TURKEY has high hopes that Britain's six-month presidency of the EC
will bring Ankara closer to the Community. Foreign Secretary Douglas
Hurd is regarded as one of the few pro-Turks among Europe's leading
politicians.
Turkey, long shunned in the West for its poor human rights record and
treatment of the Kurds, was delighted when Hurd chose Ankara for his
first trip abroad after the re-election of the Conservatives.
The Foreign Secretary presented a detailed report at the recent EC
summit in Lisbon highly recommending improved relations with Turkey.
Amid official scribblings on Maastricht and the enlargement of the
Community, Hurd managed to squeeze a paragraph into the summit's final
declaration stating that Turkey's role in the future of Europe ''is of
the greatest importance''.
Hurd has also been instrumental in persuading Germany to lift its arms
embargo on Nato ally Turkey, which was in danger of causing an ugly
squabble in the military alliance. Hurd's fondness for Turkey doesn't
spring from the kind of romantic attachment that once led Lloyd George
to champion Greece to the point of neglecting Britain's other foreign
policy objectives in the region. No, Hurd is aware that Turkey's
traditional role as a bridge between East and West and its sudden
emergence as a regional power makes it too valuable to ignore.
In these post-Cold War days when blood is thicker than ideology,
Turkey had become almost overnight the big brother of more than 50
million ethnic Turks in the former Soviet republic. Turkey is a perfect
channel for the West to make inroads into little-known territory and
keep the republics from drifting towards Iranian-style Islamic
fundamentalism.
Turkish businessmen have taken the lead in opening up the Central
Asian market to the world economy. Deals are on the cards to pipe oil
from Kazakhstan and natural gas from Tajikistan to Europe via Turkey.
Uzbek and Kyrgyz tribesmen can now feed on the same daily diet of
Western soap operas and documentaries as the rest of us thanks to
Turkey's TRT television station which is broadcasting via satellite
across Central Asia as far as the Chinese border. The Turkish Government
is paying all the costs because of the huge propaganda value.
With the Balkans and Caucasus in flames and the Middle East always
simmering, Hurd also knows that Turkey is the only stable pro-Western
nation in a region that is a hornet's nest. Its support for the allies
in the Gulf war showed how useful such a strategically positioned friend
can be.
Turkey has been an associate member of the EC since 1963 and applied
for full membership in 1987 -- at a time when current prospective
members like Sweden wanted nothing to do with the Community. But the
chances of Turkey joining ''that exclusive Christian club'' as President
Turgut Ozal has described it, are slim, at least in the near future.
For a start, only a fraction of Turkish territory is actually in
Europe and most Turks are never quite sure which continent they belong
to. There's also the Cyprus problem which has led Greece to obstruct any
Turkish overtures to the EC and block a #400m Community aid package to
Turkey since the early 1980s.
Turkey, whose annual inflation rate is hovering around 80%, would
never be accepted by Brussels until it straightened out the mess its
economy is in. Above all, memories of the Ottomans' 500-year occupation
of much of Eastern Europe, which led Gladstone to deride ''the
unspeakable Turk'', still sends shivers up and down the Balkans.
Yet there are signs that Turkey might be given a special relation
status built around the full customs union which the Community and
Ankara are due to enter into in 1996.
Turkey has hinted that it may be willing to give up the right of its
citizens to circulate freely in the EC if it were granted membership.
Under present conditions hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers would
flood into Europe to join more than two million already there as soon as
they were given a pink passport.
Douglas Hurd believes that Turkey must be given the occasional signs
of encouragement to keep it on good terms with the EC. If not, there is
a danger the country could go off in a sulk and join its new friends in
the East.
Turkey is taking a more active role in the Economic Co-operation
Organisation, formed in 1985 with Iran and Pakistan and now including
most of the Central Asian republics. Turkey has also persuaded the
countries in the Black Sea region to form a potentially formidable trade
bloc with it. In a sign of Turkey's growing importance, Prime Minister
Suleyman Demirel held separate talks with nine heads of state in 10
hours, including Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk,
at a Black Sea summit in Istanbul last month.
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