New Leader Tries to Sell Turkey (and Himself) to Europeans
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
BRUSSELS, Nov. 20 — Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he will do almost anything to get Turkey into the exclusive 15-member club known as the European Union.
As leader of Turkey's new governing party and probably the most popular politician in the country, Mr. Erdogan has promised to change laws and amend the Constitution, to root out graft and to make concessions on Cyprus.
Starting last week, he took his campaign westward, selling himself as much as his cause on a tour of seven member states of the European Union. Today, he knocked on the doors of the organization headquarters here, warning it not to discriminate against a country whose people are overwhelmingly Muslim.
"Turkey has been waiting at the gates of the E.U. for 40 years, but countries that applied only 10 years ago are almost becoming members," he complained at a news conference in a hotel. "We think we have to go beyond that and not look at the E.U. as a Christian club."
On his first trip abroad after the stunning victory of his Islamist party this month, he urged European Union leaders to agree at their summit meeting next month in Copenhagen to give Turkey a fixed date for the start of formal talks on when and how it can join.
"If the results are negative," Mr. Erdogan said, "it will create the provocative thought of the E.U. as a club of Christian countries."
The summit leaders are set to invite formally 10 countries to join in 2004 — Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Turkey has a long way to go before the European Union embraces it. In 1999, the organization accepted Turkey as a "candidate" for membership, issuing a warm statement saying it was "destined to join the union." There has been a cooling since then.
Turkey has been praised for laws adopted in August to abolish the death penalty in peacetime, permit greater freedom of expression and increase the rights of ethnic Kurds. But some members of the European Union have resisted setting a date in Copenhagen for talks, saying Turkey first has to prove it is improving its human rights record and carrying out other reforms.
This month, former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France, who is overseeing plans for the future of Europe, said bluntly that Turkey was "not a European country" and that inviting it to join the union would mean "the end of Europe."
Afterward, Mr. Erdogan, a former mayor of Istanbul, stayed cool, dismissing the remarks as "inopportune" and "emotional."
The waters were muddied again last Thursday, when Pope John Paul II gave his advice to the European Union as it prepared to expand eastward. He called on the group to remember that its "common European house" was built with "the cement of that extraordinary religious, cultural and spiritual heritage that has made Europe great down the centuries."
The effect of the remarks, whether intended or not, was to reinforce the perception of Turkey as an outsider.
Mr. Erdogan was received today by the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, and the European Union commissioner for enlargement. Günter Verheugen.
Mr. Giscard d'Estaing was in Vienna for a birthday party, his spokesman said. Chris Patten, the European Union commissioner for external relations, kept long-scheduled plans to be in Paris. Javier Solana, its foreign policy chief, who was en route to the NATO summit meeting in Prague, went to Ankara last week to meet Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Erdogan took with him 12 Turkish business and civic leaders to prove his good faith. Turkey is desperate to accelerate its bid for membership in hopes of attracting foreign investment, as it tries to recover from its worst recession since World War II.
Much to the annoyance of members, the United States has pressed hard for Turkey, the sole Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a much-needed ally in any military campaign against Iraq, eventually to become a member. On Monday, President Bush telephoned the current president of the union, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, and urged him to advance Turkey's candidacy.
Mr. Erdogan today praised his country as a model of coexistence between Islam and democracy.
"The Turkish population is Muslim," he said, "and we are trying to have a positive impact on the way the Muslim world looks at the European Union. We want Turkey to be proof of how we can live side by side."
With Turkey as a member, he added, "the European Union will be able to expand to the Caucasus, to Asia."
"It will be a gate," Mr. Erdogan said.
That is exactly what many Europeans fear, although they are reluctant to say so out loud. A concern is that if Turkey joined the union, it could become a "gate" for a flood of terrorists and immigrants from eastern neighbors like Iran and Iraq.
Mr. Erdogan sought to portray himself as a model of moderation. Convicted in 1998 of inciting hatred on religious grounds after he recited a well-known poem comparing minarets to bayonets, he has been barred from becoming prime minister until Parliament revises laws that bar him from politics.
He told reporters that a solution to the 28-year division of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey has to be examined as part of Turkey's effort to join the European Union and that a fair solution would require compromises on both sides.
Asked whether he had a secret agenda to turn Turkey into an Islamic state, Mr. Erdogan said:
"Everything is open, clear, transparent. There is no chance of a fundamentalist party's getting power in Turkey, because our population has chosen the middle way, and not the extremes. This is how we got our people's votes."
