BY MURAT YETKIN
RADIKAL- It’s as if a psychological war had begun. It’s as if every day somebody was trying to find new issues to irritate Turkey and make Ankara abandon its EU membership aspirations. Yesterday it was French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy’s turn. After Bulgaria and Romania join the EU, he said, the enlargement process should be suspended. He implicitly meant that Turkey and Croatia should be excluded from the bloc.
Doesn’t Sarkozy know that his words have no legal bearing? Isn’t he aware that stopping Turkey’s EU membership bid would require a unanimous decision by 25 member countries? Or doesn’t German opposition leader Angela Merkel know that the process can’t be reversed? Don’t these French and German politicians know that Turkey’s negotiations will be open-ended? So why do they feel the need to reiterate it so often?
Now the debate about Turkey’s membership bid is focused on the framework document. The draft text will be distributed to the members of the EU Commission tomorrow. We know that the document includes some sensitive points that could bother Ankara, such as the Armenian and Cyprus issues.
We can summarize the current situation as follows:
The EU is no longer in favor of enlargement. Feeling deflated by the latest developments, Turks are finding it hard to keep their EU hopes alive.
So things are getting more difficult. Under these circumstances, Turkey should stay calm and act with common sense. Yesterday, before his departure for Yemen, Foreign Ministry Abdullah Gul reiterated Ankara’s official policy of continuing reforms no matter what happens. Ankara knows that it shouldn’t let itself be rattled by negative statements from European figures. Under the current conditions, we should maintain this position. We should not give ammunition to the anti-Turkish circles.
It is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, above all, who should keep steady nerves. He should control his temper and be a model of good leadership. ‘The skills of a captain can only be seen during a storm,’ as he always says.
Here is our captain, and here is a storm.