It’s understandable that American leaders believe they have a stake in the EU, as each other’s main trading partners, leaders of the developed world, and the fact that the political project EU would never have existed without US support and encouragemnet. Therefore George Bush and now President Obama are probably mystified at the negative reaction to their declared support of Turkish membership of the EU. The French and Austrians have publically dismissed the Obama comments while Chancellor Merkel of Germany has again questioned the whole idea of Turkish membership.
Turkey was given candidate status for membership of the EU in 2005, under intense pressure from Tony Blair and the US administration seeing a chance for progress under the moderate AK party regime. Since then, Turkey has made little progress on the substantial reforms necessary for membership. Essentially, any country that wants join has to transform its system into a liberal democracy, with extensive Human Rights provisions, strong seperate Governmental Institutions and a strong Civil society, areas where Turkey is still lacking. Indeed, Newsweek commented last week that Prime Minister Erdogan may be losing his will to take Turkey further down the road of integration with the EU.
But geting back to American leaders feeling they have a stake in the EU - this is something to which European bristle audibly. One blogger, for example, commented “why is EU membership being spoken of as a US foreign policy tool? ” To Member-States, the EU is not like NATO - it’s many times more important. If you look to measure the imporatntce of the EU in a very crude way, about half of legislation of EU Member States is from the EU, national politicians and officials spend large amounts of their working time in countless of EU committees & councils. Decisions take in the EU, in short, have a huge impact on Member-States. Turkey would be one of the largest members of the EU and would wield a large amount of power in EU decision making.
Though the analogy is not exactly correct, it could be like Europe calling for Mexico to be admitted to the United States of America, an act that could profoundly unbalance the political entity that is the USA. Europe will need time and certainty before it takes such a step, and pressure from the USA may be having the opposite effect than what is intended.
Will red eventually turn blue?
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The reason that Washington together with London has trying so hard to promote Turkish integration within Europe is to undermine European unity The aim of U.S.A. and U.K. is to keep Europe a loose federation for economical exploitation only and serve their geopolitical interests.
When advocating Turkish claims to EU membership people tend to forget that EU is not a NATO-style coalition but a government that requires equivalent standards of political legal and economic development from members.
Turkey in order to become an EU member she should first become a normal state by acknowledging her criminal past.
Thanks Christos for the comment. I believe it’s true that the United Kingdom has a certain view of what the EU should be when they joined. That is a broad group of member States that enables them to access a Single European Market. I believe they have seen some benefits since they joined in 1973, but think in general it would gravitate more towards the “loose federation” model you suggested. Though this does depend on the political party in power, believe the likely next Conservative Government could badly damage the UK’s relationship with Europe.
I think in general the US, and the current US administration in particular is less worried about how strong the EU is, as long as it encourages stability. The US believes that making Turkey a member would further stabilise the “near-east” that is now at the EU’s borders & perhaps provide a model of stability for the Middle East.
The worry for many European countries is that this enlargement could undermine European stability itself. They worry that it could lead to the equivalent of the weak, divided EU that could not prevent the slaughter in the former Yugoslavia. As I said above, Turkey must acknowledge that they will have to act forever more as a modern liberal democracy in the future if they are to continue this European path.
You mention Turkey’s criminal past, this may refer to their actions after World War One in Armenia or in 1974 regarding Cyprus. Indeed these are issues that it would be hard to see Turkey not being forced to face pror to entry into the European Union.
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