Turkey was not invited to Europe’s big birthday bash despite being an official candidate for EU membership. Ankara expressed disappointment at a ”missed opportunity”. Media reaction to the perceived snub was sharper.
”In the 1990s, the EU was a giant organisation governed by prominent leaders,” said leading columnist Mehmet Ali Birand. ”Today it has become a fat midget that lacks perspective and is governed by small thinkers.”
Disillusion with the EU has deepened since Brussels part-suspended talks in December after a row over Cyprus. The hostility, as seen from Ankara, of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has poisoned the pot further.
But anger and frustration is giving way to a new, more assertive idea: that perhaps Turkey does not need Europe after all — and the EU will come to regret its insultingly complacent chauvinism as Turkey goes its own way.
”Europeans underestimate the importance and influence of Turkey,” said Fuat Keyman, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Koc university. ”If they are serious about the future of Europe as a power in global affairs, they need to change their thinking.” Turkey was recalibrating its external ties and the EU was but one part of the equation, Keyman said.
Turkey’s new-found confidence about life beyond Europe is based in part on a booming economy, whose sustained 7% annual growth rate far outperforms large EU states. Export earnings are rising too.
Demographic trends are also boosting independent thinking, said Guven Sak, an Ankara-based economist. ”In Turkey, the working age population as a proportion of the total population is growing. In Europe, the opposite is true.” Nor should Europe fear a new barbarian horde at the gates. Rates of growth meant that by 2015, Turkey could become a net importer of labour, he said.
Turkey’s increasingly important regional leadership role is also changing the way it views the EU. As a vital transit hub, it provides much of Europe’s oil and gas from the Caspian basin, Russia and, prospectively, the Turkic republics of central Asia. This is leading to closer cooperation with Moscow and reviving ideas of a Turkic Commonwealth from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan.
The ”reformed Islamist” government in Ankara is also cultivating the Arab and Muslim world. It signalled a new strategic relationship with Egypt last week. It sent peacekeeping troops to Lebanon last year. It talks to Iran when many will not or cannot. Close links to Israel have not prevented the building of ties with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. And despite tensions with the Kurds, Turkey is northern Iraq’s main economic partner. Istanbul is the likely venue of April’s Iraq summit.
Officially, Turkey still wants to join the EU, says Faruk Logoglu of the Centre for Eurasian Strategic Studies in Ankara. But Europe must banish its ignorance and acknowledge its own needs. ”Europe is not yet ready for Turkish membership,” he said. ”It’s going to take a long time to educate the European public.” — Â