BY SEMIH IDIZ
MILLIYET- In spite of confusing signals from the European Union to Turkey, everybody says our membership talks will start on Oct. 3. The EU should keep its promise on this date, but certain EU circles, including France and Germany, say they will continue to try to persuade Turkey to give up its EU membership bid and that an important part of these efforts will be the ‘negotiation framework’ document. This document will determine the way the talks will be held. It’s expected that it will be approved by the 25 EU members. For this reason, those opposed to Turkey will likely add to the criteria for Turkey’s EU membership. How will this happen? These countries won’t stipulate new criteria, though they would like to. However, they will take certain preconditions from the ‘general’ level to the ‘specific’ one. For example, good neighborly relations are among the EU’s general conditions. This is a general expression. However, it’s likely that certain EU members will try to make this concrete by saying that as part of good neighborly relations, Turkey has to open its borders with Armenia. This is valid also for the issue of minority foundations. This issue isn’t a precondition for Turkey’s membership. It’s included in the general framework called ‘minority rights.’ However, at this point, they might say that the issue of minority foundations will be an indicator of Turkey’s commitments about minority rights. If they say that, certain people in Turkey will use take up anti-EU rhetoric. Those who are opposed Turkey within the EU also trust the demagogic words of these people.
However, whatever their subjective calculations are, not everybody in the EU is opposed to Turkey, including Britain, which next week will begin its term presidency. Of course France might say that Britain is supporting Turkey to hinder the European bloc. Every country in Europe is making calculations, and so should we. However, we should do this in the right way and benefit from others’ calculations. Whatever the reason, those who support Ankara now expect good news from us. They say, ‘This way we can gird ourselves against those opposed to Turkey’.