|
Deleted
deleted
4116 Posts |
 Posted - 15 November 2002 : 10:37:30
|
A bridge too far?
In deciding if Turkey should join the EU, the logic of
unity clashes with the logic of peace
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday November 14, 2002
The Guardian
When should Iraq join the European Union? A ridiculous
question, you may say. But next month Europe's leaders
will be talking very seriously about taking in Iraq's
immediate neighbour, Turkey. If Turkey, why not,
eventually, Iraq?
Because it is not a European country, you say. But is
Turkey? By all conventional geography, only a tiny
part of Turkey, our side of the Bosphorus, lies in
Europe. Through much of European history, Europe
defined itself against "the Turk", the Arabs and
Islam. For the EU to cross the Bosphorus is already to
cross a rubicon. This is to move from a community
based on centuries-old notions of shared history and
geography to one based on shared democratic standards
and the future. Turkey, they say, is a "bridge"
between Europe and the Middle East, but having stepped
on to that bridge it would not be a much larger step -
in terms of history and geography - to cross to Iraq.
Yet we may be right to step on to the bridge. The case
for accepting Turkey is strong, especially in the
post-9/11 world. It has everything to do with the "war
against terrorism". This is not because Washington
will need Turkish co-operation for the northern part
of its planned three-prong invasion of Iraq, although
it will. That must not sway Europe, one way or the
other, in such a big decision. But if you are going to
address the deeper causes of Islamist terrorism you
need to show people in the Middle East the benefits
that can flow to Muslims who accept the basic
standards of democratic modernity. What better example
could there be than the moderate Islamist party which
just swept to power in free and fair elections in
Turkey, which accepts the secular state, and whose
leader will tomorrow start a tour of European capitals
to press for his country's EU membership?
Of course, to join the EU you must be a democratic
state, respecting human and minority rights. Obviously
Iraq - less a haven for terrorists than a regime of
state terror - is light years from that. But Turkey
has also been far removed from the necessary
standards. It has routinely persecuted its own
dissidents, and especially its Kurds. Human Rights
Watch notes detailed reports of torture involving 55
people since February this year. This summer, however,
the country passed a raft of legislation abolishing
the death penalty, freeing the media and improving
minority rights for the Kurds. It has a draft
anti-torture law which the new, Muslim government will
probably enact.
Why is Turkey getting better? Because it wants to join
the EU. Who is its strongest supporter inside the EU?
Its historic enemy, Greece. What a chance! The logic
of spreading democracy and respect for human rights,
of addressing the deeper causes of terrorism, of
helping Islam to adapt to the modern world and
avoiding a bloody "clash of civilisations" cries out
for us to say "yes".
Yet last week Valery Giscard d'Estaing said what many
Europeans actually think: never! Turkish membership
would, he opined, "be the end of the EU". There are
some very bad reasons for saying this. A Turkish
member of the Convention on the Future of Europe
immediately retorted that Giscard is a mirror-image of
the Muslim integrationists: "He's a Christian
integrationist. He thinks the union is a Christian
club." And, we might add, a rich white man's Christian
club, reluctant even to admit not-so-rich Christian
Slavs, let alone poor and not-quite-so-white Muslim
Turks.
However, there is one good reason beside the bad ones.
Giscard is not just an elderly, white, conservative,
Catholic Frenchman; he is also president of that
Convention on the Future of Europe. If you are trying
to think how the European Union might itself be a more
coherent political community then the prospect of
Turkey joining can lead you to blow a fuse.
As I argued in my last column, it is hard enough to
imagine a vibrant democratic community of 25 European
countries with no common language. Throw in 70 million
mainly Muslim Turks, with such a different history and
political culture, and the mind boggles. Can you see
Shropshire farmers or Scottish workers happily
accepting a Brussels decision swung by Turkish votes?
At stake is not just whether this thing could still be
called a European Union. It is whether it could ever
be a union at all. So when they talk Turkey next
month, at the Copenhagen summit, Europe's leaders will
be asking the biggest question of all: what's Europe
for? Two powerful logics clash at the gates of the
Bosphorus: the logic of unity and the logic of peace.
If Europe is mainly about creating a coherent
political community, with some aspirations to be a
superpower, we stop this side of the Bosphorus - for
another decade, at the very least. If we think it is
more urgent to promote democracy, respect for human
rights, prosperity and therefore the chances for peace
in the most dangerous region in the world, we step
boldly on to that bridge.
Yet we must know what we are doing. Each bridge leads
to another. Morocco's application for membership of
the EU has been turned down on the grounds that it is
not a European country. Can we really argue that
Turkey definitely is a European country and Morocco
definitely is not? Just down the road from Turkey is
Israel - a chunk of Europe implanted in the Middle
East. European-type solutions, with lots of
cross-border cooperation, putting economic ties before
military ambitions, are just what the state of Israel
and the new state of Palestine will need. If it comes
to war with Iraq, you can bet your bottom euro that
Europeans will be centrally involved in the subsequent
"nation-building". ("America does the cooking, Europe
does the washing up," as the bitter quip goes.) So
then you could end up with a European protectorate -
Iraq - right next to a European member - Turkey.
Of course, the ideal thing - at least from the point
of view of rich, pro-integration Europeans - would be
for countries in the Middle East to make their own
Middle Eastern union, one of a worldwide network of
unions of democratic states. But that hardly seems
likely. A rejected Turkey would not just turn round to
make a nice little local copy of the EU in the Middle
East, even if it could.
We have to decide. Giscard thinks including Turkey
would turn the union into the old British dream of an
ever larger free trade area. Even Britain is way
beyond that.
But an EU including Turkey would be somewhat less
European and somewhat less of a union. It might more
accurately be described as a community of contiguous
democracies. Is that necessarily a worse thing? It's
quite possible to conclude that Turkey is not a
European country and should join the European Union.
So, with Iraq and Osama bin Laden in mind, should we
want Turkey in? For decades, Europe's answer has been:
we very much want Turkey to go on wanting to join, but
we secretly hope it will never quite make it. Now the
space for such false-bottomed ambiguity is shrinking.
The crunch is near.
timothy.garton.ash@guardian.co.uk
|
 Stop the WAR! |
Edited by - Deleted on 15 November 2002 10:51:05 |
|
Topic Locked
