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TALKS POSE TOUGH TEST FOR ANKARA BUREAUCRACY
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Financial Times, UK
Oct 4 2005
Turkey could be in for a tough few years of political partisanship
as it seeks to meet the requirements of European Union entry while
allowing for an unprecedented level of interference in its internal
affairs from Brussels.
This will pose a severe test of Turkey's vast and truculent
bureaucracy.
Turks greeted the start of a long process of joining the EU with a
mixture of pride, emotion and criticism on Tuesday, as newspapers
gave celebratory coverage to the middle-of-the-night moment when the
formal accession negotiations got under way in Luxembourg on Monday.
In an emotional column, Mehmet Ali Birand, the veteran journalist
who has covered every event of Turkish history since the invasion of
Cyprus in 1974, wrote that Monday was "the best day of my life".
But there was dissent from the political opposition.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition Republican People's party,
accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of having settled
for a second-class status for Turkey.
Mr Baykal said the accession process did not guarantee entry to the
EU, as it did for every other aspiring member, and did not give Turks
full labour mobility rights. "This is not full membership," he charged.
Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, insisted on Monday night, however,
that full membership was essential for Turkey "and we have it".
Some analysts argue that making Turkey more European, or at least
more EU-compatible, ought not to be too difficult.
Resat Arim, director of studies at the Foreign Policy Institute at
Bilkent University, says: "The general look of Turkey may not give
the impression that everything is European, but much of our system
is geared to Europe and on the whole our legislation and regulations
are not basically very different. The accession process should not
be very difficult. There is no reason why it should fail."
The next few years will pose more than an administrative challenge for
Turkey, however. It is likely to present philosophical, intellectual
and historical tests.
Serhan Cevik, who follows Turkey for Morgan Stanley, the investment
bank, wrote to investors on Monday that the most important benefit of
the accession process would be that it provided "a favourable setting
to address historical baggage and entrenched positions".
These include the continued division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish
Cypriot areas (Turkey has nearly 40,000 troops in northern Cyprus); the
pressing issue of Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks, which some historians say was the first genocide of the
20th century; and the unresolved question of Turkey's Kurdish minority.
All of these questions go to the heart of Turkish identity: its
constant struggle to square its geographical, historical and cultural
position between Europe and the Middle East with its modernising
desire to integrate fully into Europe.
Some commentators say the EU process is intimately linked with this
identity question, and may even resolve it.
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Financial Times, UK
Oct 4 2005
Turkey could be in for a tough few years of political partisanship
as it seeks to meet the requirements of European Union entry while
allowing for an unprecedented level of interference in its internal
affairs from Brussels.
This will pose a severe test of Turkey's vast and truculent
bureaucracy.
Turks greeted the start of a long process of joining the EU with a
mixture of pride, emotion and criticism on Tuesday, as newspapers
gave celebratory coverage to the middle-of-the-night moment when the
formal accession negotiations got under way in Luxembourg on Monday.
In an emotional column, Mehmet Ali Birand, the veteran journalist
who has covered every event of Turkish history since the invasion of
Cyprus in 1974, wrote that Monday was "the best day of my life".
But there was dissent from the political opposition.
Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition Republican People's party,
accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of having settled
for a second-class status for Turkey.
Mr Baykal said the accession process did not guarantee entry to the
EU, as it did for every other aspiring member, and did not give Turks
full labour mobility rights. "This is not full membership," he charged.
Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, insisted on Monday night, however,
that full membership was essential for Turkey "and we have it".
Some analysts argue that making Turkey more European, or at least
more EU-compatible, ought not to be too difficult.
Resat Arim, director of studies at the Foreign Policy Institute at
Bilkent University, says: "The general look of Turkey may not give
the impression that everything is European, but much of our system
is geared to Europe and on the whole our legislation and regulations
are not basically very different. The accession process should not
be very difficult. There is no reason why it should fail."
The next few years will pose more than an administrative challenge for
Turkey, however. It is likely to present philosophical, intellectual
and historical tests.
Serhan Cevik, who follows Turkey for Morgan Stanley, the investment
bank, wrote to investors on Monday that the most important benefit of
the accession process would be that it provided "a favourable setting
to address historical baggage and entrenched positions".
These include the continued division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish
Cypriot areas (Turkey has nearly 40,000 troops in northern Cyprus); the
pressing issue of Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks, which some historians say was the first genocide of the
20th century; and the unresolved question of Turkey's Kurdish minority.
All of these questions go to the heart of Turkish identity: its
constant struggle to square its geographical, historical and cultural
position between Europe and the Middle East with its modernising
desire to integrate fully into Europe.
Some commentators say the EU process is intimately linked with this
identity question, and may even resolve it.