TURKEY: THE OPPORTUNITY

By Ray Fleming IT took Turkey 82 years to reach October 3, 2005; it was in October 1923 that Kemal Ataturk proclaimed a Turkish Republic and began the work of turning his country to the West. Ataturk established the Muslim nation as a secular state by abolishing the Caliphate, emancipated women, encouraged western dress, introduced a Latin alphabet and developed industry. He left much to be done at his death in 1938 but, even so, he would probably have been surprised, if not outraged, had he been able to witness the treatment his country has received at the hands of the European Union over the past few months. Although Turkey has been as associate member of the EU for 42 years and has worked extremely hard to meet EU's requirements on full membership, it still found itself on Monday being treated as an outcast at the very moment that negotiations on membership were due to begin because of the smallminded opposition of a single member state, Austria. Britain, as the current holder of the presidency of the EU, has had since early July to ensure that Austria would not embarrass the other 24 member states by its stubborness but seems to have allow matters to drift until it was almost too late. There were times during the emergency foreign ministers meeting on Sunday and Monday when Jack Straw's briefing to the press was almost incoherent and he must have been relieved that some minor compromises were found that enabled the Turkish foreign minister to say that negotiations could begin. There is a lesson in this. During what will be a decade of hard bargaining on Turkey's full compliance with the EU's social and economic EU rules and regulations there will be many opportunities for opponents of Turkey's membership to point to the dangers inherent in changing the EU from an exclusive rich, white Christian club to an association whose largest member will be a still relatively poor nation whose population is predominatnly Muslim. To pose the problem is to provide the answer, which is that those who understand the magnitude of the opportunity that Turkey's membership represents should make sure to spell this out at every available opportunity, rather than leaving it to the last moment again, when it may be too late.