The long process of negotiation that may lead to Turkey's eventual accession to the European Union is underway, now that Europe's heads of government have given membership talks the green light.
This is a crossroads in more ways than one. Turkey would be the first predominantly Muslim country to join, seen by many as a bridge between east and west. Turkey's Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan has gone as far as to say that having Turkey in the EU would be a catalyst for the harmony of civilisations and a bridge between the Islamic world and the rest of the world.
In many ways he is right. Outright rejection of Turkish membership, or indeed the imposition of a lesser status than full membership could be interpreted by some as a snub to the Muslim world, a desire to keep the European Union as a predominantly Christian family of nations. Although there are undoubtedly some right wing elements who sign up to this argument, I do not see the mainstream of European political or public opinion going in this direction.
Those of us who have opposed Turkey’s membership of the EU because of serious concerns about human rights, and in particular their treatment of the Kurds, have had to think long and hard before supporting, however reluctantly, opening talks on whether Turkey can join the EU at some point in the future. As the question of Turkish membership has progressed through the European Parliament, both I and colleagues in my parliamentary group have sought to use the debate to highlight the plight of Turkey's oppressed and put pressure for reform on the Turkish government.
What finally persuaded me that the negotiating process itself was not a green light to accession but a catalyst for ongoing reform was the groundswell of opinion in favour of such a move amongst the Kurds themselves. They now see the path to EU membership as the best chance to combat oppression.
It is clearly the case that the prospect of EU membership, and Turkey's desire to attain that has been the catalyst for internal reforms. The respected, campaigning NGO Human Rights Watch reports that just ten years ago torture was pandemic, deaths in custody were running at about one a week, writers who mentioned Turkey's minorities were branded terrorists and imprisoned whilst security forces burned Kurdish villages and drove thousands from their homes.
Today the situation has improved to the extent that the European Commission and Parliament felt able to back the opening of negotiations on Turkey joining the EU. But all is far from well when it comes to Turkey's approach to human rights and the treatment of minorities. Human Rights Watch reports that 'Turkey's respect for human rights continues to fall well below international standards: torture and ill-treatment in police custody remain common, and there has been little progress on the return of internally displaced Kurds to their homes.'
Earlier this year I had the privilege of hearing Kurdish Human Rights campaigner Leyla Zana address the European Parliament. Awarded the Parliament's Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 1995 for her peaceful struggle for the rights of the Kurdish people, she had been unable to collect the award in person until this year. The first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament, she spent ten years in prison for saying in Kurdish when taking the parliamentary oath that she would struggle so that Kurds and Turks can live together in democratic freedom. She was eventually released in June.
She dedicated her address to the 'brotherhood and happiness of the Turkish and Kurdish people', arguing that a 'Turkey that is a member of the European Union, which has resolved the Kurdish problem, will allow western civilisation to meet the great cultural wealth of Mesopotamia'. She had come to see Turkish EU membership as enabling 'western civilisation to become a contemporary democratic civilisation.'
And so the fifteen or so years that it will take to carry out the necessary negotiations has begun. If Tony Blair is still Prime Minister next summer, then he will carry the historic duty of opening accession talks with Turkey (the UK holds the EU presidency from July 2005).
The experience of new states that joined the EU this year has shown how slow and sometimes cosmetic democratic and human rights reforms can be. The EU must learn from this when it comes to Turkey. A few years ago, EU states set out the so-called 'Copenhagen Criteria', minimum standards that countries aspiring to join the EU would have to meet. Part of these criteria, often criticised for being too vague, incorporate a need for stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, guarantees about the rule of law and human rights and respect for and protection of minorities. But as Leyla Zana put it 'The Copenhagen criteria must be implemented in practice and not just in words'.
Turkey today clearly does not comply with the Copenhagen criteria. Europe's challenge now is to use accession talks to make sure that it will. Only then can we begin to talk seriously of Turkey as a European Union member - when it becomes a truly democratic state that allows all of its peoples to live in peace, freedom and security. Saying yes to negotiation does not mean saying yes to membership. There is still a long way to go.
Jill Evans MEP
