Accession negotiation timetable
Meanwhile, the inclusion of the amendments we consider mandatory in the Annan plan does not seem likely. In other words, when May 1 comes and, after the approval of the Annan plan in the referenda, Turkish Cypriots be admitted into the EU with their Greek counterparts, and our EU membership will still be undecided. Under these conditions, the government will find it difficult to get the people, even those of its own party, to accept the resolution of the Cyprus issue and will encounter difficulty getting the final agreement through Parliament. Even if all this is achieved, efforts to find a solution to the Aegean Sea issues will face significant resistance from the media.
Yet Turkey had already fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria with the fourth reform package it passed in August 2002. In this respect, no problems should have been encountered after passing the seventh package. The issue of implementation, while reasonable at first glance, is being used to hide the uncertainty over our membership. The government definitely has to focus on implementing the laws. However, as Cengiz Aktar, an expert on the issue, explained in his article in Radikal on March 2, deficiencies in implementation did not prevent other candidate-countries from start the membership negotiations or even from becoming members. In this respect, the EU can find as many mistakes as it wishes, just like it did in the implementation process. European Commission reports show there are serious deficiencies even in member countries. Moreover, can people think a country that has passed so many reforms is trying to trick the EU? Turkey, just like everyone else, can correct its deficiencies during the negotiation process, estimated at lasting around a decade.
Under these conditions, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statements like, "If they don’t accept us as members, we will turn the Copenhagen criteria into the Ankara criteria and continue on our road," will only be useful to boost the confidence of those who are against Turkey’s membership.
What German Prime Minister Gerhard Shroeder said during his visit to Ankara was really encouraging. However, Christian Democrat party (CDU) leader Angela Merkel and Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Edmund Stoiber’s statements are equally discouraging. Even European Commission President Romano Prodi said that Turkey’s membership should be explained to European society. If we add these to the statements made about our membership being put to a referendum, we will realize there are many uncertainties.
The Merkel-Stoiber duo is likely to come to power in the 2006 elections. If you just browse Tamer-Andrea Bacinoglu’s "Modern German Orientalism, German Publications in Turkey," you will realize how ingrained the misperception of the Kurdish problem, Islamic fundamentalism, the so-called Armenian genocide and Kemalism are in the German psyche. While the EU’s economic attractiveness is decreasing, it still remains important for our internal stability and Balkan policies. However, just knowing about the German misperceptions is enough reason to want Turkey’s participation in the EU’s decision-making mechanisms. These misperceptions, bordering on racism, will be even more dangerous if we are left out of the EU.
The situation in France is somewhat different. The extreme right in this country is not only against our membership but also against French membership and the new EU constitution. It has been said that they fear that giving full support to our membership before the European Parliament elections in June would strengthen the extreme right. That’s all well and good, but what about the opposition of the government’s coalition partner, the Union for the French Democracy (UDF)?
Under these conditions, the government needs to use our growing importance as part of the Greater Middle East Initiative not only to get a date to start membership negotiations before May 1 but also to secure a timetable for full membership. Turkey’s stability is gradually coming to depend on that.
