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ISTANBUL: Spain's Clos: Turkey EU accession should be a love affair

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  • ISTANBUL: Spain's Clos: Turkey EU accession should be a love affair

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    Jan 5 2010

    Spain's Clos: Turkey's EU accession should be a love affair, not a
    marriage of interests


    According to Spanish Ambassador to Turkey Joan Clos, the geo-strategic
    benefits of Turkey's eventual accession to the European Union are
    overemphasized. Clos, whose country took over the six-month-long
    rotating presidency of the EU from Sweden on Jan. 1, believes that
    arguments over Turkey's EU bid should not be based on interests.

    I think that Turkey is Europe, and we should keep talking and
    explaining to each other to make that a non-negotiable fact. The
    Turkish accession to the EU should be considered as a love affair, not
    just as a marriage of interests; there should be more love than
    interests,' Clos said in an interview with Today's Zaman.

    The EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005.
    Countries hoping to join the bloc must fulfill requirements in 35
    policy negotiating areas, or chapters. With an intergovernmental
    conference held last month in Brussels where negotiations with Turkey
    on one new policy area, namely the environment chapter, was opened,
    Ankara has so far formally opened 12 chapters, of which it has
    provisionally completed negotiations on just one, science and
    research.

    In addition to eight chapters frozen since 2006 due to a customs
    dispute, France is blocking another five chapters that are directly
    linked to full membership and Greek Cyprus plans to block talks on six
    other chapters.

    Spain is a staunch supporter of Turkey's EU bid and is co-sponsoring
    the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) initiative with Turkey,
    launched in 2005 under the aegis of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi
    Annan. Turkish diplomats say the two countries enjoy `a team spirit,'
    while defining Spain as a rising star within the 27-member EU. In
    April 2009, Ä°stanbul hosted an intergovernmental conference between
    Spain and Turkey, as well as the high-profile Second Forum of the
    UNAOC.

    `I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
    geo-strategic argument is overused. ¦ Not much weight is given to the
    immense opportunity that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in
    sharing our democratic and socio-economic values,' says Ambassador
    Clos


    Despite the presence of strong empathy and mutual goodwill between
    Ankara and Madrid, one cannot ignore the fact that Spain has taken the
    rotating presidency of the EU at a time when many assume there are
    only a few remaining chapters available to be opened in regard to
    Turkey's negotiation process.

    `Accession a complex, difficult process'
    `Spain has always been supportive of full membership for Turkey. We
    keep on defending this position. From our own accession process, we
    know that accession is always a complex and difficult process where
    the most important thing is to maintain the direction and the
    political will. I think that the most important thing is that Turkey
    keeps doing all the necessary things to become a full member of the
    European Union,' Clos noted initially when reminded of those
    assumptions.

    `Turkey should also take into account that apart from the chapters,
    there are also other ways to advance in the accession process, mainly
    through political reforms. I am sure we can generate a new positive
    attitude in Europe in this field. Apart from the chapters, we can put
    more value on the new processes that Turkey is taking toward Armenia
    and the Kurdish issue. We should recognize the difficulties on each
    side at the moment, in order to avoid deception and a loss of interest
    among people. I think this loss of interest is the worst thing that
    could happen. Perhaps it's what the ones who are against it on both
    sides are looking for,' Clos said.

    The Spanish ambassador, representing his country in Turkey since July
    2008, highlighted the huge ongoing process of change and adaptation
    within the EU itself. The adaptation to the enlargement to 27, the
    introduction of the requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and a new
    culture of majorities and minorities in the voting system are part of
    it, he said, adding that this will require a process of adjustment to
    see how they adapt to the new situation.

    According to Clos, one should also not ignore the impact of the
    economic and financial crisis, which has also generated a more
    conservative and precautious stance in the EU.

    `The mood now within the EU is to weather the crisis, to try to escape
    from it as soon as possible. But we are not seeing a very
    well-coordinated response. That is generating a kind of wait-and-see
    approach to most of the big issues in the EU. The EU itself is now in
    a challenging period. It's trying to digest the last enlargement,
    which has been and still is a compelling exercise. If we understand
    that, we can be more realistic about calendars and on the advancing of
    some issues,' Clos continued.

    `When our foreign minister [Miguel Angel Moratinos] met Mr. [Foreign
    Minister Ahmet] DavutoÄ?lu in Córdoba, he said very clearly that we
    will try to do our best to make the accession process during our
    presidency an irreversible situation,' Clos said.

    Ankara criticizes the blocking of negotiations on new policy areas for
    political reasons and states that the current obstacles in Turkey's
    path toward becoming a full member of the EU are not objective but
    rather subjective. Ankara also frequently voices disappointment that
    EU members who oppose Turkey's accession are actually making a grave
    strategic mistake.

    Clos, however, questions the efficacy of such arguments by Ankara.

    `I think that in the debate on Turkey's accession to the EU, the
    geo-strategic argument is overused. It's clear that Turkey is placed
    in a strategic region and has much economic value and is close to
    energy resources, but I think that the most important argument for the
    Turkish accession to the EU should not be economic and geo-strategic
    but political. This is because Europe is now a little bit indifferent
    to geo-strategy, but not so to democratic values and the acquis
    communautaire. Not much weight is given to the immense opportunity
    that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in sharing our
    democratic and socio-economic values,' Clos told Today's Zaman.

    The Kingdom of Spain became a full member of what was then known as
    the European Community in 1986. Most commentators considered the
    formal incorporation of the Iberian Peninsula into the larger European
    context as the beginning of an era, and the same commentators also
    asserted that the transformation of the country's economy into one of
    the EU's strongest was an undeniable reality.

    Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, membership
    has also served as a catalyst to dynamic economic development in
    Spain, analysts explain, emphasizing how the EU has helped shape the
    political process in Spain.

    `In the Spanish accession process, when we talked about interests and
    strategy, we never succeeded in the argument. We never moved the
    hearts of the Europeans when we said we were close to the Strait of
    Gibraltar, were very important for Europe or when we said our
    agriculture was very important and we had the largest area of
    farmland,' said Clos, who was the mayor of Barcelona from 1997 until
    2006, when he was appointed minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade in
    the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

    `But when we talked with our European fellows and said, `Look, we want
    to be in the EU because we want to stabilize our democracy forever,'
    this was something understood by every European citizen on the street.
    To give weight only to strategic and business reasons for European
    accession is purely an argument of interests. To put emphasis on
    values is a much deeper emotional question. There are countries which
    have geo-strategic value and position apart from Turkey, but the kind
    of democracy that you have reached with the republic and that you are
    trying to improve through governmental and everybody's efforts makes
    the difference for Turkey in relation to your neighborhood. This
    should be the main driving force. Democratic Europe cannot lose a
    growing democracy in this part of the world. If you ask a German,
    Frenchman or Spaniard, `Do you want to help Turkey to be a
    European-like democracy with our values or not?' the answer would be
    yes. This is more important than oil or agriculture,' he remarked.

    Differentiating between terrorism and socio-economic problems
    Clos applauded Turkey's ongoing efforts for the normalization of its
    relations with neighboring Armenia through establishing diplomatic
    ties and opening borders as well as for the democratization initiative
    launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government
    last summer, seeking to settle Turkey's decades-long Kurdish problem
    by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.

    `I think that the Armenian and Kurdish initiatives, the democratic
    initiative, are a kind of tectonic movement in Turkish policy. Not so
    many years ago, it was unthinkable that there could be public debate
    or a parliamentary debate on those issues. I believe this is a very
    profound and positive movement in the direction of the Turkey's 21st
    century policy. And also the approach to the neighboring countries,
    which I sincerely consider is not against the EU but the opposite, in
    favor of the EU. There is a kind of centenary change of direction, and
    there are real, deep, strategic movements in Turkey which we value a
    lot,' Clos said.

    Last month, the Constitutional Court shut down the pro-Kurdish
    Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism. While
    announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Court also mentioned the
    decision of the European Court of Human Rights in favor of the closure
    of Batasuna, the political arm of the ETA, which was banned in Spain
    in accordance with the 2002 Political Parties Law. A considerable
    number of experts questioned the appropriateness of such a link
    between the two cases, suggesting that Turkey's case laws reflect that
    talking about independence in Turkey is a legitimate reason to ban a
    political party even if that political party does not support
    violence.

    Clos was very careful in his remarks when asked whether Spain's
    experience could act as an example for Turkey in resolving its Kurdish
    issue since Spain successfully made a distinction between ETA
    terrorism and the Basque issue.

    `I will answer that by saying that those are difficult issues -- you
    cannot offer magic solutions, and there are no models. These are very
    serious and complex issues, and tackling them is specific to every
    case,' Clos noted.

    `The Belgian case is different from the Irish issue, and the Irish
    issue totally different from the ETA solution. There is no theoretical
    road map to solve the problem. You will find your way because Turkish
    history is the essence of it. We can offer what we have found most
    valuable in our case if you can take something, not everything, from
    it because the subject is different. In our case, it was very
    important to differentiate between the social problem and the
    terrorism problem. Terror is terror, and we should fight terror. That
    means that if there is a socio-economic or cultural problem, then you
    should face this problem although there is terrorism, because if you
    don't solve the socio-economic and cultural problem, you are caught in
    the terrorist trap. In our case, the socio-economic and cultural
    problems were faced with a new Constitution in 1978. And the terrorism
    problem was solved in another place, by the police in the Interior
    Ministry,' Clos said.

    `It's quite clear; one thing was to solve the social and identity
    demands of the Basque people -- 99.99 percent of whom are not
    terrorists, of course -- and a very different thing was to fight
    against the small minority who use arms to fight and in killing do not
    respect human rights. The solution to the Basque political, cultural
    and socio-economic demands was in the Constitution, and, very
    importantly, it was not specific to the Basques. Terror should be
    fought with anti-terrorist measures, and political, cultural and
    socio-economic issues should be faced through the work of the
    parliament and political parties.'

    Ending the Clausewitz paradigm
    Clos believes that every effort to promote understanding among people
    on earth is extremely relevant and therefore believes that the UNAOC
    has an important mission in discovering why humanity still has wars,
    even though when the Cold War finished, everybody thought the world
    was approaching an era without wars.

    `This is the main objective of the Alliance of Civilizations: to have
    a serious debate on why we keep misunderstanding each other and why we
    still have wars in the 21st century. Clausewitz said that `war is
    merely the continuation of politics by other means.' We should put an
    end to the Clausewitz paradigm.'

    05 January 2010, Tuesday
    EMINE KART ANKARA

    http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-197 505-8-spains-clos-turkeys-eu-accession-should-be-a -love-affair-not-a-marriage-of-interests.html
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