The Changing Turkish Approach towards the European Union after 9/11

Abstract

For over thirty years, Turkey has sought membership in what is today called the European Union (EU). This article argues that the most likely scenario to reach that goal is that Ankara will speed up its efforts to meet the EU's membership criteria, and that the EU will begin accession talks and later admit Turkey as a member in a reasonable time period. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that Turkey's determination to meet the accession criteria has increased in the post-g/n era. Today, a growing number of Turkish people concur that meeting the accession criteria, let alone acquiring full membership, will serve Turkey's interests. This is especially true when security considerations are taken into account. The second reason is that the EU itself has started to change its attitude toward Turkey's membership application. An increasing number of EU citizens now believe that the membership of a gradually Europeanizing Turkey will be in the EU's interests, mainly defined in terms of security and identity considerations.HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF TURKEY'S VIEW OF THE EU UNTIL THE LATE 1990SThirty years after the signing of the association agreement, Turkey-EU relations have undergone radical change. Since 1996, Turkey has been in a eustoms union agreement with the EU and, since late 1999, Turkey has been a membership candidate with full membership ostensibly dependent upon its meeting a set of criteria (i.e., the Copenhagen criteria) that has been applied to all other recent aspirant countries. Since 1999 and following the announcement of Turkey's candidacy, there have been radical developments in EU-Turkey relations. With the accession partnership document and Turkey's national program, Ankara is today closer to the EU than ever before. Turkey and the EU finally solved their dispute over the European security and defence policy (ESDP) in 2002, and the decision adopted at the Copenhagen summit in December 2002 for the first time overtly stated that accession talks with Turkey should start without further delay, provided that the European Commission report of late 2004 recommended this. In the November 2002 elections, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Ankara, and because of the party's prevailing pro-EU inclinations the pace of reform has also increased, not only in the domestic sphere but also in Turkey's foreign policy practices. Lastly, at the December 2004 Brussels summit, the European Union agreed to start the accession talks with Turkey in October 2005 pending Turkey's prior approval of extending the customs union agreement to the recently admitted 10 EU members, including the Republic of Cyprus.However promising such developments might appear for achieving Ankara's long-held goal of EU membership, problems remain. First, Turkey's approach towards the EU has traditionally rested on ideological grounds, rather than on a rational cost-benefit analysis. Turkey has long argued that it should be admitted to the union due to its European character. At the same time, the majority of the Turkish elites have believed that to solidify Turkey's European/western/modern identity, EU membership is a must. The problem with such an approach has been that Turkish policymakers have long failed to understand why the EU members hesitated to offer a clear membership prospect to Turkey based on their own cost-benefit calculations.1 Turkish elites have tended to believe that just as Turkey wants to join the EU on identity related grounds, the EU also adopts the same rationale vis-a-vis Turkey. Rather than believing that the EU's reluctance might emanate from its own cost-benefit calculations with respect to Turkey's admission, Ankara has long believed that the EU does not want Turkey mainly because it sees Turkey as non-European.Second, the majority of the Turkish elites have long thought that Turkey has the right to join the EU, as article 28 of the 1964 Association treaty vaguely mentions this possibility. …