By: Sabina Stiller

An important candidate member of the European Union made itself heard at the Copenhagen Summit of the EU last year. Turkey demanded to be finally given a date for starting accession negotiations. A joint German-French plan to possibly start negotiations in 2005, was nearly adopted by the EU Council. In this context, the question arises of how Germany stands towards an EU enlargement with the Turkish Republic.

An observer of the German-French initiative proposing the start of negotiations of Turkish membership in July 2005, may be led to think that Germany as a whole backs the idea of EU enlargement across the Bosporus. However, even a brief reading of the German press reveals the opposite: opinions on the issue differ widely from an outright endorsement of Turkey as an aspirant EU member to alarmist language warning of ever admitting the Muslim country into the predominantly Christian EU. What kind of positions can be discerned among politicians, business circles, intellectuals and publicists?

Official government position

To start with the official government position endorsed by the ruling Social Democrat (SPD) chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer, Germany supposedly has a national interest to ‘prevent Turkey from drifting towards Islamic fundamentalism’. That the pursuit of this interest is only possible by allowing Turkey into the EU is even disputed within the SPD where critics come from the camp of foreign policy experts who see ‘Turkish society not yet ripe for EU membership’.
While the chancellor keeps lobbying to win over such doubtful voices, the top of the opposition Christian Democrats officially rejects the possibility of allowing Turkey to start membership negotiations. Both party leader Angela Merkel as well as former candidate for chancellor Edmund Stoiber have chosen clear words: Merkel pleads for ‘further integration outside of a formal membership’ while Stoiber even warns of the ‘end of political union within the EU’ if Turkey should become a full member. In this, he almost joins sides with the president of the Convent on the future of the EU, Giscard d’Estaing, whose interview with the French Le Monde had fuelled a Europe-wide debate. Giscard said that with Turkey on board, the EU would be virtually at its end.
Nevertheless, even within the CDU one finds those who value Christian principles over contemporary trends such as seeking closer cooperation within moderate Muslim countries and others who know that native Turkish voters in Germany should not be alienated. As a matter of fact, both SPD and at least some CDU politicians are aware that voters among the half million naturalized Turks (out of a total of 2.5 million) in the country do count in election times. In this respect it is interesting to note that in the last Bundestag elections, 77 percent of this group voted for the then re-elected Red-Green coalition. On the other hand, politicians do not necessarily try to woo this voter segment: CDU politicians such as the Hesse prime minister Koch are likely to mobilize sentiments against a Turkish EU entry in order to boost support.

Mixed signals

When listening to the voices coming from the business community and its channels, mixed signals are being sent. One notable supporter of Turkey joining the EU is the German Federation of Industry (BDI) that hopes to reap economic benefits from extending the EU common market fully across the Bosporus. Just before the Copenhagen Summit it published a position paper listing ‘five good reasons for giving Turkey a clear European perspective’. On the other hand, the Wirtschaftswoche, a prominent weekly of the business press, ran an alarmist feature denouncing any further sympathetic signs to Ankara. Citing the outcome of recent German opinion polls on the issue, ‘no other question is currently proving that divisive: 46 percent of Germans back Turkey’s membership, 42 percent are opposed’.

Borders with Iraq?

Likewise, intellectuals and publicists have made widely differing contributions to public discussion and debate. The historian Heinrich August Winkler asks whether Europe should be allowed to have borders with Iraq and laments the dominance of technocrats and military strategists in the discussions on Turkish EU membership at the cost of historical arguments. Using more drastic, even polemic terms, his colleague Hans-Ulrich Wehler warns about the ‘Turkish problem’ that he sees in incontrollable consequences of Turkish migration and the prospect of Turkish predominance within an EU that will already need all its strength to accommodate the ten new member states.
Both German daily and weekly quality newspapers published opinion pieces arguing for or against Turkey’s EU membership. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ran articles discussing the issue of Turkeys ‘European’ qualities. There, the French finance ministry official Jean-Daniel Tordjman surprises with his arguments on how Turkey has long formed part of Europe’s cultural and historical heritage. If rejected as a member state, the consequences for Europe, according to Tordjman, would be unpredictable. On the contrary, Europe should better grasp her chance to integrate Turkey in its role as mediator between Islam and the Occident.
The political philosopher Otfried Höffe rejects this view of ‘Europeanness’ by questioning how stable democracy really is in Turkey given its dependence on military structures and the recent resurgence of Islam in Turkish politics and public life. Furthermore, he sees Europe apart from being a community built on common values such as democracy also as a community held together by ‘fate’, i.e. the common experience of wars and subsequent attempts at reconciliation, and Turkey is difficult to fit into this picture.
Likewise, the weekly Die Zeit dedicated front-page space to the contrasting opinions of publicist Michael Thumann and ex-chancellor and economist Helmut Schmidt. While Thumann qualifies the alarmist elements of the debate about EU-enlargement to include Turkey as the ‘search for new borders’ he sees the prospect of Turkey approaching membership as an important impetus to tackle long-needed reforms of EU procedures and policies. Schmidt, on the other hand, warns that Ankara’s geopolitical interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus may cause the disintegration of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and perhaps endanger the integrity of the EU herself. Nevertheless, he addresses the questions of what German interests are concerning this issue. His answer is that Germany needs a stable and reliable Turkey including cooperation on many policy issues, including closer economic relations and assistance; however, not at the price of free movement of labour for all Turks and paralysis of the EU’s foreign policy.

Normative versus functional arguments

This short survey of contributions to the German discussion has revealed a great diversity of arguments surrounding the question of ‘Should Turkey be in?’. Similarly, it is disputed under what circumstances the EU should start the long process of getting the country fit for membership once the country fulfils the Copenhagen criteria. It is useful to divide these arguments into three distinct categories: normative, functional and geopolitical aspects of Turkish membership. The normative dimension deals with the question ‘Is Turkey a part of Europe?’, the functional dimension roughly takes into account the costs and consequences of Turkish EU membership, while geopolitical aspects comprise issues like the German interest in a stable Turkey.

Is Turkey part of Europe?

To start with, normative arguments are dealing with the desirability of having Turkey in the EU, taking into account cultural aspects. In this respect, questions have been raised about whether Turkey is part of Europe historically speaking, and whether the country could be making part of a future European identity. Commentators on these issues frequently argue that Turkey is distinct from the rest of Europe because it did not experience the Enlightenment, uses a distinct language and is predominantly Muslim.
Undoubtedly, the question of whether there exists a distinct ‘European identity’ raised by the discussion is a tricky one. What binds the member states of the European Union? A conservative view endorses the idea that Christianity in its various forms and the values attached to it provide large part of its identity. In their eyes a Muslim country would be unacceptable as a fellow member state. This is probably true to some extent, although it should not be overstated if one looks to the continuing decline of people actively participating in church life. A more liberal view, on the other hand, points to the importance of secular values such as the pluralist democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities. Seen in this light, a Turkish state that respects all of these criteria may become ‘European’ as well as any other current member state.

Lack of faith

What seems to divide the two standpoints is the lack of faith into Turkish efforts to improve their record on democracy and human rights. Conservatives implicitly stress that the undemocratic elements in the Turkish state are going to prevail: although the Kemalistic doctrine has led to the separation of the state and Islam as laid down in the country’s constitution, the military keeps playing an important role in Turkish politics. Generals dominate the constitutional body called the security council, giving them influence unknown in European democracies. The military functions as a watchdog: it guards the reforms once launched by general Kemal Atatürk and opposes the current re-Islamisation of society and public life.
Liberals view the issue differently: They figure that giving Turkey a genuine prospect of joining the EU within a decade or so will provide sufficient incentive to modernise the country and bring it up to EU standards in terms of democracy and respect of human rights. Indeed the former government of prime minister Erbakan had accomplished important reforms such as the abolition of the death penalty, and the current government led by the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) has continued this course with a view to pressing their case before the Copenhagen Summit in December. The protection of the rights of Kurds, making up the largest minority, has been recently improved by law, to give but one example. Of course, as critics rightly point out, it remains to be seen how such changes are implemented in practice, but that progress has been occurring is undeniable.

The debate about Turkey’s EU compatibility has raised again the question of the final limits of the European Union which has not been exhaustively answered up to now. While it was answered with relative ease during the enlargement round with Eastern Europe which includes the Baltic states and the islands of Malta and Cyprus, all countries with strong historic links to Western Europe, politicians - including German ones - appear to struggle much more when it comes to Turkey. However, they may not get a better opportunity than the current one to define who may be ‘in’ and who should ‘stay out’. As the EU keeps enlarging, it seems inevitable to define its limits at some point for the sake of keeping the organization manageable. At the same time, EU institutions need to think about mechanisms of engaging countries in its periphery and managing relations with them. It is not unrealistic to expect a growing schism between EU members on this issue which shows parallelisms with the debate on ‘widening’ vs. ‘deepening’, i.e. enlarging the number of members vs. intensifying integration among current members.

Costs and consequences

Apart from the ‘cultural fit’ argument which tends to receive lots of attention, another group of arguments regards the question whether the EU would manage to integrate Turkey in terms of economic, financial and institutional consequences of membership. The first two aspects concern the state and structure of the Turkish economy which is relatively backward, agricultural and features low employment figures compared to the EU. GDP per capita is about 22 percent of the EU average; 45 percent of the population is employed in agriculture, accounting for 15 percent of the Turkish GDP. While in the EU-15 about 61 percent were employed in 2000, only 47 percents of Turks were. The implications for the EU budget in terms of agricultural and structural funds would be immense although it is clear from the outset that large transition periods for receiving funds would be mandatory. Rough estimates by the EU Commission indicate that under current rules, a yearly 20 billion of transfers would be needed for Turkey. On the other hand, as the German Federation of Industry notes, in the long run, a large market and ensuing business opportunities are the other side of the coin.

At least as important as economic-financial arguments are the consequences for the EU integration process. Both the character of EU institutions such as the Commission, the Parliament and the Council, as well as the composition of EU member states’ population is seen at stake here. Turkey has currently close to 70 million inhabitants with an annual birth-rate of 1.5 percent, superseding the EU average. By the time of a possible entry in 2015 this could be close to 80 million. Translated into influence in EU institutions, Turkey would stand side by side with Germany and France and what such influence would mean in practice can only be speculated about.
German conservative politicians like Edmund Stoiber gratefully pick up this scenario, warning that the EU could be ‘degenerating into a mere free trade zone’. Secondly, many observers such as Wehler, Winkler and Schmidt fear a large movement of Turkish migrants into the EU in search of better life opportunities. While the arrangement of long transition periods for the full freedom of movement is almost certain to occur, the argument carries a large potential for vote-seeking politicians who wish to capitalize on anti-foreigner sentiments.

EU, Turkey and geopolitics

Finally, there is the geopolitical aspect of Turkish membership which touches upon issues such as the fundamental German interest in a stable Turkey and the future of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). No sensible German politician is going to deny that Germany is interested in Turkey’s welfare and stability and developments in the country’s domestic and foreign politics sphere are being followed with interest. Ankara has proved to be a reliable partner in NATO and relations between the two countries are generally considered good.
However, Turkey does have foreign policy interests that may prove divisive for the developing foreign policy dimension of the EU. The country has not only short borders with Bulgaria and Greece, but also longer borders with Iraq, Syria, Iran, Georgia and Armenia. In the past, Ankara has been showing signs of ambition towards creating a ‘Greater Turkey’, incorporating the Turkish speaking minorities of Central Asia. There is also the problem of a large Kurdish population numbering 20 million as a destabilizing factor especially if future military action starts to unsettle Iraq. Furthermore, traditionally hostile relations with Russia, hostilities with Armenia, and possible squabbles about the location of pipelines and harbours to exploit oil and gas resources from the Caucasus and Central Asia all play a role in Turkish foreign relations.
While Helmut Schmidt warns from the consequences of trying to incorporate all of these in the CFSP ‘that may cause the collapse of the EU in times of crisis’, the geopolitical situation of Turkey can also be interpreted otherwise: the publicist Günter Seufert points to Turkey’s value for the Europeans in securing access to much-needed energy resources and ensuring the protection of pipelines.
In addition, after the terrorist attacks on the United States and the ‘war on terrorism’ initiated by the current Bush administration, Turkey has been seen, perhaps more than ever, as an important Western ally by virtue of being both pro-western and a Muslim country. This can be seen both from US verbal backing and striking diplomatic pressure for Turkish membership in the EU, and possibly also from the German initiative of giving Ankara a prospect of membership negotiations in the near future.

Conclusion

In sum, many aspects surrounding the full membership of Turkey in the EU are proving controversial and difficult to judge upon. Many of the arguments cited cannot be easily proved right or wrong and the little comforting wisdom ‘time will tell’ often applies. Political courage will be needed in order to resolve the question of Turkish membership to create a win-win situation for both the EU and Turkey.
At this point one needs to stress that it is high time for offering Turkey a clear vision on either membership or the revival and reinforcement of the existing association treaty. The EU (and Germany with it) has made itself guilty on foot-dragging in this matter. The German debate shows that sufficient controversy is raised to make future accession negotiations long, muddy and painful for both sides. A referendum may have to be held in order to temper German and other EU citizens’ worries and fears.
Perhaps this is the right point in time for Germany to move ahead and suggest a new form of engagement between the EU and Ankara. Such a partnership that stops short of membership could build on two pillars: First, being honest and clear towards Ankara about both the desirability and worries about a Muslim state of Turkey’s dimensions entering a predominantly Christian EU. Second, having a pragmatic dialogue about how to intensify economic relations and political cooperation that would both help to modernize the economy and keep the momentum in constitutional and human rights reforms.

Sabina Stiller, PhD student, Centre for German Studies, University of Nijmegen