filed. However, the EEC rejected this application. It argued that even if Turkey in principle was qualified to one day become a member it was not yet ready to take on the obligations of membership and instead recommended the formation of a customs union. The customs union was negotiated and signed in 1995 and subsequently came into force in 1996 with great political difficulties. This period coincided with one when the violence resulting from the confrontation between the Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was causing massive violations and displacement of Kurds in southeast Turkey. Turkish-EU relations were particularly bitter during this period as EU governments criticized Turkey bitterly for failing to solve the Kurdish problem. The Turkish government, in turn, accused the EU of interfering in Turkish domestic affairs and of supporting the PKK's agenda to carve a separate Kurdish state from Turkey.

Relations between Turkey and the EU reached its lowest point when in December 1997 the European Council decided not to include Turkey among the list of candidate countries for the next round of enlargement. This was preceded in 1996 by a major crisis between Greece and Turkey when both countries came to the brink of a military confrontation over a tiny set of islands in the Aegean Sea.

Yet the capture of the leader of the PKK in February 1999 very quickly brought the violence to an end. A general improvement in the political climate in Turkey occurred and the coalition government elected to power in April 1999 committed itself to reforms. This also coincided with a period when Greek-Turkish relations began to improve subsequent to the massive earthquakes that both countries suffered. These developments ushered in an era leading to the December 1999 European Council Helsinki summit decision. Subsequently a long and slow process of political reforms started. Initially, the reforms proceeded very slowly due to a weak coalition government. However, the election in November 2002 brought in the current government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with a decisive majority in the Turkish parliament.

The new government was able to bring about a number of breakthroughs in overcoming a series of Turkey's taboos. It substantially curbed the influence of the military in Turkish politics. Similarly, on Cyprus the government was able to replace the entrenched policy of maintaining the status quo to one that led to the adoption of a plan brokered by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The plan envisaged reunification following a referendum on both sides of the island. However, the plan failed to materialize when the Greek Cypriots voted overwhelmingly against it.

Even if the government was extensively praised in the international arena for supporting the plan and ensuring a positive outcome from the referendum among the Turkish-Cypriots it could not prevent the Greek side joining the EU representing the island of Cyprus. In the meantime, the government pushed through a final round of reforms in the fall of 2004 that created a positive climate in terms of meeting the Copenhagen political criteria. This climate, though, was briefly soured when the prime minister supported the criminalization of adultery. This provoked massive reaction both from within Turkey as well as the European Union. The Turkish lira that had until then been appreciating began to loose value and the Turkish stock exchange plummeted. After a few days of hesitation, the government backed down averting a major crisis in EU-Turkish relations. This enabled the European Commission to issue its Progress Report on Turkey early in October with the recommendation to the European Council that accession negotiations with Turkey could be opened. The Progress Report intensified the debate on Turkey in Europe.

Turkey's transformation and prospects of EU membership:

The last couple of years have transformed Turkey. Many of the political taboos that no one would have dared to address only a few years ago have been broken. The lifting of the death penalty, which had faced intense resistance back in the summer of 2002, now has been revised and expanded to include war-time crimes as well. Broadcasting and education in Kurdish and other languages, a step that had provoked divisive debates only two years ago, is now accepted as normal. Civil society is buoyant and there is an ever growing cooperation between it and the state bureaucracy.

Even the extremely touchy subject of the Armenian massacres of 1915 that once could not be raised is actually being debated in the public. In an unprecedented manner the Turkish prime minister attended in December 2004 the opening of an Armenian museum in Istanbul and emphasized the importance of diversity in what he called "our togetherness."

In the Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakır a massive public demonstration took place under the banner of "no to separation and yes to diversity." The Kurds in southeast Anatolia who had taken the brunt of the violence are distancing themselves from the activities of the PKK and even condemn its recent acts of violence and terrorism. These developments do not mean that all problems have been resolved. There are still persistent allegations of torture and mistreatment of people in the region. The economic situation of the area is still very poor and unemployment is rampant. Yet there is also a much more politically relaxed climate and high expectations for the future.

These improvements and high expectations in the southeast and the rest of the country are undoubtedly driven by the prospects of EU membership. There is recognition that many of the reforms and the pressure for their implementation are actually a product of EU pressure. In a similar manner the impressive performance of the Turkish economy in respect to reducing inflation, expanding exports, and sustaining an impressive level of economic growth is by and large attributed to the prospects of EU membership. The link between the performance of the economy and EU membership was very visible on December 17, the day the EU report was issued. News that a crisis had erupted over Cyprus and that the prime minister might fly back home prematurely briefly sent the Istanbul stock exchange tumbling only to recover once it became clear that a breakthrough on EU membership had been achieved.

The Turkish public is enthusiastically supportive of EU membership. Opinion polls have constantly substantiated this. The public is cognizant that by and large the EU has had a positive impact on their lives and on Turkey. However, there is also a deep running mistrust of the EU. Public opinion polls also reveal that the Turkish public fears that the EU has double standards against Turkey and that when the day comes it would hesitate to meet its end of the bargain. This situation is also aggravated by many statements from Europe critical or opposed to Turkish membership. It is understandable therefore that the public is, on one hand, jubilant about the decision of the European Council yet, on the other hand, is also nervous about the "buts" and "conditions" attached to the decision to open accession talks with Turkey in October.

Prospects for the opening of accession negotiations:

The decision to open negotiations with Turkey has been linked to a number of conditions and reservations. Many in Turkey believe that at least some of these conditions undermine the spirit if not the letter of the 1999 Helsinki summit decision that stressed Turkey is "destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to other candidate states." Furthermore, they also suspect that the decision is worded in such a manner that it leaves open the possibility of no membership or a relationship with the EU that falls short of full membership.

Under the section on "Framework for negotiations," the European Council declared that the "objective of negotiations is accession." Yet it went on to qualify this objective by adding that these "Negotiations are an open-ended process, the outcome of which cannot be guaranteed beforehand." Furthermore, it added that in the event that membership cannot be achieved an effort must be so that "the Candidate State concerned is fully anchored in the European structures through the strongest possible bond."

Such a wording not only leads many in Turkey to believe that the EU is not genuine but that it wants to keep the door for a "special enhanced relationship" falling short of membership. This has long been an idea advocated by Christian Democrats in Europe, particularly in Germany and Austria. Angela Merkel, leader of German Christian Democrats, and Valery Giscard D'Estaing, former president of France and president of the "Convention on the Future of Europe" that drafted the European Constitution. The approach argues that Turkey is simply too big, culturally too different (read as: not Christian), and economically too underdeveloped to deserve EU membership. They also add that Turkey is geographically not in Europe and therefore not suited for membership. Instead, they advocate a "special" relationship, that basically remains undefined, to prevent "losing" Turkey.

The concerns if not anxieties on the part of many Turks are aggravated by a paragraph noting that "long transitions periods, derogations, specific arrangements or permanent safeguards…may be considered…for areas such as freedom of movement, structural policies or agriculture." The reference to "permanent safeguards" is found particularly disturbing.

In the case of past enlargements, accession treaties have indeed included long transition periods especially in respect to the freedom of labor movement. Currently, the nationals of new member countries are not able to enjoy the freedom to movement for up to seven years due to these transitional arrangements that particularly Austria and Germany sought. However, these are still "transitional" arrangements. In no previous enlargement has there been a member that has been admitted to the EU with permanent safeguards understood to be the denial to enjoy basically the rights, free movement of labor, and the fruits that come with EU membership, structural and agricultural support funds.

Furthermore, the European Council has also included in its decision a novel practice opening the possibility to suspend accession negotiations should it be concluded that a candidate state is in breach of the Copenhagen political criteria. This is yet another practice that has clearly been prompted because the candidate state in mind happens to be Turkey. Previously, the EU had indeed bitterly criticized candidate states such as Slovakia and Romania for their inadequate or slow progress in implementing the Copenhagen political criteria. However, it had never actually been included as a written condition.

At a closer look, clearly some of these "conditions" are an outcome of a bargaining process between those who have supported Turkish membership on the grounds of principle and politics, and those who have been opposed to it either on ideological reasons or on grounds of public opposition. The governments of the former group-- including mostly the Mediterranean countries, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland and Sweden--argued that the EU must respect its previous decisions and treat Turkey equally as all other previous and current candidates.

The second group, led especially by France and Austria, opposed Turkish membership often citing domestic opposition and fear that Turks may flood the Union's labor market and aggravate immigration-related problems in these countries. This fear is also raised by the publics of countries belonging to the first group even if their governments preferred to conceal or side-step these concerns. Appeasing the second group's anxieties in a typically EU decision-making style is very much reflected in the way the Presidency's conclusions say that the adoption of permanent safeguards "may be considered," preferring to leave the issue open-ended and shrouded in ambiguity.

These intra-European political calculations and EU decision-making idiosyncrasies are largely lost on the Turkish public. Instead, many Turks simply see these paragraphs as a reflection of a European rejection of Turkey. Hence, in the coming years when negotiations do start it will be a major challenge both for the Turkish and EU leadership to try to mobilize Turkish public commitment, patience and trust in EU membership. This will become even more critical when, as has been the case with past candidate countries, the actual adoption of the European framework begins to have costs and public support levels for membership start to plummet. This challenge will be complicated by the fact that the same leadership will also need to dissuade the fears and prejudices of parts of the European public concerning Turkey.

The Question of Cyprus:

One last challenge embedded in the Presidency conclusions is the one addressing the issue of the recognition of Cyprus. This is a particularly complex and sensitive issue and on the first day of the summit provoked a crisis that left the Turkish prime minister at the brink of walking out. The draft Presidency conclusions had included a paragraph welcoming the Turkish decision to adopt a protocol extending the implementation of the 1963 Association Agreement and, by default, the Customs Union Agreement of 1995 to the ten new members including Cyprus.

Although there was no open mention of the name of Cyprus a crisis erupted over the fact that such a protocol could amount to recognition of the Greek Cypriot government as government for the whole of Cyprus. This was considered to be a situation that clearly would leave the Turkish government in an impossible situation vis-à-vis Turkish public opinion and the Turkish Cypriots. Many also believed that this would not only make Turkey's presence on the island untenable but would leave Turkish Cypriots as being merely a minority in a Greek Cypriot run and dominated Cyprus. Moreover, both the Turkish public and Turkish Cypriots are disappointed that despite their own support for the Annan Plan, the Greek Cypriots who rejected it had joined the EU on behalf of the whole of the island and could block promised EU policies for ending the Turkish Cypriots' international isolation.

At the end, the EU was once more able to demonstrate its skills in fudging a "solution" of a sort. The compromise arrangement reached allows Turkey a breathing space until the actual commencement date for negotiations in October 2005 to adopt the relevant protocol. However, that still leaves the issue of the recognition of Cyprus unresolved. As a result, two major challenges remain.

First, can the Turkish government actually come up with a protocol that can circumvent the recognition issue in a manner that satisfies Greek Cypriots as well as Turkish skeptics?

Second, can Turkey reinvigorate the diplomatic process that had culminated in the Annan Plan and help develop the adoption of a new plan palatable to the Greek Cypriots to ensure they do not again vote "no" while ensuring the gains Turkish Cypriots acquired in the first plan?

It is not clear at all whether Turkey can on its own meet those two challenges. It will need the goodwill and support of the EU. Will an EU absorbed in its own problems and especially in the ratification of the European Constitution master the political resources needed to assist Turkey to meet this challenge? More importantly, will the Greek Cypriots have the incentive to find a viable "solution" now that they enjoy both the comfort and the massive power that comes with sitting at the European Council decision- making table as an equal partner to all the other members? Compared to all the other challenges this one might actually be the key problem in future EU-Turkish relations.

THE FUTURE

In any event these "buts" and "conditions" should not detract the fact that the EU has reached the decision to open accession negotiations with Turkey. The "buts" and "conditions" are a reflection of the special challenges arising from Turkey's membership and the Council's efforts to find a balance between the competing and conflicting priorities of 25 members. Ultimately, what counts is that if Turkey does indeed resolve the current impasse on Cyprus there should not be any obstacle in the way of starting negotiations. If the government is able to maintain the will it was able to mobilize in support of the Annan Plan it should be able to meet this key challenge.

The government is right in tying the actual recognition of Cyprus to a resolution of the problem itself. It is generally acknowledged that currently Turkey holds the high ground because of the constructive role it played in terms of the adoption of the Annan Plan and the positive vote for the plan on the Turkish side of the island. However, that in itself is not adequate. There clearly is a need to initiate a diplomatic strategy to bring the sides back to the negotiation table to achieve a breakthrough for a final settlement on Cyprus. Any deal short of such a settlement is going to leave Turkey hostage to the Greek Cypriot government sitting at the negotiation table as representing the whole of Cyprus. Even if Turkey manages to find a formula to extend the application of the Ankara Agreement to include Cyprus without recognizing the Greek-Cypriot government's authority over the northern part of the island, this will not change the fact that their counterpart will enjoy all the power and the authority of being a full member of the EU.

At any rate, the prime minister declared the outcome as a success even if his minister of foreign affairs noted that they had fallen short of getting everything they wanted. If the government convinces the public that the EU decision is indeed a success it is highly likely that Turkey's transformation will continue unabated. This also means continued support for the current government. In the March 2004 local elections the electorate cast 41 per cent of the votes for the ruling party's mayoral candidates. This is an important increase from the already impressive 34 percent that it had received at the November 2002 national elections. Many have suggested this outcome can at least be partly attributed to the government's resolution to pursue policies in support of EU membership including its efforts to achieve a breakthrough on Cyprus.

An important role also falls on the EU's shoulders for taking some initiative on Cyprus. Aside from reviving the Annan plan, EU governments need to get through the legislation promised to the Turkish Cypriots for ending or easing their isolation from the international community. This would surely facilitate the hand of Turkey's government to find and push a formulation for the extension of the Ankara Agreement to include Cyprus and overcome the last hurdle for getting the accession negotiations off the ground.

Once negotiations do actually start it will become much easier to talk about a "success" and the country will enter another but much more substantive period of transformation. Fully preparing Turkey to meet the EU's standards and practices will be a very costly and painful exercise. In the previous round of enlargement, massive public support in other new member states evaporated as people began to experience the cost of the transformation. The EU will provide funds to assist and some what cushion the transformation. However, these funds will simply be too small to cushion the pain and buy over the public. Hence, it will be critical for the government to maintain public support and exercise its will to march toward EU membership. The opposition inside and outside the parliament is already bombarding the government with tough criticism arguing that the government is basically trying to sell an out right failure as a success.

Nevertheless, all this should not detract one from the fact that the decision taken on December 17, 2004, to open negotiation for membership is a historic one. From Turkey's point of view the country has already transformed itself to an unrecognizable extent as it struggled to meet the Copenhagen political criteria. The gains are visible and generally acknowledged.

Almost eight decades after Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, set Turkey's vocation as achieving the standards of what he termed "muassır medeniyetler" (basically Western civilization) Turkey has been recognized to have met at least the political standards needed to start to negotiate membership to the organization associated most closely by that "civilization." This is no small success considering the state in which other Muslim societies find themselves in today.

It can also be argued that the fact that this has been achieved by a government whose roots are in a political party once associated with political Islam enhances the historic significance of the European Council decision. It signifies that the transformation process triggered by the prospect of EU membership has encouraged the softening of political Islam's rougher edges and made it much more capable of co-existing with pluralist democracy and the rule of man-made law as opposed to God given Sharia Law.

Similarly, the hard-line secularism of Turkey has also become softened as the transformation seems to have ensured a more nuanced approach to religion and pluralist democracy. At least, the traditional state establishment elite are willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt. This mutual process of toleration has benefited the country politically as well as economically. In turn, these developments raise the prospects of Turkey setting an example for the other Muslim societies.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, if the reference to "the shared objective of the negotiations is accession" noted under the 23^rd paragraph of Presidency conclusions is successfully carried out to its ultimate end of Turkish membership, the European Council decision offers a good prospect for surmounting the challenges associated with a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West.

NOTES