BY DERYA SAZAK
MILLIYET- After Dec. 17, France and Austria both stated that they would hold referendums on Turkey’s European Union membership. As Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schuessel’s request, the Austrian coalition government offered Parliament an alliance against Turkey’s EU membership. But the proposal failed.
The Austrian Social Democrats’ justification for rejecting the proposal gave a democratic lesson: ‘You can’t make parties responsible for developments 10-15 years in the future.’ This is ironic. While Austrian leftists interpret the open-ended negotiation process in Turkey’s favor and charge that Schuessel’s offer is a trick, our opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) denigrates the EU summit’s outcome and asks that the process be frozen. There’s clearly a difference between the social democrats in Turkey and those in the EU.
There is resistance to Turkey’s membership, but there’s also great support. The European leftists want our negotiations to begin on October 3, 2005. The votes of the socialists, communists, liberals and Greens positively influenced the decision made last week. The British Labour Party, Germany’s Social Democrats and the Spanish Socialists made great efforts to start our accession talks. Couldn’t the CHP have also held a conference in Europe before the Dec. 17 summit? Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) had many suggestions for Ankara, but the CHP wasn’t interested. The CHP couldn’t send a message to the European leftists who tried so hard at the summit. The Austrian example is important because it showed that it would be wrong to damage the accession talks so early, before they even start.
Describing French Prime Minister Pierre Raffarin’s attitude towards Turkey as a u-turn is a sign that it would be too early to worry about the EU not accepting Turkey’s membership. The CHP shouldn’t leave the European leftists to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).