How long can Erdogan's government wait at the EU's ever reluctant doors? asks Gareth Jenkins from Istanbul Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan flew to Berlin last week to hold meetings with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac, amid signs of growing unease amongst the European public over membership accession negotiations with Ankara in 2005. Since Turkey was accepted as an official candidate for EU accession in December 1999, successive Turkish governments have pushed through a series of legislative reform packages to strengthen democracy and ease often draconian restrictions on freedom of speech. Even though implementation has lagged far behind the changes on paper, the reforms have nevertheless proved unpopular amongst Turkish conservatives and nationalists. It has only been the prospect of EU membership, which most Turks believe will give a massive boost to the country's economy and prestige, that has enabled the government to overcome dissent. Erdogan's moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP), which took power in November 2002, has been particularly active in pushing through the legislative reforms required for compliance with the so- called "Copenhagen criteria" for EU accession, not least they include the political marginalisation of the staunchly secularist Turkish military, which remains the JDP's most implacable domestic foe. Erdogan has also used EU accession as a means to suppress, at least temporarily, pressure from the party's grassroots for a relaxation of Turkey's traditionally rigid interpretation of secularism, such as restrictions on Islamic schools and a ban on the wearing of headscarves in state institutions. Privately, party officials have been asking supporters to be patient, warning that, if the government tries to do anything too controversial, the resultant domestic turmoil could alienate the EU. As a result, the JDP has effectively mortgaged its political future to receiving a date for the opening of formal accession negotiations when EU leaders hold their next summit meeting in the Netherlands on 17 December. But for the European public, Turkey's progress towards fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria has transformed the country's eventual membership from a hypothesis into a possibility, even a probability. The result has been increasing alarm, which has been fuelled by opposition politicians in France and Germany in particular, who have been quietly stoking xenophobic -- and often anti- Muslim -- prejudices by warning that the membership of a country with a population of 75 million, the majority of whom earn only a fraction of the EU norm, would flood the richer countries in the EU with migrant workers. In September Erdogan raised questions about his own understanding of the requirements and costs of EU membership when he tried to push a law through parliament that would have criminalised adultery; and then, when Brussels expressed its concern, angrily told the EU to mind its own business. Although Erdogan subsequently withdrew the draft law, the surrounding publicity played right into the hands of the opponents of Turkish membership, who seized on it as proof that Turkey and the EU were incompatible. Under pressure from French public opinion, the majority of whom are opposed to Turkish accession, Chirac announced that the French government could put the question of Turkish membership to a referendum. While in Germany the main opposition group, the Christian Democrats are already calling for the EU to grant Turkey a special status which falls short of full membership. The JDP has reacted furiously, arguing, with some justification, that other candidate countries have not faced such additional conditions. Yet a large proportion of the German population is also opposed to Turkish membership. Neither Schröder nor Chirac are likely to be prepared to commit domestic political suicide merely in order for Turkey to join the EU. When he flew to Berlin last week to try to persuade Chirac and Schröder both to resist domestic pressure and promise to urge other EU leaders to give Turkey a date in December, Erdogan attempted to sweeten his verbal entreaties by signing a $1.5 billion deal to buy 36 new airplanes from the EU's Airbus. On 6 October the European Commission released the latest version of its annual progress report which, although it admitted that Turkey had not yet fulfilled all of the criteria for membership, claimed that it had done enough to merit the opening of accession negotiations and recommended that EU leaders should give the country a date when they meet in December. As a result, the EU is very unlikely to refuse to give the green light for the beginning of accession negotiations sometime in 2005. The only questions now are what conditions they are likely to attach and whether Turkey will ever be able to fulfil them. The JDP government has been so obsessed with receiving a date in December that it does not appear to have made any plans for what will happen once the accession negotiations have started. The EU is currently formulating its next seven-year budget, which will take it through to 2013. No money has been set aside for Turkish membership, which means that accession is impossible before 2014 at the earliest. Once the date for the beginning negotiations is in the bag, Turkey faces at least a decade still waiting at the EU gate; and, although they have been patient so far, neither the JDP's supporters nor its opponents are going to sit back and put their hopes and fears on hold for another ten years.
