If EU doesn’t meet our requests

There will be similar visits and contacts as well in the coming weeks. They have two aims: firstly, getting a date for membership negotiations in December without delay and secondly, getting the EU Commission to strike ‘dangerous’ elements from its recent report. It’s very important to convince EU member states on these issues. However, we all know the views of politicians, media and the public opinion in these countries. In such an atmosphere, it will be very hard to reach our aim. First of all, the government is saying that a decision for an ‘early date’ – that is, in the first months of 2005 – should be made for starting our membership negotiations. What will happen if the talks are pushed back to 2006? In such a situation, most probably Ankara will consider this unacceptable and, thus, the process might be derailed. Turkish officials are trying to lay things out clearly for their European colleagues. There are two basic negative elements in the EC report, and Turkish diplomats don’t want the declaration issued following the summit to include these elements. One of them envisages making the negotiations an open-ended process and another sees permanent restrictions on the free movement of Turks in the EU.

What will Ankara do if these expressions or even more negative words are included in the post-summit document? There are two alternatives: Turkey will sit at the table hoping that the negative elements will be resolved during the negotiations process or it could walk away, saying that talks can’t be held under such conditions. Circles close to the government think that such subjects as the method and process of negotiations, requested guarantees and binding statements could be turned to Turkey’s favor and thus it wouldn’t be reasonable to do something that would waste all our efforts. The opposition thinks differently. Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy leader Onur Oymen thinks it would be very risky to start open-ended negotiations and that holding a referendum on Turkey’s membership would be unacceptable. He also thinks that all this should be said now. What should we do if despite of all these efforts we end up empty-handed? ‘Various formulas could be found for this issue,’ said Oymen. The CHP is making efforts towards this end. We’ll publicly announce them soon.’ Wouldn’t it be better for the government and opposition to work together and reach a consensus?”