EU gets a warning from edgy Turkey
  The New York Times, Reuters, Agence France-Presse  Thursday, December 9, 2004
 
 

BRUSSELS The European Union was warned Wednesday that it could not expect Turkey to remain in its orbit if it did not admit the country to the bloc.
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Oguz Demiralp, the EU ambassador for Turkey, said the representatives who included sometimes offensive wording in a draft EU summit statement on whether to open membership talks with Turkey were mistaken in assuming Turkey would align itself with the European Union automatically.
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"The language assumes Turkey would remain in the orbit of the European Union no matter what happens. That is not true," he said at a conference.
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EU leaders are to decide at a meeting Dec. 17 whether to open accession talks with Ankara, which has been seeking to join since 1963. France and Austria are pushing for the European Union to spell out an alternative, less-than-full membership.
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Demiralp said there was no logic for Turkey to stay on its pro-EU course if leaders said "no" or offered it some kind of partnership short of membership.
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"Many cards will be redistributed," he said, if there was not a positive decision.
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"If a candidate country does not have, as finality, membership, why should that country align itself to the agricultural policy of the European Union," he said, adding the same applied to other EU policies.
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"Accession negotiations will be only for the purpose of accession and we do not want to see any language to cast shadows on this finality," he said.
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He objected to a phrase proposed by the EU executive, the European Commission, which said the negotiations were an "open-ended process whose outcome cannot be guaranteed beforehand."
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"It goes without saying that by its very nature any negotiation process is open-ended," Demiralp said. "But in the case of Turkey, the language has been offensively blunt. There is no need to be so blunt."
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Demiralp added that he wanted the decision Dec. 17 to set a clear date, no later than next spring, to start talks.
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In a rare show of unity, Turkey's president, prime minister, army chief and opposition party leader issued a strong joint protest Tuesday against EU moves to impose new conditions for the start of membership talks.
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They were reacting to the latest draft statement, prepared for the Dec. 17 meeting, that reportedly criticizes Turkey's record on torture and would set standards for EU entry that are tougher than those for other candidate countries.
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Resistance by France, Austria and the Netherlands, among other countries, has fueled anger across Turkey, and the Turkish leaders, clearly irritated, suggested the Europeans were treating them unfairly.
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In Belek, Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged Wednesday that his government would remove any remaining obstacles to religious freedoms in Turkey as he opened a complex of Muslim, Christian and Jewish worship sites.
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The site, called the Garden of Religions, in the Mediterranean resort of Belek, contains a mosque, a church and a synagogue. It was inaugurated to underscore tolerance among different cultures at a time when Turkey is under fire from the EU for failing to fully respect the rights of its non-Muslim minorities.
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Erdogan said at the ceremony that religious tolerance was a heritage of the Ottoman Empire and quoted edicts by Mehmet the Conqueror, the sultan who took Istanbul in 1453, ordering respect for non-Muslims.
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On another issue, Turkey resisted calls to recognize Cyprus before the EU meeting. Turkey recognizes only the Turkish Cypriot enclave in north Cyprus, while the rest of the world views the Greek Cypriot government in the south, which joined the EU in May, as the representative of the whole island.
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Asked in an interview with Le Monde in France if Turkey would recognize Cyprus, Erdogan said, "No, and we find it unjust that this question is put to us when we did all we could for a peaceful solution to be found in Cyprus."
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"Only the United Nations can ask us to recognize Cyprus and this has nothing to do with the European Union," he added. The Cypriot question will not be broached until after the summit Dec. 17, he said.
.http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/08/news/turkey.html