*** DIDIER BILLION: L'enjeu turc. Adhésion ou non de la Turquie à l'Union européenn: une question déterminante, un choix d'avenir ! Armand Colin (Paris. Internet: http://www.armand-colin.com ). 2006,320 pp. ISBN 2-200-26952-8.
This book is the expression of political commitment. It has become impossible nowadays to talk about whether Turkey will or will not end up joining the EU without taking sides, for or against. A radical viewpoint, passionately defended. And this book is certainly no exception. Right from the very first sentence of the introduction, the author reveals the miltant nature of the book, immediately explaining that he cannot abide the way the EU has been prevaricating, procrastinating and rebuffing Turkey in various ways0 for forty years now. Deputy Director of the 'Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques' (IRIS), Didier Billion puts his cards on the table and tilts determinedly at anyone he believes to be guilty of unjustified anti-Turkish diatribes. Like the forty-three French politicians from the current majority who sent an open letter a few months ago to French President Jacques Chirac saying there are a lot of people in France and Europe as a whole who felt huge reluctance and even genuine aversion to the idea of opening accession negotiations with Turkey. "Aversion" according to the Oxford English Reference Dictionary is 'dislike or unwillingness', and by extension, the author notes that it also means antipathy, disgust and phobia and therefore raises the question of difference in a very brutal and extreme manner. He launches a fierce counter-attack, arguing that it is simply not acceptable for rejection of others, irrational fears and particularly xenophobia to be cited as reasons for rejecting a country's application, since the country, society and culture of Turkey have so much to offer the European Union. In the same spirit, he takes Sylvie Goulard to task for daring to write in "Le Grand Turc et la République de Venise" that the proof of sustainable changes in Turkish Islam has to be provided before negotiations are launched. The author acidly replies that until he read those words, he had had the weakness of believing that the European project was part of a particular political project that had been undertaken rather than a judgement of changes in religions of different sorts. He regrets that this is clearly not the case for some commentators, blinded by irrational hostility to Turkey and/or to Islam…
In the book, which is as impassioned as it is fascinating, the doomsayer tends to give way to the preacher, aiming to be in the service of Reason, because debate on this issue has to be carried out without prejudice and without over-simplifying, weeding out errors and false images. With this in mind, Didier Billion starts by examining the weaknesses in arguments put forward by denigrators of Turkey's application to join the EU. When it comes to 'quibbling about geography', he points out that nobody raised geographical objections to the accession of Cyprus, but Aphrodite's island is far further east than much of modern Turkey, at the same longitude as Ankara and only a few hundred kilometres from the coast of Syria, but nearly eight hundred kilometres from Athens. The author puts forward a convincing argument, returning with erudition to the fall of the eastern Roman Empire, to illustrate the fact that European history and culture has never understood Turkish history or culture. He quotes, for example, the now-forgotten saying that used to be common in Protestant Central Europe, 'Better Turkish than Hapsburg'. In the same spirit, he goes on to look at the complex and ambiguous question of identity and European values, being at pains to prove (and here too, his arguments will trouble anyone preferring doubt to dogma) that the accusations levelled against Turkey in this connection are dangerous because they are very 'culturalist' and wholly inoperative. Not to mention the fact that to rise about the trauma and barbarism of the Nazi period, the European project, in the form it was designed by the founding fathers, clearly rejected any logic of exclusion and systemic antagonism. From this viewpoint, whether one likes it or not, Turkey provides the best opportunity to reconnect with the ideals of Europe's founding project, forged in the fire of resistance to war, war-mongering and totalitarianism.
After slamming the ineptitude of demographic fantasies and under-estimation of Turkey's economic potential, the author goes on in the second part of the book (taking the form of argument and counter-argument) to look at big events in the history of the Republic of Turkey, described as a democratic, European construction, before considering the nature of Turkish society today, shedding light on the nature of the profound changes in society without avoiding the question of the sheer scale of challenges facing the country. The last part of the book considers Turkey's essential geostrategic importance. The general conclusion is that the debate surrounding Turkey's bid to join the EU in fact raises the question of the identity and nature of the European project as a whole in the twenty-first century, which the author sees as translating into the following option: Europeans either choose to turn in on themselves and cut themselves off from the rest of the world, with culture and religion cohabiting but not communicating, and with all the dangers of a clash of civilisations that would cause, or Europeans will have the courage and desire to build and offer a political project that can serve as a universal model, rejecting war-mongering and unilateral posturing by the United States.
Michel Theys
*** KEMAL KIRIªCI: Turkey's foreign policy in turbulent times. Institute for Security Studies (43 av. du Président Wilson, F-75775 Paris cedex 16. Tel: (33-1) 56891930 - Fax: (33-1) 56891931 - e-mail: info@iss.europa.eu - Internet: http://www.iss.europa.eu ). "Chaillot Papers", No. 92. 2006, 108 pp, €10. ISBN 92-9198-095-1.
Immediately after the Cold War, the future could have looked pretty serene for Turkey, described as the 'star of Islam' by The Economist. Over the 1990s however, the country rapidly found itself in an uncomfortable geostrategic position, surrounded by regions in conflict like the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, not to mention tense relations with its neighbours (partly because of their support for the Kurdish separatist guerrilla group PKK) like Greece, Syria, Iran and Russia. It was at that time that there was a strengthening of the national security component of Turkey's foreign policy. In this book, Prof. Kemal Kiriºi of the Politics and International Relations Department of Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, holder of a Jean Monnet Chair and Director of the European Studies Centre at the same university, demonstrates how the country turned itself from a 'post-Cold War warrior' into a benign regional power playing a key role in stabilisation. The author writes: 'Therefore the shape and form that Turkish foreign policy takes can have an important bearing on how the regions surrounding Turkey emerge from these turbulent times.' He explains that the big challenge is Turkey's accession to the European Union - all other foreign policy issues are connected with this in one way or another. But the prospect of accession is a big change: 'The Turkish public in general is very supportive of membership and is recognizant of the positive changes that have taken place over the last few years. There is considerable recognition of the role that the EU has had in this change. However, the public at the same time has very little thrust in the EU. Numerous surveys have shown that Turkish public opinion overwhelmingly believes that the EU will not admit Turkey as a member even if Turkey meets all the Copenhagen criteria.' In this book Kemal Kiriºi gives readers the opportunity to discover from the inside the reality of the foreign policy of a country whose whys and wherefores impact not only on the EU, but also on the Middle East and transatlantic relations through inter-cultural dialogue, Iran's nuclear programme and the transport of energy.
(FRo)
*** KIPROS KIBRIZ, VESNA MARINKOVIC: Chypre: une déchirure pour un peuple, un enjeu pour l'Union européenne. Fondation Robert Schuman (29 bld Raspail, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 53638300 - Fax: 53638301 - e-mail: info@robert-schuman.org - Internet: http://www.robert-schuman.org ). "Notes de la Fondation Robert Schuman" series. 2006, 81 pp, €10.
Each volume in this series demonstrates that concision does not necessarily have to mean approximation. In less than a hundred pages, Kipros Kibriz (the pseudonym of a high-ranking official dealing with the Cyprus dossier) and Vesna Marinkovic, who is in the process of completing a doctorate in international relations at the 'Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales' in Geneva, outlining the most important aspects of what needs to be known to start to understand the Cypriot problem, its causes and consequences, and its importance for the European Union, now that the divided island has become an EU Member State. In the conclusions, the authors note that the guarantor of British power in Cyprus has led to a policy of solely considering national interests, namely the preservation of sovereign bases on the island, since finally settling the Cypriot question would mark the end of a risky period for the preservation of its post-colonial past.
(PBo)
*** KALLIOPE AGAPIOU-JOSEPHIDES, JEAN ROSSETTO (Eds.) Chypre dans l'Union européenne. Bruylant (67 rue de la Régence, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5129842 - Fax: 5119477 - Internet: http://www.bruylant.be ). 2006, 297 pp, €35. ISBN 2-8027-2198-4.
Cyprus joining the European Union was largely overshadowed by enlargement of the EU at the same time 'to the East'. Since it joined, however, this little slice of Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean has got its revenge, particularly because of Turkey's application to join the EU, which makes this book a very timely appearance. The proceedings of a conference organised by the François Rabelais University of Tours in France and Cyprus University, it includes articles by a series of researchers looking at the conditions in which Cyprus joined the EU (the island is still divided). The real reasons underlying the rejection of the Annan Plan and the prospects for solution to the Cyprus problem through membership of the European Union using the 'peace through integration' method are the subject of very interesting academic articles.
(PBo)
*** FRANCESCO CAVATORTA, RAJ CHARI, SYLVIA KRITZINGER: The European Union and Morocco. Security through Authoritarianism? Institut für Höhere Studien/Institute for Advanced Studies (56 Stumpergasse, A-1060 Vienna, Austria. Tel: (43-1) 59991-0 - Fax: 59991-555 - Internet: http://www.ihs.ac.at ). "Reihe Politikwissenschaft - Political Science Series", No. 110, 2006, 21 pp, €6 (individuals), €20 (institutions).
Recent events on the world stage, particularly in Arab states, are whetting the appetite of the academic world with regard to the EU's foreign policy. The EU is taking on a greater role in international security, based on the theory that international stability can only be achieved by fostering the standards the EU itself was built on, namely multilateral treaties and institutions, democratic governance, respect for human rights and sustainable economic development and the like. Formalised in the Barcelona Statement of 1995, the EU's partner countries around the Mediterranean, one of the most important regions for the EU in terms of security and foreign policy, the EU expressed aims for the future which, ten years on, have not kept up with expectations, particularly in the social field. This short study examines EU foreign policy with regard to Morocco, taking a realistic view by not looking at the EU as a body simply producing rather idealistic laws but viewing it as a rational stakeholder that has its material interests in mind along with rules and regulations. In other words, the EU's security can only be achieved through political stability in other countries, and lack of respect for democracy and human rights would be a sacrifice worth paying if benefits exceeded costs. The authors argue that looked at in this light, the EU's foreign policy is more successful than some sources might suggest.
(NDu)
*** ANNA MATVEEVA: EU stakes in Central Asia. Institute for Security Studies (see above). "Chaillot Papers", No. 91. 2006, 125 pp, €10. ISBN 92-9198-094-3.
Anna Matveeva used to work for the United Nations development programme as a regional counsellor on peace and development in central Asia and as a researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. She now works as an associate at the Crisis States Research Centre of the London Schools of Economics and is the author of several publications on the Caucasus and central Asia. She has excellent understand of her subject matter, to the delight of readers because central Asia has long remained outside the focus on the European Union's attention. Several aspects of the region, however, cut across EU interests in terms of foreign policy and security. The five countries that emerged from the collapse of the USSR have not, it is true, experienced the wild bursts of nationalism seen in the Balkans for example. And minorities tend to exist peacefully side by side with the rest of the population. Moreover, as the author points out, "the viability of the new states has been ensured and the worst effects of the transition period are over… Basic security and stability exists, while crime is not a big problem for society". On the other hand, however, these countries are governed by authoritarian governments of one degree or another, and are all riddled with corruption, with nepotism being the general rule. Political parties, where they exist, are insignificant politically. Militant Islam has taken root and organised crime (particularly international drug trafficking) is thriving. Anna Matveeva describes these different areas, in the field of politics and government by elites which help themselves to lavish slices of the national cake thereby acting as a serious drain on the economy, and regional security and the various challenges listed in the European security strategy. The book also describes the battle of influence by various regional and global powers in the region (Russia, China, the United States, etc) and the EU's policy for central Asia. Through these different aspects, Anna Matveeva shows readers that the situation in central Asia is not as foreign to European concerns as one might believe. She also makes suggestions for a more lucid and coherent approach, since: 'At present, both sides are locked in their own discourses, resembling two parallel monologues'.
(FRo)