Turkey faces long road

2004-12-19 12:23

Brussels - Turkey may have spent the weekend celebrating after securing a long-awaited green light for EU entry talks - but as a new week dawns it faces a long and bumpy road ahead, with no guarantee it won't ultimately come to a dead end.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hailed as a conquering hero on his return from the Brussels gathering, where the European Union chiefs agreed to start talks next October.

Erdogan claimed a "success" after notably persuading the EU to accept a compromise on the vexed issue of Cyprus which both sides admitted falls short of a Turkish recognition of the divided island, as the EU has long sought.

But after the partying dies down, Ankara will inevitably wake up to the sobering reality of what lies ahead.

"The road will be long and difficult for Turkey to fulfil all the conditions to join Europe," said French President Jacques Chirac, who has warned that it may be up to 20 years before Turkey joins the EU, if at all.

That two-decade estimate - slipped by Chirac into a television interview on the eve of last week's summit - is double the official time frame set out in the EU leaders' conclusions, which sets 2014 as the earliest possible date.

But the length of the process may be the least of Ankara's real problems.

Clouded by Cyprus issue

Even before the talks start next October 3, they will be clouded by the Cyprus issue.

For, while Ankara agreed to sign a key protocol extending a customs accord to cover the EU's 10 new states - including Cyprus - it refused to make any commitments to recognise the government.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende acknowledged that Erdogan's pledge to sign the protocol to the 1963 Ankara Agreement did not amount to recognition, but presented it nonetheless as progress.

"It is not what you can call a formal legal recognition but it is a step that can lead to progress in this field," he said.

Turkey has not recognised Cyprus since its 1974 invasion - prompted by the threat of Greek annexation - of the northern tier of the Mediterranean island in support of a Turkish statelet which only it recognises.

Aside from Cyprus, the negotiations facing Turkey are formidably daunting in purely logistical terms: like any other EU hopeful, it must transfer over 80 000 pages of complex EU law onto its national statute book.

But the EU has made it clear that the accession of the vast Muslim country is like no other.

Could face travel restrictions

To this end it has set a series of strict conditions to ensure its transformation from a relatively hugely impoverished, heavily agrarian country to a European-style economy.

These include asserting the right to impose "permanent safeguards" - such as travel restrictions to allay European fears of a flood of cheap Turkish workers - and a warning that negotiations can be suspended in case of "serious and persistent breach" of fundamental EU values.

But they also include a clear indication that the talks could break down completely, saying that negotiations are "an open ended process, the outcome of which cannot be guaranteed beforehand."

True, EU countries like Austria and Denmark failed to persuade their colleagues to offer Ankara "privileged partnership" as an alternative to full membership in the summit conclusions finally hammered out Friday afternoon.

But Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel had another less-than-welcome surprise for Erdogan even before he left Brussels: an announcement that the Alpine country - whose population is to the most hostile to Turkey's EU hopes in the whole of Europe - will hold a referendum on Turkey's EU accession.

The Austrian ballot proposal comes only weeks after Chirac said that the French people - two thirds of whom are opposed to Turkey's EU entry according to a recent poll - will also get to vote on the issue.

The referendums can only add to the uncertainty hanging over the Turkish bid.

- AFP