TESEV, British Council ve Avrupa Komisyonu Türkiye Delegasyonu Tarafından Düzenlenen Boğaziçi Konferansı – EU-Turkey Relations: The critical year of 2009 (İng.)

Statement of Mr. Onur Öymen, Vice-chairman of CHP at Bosphorus Conference,
17 October 2009

Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. We have listened very nice introductory remarks of important personalities a moment ago. It was like music to the ears. But we have a professional disease: we read the recent documents. We studied the document of the EU Commission, the strategic document and the Progress Report on Turkey. When I read these documents, I remember the famous story of Van Cliburn. He was a young and promising pianist. He was invited to play in Carnegie Hall. He came to New York, looking for Carnegie Hall. He met an elderly man in the street and asked him:  “How can I reach Carnegie Hall?” The man said: “Practice my boy. Practice, practice and practice”. This is the message we read in EU documents.

Apparently some friends are keeping telling us that, we need more progress to reach the European Union and perhaps at the end of the day we may join the club. Others, as you have heard this morning, have another message:  “Whatever you do, you may not have a chance”. Some political leaders have even said that Turkey should never join the Union, because she is not a European country. As simple as that. Although in the last fifty years we were the members of so many European institutions they do not consider us as a part of Europe.

I believe that the title of a front page Article of International Herald Tribune of October 15th summarizes the message of the Progress Report: “Europe offers no hopes to Turkey”. The subtitle is more precise: “Warnings for Ankara, positive signals for Croatia and Macedonia”. That is where we are at this moment.

As far as my Party CHP is concerned, we are in favor of Turkey’s EU membership. For us membership to the EU is more than a project among others. It is a national goal for us. Turkey has developed her foreign, economic and social policies in the last forty years bearing in mind the requirements of the European Union. In case Turkey is kept outside of Europe, I hardly imagine that we can continue to live as a European island outside Europe. We had already some signals of what may happen in the future.

The government is concluding strategic agreements with our neighboring countries. They sign agreements of visa exemptions, but we have no visa exemption agreement with any European country. We are afraid that, if it continuous this way, at least a part of our society may be inclined to give more credits to our relations and cooperation with our neighbors. Although we are in favor of having good relations with all our neighboring countries and although we have cultural and religious affinities with them they are of a different political culture. On the contrary the countries which are somehow rejecting or delaying our membership are countries with whom we share the same values like human rights, democracy, secularism, gender quality. It would be extremely dangerous for us and for you, if Turkey’s foreign policy changes it’s center of gravity. We are feeling such a danger. And those, for their national interests, reject Turkish membership and push Turkey towards another horizon should think twice about its possible strategic implications.

We believe that we have to reset our frame of mind and we have to see what we can do together. As regards to my party’s position, I said in a press conference yesterday. the points on which we agree with the European Commission. On forty nine points, we completely agree with the observations, suggestions and criticisms of the Commission. But there are some other issues that we hardly agree with. The Commission, in some parts of the report is over optimistic, on other places over pessimistic. About the last local elections, the report says that “These elections were very democratic and fair”. This is in contradiction with the Prime Minister who mentioned that for instance in Southeastern part of the country the elections were not democratic and fair at all. You see, sometimes the Commission is more optimistic than the Prime Minister.

We have some observations on some other points as well. Now we don’t have enough time to elaborate all of them in detail. But generally I can tell you that Turkish people are very much disappointed that the membership process is delayed too much. We have started our membership negotiations with the EU the same day together with Croatia. Croatia is about to finalize her negotiations. I congratulate them. But there is no indication about the possible end of negotiations with Turkey. And on some issues, we notice that the Commission used a very diplomatic language not to hurt the government, It seems that our Government representatives were able to persuade the Commission to use a very soft and careful language vis-à-vis the government. For instance while referring to the press freedom; the report criticizes some senior political leaders who asked the boycott of Doğan Group newspapers, without stating who these leaders are. You should know that the person who asked for such a boycott is nobody else then the prime minister. But it is so politely mentioned that, it is hard to discover which person they are referring to.. About the three billion dollars fine imposed on the some media group, the conclusion of the Commission is that the high amount of this fine may disturb the company and by definition it may also hamper the freedom of press. Despite the general feeling in Turkey and in the International Media associations there is no reference to the fact that this fine is precisely used to punish that media group. So the language is very soft as regards to the government.

As regards to some other authorities, the language of the report is surprisingly harsh. For example the presidents of the Turkish high courts who are known as defenders of the independence of judiciary were criticized strongly. The report says that “These persons with their statements, damage the independence of judiciary”. A similar language is used to criticize YARSAV, the association of judges and prosecutors. The criticism against the military is much stronger compared to last year’s report. And the report targets the Chief of Staff personally for damaging democracy, interfering in the judiciary etc. However the report doesn’t refer to the statements of the chief of staff where he says that “Our forces are strictly committed to democracy and we are also against any form of use of force to overthrow the government”. Such statements are carefully omitted.

CHP has established an office in Brussels. Our representative is informing daily the European Union officials in Brussels on the statements and observations of our party. Practically there is no reference to the opposition in the progress report with the exception our position on lifting the immunity of the parliamentarians. Still we thank the Commission members who kindly received our representative Ms. Sevinç. I am confident that after one year in Brussels she will have a chance to be received by Turkish Ambassador as well.
 
Dear friends, dear colleagues,

As regards to the statement of Mr. Minister Pierre Lelouche this morning, We understood that France continuous to be against Turkish membership. With France, we have long standing friendship. And we believe that our generation does not have the right to destroy the friendship built by several generations before us. Some may consider the statements of President Sarkozy and other French politicians as an answer to the letter of Soliment the Magnificent to François the first. They are answering this way the generous support of our ancestors. What is the reason? We don’t know it yet. But whatever the reason may be French position damages our relations with the European Union. We better understand now the feelings of our British friends that they were vetoed by President de Gaulle. But they survived these vetoes and they joined European Union. We will survive French rejection as well and we will join the Union. Still I must tell you that we are quite disappointed of this reaction of France and some other European countries..

French opposition to Turkey is not limited to our EU membership only. They are now elaborating a new plan aiming to build a new G14 group, where besides G8 members other countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico will join. Egypt which is not actually a member of G 20’s will participate as well. Turkey? According the French proposal there should be no place for Turkey in this new group.
 
For other countries that are reluctant somehow about Turkish membership, we urge them to think twice. Because we believe that we have a common destiny. Turkish people were very much in favor of Europe. 72% of the Turks were supporting Turkish membership six years ago. Now the rate is 32%. The support is decreasing. We are afraid that in the following years we may have more serious problems as regards to the support of Turkish people. I wonder whether it would be beneficial for Europe if Turkish people shift its interest from Europe to elsewhere.

 Therefore we say that we have to reset our frame of minds.
I congratulate Mr. Olli Rehn because he supported the government’s Kurdish opening; this means that he is informed about the content. I believe that he would not support an initiative that he is not informed about. But no one, besides him, is informed about this project in Turkey. As opposition, we have not heard one word about the content of this project. We are very much in favor of the solution of the problems of our citizens of Kurdish origin. We have put on paper our Party’s opinions, proposals, suggestions already 20 years ago. We repeated this recently. But we have not heard one single word about the Government’s position. Apparently Olli Rehn is more informed about the Government’s position than us, I will be glad if he informs us about what he heard, about this project.

Thank you very much.