The business of Turkish accession to the European Union is being handled very badly. Extremely badly, because the surfeit of opposing positions brings with it the risk of serious rifts between the Member States (as serious as the ones caused by the war in Iraq), and of poisoning the forthcoming referendums on the Constitution (which, logically, has nothing to do with it, but Turkey could become an issue in the for or against campaigns).
Divergences are everywhere. The problem with the Turkish dossier lies, paradoxically, in the strength of the arguments for as well as against accession. If the good arguments were all on one side and the bad ones on the other, it would be any easy choice to make. But the proponents of the "yes" vote advance serious strategic, historical and political reasons, and the reasons of the opponents are every bit as valid. For perhaps the first time in such an important case, the watershed is very clear, even within the European Commission, whose forthcoming report will be decisive for the Summit's decision on opening negotiations. Frits Bolkestein took up the historical, political and even the religious reasons for the "no" vote (see our bulletin of 8 September, p.8), and Chris Patten vigorously contradicted him, saying that the Dutch Commissioner's approach is not too far removed from "all this nonsense about the Christian club". Franz Fischler showed that applying current regional and agricultural rules to Turkey would not be financially tenable for the Union, to which Chris Patten replied that clearly "we cannot have Turkey with the same agricultural policy and the same structural funds". The sub-text was that both will have to be changed.
Differences of opinion are quite as marked in the European Parliament, where the "nos" are led by Elmar Brok of the EPP group. I mention this because he is the president of the EP's committee on foreign affairs, and will thus have a part to play in the debate.
The bit the "wise men" skirt round. The most spectacular stance recently was that of the "independent commission on Turkey", made up of political players like Michel Rocard, Martti Ahtisaari, Hans van den Broek, Bronislav Geremek, Emma Bonino, Mircelino Oreja, etc, which pronounced itself in favour of the immediate opening of accession negotiations if the European Commission's report on the Copenhagen criteria is positive. Anyone interested in this dossier should read the commission's report, or at least the broad summary of it published in our bulletin of 7 September, pages 7and 8. Here are all the arguments in favour of accession, based on "Turkey's European legitimacy". In my view, however, there is an enormous gap in the document: it does not take account of the opponents' fundamental objection, which is that by extending itself to Turkey, the EU would be turning its back on all possibilities of becoming a coherent political entity, with a common foreign policy and a common defence policy. If we add Chris Patten's comment that neither the agricultural policy nor the structural funds would be able to stay as they are, the conclusion seems to be that by including Turkey, the EU would become nothing more than a free trade zone, with a few elements of economic co-ordination and a few common rules (a good Briton, Chris Patten doesn't seem to think this is such a bad thing). Is this conclusion correct, or is it excessive? The problem of the effects on the future of the EU is, in practice, skirted round by the "wise" authors of the report, possibly because they are in favour of moving towards a free-trade zone, or because they no longer believe in the possibility of Europe as a Power, or because they think that this could in any case only come into being as a "hard core" of the current Europe, with or without Turkey.
To complete the overview, it remains to be noted that public opinion is also strongly divided (with clear negative majorities in certain Member States), that any new accession is decided upon unanimously, and that several governments are planning to hold referendums.
There is more than enough here to justify the greatest of concerns. The way it's being handled, the Turkish business could cause serious rifts between the Member States and also within some of them. If we are to get out of this relatively unscathed, it will take political courage and, above all, imagination. Tomorrow, I will try to provide a bit of food for thought and a few ideas which could lead us to less traumatic consequences than that which awaits us at the end of the road we are going down.
(F.R.)