Why Turkey and Europe need each other

Therefore, the EU might adopt an even more adamant refusal to take Turkey’s application seriously than was previously the case. Furthermore, despite the recent support of both France and Germany for Turkey to receive a certain date for starting negotiations over accession, it is by no means clear that the EU will yield to their pressure.

Numerous European elites believe that Turkey should not and cannot join the EU. They offer many reasons for this judgment: Turkey’s democratic deficit with regard to the judiciary, discrimination against the Kurds, the use of torture, and the military’s ability to exempt itself from civilian democratic accountability.

Turkey’s economy, which is currently undergoing its greatest economic crisis in years, also must be transformed to satisfy the EU’s requirements embodied in over 90,000 pages of its acquis communautaire. But beyond those stiff requirements and the need for a total overhaul of Turkey’s political institutions to make them stick, many Europeans argue, as did former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing, that a Muslim state cannot join the EU. Other figures contend that Turkey is simply too large to be assimilated in the EU, and would therefore destroy it if it became a member.

Notwithstanding the Turkish democratic deficit, there are abundant signs that it is diminishing under EU and Western pressure. Too much Western commentary either neglects the particular features of the Turkish case, the present major difficulties, and the major strides forward that have nevertheless occurred under singularly inauspicious conditions.

This does not mean that Turkey should be given a pass. Undoubtedly, if it wishes to be a European state it must conform to European standards. However, this can only mean that Turkey become, as the distinguished historian Norman Stone observed, “a different country”. Therefore, the path to this outcome will necessarily be a long one that encounters considerable opposition at every turn.

As long as EU figures give reasons for validating the prevailing suspicion that EU membership will never be attained because that organization is a Christians-only club, Ankara will neither consummate the necessary reforms nor will domestic Turkish conditions allow it to do so. This would be a disaster for both the EU and for Turkey. Turkey would then be cut off from Europe and thrown back upon the undemocratic Islamic world without the means or incentive to project Western values and interests, let alone its own interests, into the Middle East, Caucasus or Central Asia.

Nor could it then be a factor for peace in the Balkans. And it is all too likely that it could not move forward far enough to break the stultifying paradigm of Ataturkism that inhibits its progress. Indeed, Turkey arguably needs another Ataturk or a leader with commensurate talent and vision to help it break free of the paralyzing rigidity that Ataturk’s paradigm has become. And this leader, should he arise, needs the EU’s and the West’s unstinting support to break that rigid domestic and foreign policy deadlock.

But whereas Turkey needs the EU to encourage it to realize its potential and its true European vocation, the EU also needs to encourage Turkey to conform to the acquis and the so called Copenhagen criteria (the city which hosted the EU meeting that laid down democratic criteria for applicants).

The EU openly professes its desire to become a superpower and proclaims security interests in Europe and beyond. If it cannot deal fairly or adequately with Turkey, the EU cannot defend any of those extra-European interests, and even its Balkan position would be weakened. In that case the EU would then not be able to realize its own dream and vocation. For if the EU cannot deal honestly with the most advanced, democratic and progressive Muslim state, it cannot then deal adequately with the Middle East or other areas in the Islamic world.

Certainly it has already long since shown its utter failure to play a serious and respected role in the Middle East, to the point where it is openly regarded with widespread derision by Israeli political elites due to its one-sidedness and fatuous policies.

Consequently, if the EU is to become a real player in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Islamic world, the December 12 meeting in Copenhagen is the right setting for a statesman-like decision that encourages Turkey to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria by setting a certain date for negotiations and ensuring that Turkey make good faith efforts to conform with them.

Those decisions will not only overcome the irritation generated by the admission of Cyprus to membership, they will go a long way to beginning a process whereby both Turkey and the EU can fully realize their true interests and European vocations.

Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.