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  • Yes To Turkey!

    YES TO TURKEY!

    Patrick Seale

    Dar Al-Hayat
    Nov 20 2008
    Lebanon

    Michel Rocard, a towering figure of the French left, has emerged
    as an eloquent and powerful advocate of Turkey's membership of the
    European Union. He has thus thrown down the gauntlet to President
    Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made no secret of his diehard opposition to
    Turkish membership.

    In terms of French opinion, Rocard seems to be scoring points and
    winning young people to his views, judging from the enthusiastic
    attendance at his public lectures, including one in Paris last Monday
    at France's National Foundation of Political Sciences (known familiarly
    as Sciences Po), where speaker after speaker rose in support of him.

    The subject of Turkish membership is an important one as Europe
    wrestles with its identity, with its place in a multi-polar world,
    with its institutions, and with the role it hopes to play in the
    conflict-ridden Middle East, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and
    in its relations both with a newly- assertive Russia and a troubled
    America, now in the process of reinventing itself under Barack Obama,
    its new President-elect.

    Rocard, 78, is a lifelong socialist. He served as Prime Minister
    (1988-1991) under the late President Francois Mitterrand, and has been
    an outspoken deputy of the European Parliament for the past fifteen
    years. His long interest in Turkish affairs has now found expression
    in a campaigning book, Yes to Turkey (In French, Oui a la Turquie),
    which argues, on its very first page, that Europe's future must involve
    Turkey, and that Turkish membership of the EU is nothing less than a
    'life insurance policy for Europe.'

    In making this claim, Rocard is not unaware of Turkey's many problems
    - its patchy human rights record; its uneven democratic experience,
    interrupted by military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980; its ongoing
    clashes with Kurdish separatists; its difficulty in coming to terms
    with the legacy of the Armenian massacres of 1915; and its continued
    occupation of northern Cyprus.

    Above all, modern Turkey remains split down the middle. On the one
    hand are the hard-line Kemalists, backed by the army and an urban
    elite, anxious to protect its privileges. Aggressively secular and
    ultra-nationalistic, these Kemalists behave as if the state belongs to
    them. Ranged against them is the ruling AKP -- Prime Minister Recep
    Tayyip Erdogan's Development and Justice Party -- whom the Kemalists
    attempted, but failed, to get banned from public life last July.

    AKP's voters - a clear majority in the country -- tend to be
    conservative and Islamic in life-style and tradition, but they have
    embraced the party's reformist and democratic platform, its pro-Europe
    orientation, and the economic prosperity which its policies have
    brought the country. The AKP has survived in power but the often
    violent opposition of some Kemalists makes for unstable politics.

    Notwithstanding these problems, Rocard boldly asserts that Turkey
    should become a full member of the European Union by 2023 - the one
    hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic by
    Kemal Ataturk, after the Ottoman Empire's defeat and dismemberment
    in the First World War.

    He suggests that the fifteen years until 2023 should be devoted
    to the 'gradual integration' of Turkey into the EU by means of a
    succession of association agreements, which would serve to harmonize
    various Turkish practices with European norms, beginning with such
    subjects as education, culture, research, and the protection of the
    environment. In the meantime, Turkey could be associated from the very
    start with Europe's external security policies, thus contributing to
    the EU's immediate geostrategic goals.

    In order to reassure European opinion about the dangers of embracing a
    partly-backward Muslim country of 80 million people, Rocard proposes
    a number of safeguards. First, the EU's borders would not be open to
    the free movement of Turkish workers until 2023, and even then only
    in a controlled manner; secondly, there would be no Turkish claim on
    the EU for structural funds until the 2021-2027 budget; and thirdly,
    Turkey would have no right of veto in European institutions until 2023,
    although it could send observers to the EU's Council of Ministers,
    to the European Commission and to the European Parliament, and thus
    take part in the EU's democratic debate.

    What then are the main arguments in favour of Turkey's EU membership?

    Perhaps the most compelling reason is the need for Europe and the
    West to rebuild bridges to the Islamic world. Christians and Muslims,
    Rocard argues, are at present living in a period of grave mutual
    incomprehension. A billion Muslims feel that they are accused of
    complicity with terrorism by one and a half billion Christians! The
    policies of America's outgoing President George W Bush, he says,
    have deeply offended Muslim countries, driving them into a tragic
    and dangerous anti-Westernism.

    Europe cannot afford to be seen as an exclusive 'Christian Club'. That
    would be a defeat for secularism and would encourage the rise of
    religious identities -such as plagued Ireland for generations, one
    might add, and continues to plague a country like Lebanon. In any
    event, Europe has within its boundaries some 15 to 20 million citizens
    of Islamic faith. Many of these Muslim citizens feel alienated and
    excluded from the tolerance for which Europe prides itself. Are they
    forever to be considered foreigners?

    To bring a major Muslim nation like Turkey into the EU would be the
    best way to prove that Europe was seeking a true understanding with
    the world of Islam.

    Rocard believes that Turkey can play a crucial role in making peace
    between Arabs and Israelis, since it has managed to have balanced
    relations with both sides for years. It has recently been brokering
    indirect talks between Israel and Syria. Turkey has also offered its
    services as an intermediary between Iran and the United States.

    Another of Rocard's arguments is that Turkey is the key to the Central
    Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirghizstan
    and, beyond the Caspian, to Azerbaijan. These former Soviet republics
    speak a Turkic language and are culturally influenced by Turkey. They
    contain vast quantities of oil to which Europe needs access. Turkey's
    membership of the EU, Rocard believes, would make a European presence
    in Central Asia more acceptable.

    In spite of the EU's success in providing a model of democratic
    government, economic coordination and respect for human rights,
    Rocard is skeptical of Europe's ability to develop into a strong and
    cohesive political power. The tug of rival national sovereignties is
    still too strong, he believes, as is the reluctance of member states
    to increase defence spending.

    But, with a combined strength of over one million men, Turkey's
    armed forces are the second largest standing force after the United
    States. The inclusion of the Turkish armed forces into the European
    Military Framework would enable the European Union to become a true
    global player - even a superpower. This would certainly be a valuable
    asset in an unstable world.
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