BY GUNDUZ AKTAN
RADIKAL- The EU Commission's proposal was accepted last week and Turkey's membership talks were suspended in eight chapters. Thus, the process of our talks was slowed down. Meanwhile, EU officials and the press stated that the EU shouldn't close its doors to Turkey, otherwise the process of reform might stop. When the word `reform' is mentioned, we think of the army being subject to civilian authority, the rights of minorities, in other words, giving collective rights to Kurds and Christians' religious rights. It's understood that the Justice and Development Party will continue membership talks under these conditions. In other words, we will be accepting punishment for a crime we supposedly committed by not fulfilling our `obligations' in the Additional Protocol concerning Cyprus. As we won't be able to solve the Cyprus issue within the UN before 2009, we will have to face the issue of unilaterally opening our harbors and ports to Greek Cypriots. This way we'll postpone this crisis to the end of 2009.
Our relations with the EU have been governed with a similar approach since the mid-`70s. We were even unable to hold Membership Council meetings due to Greece's obstructions since 1981, when it became a full member. We couldn't get the financial assistance allocated to us. Our 1987 application for full membership also faced similar obstructions. The Greek Cypriot administration applied for EU membership as the representative of the island in 1990. In spite of all our objections, it was accepted in 1993. As part of the 1995 Customs Union decision, the EU said that if the Cyprus issue could not be solved by 1998, it would start full membership talks with the Greek Cypriot administration. And it did. This government has been ready to do anything with the Turkish Cypriots in order to solve the Cyprus issue during the process of our candidacy. Nevertheless, the Greek Cypriot administration became a full member and Turkey was left outside. The decision taken in December 2004 offered limited and conditional candidacy. We accepted it. The framework document of October 2005 invented certain obstacles which were never before applied to another candidate country. We made no objection. Now it punished us, as if insulting us. We're putting up with this.
Every time we think, `Let's get through this, we'll consider other issues later.' This policy was made by paying heavy prices such as being the only country which has fulfilled its obligations without any financial assistance and accepting the Customs Union before becoming a full member. However, we can never reach the goal of full membership which covers all the areas of our lives without a certain political will on the other side. The first and foremost reason for the EU not to have such a will is its prejudices against Turkey. Other objective factors also strengthen this. Signs of typical characteristics of a pathological prejudice can be seen in certain EU member countries which object to our membership. For example, the French nation and its leaders accuse us of certain bad aspects that they hate to see in themselves. They turn the genocides that they committed into claims that we carried out an Armenian genocide. You wouldn't want a target group, to which you attribute your own bad characteristics, to be integrated with you. Because if they make us an EU member, they would fear that Turkey would bring all such bad qualities with it. So, the fact that Turkey took the French Revolution as an example, similarities between the two republics and the importance they attach to secularism would be ignored, and they would believe that Turkey wouldn't be able to fulfill these goals like France did. On the other hand, France wouldn't want Turkey, which has been turned into a bin by France where it can dump its undesired qualities, to go too far away. It must stay next to Turkey and use it as a place to accuse of having faults. So, the door is neither completely closed, nor open for us. Turkey is in a cold, endless limbo, just like the soul of a dead body which is between heaven and hell, as in Kipling's famous poem `Tomlinson'.