By Gunduz Aktan
TDN- It appears that we will get a date to start European Union membership negotiations on Dec. 17, despite everything that has happened. This development, instead of lessening the uncertainties about our membership, may even increase them.
No one expects any development that will endanger our EU membership during the negotiations about the 31 sections. These are technical negotiations. They will produce the programs that have to be implemented in order for us to harmonize with EU standards. The funds provided by the EU for this purpose will determine the speed with which these programs can be implemented, in other words, when membership will be achieved. They may be able to drag the negotiations on by providing inadequate amount of funds.
The matters that create more uncertainty over our membership are separate from these technical negotiations. One of the sources of this uncertainty is Turkey being accorded special treatment because of its “special status.” Open-ended and drawn out negotiations, constant mention of the possibility of the suspension, efforts to develop a special status and to limit the freedom of movement, use of a council-dominated negotiating method in order to provide the member countries the power to veto the process and a referendum on the accession treaty are all parts of this “special relationship.”
EU officials had said that Turkey could not ask for special treatment because of its particular traits as the Accession Partnership Document was being implemented. Instability in our neighborhood could not be taken into account. There were even some who suggested that the founding principles of our republic, secularism and the unitary nature of the state symbolized by Kemalism, was inconsistent with EU membership. The EU was a club and those who entered it would have to abide by its rules. Now, however, the same EU is making up new rules that it hadn’t applied to other candidates, just because of these traits.
The opposition front lead by Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Wolfgang Schussel are trying to conceptualize their privileged partnership proposal by Dec. 17. Their aim is to assure that the summit will decide to begin the negotiations without using the word “accession.” This way, the negotiations may lead to a privileged partnership.
The Helsinki summit declaration in 1999 envisaged the resolution of the Cyprus issue by the end of 2002 and the transfer of the Aegean issue to the European Court of Justice Authority if the sides failed to solve it by the end of 2004 through negotiation. As a result, the negotiations will concentrate on the 31 technical sections. However, Greek Cypriots and Greece, believing they would be able to get more through negotiations rather than the Annan plan and the European Court of Justice respectively, showed no inclination to resolve the issues. They will use their veto power after the end of the negotiations on the first section and ask us to sacrifice our interests regarding Cyprus and the Aegean. This is the basis of the uncertainties.
Additionally, we might be asked to recognize the so-called “Armenian genocide” towards the end of the negotiations.
Also, there is the minority matter that was introduced as part of the EU membership process. The new Accession Partnership Document, which will be redrafted in April 2005, will include articles on this issue. If the attitude inherent in the recent progress report continues to be taken then, in other words, if they insist on including the Alawis and Kurds under the privileges granted to the non-Muslims by the Lausanne Treaty, or even ask for broader political rights for the Kurds that may lead to regional autonomy, domestic instability may increase even further.
As Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal said at a conference, the West went through a serious crisis between the world wars. This fascist era had its own ideology, political parties, media, and even its own philosophers, literature and “science.” European integration after World War II aimed to prevent the repeat of that era. Despite Turkey westernizing with the creation of its republic, it stayed out of this crisis. As a result, it was natural for it to enter the EU.
However, d’Estaing and his supporters are utilizing this anti-Semitic and racist attitude, which was the source of that crisis, against Turkey. They seem oblivious to the fact that this will take them back to the years between the wars.
Even the world wars that created significant uncertainty for states lasted four to five years. They are asking us to wait in this uncertainty as long as 10 to 15 years, because the EU has failed to formulate its own political will. These obstacles created by matters disassociated with the negotiations will be impossible to bridge, if not for a miracle.