No more quiet waiting at EU’s door, Erdoğan warns
18 January 2011, Tuesday / TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
With its impressive economic growth, political stability and increasing role in world politics, Turkey can give the troubled European Union the vigor it needs, but Ankara’s bid to join the 27-nation bloc is facing unprecedented opposition from some members, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.
In an article that was published in the latest edition of Newsweek, Erdoğan said the Turkish accession bid is turning “into a sort of Byzantine political intrigue that no candidate country has previously experienced” and warned Europe’s reluctant leaders that Turkey will not quietly wait at the EU’s door forever.
“Our European friends should realize that Turkey-EU relations are fast approaching a turning point,” Erdoğan wrote in the article, titled “Europe’s Robust Man,” a reference to the term “sick man of Europe” that was once used to describe the Ottoman Empire during its collapse.
“In the recent waves of enlargement, the EU easily welcomed relatively small countries and weak economies in order to boost their economic growth, consolidate their democracies, and provide them with shelter. Not letting them in would have meant leaving those countries at the mercy of possible political turmoil in the region. No such consideration has ever been extended to Turkey,” said Erdoğan. “Unlike those states, Turkey is a regional player, an international actor with an expanding range of soft power and a resilient, sizable economy. And yet, the fact that it can withstand being rebuffed should not be reason for Turkey’s exclusion.
Sometimes I wonder if Turkey’s power is an impediment to its accession to the union. If so, one has to question Europe’s strategic calculations.”
Turkey began accession talks with the EU in 2005 but progress has been painfully slow since. Talks have been opened on 13 of 35 negotiating chapters and 18 out of 22 pending chapters are blocked due to political disputes. The division of Cyprus is one key political obstacle in advancement, while countries such as Germany and France are opposed to Turkish membership because of cultural differences.
“It’s been more than half a century since Turkey first knocked at Europe’s door. In the past, Turkey’s EU vocation was purely economic. The Turkey of today is different,” Erdoğan wrote in Newsweek. “We are no longer a country that will wait at the EU’s door like a docile supplicant.”
Erdoğan said his government’s growing ties with countries in the former Ottoman territory will also help the EU in the future. “This is not a romantic neo-Ottomanism: It is a realpolitik based on a new vision of the global order,” Erdoğan said of the government’s foreign policy.
“Some claim that Turkey has no real alternative to Europe. This argument might be fair enough when taking into account the level of economic integration between Turkey and the EU -- and, in particular, the fact that a liberal and democratic Europe has always been an anchor for reform in Turkey. However, the opposite is just as valid. Europe has no real alternative to Turkey. Especially in a global order where the balance of power is shifting, the EU needs Turkey to become an ever stronger, richer, more inclusive, and more secure union. I hope it will not be too late before our European friends discover that,” Erdoğan wrote.
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-232769- ... warns.html
