The Delay of Turkey's EU Accession Does Not Have to Do Anything with Islamophobia

• 01.27.2015, 11:50
• Greta Avetisyan
•  Europe,  Region,  "Insight" Analytical Center ,  World,  Analytics

As it is known last week Turkish President Erdoğan’s tour to Africa started. In his second stop to Djibouti, in a joint press-conference with the President Ismail Omar Guelleh, Erdoğan speaking about the situation in Egypt and Syria, did not miss the opportunity to criticize Europe "for just looking at what is happening in these countries as a spectator". Declaring that Turkey "will never tolerate terrorists" that can be of any religion, the President of Turkey very smoothly passed to Turkey's EU membership process and made a very controversial statement that needs to be very carefully discussed. In his speech Erdoğan declared: "We are testing Europe. Will Europe be able to accept a country which has a Muslim population? Are you [Europe] against Islamophobia or not?"

So does this mean that Turkey expects Europe to accept it just to prove that Europe is against Islamophobia? Is Turkey questioning Europe's objectivity for accepting countries and considers that it is only this factor that hinders its accession to the EU? To answer these questions several factors should be taken into consideration. First of all, no matter how much Europe after the recent terrorist attacks speaks about the danger that comes from radical Islamists, this should not be an indicator that the whole Europe is suffering from Islamophobia and the thing that Turkey is a Muslim country makes it not accept Turkey into its family. One should remember that Turkey became an EU candidate country in 1999 and since then until the recent years, one cannot claim that there was a high level of religious intolerance in Europe. Just vice versa, only in Germany 63% of the whole Muslim population are Turks. In the recent years the rise of Islamic extremism in Europe, of course, changed the stance of the Europeans and now they feel like they should be more careful from Muslims identifying them with radical Islamists. But this is on the level of population, not an official one. To speak about Islamophobia on an official level is even ridiculous.

Second, to become an EU member country one should adopt the European acquis communautaire and fulfill the Copenhagen criteria. These are the two factors by which the pace of negotiations is determined. The same refers to Turkey, which has opened 14 out of 35 negotiation chapters so far, the last one being chapter 22 on regional policy and coordination of structural instruments. However, there are 17 chapters that are still blocked. As in Turkey' Progress Report of 2014 is written, there are certain areas, particularly issues related to freedom of speech and the lack of an independent judiciary, that become obstacles on the way to Turkey's EU accession. The report calls Turkey to open the chapter 23 on Judiciary and Fundamental rights and chapter 24 on Justice, Freedom and security by stating that this will be in the interests of both Turkey and the EU.

Taking into account the aforementioned, it becomes obvious that Turkey's EU accession does not have to do anything with Islamophobia and the fact that Turkey is still not an EU member country is not a proof that the EU is a "Christian club", as Erdogan stated. The problem is that Turkey, along with some other countries refuses what is obvious, what is clear to the whole world – problems with freedom of speech, freedom of media, judiciary system, etc. Over the last few months a number of examples come to prove this - blocking Twitter and YouTube, arrests of a number of journalists including editor in chief of Zaman, a ban by a Turkish court on access to the websites showing Charlie Hebdo's front cover, the inspection of the Turkish police of Cumhuriyet’s cars to make sure the publication did not contain any reprints of Charlie Hebdo’s cover cartoon and so forth. And in such an undemocratic situation the President of Turkey becomes offended from the words of Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiation and  Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign affairs, who called the recent arrests in Turkey as " incompatible with the freedom of media which is a core principle of democracy." As an answer to the EU's criticism, Turkey's president declared that the EU had no right to give "democracy lessons" to his country. Moreover, he stated that Turkey itself can give such lessons to the EU.

Taking into account these entire factors, one, however, should keep in mind that there are mutual interests the countries cannot ignore and reach to a red line beyond which there will be no way out. With the threat of the "Islamic State", bad relations with Russia, the problems inside the EU – the eurozone economic downturn, 11.5% of unemployment rate, the risk of the UK to come out from the EU, does not let the European Union to act more rashly towards Turkey. At the same time these problems, especially the internal ones, do not let the EU close its eyes on the situation in Turkey and let it become an EU member. Turkey, in its turn, is economically tied with the EU, as the latter is its biggest trading partner and the most part of Turkey’s foreign direct investments come from the EU countries. Thus there are interests that the both sides have to reckon with…