Published In

SAIS Review

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1999

Subjects

Turkey -- Politics and government -- 1980-, European Union countries -- Relations -- Turkey, Turkey -- Relations -- European Union countries

Abstract

In recent years, two developments have challenged Turkey's national and cultural identity--a growing Islamist movement at home and the European Union's (EU) orientation toward Turkey. While the Turkish government and the military continue to pursue a pro-NATO foreign policy orientation, an increasing number of Turks have begun to question whether the country could not be better served by reducing their ties to the EU. The apparent dissatisfaction with the West stems, to a significant extent, from the EU's decision to exclude Turkey from the next wave of EU membership expansion. At the Luxembourg summit in December 1997, the European leaders added insult to injury by including Cyprus (the internationally recognized Greek Cypriot government) among the first wave of the next members.

Today, EU-Turkey relations stand at an all time low with little prospect for improvement. The European Parliament recently invited Turkey to enter into political dialogue with the union. However, it listed the same conditions for membership that were outlined in the EU's earlier rejection of Turkey's candidacy. The Turkish reaction has been a flat refusal of dialogue with the EU as long as the union maintains its position on Turkey's membership.

These developments raise questions over how Turkey might revise its foreign, economic, and security policies to better position itself in the next century. During the 1990s, Turkish leaders initiated bold economic, political, and security relations with the Turkic republics of Central Asia and Azerbaijan, brought together the Black Sea states in an economic framework known as the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Zone, and signed agreements with Israel. Can these efforts replace the key position the EU currently holds in Turkish external trade and security relations? To what other alternatives can the Turks look?

Clearly absent from these agreements is any serious attempt to improve Turkey's ties to the Islamic states of the Middle East. Even the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party, when it was the majority coalition partner in the Erbakan-Çiller coalition, failed to achieve tangible results in Turkey's economic relations with the Islamic world. In general, the Islamists would like to cut Turkey's ties to the West and improve relations with the Islamic world. This is most apparent in the position taken by the Refah and Fazilet (Virtue) Parties in recent years. Would continued problems with the EU help the Islamists in their objectives? As these questions imply, Turkish leaders face important challenges as they prepare their country for the next millennium. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of EU-Turkey relations and assess the implications of the recent problems for Turkey's foreign and domestic policy orientation in the twenty-first century.

Description

Copyright ©1999 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in the SAIS Review, volume 19, number 1, pages 144-161.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10949

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