Looming Crisis for Turkey

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in ft.com on Mon 8th May 2006

A crisis is looming in Turkey's bid to join the European Union. By the end of this year Turkey is obliged to extend its current EU customs association agreement to the ten new member states, including Cyprus, which joined in 2004. After a lot of fuss and bother, the relevant protocol was signed just in time to allow the formal membership negotiations to begin on 3 October last year. But Turkey suddenly added a unilateral declaration to the protocol denying that the extension of the customs union implied formal Turkish recognition of the Republic of Cyprus.

As the Turkish statement merely reiterated Ankara's long-held position, it was deemed even by Turkey's friends to have been clumsily provocative. The EU Council of Ministers formally rebuked the Turks, with the result that neither the Turkish Grand National Assembly nor, therefore, the European Parliament has yet ratified the trade agreement. Unless the Ankara Protocol is implemented in the autumn, the Greek Cypriots will have every excuse they need to call for a suspension of the accession process.

Such a breakdown would be a pity because, trade with Cyprus apart, Turkey's efforts to absorb the European acquis communautaire are going rather well. The government has recently picked up the momentum of reform and delivered another ambitious package of modernisation measures to the Turkish parliament. The economy continues to grow fast. The commitment of the government to European integration is not flagging and in this it is still supported by a large majority of Turkish public opinion, including the business community, most of the media and human rights NGOs.

Even the main opposition party, the Kemalist CHP, says it supports EU entry despite being bitterly hostile to almost every other action of the governing Islamic democrat party, the AKP. The government is right to claim that Turkey's democracy is growing stronger. The judiciary is undergoing (for it) painful reforms. Old taboos are now the subject of daily controversy. The struggle to adapt European norms to Turkish particularities navigates a host of tricky issues: tension between official secularism and popular Islam, the role of the military, the position of the Kurds, the vulnerability of non-conformists, the future of the Christian churches, the Armenian 'genocide'. All this, too, when Turkey's eastern neighbourhood is in chaos. As a remarkably cheerful foreign minister Abdullah Gül told MEPs visiting Ankara last week, 'democracy is all about pluralism'.

It is difficult to be optimistic about the Cyprus problem, however. Mr Gül has offered to open all Turkish ports and airports to Greek Cypriot carriers in exchange for a simultaneous end to the international embargo of North Cyprus. This is rejected outright by Greek Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos, currently fighting elections in the South. Prime minister Erdogan fears he cannot make more concessions to the Greek Cypriots without provoking a savage nationalistic backlash at home which would drive AKP from office in next year's elections.

The intransigence of Mr Papadopoulos in maintaining the blockade of the North seems to be based on the presumption that isolation and poverty will cause the Turkish Cypriot community to wither away. He is likely to be proved wrong. The rapid emergence of the Turkish motherland as a richer and self-assured regional power will ensure the survival of the small Turkish Cypriot entity. The EU has at last begun to subsidise the North, initially to the tune of € 139 million. Evolving jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice should gradually serve to spread the privileges of EU citizenship to Turkish Cypriots.

The EU's need to ensure security of oil and gas supply heightens the strategic importance of the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey's integration with Europe may prove indispensable in the long run to the development of a decent EU common foreign and security policy in the Caspian region as well as to the EU's efforts to bring lasting stability to the Balkans. In Brussels, aggravation at the lack of generosity of the Greek Cypriots towards their Turkish compatriots grows.

Turkey is in a stronger position than it realises, and the stakes are high. It would be sadly self-defeating for Turkey to stop a Greek Cypriot cargo ship from docking in Mersin. Better to call the bluff of Mr Papadopoulos and do the deal on trade, bringing Turkey into line with EU law and keeping the accession process on track. To sweeten the bitter pill, Turkey should demand a joint EU-UN package of measures for North Cyprus including visas, land swaps, cultural exchange, financial and technical assistance - and, above all, trade. Mr Gül rightly observes that 'compromise is part of European culture'. Now is the time for all sides to the Cyprus dispute to show themselves to be truly European.

Andrew Duff is vice-president of the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee.