A week from today, barring a
last-minute upset, there will be a small, quiet signing ceremony, probably in
Strasbourg. Not even the UK Foreign Office seems entirely sure of the venue or
its format. But no one is questioning the scale of the ambition nor the risks
which underpin this event - the opening of the accession process for Turkey's
membership of the European Union. Welcome to regime change, European-style.
The
parallels are inescapable: the US launched its regime change in a Muslim
country with shock and awe, an unprecedented onslaught of military power. The
EU quietly initiates its regime change in the Muslim country next door with the
shock of 80,000 pages of EU regulations on everything from the treatment of
waste water to the protection of Kurdish-minority rights. While one sends in
its Humvees and helicopters, the other sends in an army of management
consultants, human-rights lawyers and food-hygiene specialists.
The
more the US model of regime change disintegrates into violent chaos in Iraq,
the more the EU glows with discreet pride in its own unparalleled record of successful
regime change, from post-dictatorship Spain and Portugal to the more recent
enlargement countries such as Hungary and Estonia.
The
EU model uses the incentive of membership to insist on dramatic change - once a
country is a member, the leverage is lost. So Turkey will have to jump through
a number of hoops on issues such as corruption and sewerage, which might trip
up many of the oldest EU members. It's a style of regime change which is
"cheap, voluntary and hence long-lasting", points out Steven Everts
in a new pamphlet,Why Europe Should Embrace Turkey.
This
kind of regime change is the only way in which the EU can lay claim to being a
serious global player - on almost every recent international crisis, from
Bosnia to Iraq, internal squabbles crippled an effective response. No wonder
then that there are plenty of Europhiles, particularly in the UK, whose eyes
glitter at the prospect of Turkey in the EU queue. They rattle off the long
list of advantages: the geostrategic significance of Turkey in relation to the
Caucasus and the Middle East; the key gas supplies that now run through Turkey;
the demographic advantages of a much younger population; the dynamic Turkish
economy - grown by a quarter since 2001; securing Europe's back door against
drugs and people-trafficking.
Besides,
Turkey has aspired to EU membership for over 40 years, and such has been its
enthusiasm in the past few years that, to win Brussels' favour, it has agreed
to the most ambitious political and economic reform programme since the great
secular moderniser Kemal Ataturk. Regime change is already well under way in
Istanbul, but not irrevocable; the prospective trial of the novelist Orhan
Pamuk for his comments on the Armenian massacre indicate that some in Turkey
are only too keen to torpedo the whole process. If Europe was to turn truculent
with Turkey, an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen human rights and ensure
stable democracy would be lost. The conclusion is clear: Turkish membership is
a "no-brainer", insist Britain's Euro elite - commentators,
government and analysts alike.
What
fuels this British enthusiasm is that Turkey offers the tantalising possibility
of exorcising the "clash of civilisations" ghost. If there was a
secular, democratic, economically successful Muslim state it would kill off
intense arguments about the incompatibility of Islam with democracy or Islam
with human rights and modernity. Furthermore, 80 million Turks within the EU
would also kill off the EU's credibility deficit in the Muslim world, where
it's seen as a Christian, white club with a dodgy imperial past (although the
latter is as much a Turkish problem as a European one in the region). Finally -
the coup de grace - it would strengthen the claim of Europe's 15 million-strong
Muslim minority to a home in Europe. In sharp contrast to the US, Europe could
shape a new, prosperous and peaceful accommodation between Islam and the secular
west.
But
this is the nub of the problem - vast swaths of Europe don't buy it. Either
they don't believe a peaceful accommodation with Muslims is possible or they
fear it requires such a dilution of European identity that they don't want it.
Britain's enthusiasm is echoed in only a few countries such as Poland and
Spain, while across the rest of the continent the "clash of
civilisations" argument is flourishing. Hence the quietness of the short
ceremony next Monday. No one has any desire to launch this project of regime
change with a fanfare - it fills European populations with horror. The figures
from a recent Eurobarometer poll tell it all: 80% of Austrians are against, and
only 10% in favour; 70% of the French are against and 74% of the Germans. It's
going to need a very hard sell to convince millions of people that Turkish
membership is in their interests, and after the failure of a previous Euro
elite project - the constitution - no one's relishing the challenge.
The
accession process will take at least a decade and over that time both the EU
and Turkey are likely to change dramatically, but what will make the process so
fascinating is that as the rows rumble on (no one denies that it's going to be
rocky - the Turks are allegedly "terrible negotiators", every detail
becoming a point of national honour) it will be the canvas on which will be
projected all of Europe's crucial choices.
Will
self-interest - put crudely, young Turks might pay for ageing Europe's pensions
- be trumped by the unpredictable politics of identity as an insecure Europe,
aware of its shrinking demographic and economic weight in the world, pulls up
the drawbridge and opts to define itself more narrowly around its historical
Christian identity?
This
self-interest isn't obvious: it will need European politicians to do a lot of
explaining. Geostrategic thinking doesn't come easily to your average voter and
they'll need reassurance that they are not going to be swamped by cheap Turkish
labour. Free movement of labour can be staggered, as it is for the new eastern
European members, and is unlikely to come before 2022. Similarly, structural
funds are not going to be swallowed up whole in the peasant hinterland of
Anatolia and probably won't be accessible by Turkey until after 2020.
But
the reticence about taking on the advocacy role for Turkish membership has been
evident across the political spectrum in Germany as politicians fear being
ambushed by the visceral emotions stirred up by Turkey. Austria and Germany are
still thinking of the geese whose honking woke the army when Vienna was under
siege from the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, commented one seasoned
observer.
Can
such history be laid to rest when it has sunk such long and deep roots into the
national identity? All over the world, in places such as Rwanda and South
Africa, there are many grappling with different formulations of just that
question. The EU ploughs funds and diplomacy in to achieve an affirmative. How
hollow does that ring if Europe itself, despite all its vaunted values of
freedom and tolerance and its envied prosperity, fails the test and lets
history win. Watch Turkey's accession process in the years to come as the
barometer of Europe's degree of civilisation.
26
September 2005
The Guardian
