EU: Turkey’s Best Strategy

“Each time we jump a hurdle, they set up another!” This is how Mesut Yilmaz, the former Turkish prime minister, described his country’s experience with the European Union a few years ago. Yilmaz knew what he was talking about if only because for many years, in different government positions, he had been in charge of his country’s negotiations for EU membership.

Yilmaz’s view was reconfirmed just over a week ago for the nth time. While the European Union summit agreed to open formal negotiations next year about the Turkish application for membership, a number of member states raised the possibility of submitting the issue to referendums. At the same time the EU has raised other issues, including Ankara’s recognition of the Greek-dominated government in Nicosia, Cyprus, in a bid to set up hurdles along the road to Turkish membership.

Even opponents of Turkey’s membership now admit that it has met most of the conditions fixed by the EU, thus leaving little excuse for dragging on the final negotiations about it membership application. It was, therefore, necessary for opponents of Turkish membership to find other hurdles.

One such hurdle is a suggestion by French President Jacques Chirac that Turkish membership be put to a referendum. The latest public poll, held in November, shows that 67 percent of the French will vote against Turkish membership under any circumstances. In Germany, opponents of Turkish membership account for 55 percent of the electorate. If a referendum were to be held in all the 25 EU member-states, Turkish membership would be rejected by a comfortable majority. The only EU countries where Turkish membership is likely to win are Britain and Holland.

There is, of course, nothing in EU rules to oblige the member states to hold such a referendum. But it is enough for a single EU member to reject the Turkish application for it to be set aside.

It is not clear whether or not Chirac is personally opposed to Turkish membership. He may well be hoping that Turkish membership negotiations would continue long after he has retired from politics. Thus the referendum he promises may never happen under his watch. Others who openly support Turkish membership hope that the process of negotiations, expected to take at least five years, would help change EU public opinion in favor of Turkey.

Yet another view, known as Plan B and mostly backed by the new members of the EU, is to offer Turkey what is called a “privileged relationship”. Short of full membership, this will offer Turkey a number of special economic advantages in its relations with the EU.

The background to all this is the assumption throughout the EU that it will be doing a favor to Turkey by letting it in.

While this is certainly true, it is equally true that Turkey, too, will be doing the EU a favor by joining it. It is, perhaps, time for both sides to acknowledge this fact and for the Turkish leaders to argue it more persuasively. Let us review some of the contributions that Turkey could make as a full member of the EU.

The EU started as a Common Market and is thus primarily about doing business. By the time Turkish membership is finalized, perhaps in 10 years’ time, Turkey would have a population of over 80 million, representing a market worth some $200 billion.

As a developing economy, Turkey would also be a magnet for foreign direct investment. The most conservative investments put its capacity to absorb foreign capital at around $3 to $ billion a year, needed to develop its agriculture, industry, services, and infrastructure.

But Turkey would be doing the EU bigger favors in strategic terms. The EU today is a club of aging nations that, without a steady flow of immigrants from the peripheries, especially North Africa, would face a dwindling population. The average age in the EU today is 39 years, while in some countries, notably France it is approaching 42. In Turkey, however, average age is 27 years.

Turkey could reinvigorate the European labor market by offering millions of young workers. This, of course, may provoke xenophobic sentiments in the EU. Neo-fascist parties in the EU are already talking of the Turkish peril. But the choice available to EU’s aging nations is between the Turkish option and a steady flow of immigrants from Arab and African nations that do not espouse the same pro-European sentiments that the Turks have built over decades. Turkey is the only major nation on the peripheries of Europe to have made a conscious decision to Europeanize itself since the 1920s.

Turkey could also become an interface between the nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia that belong to the same cultural and linguistic families, and the EU. Beyond the Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkey is the natural interface between Europe and Muslim nations, especially in the Middle East.

To all this must be added Turkey’s role as Europe’s principal line of defense for the past half a century — a role illustrated by the fact that the Turkish Army is the largest of any NATO member after the United States.

Despite all these facts it is clear that Turkey is not yet welcome in the EU and that it has powerful adversaries in virtually every member state. The worst compromise would be to keep Turkey dangling for years, if not decades, by promising membership but dragging on the so-called final negotiations.

Has Turkey been unwise to put all its eggs in the EU basket?

Many in Turkey are beginning to believe so. Some go as far as criticizing the initial decision to seek EU membership.

Such criticism however misses the point. The strategy of seeking EU membership, first elaborated by the late President Turgot Ozal, has already benefited Turkey, especially by forcing its successive governments to strengthen the nation’s democracy, improve respect for human rights, and reform the derelict bureaucracy. The prospect of EU membership has helped limit the Turkish military’s political role, and persuade all political parties to accept the principle of alternation in government based on elections.

For all that, it would be unwise for Turkey not to develop a Plan B. Turkey cannot expect to wait indefinitely for the EU to make up its mind. Some of the key decisions that Turkey must make in this century cannot be postponed for much longer.

On the economic front, Turkey should speed up its liberalization plans, especially by opening the development of its natural resources to foreign investment. It should also remove the last remaining bureaucratic hurdles that discourage foreign ownership of companies and real estate. Making millions of Europeans owners of shares in Turkish companies and of villas and apartments in Turkish resorts would not only help sustain economic development but would also raise the level of support for Turkish membership within the EU. (Incidentally, Spain used a similar strategy to build up support for its membership of the EU.)

Turkey can succeed without early membership of the EU.

The best strategy for Turkey is to pursue its economic and political Europeanization regardless of the length of negotiations with the EU. Turkey has most of the economic and demographic assets needed to build a successful society. It should work toward the day when the EU would be begging it to join — urgently.