Next Tuesday, Turkey’s bid to join the European Union will creep forward one more inch. The EU and Turkey will open formal talks on taxation, one of the 35 “chapters”, or policy areas, that a candidate for EU membership must complete before joining the bloc.
Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, is pleased but, unsurprisingly, not overwhelmed. After the taxation talks start, only 11 of Turkey’s 35 chapters will be open. The EU froze another eight chapters in December 2006 in retaliation for Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to vessels and aircraft from the Greek Cypriot-controlled government of Cyprus.
Visiting Brussels on Thursday, Bagis made it plain that he strongly favoured EU membership. “I believe that the European Union is the grandest peace project in human history, and the crown of this peace project will be Turkey’s accession,” he told me and some other Brussels-based reporters over lunch.
But entry into the EU is indisputably a long way off. Bagis recognised that Turkey would not complete all 35 chapters by 2014. Even then, there would be huge question marks over the readiness of countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands to approve Turkish membership. Western European political parties opposed to Turkey’s accession performed strongly in the recent European Parliament elections.
Bagis made one particularly interesting point. He said he foresaw three possible scenarios in the event that Turkey were to close all 35 chapters: a) Turkey immediately joins the EU; b) Turkey, like Spain and the UK in the 1960s, is vetoed but perseveres with its application and eventually succeeds in joining; or c) Turks, like Norwegians in 1972 and 1994, turn down the chance of EU membership in a referendum, even though their country meets all the entry criteria.
Bagis says that EU membership is a goal that can unite all Turks – civilian leaders and the military, northern Turks and southern Turks, Turks and ethnic Kurds, and so on. But what if, thanks to western European opposition, Turkish society’s faith in the possibility of EU membership diminishes to the point where the goal itself no longer seems to matter?
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