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Today's Zaman, Turkey
Jan 5 2010
Spain's Clos: Turkey's EU accession should be a love affair, not a
marriage of interests
According to Spanish Ambassador to Turkey Joan Clos, the geo-strategic
benefits of Turkey's eventual accession to the European Union are
overemphasized. Clos, whose country took over the six-month-long
rotating presidency of the EU from Sweden on Jan. 1, believes that
arguments over Turkey's EU bid should not be based on interests.
I think that Turkey is Europe, and we should keep talking and
explaining to each other to make that a non-negotiable fact. The
Turkish accession to the EU should be considered as a love affair, not
just as a marriage of interests; there should be more love than
interests,' Clos said in an interview with Today's Zaman.
The EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005.
Countries hoping to join the bloc must fulfill requirements in 35
policy negotiating areas, or chapters. With an intergovernmental
conference held last month in Brussels where negotiations with Turkey
on one new policy area, namely the environment chapter, was opened,
Ankara has so far formally opened 12 chapters, of which it has
provisionally completed negotiations on just one, science and
research.
In addition to eight chapters frozen since 2006 due to a customs
dispute, France is blocking another five chapters that are directly
linked to full membership and Greek Cyprus plans to block talks on six
other chapters.
Spain is a staunch supporter of Turkey's EU bid and is co-sponsoring
the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) initiative with Turkey,
launched in 2005 under the aegis of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan. Turkish diplomats say the two countries enjoy `a team spirit,'
while defining Spain as a rising star within the 27-member EU. In
April 2009, Ä°stanbul hosted an intergovernmental conference between
Spain and Turkey, as well as the high-profile Second Forum of the
UNAOC.
`I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
geo-strategic argument is overused. ¦ Not much weight is given to the
immense opportunity that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in
sharing our democratic and socio-economic values,' says Ambassador
Clos
Despite the presence of strong empathy and mutual goodwill between
Ankara and Madrid, one cannot ignore the fact that Spain has taken the
rotating presidency of the EU at a time when many assume there are
only a few remaining chapters available to be opened in regard to
Turkey's negotiation process.
`Accession a complex, difficult process'
`Spain has always been supportive of full membership for Turkey. We
keep on defending this position. From our own accession process, we
know that accession is always a complex and difficult process where
the most important thing is to maintain the direction and the
political will. I think that the most important thing is that Turkey
keeps doing all the necessary things to become a full member of the
European Union,' Clos noted initially when reminded of those
assumptions.
`Turkey should also take into account that apart from the chapters,
there are also other ways to advance in the accession process, mainly
through political reforms. I am sure we can generate a new positive
attitude in Europe in this field. Apart from the chapters, we can put
more value on the new processes that Turkey is taking toward Armenia
and the Kurdish issue. We should recognize the difficulties on each
side at the moment, in order to avoid deception and a loss of interest
among people. I think this loss of interest is the worst thing that
could happen. Perhaps it's what the ones who are against it on both
sides are looking for,' Clos said.
The Spanish ambassador, representing his country in Turkey since July
2008, highlighted the huge ongoing process of change and adaptation
within the EU itself. The adaptation to the enlargement to 27, the
introduction of the requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and a new
culture of majorities and minorities in the voting system are part of
it, he said, adding that this will require a process of adjustment to
see how they adapt to the new situation.
According to Clos, one should also not ignore the impact of the
economic and financial crisis, which has also generated a more
conservative and precautious stance in the EU.
`The mood now within the EU is to weather the crisis, to try to escape
from it as soon as possible. But we are not seeing a very
well-coordinated response. That is generating a kind of wait-and-see
approach to most of the big issues in the EU. The EU itself is now in
a challenging period. It's trying to digest the last enlargement,
which has been and still is a compelling exercise. If we understand
that, we can be more realistic about calendars and on the advancing of
some issues,' Clos continued.
`When our foreign minister [Miguel Angel Moratinos] met Mr. [Foreign
Minister Ahmet] DavutoÄ?lu in Córdoba, he said very clearly that we
will try to do our best to make the accession process during our
presidency an irreversible situation,' Clos said.
Ankara criticizes the blocking of negotiations on new policy areas for
political reasons and states that the current obstacles in Turkey's
path toward becoming a full member of the EU are not objective but
rather subjective. Ankara also frequently voices disappointment that
EU members who oppose Turkey's accession are actually making a grave
strategic mistake.
Clos, however, questions the efficacy of such arguments by Ankara.
`I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
geo-strategic argument is overused. It's clear that Turkey is placed
in a strategic region and has much economic value and is close to
energy resources, but I think that the most important argument for the
Turkish accession to the EU should not be economic and geo-strategic
but political. This is because Europe is now a little bit indifferent
to geo-strategy, but not so to democratic values and the acquis
communautaire. Not much weight is given to the immense opportunity
that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in sharing our
democratic and socio-economic values,' Clos told Today's Zaman.
The Kingdom of Spain became a full member of what was then known as
the European Community in 1986. Most commentators considered the
formal incorporation of the Iberian Peninsula into the larger European
context as the beginning of an era, and the same commentators also
asserted that the transformation of the country's economy into one of
the EU's strongest was an undeniable reality.
Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, membership
has also served as a catalyst to dynamic economic development in
Spain, analysts explain, emphasizing how the EU has helped shape the
political process in Spain.
`In the Spanish accession process, when we talked about interests and
strategy, we never succeeded in the argument. We never moved the
hearts of the Europeans when we said we were close to the Strait of
Gibraltar, were very important for Europe or when we said our
agriculture was very important and we had the largest area of
farmland,' said Clos, who was the mayor of Barcelona from 1997 until
2006, when he was appointed minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade in
the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
`But when we talked with our European fellows and said, `Look, we want
to be in the EU because we want to stabilize our democracy forever,'
this was something understood by every European citizen on the street.
To give weight only to strategic and business reasons for European
accession is purely an argument of interests. To put emphasis on
values is a much deeper emotional question. There are countries which
have geo-strategic value and position apart from Turkey, but the kind
of democracy that you have reached with the republic and that you are
trying to improve through governmental and everybody's efforts makes
the difference for Turkey in relation to your neighborhood. This
should be the main driving force. Democratic Europe cannot lose a
growing democracy in this part of the world. If you ask a German,
Frenchman or Spaniard, `Do you want to help Turkey to be a
European-like democracy with our values or not?' the answer would be
yes. This is more important than oil or agriculture,' he remarked.
Differentiating between terrorism and socio-economic problems
Clos applauded Turkey's ongoing efforts for the normalization of its
relations with neighboring Armenia through establishing diplomatic
ties and opening borders as well as for the democratization initiative
launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government
last summer, seeking to settle Turkey's decades-long Kurdish problem
by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.
`I think that the Armenian and Kurdish initiatives, the democratic
initiative, are a kind of tectonic movement in Turkish policy. Not so
many years ago, it was unthinkable that there could be public debate
or a parliamentary debate on those issues. I believe this is a very
profound and positive movement in the direction of the Turkey's 21st
century policy. And also the approach to the neighboring countries,
which I sincerely consider is not against the EU but the opposite, in
favor of the EU. There is a kind of centenary change of direction, and
there are real, deep, strategic movements in Turkey which we value a
lot,' Clos said.
Last month, the Constitutional Court shut down the pro-Kurdish
Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism. While
announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Court also mentioned the
decision of the European Court of Human Rights in favor of the closure
of Batasuna, the political arm of the ETA, which was banned in Spain
in accordance with the 2002 Political Parties Law. A considerable
number of experts questioned the appropriateness of such a link
between the two cases, suggesting that Turkey's case laws reflect that
talking about independence in Turkey is a legitimate reason to ban a
political party even if that political party does not support
violence.
Clos was very careful in his remarks when asked whether Spain's
experience could act as an example for Turkey in resolving its Kurdish
issue since Spain successfully made a distinction between ETA
terrorism and the Basque issue.
`I will answer that by saying that those are difficult issues -- you
cannot offer magic solutions, and there are no models. These are very
serious and complex issues, and tackling them is specific to every
case,' Clos noted.
`The Belgian case is different from the Irish issue, and the Irish
issue totally different from the ETA solution. There is no theoretical
road map to solve the problem. You will find your way because Turkish
history is the essence of it. We can offer what we have found most
valuable in our case if you can take something, not everything, from
it because the subject is different. In our case, it was very
important to differentiate between the social problem and the
terrorism problem. Terror is terror, and we should fight terror. That
means that if there is a socio-economic or cultural problem, then you
should face this problem although there is terrorism, because if you
don't solve the socio-economic and cultural problem, you are caught in
the terrorist trap. In our case, the socio-economic and cultural
problems were faced with a new Constitution in 1978. And the terrorism
problem was solved in another place, by the police in the Interior
Ministry,' Clos said.
`It's quite clear; one thing was to solve the social and identity
demands of the Basque people -- 99.99 percent of whom are not
terrorists, of course -- and a very different thing was to fight
against the small minority who use arms to fight and in killing do not
respect human rights. The solution to the Basque political, cultural
and socio-economic demands was in the Constitution, and, very
importantly, it was not specific to the Basques. Terror should be
fought with anti-terrorist measures, and political, cultural and
socio-economic issues should be faced through the work of the
parliament and political parties.'
Ending the Clausewitz paradigm
Clos believes that every effort to promote understanding among people
on earth is extremely relevant and therefore believes that the UNAOC
has an important mission in discovering why humanity still has wars,
even though when the Cold War finished, everybody thought the world
was approaching an era without wars.
`This is the main objective of the Alliance of Civilizations: to have
a serious debate on why we keep misunderstanding each other and why we
still have wars in the 21st century. Clausewitz said that `war is
merely the continuation of politics by other means.' We should put an
end to the Clausewitz paradigm.'
05 January 2010, Tuesday
EMINE KART ANKARA
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-197 505-8-spains-clos-turkeys-eu-accession-should-be-a -love-affair-not-a-marriage-of-interests.html
Jan 5 2010
Spain's Clos: Turkey's EU accession should be a love affair, not a
marriage of interests
According to Spanish Ambassador to Turkey Joan Clos, the geo-strategic
benefits of Turkey's eventual accession to the European Union are
overemphasized. Clos, whose country took over the six-month-long
rotating presidency of the EU from Sweden on Jan. 1, believes that
arguments over Turkey's EU bid should not be based on interests.
I think that Turkey is Europe, and we should keep talking and
explaining to each other to make that a non-negotiable fact. The
Turkish accession to the EU should be considered as a love affair, not
just as a marriage of interests; there should be more love than
interests,' Clos said in an interview with Today's Zaman.
The EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005.
Countries hoping to join the bloc must fulfill requirements in 35
policy negotiating areas, or chapters. With an intergovernmental
conference held last month in Brussels where negotiations with Turkey
on one new policy area, namely the environment chapter, was opened,
Ankara has so far formally opened 12 chapters, of which it has
provisionally completed negotiations on just one, science and
research.
In addition to eight chapters frozen since 2006 due to a customs
dispute, France is blocking another five chapters that are directly
linked to full membership and Greek Cyprus plans to block talks on six
other chapters.
Spain is a staunch supporter of Turkey's EU bid and is co-sponsoring
the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) initiative with Turkey,
launched in 2005 under the aegis of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan. Turkish diplomats say the two countries enjoy `a team spirit,'
while defining Spain as a rising star within the 27-member EU. In
April 2009, Ä°stanbul hosted an intergovernmental conference between
Spain and Turkey, as well as the high-profile Second Forum of the
UNAOC.
`I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
geo-strategic argument is overused. ¦ Not much weight is given to the
immense opportunity that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in
sharing our democratic and socio-economic values,' says Ambassador
Clos
Despite the presence of strong empathy and mutual goodwill between
Ankara and Madrid, one cannot ignore the fact that Spain has taken the
rotating presidency of the EU at a time when many assume there are
only a few remaining chapters available to be opened in regard to
Turkey's negotiation process.
`Accession a complex, difficult process'
`Spain has always been supportive of full membership for Turkey. We
keep on defending this position. From our own accession process, we
know that accession is always a complex and difficult process where
the most important thing is to maintain the direction and the
political will. I think that the most important thing is that Turkey
keeps doing all the necessary things to become a full member of the
European Union,' Clos noted initially when reminded of those
assumptions.
`Turkey should also take into account that apart from the chapters,
there are also other ways to advance in the accession process, mainly
through political reforms. I am sure we can generate a new positive
attitude in Europe in this field. Apart from the chapters, we can put
more value on the new processes that Turkey is taking toward Armenia
and the Kurdish issue. We should recognize the difficulties on each
side at the moment, in order to avoid deception and a loss of interest
among people. I think this loss of interest is the worst thing that
could happen. Perhaps it's what the ones who are against it on both
sides are looking for,' Clos said.
The Spanish ambassador, representing his country in Turkey since July
2008, highlighted the huge ongoing process of change and adaptation
within the EU itself. The adaptation to the enlargement to 27, the
introduction of the requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and a new
culture of majorities and minorities in the voting system are part of
it, he said, adding that this will require a process of adjustment to
see how they adapt to the new situation.
According to Clos, one should also not ignore the impact of the
economic and financial crisis, which has also generated a more
conservative and precautious stance in the EU.
`The mood now within the EU is to weather the crisis, to try to escape
from it as soon as possible. But we are not seeing a very
well-coordinated response. That is generating a kind of wait-and-see
approach to most of the big issues in the EU. The EU itself is now in
a challenging period. It's trying to digest the last enlargement,
which has been and still is a compelling exercise. If we understand
that, we can be more realistic about calendars and on the advancing of
some issues,' Clos continued.
`When our foreign minister [Miguel Angel Moratinos] met Mr. [Foreign
Minister Ahmet] DavutoÄ?lu in Córdoba, he said very clearly that we
will try to do our best to make the accession process during our
presidency an irreversible situation,' Clos said.
Ankara criticizes the blocking of negotiations on new policy areas for
political reasons and states that the current obstacles in Turkey's
path toward becoming a full member of the EU are not objective but
rather subjective. Ankara also frequently voices disappointment that
EU members who oppose Turkey's accession are actually making a grave
strategic mistake.
Clos, however, questions the efficacy of such arguments by Ankara.
`I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
geo-strategic argument is overused. It's clear that Turkey is placed
in a strategic region and has much economic value and is close to
energy resources, but I think that the most important argument for the
Turkish accession to the EU should not be economic and geo-strategic
but political. This is because Europe is now a little bit indifferent
to geo-strategy, but not so to democratic values and the acquis
communautaire. Not much weight is given to the immense opportunity
that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in sharing our
democratic and socio-economic values,' Clos told Today's Zaman.
The Kingdom of Spain became a full member of what was then known as
the European Community in 1986. Most commentators considered the
formal incorporation of the Iberian Peninsula into the larger European
context as the beginning of an era, and the same commentators also
asserted that the transformation of the country's economy into one of
the EU's strongest was an undeniable reality.
Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, membership
has also served as a catalyst to dynamic economic development in
Spain, analysts explain, emphasizing how the EU has helped shape the
political process in Spain.
`In the Spanish accession process, when we talked about interests and
strategy, we never succeeded in the argument. We never moved the
hearts of the Europeans when we said we were close to the Strait of
Gibraltar, were very important for Europe or when we said our
agriculture was very important and we had the largest area of
farmland,' said Clos, who was the mayor of Barcelona from 1997 until
2006, when he was appointed minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade in
the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
`But when we talked with our European fellows and said, `Look, we want
to be in the EU because we want to stabilize our democracy forever,'
this was something understood by every European citizen on the street.
To give weight only to strategic and business reasons for European
accession is purely an argument of interests. To put emphasis on
values is a much deeper emotional question. There are countries which
have geo-strategic value and position apart from Turkey, but the kind
of democracy that you have reached with the republic and that you are
trying to improve through governmental and everybody's efforts makes
the difference for Turkey in relation to your neighborhood. This
should be the main driving force. Democratic Europe cannot lose a
growing democracy in this part of the world. If you ask a German,
Frenchman or Spaniard, `Do you want to help Turkey to be a
European-like democracy with our values or not?' the answer would be
yes. This is more important than oil or agriculture,' he remarked.
Differentiating between terrorism and socio-economic problems
Clos applauded Turkey's ongoing efforts for the normalization of its
relations with neighboring Armenia through establishing diplomatic
ties and opening borders as well as for the democratization initiative
launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government
last summer, seeking to settle Turkey's decades-long Kurdish problem
by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.
`I think that the Armenian and Kurdish initiatives, the democratic
initiative, are a kind of tectonic movement in Turkish policy. Not so
many years ago, it was unthinkable that there could be public debate
or a parliamentary debate on those issues. I believe this is a very
profound and positive movement in the direction of the Turkey's 21st
century policy. And also the approach to the neighboring countries,
which I sincerely consider is not against the EU but the opposite, in
favor of the EU. There is a kind of centenary change of direction, and
there are real, deep, strategic movements in Turkey which we value a
lot,' Clos said.
Last month, the Constitutional Court shut down the pro-Kurdish
Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism. While
announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Court also mentioned the
decision of the European Court of Human Rights in favor of the closure
of Batasuna, the political arm of the ETA, which was banned in Spain
in accordance with the 2002 Political Parties Law. A considerable
number of experts questioned the appropriateness of such a link
between the two cases, suggesting that Turkey's case laws reflect that
talking about independence in Turkey is a legitimate reason to ban a
political party even if that political party does not support
violence.
Clos was very careful in his remarks when asked whether Spain's
experience could act as an example for Turkey in resolving its Kurdish
issue since Spain successfully made a distinction between ETA
terrorism and the Basque issue.
`I will answer that by saying that those are difficult issues -- you
cannot offer magic solutions, and there are no models. These are very
serious and complex issues, and tackling them is specific to every
case,' Clos noted.
`The Belgian case is different from the Irish issue, and the Irish
issue totally different from the ETA solution. There is no theoretical
road map to solve the problem. You will find your way because Turkish
history is the essence of it. We can offer what we have found most
valuable in our case if you can take something, not everything, from
it because the subject is different. In our case, it was very
important to differentiate between the social problem and the
terrorism problem. Terror is terror, and we should fight terror. That
means that if there is a socio-economic or cultural problem, then you
should face this problem although there is terrorism, because if you
don't solve the socio-economic and cultural problem, you are caught in
the terrorist trap. In our case, the socio-economic and cultural
problems were faced with a new Constitution in 1978. And the terrorism
problem was solved in another place, by the police in the Interior
Ministry,' Clos said.
`It's quite clear; one thing was to solve the social and identity
demands of the Basque people -- 99.99 percent of whom are not
terrorists, of course -- and a very different thing was to fight
against the small minority who use arms to fight and in killing do not
respect human rights. The solution to the Basque political, cultural
and socio-economic demands was in the Constitution, and, very
importantly, it was not specific to the Basques. Terror should be
fought with anti-terrorist measures, and political, cultural and
socio-economic issues should be faced through the work of the
parliament and political parties.'
Ending the Clausewitz paradigm
Clos believes that every effort to promote understanding among people
on earth is extremely relevant and therefore believes that the UNAOC
has an important mission in discovering why humanity still has wars,
even though when the Cold War finished, everybody thought the world
was approaching an era without wars.
`This is the main objective of the Alliance of Civilizations: to have
a serious debate on why we keep misunderstanding each other and why we
still have wars in the 21st century. Clausewitz said that `war is
merely the continuation of politics by other means.' We should put an
end to the Clausewitz paradigm.'
05 January 2010, Tuesday
EMINE KART ANKARA
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-197 505-8-spains-clos-turkeys-eu-accession-should-be-a -love-affair-not-a-marriage-of-interests.html