THE HAGUE, Dec 23 (AFP) - Turkish membership of the EU will help Europe become a formidable political power in a globalised world, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told AFP.
"If you want to count in a globalised world I believe it is important to have considerable weight in terms of population, military capacity and economic capacity. Turkey will contribute to this political power we must become," Bot said in an interview late Wednesday.
European Union leaders agreed last week to open accession talks with Turkey in October 2005.
Although the talks will not necessarily end in EU membership, Bot said he felt there was a "good chance" Ankara would join the union.
"As the goal of the operation is (for Turkey) to become a full member of the EU I think that with a little good will we will get there," the minister said.
Faced with the booming economy of China and India and other Asian countries as well as the United States, the European Union "wants to change its economic might into political might".
"If Europe shows that it is united we can make things happen," Bot said.
As an example he named the EU involvement in the political crisis in the Ukraine as "a clear manifestation of the new found zest of Europe."
"With Turkey we will be more powerful, without a doubt," he said.
The value Turkey can add to the EU is also strategic because of its borders with Syria, Iran, Iraq and the Caucasus region, according to Bot, who switched effortlessly from his native Dutch to French, English and Spanish during the interview and even confessed to speaking some Turkish.
The 67-year-old diplomat warned that one of the dangers of not admitting Turkey was that the Islamic world could turn against Europe.
"We have to show the outside world that we are not discriminatory in regard to Islam because that is a conclusion that will be drawn from our refusal."
Bot, who was the Dutch ambassador to Turkey in the late 1980s, again lashed out at plans by France and Austria to hold referendums, calling this "unfair."
"If (Turkey) fulfills all the conditions, does everything we want, I think that saying that were are refusing them access only because of a referendum in one or two countries means we are changing the goal posts during the match."
When the EU agreed to launch negotiations with Turkey they set a series of tough conditions including a demand that Turkey sign a key diplomatic accord seen by some as amounting to de facto recognition of Cyprus.
"We have always very modestly and carefully called it a first step on the road to legal and formal recognition," Bot said, unwilling to say if he considered it a de facto recognition.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkish troops occupied the northern third of the island in response to a coup engineered by the then-ruling military junta in Athens to unite the country with Greece.
Only the Greek-Cypriot part of the island joined the EU on May 1, after Greek Cypriots rejected in a referendum a United Nations blueprint, known as the Annan plan, to reunify Cyprus.
"The Turks told us if the Greek Cypriot side had collaborated a few months ago there would have been a united Cyprus and we would not have this problem today," Bot said.
EU-leaders have called on both sides to open talks again on a unified Cyprus on the basis of the Annan plan.
"The Turks are no fools when they say if we go to full recognition now we make that change extremely slender if not impossible. There is no incentive for (the Greek-Cypriots) to negotiate because they already have what they want."
12/23/2004 09:52 GMT - AFP