Accession aspirations degenerate: a new chapter for Turkey and the EU.

• Published date: 22 March 2010
• Author: Hugg, Patrick R.
• Date: 22 March 2010

ABSTRACT

Political and judicial events in 2009 severely undermined Turkey's negotiations to accede to full membership in the European Union ("EU"). The ongoing accession dialogue has proven largely unproductive of its aims, and these new events have clarified the negative environment engulfing the process and warrant the conclusion that Turkey and the EU are better served by recognizing this reality and moving forward to a more constructive chapter of collaboration.

In the June 2009 European Parliamentary elections, rightist parties inhospitable to Turkey's EU aspirations won large numbers of seats amid a campaign in which political rhetoric dangerously broadened the range of acceptable criticism of immigration, Islamic culture, and Turkey itself. Concurrently, EU organs and Member States continued an ongoing policy of scrutinizing Turkey's progress to accession with a finer lens than was ever used before, and in fact vetoing the start of negotiations in many chapters of the EU acquis communitaire. Finally, the European Court of Justice issued its powerful Apolostolides v. Orams judgment, and the voters of the northern Cypriot community elected a new nationalist, rightwing government known to oppose the United Nations ("U.N.") plan to reunite Cyprus on a federal bi-zonal basis. Both of these latter developments further lessened the likelihood of progress in the U.N. negotiations to resolve the Cyprus division, one of the keys to Turkey's own EU accession aspirations.

All of these new developments combine to render Turkey's accession to full membership in the EU improbable in this era, supporting the conclusion that Turkey and the EU should modify the present, unfruitful accession discussion and advance to a new, realistic framework for constructive dialogue and collaboration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
                 I. INTRODUCTION
                 II. THE MORE CONSERVATIVE NEW EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
                III. TOO MANY VETOES
                 A. The 1963-1974 Breakdown of Cyprus
                 B. The 2004 United Nations Peace Plan Referendum
                 C. International Inequity
                 IV. THE EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE DECISION AND THE TRNC
                 ELECTIONS
                 A. The Apostolides Decision
                 B. The Apostolides Facts--A Perfect Storm
                 C. The Legal Appeals in the UK and the European Court of
                 Justice
                 D. The Significance of the ECJ's Ruling
                 E. The 2009 TRNC Parliamentary Elections
                 V. CONCLUSION
                

I. INTRODUCTION

The conventional discussion of the past two decades regarding Turkey and its accession to the European Union may now be relegated to the past, allowing the EU-Turkey relationship to advance to a more realistic and fruitful chapter. Recent political and judicial events lay bare the futility of the arduous accession dialogue with a relieving clarity. The political impact of emerging concrete Facts breaks through the previous aspirational dialogue and exposes its impracticality and even its layer of destructive pretense. (1) That dialogue has proven largely unproductive of its stated aim to gain Turkish acceptance into the EU, frustrating its participants, and generating broad, negative reactions. (2) Its demise is clarifying and may be a good thing. These recent events make clear now that Turkey will not, in this era, be accepted into full membership in the European Union.

Such a negative conclusion runs contrary to massive efforts and extensive achievements toward Turkey's accession--and surely contrary to the higher-minded hopes of many. (3) The European Commission's 2008 Progress Report extensively details those efforts. (4) Turkey and the EU have dedicated substantial monetary resources toward legal and economic harmonization necessary for accession, and Turkey has already accomplished broad--even historic--law reform. (5) With the "EU acting as a catalyst--and demandeur--for reform," Turkey has undergone a radical process of political, economic, and social change. (6)

In a period of ten years, the Turkish Constitution was amended numerous times, followed by complementary legislative reforms, representing "the most significant political transformation the Republic of Turkey had experienced since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1945." (7) Notably among other reforms, the death penalty was abolished, torture was outlawed, minorities were given greater protection, Kurds were given greater freedoms, and the army's role in government was reduced. (8) The Customs Union between Turkey and the EU is in place, annually yielding over 100 billion € in bilateral trade. (9) Countless meetings of EU and Turkish officials have convened to guide the importation of the EU's acquis communitaire, with its many thousands of pages of rules and regulations, into the Turkish legal system. Significant to legal science, Turkey's efforts toward adopting the EU acquis represent a "unique experiment in using international harmonization as a tool in implementing a comprehensive reform strategy." (10) Finally, many political and social leaders at the highest levels have broadly publicized the case for Turkey's accession. (11)

Regrettably, the political will in Turkey and in EU Member States opposing its accession has shifted, as Turkey's reform efforts have slowed and the anti-Turkey rhetoric, described below, in some Member States has become extreme. (12) Some Turkish commentators have argued that EU accession is not likely, (13) and public opinion in the EU and Turkey has likewise shifted against Turkey's accession. (14) "Enlargement fatigue" in Western Europe, the current economic crisis, and resistance to Turkey's accession are leading factors pushing the candidacy further into jeopardy. (15) Moreover, the rejection of the EU's Constitutional Treaty, the difficult birthing of the Lisbon Treaty, and the divisions over EU economic cohesion in the current economic downturn suggest that today's EU will not offer the kind of strong leadership in marshaling the political forces needed to successfully push through Turkey's already controversial accession negotiations. (16)

The EU and Turkey need each other for so many reasons; it is natural and prudent for them to strive for closer cooperation. Economics surely offers the leading reason, as the volume of trade grows, but energy and security concerns conduce the same co-dependence. (17) In 2008, the European Commission concluded that Turkey's strategic importance to the EU has increased in recent times "in key areas such as energy security, conflict prevention and resolution and regional security in the Southern Caucasus and the Middle East." (18) The July 2009 agreement, signed in Ankara by leaders from four EU countries and Turkey, to go forward with the Nabucco pipeline to deliver natural gas from the Caspian Sea to the EU underscores this strategic location and the parties' eagerness to work together towards progress. (19) Just as Germany and France could agree in the 1950s to deconstruct old national resistances for the sake of economic recovery and security, so, too, can Turkey and the EU do the same with their complementary resources in this period of hyper-trade-dependence and instability in eastern Europe, western Asia, and the Middle East.

The well-known and well-worn reasons for and against Turkey's accession have been explicitly and repeatedly articulated. (20) Turkey is not geographically in Europe; Turkey is not culturally in Europe; Turkey has no true democratic tradition; Turkey bears a regrettable record of torture. Further, it is unthinkable that such a massive, poor, Islamic country would be allowed to enter the EU, either at the frequently discussed date of 2014 or later, (21) and then immediately become its largest, most populous Member State, (22) drain the EU budget, (23) and vote in the Council and Parliament with the political strength of Germany. (24) "As for power, Turkey's membership in the EU will have a big impact. Under either the Nice Treaty or the Constitutional treaty rules, Turkey would be the second most powerful member of the EU 29.... Plainly this situation might decrease the acceptability of ... Turkey's membership." (25)

Finally, Turkey's accession would seriously alter the balance in EU policy-making, drain the EU's structural and agriculture funds, and flood Europe with Turkish workers. (26) The geopolitical center of Europe would be moved eastward by Turkey's inclusion, weakening the traditional French-German leadership axis, and ultimately diluting the EU to no more than a less cohesive, Anglo-Saxon free trade zone. (27)

To the contrary, Turkey's proponents insist these arguments are either untrue or are outweighed by the compelling reasons for Turkey's admittance into the European family. First, one could emphasize that Turkey and the Turkish people are already part of the European family: Turkey has more territory and citizens on European soil than several other EU countries; Member State Cyprus lies farther east than most of Turkey; and Turkey has been a part of political Europe for centuries. (28)

 The arguments that locate Turkey outside European history and
                 geography cannot withstand analysis. For more than four centuries
                 the Ottoman empire shared and shaped the political and strategic
                 future of the continent. During the late 19th and early 20th
                 century, it became the "sick man of Europe". Even today, Turkey's
                 historical and economic influence continues to be substantial. (29)
                

Moreover, Turks were invited to Germany and other European countries to work beginning in the 1960s, (30) and today four and a half to five million people of Turkish descent live in the EU, (31) with over nine million more Turks living on the eastern side of the Bosporus in Turkey. (32) Turkey would "add a young and dynamic economy to a sluggish and ageing EU." (33) Europe would benefit economically, politically, and militarily by embracing a country on the geographic seam between Europe and the Middle East. The EU's common foreign and security policies would gain exponentially from Turkey's strong military force and its strategic location...