Turkey, the EU, and an alliance between civilisations

Although this recommendation will still have to be approved unanimously by the leaders of the EU in a summit meeting on December 17, it is highly unlikely that any of them will challenge it. According to experts, these accession talks may easily last between ten and fifteen years. In its recommendation, the European Commission also made it clear in writing that the EU negotiators may suspend or stop these talks at any time if they are not satisfied with the progress of the negotiations.

While in the past , in a couple of cases the EU negotiators had to resort to such threats in the middle of the negotiating process, this is the first time, the EU has laid down this special condition in advance. In many countries of Europe, specially in France, Germany, Holland, and Austria, there have been pronouncements and demonstrations against Turkey's proposed entry to the EU.

One of the EU commissioners called Frits Bolkestien from the Netherlands warned of the "Islamisation" of Europe. Helmut Schmidt of Germany and Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France have spoken out against it. President Chirac, although personally in favour of Turkey's entry, is thinking of holding a referendum on this issue. Germany's CDU and CHU are against Turkey's entry in the EU. Instead, they have recommended a "special associate status" for Turkey.

Turkey's journey towards full membership of the EU has indeed been a very slow, painful, and frustrating one. It started in 1959, when Turkey filed its application to sign the European association agreement as the first step to become a full member. Four years later, in 1963, it signed the agreement with the European Community, which at that time had only the six original members, Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. While the Community kept on expanding, Turkey was kept at bay.

Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined in 1973, Greece in 1981, and Portugal and Spain in 1986. By the way, Ireland was not required to loosen its marriage, contraception, and abortion laws before entry, and few, if any ruminated darkly about the imminent "Catholicisation" of the EU when Spain and Portugal joined. After all, Europe's Catholics and Protestants had killed each other and devastated the continent for more than a century. By then, the Community had become a twelve-member club. Turkey's application to be formally considered as a candidate was not accepted until 1987.

But in 1989, the European Commission rejected the application, stating that Turkey was not fit to be considered as a candidate. Turkey kept insisting. Meanwhile in 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU, making it a 15-member bloc. Finally in 1999, the EU formally accepted Turkey as a candidate.

In 2000, the Treaty of Nice provided for the extension of EU membership to 12 East European (former enemies of the West Europeans) and Mediterranean countries by 2007 -- Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Malta, Cyprus (only the Greek part), and Slovakia by 2004, and Romania and Bulgaria by 2007. In 2005, Croatia will start negotiations for EU membership.

In December 2002, the leaders of the Union agreed to open formal negotiations with Turkey in December 2004, provided Turkey made the necessary legal, fiscal, and economic reforms recommended by the EU. A quick look at the map of Europe will show that during the last fifty years or so, the original 6-member European Community has expanded to the west, north, east, and even to the south (Malta and Cyprus) to become a huge economic bloc and a potentially powerful political entity. But it has so far rejected even to consider Turkey's application to become a member and kept it hanging outside the club door. Why?

Instead of beating about the bush, if one wants to give a straight answer to this question, then I am afraid, the answer is: Europe's hypocrisy and double standards. The first excuse that is put forward is that Turkey does not really belong to Europe. Turkey has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation since 1952 (even a few years before the European Economic Community itself was founded), militarily defending the eastern flank of Europe against the Soviet Union, and it has also been a member of the Council of Europe since its inception. No one then bothered to mention that Turkey was not European. Again, geographically, if Turkey is not considered European, how have Cyprus and Malta been accepted as members of the European Union? I agree with President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic when he says: "It is arrogant to think that any one country or a group of countries owns the proprietorship of a trademark called Europe."

The fact that Turkey is big is often held against it. Turkey is indeed a huge country of approximately 780,000 square kilometres where 71 million people live. The conservative Europeans fear that given its high birth rate, Turkey, if allowed in, by 2030 will become the most populous member of the club. It is anathema to them to think that a country with a different cultural and religious background may have the largest representation in Brussels and thus control the decision-making process. This fear is borne out by the fact that no protests were heard in 1990 when East Germany joined the EU as part of reunified Germany, thus converting Germany into the most populous country of the Union with maximum representation. In my opinion, this fear has no logical foundation either. Under the double majority voting system proposed in the new constitution, Turkey alone will be unable to influence the decision-making process in a club with close to 30 members.

The next excuse is that it is a poor agricultural country and will need large transfers from the EU for its development. While this is true that Turkey at present is a poor country, the way its economy is growing (average GDP growth of over 8 percent), with further foreign investments from abroad and help from the EU, it may soon become a showcase success story for the EU. When Ireland became a member in 1973, no one could imagine the progress it would make in the next 30 years. Poland's large and backward agricultural economy has not been a hindrance to its joining the EU.

Many Euro-sceptics are also afraid of possible Turkish immigration -- that the Turks would take Europe's scarce jobs. Already there are three million Turks living in the EU. Given Turkey's huge population and poor economic condition, many fear that if Turkey is allowed in, massive immigration will take place causing serious economic and social problems in the host countries. This is a natural fear. The same fear was expressed when Spain and Portugal applied for membership. But after their admission, nothing akin to a massive emigration took place. In fact, in the case of Spain, there was a reverse immigration. As the Spanish economy prospered, many Spaniards, who had migrated to other parts of Europe started coming back. In any case free movement of labour can be introduced on a gradual basis as happened in the case of Spain (seven years' transition period was allowed). On the other hand, if one can examine the immigration issue in a dispassionate manner, Turkey's mostly young population may prove to be a boon to Europe's economic growth. After all, everybody knows that Europe's ageing population is a hindrance to sustained economic growth.

It is also said that Turkey is not a democracy in the strict sense of the term. There is some truth in this. The deplorable way successive Turkish governments have treated the Kurdish minority has contributed to this image. But over the last two years, Turkey has made sweeping legal reforms and enormous progress in the fields of human rights, women's rights, and freedom of expression, to bring them in line with EU standards, although in some cases actual implementation of the new rules will take some time.

Many prisoners have been released, systematic torture under police custody has been banned The judicial system has undergone major reforms and the death penalty has been abolished. And the government is working on a project to accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Kurdish minority. The use of Kurdish language is no longer prohibited in schools, and on radio and television. The special position occupied by the army as the ultimate guardian of Turkey's secularism is indeed a serious obstacle on its path to eventual entry, but considerable progress has already made in this field. A law has recently been passed by the government to bring the army under civilian control although, in practice, it seems it is still not subordinate to the Grand National Assembly.

Finally, religion and culture are the most important reasons why many Europeans are against Turkey's membership in the EU. Although the constitution of the EU provides for religious freedom, most Europeans (of course with notable exceptions) and some American intellectuals consider the EU as a Christian club and not as a "community of values" as the Turkish Prime Minister Racep Erdogan would like it to be. Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, a neo-con intellectual has gone so far as to predict that at the end of the 21st century, "Europe will be a part of the Arab West or Maghreb."

On this issue, I tend to agree with Josep Borrell, the current president of the European parliament when he says: "Our religions may be different but the values are the same." As far as culture is concerned, is European (Christian) culture that different? Can anyone from Greece, Cyprus, Malta, southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, etc. sincerely state that his country's present culture has not been influenced by Islamic culture? It would be equally preposterous to think that the current Muslim culture across the world has not been influenced by the Western Christian culture. Instead of insisting on differences -- some real and some imaginary -- the EU should be "an address where civilisations harmonise" as the Turkish Prime Minister wants it to be.

There are big geo-strategic and security reasons to welcome Turkey into the fold. In the words of Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign minister: "To close the door now, at this moment of tension between Islam and the West, would be a disaster."

Europe has to reassure an alienated Islamic world that it is not in agreement with Bush's so-called war on terrorism, which has so far been directed against the Muslims. The EU, which was born to eliminate the disastrous Franco-German rivalry, to confront the totalitarian Soviet empire, to bring uniform economic progress to the continent, and to give new meaning to the term civilisation, by allowing Turkey within its fold, will contribute positively to the current Spanish Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero's idea of "an alliance between civilisations" and go a long way to prove that the "clash of civilisations" theory is doomed to failure.

Chaklader Mahboob-ul Alam is a regular columnist for The Daily Star.