PARIS, 22 October 2004 — Turkey’s prime minister said yesterday he hoped French skepticism about his country’s European Union bid would be overcome and called on President Jacques Chirac for backing. “I expect a declaration from my friend President Chirac which would put an end to all the chatter,” Tayyip Erdogan told Le Parisien newspaper.
“I am sure that he will manage this, because of his great genius. Isn’t he one of the senior figures in politics?” Chirac favors Turkey’s entry but opinion polls show a large majority of French voters oppose it and deputies complained during a debate in Parliament last week that starting entry talks with Ankara would make Turkish membership inevitable.
The EU’s executive commission has recommended the talks begin but has said they should be suspended if Ankara backtracks on human rights or political reforms. “Despite the EU recommendations, we now have a debate which saddens us, but I hope we will overcome it,” Erdogan told a news conference at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, referring to the situation in France.
“France has always supported us. We saw that in previous summits. I am convinced that on Dec. 17, at the EU summit, political will be expressed,” he said. Erdogan has said Turkish entry was a long process which would not end at a summit on Dec. 17 when EU leaders decide whether to invite Ankara to start entry talks.
Chirac, whose ruling conservative party is hostile to Turkey’s entry, has said France will hold a referendum on the issue if EU leaders agree it has met the membership criteria. That is considered unlikely for more than a decade. Erdogan told Le Parisien EU member states had not held a referendum on other countries’ accession and added:
“Imposing this on Turkey would contradict the process that has been carried out until now. It would also be contrary to the Union’s principles... We ask for only one thing: to be treated just like the others.”
Opinion polls show French people fear Turks will flood the EU job market and are wary of allowing in a large, mainly Muslim country. They also fear a loss of French influence in the EU. Erdogan is visiting Paris as part of a European-wide campaign to drum up support for Turkey’s candidacy before the December summit. He has no meeting scheduled with Chirac during the two-day stop but will see the French leader and German President Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin on Tuesday.
Erdogan’s visit to France coincided with the OECD’s release of an assessment of Turkey’s economy, in which it said Turkey’s current efforts towards winning a date to start EU membership talks may support the country’s changing economic regime.
“If the accession negotiations are confirmed by the European Council in December, this will strengthen the international anchors for Turkey and could very well underpin Turkey’s shift to an even stronger growth path,” the OECD’s head Donald Johnston told a joint news conference with Erdogan.
The OECD said it expected Turkey’s economy to grow by more than eight percent in 2004, well above Ankara’s five percent forecast. Turkish officials have recently said growth could exceed 10 percent as the economy recovers from a 2001 crisis.
Meanwhile, a Turkish court sentenced yesterday one of the country’s most notorious contractors to 25 years in jail over the deaths of 195 people who perished in a 1999 quake in shoddy houses he had built, Anatolia news agency reported. The court in the central city of Konya convicted Veli Gocer of “causing the death of more than one person by negligence and carelessness.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said yesterday that relations between Turkey and the European Union are at a “critical point.”. “Historically, we have reached a very critical point,” he told a conference of Turkish businessmen in the German capital. He said the Dec. 17 decision of EU leaders whether to open membership talks with Turkey would reveal “if our relations with the EU are on the right track and if the EU is able to reconcile its own interests with ours.”
Germany, which is home to two and a half million Turkish immigrants, has already said Schroeder will vote in favor of Turkey beginning talks to join the Union.
