Turkey's EU dreams require sensitivity and leadership

WorldView: The Turkish ambassador in Vienna emphasised his country's proud past as a European power, the role of Ottoman Turkey as a multicultural and tolerant empire in its 500 years of European involvement, and the progressive role of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's modernising nationalism in moulding modern Turkish identity on a European model.

We spoke in October 1998 in a large dark room in the embassy overlooking the famous Belvedere palace built in the years following Turkey's defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683, which set a definitive limit on Ottoman expansion.

He was still smarting at the refusal of the European Council in Luxembourg to endorse Turkey's application to fully join the European Union the previous year, which he described as a stupid decision and an insult to Turkish pride. He hoped it could be revisited over the coming year. The key actor was Germany, he believed, following the recent victory of the SPD-Green coalition in elections there.

But he remained pessimistic that the Germans would be willing to change their citizenship laws to accept the notion of dual citizenship. He pointed out that the number of Turks living there and elsewhere in the EU, at perhaps six million, was more than the population of several member-states, including Ireland. The alternative to an inclusive definition of European identity open to Turkish membership as a Muslim nation would be a much narrower and restrictive one centred on Christianity.

The latest Eurobarometer poll, published this week, brought our conversation to mind. It finds that 52 per cent of voters in the EU oppose Turkish membership, 35 per cent support it and 13 per cent don't know. Albania is almost as unpopular. Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Ukraine and Romania are roughly evenly balanced, Bulgaria and Croatia are favoured, whereas there is very strong support for Switzerland, Norway and Iceland joining. The figures were 80-10 against Turkey in Austria, 70-21 in France, 74-21 in Germany and 53-39 in the Netherlands. They were 73-22 in favour in Turkey. In Ireland 38 per cent were in favour, 34 against and 29 per cent did not know.

The ambassador's pessimism about German-speaking Europe's attitude to Turkish membership seems to be confirmed by these findings - and also by the expected victory of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in September's elections. The SPD-Green coalition did change citizenship laws, but restrictively. It has also supported Turkish EU membership, in sharp contrast to the Christian Democrats. Now France has decisively joined this camp after the referendum on the EU constitution. The argument there and in the Dutch referendum that enlargement should slow down and that Europe needs clear borders seems to crystallise hostility to Turkish membership.

This comes ahead of October's decision on whether to open formal negotiations with Turkey. There is no guarantee they would be successful and every reason to believe they could take 15-20 years to complete, by which time circumstances could have radically changed. One has only to think of the impressive changes within Turkey and its relations with Greece and other neighbours since 1998 to understand this.

After Turkey was accepted as a prospective EU member at the Helsinki summit in 1999 there has been a flood of political, legal and constitutional reforms, driven in large part by the imperative of meeting the Copenhagen Criteria for EU membership. Civil and cultural rights for the Kurdish and other minorities have been transformed. The state of emergency in the southeast of the country has been lifted, the role of the military reined in, the death penalty abolished in peacetime, there is greater equality between men and women and extensive economic stabilisation.

While much remains to be done to bring Turkey into line with EU norms, it must be recognised that this reform program, most of it brought in by a moderate Islamic party led by the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a major transformation. In many respects it changes the strictly assimilationist, centralised and Jacobin model of nation building Ataturk adopted from republican France towards a more multicultural model recognising diversity.

But the broader picture of EU enlargement to include Turkey must also be borne in mind. Events there were brutally brought home to Irish people this week when the Co Waterford teenager Tara Whelan was killed in the minibus bombing at Kusadasi carried out presumably by a breakaway Kurdish group. In fact most Turkish Kurds strongly support EU membership as an affirmation of their rights. The breakdown of the ceasefire between the PKK organisation and the Turkish armed forces last year cuts across that and puzzles informed commentators. It may have to do with uncertainties arising from neighbouring Iraq, where the PKK found sanctuary.

The strong case in favour of a Turkish vocation to join the EU is closely related to the need for Europe to accommodate differences with its own Muslim minorities and to find a constructive way to develop relations with the Muslim world. Closer relations with a reforming secular Turkey provides a real opportunity to do so. But it is clear that this momentum is best maintained by the prospect of full membership rather than a privileged partnership as advocated by Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy.

Such a partnership is seen as a second-class option in Turkey, both symbolically and substantively. There is a highly sensitive streak in their political culture which responds negatively to such ambiguities in their perceived identity. This reveals a precarious self-definition of liminality with regard to Europe. Misinterpreted or rejected, it could have serious political consequences, not least for relations between Europe and the wider Muslim world. At a time of escalating tension arising from terrorism and the war in Iraq it is important not to lose sight of this.

It is a task requiring real political leadership. This was certainly not visible in a remark made by Romano Prodi after the French referendum in a campaign speech in Rome. He recalled his mother's use of the phrase "the Turks are coming" to discipline her children. In Dublin this week Robert Cooper, Javier Solana's adviser on security affairs, reminded his audience of a different perspective on enlargement. It has brought "a kind of political miracle of stability to central and eastern Europe" over the past 16 years, in which states were able to have political revolutions without inter-state war or the Cromwells, Robespierres and Lenins thrown up elsewhere. The Balkan wars were the exception proving this. A loss of momentum there, or with Turkey, could endanger everyone's stability.