The fiction goes on. The authorities in Brussels and Ankara know very well that Turkish membership of the EU will never come about - but they use this fiction as an instrument that enables delicate and crucial aspects of their relationship to be discussed, and to make the rights and interests of each side known. Last week's Cooperation Council (the 55th session!) respected the rules - detecting this or that chapter that might prove able to relaunch the negotiations that have been blocked for years, while surrounding this illusion with a few sentences that are fitting for the circumstances. Thus Stefan Füle, the commissioner for enlargement, stated: “We need Turkey in the EU more than ever. The EU would thus be broader and more influential in the world.” Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish minister for foreign affairs, expressed his wish for all the negotiation chapters to be opened - at a time when 17 of them are blocked, in his opinion, “for political reasons”. The president of the Council of the EU, Eamon Gilmore, was more guarded, stressing the need to strengthen relations between Turkey and the EU - which, by avoiding the word membership, is clearly more realistic and reasonable.
Unrealistic Turkish demands. After the fiction, reality resumed its duties - with confirmation that the respective priorities are radically different. Turkey emphasises foreign policy and especially trade policy. It applies the EU's external tariff, without being able to participate in the negotiations that determine it - the EU negotiates and decides, Turkey has to follow. According to Mr Davutoglu, Ankara ought to be involved in the negotiation of any free-trade agreement between the EU and a third country - a clear allusion to the Euro-American negotiations that are being developed. Yet how could the USA imagine Turkey participating in these negotiations? How could the EU envisage it? Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that the Turkish discontent is justified on this point.
On a general level, it is unthinkable that Turkey be involved in the EU's foreign policy. Prior consultation would be absurd - and all the more so as Ankara, on its side, is very active in this domain, without sending any preliminary information in the Brussels direction.
Another Turkish demand is of a more immediate nature - Ankara is calling for the removal of visas for Turkish citizens who travel to the EU, but Brussels baulks at this.
In a nutshell, accession negotiations are blocked and will remain so.
The true differences. The Cooperation Council nevertheless enabled the two parties to indicate their approaches. Stefan Füle spoke of resuming the accession negotiations through the social chapter - for which Ankara should pick up the rules of the EU, which are so much more complete and binding than what exists in Turkey. Füle then reiterated that Ankara was still late in its application of the additional protocol and of several other contractual obligations or commitments. Yet the really burning and controversial issue is, of course, that of Turkish relations with Cyprus - a member country of the EU in which Turkey has set up an independent state that only Turkey recognises.
In fact, there could only be agreement to relaunch the negotiation on the chapter on regional policy - which is interesting for Turkey because it would give it the right to considerable EU funding.
My conclusion is that it seems evident that neither of the two parties believes in membership. Yet the majority of files mentioned need to have solutions found to them. The reasons for cooperation are plentiful and the two parties have interest in doing this - given the growing role of Turkey in the Mediterranean, in Asia and the in the Maghreb. In the Syrian tragedy, Turkey's role is of primary importance. Cooperation in the energy domain is crucial - both because of the discovery of gas around Cyprus (where Brussels' and Ankara's positions are radically different) and because of the relaunch of, and new issues in, the Nabucco project.
Energy cooperation and the function of Nabucco. We are well aware of the long history of this gas pipeline - which was initiated at a time when Turkish membership of the EU was considered possible and the Nabucco project seemed the right way to diversify Europe's supply of gas in order not to depend too much on Russia. For opening a direct route between Europe and the producer countries of Central Asia (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), Nabucco was announced as the appropriate instrument. Without returning to all the ups and downs of this instrument, what is new is that the French giant GDF Suez has come on board the project, which in 2020 will be able to transport 10 billion m3 of gas - a volume which, according to the companies concerned, could gradually be taken to 23 billion m3. Let me recall that Nabucco will have two separate outlets in Europe: (i) Turkey-Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria; (ii) further south, Turkey-Greece-Italy. It is in competition with the South Stream project, through which the Russian giant Gazprom, along with EDF (France) and ENI (Italy), aims to transport gas from Russia to the southern part of the EU.
Turkey is therefore doubly involved in the EU's energy supply.
Real significance of the current unrest in Turkey and elsewhere
The negotiating partner remains the same. My readers will have noticed that this overview does not take account of the demonstrations and disorder of recent days in Istanbul and elsewhere. The reason is simple - even if the ongoing unrest targets the government and other Turkish authorities that are in place, the people with whom the EU has to discuss and negotiate will not change! This is because these authorities have won three successive elections - the latest in June 2011 - improving their score every time. They are, therefore, the legitimate and incontestable negotiating partner for Europe in any discussion. Yet their policy is towards the progressive elimination of their country's secular nature, which is written into Atatürk's constitution. A new constitution is under way and it will give Turkey an explicitly Muslim religious nature - which is evidently incompatible with the principles of European unity.
Prime Minister Erdogan has, therefore, said of the events in Istanbul: “The people who can't beat the party in power at the elections are now pushing naïve and innocent citizens to revolt”. And he has called on the police to intervene less harshly. He therefore wants to appear the defender of freedom and democracy - when Turkey is the country in the world with the greatest number of journalists in prison. And any person who insults the values of Islam is also deprived of his freedom. Finally Mr Erdogan has stated that he is able to bring together a million demonstrators who support his government - but he prefers not to do this.
A few absurd attitudes in Europe. In the face of the situation described, some attitudes in Europe which demand the immediate relaunch of Turkish accession are absurd, illogical and - at the least - superficial.
Today's Turkey has made good progress towards a solution for the Kurdish issue, in a clearly asserted Muslim context (see this column in EUROPE 10819), and it has a huge role to play in Asia and in the Mediterranean part of Africa. Some observers speak symbolically of a return of the Ottoman Empire.
Europe's ambition must be to cooperate with Ankara as much as possible and to resolve the difficulties and obstacles described above. Its ambition must certainly not be to bring Turkey into the Community institutions and European Parliament. Cooperation - yes, but any expectation of EU membership is more and more absurd.
(FR/transl.fl)