BY ISMET BERKAN
RADIKAL- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has predicted that the EU will give us a conditional yes. For Schroeder, this means that our membership negotiations won’t start immediately. Let’s say plainly that if such a decision is made during the December EU summit, Turkey should reject it and walk away from the table. Neither Europe nor Turkey needs another decision like the one made at the 1997 Luxembourg summit. If such a decision is made, there will be intensive discussions in both Turkey about the EU. For this reason, in such a situation, the government can leave the table, saying, ‘Turkey has reason to doubt Europe’s trustworthiness and reliability.’ Europe can make a straightforward decision about Turkey in December, that is, giving the authority to the European Commission to start membership negotiations with Ankara. The decision to start negotiations is actually more important than starting them. After this decision just sitting at the table and starting negotiations is a technical and bureaucratic matter. Nobody can estimate the length of these negotiations. Some optimists believe they will end in five or seven years, while pessimists expect 15. The average estimate seems to be 10 years.
We don’t know what sort of a Europe we will face and where Turkey will be over the next decade. For this reason, it might be absurd to talk about full membership now. However, neither we nor Europe know what’s currently important. Turkey has no patience for new conditions, dodges and stale delaying tactics. We should be as sincere to Europe as it is to us. If Europe thinks, ‘Unfortunately a promise was given to Turkey in 1963. We should keep that promise but if we delay it, Turks will voluntarily give up and save us,’ we should help them by refusing. We’re aware of our shortcomings on the quality of democracy and the respect for human rights and the rule of law, and we’re doing our best to address them. Of course we’ll do so with or without Europe. However, keeping Turkey in suspense and erecting new hurdles is nothing but racism and discrimination. We should tell Europe about this religious and cultural racism.