By Wolfango
Piccoli
Later this week, the European Council will press Turkey's government to reconsider
its refusal to give Greek Cypriot vessels access to its air and sea ports under
a customs union pact with the bloc. While this may cause some tension, Turkey's EU
membership talks won't be formally suspended or further complicated by tougher
measures. EU leaders are wary about aggravating tension and undermining
U.N.-sponsored peace talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities aimed at
ending the island's 35-year partition. Plus, there's no need for the EU to take
more action against Ankara.
The process of accession negotiations has almost completely lost its momentum,
and it certainly won't get a jumpstart in 2010, given the adverse political
circumstances prevailing in both Turkey and the EU. If the
prevailing mutual disinterest between Turkey
and the EU persists, Ankara's accession talks
will inevitably run to a halt, raising the risk of a more definite split
between Turkey
and the EU next year.
The key issue for Turkey's
EU bid is Cyprus,
on which negotiations began in September 2008, but little progress has been made.
If a settlement isn't reached by spring 2010, it could bring a total breakdown
in Turkey-EU talks. While it's hard to trace a sense of urgency on the Greek
Cypriot side, the April 2010 presidential elections in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic
of Northern Cyprus
are generally regarded as an informal deadline for the reunification talks.
Without a settlement, the present incumbent, Mehmet Ali Talat, may lose his
seat in April and be replaced by a president who is less supportive of a
settlement, which would further complicate the already thorny negotiations.
Meanwhile, as long as the EU's commitment to accept Turkey
remains ambiguous, it is difficult to see how Ankara could accept a settlement concerning
the divided island.
Within Turkey, accession to
the EU is not a priority for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) leaders,
who are far more focused on their policy of expanding Turkey's foreign policy drive beyond Europe and
its traditional western allies to the Middle East, Russia,
and the Caucasus. This pursuit is aimed at
establishing Turkey
as a regional player, building on the country's location, Ottoman past, and
greater economic power. But this foreign policy course has minimal implications
for Turkey's
EU aspirations.
Turkish government and AKP officials seem to share the belief that by casting Turkey as an
aspiring powerbroker in its neighborhood, the country will obtain stronger
leverage in its membership negotiations with the EU. Such a belief is deeply
flawed as the EU will not cut Turkey
any slack on reforms because of its strategic importance as a potential energy
transit route and its growing diplomatic clout in its neighborhood. To make
things worse, the EU is not seen any longer by the AKP leadership as a
vote-winning card because the Turkish public has lost faith in the positive outcome
of the accession talks.
Certain EU member states (notably France
and Austria)
can be equally blamed as they have undermined the EU's credibility by sending
negative messages concerning the final outcome of the accession talks and by
creating new obstacles that do not allow for the opening of various policy
chapters. The acceptance by the other EU member states of these impositions
(which are in violation of the EU's framework for negotiations with Turkey of
October 2005) has exacerbated the damage. As a result, the EU has lost much of
its leverage vis-à-vis Turkey,
harming the functioning of the interplay of EU conditionality-Turkey
compliance. Given the inability of the EU's 27 governments to reach a common
position on Turkey, it is
difficult to foresee how the EU could bring greater credibility to its formally
existing commitment for Turkey's
accession in case of successful completion of negotiations.
Unless Turkey's accession
process receives an unexpected boost from the ongoing Cyprus negotiations, the AKP or the EU probably
won't take any major step to re-galvanize Ankara's
bid for membership. At the moment, both sides appear more concerned with
keeping the process alive than moving it forward. In the longer run, the mutual
estrangement between Turkey
and the EU is set to send Turkey's
EU bid into a slow death spiral, raising the risk of a more definitive split
between the two sides.
Wolfango Piccoli is an analyst at Eurasia
Group.
BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images
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