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There are numerous reasons, both historical and
contemporary, why the Istanbul government's
application for EU membership needs to be rejected
On Dec. 16, Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey's most famous
writers, will enter an Istanbul court to face a
charge of "insulting the national identity" after he
advocated open discussion of the Turkish genocide of
1.5 million Armenians in 1915 and 1916. Pamuk faces
three years in prison. Turkey's effort to fine and
imprison those who do not toe the official line
convinces me that I was correct to oppose opening
negotiations on the country's EU membership.
In December 1999, the European Council granted
Turkey the status of EU candidate-member, implying
that Turkey would accede to the union at some
future, unspecified date. The council subsequently
asked the European Commission to decide by October
last year whether Turkey had sufficiently fulfilled
the political criteria -- including democracy, the
rule of law and respect for the rights of ethnic
minorities -- for membership. That decision was one
of the last taken by Romano Prodi's commission, of
which I was a member. Of its 30 members, 29 said
that Turkey had fulfilled the criteria sufficiently
to proceed. I was the lone dissenter.
The commission's own report on Turkey, prepared by
Gunter Verheugen, who was then in charge of EU
enlargement, shaped my decision. This report
mentioned that in 2003 some 21,870 Turks submitted
asylum claims in the EU, of which 2,127 were
accepted. In other words, the EU's own governments
acknowledged in 2003 that the Turkish government had
persecuted more than 2,000 of its own citizens.
Meanwhile, the commission published a progress
report on Turkey that granted that reforms were
continuing, albeit at a slower pace, under Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mildly
Islamic-minded government. Yet the report also
presented serious misgivings: human-rights
violations, including torture, continued; the
military's influence remained too high; freedom of
speech was not universally observed; non-Muslim
religious and cultural minorities faced
discrimination; and violence against women was not
opposed strongly enough.
Not much has changed since accession talks began
this October. Beyond the current persecution of
Pamuk, unacceptable behavior abounds. In March this
year, the police violently disrupted a demonstration
to celebrate International Women's Day. In May, the
largest teachers' union was banned for promoting the
education of Turkey's 14 million Kurds in their own
language.
Indeed, intolerance goes right to the top of the
Turkish government. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
abruptly cancelled a recent press conference in
Copenhagen when he spied a Kurdish journalist in the
audience and the Danes refused to evict him.
Such actions and attitudes amply justify my dissent
of October last year. But, even if these
shortcomings were removed, Turkey should still not
be admitted to the EU, because it is not a European
country. Christianity, feudalism, the Renaissance,
the Enlightenment, democracy and industrialization
have made us what we Europeans are, but they have
not made Turks who they are.
So I am not convinced that reforms in Turkey
implemented at the insistence of the European
Commission would continue after accession. Indeed, I
suspect that there will be backsliding.
Moreover, Turkey's accession would lead inevitably
to that of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, and perhaps
of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The first three
of these countries are certainly more European than
Turkey. Leaving the three Caucasian republics aside
but including the successor states to Yugoslavia,
this would mean an EU of some 35 members. What sort
of union would that be?
The EU is not simply a club of friends. It is based
on freedom of movement of goods, services, capital
and people. The Commission, as the guardian of the
union's treaties, must protect these four
fundamental freedoms, which means that it must
sometimes persuade, and if necessary force, member
states to change their laws. Alcohol policy in
Sweden, the Volkswagen-law in Germany, and
discrimination against foreign investment funds in
France are examples of cases that made the
Commission unpopular. But they were necessary.
By the time I left the commission, I was sitting on
a pile of 1,500 such infringement proceedings. In
short, EU membership entails having to accept
incisive measures that deeply affect a state's
internal affairs.
That will be impossible with such disparate members.
The EU would fall victim to what the historian Paul
Kennedy calls "imperial overreach." The EU would
become unacceptably diluted. That is why former
French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing feared
that Turkey's entry would lead to the EU's breakup,
and it is why former German chancellor Helmut
Schmidt said, "Accession of Turkey would be more
than the EU could bear."
But the strongest reason to oppose Turkey's
accession is a question of democracy: A majority of
the EU's population simply does not want it.
Frits Bolkestein was a member of the European
Commission from 1999 to last year and is a former
Dutch minister of defense.
Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences
Related issue:
Armenian Genocide by Turkish Muslims against
Christians
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