Slick EU video supporting enlargement

The European Commission has prepared a one-minute video that clearly aims at enhancing public attitudes toward South-Eastern Europe, including Turkey. In the very well-produced video, we are faced with images of modern, historic, and serene landscapes and cities that may well be taken from EU capitals and countries. Upon them are superimposed questions, like: "Sweden?" and correct answers: "Montenegro".

Over images of a bustling city with skyskrapers, the text asks "Germany?" and answers "Turkey." With respect to the latter, I don't think this is anywhere near enough to turn public opinion around while national political leaders in many capitals play politics with the question of Turkish membership, but I liked the video. High production value, and nice ending slogan: "So similar. So different." Isn't that what the EU is about? Unity in diversity?

State of play, Turkey-EU relations, part 2

This is the second post reflecting on the current obstacles to progress in the accession negotiations. Part one listed three items as key problem areas: The visa waiver issue, Cyprus, and the slower pace of Turkish reforms. I now turn to two sets of items that pertain to challenges internal to the EU.

4. Xenophobia in the EU
This issue is one that I deal with continuously on this blog. It has long historical roots, not the least when it comes to prejudices about Muslims as well as Turks. These go back to Pope Clement IV's calls in 1342 for a crusade against “those unbelieving pagans, called in the vernacular the Turks, who thirst for the blood of Christian people and seek the destruction of the Catholic faith.” Or to the standard Exhortatio ad bellum contra barbaros that became a staple of Renaissance-era diplomatic congresses, royal weddings and "almost any public occasion," as historian Robert Schwoebel put it. The so-called "barbaros" against whom this formulaic call to war was supposed to be directed were, as you might have suspected, Ottoman Turks.

Too many actors in what is today the EU have for too long defined Europe and Europeans by contrasting them against a prejudiced view of Turkey and Turks. And this historical legacy has a continued impact on today's thinking about Europe, as illustrated e.g. by outgoing EU Commissioner Fritz Bolkestein's notorious remark (on the eve of the start of membership negotiations with Turkey in 2004), that Europe may be predominantly Islamic by the end of the century, which would mean that the "liberation of Vienna will have been in vain." His not-so-contemporary reference is to the breaking of the Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1683...

With the post-9/11 panic about Islamic fundamentalism and Jihadist terrorism in the West, these age-old fears gained new life, and resistance to Turkish accession grew in the EU. In this light, it becomes easier to understand what otherwise might appear like a paradox: that with each major Turkish pro-democratic reform package, support for Turkish membership in the EU has seemed to cool. Between 2002 and today, Turkey has enacted substantial and extensive democratic reforms, but support for Turkey in the EU has steadily dropped. For many (though certainly not for all), concern over Turkish human rights abuses is just a cover for other fears, and for these people, bringing Turkey closer in line with the Copenhagen political criteria is not at all reassuring: it is frightening because it raises the prospects of Turkish membership.

Add to this renewed general anti-immigration sentiments throughout Europe, with the extreme right gaining ground in elections throughout the continent, and the picture looks bleak from the Turkish point of view.

Not even the more recent developments in North Africa seem to help Turkey's standing in the eyes of the common man in the EU. The "Arab spring" should probably be praised as on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall in terms of what it means for the progress of worldwide democracy. And Turkey's importance as a model for the fledgling/aspiring democracies of Egypt and the Maghreb should underline it strategic significance. But in Europe people seem mostly worried about increased refugee flows from Libya. None of this helps Turkey, which is already associated with immigration in the eyes of many Austrians and Germans.

But there are more problems than that of xenophobia in the EU of today. The discussion of North-Africa is a nice segue into some other issues that really have nothing to do with Turkey, but which I believe nevertheless contribute to the current stalemate.

5. Unrelated problems in the EU.
For the EU's fumbling response to the Libyan revolt and civil war has revealed (or worsened or created) deep fissures within the Union, as the major European powers - Germany, the UK, Italy, and France - came down on different sides on the question of what to do with Gaddafi. The participants at a recent full-day conference at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs (titled "The EU as a Global Actor: Lessons from the Arab Spring") were unanimous in their judgment that the EU failed the "Libyan test" miserably.

And we must not forget (although how could we) the current crisis affecting the Euro-zone. It appears increasingly likely that Greece is heading for a default (or "restructuring" as the euphemism has it) on its debt. (Personally, I find it difficult to see how Greece is supposed to "cut" its way out of its recession, but hey, I'm no economist. I'm sure there is a beautifully elegant and parsimonious neo-classical law that shows just how throwing hordes of government workers into the unemployment benefits system is a great way of reducing the deficit and how slashing the salaries of those that still have a job is an excellent way of infusing demand into the economy and boosting consumer spending...)

Even so, Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy are next in line for the investors' treatment. And no one really knows what the future holds for the Euro. What we do know is that Germany is increasingly reluctant to help out the Greeks, and that Finland's established parties have been forced to welcome a brand new party - the True Finns - to their group, a party whose only real election platform was a rejection of more aid to Greece (OK, that's not entirely True, they also ran on an anti-immigration platform).

None of this has anything directly to do with Turkey or its accession negotiations. But it adds up to an EU that is preoccupied with internal squabbling over foreign policy and economics, and struggling to salvage both the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the newly established European External Action Service as well as the very future of the Euro.

This EU has little time or energy over to take on the many tough decisions it would need to make to jump-start negotiations with Turkey. A badly damaged Angela Merkel would have little desire to open up a new political front at home by e.g. making concessions on Visa-free travel toward Turks, even if she felt that it was the right thing to do.

So with these five main hurdles, my suspicion is that the Turkish accession negotiations will at best muddle through for the time being, and that we are unlikely to see an major breakthrough in the near future. I hope I am wrong.

Austria to hold referendum on Turkish EU accession

"What's with Austria?!?" This was how a colleague of mine responded to yesterday's post about the cross-national variation in levels of support for Turkish EU-accession. (Austria is, by far, least supportive of EU member states.) It is a valid question.

And the extremely low level of support for Turkish EU membership in the country has political consequences. Understandably, Austrian politicians are reluctant to take a stand and try to push through such an unpopular issue. The natural - albeit cowardly - response is to "let the people decide." Austrian Chancellor has used the occasion to reaffirm its decision to put Turkey's EU bid before the Austrian people EurActiv Turkey reports:

"Even in the case of a positive decision after the negotiations between the EU and Turkey, we will organise a referendum in Austria on this topic," Faymann was quoted as saying by Turkish daily Hürriyet.

In all honesty, it is overly generous to present this as a response by the Austrian leadership to existing popular sentiments. There is probably an element of this - collective memories of 1683 perhaps - but the two largest parties as well as much of the media establishment is resolutely against letting Turkey in. On this issue, they are as much the leaders of opinion as they follow it.

Of course, Austria is not alone. France has taken a similar position on the issue of referendam, and for Turkey this clearly spells trouble. The accession of a new member state requires the consent of all existing members. Thus, EurActiv phrasing of the Turkish reaction to the Austrian Chancellor's statement - made on the occasion of Turkish President Abdullah Gül's visit to the country no less - is probably somewhat of an understatement):

 The statement apparently left Ankara unimpressed. 

http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/austria-mulls-turkey-referendum-ankara-unimpressed-news-504579?utm_source=EurActiv+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8299b828e4-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email

Effects of Fox News' Muslim Bashing

Media Matters has an interview with John L. Esposito, Georgetown University, about the deleterious effects on public opinion of the Muslim bashing on Fox News. In an email to Media Matters, Esposito wrote:

The cumulative effect of the confrontational rhetoric of Fox commentators like Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity who hammer away at portraying Islam and Muslims as fundamentally different contributes to a popular culture in which seeing 1.5 billion Muslims as potential enemies has become embedded. Too many Americans are developing an intolerant, irrational fears and even hatred not simply of extremists but of Islam and Muslims which has led to discrimination, harassment, and violence.

In particular, he focuses on the space and sympathetic treatment given to anti-Islamic crusaders like Brigitte Gabriel, on Fox, whom I have blogged about recently. Esposito describes a Gabriel as:

an entrepreneur, a professional Muslim basher. She, like [Pamela] Geller, [Robert] Spencer and company have no expert credentials in Islam or Muslim history and cultures, the very topics that they speak about. She is a fear monger pure, an Islamophobic culture warrior, and plays fast and loose to get the limelight and a career. What she and others excel at are simplistic generalizations and assertions, often choosing selective texts, individuals or events as if they were representative of the entire community.

Instead of focusing on extremism in America or Muslim extremists as a dangerous but very small percentage, she chooses to target the

MEP Andy Duff's dire FT piece

Andy Duff, a longtime critical supporter of Turkish accession in the European Parliament and now also monthly columnist for the Financial Times, has a long and depressing piece in today's FT. The piece reeks of gloom and pessimism; an unsettling fact for supporters of Turkey's EU bid given Duff's privileged position as a long-time EU insider. Efforts by Parliament and the Commission to move forward on the issue are, in his view, now largely symbolic.

The European Commission continues doggedly to pursue its mandate to negotiate on behalf of the EU, and is doing some good work inside Turkey, but actual progress is far too slow to transform the dynamics of integration.

While continuation of the effort is respected by the European Parliament, it is difficult to find MEPs who are still outright supporters of Turkey’s full membership.

In Duff's opinion, it seems, the Turkish quest for EU membership is all but over. A combination of "enlargement fatigue," failure to move forward on reforms in Turkey, the absence of a solution to the Cyprus issue, and rising Islamophobia in EU member states make for a too formidable obstacle. Duff's only suggestion is for Erdoğan to make use of the "one last chance to swallow his pride" and settle the Cyprus issue (on which, by the way, Duff is much more balanced than most).

FT.com / World - EU and Turkey avoid last ditch Cypriot talks

Dutch news - Serious Concerns about Turkish-Dutch Youth

A group of 10 successful Dutch Turks have signed an open letter to the Dutch authorities expressing concern over what they see as the increasing isolation of many Dutch youths of Turkish origin. The group had apparently tried to raise this issue with Dutch authorities but decided to publish a letter in the newspaper De Volkskrant instead when they did not get the desired response.

I am myself increasingly concerned that many European countries are in the midst of a vicious circle in which marginalization and alienation of immigrant communities, an associated radicalization and militancy among (still very small) pockets of especially young Muslims, and growing xenophobia and discrimination in the dominant host societies feed on and exacerbate each other.

The aftermath of the recent failed suicide bomb attack in central Stockholm, Sweden, during the Christmas shopping rush illustrated the negative potential of this dynamic, but also some positive signs from surprising sources. The reactions to the bombing (which left only the bomber dead, as he for some reason detonated his bomb on an empty side street rather than the busy shopping street a block away - the better part of me wants to think that he came to his senses at the last moment, but I don't know if the issue has been determined) in mainstream media outlets were generally measured.

But there were exceptions, such as the columnist in the large Swedish evening paper Expressen, who worried (article in Swedish) that Swedes were in the process of "abolishing" themselves due to the higher birth rates of the Muslim population in Sweden (said population constitutes ca 4.3 % of the total Swedish pop of 9.4 million), describing this demographic scenario as a "war." And the Swedish blogosphere was replete with reactions that were anything but measured. In short, my concern is that if even a failed bomb attack with no casualties (except the bomber) elicits such latent hostility, what if the attack would have succeeded? Or what happens when an attack does succeed?

Many immigrants already feel discriminated against in comparatively liberal and open Sweden - experiments at Stockholm University showing that many employers treat applicants with identical CVs apart from whether they had Swedish or foreign-"sounding" names differently gives credence to such sentiments - and it is reasonable to assume that this increases the alienation of many young men, who are the recruits of choice for militant extremist groups. The thought that it could get a lot worse is not encouraging. Changes in Dutch public opinion following the murder of Theo van Gogh is a warning-sign of what could come.

The positive surprise in the aftermath of the failed bombing in my view came from an unlikely source - the "secret police." SÄPO (the Swedish Security Service) was heavily criticized for a report that they coincidentally published just days after the attack (it had been commissioned in February and completed in the month before the attack), in which they evaluated the threat from militant Islamic extremism as

currently not a threat to the fundamental structures of society, Sweden’s democratic system or Central Government

even though it posed a threat to individuals, especially abroad. This sounds like an entirely reasonable assessment to me. What was even more encouraging was that SÄPO spokespersons continuously rejected calls in the media and elsewhere for more extensive and intrusive surveillance. In one radio interview, the spokeswoman on counter-terrorism was asked why SÄPO did not know about the activities of a person who had traveled to both the UK and the middle east, and responded quite reassuringly that in order for SÄPO to track everyone with the same traveling patterns (the current author would be included in this group!), we would no longer live in the open society that Sweden now is.

(Note - I am not saying that it was a good thing that SÄPO was unable to prevent the botched attack or that they should not survey militant extremists. Just that they were an unexpected voice of sanity in the post-attack debate.)

I won't end with any wise suggestions for how to get out of the negative spiral that we may find ourselves in, merely note my concern over it. Perhaps on another day I will feel more inclined to be constructive.

(Link to the Dutch article courtesy of Turkish Digest.)

-----
UPDATE 2010-01-13: 
In an interview with De Volkskrant, Turkish government minister Faruk Çelik has responded to the open letter, according to DutchNews.nl, which quotes him as saying:

The fact that Turkish Dutch youngsters still feel they are second class citizens, that they are not welcome and that they are discriminated against, shows the Dutch authorities that they should revise their integration policy.

A part of that which the Netherlands calls integration policy has isolated immigrants, rather than integrated them.

Turkey will be in the EU, says Sweden's foreign minister - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt continues to express support for Turkey's EU membership bid. As I previously noted, on Dec 10 last year Bildt wrote a NYT op ed together with the foreign ministers of Finland, UK, and Italy in which they expressed their support for Turkish membership.

And in a recent interview with the Turkish TV channel Skyturk, Bildt reiterated his views. As reported by Hürriyet Daily News, Bildt argued that

Historical experience shows that a democracy that knocks on the door of the democratic European Union will at the end of the day never be refused

I think that Bildt is doing an important job - if for no other reason than to let supporters of both continued reforms and eventual EU membership in Turkey know that they have friends in the EU. While I have heard him make the argument in Swedish media on at least one occasion, I have not noticed him being quite as active in Sweden as he has been in international and Turkish media. It may well be that I have missed something, so I don't want to press this point. But it does point to a more general challenge for supporters of Turkish EU membership in EU member states: making the case for a Turkish membership at home.

Slanted reporting on Turkey's stalled EU bid

I will continue on the theme of slanted media reporting of Turkey-EU relations, simply because there's a lot to cover. Don't get me wrong - most of the reporting is good and even the bad usually contains bits and pieces of good information. But a growing number of news stories appear to be converging around a simple explanation for the lack of progress in Turkey's accession negotiations, and I think that this explanation is one-sided. (Fortunately, it is not yet a consensus, and I will quote reports with a different take to emphasize that there is another side to the story.)

But let me give just one recent example, posted yesterday on the South East European Times website SET.com (find the article here). (The SET, btw, is sponsored by the US European Command.) The article sums up recent developments concerning Croatia's progress toward accession, and then turns to Turkey. Here is what the piece says about Turkey, in its entirety:

Turkey, which also began its membership talks in October 2005, has been moving at a much slower pace in the negotiation process. It was able to open only one negotiating chapter this year, bringing the total to 13, and has closed only one since the start of its negotiations with Brussels.

The main reasons for the slow pace are Turkey's sluggish reform progress, as well as its refusal to open its airports and ports to traffic from EU member Cyprus. As a result, negotiations on eight of the chapters have been frozen since late 2006.

Going East, Young Turk? An emerging narrative?

At times, it must feel to Turks that they can do no right in the eyes of many in the EU. My last post was a link to a news piece about the Turkish economy, and it got me thinking about how the latter is being portrayed in Western media.

The Turkish economy, as most readers will know, is now doing extraordinarily well and is coming out of the current recession in much better shape than many of its European neighbors. As Bloomberg notes:

During his first five years as prime minister, Erdogan presided over gross domestic product growth that averaged almost 7 percent per year. Turkey’s GDP increased at an annual rate of 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 as the country recovered from the global crisis, lagging behind only China among the Group of 20 nations, and the International Monetary Fund predicts an expansion of 6.25 percent in 2010.

The IMF now ranks Turkey as the world's 15th largest economy and Turkey is growing faster than its EU counterparts. All of this may seem like good news from the EU's perspective, and four EU foreign ministers recently did make the argument in a NYT op-ed that such a dynamic economy would be a good addition to the troubled EU economic area.

Instead, it is striking to note how many of the Western reports of the Turkish "miracle" that end up either mentioning of framing the entire story in terms that make the recent economic growth and trade a threat to the EU. The trouble is, we learn, that much of this growth is due to Turkey's increased trade with its eastern, Asiatic, and most troubling of all, predominantly Muslim neighbors - like Iran and Syria - rather

European values: liberty or tyranny - Features - Al Jazeera English

A survey of recent Islamophobic and xenophobic trends in Europe, from al Jazeera English (by a Dr. Parvaz.)

And it is not just tabloids that have contributed to the hysteria - social media has played a role in the anti-immigration, anti-Islam campaign, with film clips predicting when various Western countries will become Muslim states getting millions of hits, and clips refuting those claims receiving just a fraction of the interest.

European values: liberty or tyranny - Features - Al Jazeera English

WikiLeaks: German foreign minister privately strongly against Turkey joining EU

From The Hindu on December 11:

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is far more opposed to Turkey joining the European Union than he has expressed publicly, the media reported on Saturday, quoting U.S. embassy documents released by WikiLeaks.

You will find the article here: The Hindu : News / International : WikiLeaks: German foreign minister against Turkey joining EU

Link courtesy of Turkishdigest.