By Gérard DupuyTuesday 04 October 2005
Arranged marriages always have a laborious element, but just because something is laborious does not mean it is a good arrangement. The agreement between the EU and Turkey, reached last night after some delay, is the result of the sort of knives-drawn diplomacy that is more usually practiced to avoid a war than to draft the preamble to a marriage contract. A few syllables more or less on the order of the day were supposed to decide the outcome of many long years of negotiations by determining their status. Either - as Turkey and its supporters, including Great Britain, consider - Turkey's adhesion is a done deal, as long as the technical details are settled during the next 10 to 15 years. Or - as Austria, whose faint voice was strengthened by the approbatory silence of many other Europeans, wanted - negotiations were opened to establish a compromise that authorizes this adhesion. It is probable that this ambiguity will have to be spoken of again in spite of the salvaging in extremis of the negotiatios.
One may denounce the narrowness of view and the prejudices of the many Europeans who reject Turkey's adhesion to the EU. Turkish propaganda takes that opportunity. One may nonetheless find it desirable that Turkey be able to pursue its integration into European institutions and demand that it fulfill a certain number of conditions to do so - conditions that are not yet satisfied today. They may be so, as long as Turkish governments want them to be. The attitude adopted by Prime Minister Erdogan in recent days - not only with regard to Cyprus - is not reassuring in that respect. One detail: the Turkish government met yesterday without interruption at the headquarters of the (Islamist) party in power. Any normally European country would consider such confusion between party and State scabrous. Maybe after a long engagement, things will go better.
