After a 40 year-long policy of lies implicitly serving each party’s interests, and once the next row of enlargement is achieved, the time will be ripe for the masks to fall off as to the integration of Turkey to the European Union. However if simple “yes-no” answer cannot be given to that question, why not change the question itself …

At the end of this year, the European Union is supposed to give an answer to the question whether it will start now or not membership negotiations with Turkey. Three major options are de facto on the table. In my opinion, two of them will bring devastating effects on both sides while one paves the way to a bright common future for both Turkey and the European Union.

For quite a long time now I have been saying to European audiences as well as to Turkish ones that Turkey will not join the European Union in the coming twenty years (knowing that I started saying that in 1986, I was not that wrong then!) and that far from being bad news, it could be the best option for both Turkish and European Union citizens. I keep on defending the same idea, with the same conviction that it is in the interest of both people.

After about 40 years of constant lies from both sides: EU leaders lying to Turkish public opinion by maintaining the false belief that the EU will easily welcome them one day … in order to obtain what they want from Ankara at cheap price (security support, access to Turkish market, …) ; and Turkish leaders lying to Turkish public opinion by making Turkish citizens believe that all those European Union speeches were essentially true (when they very well knew it was pure public relation gestures), in order to prevent any serious reflection for alternative futures … and therefore alternative leaderships.

2004 is coming as THE year when all masks should fall off

Only three main options are now left on the table:

The previously used option - delaying once more the answer about possible membership - no longer exist (whether it is implemented by making Turkey wait for the answer, or by initiating never-ending negotiations). Helsinki’s decision in 1999, AKP’s party victory in 2002, Giscard’s remarks in 2002, as well as the Iraq crisis in 2003, have put the Turkish issue under such public exposure that diplomatic tricks can no longer work. Public opinions tend to be less patient than experts!

So let’s go back to the three scenarios and their rationale.

Scenario N°1 - European Union’s termination as a political project

Saying ‘yes’ to Turkish membership and opening related negotiations will immediately act as a very powerful political booster for all xenophobic and rightist extremists parties throughout EU (already on the rise). Moreover it would prevent any convergence to be created until 2010/2015 between the European Union and the two or three groups of EU members which are going to move forward from now on in the fields of economic integration (around Euroland), of defence and foreign policy (around the French-British-German-Belgium core-group) and of political integration (around the Constitution project). Let’s keep in mind that the European Union as such is going to be almost completely paralysed until at least 2010 because of the current enlargement and its lack of institutional and methodological preparation. Turkey’s accession would definitely push the EU into the direction of a mere trade area, while the core groups will move towards a more profound integration. The two main forces that prevented the core-groups to move forward have either completely vanished (Soviet threat, since the fall of the wall), or lost their ability to shape up Member-States’ major decisions (USA, since the Iraq crisis).

Scenario N°2 - Turkey’s crash into political instability

Saying bluntly ‘no’ to Turkey with nothing else available than the existing possibilities of cooperation with EU will generate a major instability in this country and therefore in all the surrounding region. Relations between top Turkish army leaders and AKP party leaders already are so strained after the Iraq crisis that such a rebuff from the EU would immediately open a struggle for power between the two groups. We should not forget that one of the main arguments used for decades by the army leaders to preserve their control of the political power in Turkey is that they were the best warrants for Turkey’s accession … as they represent the force preventing any evolution of Turkey towards an Islamic state.