TURKIYE- Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on the European Union’s Progress Report on its candidate countries, the EU’s enlargement policy and Turkey’s status in the report. A summary of his column is as follows:
The EU’s Brussels Progress Report on candidate countries and its enlargement policy will be released today. The report includes, a six-page section discussing Turkey’s achievements in meeting the Copenhagen criteria. However, the report also states that Turkey has not yet been able to implement certain policies. This report will be presented to the EU Summit set to be held in December in Copenhagen.
The Brussels report doesn’t offer Turkey an exact date for its accession talks to begin. Yet, this doesn’t mean that such an offer won’t be offered at the Copenhagen summit, either. Thus, those people in Turkey who are dead set against the EU and who are unconcerned for Turkey’s future shouldn’t rejoice over what the report says. I don’t want to hear them parroting the old lines: ‘We told you so! They won’t let us in. They will divide our nation.’
The Brussels report is just a technical report, an explanatory document written by EU bureaucrats. However, the EU is a political organization. It is the most comprehensive civilization project that history has ever witnessed. It is contemporary civilization exemplified. It’s not the technocrats who will decide whether the EU should offer a date for accession talks; the decision is going to be made by the presidents or prime ministers of the 15 EU member countries.
This decision will not be technical, but political. The EU will try to weigh and assess Turkey’s potential and its geopolitical importance. Let’s put it plainly: The EU will decide which scenario, taking Turkey in as a member or excluding it, would better serve the EU’s interests.
Washington’s attitude will also be pivotal. Will the Bush administration encourage the EU to offer Turkey a date to the same degree as Clinton did in the past? What kind of a stance will the US take on the Cyprus issue? Everything’s going to be much clearer after the Copenhagen summit this December.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION