HURRIYET- Columnist Tufan Turenc comments on Turkey’s path to EU membership. A summary of his column is as follows:
The next seven months will be the most important period for Turkey’s history. The future of the Turkish nation will be determined at the end of this critical period. Turkey will be either a European country, or the battle that has been carried out for 40 years towards this goal will have ended unsuccessfully. ‘Reaching the level of contemporary civilizations or not’: this is the sharp line that will be drawn. At the end of December we will either take a huge step on the path to become part of the civilized world, or we will be left out of that world. At this point, we all must be reasonable. Until the December EU meeting, we should work to meet these conditions: abolishing the death penalty, removing the legal obstacles to education on native tongues and ensuring progress towards a solution to the Cyprus issue. We shouldn’t have ignored the Mesut Yilmaz and Ismail Cem’s warnings. However, we failed in this regard as we were at loggerheads and some people were incapable of grasping this historical moment. However, the opportunity hadn’t been missed yet. We have a lot of time, that is, seven months.
If Turkey comes to its senses and the conspiracy theories and groundless fears in some people’s minds can be left behind, these conditions can be met. Then do you know what would happen? The EU would be shaken by a strong earthquake, those who are against Turkey’s EU membership would be shocked and Turkey would have the necessary date for membership negotiations announced. Then a much easier process would start because once the full membership negotiations begin, there can be no turning back for either side. Therefore the December meeting is of the utmost importance for Turkey. What would happen if Turkey doesn’t meet these conditions? Then relations between Turkey and the EU would lead to a serious ambiguity and nobody would be able to know when the necessary date for membership negotiations would be given. Thus, Turkey might seek new avenues and alliances. The latest decision made by the EU disturbed some of the naysayers in Turkey because one of the excuses they can never stop talking about was snatched away. Those who are against the EU were saying, ‘Why don’t they include the PKK and DHKP-C in their list of terrorist organizations? Clearly, they have bad intentions.’ In some respect these reactions became useful because they awakened the EU from its inattentive slumber towards Turkey. However, at this point the work done by Mesut Yilmaz and Ismail Cem on behalf of Turkey has been very useful. In conclusion, everybody understands the importance of Turkey for the EU. Anyway, the matter was settled amicably. I hope we can meet the necessary conditions and get a date for starting full membership negotiations.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION