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Category: EU Members

European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004

  • Azerbaijanis in Germany against opening of borders

    Azerbaijanis in Germany against opening of borders

    Baku – APA. “The Azerbaijanis living in Germany are concerned over the talks on the reopening of Turkey-Armenia border,” says the statement issued by German Azerbaijanis Coordination Center, press service of State Committee for Diasporas told APA. The statement says that such a point in the relations of the two fraternal countries having close historical roots was unexpected for Azerbaijanis.
    “From the very beginning of Karabakh conflict Turkey has supported Azerbaijan, cut off all relations with Armenia, stated that the relations with this state can not be restored unless the occupied Azerbaijani territories are released. Azerbaijani people are concerned over Turkey’s giving up this statement and regard such steps as blow on Turkey-Azerbaijan relations,”
    German Azerbaijanis Coordination Center says that removal of the fraternal country’s support even under pressures may have a negative influence on the settlement of Karabakh conflict.

  • Yes to a NATO Turkey, no to a European Turkey

    Yes to a NATO Turkey, no to a European Turkey

    Mostafa Zein       Al-Hayat     – 07/04/09//

     

    Enter NATO with us. Give us your military strength so that we can together defend our borders. We will contain Communism, coming from Russia. We will confront the nationalist currents that are dangerous to us and to Israel. It is no matter if religion is used in this battle. Spread your moderate Islam in the Middle East. But do not come near our European Union, for you are, despite your moderation, backward and different.

    This is a summary of European-Turkish relations ever since Kemal Ataturk declared in 1923 his affiliation with the old continent, deluded into thinking that replacing Arabic letters with Latin ones and eliminating the tarboush and the hijab would forge a new identity and erase the long history of enmity between the two sides. It was a relationship that turned Turkey, with its strategic and historical weight, into a mere military arm of NATO.

    The best expression of the racist view toward Ankara, despite the need for it, might have come in the speech by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, answering President Barack Obama’s call on the EU to admit Turkey as a member. During the Euro-American Summit in Prague, Sarkozy said, “I work hand in hand with President Obama, but with regard to Turkey’s joining the EU, the decision lies with member states.” He added: “I have always opposed this membership and will continue to do so. I believe that the overwhelming majority of EU states supports France’s position… Turkey is a very big country and an ally of NATO and of the US, and should remain a privileged partner. However, my position will not change.”

    Privileged partnership is not the position of the French right alone, as the left shares this vision. In his book “Yes to Turkey,” the French Socialist Michel
    Rocard (prime minister under Francois Mitterand and a deputy in the European Parliament) maintained that Ankara’s joining the EU was “a life insurance policy” for Europe. But at the same time, he said that this gift should come in 2023, on the centennial celebration of Turkey’s founding, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Until then, the EU should work on gradually absorbing Turkey into its institutions, through a privileged partnership that will see it abandon its cultural criteria, to be in line with European standards. Rocard does not forget to recommend that it join, beginning now, common security policies, in order to participate in achieving geopolitical goals for Europe. These include standing up to Iran, and assisting in the control of sources of oil.

    The European left and right want Ataturk’s military, but not its culture. The ruling Justice and Development Party, with its moderate Islam, will remain outside the gates, to fend off attacks and spread its message in its own surroundings. It has now begun to play this role, by trying to recover the Ottoman relations, albeit modified, with the Middle East and Central Asia.

  • EU needs to open energy accession chapter with Turkey

    EU needs to open energy accession chapter with Turkey

    ALEXANDROS PETERSEN

    06.04.2009 @ 12:08 CET

    EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – The White House is touting President Obama’s visit to Turkey as the cure-all that will not only put US-Turkey relations back on track, but help to resolve some of Europe’s energy security concerns.

    However, media attention has focused on Mr Obama’s campaign pledge to refer to Turkey’s “genocide” of Armenians in the 20th century, and whether he will backtrack on that language in deference to his hosts. When it comes to the region’s energy geopolitics, however, it is to Turkey’s relations with another Caucasus neighbour, Azerbaijan, that Mr Obama should turn his focus.

    The Bosphorus straits: Turkey is a vital energy route for Europe (Photo: wikipedia)

    One nation, two countries is what they used to say about Azerbaijan and Turkey. Their culture, language and heritage have much in common, and since Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia in the early 1990s, Turkey has supported its linguistic brethren by keeping its border with Armenia closed.

    In the past few months, however, Azerbaijani-Turkish relations have become significantly strained, not just because Ankara is entertaining closer ties, including an open border, with Yerevan, but because Ankara and Baku are locked in a struggle over natural gas supplies to Europe. Interestingly, exactly the same issue has at the same time fostered increasingly close relations between Azerbaijan and Greece.

    Turkey turning into energy trader with EU

    At issue is the so-called Turkey-Greece Interconnector gas pipeline, which is to be eventually expanded across the Adriatic to Italy.

    Once completed, this route would theoretically bring Azerbaijan’s Caspian gas resources to energy-hungry southeastern Europe, helping to ameliorate the EU’s overdependence on Russian reserves.

    The idea conjured during the Clinton administration, and still pushed by Mr Obama’s newly appointed officials, is that Turkey will serve as an alternative corridor, not under the control of unpredictable decision-makers in the Kremlin.

    But, as Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has become increasingly frustrated with the EU’s mixed signals on membership for Turkey, he has pointedly chosen to emulate Moscow in Turkey’s energy relationship with the Union.

    As the EU continues to stall on opening the energy chapter of Turkey’s accession negotiations, Ankara’s policy is now to become an energy middle man, not an energy partner for Europe.

    So, instead of being a conduit for Azerbaijani gas to Greece and elsewhere on the continent, Turkey is now attempting to strong-arm Baku into selling its gas at discount prices to Ankara, so that Turkey can sell it at almost four times the price to European consumers.

    Russia’s attempt to do this with Caspian gas during the past two decades is exactly what prompted countries like Azerbaijan – and attracted US involvement – to seek alternative routes such as Turkey.

    Now, Azerbaijan’s leadership is naturally peeved at Turkish decision-makers, choosing instead to work on the other piece of the corridor, namely Greece.

    Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev visited Athens in February and was greeted warmly by Prime Minister Karamanlis as the two countries agreed on cooperation in a number of spheres: economic, political and energy.

    The Azerbaijan-Greece intergovernmental economic commission, which has met since 2005, is now stepping up its activities. Greek companies are increasingly investing in Azerbaijan’s still-growing economy, and not just in the energy sector. As Mr Obama courts Turkey, Baku has a greater friend in Athens than in Ankara.

    Need for more EU involvement in Black Sea region

    Either way, both Azerbaijan and Greece lose out if Turkey remains an obstacle to the expansion of the Turkey-Greece Interconnector.

    The crux of the problem lies in the pace of Western integration in the broader Black Sea region. Despite its cultural, linguistic and historical ties to Cyprus, Greece supports Turkey’s EU accession because its leadership is aware of the enormous benefits in regional development, security and cooperation that can be accrued with the broader region’s greater integration.

    While Turkish tactics are certainly questionable, Ankara’s strategic EU accession aims are not only legitimate, but central to the transformation of Europe’s periphery.

    At the moment, intransigence by EU member states, such as France and Germany, on the

    energy chapter of Turkey’s accession process is not only whipping up a backlash in Turkey, but jeopardizing the EU’s energy security and undermining positive links between EU members such as Greece and EU neighbours like Azerbaijan.

    If the current conundrum continues, the only way out for Azerbaijan will be to turn to Russia – now offering Baku better prices for gas than Turkey.

    Two days before his Turkey visit, Mr Obama will meet Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy. If he is serious about helping to ameliorate EU energy security, he will politely remind his French and German counterparts that opening Turkey’s energy accession chapter is the first step in acting in their own interests.

    Alexandros Petersen is Dinu Patriciu fellow for Transatlantic energy security and associate director of the Eurasia Energy Centre at the Atlantic Council of the United States.

    https://euobserver.com/opinion/27904

  • Turkey’s time has come

    Turkey’s time has come

    Telegraph View: Turkey’s strategic value to the West cannot be overstated

    One has only to look at Turkey’s geographical location, wedged between the prosperous, democratic nations of the West and the turbulent, predominantly Muslim regions that lie further east, to understand why President Obama chose Ankara as his first port of call in the Islamic world since his election.

    It is not just that Turkey, a long-standing and valued member of the Nato alliance, acts as a strategic bulwark against any possible threat emanating from the east, whether resurgent Russian nationalism or Iranian-style fundamentalism. It is also because the continued support of this relatively moderate, secular state is seen by many in the West as crucial to the success of coalition efforts to effect a similar outcome in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But the disinclination of several leading European powers, notably France and Germany, to give serious consideration to Turkey’s bid for full membership of the European Union risks alienating Turkish support at a time when it is most needed.

    Devotees of deeper European integration such as President Sarkozy oppose Turkish membership on the grounds that the accession of a Muslim nation would fundamentally undermine the EU’s Western identity and culture. Consequently, they have raised numerous objections, ranging from Ankara’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide of the First World War to its dubious human rights record, to keep its application on hold.

    But as Mr Obama pointed out in his speech yesterday to the Turkish parliament, by adopting such underhand tactics the EU is wasting a valuable opportunity to build a broader relationship with a valued Muslim ally – one that is based on mutual interest and respect.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/5115953/Turkeys-time-has-come.html

  • Obama rebuilds bridges with Islam

    Obama rebuilds bridges with Islam

    Published: April 6 2009 19:34 | Last updated: April 6 2009 19:34

    It is extraordinary to think that an American president should have to make a public speech in a friendly Muslim capital explaining that the US is not at war with Islam. Yet after eight years of the Bush administration and its misguided policies in the broader Middle East, the Pew Global Attitudes Project registered a collapse in support for the US in Nato-allied Turkey to 9 per cent.

    There, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, a majority had come to believe that the US, through its policies in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and, above all, Iraq, was indeed at war with Islam. The beneficiaries of this political disaster have been Islamists in general and jihadi extremists in particular.

    Barack Obama’s deliberate choice of Turkey for his first state visit to a Muslim country is the start of what will be a very long and arduous attempt to turn back the tide.

    Why Turkey? Not just because it is a Nato ally. Not just because it is the geographical bridge between Europe and Asia. Not even just because it is a Muslim democracy. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), is the marriage of an evolved form of political Islam with democracy. The Muslim world’s first, as it were, Christian Democrats are admired in a broader Middle East mired in various forms of extremist-incubating tyranny – not as a model, but as a success.

    That is why the AKP’s electoral victory against Turkey’s overmighty generals in 2007, and score-draw against an attempted coup by the judiciary in 2008, are milestones not just for Turkey but the region.

    For a US with fewer lines of communication in the region, moreover, Turkey’s open channels – to Syria, Iran and Hamas as well as to Israel or Saudi Arabia – could be valuable.

    Turkish support will be important in securing an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, and as a supply platform for and ally in Afghanistan. A US president who opposed the Iraq war is well-placed to dispel the mistrust caused by Turkey’s refusal to allow the Bush administration to use its soil for the invasion – and, indeed, to retrieve a relationship that Washington had frittered away.

    Mr Obama sensibly pledged to support Turkey’s promising rapprochement with Armenia. Ankara, especially as it pursues a problematic entry into the European Union, will have to confront Ottoman Turkey’s role in the mass murder of Armenians from 1915 onwards, and establish whether it was centrally directed. But the US Congress’s push to get this declared a genocide is grandstanding that would benefit the nationalist right in Turkey – and blow up a valuable Muslim bridge to the EU and the US.

  • Turkey: Bridging the divide

    Turkey: Bridging the divide

  • Editorial
  • Tuesday 7 April 2009

    • It is an inconvenient truth that the two most influential countries in the Middle East are both non-Arab – Iran and Turkey. But some hope must lie in the fact that Barack Obama yesterday chose to make Turkey the focus of an attempt to bridge the gulf between Islam and the west. Alighting on Turkey as an example of the deal that can be struck between the US and the Muslim world is as bold in foreign policy terms as it is risky in domestic ones. There are plenty on the right who would seize on Mr Obama’s self-identification as an American who has Muslims in his family. But to choose the Turkish parliament as the venue to say that his country is not and never will be at war with Islam is the mark of a man who is showing increasing confidence on the world stage.

    The French president and the German chancellor, who have bolted the door to Europe, have dropped the ball on Turkey. They have yet to see what Mr Obama has already understood. Turkey’s biggest asset is its geopolitical role, and it is using it intelligently. The president, Abdullah Gul, has gone to Armenia on the first visit by a Turkish leader in the two nations’ bitter history. Ankara is also trying to transform its relationship with Iraqi Kurds. Turkey mediated indirect talks between Syria and Israel, and when the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, telling the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, that he was killing people in Gaza, Turkish flags went up all over Palestine.

    At a time when Washington is reviewing its policy on the stalled Israeli-Arab peace process, Mr Erdogan’s message that Hamas must be represented at the peace table carries weight. Not least it gives Israel, which maintains close ties with Ankara, cause for concern. If any country can reinforce the message to Mr Obama that the current status quo is untenable it is Turkey.

    Mr Erdogan is not without his domestic problems. His Justice and Development party won about 39% of the vote at recent local elections, well down on the 47% it got two years ago. It was 36% in Istanbul and the coastal cities, a clear sign that he must listen to the progressive areas of his country. He has relaunched moves to widen ethnic and religious freedoms, and promised to work on a new and less authoritarian civilian constitution. Turkey is always reforming and never reformed, and Mr Erdogan may have personally lost faith in the ultimate goal of seeking accession to the EU, no thanks to Mr Sarkozy. Turkey is not a model country, any more than any other is. But it is a telling example. It undermines the western notion that Islam and modernity are somehow fundamentally incompatible, and it does have useful regional contacts. Next stop Iran.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/barack-obama-turkey-east-west