MILLIYET- Columnist Derya Sazak comments on Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Erdogan’s visits this week to Europe and the United States. A summary of his column is as follows:
The visits of Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan are beginning to look like the discovery of America by Columbus, who after all was actually trying to reach India by traveling west. In this case, Erdogan is trying to reach Turkey’s target of European Union membership via the United States. First Copenhagen, then Washington, and then Copenhagen again in a single week… He’s playing all of Turkey’s cards in his bid to get a date for negotiations from the EU. Solving the Cyprus issue will be easy if an exact date can be gotten from the EU. Sooner or later, the US will attack Iraq. If Turkey opens its bases before the US requests it, Bush can convince his fellow Western leaders on the Turkey issue. Although EU Term President Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh has said that a date won’t be given to Turkey at the Copenhagen summit, the Erdogan-Gul administration isn’t giving up the ghost. Mark these words of Prime Minister Abdullah Gul: ‘If Turkey can receive the date that it deserves at Copenhagen, clearly the Cyprus problem will be solved much more easily. The EU’s leaders should consider this issue strategically, forsaking small expectations.’ These words effectively answer the question, ‘Why is the EU avoiding giving Turkey a date for negotiations?’ Though the EU countries, especially France and Germany, are considering the EU’s future strategically just like Gul suggested, they have avoided committing themselves to Turkey’s membership because the first target of the EU’s enlargement strategy is the inclusion of 10 ex-Eastern bloc members. The government in Berlin, which has reeled from the heavy economic burden of uniting East and West Germany, said yes to Poland and also supported the Czech Republic and Hungary. Now Germany wants to call things to a halt. France, too, believes that much EU enlargement would threaten its importance within Europe. The US attacking Iraq and having a say in Middle Eastern petroleum would suit the interests of neither Germany nor France. Europe didn’t welcome Bush’s pressure on the Turkish issue, and military considerations played a large part in this. Europe doesn’t want the EU’s borders to extend to Iran, Iraq and Syria, our eastern neighbors. Thus, even though the Cyprus problem may be solved, Turkey still might not become an EU member. The Copenhagen summit is an important threshold for Turkey. If the EU doesn’t decide on starting negotiations before 2004, then Turkey will never join the club. Erdogan is aware of this situation, so he’s looking to force the White House with his thought in mind: ‘The path to the EU goes through Washington’.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION