A Maltese perspective on Turkey's EU membership bid

The day after Lawrence Gonzi told the Maltese Parliament that his government supported Turkey's EU accession bid, the Turkish Daily News reported Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying: "If Turkey is still kept waiting after December 2004 [to receive a starting date for accession negotiations] then we look for what lies behind it and that will be the civilisation we belong to".

In plainer words: No date means that you Europeans will increase the risk of a clash with Islamic civilisation. Why? In the same speech Mr Erdogan said that the EU should be a place where civilisations meet. Says who? Turkey is not in the Union yet and has already begun to lecture it on what it should be? While making veiled threats?

Parts of the Turkish commentariat were more interesting in their reaction to last week's EU summit. Mehmet Ali Birand, an authoritative commentator, has reported, on the basis of several talks with senior European Commission officials, that the likely date for the start of negotiations would be July-October 2005, under the UK presidency (the UK is a strong supporter of Turkey's EU bid).

Burak Bekdil has pointed out that it is likely that what Brussels favours is a date with several strings attached to it, with eventual membership coming after no less than 12 years. Mr Bekdil has no time for Mr Erdogan's chosen rhetoric, warning that it "will only strengthen the Turkey-skeptics in the EU. Someone must tell Erdogan that his obsession with Samuel Huntington's famous book may be counter-productive".

From a Maltese perspective it certainly is counter-productive, a distraction from the real issues that might affect us.

The idea that, if Turkey's membership bid is rejected, somehow Europe would be signalling that it is not prepared to cooperate in close ways with Muslim countries is worse than simply mistaken. Think about it. If Turkey were made a member, would it be signalling possible membership to Morocco or Lebanon?

Of course not. Yet, Turkey is defining anything less than membership as a rejection of any sort of meaningful integration.

So, if anything, if Turkey were refused membership but given very preferential terms of political, economic and cultural cooperation under the neighbourhood policy, then a much more productive signal would be sent to the entire Muslim Mediterranean.

Besides, the idea that admitting Turkey as a member would be the best way of instituting a dialogue with Islamic civilisation would be considered with some scepticism by the EU's Arab neighbours, where Turkey is remembered by most as a colonising power and recognised now (despite recent tensions) to be Israel's foremost ally in the Middle East, exporting water (a security issue) and sharing military intelligence with it.

In its turn, the Turkish state under Mustafa Kemal built up its post-colonial national identity by rejecting much of its Ottoman Muslim heritage, legally proscribing certain kinds of religious speech, script, dress and manners in public life.

A Kemalist anti-religious prejudice within important sections of the Turkish elite arguably continues to exist today. Philip Robins, a foreign policy expert on Turkey based at St Antony's College, Oxford, has written: "... it is the relationship with Europe that remains pivotal for the Turkish elite... The relationship is about the very identity, aspirations, and, in turn, the maintenance of the privileges of that elite. For the Kemalist elite, being recognised as European is about being acknowledged as civilised and sophisticated. Rejection is tantamount to being dismissed as no better than the Anatolian peasantry that they themselves despise..."

So even though Mr Erdogan's democratic Islamic party came to power on a wave of reaction against this kind of elitism, it is difficult to see how Turkey will help advance a general European dialogue with other Muslim neighbours.

Dismissing the red herring arguments, we can begin to focus on the real arguments in favour of Turkey's membership. From a narrowly Maltese perspective, they boil down to two questions.

First, admitting Turkey as a member would foreclose certain options of development for the EU. If the UK favours Turkey's membership, this is because that would almost force the EU to concentrate on loose arrangements rather than deeper integration. Is this what Malta ought to favour, if it comes down to such a choice?

Second, despite the start of a membership negotiation process with Turkey, the sheer length of that process might be very useful to a Europe that wants to use the experience to develop a neighbourhood policy that permits very close cooperation with the southern Mediterranean. The European People's Party is in favour of continuing to consider Turkey under the neighbourhood policy even if negotiations do start. Is that what Malta, as a state, should favour, too?

ranierfsadni@europe.com