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EU offer would boost reform in Turkey

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  • EU offer would boost reform in Turkey

    The Irish Times
    September 28, 2005

    EU offer would boost reform in Turkey


    Although recent events in Turkey raise concerns, there are grounds
    for believing a firm promise of EU membership can help advance
    reforms, writes John O'Brennan.

    After a fraught and difficult year, the European Union is faced with
    the extremely contentious issue of whether to proceed to substantive
    membership negotiations with Turkey. In advance of the European
    Council decision, expected on October 3rd, it is worth examining what
    is at stake for the EU.

    The internal EU debate about Turkey revolves around two distinct
    issues. The first is identity and culture. There are many within the
    EU who see Turkey as an Asiatic rather than a European country, or at
    best a "Eurasian" country, a bridge between Europe and Asia. Turkey's
    population of 72 million is overwhelmingly Muslim and thus seen as a
    threat to Europe's increasingly secular value system. Although the EU
    is manifestly not a religio-cultural entity, this does not prevent
    those opposed to Turkish membership, including Pope Benedict XVI,
    alluding to the weight of cultural difference as the key barrier to
    Turkish accession.

    The second key issue is the political power Turkey would potentially
    wield within the EU. Under the complex weighted voting system used by
    the EU Council of Ministers, Turkey would command a similar voting
    strength to Germany, France and the UK. That is something that
    worries Paris and Berlin especially. Turkish membership, say the
    critics, would paralyse a decision-making system that is already
    creaking in the wake of the eastern enlargement and the inefficient
    institutional architecture recalibrated through the Nice Treaty.

    In the run-up to the European Council summit, the Turkish negotiating
    hand has been significantly weakened. On the one hand the EU
    enthusiasm for further enlargement has receded significantly in the
    aftermath of both the 2004 eastern enlargement and the antipathy to
    expansion demonstrated in the constitutional treaty referendums in
    France and the Netherlands.

    Recent events within Turkey have not helped its cause either. The
    decision to prosecute the country's greatest living writer, Ohran
    Pamuk, for allegedly "denigrating the nation" by making public
    reference to the 1915 mass murder by Ottoman forces of Armenians was
    followed last week by another judicial decision to ban a proposed
    academic conference dealing with the same issue. Although the Turkish
    government had nothing to do with these decisions, they have enabled
    EU obstructionists to argue that Turkey's value system is
    fundamentally incompatible with the liberal norms which lie at the
    core of the EU's identity.

    What then can the EU hope to achieve in proceeding to negotiations?
    The answers can be found in the mechanisms used by the Union to
    incorporate future member-states. In short, the offer of membership
    to outside states and the management of enlargement processes has
    proved the most effective foreign policy tool the EU has employed in
    its efforts to stabilise, modernise and democratise a whole range of
    states on its southern and eastern borders over the past two decades.
    Just as earlier accession processes helped transform Greece, Portugal
    and Spain from authoritarian, economically backward states into
    vibrant and dynamic liberal democracies, so too can the accession
    process help Turkey's modernisers effect the transition they (and the
    EU) so desire.

    More recently, the EU's experience of eastern enlargement
    demonstrates how effective are both the membership criteria and the
    pre-accession process as instruments for reshaping the applicant
    state's public administration, judiciary, and economy. In effect, the
    EU transposes its norms on to applicant states in advance of their
    accession. The process is completely asymmetrical, with the applicant
    state having no option but to accept the changes recommended by
    Brussels.

    In Central and Eastern Europe the transposition and implementation of
    EU laws helped consolidate fragile democratic institutions, open up
    previously moribund economies, strengthen administrative capacity,
    reduce corruption in public life and stabilise relations between
    neighbouring countries. The benefits this has brought the EU include
    a vast increase in intra-European trade and the stabilisation of its
    external borders.

    At a more micro level, my own research into the eastern enlargement
    demonstrates that for EU policy to work a "good cop/bad cop" strategy
    works best. This revolves around a firm promise of membership coupled
    with the credible threat of exclusion (in the case of failure
    adequately to transpose EU legislation and norms).

    Prospective member-states must have sufficient incentive to carry on
    domestic reform programmes, which bring them closer to EU norms, but
    they encounter significant local opposition as more and more
    legislative measures are adopted. The actions of the Turkish
    judiciary in recent weeks constitute just such an example of domestic
    contestation of EU standards and have been condemned by the Turkish
    prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan.

    Those within the EU opposed to Turkish membership should look at the
    record of reform of the AKP government since it won a landslide
    victory in the 2002 election. It has pushed through four major reform
    packages, some of which required significant changes in the Turkish
    legal code.

    Significant though these reforms have been, there is still a
    fragility about Turkey's engagement with modernisation and
    Europeanisation. The EU needs to act on the commission's
    recommendation to open talks. If it does it will accelerate the
    Turkish reform programme and ensure its eventual success. There is a
    lot at stake at next week's summit. The EU should not shirk the
    challenge.

    Dr John O'Brennan is IRCHSS post-doctoral fellow in the department of
    politics and public administration at the University of Limerick. His
    book on the Eastern enlargement of the EU will be published by
    Routledge in February.
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