BY SOLI OZEL
SABAH- Columnist Soli Ozel urges Ankara to set an agenda beyond the focus on this week’s visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Germany. A summary of his column is as follows:
Certain visible results of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Germany this week have been trumpeted by our newspapers. Their reporters covered the visit well. However, visits by columnists, senior journalists and Ankara correspondents might have produced deeper analyses.
Normally Ankara would hold meetings with high-ranking US officials and diplomats and ask policy-makers and think-tanks their opinions. During our countdown towards European Union membership negotiations, such inquiries and studies have not been applied to Germany. I wonder if the issue of sending soldiers to Iraq had been discussed and if so, what the people said. Will there be cooperation under the UN umbrella? Germany’s stance concerning the issue of Turkey’s EU membership is becoming clear. It seems the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has adopted a policy based on religious discrimination or enmity towards foreigners. Will the ruling Social Democrats make a stand by condemning this anti-Turkish position? Will German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s friendly relations with Turkey become a permanent political orientation?
Under these circumstances, Ankara should go beyond an agenda centered around only the Copenhagen criteria. In addition, we shouldn’t consider our relations with the EU as an alternative to relations with the US. It would be particularly beneficial for Turkey to create balanced relations with its partners within the Atlantic alliance. Turkey should simultaneously deepen its relations both with the EU and the US and redefine its relations within this triangle. In turn, Turkey’s European and American allies should see that the cost of alienating and isolating Turkey is too high. Of course Ankara should fulfill its duties. However, it should also tell most importantly Berlin and Paris what it can bring to the EU and conversely the high cost of its excluding it.