CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANCE ...

CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANCE AND TURKEY Transcendıng Stereotypes Edıted by

Senem Aydın Düzgit - Ayhan Kaya

Edıted by Senem Aydın Düzgit - Ayhan Kaya CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANCE AND TURKEY Transcendıng Stereotypes ‹stanbul Bilgi Unıversıty Press ??? European Studıes ISBN 978-605-399-128-1 Fırst Edıtıon, ‹stanbul, November 2009 © Bilgi ‹letiflim Grubu Yay›nc›l›k Müzik Yap›m ve Haber Ajans› Ltd. fiti. Adress: ‹nönü Caddesi, No: 43/A Kufltepe fiiflli 34387 ‹stanbul Phone: 0212 311 52 59 - 311 52 62 / Fax: 0212 297 63 14 www.bilgiyay.com E-maıl [email protected] Dıstrıbutıon [email protected] Edıted by Belgin Çınar Cover Desıgn Mehmet Ulusel Electronıc Page Makeup Maraton Dizgievi Prınter and Bınder Sena Ofset Ambalaj ve Matbaacılık San. Tic. Ltd. Şti. Litros Yolu 2. Matbaacılar Sitesi B Blok Kat 6 No: 4 NB 7-9-11 Topkapı İstanbul Phone: 0212 613 03 21 - 613 38 46 / Fax: 0212 613 38 46

‹stanbul Bilgi University Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Istanbul Bilgi University Library

Devletin Silahlanmas›: Ortado€u’da ve Orta Asya’da Zorunlu Askerlik (1775-1925) / derleyen Erik J. Zürcher; çev. M. Tanju Akad p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-605-399-128-1 (pbk.) 1. Draft. 2. Middle East—Armed forces. 3. Middle East—History, Military. 4. Middle East—History. 5. Asia, Central—History. 6. Asia, Central—History, Military. 7. Asia, Central—Armed forces. I. Zürcher, Erik Jan. UB345.M5 D48 2003

Edıted by

Senem Aydın Düzgit - Ayhan Kaya CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANCE AND TURKEY Transcendıng Stereotypes

Table of Contents

ix Authors

1 INTRODUCTION - INTERACT: Empowering Civil Society Dialogue Between Turkey and France Senem Aydın Düzgit - Ayhan Kaya Riva Kastoryano - Jean Marcou

4 Presentation of the Book 6 Acknowledgements

9 1 Civil Society Dialogue in Action: A Review of Civil Society Workshop Series Laden Yurttagüler 9 Introduction 10 Networking as a Strategy 11 Mapping as a Capacity Building Activity 12 “NGO Dialogue between France and Turkey: Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series” 13 15

Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series I: Strategic Mapping of Relations for European Citizenship Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series II: Strategic Mapping for Strategy Building

17 2 Lessons Learned? EU Conditionality and Its Uses in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey Deniz Bingöl McDonald 17 Introduction 18 ‘World Time’ of EU Enlargement 19 Its use and Origins 22 A Perfect Record? 24 Parameters for Comparison for CEE and WB 24 25 26 27

Healthy Competition Among the Reforming Countries Regional Cooperation Amongst Acession Countries Current Accession Countries Could Learn by Example from Past and Current Successes Reform Consensus in Accession Countries

29 Which Lessons can be Learned? 30 Turkey as a Group of its Own? 31 The Future of Enlargement Policy 33 EU Enlargement and the EU in the Next Two Decades

vi table of contents

35 3 National Identity and Minority Issues in Turkey and the European Union: A Comparative Analysis of the West-European Experience and the Kurdish Problem in Turkey Maya Arakon 35 Introduction 36 What is Nationalism? 38 Why do the Ethnic Minorities Living in Multiethnic States Become State-Claiming Ethnic Nationalities? 42 National Identity Turning into Separatist Claims: Northern Ireland, Basque Country and the Kurdish Question

42 The Northern Ireland Question 46 Separatist Aspirations in the Basque Country 49 The Kurdish Question

53 Conclusion

57 4 Interdependence, Rivalry and Cooperation: Nabucco Project and the Politics of Energy Security of Natural Gas in the Wider Eurasian Region Cem Deniz Kut 59 Energy Security and Natural Gas 61 Energy Politics of Natural Gas: Russia and the Main Actors of Supply in Eurasia 62 Russia 63 Caspian, Central Asia and Turkey 66 Problems Regarding Geopolitics and Security in the Region: Exportation and Russia's Relations with Central Asian States 70 Turkey and Energy Security of Natural Gas 73 The Nabucco and South Stream Projects 74 Conclusion

79 5 Turkey Between Russia and the European Union: The Foreign Policy Challenges of an Emerging Regional Power Laurent Vinatier 79 Introduction 82 Russia's Energy Bluff: The Focus on South Stream

82 A Too Perfect Picture

table of contents vii

85 85 86 87

88 Turkey's Path Towards regional Leadership

88 91 93 95

Gazprom’s Work Principle No Reliable Supplies from Turkmenistan South Stream’s Weak Incentives Russian Realities Beyond: Making Gazprom a Normal European Economic Actor Turkey’s Energy Card: Becoming a Hub The Opening with Armenia and the Growing Spaces of Negotiations on the East The NATO-Russo-Georgian Compromise: A Turkish Bet Iran, as a Powerful but Non Regional Player

96 Conclusion

99 6 Turkish Elites’ and Public Opinion’s Attitudes Towards the European Union within the Framework of Turkey’s Full Membership Process to the European Union Nicolas Monceau 99 Introduction 100 Investigating the Turkish Elite 102 The Civil Society Elite as a Case Study of the Modernising Elite in Turkey 104 Profile of the Civil Society Elite in Turkey 104 105 106

107 Turkish Elite and the EU

107 110 113 114

Gender and Age Educational Levels, Education and School Types, Foreign Language Ability Occupational Backgrounds

A Strong Support for European Integration Turkish Elite and Public Perceptions of Europe: Democracy or Economic Prosperity? Feeling National or European? European Integration and Attitudes towards Democracy

116 Conclusion 117 Appendix

Authors MAYA ARAKON Assistant Professor of International Relations, Yeditepe University SENEM AYDIN DÜZGİT Assistant Professor of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University RIVA KASTORYANO Research Director at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche Internationale (CERI-Paris) AYHAN KAYA Professor of Political Science, Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of International Relations CEM DENİZ KUT PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University JEAN MARCOU Professor of Political Science at the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA) DENİZ BİNGÖL MCDONALD Research Fellow at CENS and Department of International Relations and European Studies, Central European University NICOLAS MONCEAU Research Fellow at University of Grenoble - Institute of Political Studies & PACTE Research Center (CNRS) LAURENT VINATIER Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris LADEN YURTTAGÜLER Program Officer in NGO Training and Research Centre, Istanbul Bilgi University

Introduction

INTERACT: Empowering Civil Society Dialogue Between Turkey and France Senem Aydın Düzgit - Ayhan Kaya, RIva Kastoryano - Jean Marcou

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urkey’s EU trajectory has for long been situated at the core of national and international concerns within the European academic circles and beyond. It leads to controversies regarding European Union enlargement and to debates on the very definition of Europe and the essence of the European Union. Many reports are being written and circulated among bureaucratic circles in Europe. In a similar vein, many European associations have organised conferences and public debates with experts, journalists and academics in order to spread knowledge on Turkish state and society. Nevertheless, only a few of the analyses mention the complexity of Turkish reality, namely the nature of civil society; the internal and external dynamics; social, economic and cultural development of the country; its importance in the region as well its relations with the European Union and its member states. Turkey’s accession to the EU sparks certain fears in Turkey primarily regarding the erosion of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Similarly, debates on enlargement in Europe are often convoluted with a sense of a loss of identity and the fear of globalisation. This is particularly the case in a key country like France, as witnessed in the recent French debates on Turkish accession. The argument here is not to dismiss each fear raised by enlargement prospects as irrelevant, but point to the need to situate them within an informative framework where the issues are presented through a scientifically informed perspective devoid of populism. One of the major constraints in this regard is insufficient societal and academic engagement. In

2 civil society dialogue between france and turkey / transcending stereotypes

the case of France, where there is contact, this is highly limited to collaboration between Francophone universities in Turkey and selected universities in France. This constraint manifests itself both in the shape of a low demand for inter-societal dialogue and related lack of opportunities to foster such a dialogue. This constraint and its resulting implications can only be overcome through actions oriented towards enhancing both the quality and quantity of interaction between the two sides. This was the main motivation behind the large scale project entitled “INTERACT: Empowering Civil Society Dialogue Between Turkey and France”, funded by the Civil Society Dialogue Program of the European Commission, and run by İstanbul Bilgi University, Sciences Po-Paris, and the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA). The project was aimed to facilitate the taking of further steps for mutual dialogue and collaboration between Turkey and the EU, by contributing to the extension of such collaborative activities to France, a key country for both Turkey and the EU. France is a country that has played a key role in shaping the modernisation/Westernisation trajectory of Turkey in various realms such as state-society relations, the role of religion in the public sphere and the bureaucratic structure. More recently, France has begun to play an influential role regarding Turkey’s integration with the European Union. This has not solely been a case of one-way influence of France over Turkish domestic and foreign policy. French debates on the future of Europe and France’s role in it has also centred on Turkish accession to the EU and the questions it raises regarding identity and belonging not only in international affairs, but also in domestic spheres of EU member states. While the impacts of both countries in the formulation of their internal debates and external policies are apparent, it is a well-known fact that prejudice and misinformation among the civil society of both countries continue to overwhelmingly cloud the relations between the two. The overall objective of the project was geared towards taking up a twofold challenge in this respect. One was to contribute to the eradication of societal prejudices between the two countries in question and to paving of the way for more rational debates on both sides via strengthening contacts and mutual exchange of knowledge and experience between civil society in Turkey and in France. Since academicians and universities comprise a key elite that play a significant medium role in the construction and dissemination of rational argumentation in modern society, the second challenge of the overall objective have lied in contributing to dissemination of better

introduction - interact: empowering civil society dialogue between turkey and france

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knowledge and understanding of Turkey within the EU and of EU within Turkey, mainly through long-term sustainable cooperation and partnership between a Turkish University (İstanbul Bilgi University) and a prevalent EU member state university (Sciences Po-Paris), with a considerable degree of input from IFEA. This cooperation was not only envisaged to provide for the exchange of knowledge on politics, history and culture of Turkey and EU policies, institutions and values; but also to help enhance analytical skills and academic know-how between the two institutions. The fact that Science Po is a highly international institution where approximately one third of its students are foreign also made it a crucial international partner for extending the mutual dialogue and debate beyond France to the rest of the EU. Within this perspective, both Sciences Po Paris and IFEA fully collaborated with İstanbul Bilgi University in the project. The project played a crucial role for academics and students of both institutions in fulfilling the lacuna on knowledge and understanding of both societies and their perception and representation of the European Union. The way in which this was realised was through a variety of activities within the remit of the project. These included the scientific exchange of professors from İstanbul Bilgi University and Sciences Po; an expert task force of doctoral/post-doctoral fellows; scientific exchange of doctoral/post-doctoral research fellows from France and Turkey; a joint multidisciplinary research project on regional governance in selected underdeveloped regions of France, Turkey and Poland within the scope of EU accession (Kaya and Bafoil, 2009); a permanent course opened at Istanbul Bilgi University on “France and the EU: Politics, Society and Culture”; two weekend schools for selected civil society representatives from France and Turkey; a summer school for international undergraduate students, three thematic/awareness raising conferences and one final evaluation conference. This book is a collection of the selected academic/policy relevant outputs of these project activities. It contains two articles by the two post-doctoral research fellows (one from Turkey, and one from France) that occupied six-month posts at Sciences Po and İstanbul Bilgi University respectively, with the aim of promoting scientific interaction of younger academicians. The book also includes two papers from the participants of the doctoral/post-doctoral workshops (also referred to as the “expert task force”) held in Istanbul and Paris with research fellows from Turkish and French Universities, to es-


tablish links between young academicians researching themes that are within the remit of the project (EU and civil society, EU-Turkey relations, France in the EU and multiculturalism), provide a common space for academic interaction and hence promote socialisation and academic know-how. The book also contains articles that are related to the networking activities undertaken within the scope of the project, geared towards enhancing both academic and civil society contacts and hence fostering socialisation as well as ensuring high visibility of EU support and the idea of civil society dia-logue through events that target the involvement of wider community groups in EU and Turkey. One activity in this respect concerned the establishment of two weekend schools (one in Paris, one in İstanbul) where civil society representatives from Turkey and France were brought together to enhance communication and understanding between the two sides, to contribute to debates on the future of civil society in Europe within the scope of the debates on multiculturalism, diversity, state-society relations; disseminate information on the implications of Turkish accession on Turkey and on the EU within the scope of highly acquis-dependent selected EU policies such as agriculture and environment, and to pave the way for future cooperative activities/projects between civil society institutions. An activity which relates to another article of the book is the one-month summer school entitled “EU Borders and Enlargement”, where twenty third and fourth year undergraduate students from EU and the candidate states received lectures from ten academicians from BİLGİ, Sciences Po and selected EU universities. PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK This book does not constitute a report on the activities of the project. Instead, it takes a snapshot of the activities through selected academic/policy relevant contributions that took place within their framework. This book, however, is also not an ad hoc collection of articles pertaining to the activities of the project. All the contributions are firmly rooted in the general framework of paving the way for a more rational debate on Turkey’s accession in the EU, which is a major goal of the project and thus all its activities as described above. Furthermore, the fact that these outputs are produced by scholars from France and Turkey in a collaborative framework, by itself constitutes a civil society dialogue process. Therefore, it should also be considered that the context within which these outputs have been produced is also part of the conceptual framework of this book.


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The first contribution by Laden Yurttagüler directly relates to the policy relevance of the project. It provides an historical outline of the civil society dialogue in the European Union, to be followed by an account of the weekend schools that were organised within the scope of the project. The article focuses on exercise of “strategic mapping” that took place in the weekend schools, where the main aim was to enhance capacity building of the civil society institutions through effective interaction. The following two articles by Deniz Bingöl McDonald and Maya Arakon focus on a highly popular area which is also a field that is ripe for misconceptions and prejudices between EU and Turkey, namely democracy and human rights. Deniz Bingöl McDonald tackles the concept of “EU conditionality”, with a comparative emphasis on the way in which it was utilised in the cases of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) and the Western Balkans. She finds that although the EU seems to have learnt some lessons from the previous enlargement to CEECs, it still lacks a “commitment deficit” in its relations with the countries of the Western Balkans. She then turns her attention to the case of Turkey, where she argues that together with the Western Balkans, it faces a considerable degree of “uncertainty” and “higher hurdles” that significantly hamper the credibility of conditionality in both cases. Maya Arakon looks at the other side of the coin by focusing on the actual democratic practices within Turkey, mainly regarding the Kurdish issue. She highlights the differences and similarities with the cases of the Basque Country and Northern Ireland, concluding that although certain steps have been taken, prospects for reconciliation and devolution need to be considered for a peaceful solution to the long standing conflict in Turkey. The next two articles by Cem Deniz Kut and Laurent Vinatier focus on a crucial, yet highly underexplored aspect of EU-Turkey relations, namely the energy issue. Cem Deniz Kut outlines the problems that Russia, EU and Turkey faces in energy cooperation, with a specific emphasis on the limits and opportunities of a possible active cooperation between the EU and Turkey on natural gas through the Nabucco Project. Laurent Vinatier focuses on the South Stream Project as a rival to Nabucco, and moves a step further to analyse the way in which the energy cooperation and related developments in the South Caucasus create essential bargaining tools for Turkey to substantially increase its presence from the Black Sea to the Caspian region. The last article, by Nicolas Monceau, demonstrates that just like in the EU, Turkish public opinion on European integration is divided between the elite and the masses


on a variety of issues regarding European integration. By highlighting similar cleavages on economic benefits, democracy and human rights and identitybased considerations, he points to the fact that the thesis that Turkey is a sui generis case to Europe in all respects needs to be treated with caution. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has been produced as part of the European Commission’s Pre-accession Assistance Programme for Turkey “Promotion of the Civil Society Dialogue between European Union and Turkey” (CSD - I) project. The authors and the project team thank the European Commission, the EU Secretariat General, the Central Finance and Contracts Unit, the EU Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey and the Civil Society Dialogue Technical Support Unit for their support throughout the Project. The editors of the book want to express their gratitude to their colleagues who have wholeheartedly contributed to the INTERACT Project from the very beginning. We are grateful to Gülperi Vural and Kerem Çiftçioğlu who have made the whole project possible. They have generously dedicated their time, insights and most importantly their passion. The project could not have been implemented without their effort. Aydın Uğur, the former Rector of BİLGİ, was always very supportive. We also want to acknowledge Halil Güven, BİLGİ’s new Rector, who also generously gave his support. We appreciate his support very much. Francis Verillaud and Catherine Farhi from Sciences Po-Paris as well as Nora Şeni from IFEA were also very much involved in the implementation of the project. We are grateful to them. BİLGİ’s Rectorate, General Secretariat, Accounting Office and Publicity teams were extremely helpful. Thanks to you all. Özge Onursal has always been with us since the writing of the Project proposal, we are also very much thankful to her enthusiasm and insightful interventions throughout the whole project. Suna Gökçe, Refika Saldere, Yaprak Gürsoy, Burç Beşgül and Ayşe Tecmen were always there when we needed their assistance. Thank you all. The Project team was very fortunate to have a group of scholars who were very generous in giving their support to the project. We are especially indebted to İlter Turan, Şule Kut, Soli Özel, Nihal İncioğlu and Volkan Vural for their continuous support. We also would like to thank other collegues who have been involved in different parts of the Project: Serhat Güvenç, Umut Özkırımlı, Yeşim Atamer, Bertrand Badie, Anne-Marie Le Gloannec, François Bafoil, Michel Marian, Frederic


7

Charillon, Emre Gönen, Alan Duben, Gencer Özcan, Maya Arakon, Laurent Vinatier, Odile Bour, Catherine Palpant, Nicolas Monceau, Lisa Montmayeur, Loubna Lamrhari, Benoit Montabone, Simone Weske, Ali İhsan Aydın, Nur Yasemin Ural, Deniz Kut, Erhan Akdemir, Özge Genç, Hamdi Gargin, Pelin Bingöl, François Bafoil, Frederic Durand, Aysu Acar, Laden Yurttagüler, Avi Haligua, Burak Arıkan, Burak Tamaç, Joost Lagendijk, Alain Servanti, Samim Akgönül, Aslı Tunç, Deniz Bingöl McDonald, Alan Duby, Joerg Baudner and Deren Doğan Yavuz. Eventually, we also want to thank the Bilgi University Press for their continuous support and faith in our works. Istanbul and Paris, October 2009

Bıblıography Kaya, Ayhan and Bafoil, François (2009). Regional Development and the European Union: A Comparative Analysis of Karabük, Valenciennes and Katowice. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press.

1 Civil Society Dialogue in Action: A Review of Civil Society Workshop Series Laden Yurttagüler

INTRODUCTION he enlargement of the European Union to ten new member states on 1 May 2004 led to some lessons to be learned about the enlargement process and its effects. One of the lessons that can be drawn from enlargement policy is that citizens in former EU Candidate and/or EU Member States were not sufficiently informed or prepared. The communication on the civil society dialogue between the EU and the candidate countries in 2005 has highlighted that any future enlargement of the EU needs to be supported by a deep and sustained dialogue between the citizens of the candidate countries and of the EU member states (European Commission, 2005). Based on the experiences with the ten new member states, the European Commission strategy for accession negotiations with candidate countries – and particularly with Turkey – has been built on three pillars. The first pillar is designed to support the reform process in the candidate countries. The second pillar sets out the framework for accession negotiations. The third pillar concerns the strengthening of political and cultural dialogue between the candidate countries and the EU. Political and cultural dialogue can help to bridge the information gap about different cultures. It can also create mutual knowledge between citizens of different countries, which, in turn, can provide awareness about the future opportunities and challenges of the accession process (European Commission, 2005). In this particular pillar, civil society plays an important role in involving citizens in the accession process, the de-

T


cision making mechanisms and the awareness raising processes on both the different cultures and social and/or political institutions of the EU and candidate countries. In the EU communication document, the definition of civil society is borrowed from the European Economic and Social Committee, which describes it as “all organizational structures whose members have objectives and responsibilities that are of general interest and who also act as mediators between the public authorities and citizens.” Thus, civil society includes organisations such as labour-market actors, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations and the media. The objectives of the civil society dialogue are highlighted as strengthening contacts and mutual exchange of experience between all sectors of civil society in the member states and candidate countries; ensuring a better knowledge and understanding of the candidate countries within the European Union, including their history and their culture, thus allowing for a better awareness of the opportunities and challenges of future enlargement; and ensuring a better knowledge and understanding of the European Union within the candidate countries, including the values on which it is founded, its functioning and its policies (European Commission, 2005). Regarding Turkey, the Civil Society Dialogue in its first year (20042005), was built on previous activities. For instance, a variety of GreekTurkish cooperation projects were supported under the Greek-Turkish civic dialogue between 2004 and 2005. In 2006, four civil society dialogue grant schemes (“Small Projects Program: Strengthening Civil Society Dialogue”, “Civil Society Dialogue: Europa-Bridges of Knowledge”, “Strengthening Civil Society Dialogue: Participation in NGO events in the EU”, “Civil Society Dialogue: Culture in Action”) were implemented, providing 4.33 million EC financial support to more than seventy dialogue and cooperation projects. In 2007 and 2008, the financial support for Civil Society Dialogue was 21.5 million under the five programs (“Youth Initiatives for Dialogue”, “Towns and Municipalities Grant Scheme”, “Professional Organisations Grant Scheme”, “Universities Grant Scheme”, “Cultural Bridges Program”). NETWORKING AS A STRATEGY In order to increase civil society dialogue between EU member states and candidate countries, NGOs have run several projects using different methods to raise awareness on political and cultural issues and to build bridges between

1. civil society dialogue in action: a review of civil society workshop series

11

the EU member states and candidate countries. Some projects have organised meetings for NGOs to let them share their experiences. Some have developed projects for study visits to allow the NGOs to observe each other in their local environment. Another mechanism was to provide trainings for NGOs to develop their capacities on various grounds ranging from content based issues to organisational matters. In all these activities, networking (network building) remained as the main tool for the empowerment of the civil society dialogue. Network (and networking) is a term used both technically and commonly in multiple fields. In a civil society and NGO related context, it is used to refer to groups and individuals or organisations that have some form of common interest and relationship with one another (Bender-deMoll, 2008: 1). Networking is highlighted as an important tool for NGOs to share their experiences coming from the local/national level and carry them to the national/international level, to disseminate knowledge and information among the other NGOs who share common interests and to enhance the empowerment of the NGOs (Holmén, 2002: 3). As an empowering methodology, networking aims to bring together from different backgrounds, which also reflect their heterogeneity in a non-hierarchical way.1 MAPPING AS A CAPACITY BUILDING ACTIVITY In networking activities, the meeting can focus on different subjects, from communication to advocacy, to develop the capacity of the participant NGOs. In the network building meetings, it is possible to choose a subject to work on and to let the participants contribute to the subject based on their experiences related to their NGOs’ working field. Among various methods and subjects, mapping (network mapping) is a method used as a tool of visually presenting relational information that is too complicated to show with tables (Bender deMoll, 2008: 7). Content based mapping can be used for strategy building and advocacy related projects/programs. In mapping, the goal is to create a map that makes the relationships between various entities (such as people or organisations) both visible and informative (Bender deMoll, 2008: 8). There are possible computerised ways to create the maps, but maps can also be drawn by graphs (with a set of points and lines). In mapping, one of the critical and important decisions is related to the information that will be used for the “map to be created”. The distinction between a (net1

For detailed information on networking and communication, see Communication and Networking for NGO’s, accessible at http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/pages/info10.htm#4.


work) mapping and a flow chart is based on the positioning of the elements. Where in a mapping, the elements are positioned based on their relational structure; in a flow chart, the elements can be freely associated to the choice of the designer (Bender-deMoll, 2008: 8). Mapping can be used as a networking, strategy building and advocacy making method that can visually display both the relations and also the weak and strong points in the networks. “NGO DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANCE AND TURKEY: CIVIL SOCIETY DIALOGUE WORKSHOP SERIES” In the “Interact – EU, France, Turkey University Dialogue” project, one of the activities, “NGO Dialogue between France and Turkey: Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series”, aims to bring together those NGOs that work on rights based issues such as human rights, social rights, housing rights and women’s rights to share discussions on civil society (from France and Turkey), to share their experiences on their working subjects (content and organisation based), to increase their capacity to work with each other, to build networks and/or to strengthen already existent relations. The series is designed as two meetings (which are subject-based related to each other) that are supported in between by an interactive process facilitated by e-instructions. The series consisted of four phases. The first phase was the preparation process, the second phase was the first meeting, the third phase was the “in-between” e-communication process and the fourth phase was the second meeting. Strategic mapping is chosen as a central element of the programme for a common working method. Strategic mapping is a recently emerging methodology that is utilised to identify, analyse and work on the relations and interactions (existent and potential) among the social entities of real life. In the context of the programme, strategic mapping is used for identifying the relations that fall within the remit of the working fields of the participating organisations. Introducing such a methodology is deemed useful in a network meeting where the NGOs can develop new relationships and make their former and existent relations visual, which helps in their evaluation. The methodology enables to picture the overall network of relations and to spot the problematic and potential areas of interaction and cooperation among the geographically and thematically diverse NGOs. The methodology is main streamed as a working subject during the workshop series, whereas the meetings are also supported by theoretical discussions and experience sharing activities both in the formal and informal settings.


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Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series I: Strategic Mapping of Relations for European Citizenship The workshop series started with the preparation process of the workshops. The preparation process is used for structuring the program and also for the application process of the participants. In the preparation process, the workshop team decided the subjects on which the workshops will be constructed. The content of the program and the call for the applications were also prepared during this phase. The call for applications took place at the beginning of April. The call for applications of the workshop series were actualised through several channels such as e-groups, mails to NGOs, announcements in the project’s web site, both in Turkey and in France. At the beginning of May, the participants of the workshops were announced by the workshop preparation team. The aim was to select a total number of 30 participants, with 17 from Turkey and 13 from France. Out of 55 applications from Turkey, 17 participants were selected according to their working fields and their expectations that were stated in the application form. From the French side, participants were selected on the basis of the subjects that they were working on. The first meeting of the workshop series took place in Istanbul with the participation of 30 NGO representatives.2 The workshop took two days and was conducted at the Dolapdere Campus of Istanbul Bilgi University. The workshop was performed in English. The program of the workshop aimed to share different backgrounds and experiences of the NGO representatives, to discuss the concept and the perception of civil society both in Turkey and France and to familiarise NGO representatives with the methodology of strategic mapping. Hence the opening session of the workshop focused on group building and expectation taking activities. The second and third sessions aimed to bring forth discussions on the concept of civil society both in France and in Turkey. In these sessions, the goal was to share the theoretical discussion on the concept of civil society and its relation to the concept of “citizenship”, to display the actors who were working on rights based issues in both countries and to define the rights based subjects on which the NGOs were working in both countries. After discussing the concept of civil society, strategic mapping was introduced, to be followed by an explanation of the fundamental characteristics of the method. The second day of the workshop started with a brief presentation of the NGOs on their organisations. 2

The NGOs that have participated in the workshops are listed at the end of the article.


The second session continued with the exercise of strategic mapping. NGOs were first randomly divided in groups and assigned different subjects such as youth work, environment policies, urban transformation, and capacity building for civil society organizations. The groups were expected to come up with a general map of the subject. In the second exercise, they were grouped according to their specific working areas and asked to come up with a map that would display the relations of their organisation with different actors and institutions. In the second part of the day, the NGOs shared their “strategic mappings” with other institutions.3 At the end of the workshop, a session entitled “what’s for future” was conducted in which the future process was explained and structured. The NGOs were asked to collect actual and updated information about their own NGOs for the second workshop. An e-group was also planned to be built for future communication. A blogwebsite, http://civilsocietydialogue.blogspot.com/, was launched afterwards for displaying both the strategic mappings done by the organisations during the first workshop and NGOs’ presentations of their organisations.

In-between the two meetings, the e-group was used for e-communication and for e-instructions for NGOs to develop their strategic mappings with feedbacks and support from the workshop preparatory team. For the second meeting, the NGOs were asked to experience strategic mapping as a tool to 3

For detailed information about the organisations, see http://civilsocietydialogue.blogspot.com


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assess and evaluate their relations with other actor and/or institutions on the local, national and international level. Civil Society Dialogue Workshop Series II: Strategic Mapping for Strategy Building The second meeting of the workshop series took place in Paris. The workshop took one and a half days and was conducted at the centre of the participant NGOs. The workshop was performed in English. The second workshop mainly aimed to strengthen the existent relations between the NGOs from Turkey and France. It also aimed to develop the skills, knowledge and information of the participant NGOs on strategic mapping. The second meeting also discussed possible and potential areas to use strategic mapping as a tool for creating networks and/or for advocacy studies on the local, national and international level. In the first part of the meeting, the process of mapping and the prepared maps were discussed by the NGOs. The participants shared their experiences on the preparation process of the maps. In the second phase of the meeting, participants were asked to discuss the possible ways of using strategic mapping on different levels as well as the positive and negative aspects of using strategic mapping. During this phase, working in small groups was used as a working method. The first day ended with a tour in the NGO building and with an “open-space” session that allowed participants to refresh each other about their organisations and to share their experiences. In the third phase of the meeting held on the second day, Bernard Dreano joined our workshop as an expert and broadened the perspectives of the participants on the various areas of solidarity in international civil society. The evaluation of strategic mapping as a tool was summarised under two headings: one that points out the possibilities that the tool provides and one that underlines the threats related to the tool. The opportunities provided by the tool were related to its power that was brought with visibility. Strategic mapping was evaluated as a policy tool that helps to display the relevant actors, institutions and relations in the field which in return eases to recognise the weak and strong points of the organisations. It was also considered to be a powerful tool for fundraising. Nevertheless, the participants have also stated that this tool could be used as a surveillance mechanism, as a threat, since it displays the relations of the rights based working NGOs. On top of that, it was also underlined that strategic mapping needs a lot of effort to prepare. The workshop series in general have assisted


the dialogue between the NGOs from Turkey and France. They have started new networks or are now strengthening the networks between the NGOs working on rights based issues. It also helped to raise awareness about the concepts and actual situations of the civil societies of Turkey and France. List of Organisations Organizations from France

Organizations from Turkey

1. AITEC 1. 2. Echanges et Partenariats 3. MIGREUROP 2. 4. NO VOX 5. GISTI 3. 6. AMORCES 4. 7. ACORT 8. AEC FRANCE 5. 9. CMIL 6. 10. Forum Social des Quartiers Populaires 7. 11. LGBT Commission of Greens 8. 12. ACT UP FRANCE 9. 13. RACORT 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly / Refugee Support Program Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG) İnsan Hakları Ortak Platformu Youth Studies Unit / Istanbul Bilgi University İstanbul Mahalle Dernekleri Platformu Uçan Süpürge Küresel Eylem Grubu Sosyal Haklar Derneği Adana Kalkınma İnsiyatifi Uluslararası Af Örgütü Çevre Hukuku Derneği Hacı Bektaş Veli Anadolu Kültür Vakfı Development Center Association İnsan Yerleşimleri Derneği STGM YAKA-KOOP

Bıblıography Articles, Reports and Documents European Commission, “Communication from the commission to the council, the European parliament, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions”, COM (2005) 290 final, 29 June 2005, Brussels. Bender-deMoll, Skye (2008). “Potential Human Rights Uses of Network Analysis and Mapping”, Report to the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 28. Holmén, Hans (2002). “NGOs, Networking, and Problems of Representation”, Linköpings University and ICER Working Paper, accessible at http://www.icer.it/docs/wp2002/ holmen33-02.pdf Electronic Sources http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/pages/info10.htm#4.

2 Lessons Learned? EU Conditionality and Its Uses in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey Deniz Bingöl McDonald

INTRODUCTION “You are in a constant struggle. I mean there is something big standing in the middle. You are pulling it to your end and it is being pulled from the other end. You cannot meet in the middle. And this struggle will continue for a while.”

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bove is a dialogue from the short film entitled, ‘Tell me about my future’ by Zeynep Gursel which was aired on the 30th of July (2009) in Istanbul, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the first agreement between European Union (EU) and Turkey. An evaluation of Turkey’s EU story through the reading of a coffee fortune, a very popular past-time in Turkey, made reflections on the relationship between the aspirant country and the community. The enlargement of the EU to Turkey and Western Balkans remains on the agenda of the Community, yet the last French presidency of the Union and the Czech presidency managed not to pronounce Turkey’s name with ‘accession’ nor to make any decisive move on enlargement during this past year. Pressing issues such as the global economic crisis and the energy crisis hijacked the Czech agenda, while Mr. Sarkozy’s ghost, according to one Turkish analyst, still lingers around the accession talks with Turkey. This article will first look at EU enlargement in ‘world time’, emphasizing the way in which this stock-taking exercise is timely and significant in the sequence of real world events. Then the study will briefly discuss its cont-


ribution to research and debate in comparative enlargement studies. After reviewing the origins and uses of this ‘most successful democratizing tool’, the article will attempt to answer the question of whether EU conditionality is unique among other external pressure mechanisms. The second section of this contribution will focus on the future. It will try to reflect on the challenges faced by the EU in managing the diversity of the economic, political, social and cultural institutions and the heritage introduced by each candidate. Does diversity strengthen or erode the ‘union of n+’? This section will place past, current and future uses of conditionality and its uses into perspective. In doing so, it will compare the Central European cases with Western Balkan cases with the help of certain parameters used in an earlier study (McDonald, 2008). In the final part of the article, the following question will be addressed: ‘what lessons, if any, can one impart in order to improve the future performance of conditionality?’ ‘WOLD TIME’ OF EU ENLARGEMENT In the time of writing, it has been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the past twenty years, large scale economic and political transformations have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Celebrations all across the region marking this important anniversary was coupled with the five year anniversary of the First Wave of EU Enlargement to the eight CEE countries, followed by two other CEE countries that acceded in 2007. The first half of this year also marked the first CEE Presidency by the Czech Republic which resumed the helmet with difficult challenges for a ‘novice’ to handle. Although she had to set aside all the eastern enlargement oriented agenda, its six month record was evaluated by students of EU integration as surprisingly successful. More CEE presidencies will follow between this year and 2011. But what is on the ‘world time’ of the enlargement agenda in the near future? On 8 July 2009, Sweden has assumed the EU presidency which also promises its own share of difficulties. Aside from the challenges stemming from the continuing recession in the Euro-zone, preparations for the decision on Turkey also need to be made by the end of 2009. The developments so far have been encouraging. Sweden, being a consistent but cautious supporter of Turkish accession, did not lose any time in setting up a ‘Cyprus Working Group’ in Stockholm, realising the crucial effect of Cyprus reunification talks over Turkey’s accession negotiations. Similarly, an informal group named ‘Like-minded countries on

2. lessons learned? eu conditionality and its uses in central and eastern europe and turkey

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Turkey’s EU membership’ was formed in Ankara; with Britain, Italy, Spain and Sweden as founding members and Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland as participants. What lies in store for the future of the enlargement of the EU? The answer partly lies with some of the activities of the Center for EU Enlargement Studies (CENS) in Budapest. CENS was established at the Central European University to expand the university’s research portfolio in EU integration studies and enlargement policy. It is situated within a network of Central European foreign policy institutes and practitioners and is extending its expertise to local governments and policy makers in the EU’s neighbours such as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Russia. CENS managed in the past five years to acquire funding under national, regional and trans-European frameworks for research in EU integration and enlargement. The centre remains an active partner of various projects, among which are collaborations with the International Visegrád Fund for increasing and sustaining the role of the Visegrád countries in shaping the political agenda of the EU and its member states; and collaborations with Turkish think tanks and research institutes such as Bilgi University European Institute and the International Policy Center at Sabancı University. One of the particular research interests at CENS concerns the study of the impact and uses of EU conditionality as a form of external pressure mechanism, to which we turn below. ITS USE AND ORIGINS EU’ s use of conditionality is deemed to be a success for inducing market related and democratic reforms for the past ten years. However, it became apparent that conditionality was not without problems in its application across countries as discussed in the now vibrant literature on conditionality (Kelley, 2004; Schimmelfennig, 2007; Epstein, 2005; Hughes et al., 2004; Jacoby, 2004; Vachudova, 2005; Grabbe, 2006; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, 2004). The effectiveness of conditionality was discussed to be further undermined by EU’s own internal political struggles. EU conditionality was born out of EU’s Copenhagen Summit (1993) where the candidate countries were to ‘...assume membership obligations; have stable institutions guaranteeing the rule of law, human rights, and respect for minorities, have a functioning market economy, endorse objectives of political, economic and monetary union; and be able to cope with competi-


tive pressure and market forces with the union...’ The EU had thus for the first time outlined the ‘conditions’ for becoming a part of this exclusive club of twelve. It seemed rather exclusive since only a small number of countries in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood could be expected to qualify in the next decade. Nevertheless the EU did not completely close the door shut for ‘any European country’ who could aspire to work towards these conditions. How does the EU induce and monitor the progress of the candidate countries? The conditionality of the EU consists of carrots (accession promise and accession aid) and sticks (demotion in the steps towards full membership, removal of promise and aid). The monitoring of the countries’ progress in fulfilling accession conditions started in the real sense with Agenda 2000 (1999), an action programme for the EU which established the financial framework and mechanisms for pre-accession aid. The publication of the annual avis and progress reports by the EU Commission were other monitoring mechanisms that took centre stage by late 90s and early 2000s. Other tools such as demarches and communiqués were used less frequently in the past fifteen years since the start of the accession process with the CEE. Is EU conditionality a unique tool among other external incentive mechanisms that are used by international organisations providing assistance or extending membership options to countries? One would argue that it is unique, in the sense that the EU ought to offer a general membership perspective to ‘any European state’ adhering to the fundamental political ‘principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law norms’ [Article 6 and Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU)]. Is the EU ‘s sticks and carrots approach unique? The brief answer would be ‘no.’ While EU conditionality has some distinctive characteristics, it does not diverge too much from the lending conditionality of the international financial institutions. In order to study how and why countries fulfil conditions, students of external pressure mechanisms use ‘rationalist (bargaining) model’1 through the use of sticks and carrots towards the pre1

Rationalist (bargaining) model of conditionality is what is underlined in the external incentive model as discussed by Schimmelfennig, and Sedelmeier (2005), Hix and Goetz (2000) and Heritier (2001). In the bargaining process, actors exchange information, threats, and promises to their preferences. The outcome of the bargaining process depends on the relative bargaining power of the actors, which is a result of the asymmetric distribution of information and benefits of a specific agreement compared with those of the alternative outcomes. In this case, the EU sets adoption of its rules as conditions that the candidates need to fulfil in order to receive the rewards from the EU.


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ferred end which is state-membership. The students of EU enlargement have also discussed the role of norms in both the demand and supply side of accession in addition to a purely incentive based, consequential approach. The EU arguably wanted to let all CEE applicants in because of the ‘moral obligations’ it has had towards its poorer former East in the past 50 years. In exchange, the countries seek to fulfil the obligations encapsulated in a role, identity or ethos of ‘Europeanness’ due to the expectations of the organisation. Additionally, the EU continued to have a sizable trade surplus with its non-EU eastern neighbours including Turkey. Lastly, the EU’s desire to restructure its foreign and security policies in the last decade may have also necessitated an extension of its zone of influence to further east, thus allowing a ‘big bang’ expansion in 2004-2007. The imperfections of this ‘most effective democratising’ tool are numerous and the space here will not allow us to cover all aspects. The most significant one is the challenge faced by the candidates to chase a ‘moving target,’ which refers to a continuous growth and change in the requirements coming from an additional criterion to the Copenhagen criteria. The economic and political conditionality were coupled with this third criterion, which was the adoption of the acquis communaitaire. The adherence to this third one required that candidates were in an endless race to adopt an ever-enlarging document of over 80.000 plus pages of legislation. This rush of unquestioning legal adoption could be argued to transfer the democratic deficit within the EU to the acceding countries. For instance, during a June 1999 Hungarian parliamentary session, 152 of the 180 laws were passed, without being subject to any debate on the grounds that they were part of the acquis. A second imperfection which did not fit well with incentive based carrot-sticks calculations was the more recent adoption of the concept of the ‘absorption capacity’ of the existing EU. The absorption capacity, later to be renamed as ‘integration capacity’, had in fact existed on paper since the Copenhagen summit of 1993 as an additional criterion, stating that ‘the Community would have to be able to absorb new members while maintaining the momentum of European integration.’ However, one could safely argue that it was left intentionally ambiguous. The ambiguity of the concept of absorption capacity was intentional in the sense that it suited EU’s purposes and reservations for future promises. It was tried to be remedied by efforts after the big bang expansion with consecutive strategy papers by the Community. According to its 2006


enlargement strategy paper, the EU declared that it will be ‘cautious about assuming any new commitments.’2 The EU expressed once more the limitations to its capacity to integrate new members in the Western Balkans (with respect to the potential candidates: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo under UN Security Council Resolution 1244). While emphasizing its commitment that enlargement will not endanger the momentum of integration, it promised a renewed consensus on enlargement within the EU. It drew the strict borderline between neighbourhood policy and enlargement policy, on grounds that enlargement was a ‘finite’ process. A PERFECT RECORD? How could one evaluate the record of conditionality in the past fifteen years? One could focus on the use of carrots (promised or dispensed with) and sticks (shown or hidden) to the applicant countries. Several evaluations have previously asked the question of whether the EU could still demand anything from its acceding countries once the date is set for entry and the country steps in the doorway (Sedelmeier and Epstein, 2008). Do the ‘sticks’ go beyond accession? The record has been mixed regarding the 2007 enlargement to the remaining two CEE countries. The Commission, to its distaste and despite its protests, observed the relaxing of reforms in Romania and Bulgaria, in particular the dismal record of judicial and anti corruption reform in the post 2007 period in these two new members. But did it have any other instruments to make the acceding countries fulfil their promises once they were past the post? The answer lies in what consists of being a full member to the EU, such as becoming integrated to the euro-zone and the visa free zone. According to some students of conditionality (Johnson, 2008), these also remain inadequate, once again dividing new members into accession frontrunners and accession laggards. Another question concerns the effectiveness of the rewards that the EU promises past accession, in other words, do the ‘carrots’ go beyond accession? The accession of all 10 CEE countries, including of the two that acceded in 2007, were mired with long transition periods, most notably in labour mobility, which will end in 2011 for the EU 8 and in 2014 for all EU 27. Transition periods in regulatory fields led to a valid concern over the emergence of a ‘two’ or ‘multi’-tier EU in the future, which would allow countries 2

See http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2006/Nov/com_649_strategy_paper_ en.pdf)


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to integrate at their own pace or go their separate ways. For some analysts, the only way to resolve the disagreements in EU 27 on the Lisbon Treaty and continue with deeper integration lies in the constitution of an inner group that breaks away and pursues fast track integration without the participation of all EU member states. Aside from the possibility of tier-isation and/or further marginalisation of the new members, there were of course unforeseen (by some) changes to the terms of engagement after countries acceded, as we have seen in the case of Poland and Romania with budget re-negotiations for Common Agricultural Policy and the Structural Funds. These developments accentuated distributional concerns within EU 27, once again demonstrating the challenges involved in managing the diversity amongst the development levels of the current candidates and the future members. In the next section, EU conditionality will be treated in perspective by comparing the recent experience in CEE with the more current one in the Western Balkans (WB). Are the future candidates more diverse than the previous groups of countries that have joined, and how are conditionality tools and mechanisms prepared to deal with these diversities in the region and amongst the candidates? Accession negotiations with Croatia and Turkey were opened in October 2005. The Commission adopted two new tools, namely a monitoring tool (benchmarks) and a financial tool (the Instrument for Pre-Accession) which would replace all the existing assistance instruments for the Western Balkans. In doing so, one could observe that the Commission was trying to learn from its most recent experiences and was also trying to correct some of the earlier mistakes it made in applying conditionality in the region. After reiterating its commitment to the Western Balkans under the Austrian presidency (which insisted on Croatia’s membership perspective to be realised before Turkey’s), the EU hoped to develop additional tools to promote aspects of regional cooperation (i.e. between Croatia, FYR Macedonia and Albania), and increase investment and trade across the countries in the region. The CEE, in particular the Visegrád 4 group consisting of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, has shown particular strengths for pre-existing and more importantly still functioning co-regional relations. The ‘regional’ variable is in the centre of our parameters for comparison (see Table 2.1 below) of the success and failure in the use of EU conditionality in CEE and WB in the next section.


PARAMETERS FOR COMPARISON FOR CEE AND WB Healthy Competition Among the Reforming Countries The Commission in the CEE from the early 1990s hoped that the economic and political conditions for membership could somewhat facilitate or be facilitated by a healthy competition among the reforming 8 CEE countries in the CEE. Since the summit of 1991, convened by Lech Wałęsa, EU became a vehicle for coordinating the CEE’s road to Europe while developing closer cultural, commercial and political ties within the region. When Slovakia fell behind in the accession talks in first half of the 90s and Poland in 2000, both Hungary and the Czech Republic threatened that they would not wait for laggards when seeking EU membership. Many argued that especially in the case of Slovakia, the sense of falling behind the other three, intensified the hand of the pro-EU coalition to overthrow the Meiar regime in 1998, following its exclusion from the group of green light countries in the 1997 Luxemburg Summit. To a lesser extent, but comparable with the Visegrád group, the regional competition arguably played a role within the Baltic-3. Estonia was shown as the front runner of the three in the Luxemburg summit, indicating that the other two Baltic countries needed to ‘work harder’ to catch up with Estonia in adhering to ‘democratic conditionality.’ The exclusion of Latvia from the first-wave of accession countries in December 1997 intensified the sense of exclusion, and repeated the ‘Slovak’ effect in exerting pressure to catch up with your immediate neighbours. A competition to catch up with Estonia arguably played a part in minority rights and other political and administrative reforms in the Latvia and Lithuania between 1998 and 2005, despite the criticized lack of benchmarks for compliance from the Commission. Could one see a similar sense of healthy and productive competition among the acceding and candidate countries in the Western Balkans? In nearly all Western Balkan cases, statehood was achieved after conflict, mostly involving armed conflict against one another. Minority conflicts and unresolved population resettlements continue. Instead of a healthy competition, one could argue that the countries are conducting their relations with the Commission on a bilateral basis. The bilateral approach, or each country to her own, has been condoned in the 2006 enlargement strategy by the following statement: ‘...each country is judged on its own merits: the negotiations offer countries the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to complete the necessary reforms and meet all membership requirements...’


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Hence, the Commission does not seem to be nurturing a sense of competition amongst these countries. Even though competitiveness amongst former parts of a political union can be unavoidable, how healthy could one deem this rivalry/competition to be? Regional Cooperation Amongst Accession Countries Regional cooperation especially in the Visegrád 4 (V-4) region predates EU conditionality, but it is argued to have helped the individual countries cope with the political, economic and administrative challenges of complying with the adoption of political, economic and acquis-related reforms. The cooperation amongst the V-4 extended far beyond trade agreements to include the building of transportation networks, cross border cooperation, lobbying together in Brussels, using each other’s experts groups to help with transposition of the acquis and helping with translations, particularly between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In the Western Balkans, regional cooperation is placed as a specific requirement under the stabilisation and association agreements. The necessity of regional cooperation in WB were explained by the Commission as ‘a crucial ingredient of stability’; ‘a catalyst for reconciliation, good-neighbourliness and good political relations’ and a way of ‘helping overcome nationalism and intolerance and promoting mutual understanding and political dialogue in the region.’3 Levels of economic prosperity and political stability largely vary in the region, thus the EU has been trying to promote regional cooperation proactively and from top down to defeat the ‘regional antagonisms’ that have more recently increased and became more evident in the border disputes between the EU members and the candidate countries (i.e. Slovenia and Croatia, Greece and FYR Macedonia). A new and modernised version of CEFTA came about in 2006 to establish a free trade zone in the region. Similarly, in June 2006, a treaty creating a legal framework for electricity market and natural gas networks integration came into force. RCC (Regional Cooperation Council) was established in February 2008 with the hope of institutionalising regional ties. Nevertheless, the question to be asked is whether regional cooperation has prospered in the region as these efforts have attained to do. Regional cooperation is noted in the areas of trade, energy and transportation according to the Commission’s assessments.4 3 4

Commission strategy paper can be accessed at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/nf5703249enc_ web_en.pdf See http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2008/november/tradoc_141300.pdf


A more accurate assessment would claim that regional cooperation is mostly occurring amongst the front runners in the region, namely between the candidate countries. While Croatia and Macedonia are building further commercial and investment ties with the EU-27, Albania and Montenegro are cooperating more with the Commission but less with one another. The verdict of reports assessing the effectiveness of regional cooperation converges on the view that the region is divided into those on the way to membership and those who lag behind. These countries are also divided with regards to two fundamental security issues, i.e., Bosnia Herzegovina (involving Serbia and Croatia) and Kosovo (involving Serbia, Albania and Macedonia). Front runners do not want to be penalised by their regional ties, as was testified in the Croatian president’s statement that countries’ progress should be subject to a regatta principle (allowing each country to join when they are ready) rather than a caravan principle which would imply the front to wait for the back to catch up. However, even the front runners see the necessity of engaging more constructively with their more laggard neighbours. Do the laggards then resent their forwardly neighbours’ progress or do they take courage from the rewards given to the front runners? While cooperation was merely encouraged in the CEE, in the Western Balkans it is made compulsory. The top down approach to creating regional cooperation where it has not existed before could be costly but it could be a step in the right direction regardless of the countries being in different stages of integration. Current Accession Countries Could Learn by Example from Past and Current Successes The effects of lesson drawing and emulation (Jacoby, 2004; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, 2005) among aspiring countries have been extensively discussed in the literature on EU conditionality. Exchanging experiences is deemed mutually beneficial without involving heavy commitment of human and financial resources. Such learning by example and emulation arguably occurred between Slovakia and Hungary, and Slovakia and Czech Republic. While these countries benefited from each other’s policy expertise in Brussels, they also shared their own internal implementation methods of even the most intricate adaptations of EU legislation. The EU realised that the countries in the Western Balkans face similar circumstances and challenges in dealing with the economic and social costs of restructuring their industries, their national and regional administration and


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their armed and police forces, and in some country cases, meeting the conditions of cooperating fully with the ICTY. Thus, the Commission encouraged countries to share the lessons learnt and the expertise acquired, in seeking improved access to international expertise and assistance in project development and implementation, and in seeking improved access to international project funding from government and private sources. Where substantial material resources need to be involved as in the field of translating the EU acquis, learning and sharing play a significant role. Croatia translated more of the acquis than any other country in the region by its own financial resources and makes certain pieces of legislation available upon request. Cooperation through benefiting from another country’s experience has been documented in the cases of Macedonia and Croatia in the last two years. Both countries face serious stumbling blocks in their accession processes due to border disputes, leading to consequent resignations of both countries’ Prime Ministers. Croatia gave support to Macedonia in Skopje’s EuroAtlantic cooperation, while Macedonia has been vocal about the negative impacts of the deadlock on Croatia imposed by some EU nations. CroatianMacedonian trade and cross- foreign direct investment also continued to grow in 2008 and 2009. Reform Consensus in Accession Countries The presence or absence of reform consensus is discussed widely in the literature as the necessary ingredient for costly reforms to pass and to be implemented in CEE and the Western Balkans (Knill and Lehmkuhl, 2002; Grzymala-Busse and Innes, 2003). The reform consensus was stronger during the earlier phases of economic and political reforms in CEE, where coalitions amongst diverse veto players were united under one goal of ‘return to Europe’. Analysts of CEE transitions made the case that the reform consensus that was uniting those veto players under the European flag started to wane once the entry date was set and accession took place. For later phases of fulfilling further conditions of membership such as the entry to the euro zone, the consensus eroded or dissipated. Maastricht conditionality proved to be less potent than Copenhagen conditionality. EU actors even discouraged the laggard countries from making euro zone a domestic policy. The Stability Pact (SP) which was signed in 1994-95 with CEE countries was repeated with the Western Balkans countries (Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina) in the 2003 Thessaloniki Sum-


mit, in order to give the political elite in these countries a stronger objective and more coherent guidelines in fulfilling the conditions towards membership. As the SP was formulated to serve as a political light house and a supplement, the main element of conditionality was the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), which would provide the framework for membership negotiations with a select number of countries. In the case of the Western Balkans, one can speak of an even more resolute reform consensus to gain candidacy or membership status among the countries. One can note that at its earlier stages, the regional approach and its instruments lacked credible incentives for reforms. The most important incentive, namely the membership perspective, did not work effectively. However, in the later stages, the SAP, together with the ‘visible and realistic’ prospect of membership, managed to make conditionality work more effectively to nurture such consensus amongst the diverse political and economic veto players. EU conditionality arguably managed to anchor the incentive of national authorities to pursue reforms in Macedonia and Croatia, and to a lesser extent and less consistently, in Serbia and Albania. Reflecting from the Croatian experience so far, the relatively slow pace of negotiations, due to the demanding benchmarks and delays in the verification process indicate the limits of conditionality. Enlargement Commissioner Rehn has openly declared that Croatia who has come this far with the help of a reform consensus has the ball in the court while the Croatian reformers see that the EU needs to do its part to further overcome the obstacles in front of the accession deadlock. In the case of Macedonia, the Commission decided that the country has made good progress in judicial reform and in the implementation of SAA obligations. The Commission stated that Macedonia continues to consolidate multi-ethnic democracy by implementing the Ohrid Agreement of 2001, where its strongly pro-EU coalition was given credit for making progress on fighting corruption, civil service reform, improving the business environment and stimulating employment. Nevertheless, the Commission recommended that Macedonian government needs to ensure free and fair elections and to improve the dialogue between major political parties and actors. Hence further efforts were considered as necessary in a context where the Commission expressed its worries about the waning of support, not only in Macedonia, but also in Serbia and Montenegro. Visa facilitation agreements were signed with these three countries in July of this year, which were welcomed as a ‘giant step forward’ by the Macedonian government and the ‘res-


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toration of personal dignity’ by the Serbian prime minister. How much of the reform consensus can the EU help to preserve with such small, albeit symbolic concessions, given the giant road blocks to negotiations? TABLE 2.1 Conditionality Performance: CEE and WB Compared Outcomes

CEE

WB

Healthy competition

Yes: SK, LIT., and LAT. catching up post- Luxemburg

No: Each country focusing on bilateral relations with the EU

Regional cooperation

Yes: V-4 group negotiating with EU

No: Regional antagonisms

Learning by example

Yes: SK -Czech example

Maybe?: MAC-CRO ex

Reform consensus

Yes, (less so, after accession) No: Bosnia, Serbia

WHICH LESSONS CAN BE LEARNED? As discussed in the previous sections, conditionality in the Western Balkans consisted of several elements with varying levels of importance: namely the SAP conditions, and the SAA agreements and Accession or European Partnerships as rewards. A general assessment of their implementation suggests that despite some progress, a deficit of commitment exists on the supply and demand sides of EU conditionality. Firstly, for a majority of candidate countries, the process suffers from a demand side disability, which is the lack of membership perspective, in other words, lack of a ‘finalité.’ Just as important from the demand side, is the gradual reduction of assistance funds that are extended by the EU to the Western Balkans between 2005 and 2009. Many analysts blame this decrease in generosity on the negative experiences of the fifth enlargement to Romania and Bulgaria. As the frauds and abuse of EU funds in Bulgaria became evident, the EU has established stricter conditions to qualify for funds (i.e. much more emphasis placed by the Commission on implementation gaps), made the monitoring stricter, and the promises less concrete to its current candidates. Thus, one of the main pitfalls of conditionality in the Western Balkans comes from the de-linking of rewards to progress, as the conditions remain stagnant. Some suspect that the Commission, although it never openly stated, would prefer a longer horizon for the Western Balkans by preferring that the candidates become members around the same time, rather than adopting a


piece meal or regatta approach as desired by the front runners in the region. While the lack of clear benchmarks (i.e. with regard to the CARDS5 program) was criticised by some analysts, the main line of criticism focused on the haphazard use of the carrot. In other words, the EU was accused of distributing political rewards on contingency or in a state of emergency. The countries and policy analysts made their complaints known to the Commission, and above all, demanded both internal and external consistency (ESI report 2004, 2006). Such complaints emphasised that any future assistance to the Western Balkans should be delivered in accordance with the development principles that underlie the European Union structural funds: local co-financing; institutionalised partnership between the Commission, national and sub-national authorities; and effective multi-annual programming of development efforts. These principles need to be applied uniformly across the region. TURKEY AS A GROUP OF ITS OWN? In November 2008, the Commission declared that 2009 would be the year of Western Balkans and Turkey.6 Turkey represents a unique challenge for its often repeated sui generis qualities. It is not treated as part of a regional cooperation scheme nor is it a participant of a regional assistance fund. Furthermore, the obstacles that converge in Western Balkans are not applicable to Turkey, preventing the EU to apply a common approach. It is the largest of all the previous and current candidates in terms of the size of its population and its economy. It is also a predominantly Muslim country, leading to debates on its suitability to be a member with a non- Judeo Christian cultural heritage. It is also the poorest of all applicants in terms of GDP per capita. Yet, the question is to what extent should Turkish candidacy be treated as ‘n=1’, a unique case for the EU Commission and for the reformers in Turkey? The Commission, prior to the opening of the accession negotiations, have introduced ‘exit options’ in Turkey’s Negotiating Framework. These exit options guarantee that in the case of a sustained lapse in the progress of reforms, or in case of a political stalemate such as the Cyprus issue, both sides can ask for the suspension of membership. Furthermore, during the Austrian presidency when the 2005 decision to open accession negotiations with Tur5

6

The Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS) program was created by the European Commission to support the economic development of the Western Balkan countries. The participants in the program are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. See http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1638&format=HTML&age


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key were taken, a segment of the French political elite was joined by the Austrians in demanding that all future enlargements are put to a referendum. In France, the French constitution was amended to reflect that decision and as far as Austria is concerned, Turkish membership will be put to a national referendum. Regarding political conditionality applied to Turkey, observers have often complained about the lack of clear benchmarks for effective monitoring of compliance and requested the clarification of benchmarks (as discussed in the case of the WB). More importantly, some have suggested that couching political conditionality in technical and objective terms might help de-sensitify such politically sensitive reforms. But would these measures coupled with increased rewards by the EU be sufficient to overcome the heavy political costs of democratic conditionality concerning the territorial integrity and unitary identity of the Turkish state? THE FUTURE OF ENLARGEMENT POLICY Some significant alterations were devised in the enlargement strategy of the EU in order to ‘manage’ the diversity of the Western Balkan cases. The Western Balkans’ common problems outlined by the Strategy were high unemployment, weak economies and inadequate social cohesion. Despite these commonalities, each country presented its own dynamics. Thus the motto of the Western Balkan strategy had become ‘tailoring conditionality to each country’s needs’ as outlined in the 2006 Accession Strategy. The three fundamentals of this strategy could be elaborated as more emphasis on regional cooperation, a strict monitoring of conditionality, and tailored country strategies. This strategy outlines an updated version of the tested carrot and stick approach. Nevertheless, one should add that it integrates the lessons learnt from previous experiences with enlargement to the CEE, and to some extent, it also echoes the earlier lessons learnt by international financial institutions about conditionality, primarily that of ‘one size does not fit all.’ In contrast to CEE, many of the challenges to enlargement conditionality in the WB have cross border dimensions. As discussed above, the Commission established the Regional Cooperation Council and extended the existing CEFTA agreement to cover more countries in the region. The CARDS program that was in use since the early 2000s was transformed to IPA (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance) in 2007. Twinning has also helped, particularly in the case of Macedonia where Croat officials helped in answer 3000 questions for EU monitoring.


Even more importantly, the EU introduced a new tool, namely benchmarks. These benchmarks make progress easier to measure and are linked to key elements of the acquis. While opening benchmarks concern the preparatory steps for future alignment and the fulfilment of contractual obligations that mirror acquis-related requirements; closing benchmarks concern legislative measures, administrative and judicial bodies and a track record of implementation of the acquis. Once the Commission observes that the country does not fulfil the opening benchmarks, it can immediately suspend negotiations on that chapter. Similarly, if a country no longer fulfils the closing benchmarks in a chapter that has been provisionally closed, the Commission may propose to the Member States that accession negotiations on that chapter are re-opened. This puts the Commission more firmly in the driver’s seat compared to previous enlargements. Regarding the lessons learnt from the accessions of Bulgaria and Romania, the WB strategy reflects the imposition of the monitoring progress after accession, admitting that the accession process failed to ensure that candidate countries continue to meet the standards. Another previous enlargement lesson learnt was that the fight against corruption, organised crime and judicial reform has to be tackled in much earlier stages if the other reforms are to proceed according to the planned timescales. What has, however, not been discussed sufficiently here is the danger of dividing up the Balkans between achievers and losers. Such divisions may have an adverse effect in the WB where the element of regional cooperation does not predate EU conditionality, and recent antagonisms or open wounds such as territorial disputes, cross border ethnic conflicts and population resettlements co exist with more mundane market institutional reforms such as adjusting corporate tax rates and lowering trade tariffs. What could be done by the candidate countries to tackle such problems that may not immediately emerge from themselves but from the institutional problems of the EU? The countries may need to self-impose their own deadlines to signify their commitment to the EU for the continuity of reforms. Could the previous solutions to territorial disputes set precedent to currently unresolved issues, and how could the multilateral institutions of the EU be reequipped to address the currently bilateral conflicts between member states and the candidates?


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EU ENLARGEMENT AND THE EU IN THE NEXT TWO DECADES The next phase of enlargement is mired with undeniable uncertainties. We can summarise these under four main points. One concerns the lack of real EU policy/guidelines in some sensitive areas such as minority rights and resettlement of populations in war torn areas. Secondly, enlargement strategy in 2006 shifted so that accession would be more about the consolidation and the integration capacity of the EU. Hence, further enlargement is now linked more firmly to institutional reform in the EU. There has been a persistent emphasis on ‘integration capacity’ of the EU in 2008 and 2009, which was nevertheless left ambiguous. Thirdly, since the fifth wave of enlargement, we have witnessed special requests (i.e. for referendums or demands for territorial revision) and red flags by some EU members on particular candidates. Lastly, the bilateral disputes that have brought all current accession negotiations to a deadlock need to be resolved without sacrificing the ‘uniformity’ of accession negotiations across candidate countries. Overall, we could conclude that far from constituting a comprehensive assessment, the analysis suggests that new candidates for membership face more uncertainty and higher hurdles than the previous applicants. The EU entails two main dilemmas in the next two decades. One concerns the ambiguity of the concept of absorption capacity and the second one involves the uncertain future of the Lisbon Treaty. While the EU’s interpretation of its normative goals and political conditions largely remain ‘hostage’ to members’ changing goals and interests, the changing geo-political and economic developments in the region also remain as shifting variables. Bıblıography Epstein, Rachel (2005). “Diverging Effects of Social Learning and External Incentives in Polish Central Banking and Agriculture”, in F. Schimmelfennig and U. Sedelmeier (eds.), The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 178-198. EU Commission (2006) “Accession Strategy Paper” accessible at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/nf5703249enc_web_en.pdf EU Commission, (2008) “Western Balkans: Enhancing the European Perspective” accessible at http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2008/november/tradoc_141300.pdf EU Commission (2005) “Regional Cooperation in the Western Balkans: A Policy Priority for the European Union” accessible at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/nf5703249 enc_web_en.pdf) EU Commission, Press Release, IP/08/1638, accessible at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1638&format=HTML&age.


Grabbe, Heather (2006). The EU’s Transformative Power: Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Grzymala-Busse, Anna and Abby Innes (2003). “Great Expectations: The EU and the Domestic Political Competition in East Central Europe”, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 17, No. 1: 64- 73. Hughes, James; Gwendolyn Sasse, and Claire Gordon (2004). “Conditionality and Compliance in the EU’s Eastward enlargement: Regional Policy and the Reform of Sub-national Government”, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3: 523-51. Jacoby, Wade (2004). The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, Juliet (2008). “The Remains of Conditionality: The Faltering Enlargement of the Euro Zone”, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 6: 826-42. Kelley, Judith (2004). “International Actors on the Domestic Scene: Membership Conditionality and Socialization by International Institutions”, International Organizations, Vol. 58, No. 3: 425-57. Knill, Christoph and Dirk Lehmkuhl (2002). “The National Impact of European Union Regulatory Policy: Three Europeanization Mechanisms”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 41, No. 2: 255–80. Schimmelfennig, Frank and Ulrich Sedelmeier (2004). “Governance by Conditionality: the EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe”, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 11, No. 4: 661-79. Schimmelfennig, Frank and Ulrich Sedelmeier (eds.) (2005). The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Schimmelfennig, Frank (2007): ‘European Regional Organizations, Political Conditionality, and Democratic Transformation in Eastern Europe’, East European Politics and Societies 21:1, 126-141 Sedelmeier, Ulrich and Rachel Epstein (2008). “Beyond Conditionality: International Institutions in Post-communist Europe after Enlargement”, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 6: 826-42. Vachudova, Milada Anna (2005). Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration after Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3 National Identity and Minority Issues in Turkey and the European Union: A Comparative Analysis of West-European Experience and the Kurdish Problem in Turkey Maya Arakon

INTRODUCTION eparatist movements and national identity demands are not solely a problem for Turkey. The Kurdish conflict in Turkey had first started in 1974 as a class movement, but changed its nature after 1980 by taking the form of a claim for ethnic identity and its recognition. Within time, however, it turned into an armed conflict between the Turkish army and the separatist armed organisation called the PKK. The problematic is multiple: what are the barriers that prevent a peaceful solution to the conflict? What do the Turkish State and the Kurdish leaders have to do to stop the bloodshed which has been going on for almost forty years? How do the European Union countries such as Great Britain, Spain and France, which face similar kinds of ethnic and separatist threats (respectively the Irish Republican Army- IRA, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – ETA and the Front de Libération Nationale de la Corse –FLNC) deal with the question of finding a peaceful solution? Which policies did they apply in reacting to minority demands? The aim of this study is to analyse the policies of the Turkish State towards the Kurdish minority in the light of the West European experiences, especially regarding the cases of Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. The goal is to show the similarities and differences in a comparative perspective and to see if these experiences are applicable to Turkey. After the end of the Cold War, nationalism has experienced a revival by being unleashed from its long suppressed status under the bipolar system. The awakening of the na-

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tionalist feelings across Europe went hand in hand with the growing strength of the EU institutions. There was the emergence of a new system in which the supranational bodies came to fulfill the functions formerly provided by the state. In this new system which allowed the minorities in Europe to express their identities more freely, some groups such as the Catalans, Basques, Corsicans, Irish and Scots sought greater autonomy within their state territories (Kuphcan, 1995). So why did the minorities begin to claim autonomy or independence after the end of the Cold War? What was the new impetus or the trigger for the revival of nationalism in Europe? In order to answer these questions, we should first understand what nationalism is in a broad sense. WHAT IS NATIONALISM? Nationalism is an ideology which merges two separate entities, the first one being purely administrative; the state, and the second being purely emotive; the nation. The state provides goods and services to its citizens as well as economic prosperity (Snyder, 1993: 79-101) whereas the nation provides a sense of belonging and community to its members (Kupchan, 1995: 2) and thus brings forth a common political identity among a specified population. This common identity is grounded in a common and shared ethnicity, lineage, language, culture, religion and/or citizenship. By generating shared historical experiences and myths, nationalism commands popular loyalty and elevates the nation-state to a place of primacy. It is vital to the transformation of disparate and politically weak ethnic and cultural groupings into modern states (Kupchan, 1995) and it transforms the administrative state into the sentimental nation. The nation can be defined as a political community that is capable of extracting further devotion from its members due to its emotional appeal. Hence it is not erroneous to assert that nationalism is about identity and that the nation-state serves as a defining element of political identification. In recent years, scholars have defined nationalism in several different ways. In his influential study entitled Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1983) argues that nationalism is a process of imagining nations, or political communities that have offered secular continuity and meaning to life after a radical change in the apprehension of time and space have transformed the way in which people conceptualised the world. Anthony D. Smith (1993) calls nationalism as an ideological movement that extends and intensifies the meaning and scope of historic ethnic groups as communities whose members share ancestry myths, histories, cultures, and a sense of solidarity.

3. national identity and minority issues in turkey and the european union

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Finally, Ernest Gellner (1983) defines nationalism as a theory of political legitimacy based on the correspondence of ethnic and state boundaries.1 Analysing nationalism is guided by two assumptions. First, nationalism and the concept of nationality were and continue to be socially and politically constructed, and that the nation-state is prevalent because it still provides security, economic welfare and a sense of belonging to its members. Hence nationalism should not be treated as an essentialist value, it is malleable and its trajectory is susceptible to influence through policy instruments. The underlying social and economic conditions affect the course of nationalism within a given polity (Kupchan, 1995: 3). Second, nationalism has stabilising and destabilising effects on the international system. It has been and continues to be a key ingredient of both domestic and international orders. All forms of nationalism embrace symbols that help define a unique and distinctive national grouping. These symbols may be either ethnic or civic in character. Ethnic nationalism defines nationhood as sharing some characteristics including physical ones, culture, religion, language and a common ancestry. For this reason, citizens of different ethnic origins, even if they live and share the soil of a common territory and state, do not become part of the national grouping. And in reverse, the ethnic grouping does not need states in order to become nations.2 Civic nationalism defines nationhood in terms of citizenship and political values rather than in terms of ethnicity. It is thus more inclusive than ethnic nationalism. A citizen is a national without taking into consideration the ethnicity or common ancestry (Kupchan, 1995). This is why civic nationalism is sometimes able to erase ethnic and racial dividing lines. Ethnic nationalism is in a way the basis for a solid nation-state when the latter is formed around an ethnically homogeneous population. In today’s international system, however, ethnic nationalism might become violent and cause the breakup of existing multiethnic states, as we have seen in the case of former Yugoslavia, or demand separatist action as it is the case in Spain, Turkey and in France. 1

2

Some scholars like Charles Kupchan argue that this definition is inadequate since it is important to draw a clear distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. He argues that “disparate ethnic groups can and do unify around a common notion of nationality when nationhood is defined in terms of citizenship, not common ethnicity or culture. The nation-state can very comfortably cut across ethnic and cultural boundaries as long as national sentiments and identities do so as well. Defining nationality in terms of identity rather than in terms of ethnicity or culture resolves this problem” (Kupchan, 1995: 194). For example the Palestinians today are accepted as a national grouping despite the fact that they do not have a state (Kupchan, 1995: 4).


As an ethnic group inside a multiethnic state becomes mobilised, it passes through three main stages of national identification. First, it claims “group distinctiveness” and sets itself apart from the political and cultural mainstream. During this stage, ethnic identity may coexist with civic notions of nationhood but ethnic affiliation becomes an important determinant of political affiliation as it was the case for the Bretons in France. Second, the ethnic grouping claims “group autonomy” and seeks to separate itself from central political institutions and establish its political autonomy. This means a distant affiliation with the nation-state. This was the case with the Catalans and the Basques in Spain. The third is the “group secession” stage. The ethnic community claims to establish its own nation-state and ethnicity becomes the dominant factor of political identity (Kupchan, 1995: 6). Kurds in Turkey, Corsicans in France and Basques in Spain are examples in that respect. At this stage, the members of the ethnic groups show great devotion to the nation-state and sacrifice themselves on behalf of it if necessary. They even form armed organizations and fight for their own state building process. This is the case with the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain, Front de Libération National Corse (FLNC) in France and Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey. WHY DO THE ETHNIC MINORITIES LIVING IN MULTIETHNIC STATES BECOME STATE-CLAIMING ETHNIC NATIONALITIES? Individuals identify with families, villages, towns, regions, age and sex groups, classes, religious, ethnic and national communities, and these are affiliations usually invoked for different purposes and on different occasions. They rarely come into conflict (Smith, 1993: 27-41). Within time, a given ethnic identity may become stronger, and an ethnic group which had not in the past shown the slightest claim for a nation-state of its own may start to demand separation from the multiethnic state in which it has resided for decades. Why do the communities that do not even identify themselves as an ethnic group later seek to establish ethnically-based nation-states? Here are some causes for an ethnic group to claim separation from the nation-state: a) Loss of state capacity: The state is the political actor which fills in the basic political, economic and social rights and functions for its members. When the state fails to provide these functions, the ethnic group may take its


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position to fulfill its duties, which may provide a legitimate basis for the formation of a successor political community. Hence, ethnic groups become state-claiming ethnic nationalities when the state in which they reside flounders. In other words, the ethnic group takes the place of the state in taking collective action and providing public goods (Snyder, 1993: 85-86). In Western Europe, since the European Union started to assume the responsibilities previously fulfilled by its member states, ethnic groups became less reliant on the traditional state structure for public goods. Thanks to the regional policy of the European Union, the underdeveloped regions of Europe now rank at the same economic and social level as the rest of the Union. With the Union fulfilling the state’s responsibilities partly under the “subsidiarity principle”3, the regions prospered and the ethnic groups living in the regions began to demand for more autonomy and even independence in some cases such as that of the Basque Country and Corsica. b) Treatment of minorities: Another factor relates to the way in which minorities are treated by the dominant majority in the nation-state. A very common approach underlines that ethnic groups that are persecuted or systematically mistreated seek to establish their own states (Newland, 1993: 81101). There are, nevertheless, two other possibilities which cause the ethnic group to seek to establish its own independent state. One concerns a case where the dominant majority desires to assimilate the ethnic group into the dominant culture or to replace ethnic identities with civic ones. Under such a scenario, the ethnic group could demand to distance itself from the nationstate. Quebec’s gradual distancing from the Canadian state constitutes an example in this respect. In the latter case, invitations from the state to participate in the political mainstream had been interpreted not as an inclusive move, but as a threat to group distinctiveness (Meadwell, 1993). Another possibility is when calls for increased autonomy trigger ethnic mobilisation and separatist forces. When the nation-state does not integrate the ethnic group into the political community and disregard its civic rights, 3

The principle of subsidiarity is defined in Article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. It is intended to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made as to whether action at Community level is justified in the light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level. Specifically, it is the principle whereby the Union does not take action (except in the areas which fall within its exclusive competence) unless it is more effective than action taken at national, regional or local level. It is closely bound up with the principles of proportionality and necessity, which require that any action by the Union should not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaty. See http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/subsidiarity_en.htm


the centripetal forces associated with ethnic identification may trigger the mobilisation of state-claiming ethnic nationalities. In some cases, ethnic minorities feel persecuted by the new states in which they find themselves (Brown, 1993: 8). This was the case of the Kurds in Turkey after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. The long-term discriminatory policies of the Turkish state towards the Kurds such as the denial of their linguistic and cultural rights as well as the efforts to suppress the militant PKK triggered a sentiment of exclusion within the Kurds. On top of this, efforts to assimilate the Kurds into the Turkish secular and civic system triggered Kurdish separatism (Kupchan, 1995: 9). c) Historical rivalries: The ethnic group’s claim to a state of its own may be the product of historical ethnic identities or rivalries which rise to the surface when the forces that have held them together disappear. This was the case with former Yugoslavia. In that specific case, it was not only the historical hatreds that caused the separation, but also the external conditions that prepared the dissolution of the Yugoslav state in which the ethnic nationalities had now seen the opportunity to establish their own independent state. d) Contagion and emulation: Mobilisation of ethnic sentiments can also be the product of contagion. In other words, one ethnic group’s efforts to establish its own nation-state might encourage other ethnic groups to do the same (Anderson, 1983). e) Social change and identity formation: A mobilised ethnicity might dominate other forms of identity. The breakdown of traditional forms of identification can be triggered by any number of developments. Political centralisation might undermine local patterns of authority as it was partly the case in the Kurdish issue in Turkey since the Kurds live in the southeastern part of the country where the feudal system still has some considerable power. Change in this traditional system and the empowering of a central governmental authority have caused a weakness in the traditional feudal system and thus triggered the Kurdish claims for their own independent state. The emergence of markets and urbanisation can also encourage labour mobility and thus threaten traditional family ties. Secularisation is another factor of change and could also threaten religious affiliation as a chief component of identity. Hence industrialisation and modernisation pave the way for a breakdown in traditional identities, in turn fostering nationalism (Gellner, 1983). In all these cases, ethnicity provides a sense of belonging and selfdefinition in a process of change where other symbols of identity become


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unavailable. The danger here is that the emergence and the rise of ethnic nationalism in one group might be perceived as threatening by others and thus might sharpen the distinctions between groups, making it more likely for ethnic minorities to demand their own states (Brown, 1993: 9). However, the emergence of ethnic conflict is dependent on the existence of certain factors. First, two or more ethnic groups must reside in close proximity as it is the case in Spain or Turkey. Second; regional, national or international authorities must be too weak to keep groups from fighting and ensure security. These two conditions are not sufficient for an ethnic conflict to occur, yet they are essential factors in making it possible. Ethnic aspirations do not turn into conflicts in every case, since there are few examples of amiable separation in history, such as the separation of Czechoslovakia into separate independent states. Velvet divorces, however, are very rare for many groups that are likely to perceive fragmentation as a threat to their identity, their regional influence and their place in world affairs. In many cases, ethnic disputes become violent and turn into ethnic wars when a minority group insists on separating and establishing its own state as in the case of the Basque Country. It might want more political, economic, cultural or administrative autonomy within the nation-state, as it is the case with the Kurds of Turkey, or it might be satisfied with democratic reforms, ethnic power sharing, or simply more equitable representation (Brown, 1993: 13-15). When the nation-state adopts the attitude of denying or repressing the existence of the ethnic group, this situation might also trigger an ethnic conflict. Through cultural recognition, political autonomy and federalism, the state acknowledges varying degrees of internal difference. Denial by the state refers to its refusal to accept the existence of any sort of cultural, historical or political minorities within its territory. As internal diversity is ignored, assimilation is actively encouraged. The Kurdish problem in Turkey constitutes an example in this respect. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and with the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the existence of the Kurds within the Turkish territory was denied –although they have been a part of the republican project in the years 1920-1925 with their own Kurdish identity- and the successive governments have ignored their existence. At the very beginning of the Turkish Independence War that have founded the Republic, the Kurds have been promised autonomy and they have been included in the Independence War. However, after the Republic was founded, the governments tried to assimilate the Kurds through various means that will be out-


lined in the sections below. In the case of denial, the state imposes a unique language, culture and institutions where any other cultural or linguistic difference is considered as a regional characteristic. The denial takes the form of repression when the national minority starts to claim its own identity. Catalonia and the Basque Country, for example, had to endure the harsh repressive measures imposed by Franco regime in 1939-1975 (Guibernau, 2005: 59-60). NATIONAL IDENTITY TURNING INTO SEPARATIST CLAIMS: NORTHERN IRELAND, BASQUE COUNTRY AND THE KURDISH QUESTION The twentieth century history of Europe has witnessed the emergence of three important national separatist movements that claimed to establish their own independent states: IRA in Northern Ireland, ETA in the Basque Country and PKK in the southeast of Turkey. In order to understand the evolution of these movements, we have to look back at their recent history and analyse the factors behind their claims to secession. The Northern Ireland Question The conflict in Northern Ireland goes way back in history. The Britons invaded Ireland in 1167, after which alternating Irish revolts started to take root due to the discriminative policies of the Britons such as land confiscation from rebellious Irish families and/or expulsion of native Irish families in order to make the island more “British”. Meanwhile, there were some attempts for independence by the Irish rebels, yet with no success. Especially in the nineteenth century, demands for Irish self-governance have increased. The creation in 1870 of what would become the Home Rule League, saw the emergence of a parliamentary lobby group for Irish self-government. Its leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, put Home Rule firmly on the parliamentary agenda, but ultimately failed to achieve his goal. The dawn of the twentieth century saw a cultural renaissance in Ireland, where efforts were made to reverse the erosion of Gaelic culture. Organisations such as the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League aimed to preserve the native Irish language and traditions. At same time, Republicanism experienced resurgence with the founding of Sinn Fein (‘ourselves alone’) in 1905 and the revival of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). A Third Home Rule Bill had been introduced by Prime Minister HH Asquith’s Liberal administration


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in 1912, but the Unionists remained implacably opposed to Home Rule. Private armies were also created, with the Protestants forming Ulster Volunteer Force and the nationalists forming the Irish Volunteers. Both had memberships exceeding 100,000 men and armed themselves with weapons smuggled in from Germany. The unionists, aware that they could no longer resist Home Rule, began lobbying for the exclusion of six of Ulster’s nine counties from the arrangements. The specter of civil war hung over Ireland. In the Easter of 1916, an Irish rebellion broke out and was crushed very harshly. One of the surviving leaders of the Easter Rising, Eamon de Valera, was elected president of Sinn Fein in October 1917, unifying all groups working towards an independent Ireland under a single leadership. The Easter Rising of 1916 was also the event through which the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was born. The IRA fired the first shots of the Irish War of Independence. The British government responded by imposing curfews and deploying two new forces - the so-called ‘Black and Tans’ and the Auxiliaries. Atrocities were committed on both sides of the conflict as it became increasingly bitter and divisive. The solution came in the form of the partition of Ireland into two parts under the Government of Ireland Act, which became legalised in May 1921. The six predominantly Protestant counties of Ulster would become the ‘north’, and the remaining twenty-six predominantly Catholic counties would become the ‘south’. This was the way in which Northern Ireland was created. Negotiations took place in the following months between Irish nationalist leaders and the British government. They resulted in a treaty creating the ‘Irish Free State’, which had ‘dominion status’ within the British Commonwealth, but fell short of full independence. The treaty split Irish nationalists. A split in the IRA between pro-treaty and anti-treaty members rapidly led to armed conflict and then to all-out civil war. In Northern Ireland, the IRA had begun a campaign of violence even before partition became a reality in 1921. In response, the Ulster Volunteer Force was revived and thus the new nation experienced sectarian bloodshed from its very inception4, which continued until the British government under Prime Minister Tony Blair took the decision to end it. In fact, since 1969, the British government has attempted to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict through amnesty, reconciliation and reintegration. 4

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/troubles/overview_ni_article_05.shtml for more details.


The word amnesty here is used as “weapons amnesty” or, as referred to in Northern Ireland, “decommissioning”, which is a crucial part of the peace processes of a similar kind.5 The political process was completed with the reconvening of the Northern Ireland Assembly on 8 May 2007 and the ending of the British military’s security operations after thirty-eight years in July 2007. As highlighted above, the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland were both political and economic (Bloomfield, 1997: 22). Reaching a solution in an atmosphere of fear, intimidation and violence has not been easy. Resolution of the conflict required a security component to cope with the violence and intimidation that engendered fear. Fear in turn impeded political and economic progress. The UK government was unable to make real progress in Northern Ireland until it achieved a balance between security operations and a progressive political dialogue. The conflict in Northern Ireland thus continued for over 25 years with paramilitary violence and a death toll of over 3,600 people and countless more injuries (Clark, 2008). The political dimension of the resolution of the conflict came first with the establishment of Anglo-Irish Council in 1983 by which the UK government began to move towards achieving a political settlement. The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 established an intergovernmental conference to discuss affairs of mutual interest in Northern Ireland. In December 1993, a joint declaration created the basis of a peace process, eventually termed “A New Framework for Agreement”, which was implemented in February 1995. The process paved the way for political dialogue that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement (known also as the Belfast Agreement) of 10 April 1998. The political process ended with the reestablishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007 (Clark, 2008). One of the main obstacles in the negotiation process was the close association between the political parties and paramilitary organizations; namely Sinn Fein and the IRA on the nationalist side and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) on the unionist side. The UK refused to deal with political parties that had close ties with terrorist and criminal organisations. Nevertheless, in 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to drop arms decommissioning as a precondition to dialogue and invited Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, to meet with him at the Prime Ministry. This at5

Decommissioning is one of the pre-conditions that Turkish government asks from the Kurdish rebels to start a peace negotiation process.


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tempt finally broke the deadlock. This was a relatively courageous move given the fact that the relations between Sinn Fein and the IRA were still in close association at that time.6 With the involvement of the United States and the EU as outsider brokers, the conflict gained a new international aspect. The Republic of Ireland took a position to deal with the UK on the nationalists’ behalf. The EU supported the peace process both economically and politically. It tied political progress to economic incentives and this encouraged the political parties to keep the process moving. When the opposing sides engaged in political interaction with their sworn enemies, they could finally see beyond a zero-sum game and found an alternative to attempting to solve the issue through violent means. The progress in the political process went hand in hand with economic development. Economic recovery, particularly the diminishing unemployment rate, removed a significant cause of the societal resentment that made the criminal activities of the paramilitary organisations appealing. Those who were employed became stakeholders in society and sought a peaceful environment in which to work and prosper. As a usual feature of paramilitary organisations, the terrorist groups had offered the recruits financial incentives and additional family support (Cragin and Chalk, 2003: x). Thus, economic and political development served the security dimension by preventing young people from being allured by the financial incentives that the paramilitary groups had once offered. In the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998, the UK and the Irish Government committed themselves to establishing “mechanisms to provide for an accelerated program for the release of prisoners”.7 Hence, there was at least partial recognition of the obligation to incorporate into society those who had fought for two generations to unite Ireland and to drive the British out. Thus, the UK Government agreed to a rapid general amnesty in the GFA. Granting general amnesty served to enhance the trust the nationalist parties had in the UK Government by demonstrating its will to achieve a real solution. This had two effects on the political process. First, the former militants were led to work through legal political parties in order to achieve their de6

7

This move was made possible by Blair’s huge victory in the general elections of 1997. However, one should take into account also the former US President Clinton’s move to legitimise Gerry Adams by inviting Adams to the White House in 1994. The Agreement, 30, accessible online at http://www.nio.gov.uk/agreement.pdf/


sired ends. Second, many of the paramilitaries have been directly involved in furthering the peace process (Mitchell, 1999: 131). The best example is Michael Mc Guiness, a convicted senior IRA terrorist who became the chief Sinn Fein negotiator of the GFA. He currently holds office as the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland (Fitzduff, 2002: 102). As for reconciliation, it entails the coming together of opposing political agendas to the point where progressive dialogue becomes possible. Social reconciliation is probably the most difficult to achieve, particularly in societies where separate identities have evolved, as it is also the case in the Kurdish question in Turkey. In Northern Ireland, the reconciliation between the two communities has been hard and is not completely achieved yet. Some physical and mental separation still exists between the communities that hold fears about each other’s ultimate intentions, making any agreed political solution more difficult to sustain (Fitzduff, 2002: 32-33). Separatist Aspirations in the Basque Country In order to better understand nationalism in the Basque Country, one should look back in Spanish history. The Spanish kingdom has been built as an aggregate monarchy by the marriage of two monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile. Within time, a centralised administration has reinforced state unity around the Castilian crown. The construction of the Spanish state has progressively been realised around the figure of the king, instead of a spontaneous accession to a unified nation (Izquierdo, 2000: 76-78). Although Spanish territory had been divided into regions, a national sentiment has emerged with the War of Independence in the early nineteenth century. In 1812, with the Cadix Constitution, this national ideal on the liberal model was concretised for the first time. It was geared towards building a unified state centralised around Castile. In 1837, the liberal Spanish state abolished regional privileges in order to strengthen the central administration. During the nineteenth century, other institutions controlled by the central government have been established and the central administration assured its authority and domination on the entire territory (Izquierdo, 2000: 76-78). There then emerged a cleavage between the central administration and the regional bourgeoisie. This division prevented Spain from becoming a nationally unified state. On top of this, some financial problems caused state dysfunction. With the laws of 1836 and 1855, the oligarchy confiscated the goods of the Church in order to finance the public deficit, which bred social fragmentation


47

and resentment, especially within a structurally weak state with very few possibilities of social ascension. This intensified social differences and caused a sentiment of frustration within the population that was socially excluded from “national life”, causing the revival of regional patriotism. Rural Spain, excluded from the political debates, mistrusted the Castilian centre as well as the liberal values that it represented (Recalde, 1984: 78). As in other national construction movements in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, regionalism rhymed with the sense of ethnic identity in Spain. There have been two patterns of nation-state building in Europe: either national construction preceded the foundation of the state as it was in the case of the Balkan states; or state construction preceded national construction as it was in the case of France, where one of the functions of the state was to homogenise the nation. In the Spanish case, however, neither national construction nor the installation of the centralised state appliance was complete by the end of the nineteenth century. Both of them remained weak. In other words, the very idea of a Spanish nation has been unrequited within the Spanish people (Letamendia, 1977: 84).8 Economic recession had further fuelled regional differences over time. Some regions such as Catalonia and the Basque Country have profited from the Industrial Revolution and made rapid economic progress, cutting off their links with the most underdeveloped regions. The Basque Country, in the 1880s, became a centre of attraction for the unemployed coming from other regions in Spain. In time, those who were coming from other Spanish regions began to be perceived as “foreigners” who were damaging the very soul of the Basque country by “debasquizing” the region. Besides, the liberal crown against the influential Church was not successful in reducing the differences among the population. Hence, Spanish society remained organized in a hierarchical structure. Under these circumstances, the economically prospered regions developed their own bourgeoisie as well as a deep resentment against the Castilian central administration. Basque nationalism had its apogee during the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). Franco’s regime was openly hostile to the idea of a separate Basque identity. General Franco applied harsh cultural repression after his victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1939, where all vestiges of Basque identity, manifestations of local culture 8

Contrary to the German model, the nationalist discourse in Spain has been posterior to the achievement of state building and thus did not have a unifying and stirring effect (Letamendia, 1977: 84).


and the use of Euskera, the Basque language, were prohibited. The opponents of the regime were executed, imprisoned or exiled. ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – Basque Homeland and Freedom) was established in this context. Franco signed treaties both with the Vatican and the United States (1953) to end the isolation of his regime. The leaders of the PNV (Partido Nationalista Vasco- Basque Nationalist Party) were exiled and did not have a determined strategy to fight against the Franco regime. The young Basque nationalists were growing frustrated with the stagnancy and passivity of the PNV. ETA thus had its origins in a student group in Bilbao in 1952, which aimed to protect Basque identity and culture from extermination (Rooney, 2007). The group was first known as Ekin, which means “to act” in Euskera. Its members soon broke off their ties with the PNV to form the more militant ETA on 31 July 1959. It evolved from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to a paramilitary group fighting for the independence of the Basque Country. ETA started its violent actions in 1968 and has killed more than 800 people to this day.9 However, the new Constitution of 1978 radically transformed the centralist non-democratic socio-political regime inherited from Franco and established the Autonomous Communities System based on devolution, which gives power to the regions (Guibernau, 2006). Yet, instead of directly responding to the nationalist demands of Catalonia and the Basque Country, it divided the territory of Spain into seventeen autonomous communities (Guibernau, 2004: 70-84). Catalans and Basques were not fully satisfied with this devolution since they desired to be recognised as nations within Spain. Catalonia’s recognition as a “nation” within Spain was approved in 2006,10 but this was not the case for the Basque Country. The Basques demand greater autonomy. The Plan Ibarretxe launched by the Basque Govern-ment, suggesting that the Basque Country becomes a “free state” associated with Spain, was rejected by the Spanish Parliament (Guibernau, 2004: 73).11 The Basque nationalists are strongly against a unitary state model. Devolution has not fostered separatism, but it has generated a strong desire for greater autonomy in the Basque Country. The neo-centralist policies of the Aznar government (2000-2004) have further contributed to radicalising regional nationalism and fuelling separatism in Spain (Resina, 2002).12 The 9 See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/basque.html. 10 http://qanda.encyclopedia.com/question/catalonia-recognized-nation-within-spain-117537.html 11 This Project was launched on 27 September 2002 by José Maria Ibarretxe, lehendakari or President of the Basque Autonomous Government, and obtained the support of the Basque Parliament. 12 Plan Ibarretxe was refused under the Aznar government.


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attitude and the policies of the Aznar government played a major role in exacerbating nationalist feelings in Spain. The Basques identify themselves primarily as “Basque” rather than as “Spanish”. Citizens who identify themselves only with their autonomous community represent 25 % of the population in the Basque Country, where those who confer priority to their autonomous identification rather than Spanish identification receive the highest scores in the Basque Country (19 %) and Catalonia (24 %). The Basque Country is the autonomous community with the weakest sense of Spanish identity. However, the overall percentage for those declaring some kind of dual identity - Spanish and Basque at the same time- is 56 %. Thus one can argue that in Spain, devolution has not resulted in the weakening of Spanish identity. On the contrary, those who felt oppressed within an alien state during the Franco era started to identify themselves with the Spanish state when the latter became a democratic, pro-European, secular and modern one after the transition to democracy (Guibernau, 2004: 66). Hence it is possible to argue that devolution, when accompanied by a substantial transfer of power, the constitution of regional institutions and access to significant resources, as in the case of Spain, promotes the emergence of regional identity without necessarily weakening national identity. It does not challenge the integrity of the nation-state’s boundaries. It is founded upon mutual trust, recognition and a sound financial arrangement and hence it is a successful strategy in the accommodation of national minorities within liberal democracies. However, it is not a strategy that is easy to achieve. The state’s determination to protect its territorial integrity and its will to foster a single national identity among its citizens clash with the national minority’s wish to be recognised as a separate entity entitled to decide upon its political destiny and to foster its distinct identity (Guibernau, 2004: 73). In Spain, the dialogue between ETA and the Spanish government that was initiated in 2006 by the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was blocked by the decision of ETA to end the ceasefire with an attack at Madrid airport in 2007, after which the government declared off the dialogue. The Kurdish Question The Kurdish question has certainly been one of the most important political problems of Turkey throughout the twentieth century. Although this was a problem which emerged in 1840 when the Ottoman Empire attempted to centralise the Kurdish emirates of the southeast part of the country, which led


to a conflict between the central government and the Kurdish emirates in 184813, the question gained new dimensions with the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The Ottoman system was based on the concept of millet, which referred to religious and ethno-religious groups. In order to cut off its links with the Ottoman legacy and to build a new and “modern” nation, the founder elites of modern Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal attempted to homogenise the population either by erasing religious differences by the exchange of populations or by ignoring ethno-linguistic differences. The new state had to be formed out of a single nation unified around the same language, the same culture, the same collective memory, and the same religion. The Turkish state had two objectives: to create a society without any social, ethnic and religious distinctions and to construct a nation based upon an individual and juridical affiliation and not upon the conglomeration of the ethno-confessional communities (Akgönül, 2008: 70). The Kurds, at the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, were divided between the territories of four different countries: Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. In time, the Kurdish problem has gained both an intra-state dimension within and an inter-state dimension between these countries (Şahin, 2005: 123). Although there was an approach to include the Kurds into the war and the Republican project during the Turkish War of Independence, from the middle of 1920s onwards, this has left its place to an exclusivist approach that ignores all ethnic and cultural differences (Yıldız, 2001; Bozarslan, 2005).14 The founding elite wished to homogenise the Turkish nation in order to have homogeneous identities and affiliations (Anderson, 1983). The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 did not recognise any other groups than nonMuslims as a minority (Akgönül, 2008). Thus, the new Republic rejected the existence of the Kurds. Furthermore, the societal structure of the Kurds who were living in the rural areas of Southeast Turkey was not compatible with the project of modern Turkey since it was still a feudal system dating back to the Ottoman Empire. The Kurdish societal structure was then archaic and conservative, hence the new and modern Turkish state had to cut off its links 13 Interview with Kendal Nezan, Director of the Kurdish Institute of Paris, Paris, 3 August 2009. 14 The uniting factor of the Turkish Independence War was Islam. Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, had upheld this element as a tool to gather people around his cause and lead the war to victory. In a speech held at the General Council of the Assembly in 1920, he declared that unity could not be achieved through being Turkish, Circassian or Kurdish. It has to be achieved through Islam in order to include every ethnicity in the country (Yıldız, 2001; Bozarslan, 2005).


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with this old system which was against the rationale of the new republic (Şahin, 2005: 125). By the 1930s, with the rise of fascism in Europe, the Turkish governments also displayed nationalist sentiments under a one-party system. Within time, oppressive practices and assimilating policies increased to the extent that there has been a policy of “Turkification” in every aspect of live; from education to culture and even to the economy (Aktar, 2000). Speaking Kurdish was progressively banned and the juridical practices were followed by military ones, culminating in the Kurdish revolt of 1925. It was the first Kurdish revolt of the new Republic and as the Kurds ‘did not exist’ any more, those who resisted the new regime were not presented as Kurds with an ethnopolitical cause, but as tribes and bandits threatened by the dissemination of modern state power in the region. The Settlement Law of 1934, a privileged text of Turkish nationalism of the 1930s, constitutes an example in this respect. After two large-scale Kurdish rebellions in 1925 and 1930, the new regime embarked on solving the Kurdish question by the means of an extensive settlement law. Despite highlighting that the ultimate aim of the law was the Turkification (assimilation) of non-Turks, the text produces the impression that those intended to be assimilated were tribal people with no ethnic identity (Yeğen, 2007). The Turkish state thus initiated a struggle against those who would not identify themselves as a Turk. This practice had gone as far as emptying Kurdish villages to fill them with Turkish-speaking populations and changing the Kurdish names of the villages into Turkish ones (Öztürk, 2008: 37). With the transition to multiparty system in 1946, the Kurds could finally find some political means to express their identities. They started to form some political movements and from the 1960s on, also thanks to the rural exodus to the big cities, a Kurdish intellectual elite started to emerge. Nevertheless, they were perceived as a threat to the secular and modern Republic and thus their existence were constantly denied. With the military coups of 1971 and especially of 1980, the Kurds and their newly expressed demands for identity were harshly oppressed by the military junta, where some Kurdish militants had to flee from Turkey. Under these circumstances, the cultural and linguistic claims of the Kurds turned into separatist, violent and autonomous actions. Those who fled from the country became organised in Europe, gained cultural consciousness abroad and started to express stronger demands for identity. An armed opposition led by the PKK –


Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan- (Kurdistan Workers Party) was established in the mid 1980s and lasted for twenty five years, leading to approximately forty thousand casualties. By the early 1990s, their militants numbered a few thousand. They eventually adopted a more conventional guerilla style of violence, but tactical use of terrorism also persisted over time (Reinares, 2005: 121). In the 1990s, the armed struggle of the PKK went together with an eager discontent of the Kurdish masses. This indicated that the alienation between the Kurds and the state increased in the 1990s (Gürbey, 1996: 7-37; Yeğen, 2007: 136). All political parties that explicitly espoused Kurdish identity were banned and closed down between 1993 and 2005. Their leaders and protagonists were imprisoned15. Today there is not only a political deadlock about the solution of the Kurdish issue, but also an increased enmity between the Turks and the Kurds in Turkey. Although the Kurds declare to have given up their separatist claims of the 1980s and 1990s and that they actually demand cultural and identity rights16, the Turks have been turning against them for a long time, since many perceive them as those who seek to divide Turkey to create their own country, Kurdistan. A concrete political solution is still not under way, and a societal solution seems even more urgent than the political one. In the summer of 2009, the Turkish Government has launched an initiative to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. However, it still remains as a vague plan. Although Turkish nationalism has been on the rise in recent years, and the Turkish army has been against any political solution including regional devolution, the government is becoming more aware that tackling the Kurdish question with the instruments of the past such as massive assimilation or compulsory settlement will be harder in a Turkey that wishes to enter the European Union (Yeğen, 2007:141). Yet, with the army acting as a primary political actor, all the opposition parties and most of the population do not perceive a peaceful solution as feasible. They fear that Turkey will be divided into many autonomous regions, a fear that does not have a logical basis since devolution does not necessarily foster separatism, as we have seen in the case of the Basque Country. To start negotiations, the Turkish army sets up the preconditions of decommissioning for the PKK, but 15 There is currently a law suit to ban the DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi-Democratic Society Party), the only Kurdish party in the Turkish Parliament. For more details, see Maya Arakon, DTP Kapatılamaz! in www.sansursuz.com 16 Milliyet, Interview of Hasan Cemal with Murat Karayılan, the current leader of PKK, 2-10 May 2009.


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the latter refuses it unless the army does it as well. Demokratik Toplum Partisi (DTP), the only Kurdish party in the Turkish Assembly, emphasises that one of the sides of the negotiation should be Abdullah Öcalan, the founder and the former head of the PKK - considered as a “terrorist” by Turkey and the EU - who has been imprisoned since 1999. However, the government has declared that they would never negotiate with terrorists - the same precondition set by the UK governments which gridlocked negotiations in Northern Ireland for more than 40 years until 1998. CONCLUSION Finding a peaceful solution to a separatist nationalist problem is not easy. It necessitates a genuine will on the part of both sides as well as the political, economic and social tools to implement a long-term settlement. In all three cases, Northern Ireland –IRA, Basque Country- ETA and the Southeast Turkey-PKK, there are some similar points which made peace possible or deadlocked. First of all, all three states, committed the same mistake of oppressing and assimilating the minority identity in order to prevent the country from disintegrating. However, history has shown that all attempts to assimilate or to oppress different ethnic or national cultures and identities have, on the contrary, fostered those national and regional identities and paved the way for a nationalist or sometimes a secessionist struggle within the territory of the nation-state, demanding self-determination, autonomy or total independence. Devolution, however, has never fostered secessionism or separatism. On the contrary, the experiences of Britain with Northern Ireland and Spain with the Basque Country show that devolution has contributed to deterring secession. It does not fully satisfy self-determination claims but it tends to weaken them, by entitling national minorities to enjoy substantial powers (Guibernau, 2004: 70). Nation states, however, are not willing to give up their political, economic and territorial sovereignty. Furthermore, the process of devolution and a peaceful settlement to the national conflict have always been hard to achieve. There are actors such as opposition parties and the conservative wing of the society who are completely against making considerable concessions for peace. For instance, in the discourse of the Spanish rightwing Popular Party (PP), “nation” is raised to the position of utmost importance where all the other elements are connected to it. The State can only be safe and sound if the nation is intact (Maskaliunaite, 2007: 81). This attitude


bears a resemblance with the discourse of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) of Turkey, where the “nation” ranks above all and the Turkish state is based on Turkish nationhood. Hence, as it was the case in Spain, keeping the constitution intact becomes necessary for the protection of the nation. Second, when it comes to struggle for peace instead of struggling with separatist militants, all the state authorities declare that they will not deal with terrorists. This was and still is the case for Spain and Turkey, where the state authorities refuse to hold talks with ETA and PKK or their political branches, i.e., Batasuna and DTP respectively. Hence recognising minority identity is often perceived as making concessions to the “terrorists”. This discourse finds support within the extreme-right and the centre-right which try to keep the problem within the limits of the concept of “terrorism”, rather than a problem concerning “national minorities”. They refuse to admit that the reason for violence to occur in the first place was the lack of any legal mechanisms for national minorities to express their identity demands. Moreover, the centre-right and the extreme right – as well as the army in Turkey which plays the role of a political actor with its weight in the government’s security and military policies - use this violence in the creation of martyrs and the reaffirmation of the nation.17 Hence for the nationalists, there is violence because there is a conflict between the nation-state and the national minorities concerning lack of autonomy and national recognition. For the nationstate, there is only a problem of terrorism. This issue has only been successfully dealt with in the UK where the unprecedented and courageous initiative of Tony Blair resolved the conflict and made the peace process a reality. A peaceful settlement could still not be reached in Spain and Turkey. Those who resist to make concessions or to take the first step still continue to use the “emotional fight” against violence as part of the political discourse. In both countries, as it is the case in almost all intense ethnic conflicts, there is a double minority situation in which each group emphasises its own vulnerability and weakness and ignores how its strength threatens the opponent (Ross, 2000: 42). For this reason, there should first be a peaceful political solution “genuinely” desired by both sides, and second, perhaps more importantly, a 17 The cult of the “fallen for the patria” constitutes a significant element in the consolidation of the idea and feeling of the nation. As the victims died for the nation, and at the hands of the evil other, their deaths provide a moral meaning to the understanding of the nation itself (Maskaliunaite, 2007: 84).


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will to reach societal reconciliation which can take more than one generation.18 In attempting to reach a peaceful settlement to Turkey’s Kurdish problem, there are many lessons to learn from the experience of Northern Ireland and the courageous attitude of the British politicians who made the peace possible after almost a century of fighting.

Bıblıography Books and Articles Akgönül, Samim (2008). “Les Kurdes forment-ils une minorité en Turquie?”, Diplomatie, No: 30: 70-73. Aktar, Ayhan (2000). Varlık Vergisi ve Türkleştirme Politikaları. İstanbul: İletişim. Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Bloomfield, David (1997). Peacemaking Strategies in Northern Ireland: Building Complementarity in Conflict Management Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bozarslan, Hamit (2005). “Türkiye’de Kürt Milliyetçiliği: Zımni Sözleşmeden Ayaklanmaya 1919-1925”, in E. J. Zürcher (ed.), Türkiye’de Etnik Çatışma. İstanbul: İletişim. Brown, E. Michael (1993). “Causes and Implications of Ethnic Conflict”, in M. E. Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict and International Security. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Clark, John (2008). “Northern Ireland: A Balanced Approach to Amnesty, Reconciliation and Reintegration”, Military Review, January-February 2008: 37-49. Cragin, Kim and Patrick Chalk (2003). Terrorism and Development: Using Social and Economic Development to Inhibit a Resurgence of Terrorism. Santa Monica, California: Rand. Fitzduff, Mari (2002). Beyond Violence: Conflict Resolution Process in Northern Ireland. New York: United Nations Press. Guibernau, Montserrat (2004). Catalan Nationalism: Francoism, Transition and Democracy. London: Routledge. Guibernau, Montserrat (2005). Nations without States: Political Communities in a global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Guibernau, Montserrrat (2006). “National Identity, Devolution and Secession in Canada, Britain and Spain”, Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 12, No. 1: 51-76. Gürbey, Gülistan (1996). “The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey since the 1980s’, in R. Olson (ed.), The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. Izquierdo, Jean-Marie (2000). La Question Basque. Editions Complexe. Kupchan, A. Charles (1995). “Nationalism Resurgent”, in C. A. Kupchan (ed.), Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 18 Interview with Hamit Bozarslan, Professor at Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, 9 June 2009.


Letamendia, Francisco (1977). Historia de Euskadi. Barcelone: Ruedo Ibérico. Maskaliunaite, Asta (2007). “The Role of (ETA) Violence in the Construction of Nationalism in Spain and the Basque Country”, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Vol. 7, No. 3: 78-93. Meadwell, Hudson (1993). “The Politics of Nationalism in Quebec”, World Politics, Vol. 45, No. 1: 203-41. Mitchell, J. George (1999). Making Peace. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Newland, Kathleen (1993). “Ethnic Conflict and Refugees”, Global Politics and Strategy, Vol. 35, No. 1: 81-101. Öztürk, Saygı (2008). İsmet Paşa’nın Kürt Raporu. İstanbul: Doğan Kitap. Recalde, José Ramón (1984). “Intersección de dos Procesos Nacionales (Estudio des Conflicto Español-Vasco)”, Estudios de Historia Social, No. 28-29. Reinares Fernando (2005). “Nationalist Separatism and Terrorism in Comparative Perspective”, in T. Bjorgo (ed), Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and Ways Forward. New York: Routledge. Resina, Joan Ramon (2002). “Post-national Spain? Post-Spanish Spain?”, Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 8, No. 3: 376-96. Rooney, Nicola (2007). “Violent Nationalism in Catholic Communities: The Provisional IRA and ETA”, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Vol. 7, No. 3: 64-77. Ross, Marc Howard (2000). “Good Enough isn’t so Bad: Thinking about Success and Failure in Ethnic Conflict Management”, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol. 6, No. 1: 27-47. Smith, Anthony (1993). “The Ethnic Sources of Nationalism”, in M. E. Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict and International Security. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Snyder, Jack (1993). “Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State”, in M. E. Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict and International Security. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Şahin, Bahar (2005). “Türkiye’nin Avrupa Birliği Uyum Süreci Bağlamında Kürt Sorunu: Açılımlar ve Sınırlar”, in A. Kaya and T. Tarhanlı (eds.), Türkiye’de Çoğunluk ve Azınlık Politikaları: AB Sürecinde Yurttaşlık Tartışmaları. İstanbul: TESEV Yayınları. Yeğen, Mesut (2007). “Turkish Nationalism and the Kurdish question”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1: 119-51. Yıldız, Ahmet (2001). Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene – Türk Ulusal Kimliğinin EtnoSeküler Sınırları 1919-1938. İstanbul: İletişim. Newspapers and Electronic Sources Milliyet www.bbc.co.uk http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/subsidiarity_en.htm www.nio.gov.uk/agreement.pdf/ www.qanda.encyclopedia.com www.sansursuz.com www.smithsonnian.com

4 Interdependence, Rivalry and Cooperation: Nabucco Project and the Politics of Energy Security of Natural Gas in the Wider Eurasian Region Cem Deniz Kut

INTRODUCTION nergy security issue is not solely an economic problem, but it is also, and sometimes mainly, a political and security issue, since the states are responsible for the welfare and well-being of their citizens. Hence decisionmaking on the energy security issue involves a multitude of layers for the main actors of the wider Eurasian region. The primary issue concerns diversification, which is essential for both consumers and suppliers in order to not to be over dependent on single suppliers, transit countries or buyers. However, this is not currently the case. There is over dependence in all three aspects. Thus in order to achieve the necessary security of supply, this exclusive dependence is in need of proper management, investment and governance. Russia and the European Union constitute the two major variables of the equation of energy security in Eurasia, one as the major buyer and the other as the major supplier. They both suffer from overdependence and they are both in need of immediate diversification: the EU has to diversify its sources and Russia has to diversify its transit routes. Turkey comes into the equation at exactly this point since it is literally located in the middle of the Eurasian region and it is a reliable partner for both of the parties in terms of diversification of routes. The relations between the two parties are positive and strong. Turkey is one of the biggest investors in the Russian economy, especially in manufactured goods and the construction sector. Turkey also buys its energy directly from Russia. However, in terms of geopolitical and energy

E


security concerns, the interests of the two do not converge. To the contrary, they conflict. First of all, Turkey does not want Russia to increase its influence in the Central Asian and the Caspian regions. Secondly, Turkey as an energy buyer itself seeks to diversify its sources and thus support possible alternatives. On the Russian side, in order to keep the monopolistic position that it has over the export of energy into the EU and Turkish markets, it needs to deepen its influence on other producer countries in the region and obstruct alternative pipeline projects. Turkey’s interests, on the other hand, converge to a large extent with those of the European Union. They are both energy dependent buyers, threatened by Russian monopoly. Therefore, in terms of diversification what is good for one is favourable by the other. They also both expect and seek stability and economic integration in the region independent from mighty Russia which turns every relation into an asymmetrical one. Russia’s relations with the other producers in the region are still very strong and its historical ties from the Soviet era are still present at social and political levels. Yet there are incremental deviances from the Russian line in the region. Starting with Turkmenistan and then Azerbaijan, other producer countries are increasingly seizing the opportunity to boost up their economies by taking charge of their capabilities and opening up to the new markets. However, it is a slow and costly process. For the time being, investment needs and revenues do not balance each other out. These countries require more investment to be able to sell more. The questions of reliability and feasibility have mostly prevented concrete investments from being realised. Nevertheless, the recent gas crises between Russia and Ukraine in 2006 and 2009 (threatening and affecting the EU and Turkey) speeded up the evaluation and decision making process. Immediately after the first recent crisis (2006), the EU has put the energy security issue and therefore Nabucco on the top of its agenda. The parameters of the relationship between Russia and Turkey revolve around this context. It is difficult to argue that there is a potential win-win situation regarding the energy security issue. If handled properly, energy politics in the region has great potential in delivering regional stability and integration since the issue is central to the very existence of producers, transits and suppliers altogether. The very fact that the region surrounding Turkey has been (and still is) a scene for the most of the conflicts in the world, increases the importance of that need for proper mana-

4. interdependence, rivalry and cooperation

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gement of energy politics. This paper does not argue that politics of natural gas and energy security can bring an end to all the conflicts in the region. However, it argues that even though the problems are multi dimensional and difficult to untangle, energy politics constitute a common denominator and a significant incentive to aim for resolving conflicts for all the actors of the region. ENERGY SECURITY AND NATURAL GAS The issue of energy security for the European Union was put on the agenda recently in 2006. ‘The Energy Policy for Europe’ by the European Council marked the moment when the European Union seriously started to focus on the issue as an immediate concern. What happened to Ukraine in January 2006 was concrete enough for the European Union to take action within the Union towards a common energy policy. Today, most of the European Union member states are dependent upon imported energy, specifically from Russia. As a whole, 50% of the energy needs of the member states of the European Union are provided through imports and 25% comes from Russia, and this figure is rising progressively. The estimates are that by 2030, the members of the European Union will import 40% of their gas needs from Russia (Gallis, 2007). By that time the overall external dependency on Russia is expected to reach 80%.1 For the EU member states, energy security is primarily an economic and political issue with significant consequences. The increasing over-dependence on Russian gas is a major obstacle for the EU. Furthermore, the individual agreements of the member states with Russia (as seen in the cases of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria) seriously harm the political and economic unity of the European Union, jeopardizing its future integration. Since the European Union has to secure a stable and affordable energy flow through/into the territories of its member states, on 30 May 2006, a paper regarding the EU external relations policy on energy was released. Taking the main points of the European Security Strategy of 2003 also into account, the paper suggests that the European Union’s policy on energy must be coherent, strategic, focused and consistent with the EU’s broader foreign policy objectives such as conflict prevention and resolution, non-proliferation and the promotion of human rights (thus fully in line with the main points of its security strategy) (Winrow, 2007). 1

http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/geopolitics-eu-energy-supply/article-142665


In the case of Russia, however, the guarantee for markets is necessary in order to sell the gas and invest in production. This is a crucial point where a mutual dependence between the supplier and the consumer of natural gas emerges (Winrow, 2007). Yet this is not a symmetrical dependence, it is mostly beneficial for Russia, which buys cheap Caspian and Central Asian gas and sells it to buyers in Europe at a much higher price. At that point President Putin does not regret to state that Gazprom is a “powerful political and economic lever of influence over the rest of the world” (Gallis, 2007). The energy security issue is a political, economic and security-related issue mainly revolving around security of affordable supply. Today, in terms of the security of natural gas supply, there are several multi-layered discussions on the part of both the main buyer camp (EU) and the main supplier (Russian Federation). The functioning of the EU and the impact of the individual choices of the member states, thus the problem of coordination of a coherent energy policy to not to become more dependent on a single source but to diversify the supply, is the most acute problem for the EU. On Russia’s part, the most immediate problem is to overcome the risk of emerging alternatives to Gazprom sought by the buyers, to prevent the loss of the economic and political advantages that it currently enjoys. In a sense, understanding the main tenets of the whole energy security issue in terms of the security of supply and actors is not very complex. All derives from the simple correlation between supply and demand. From the economic point of view, it is clear that both demand, by buying the gas, and supply, by producing and transporting the gas are the main interdependent variables. However, in order to buy, there should be production and transport, and in order to produce and transfer, there should be investment. From that point on, things get complicated. The reason is that fossil fuels are still number one sources of energy and vital for any economy and government. They are essential for the well-being and welfare of societies and the legitimacy of governments. Yet the states are not the only actors. National companies as well as international and supranational organisations are also at the core of energy security equation, and they constitute together with the states a multitude of actors which operate in a multilayered and multidimensional way. What is meant by multilayered and multidimensional is that there are multiple grounds of action and outcomes affecting different dimensions. These dimensions can be categorized as domestic policy dimension, economic dimension, geopolitical dimension and security policy dimension.


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In terms of the nature and management of fossil fuels, energy security of natural gas displays a different picture. While oil is the primary energy source in the world and is traded globally without being limited to a single producer with significant leverage over a single consumer, gas relations involve only a few contractual parties (Goldthau, 2008: 686). In addition to this, oil is traded in global markets in various ways being supplied from many countries all around the world, with a diverse nature of supply and demand; whereas natural gas is predominantly traded through pipelines and since sources are concentrated, its trade is much more limited. ENERGY POLITICS OF NATURAL GAS: RUSSIA AND THE MAIN ACTORS OF SUPPLY IN EURASIA The issue becomes more complicated when other producers, transit countries and different markets are included in the equation. The additional actors to the equation consist of: 1) Caspian and Central Asian Producers, namely Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Iran; 2) Transit countries, namely Ukraine (+Belarus), Turkey and Georgia; 3) Alternative markets, particularly the Asian market. Today, Russia is the largest natural gas exporter in the world, where the EU is the largest natural gas importer. The balance and relations between the two constitute the basis of the whole debate. On one side there is Russia which holds a monopolistic position in natural gas imports of the EU. About 40% of the EU’s gas imports are from Russia.2 However, on the other side, the EU constitutes the biggest gas market for Russia and a very significant amount of the total natural gas exports of Russia are towards the EU, where more than 80% of this amount passes through Ukraine (Stern, 2006). Therefore, in terms of market dependency, both actors are highly dependent on each other for sustainability. The dominant view in terms of energy and supply security is, as mentioned before, the increasing over dependence of the EU on Russian gas, which is considered as a major problem due to the fear that this huge share gives Russia a potential political leverage over the EU. This fear has been deepened with the recent crisis (2009) between Russia and Ukraine, when Russia tried to corner Ukraine to pay its debts by a possible pressure from the EU. Russia created the threat of disruption in the flow of energy into the EU due to Ukraine’s payment problems and hoped that EU countries, which 2

Ibid.


cannot wage secession in the flow, would push Ukraine towards a position where the EU would hold Ukraine responsible and pressure Ukraine to pay its debts in order to guarantee a constant flow of natural gas in the territories of its member states. The wider Eurasia also includes some of the most unstable regions in the world within which the international community and the great players of the international arena seek relative stability. Turkey, as highlighted above, stands literally at the centre of this whole debate since it neighbours Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Russia (by the Black Sea) and the EU. RUSSIA Russia’s attempt to preserve its monopolistic position in natural gas exports is directly interdependent with the three sets of additional actor sets mentioned above (1-Caspian and Central Asian producers, 2-Transit countries and 3-Alternative markets), since every single one of them constitutes a powerful dynamic to shape short and midterm policies. First, Russia has to secure further agreements with the Caspian and Central Asian countries to buy enough gas from them to cover the domestic and export gaps. Secondly, it has to diversify its transit routes (Ukraine) towards the EU market and compete with the buyer states’ attempts to establish alternative supply routes which would get establish direct contact with the cheaper producers of Central Asia and the Caspian region. Third, it has to secure investments not only for existing markets, but also for future potential deals with an alternative market, namely the Asian market to prevent from being overdependent on the revenues from the EU market. Russia, however, has several important obstacles to fulfilling its potentials and maintaining its advantageous position in the energy market. First, its major fields have reached their peak and the overall gas production is in decline. Second, Gazprom’s monopoly over gas production in Russia creates an unfavourable environment for foreign investment that Russia needs, in order to cope with the decrease in production by the creation of new production fields. Third, the pipelines that are being used for more than 30 years are now causing trouble as almost 30% of the gas that is being transported from these lines is lost due to leaking (Andrianopoulos, 2007). Fourth, there is the issue of flaring of gas excess (associated petroleum gas - APG) in the oil fields: “Russia is by far the leader in flaring. The country flares 30% of total APG flared in the world and sustains losses equal to 362 billion rubbles per


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year”.3 Oil producers find it easier and cheaper to burn the excess gas rather than process and feed it back into the system. The fifth problem is about pricing. In order to subsidise domestic and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries; Russia exercises a double-pricing system which decreases the revenues. This is a very significant problem since energy efficiency is low in these countries when compared to the EU countries. Thus, they use more energy for cheaper prices, leading to a situation where Russia feeds the most of its energy for relatively small revenues. Sixth, there is the issue of dependency. Even though the EU is over-dependent on Russia in terms of supply, Russia is also challenged by the issue of dependency in two major ways. It is dependent on the buyer states and has to secure buying-sustainability, and also, it is dependent on the transit countries, namely Ukraine, to be able to transfer and sell its gas to the EU market. Russia has to maintain its position as the main source and diversify its transit options. This leads to the seventh problem where Russia is not the only state that seeks diversification. EU states seek to diversify the supply to their markets and by doing so they jeopardise the only strong position that Russia has vis-à-vis the EU market in terms of energy politics. EU’s Nabucco project poses a grave threat to this strength and thus Russia has to come up with alternative but very expensive solutions to the project, namely Nord Stream, South Stream and Blue Stream II. The eighth problem is that the Russian economy is almost exclusively dependent on its energy revenues and cannot risk a decrease of the value of that asset. CASPIAN, CENTRAL ASIA AND TURKEY Wider Eurasia contains some of the most problematic regions in the world. The problems between different states of the region directly affect energy politics. In terms of geopolitics, security and economy of the energy security there are different sets of problems in the region. The most important ones comprise of problems regarding transit pipelines, dependence, geopolitics and security, and energy export rights. The transit pipelines issue involves Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran and Turkmenistan. Dependence problems involve Russia, Ukraine and Turkey. The geopolitical security problems involve Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. Problems related to energy exports involve Russia, Kazakhstan, 3

http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/articles/p/97/article/883


Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The countries listed fall under more than one set of problems; and given the fact that all these sets are more or less interrelated; the complexity of the issue can be better understood.

Turkmenistan

Iran

X

X

X

X

X X X X X

Kazakhstan

Armenia

Georgia

Ukraine

X X X X X X X X X X X

Azerbaijan

Transit Pipelines Dependence Export Problems Geopolitical Security

Turkey

Russia

TABLE 4.1

X

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia had assumed a natural sphere of influence around the newly independent states. From the Russian perspective, especially with the Putin era, the extraction and transportation of the natural resources of the region had to follow traditional routes and be distributed from Russian territory. However, Russia could not manage to obtain a dominant position for itself in accordance with its expectations. Once the value of the resources and potentialities were realised, the Caspian states had seized the opportunity to form their own policies around their newly defined interests.4 Moscow has been very vulnerable to that since Russia has supply problems. Given the fact that the demand is in a sharp rise, it cannot meet the supply quotas required by its mid and long term agreements with the EU. Therefore the additional gas that it will buy from other producers in the region is vital to Russian interests. Nevertheless, the relationship between Russia and the Caspian and Central Asian producer countries is nothing but simple ‘seller and buyer’ relations.5 It is no secret that Russia has the ambition to monopolise and control the Caspian natural gas supplies. Moscow does not want to lose its position where it buys premium gas for relatively cheaper prices and sell at high profits. Yet the profit margin is getting narrower since the prices of the gas that it buys from Central Asian countries constantly increase. This does not matter too much for Moscow since first, it is still cheaper than the alternatives and second, Russia continues to buy to secure 4 5

Ibid. Ibid..


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future access and to create interdependence by increasing dependence of the Central Asian countries on Russia (Olcott, 2009: 28). Therefore what Russia seeks in the region is to dominate all actual and future (by buying the extraction rights) gas export potential. To do this, it pursues a very determinate policy of direct investment. Moscow also links ‘energy policy to deliverables in the security sphere’ mostly in terms of ‘promises of security assistance’. In energy relations with the Central Asian producers, Russia is more cooperative than its traditional stance since it has to satisfy its export commitments. Through political and economic moves (by buying assets of companies in the Caspian), it has secured a significant amount of control over deposits of strategic importance, but not as much as it is needed (Olcott, 2009: 8). Nonetheless, for the producers of the Caspian, even though it is the most profitable one in the short run, the Russian market is not the only market. The two major alternatives are the European and the Chinese markets. The Chinese market, with its guarantees on demand rates and investment power, provides a serious and immediate alternative to the Russian market. The EU market on the other hand, is also very significant, lucrative and reliable; but the investment costs and reluctance to build the necessary infrastructure at the side of the buyers delay the prospects of the projects. The most current issue within this category is the recent crisis between Russia and Ukraine. Only two years after a similar incident, in 2009, Russia has threatened Ukraine once again since Ukraine failed to pay its debts. The previous crisis in 2006 had left the EU with a bitter taste and provoked important debates concerning the relations between Russia and the EU and the energy policies of the EU. Just like the 2006 crisis, in 2009, the Russian threat to cease the gas flow to Ukraine, and therefore to the EU, intensified the diversification debate within the Union. The expected outcome for Russia was for pressure to be applied over Ukraine. Even though this was partly the case, the almost frozen Nabucco project which was highly threatening for Russian gas export rates and income has also gained pace. Both of the crises have shown that diversification is a must for both Russia and the EU. It became once more apparent that the EU’s overdependence on Russia should be broken. On the Russian side however, Moscow once again realised that the ways to reach the EU market had to be diversified (or they should bypass any other jurisdiction – by pipelines like South Stream project which would directly connect Russia to the EU from beneath the Black Sea) and the dependence on a single major transit route (via Ukraine) is not safe.


The pipeline attempts between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, namely the TransCaspian pipeline project is another issue. Due to the dispute over the demarcation of the Caspian Sea, a very viable and profitable project is on hold. The Russian and Iranian agreement signed during the Soviet era claiming that the Caspian is a lake (to not to make the area a subject to UNCLOS) currently creates a problem since the agreement is not recognized by Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (Shafiyev, 2001). Both Russia and Iran favour a non-solution for their own benefits. Iran and Russia do not want to be bypassed when Turkmenistan attempts to reach the EU market. Unless the demarcation of the Caspian is complete, any project concerning the sea/lake will be put on compulsory hold. The pipeline between Turkmenistan and Iran reaching out to Turkey, which emerged out of necessity and the bilateral agreements, is currently a significant line together with the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, one of the two modest but operating alternative routes for the EU market. Yet political problems and the amounts that are currently being transported limit the significance of the line. In addition to this, the Iranian connection to Turkey, Tabriz-Ankara pipeline, is also significant, but limited for the very same reasons. Iran lacks the necessary investment and reliability to produce or to be cooperated with; and this is a major obstacle before any project that might include Iran as a partner, whether as a hub or a transit country, despite the fact as a producer, it holds the second largest natural gas reserves in the world. The Blue Stream Pipeline between Turkey and Russia is another important project. With the Blue Stream II on the agenda, this project is vital for Turkey’s energy security (Socor, 2009). It enables Turkey to be relatively independent from crises that the EU faces when incidents like those in 2006 and 2008 with Ukraine occur. However, it is not enough to sustain the energy needs of Turkey. The problem with this project is that even though it is beneficial in some respects, it is too expensive and under is not compatible with alternative projects such as Nabucco under the given circumstances. PROBLEMS REGARDING GEOPOLITICS AND SECURITY IN THE REGION: EXPORTATION AND RUSSIA’S RELATIONS WITH CENTRAL ASIAN STATES The geopolitical security issues in the region directly affect the energy security of buyer states. The most recent problem occurred between Russia and Georgia over the South Ossetia Region in 2008. This incident has shown the


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vulnerabilities of the states in the region against Russian power. In turn, insecurities and concerns regarding the security of supply route passing through Georgia (BTE) have grown. The importance of a strong ally which can politically resist Russia has increased. Under these circumstances, being dependent solely on Georgia appeared to be a potential problem for Turkey, where the need grew for future projects to diversify natural gas flow in the region. Therefore, Iran’s place in the equation and relations between Armenia and Turkey gained importance. A possible line from Azerbaijan via Armenia into Turkey could be taken into consideration. Yet another security issue in the region, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, remains to be solved in order to even imagine such a possibility. Energy politics is central to Kazakh – Russian relations. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the two countries have maintained close relations. Today, even though Kazakhstan has some space for political manoeuvring (Torjesen, 2009), its interests in energy issues are mostly concurrent with the Russian line since projects towards the European market are far from being realised. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan aims not to be over-dependent on Russia and hopes to be able to take part in different projects with alternative actors. The issue is not so much different in the case of Uzbekistan. Russia is also keen to acquire the ownership of Uzbek assets.6 However, what is worth mentioning is that even though Uzbekistan, given its size and location, is a fellow strategic partner for Russia, its importance in terms of natural gas is somewhat indirect. The country’s gas production management and lack of investment is problematic, yet the potentialities of Uzbekistan as a steady and protected ally to Russia, constitutes a significant leverage against Turkmenistan in the hands of Moscow (Olcott, 2009: 21). The relation between Azerbaijan and Russia are twofold. They are good companions, cooperating in many fields. The long lasting Karabagh problem and Russia’s sales of arms to Armenia in 2008 (Olcott, 2009: 26) suggest, however, that the relationship between the two countries also have a bitter side. Turkey’s relationship with Azerbaijan is more easygoing. Turkey’s full support on the Karabakh question, the cultural ties between the two countries which are being promoted and the investments made since the dissolution 6

“Uzbekistan: Tashkent Pledges to Export Natural Gas Exclusively via Russia”, Eurasianet, http:// www.eurasianet.org/departments/briefs/eav012309e.shtml


of the Soviet Union should not be disregarded since they paved the way for two important projects, namely BTC and BTE. Azerbaijan has deviated from the Russian line relatively more so than the other ex-Soviet republics in the region. It has independent and operational deals with third parties (BTC, BTE, a possible TransCaspian line, and Nabucco) in its energy politics. This is very important for countries like Turkey and members of the EU since Azerbaijan provides the only realised project to diversify the sources. Yet it is doubtful that it has the necessary capacity to fulfil the need. In the case of Turkmenistan, however, the reserves are not an issue since the country is the top exporter of natural gas in Central Asia. It produces over 60 billion cubic metres per year, enough to supply the Nabucco project and more.7 Hence Turkmenistan holds a very powerful leverage. Since the late 1990’s, the country is determinately establishing new projects for energy exports. It is the first country to build export pipelines that bypass Russia in the region. It has deals with Iran (with swaps, Turkey) and Azerbaijan (TransCaspian waiting to be realised) and is considerably involved in the Chinese market. THE EUROPEAN UNION In this context, apart from being the major buyer of energy in the region, the European Union also deserves particular attention as a regional integration model, a functionalist project that has managed to adapt to the changes in the international arena and opted for a role for itself as a global actor. From its own experiences, the EU is aware that the economic interdependence is at the core of regional integration and political stability. The EU’s approach towards the many complex regional and global issues highlights the importance of the respect for human rights, international law, dialogue and multilateralism and regional integration, which are all crucial elements for a better future in the southeastern part of the wider Eurasia. The European Union operates in an international environment where most of the other actors are traditional. It can sometimes be more preferable for the member states to pursue their bilateral relations themselves with the third parties while remaining in contact with Brussels. However, when the question at hand requires full cooperation in order to decrease the member states’ (and thus the Union’s) vulnerability on certain issues, such as energy security, it is es7

http://in.reuters.com/article/asiaCompanyAndMarkets/idINL0716126720080207


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sential that the institutional framework carries some weight. In many cases, the European Union and its framework of functioning are being accused of being inefficient and ambiguous or vague in the new security domain of foreign policy. The member states and the bureaucratic and diplomatic framework of the Union present a delicate system of balance between the main powers (legislative, executive and judicial) especially in terms of the new (post-Cold War) understanding of security, where the intergovernmental structure still presents an enormous obstacle before a single and liberalised energy market. Yet it is also important to see that under certain circumstances, the lack of centralisation of authority provides a certain degree of flexibility and therefore the potential for better adaptation modern by states such as Russia and Turkey. Regarding the policies on the energy security of the European Union, Trans-European Networks (TENs) need to be highlighted. The idea of TransEuropean Networks (TEN) has emerged in an environment of more thorough cooperation between the member states of the European Community in the 1980s. The TEN was an essential point and question mark in the making of a large European market, with the need of freedom of movement of goods, persons and services that required a modern and efficient infrastructure of transportation.8 In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty established a firm legal basis for the Trans-European Networks under the new framework that it had set up. With the new perspective provided by the Maastricht Treaty, the promotion of the development of Trans-European Networks became a key element for the creation of the Internal Market and the reinforcement of Economic and Social Cohesion in the European Union.9 The TEN project is composed of transportation, energy and telecommunications sectors. In terms of the European Union’s overall energy policy objectives, the Trans-European Energy Networks are of critical importance. TEN’s goals such as increasing competitiveness in the electricity and gas markets, reinforcing security of supply, and protecting the environment are all central to the energy security perspective and the energy strategy of the European Union. It constitutes a basis for the member states’ common perspective for a single energy market at the European Union level. With the Ukraine-Russia gas dispute in January 2006, the external dependency of the Union became evident, where having settled individual deals 8 9

http://ec.europa.eu/ten/index_en.html Under the terms of Chapter XV of the Maastricht Treaty (Articles 154, 155 and 156)


with external energy suppliers created a problem for the European Union. With the liberalisation of EU gas and electricity markets, energy security became an important issue in the political agenda of the Union. The result was the famous Green Paper of 200610. This strategy paper stressed the need for a common external policy to achieve “sustainable, competitive and secure” energy supplies for the European Union. Ten months later, on 10 January 2007, the new energy policy for the Union was adopted by the Commission followed by the two year action plan with strategies for the expansion and strengthening of the international energy relations of the European Union.11 The question of energy and its security are key issues for the European Union, where the energy policy framework of the EU and individual member states’ foreign policies are directly influenced by these. At the EU level, as the energy policies are mostly perceived as matters falling under national sovereignty, the foreign ministries of the member states are responsible for the development of their own policies.12 The European Union faces interrelated and relatively independent problems in energy security. First, the internal balance of the EU lack the necessary environment for the individual member states to establish a single energy market. The individual long term agreements between member states and Russia tie the hands of Brussels for future projects. Second, the over dependence on Russian gas is already out there and the necessary precautions are obstructed with either the politicisation of alternative projects or the lack of solidarity between the member states and their energy strategies. Third, most of non-Russian gas and oil reserves that the EU have benefited so far have already peaked and are mostly in decline (Goldthau, 2008: 688). This significantly increases short and midterm dependence on Russian gas. Fourth, since Russia faces the problem of inadequate investment and thus inadequate supply, EU as the main buyer is also threatened by this issue. Fifth, the fact that Russia is trying to dominate all Central Asian gas transfer disables EU initiatives to diversify the supply and to directly reach alternative producers. TURKEY AND ENERGY SECURITY OF NATURAL GAS Its geopolitical position accords Turkey a special strategic significance and vests a responsibility on it as a major power in the region. The convergence 10 http://ec.europa.eu/energy/green-paper-energy/index_en.htm 11 Ibid. 12 www.euractiv.com/en/energy/geopolitics-eu-energy-supply/article-142665


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of the country’s own needs, apprehensions, and objectives and its regional responsibilities and aspirations holds a central place in this study. There are several fields that this convergence can be observed in Turkey’s foreign policy choices, where one of them is the energy issue. First of all, the energy issue touches upon a need in Turkey as it is not a supplier but a buyer of energy. Thus, it has to secure constant energy flow to its territory. Secondly, Turkey feels deeply threatened by the fact that there is a possibility that it is no longer a key strategic partner in world politics where new parameters have been set in the post-Cold War international structure. The risk of being left alone in a region which is historically and potentially full of threats, disputes and crises has to be averted. Consequent to these needs and apprehensions, Turkey’s expectations are based on finding new ways to consolidate its key strategic role in the region. The energy issue constitutes a common denominator for the needs and aspirations of Turkey. By becoming an energy corridor, Turkey hopes to satisfy both its own energy needs and get closer to its objective of becoming once again an indispensable ally in Trans-Atlantic relations, a position it enjoyed during the Cold War. Furthermore, a dominating issue in Turkish foreign policy, namely the country’s aspirations to become a full member to the European Union, has close links with the post-Cold War energy politics of Turkey. The collective governance and material interdependence that Turkey can generate – by being the main energy corridor for the EU and a stable and reliable partner/neighbour in the region for all other actors – should serve both regional stability and its integration objective. The Nabucco pipeline (which will be dealt with in more detail below) is a very significant and promising project for Turkey to regain and maintain its status and to reach its above highlighted objectives in the region. To reduce the natural gas dependency on Russia, a giant but not always a friendly partner, the European Union has presented the famous Nabucco gas pipeline project. This project is designed to transport 31 bcm of gas from Azerbaijan via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.13 Turkey has bilateral agreements with Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. At the same time, to secure its position as an energy hub and a transit country, it established a pipeline reaching out to Greece which is to be stretched out to Italy in the future. The pipeline which carries the Azeri gas to Turkey (Baku, Tbilisi, Erzurum – BTE), if the disputes over the Caspian and 13 The Nabucco pipeline project homepage, http://www.nabucco-pipeline.com/


the obstacles generated by Russia and Iran can be tackled, will include Turkmenistan through the Trans-Caspian pipeline. If the international pressure over Iran decreases and if Iran invests more for the production and trade of natural gas, the Tabriz – Ankara pipeline could become a major line. Turkey could achieve a lot in term of diversification of sources with the extension of the pipeline between Egypt and Syria to Turkey, and, if the turmoil in Iraq comes to an end, by establishing a pipeline from Iraq to its territory. However, given the current circumstances, none of these potential projects is attainable in the short run. Even though this is the case, the potentials are significant. The realisation of these projects is dependent on many factors. Yet, the interdependence which will emerge can promote economic and political stability in the region.14 It is at this point that Turkey acquires a crucial leverage. A potential stable flow from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran and/or Iraq is fully concurrent with the needs and policies of both Turkey and the EU. This makes Turkey a crucial player in the region. However, in today’s circumstances where gas from only Azerbaijan and Iran is operational at low supply rates, Nabucco does not seem to be a very attractive investment. Yet, if the afore mentioned potential add-ons are realised, the project will definitely promote a win-win situation for almost every actor in the region15. If that happens, the supply diversification which is sought by the EU would be realised. Turkey would benefit from this (since its interests converge with the EU) and would also increase its geopolitical importance – a factor which Turkey emphasises the most in its international relations. The interdependence which would emerge out of these projects of source diversification could eventually intensify and promote regional integration. With significant investments in Russia, especially in the field of construction businesses, Turkey is considered to be one of the most recognised partners of Russia. Even though what is sought by both parties in energy politics are mostly non compatible (since Turkey, together with the EU, attempts to diminish the dependence on Russian gas) and the convergence of interests is at a low level, the way in which the two countries use each other while dealing with 14 Here, Turkey’s recent diplomatic activity in the region, especially with Armenia and Syria is noteworthy. Establishing good relations with the neighbours is an important principle and is the very first step in creating an environment conducive to cooperation. 15 Except for Russia; taking into consideration its traditional and current dispositions vis-à-vis international politics and power relations. However, if Russia could attain an optimalist stance (for the benefits to obtain in the long run) instead of a maximalist stance (which is lucrative for the short term), the win-win situation could also include Russia (through cooperation and integration).


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the EU is thanks to a grey zone from which both Russia and Turkey benefits whenever they need a leverage against the EU. Therefore, there are multitude dimensions of energy politics for Turkey. First of all, the Nabucco pipeline provides a great opportunity for Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU as the energy dependence of both Turkey and the EU necessitates further cooperation in decreasing the vulnerabilities of both in geopolitical and energy dependence. Nevertheless, due to EU’s lack of commitment to Turkish membership and the increasing need to secure the energy flow into the country, Turkey has signed its own deals with the Russian Federation, such as the Blue Stream, the Blue Stream II and with the new design, a potential South Stream16. Consequently, due to the mutual inability of Turkey and the European Union to cooperate, dependence on Russian energy supplies increases and with the long term contracts, it becomes acute. The recent developments between Turkey and the EU regarding Nabucco have shown that both parties are aware of the importance and urgency of the diversification issue. With the signing of further agreements in May17 and July18 2009, a long expected and somewhat concrete step was taken. Furthermore, since Russia and Turkey have agreed on the terms of South Stream’s potential design in August19 2009, it can be argued that Turkey’s importance and necessity was approved by both the EU and Russia. THE NABUCCO AND SOUTH STREAM PROJECTS These two projects are so far the biggest pipeline projects in the region. They are both very ambitious and they originally competed fiercely to muscle out one another. The Nabucco project is designed to transport 31 bcm of gas from Azerbaijan via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.20 It covers a very large and important region with a multitude of suppliers. Nabucco pipeline could be supplied with gas from Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Egypt and Syria. The partners to this project are Romania’s Transgaz, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz, Austria’s OMV, Turkey’s BOTAS, Hunga16 The earlier version of the South Stream project was threatening the Blue Stream II project since it would create severe reactions on the part of Turkey as it muscled out Turkey from the energy transport equation between Russia and the EU in the Black Sea. 17 http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=41460 18 http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/eu-countries-sign-geopolitical-nabucco-agreement/ article-184062 19 http://www.rferl.org/content/Putin_In_Turkey_Seeking_Approval_For_South_Stream_ Route/1793851.html 20 The Nabucco pipeline project homepage, http://www.nabucco-pipeline.com


ry’s MOL, and the German company RWE. This project has a great potential to reduce the vulnerability of buyer states to the possible disruption of Russian energy supplies. In terms of energy security, the diverse nature and multitude of the number of suppliers in the Nabucco project is crucial for the main buyer states, trying not to become over-dependent on Russian energy (Winrow, 2005: 87). Yet Russia has presented South Stream, its own pipeline project in June 2007. The South Stream pipeline is designed to run under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria, where it can branch off in several directions. The agreement was signed in Rome between Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Gazprom and also joined by Bulgarian Bulgargaz -a member of Nabucco pipeline project (Pop, 2008). The South Stream pipeline is aimed at bringing Siberian gas to southern Europe without Turkey or Ukraine in the picture. It branches off in Bulgaria, supplies Greece and southern Italy with the southern branch, and the northern branch runs through Romania and Serbia towards northern Italy. However, there is significant doubt whether South Stream is a viable project, since it would cost at least twice as much as Nabucco. As “Russia seeks [...] to ensure that the Russian economy benefits from low-cost Central Asian energy, while Transneft and Gazprom may deliver Russian crude oil and natural gas at a higher price to the lucrative European market” (Winrow, 2007: 219), the success of the South Stream project is central to the future plans of Turkey and the EU. The Russian move to empower Gazprom with exclusive export rights and to make the company a single actor without any partners or producers can endanger Turkey’s position and abilities in the region. This jeopardises energy security for both the EU and Turkey as it drastically increases the dependency on Russian energy supplies. Nevertheless, even though the situation presents a clear rivalry between Russia and the main buyer countries, it becomes more complicated with the bilateral agreements between Russia and the individual EU member states challenging the Nabucco project. Turkey is also involved in such bilateral relations and therefore there is no clear and still picture of the political momentum. It is far more dynamic, with both states and companies subject to change sides without notice. CONCLUSION When the needs and aspirations of the EU and Turkey are considered, an opportunity to mold a cooperation model - based on the convergence of short and long term interests - leading to regional integration and mutual benefits


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in terms of energy security and geopolitical aspirations emerges. The main mechanism through which the process of integration can move forward is positive spillover (Rosamond, 2000: 54-8). Positive spillover implies that integration between states in one economic sector will quickly create strong incentives for integration in further sectors. Thus in order to fully capture the benefits of integration in the original sector; cooperation between the European Union and Turkey is beneficial for both parties in securing energy and providing regional stability. In terms of the energy security of the EU and the EU’s relations with the neighbouring regions, positive spillover is the most useful concept to explain and develop models of cooperation in order to acquire security and stability. However, under given circumstances where Turkey cannot settle for less than full membership while the European Union cannot say ‘yes’ to Turkey’s full membership in the near future, this cooperation vital for regional integration is destined to be fragile. Nevertheless, under the assumption that a spillover effect will occur, the main hypothesis of the study is threefold: Firstly, the more Turkey becomes central in energy networks, the more it will consolidate its position in the region. Secondly, as Turkey secures its position as a stable and cooperating alternative to the Russian Federation in energy transportation and logistics, it gets closer to achieving its primary objective of becoming a full member of the EU. The European Union’s attempt to consider Turkey not as a member mostly has a negative effect on the potential win-win partnership (full membership and diversification through Nabucco) in the long run. The variables of the energy security equation are multiple and difficult to untangle. Yet, the actors of the debate manage to exist, cooperate and compete within this complex set of interests, dependencies and interdependences. In terms of the issue, Russia and Turkey (together with Brussels) share less in common due to Russia’s zero sum and/or maximalist approach. Even though it faces huge problems of inefficiency, dependence and economic instability, Russia forces itself until the last moment to preserve the status quo (and/or to improve its own status). On the other hand, Turkey is in need of changing the status quo. This has two major reasons. The first reason is that it threatens secure and constant energy flow with the principle of affordable prices. Second, Turkey is very eager to benefit from newly developing alternative projects. This conflict of interest, although major, does not necessarily mean that there is a deadlock in energy relations. Under circumstances where ambiguities and uncertainties prevail in terms of projects with multiple third


parties, the two countries use each other for their political manoeuvres and at the same time, they maintain and further develop their already existing partnerships. Competing over rival potential pipeline projects which are against each other’s interests and which operate on a larger scale do not prevent the two countries from collaborating on bilateral projects such as Blue Stream II. Nevertheless, the energy security issue operates on a larger scale and conflicts of interest are present. At the larger scale, bringing an end to Russia’s monopoly is beneficial to every single state in the region. Apart from Russia, it creates a win-win situation for every state in the region since a possible diversification project necessitates economic cooperation which would enhance interdependence providing possibilities for regional integration and stability. However, given the multiplicity, size, and complexity of the issues to be resolved in the region, to achieve this almost total win-win situation seems to be a long shot in the near future.

Bıblıography Books, Articles and Reports Andrianopoulos, Andreas (2007). “Russia cannot meet its obligations”, Interviewed by Ioannis Michaletos, European Energy Review, Vol. 1 – 1. Barysch, Katinka (ed.) (2008). Pipelines Politics and Power, the Future of EU-Russia Energy Relations. London: Centre for European Reform. Barysch, Katinka (2007). Turkey’s Role in European Energy Security. Centre for European Reform Essay. London: Centre for European Reform. Gallis, Paul (2007). NATO and Energy Security. CRS report for the Congress, accessible at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22409.pdf Goldthau, Andreas (2008). “Rhetoric versus reality: Russian threats to European Energy Supply”, Energy Policy, Vol. 36. Olcott, Martha Brill (2009). “Russia, Central Asia, and the Caspian: How Important is the Energy and Security Trade-off?” in Russia and the Caspian States in the Global Energy Balance, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Energy Forum, Rice University, Texas, USA. Pop, Valentina (2008). “Energy security: South Stream vs. Nabucco Gas Pipelines” in Southeast European Times in Bucharest; accessible at http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/ setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2008/02/14/feature-02 Rosamond, Ben (2000). Theories of European Integration. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Shafiyev, Rauf (2001). “The Legal Regime of the Caspian Sea: Views of the Littoral States”, Prism, Vol. 7, No. 6, accessible at http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_ cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=28012&tx_ttnews[backPid]=223 Socor, Vladimir (2009). “Gazprom, Turkey Revive and Reconfigure Blue Stream Two”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol.6, No. 154, accessible at http://www.jamestown.org/


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single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35394&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=da2 f573c7c Stern, Jonathan (2006). “The Russian-Ukrainian Gas Crisis of January 2006”, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Torjesen, Stina (2009). “Russia and Kazakhstan: A Special Relationship”, in Russia’s Energy Relations With its Caspian Neighbors, Russian Analytical Digest, No.56. Winrow, Gareth (2005). “Energy Security in the Black Sea-Caspian Region”, Perceptions, Vol. 10: 85-98. Winrow, Gareth (2007). “Geopolitics and Energy in the Wider Black Sea Region”, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2: 217-35. Eelectronic Sources http://ec.europa.eu/energy/green-paper-energy/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/ten/index_en.html http://in.reuters.com/article/asiaCompanyAndMarkets/idINL0716126720080207 http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/geopolitics-eu-energy-supply/article-142665 http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/eu-countries-sign-geopolitical-nabucco-agreement/article-184062 http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/briefs/eav012309e.shtml http://www.nabucco-pipeline.com/ http://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/articles/p/97/article/883 http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=41460 http://www.rferl.org/content/Putin_In_Turkey_Seeking_Approval_For_South_Stream_ Route/1793851.html

5 Turkey Between Russia and the European Union: The Foreign Policy Challenges of an Emerging Regional Power Laurent Vınatıer

INTRODUCTION ccording to widespread and prestigious analyses by famous columnists and thinkers in international relations, the world has entered a “postpost Cold War era”. It is argued to be characterised by the limits that frame the powers of USA and the growing influence of China and Russia, acting as major regional and even global actors. China’s increasing importance in Southeast Asian economies and the Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008 have demonstrated the willingness of both countries to assert their positions by any means, including military ones in the case of South Caucasia. What about the place of Turkey in this new emerging world? It has fully and successfully integrated into the simple post Cold War structure during the early 90s by democratising its political life and stabilising its economic fundamentals. Turkey confirmed its “Westernisation” through various means such as strengthening its NATO membership by taking over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) leadership in Afghanistan. As for relations with the European Union (EU), Turkish will to join the EU grew stronger and was partially satisfied on 3 October 2005 when the accession negotiations were opened. Nevertheless, there is a rapid realisation in Ankara of the need to adapt to novel international realities, which has led to the emergence of the concept of ‘post-post Cold War’ period. It became clear that no breakthrough in EU-Turkey relations should be expected in the near future. Most of the chapters of the acquis either require considerable efforts or prove very hard to adopt. In addition to this, neither

A


Germany nor France, two of the main decision-makers on this issue, are ready to facilitate the talks. German and French reluctance have practically blocked the accession process, making Turkey’s membership only foreseeable by 2020. It also became evident that it was time to dissociate Turkish foreign policy from that of the US. Following the experience of the Iraq War in 2003,1 Turkish authorities chose to deepen their emancipation from the US on international issues. This still seems to be the case at the end of the decade. This was most recently demonstrated in the appointment of Ahmed Davutoğlu as the Minister for Foreign Affairs on 2 May 2009. He had been the “behind the scenes” figure building what was termed as a pro-active and multi faceted foreign policy.2 He is now at the forefront of Turkish politics, free to implement his ideas and strong orientations. He argues that: [Turkey] has to take on the role of an order-instituting country in all these regions. Turkey is no longer a country which only reacts to crises, but notices the crises before their emergence and intervenes effectively, and gives shape to the order of its surrounding regions.3

In this new period, Turkey also had to take into consideration the new and regionally powerful Russia, willing to engage in a deeper political and economic rapprochement. Duma Deputy Serguei Markov, close both to President Medvedev and to Prime Minister Putin, is not hiding this Russian prospect, highlighting that: Russia and Turkey have achieved a first level of partnership, notably in trade and economic areas. We now need to reach a higher level of cooperation and build a strategic political partnership (Taraf, 5 May 2009).4

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Ankara on 6 August 2009 and the more than 20 agreements which were signed on that day covering mainly energy and trade issues, explicitly illustrate this new Russian pro-active approach towards Turkey. The most remarkable dimension of these joint projects 1 2

3 4

One month before the US attack, Turkey did not allow the US ground forces to operate from its territory. He is known for his book, “Stratejik Derinlik” (Strategic Depth, 2001) in which he demonstrates that Turkey has to become a key and independent country, giving up its position of a forward base for NATO and notably for the US. Taraf, 5 May 2009. Author’s interview with Serguei Markov, Foros Conference, Abkhazia, 22 July 2009.

5. turkey between russia and the european union: the foreign policy challenges of an emerging regional power

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concerns energy cooperation, and most notably Turkey’s new expressed support for Russia’s South Stream pipeline. Under the agreed protocol, Russia is allowed to use the Turkish exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Black Sea to lay the South Stream pipeline on the seabed between Russia and Bulgaria, en route to Europe. For the first time, Russia officially and publicly proposes to build South Stream’s underwater section through Turkey’s EEZ rather than Ukraine’s and obtains Ankara’s signed consent. By November 2009, Turkey will authorize Gazprom to proceed with seismic and surveying work in the Turkish zone. By November 2010, Turkey will decide if it will take part in the construction work in partnership with Italian ENI and Gazprom (Kardaş, 2009). Geopolitically at the crossroads between Iran and Russia, Iran and the EU and the Caspian zone and the EU, Turkey has to manage by itself a variety of bi- and multilateral relations which involve the establishment of dialogue based on equal footing and independence. Otherwise, it will be difficult for Turkey to remain as a pivotal player, with its position reduced to a simple actor among others. That is why, for example, it is important for Turkey to sharply distinguish its foreign strategy towards Iran and its partnership with Russia by treating them as two distinct and separate questions5. Against this background, Turkey can evolve into one of the two or three major regional powers in the Black Sea – Caspian Sea zone (i.e. in addition to Russia and maybe the European Union) in the post-post Cold War context. Turkey’s policy-makers seem aware of this challenge. Some doubts, however, remain regarding Turkey’s ability to take on and fulfill this new regional stance. Turkey’s foreign policy is in transition and faces some uncertain challenges. A primary challenge concerns Russia. Its reliability as a strategic partner should not be overestimated. On 6 August, two significant initiatives were introduced. First, Russia accepted to commit its crude to Samsun and thus to make the planned Samsun-Ceyhan Turkish internal pipeline viable, bypassing the congested Bosphorus and the Dardanelles straits. Nevertheless, President Putin has never ruled out his interest in the alternative option of going from the Bulgarian harbour on the Black Sea Burgas to the Greek city Alexandroupolis on the Aegean cost. He instead emphasised that the two pipelines may be complementary. It also remains the case that Russian companies still own the majority of shares in the Bulgarian consortium. Secondly, Turkey and Russia reinforced their cooperation on nuclear 5

Author’s interview with Mehmet Ali Tuğtan, İstanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, 27 July 2009.


matters, with Ankara pledging to approach positively a bid by a Russian-led consortium (Russian Inter RAO, Atomstroiexport and Turkish Park Teknik) to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. However, a few weeks later, due to unchanged and unacceptable Russian conditions on the price for supplying electricity to the Turkish grid, Turkey’s Energy Ministry had to once again postpone the final decision on the tender to the end of November. It seems that overall, Turkey still hesitates to build itself as a significant and powerful actor. There are very promising recent decisions which lead one to think that Ankara will promote and defend its own strategic interests. After months of hard negotiations on Turkey’s participation in Nabucco, the high-level signing ceremony of the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) in Turkey on 13 July 2009 gives a preliminary sign of the changing international stance of Turkey. The normalisation process launched with Armenia in February 2009 constitutes another example in this respect. This paper intends to first outline the Russian South Stream pipeline project as a case study, to be followed by some conclusions and recommendations on relevant issues of Turkish foreign policy. RUSSIA’S ENERGY BLUFF: THE FOCUS ON SOUTH STREAM6 On paper, Russia’s energy strategy could not be better. Connecting the huge Russian gas reserves directly to European Union’s markets, both in the North and the South, while bypassing potentially unreliable transit countries, namely Ukraine and the Baltic States, appears to be a major geopolitical achievement. It does not only reinforce the dependency of European Union members on Russian supplies, but it also significantly increases Russia’s bargaining levers with its closest neighbouring “satellites” (Belarus and Ukraine) and partners (Turkey), while building strategic economic ties with major energy European companies. A Too Perfect Picture Already relatively well-advanced, the North Stream Project is covering 1220 km through the Baltic Sea between northern Russia and Germany, expected to deliver 55 billion cubic meters (BCM) annually. Half of that volume is set to be available in 2011 at Bovanenkovskoye on Yamal, the other half coming in addition after 2013. The total cost of the pipe is estimated to be less than 6

The following analysis on South Stream is an updated version of a previous article published by the Thomas More Institute. Laurent Vinatier, With or Without South Stream? Russia’s Energy Strategy between the European Union and Turkey, Note de l’Institut Thomas More, www.institut-thomas-more.org, 7 July 2009.

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8 billions. Dominated by the Russian Gas giant Gazprom, which holds 51 percent of the shares, the consortium also includes Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas and BASF/Wintershall with 20 percent each and Netherlands Gasunie with 9 percent. The French company GDF is also said to be in talks with Gazprom to secure long-term supply contracts, but not necessarily to buy stakes.

IPE

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rd

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MAP 5.1: North Stream Route. Source: North Stream AG. http://www.nord-stream.com/en/the-pipeline/pipeline-route.html

Launched in June 2007 jointly by Gazprom and the Italian company ENI, the South Stream Project is at an earlier stage of implementation. Located on the seabed of the Black Sea, the pipeline will start from the Krasnodar Krai in Russia, near to the Blue Stream, and reach Bulgaria. The project then divides into two overland routes: one to the Greek Adriatic coast for subsequent prolongation on the seabed to Italy, running approximately 1000 km; the other one to Serbia, Hungary and Austria, with various planned outlets in Romania, North Italia and/or Slovenia, amounting to more than 1300 km in total. Initially proposed to carry around 30 BCM per year, Gazprom officials have recently declared that the annual output would rather be 47 and more probably 63 BCM after 2015 (Miller, 2009). Russia in this case tacitly counts on Turkmen gas which it would re-export, thus defeating any European rival projects, most notably Nabucco. It would in fact be more rational to have Central Asian gas transiting through Russia than under the Caspian Sea or by swaps in Iran. The overall costs of that project are quite


high between 19 and 24 billions, but many variable components, gas price among others, can still fluctuate and reduce the bill. Gazprom has, for example, calculated its investment potential on the basis of conservative prices, allowing for a certain degree of flexibility (Khandokin, 2009). Only Russians and Italians are supervising the whole project. On 18 January 2008, a special purpose company under the name of South Stream AG was registered in Switzerland, incorporated by Gazprom and Eni on a parity basis. Germany

Czech Republic

Poland

Belarus

Slovakia

Austria Slovenia

Ukraine

Hungary

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Bosnia and Herzegovina

a

ov old M

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ania

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Georgia Greece

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MAP 5.2: South Stream Planned Route. Source: South Stream AG. http://south-stream.info/index.php?id=3&L=1

However, despite this picture where Russia is finally ensuring almost half of the future European gas consumption within a decade7, some fault lines are emerging. Russia’s energy strategy does not seem to be as clear and effectively-built as it appears. The difficulties are not entirely linked to the recent financial crisis and the subsequent drop in oil and gas prices to more normal levels. Most analysts recognise that Gazprom’s financial results for 2009 will be largely comparable to those in 2007, 2008 being indeed a particularly successful year not only for the Russian giant, but also for all major energy companies. Besides, even if Gazprom was highly indebted, it would have no difficulties in finding additional investment funds, either from the Russian budget or from

7

According to concordant sources (Eurogas, European Commission, Russian forecasts), EU gas consumption in 2020 should reach 500 BCM, of which 250 BCM would be provided by Russia.


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foreign banks.8 It would be a mistake to think that Gazprom could face any financial shortcomings. The difficulties with South Stream are not related to such issues, but to other processes that are inherent to Russian practices. Gazprom’s Work Principle It has been highlighted by CEO Alexey Miller at the Annual General Shareholders Meeting last June that ‘Gazprom operates “from the market”. No gas will be produced until it is sold... Instead of relying on demand forecasts that are not supported by purchasing contracts, Gazprom has used a balanced method to always invest in production and gas transportation in the exact amounts required to implement its already signed contracts. As a consequence, the company has a sufficient production capacities margin that avoids any excess”.9 This clearly means that as long as some Balkan States and several EU member states, such as Austria, Slovakia, Hungary or Italy do not sign long-term supply contracts with Gazprom, the South Stream pipeline will not be built. However, such high needs in Europe do not seem to be occurring in the near future. Gazprom itself has just decided, in accordance with the above mentioned principle, to delay “the commissioning of the Bovanenkovskoye field’s first launch complex until 2012”.10 Besides, in the same speech, Alexey Miller has declared that the investment decision for the Stockman condensate field will not intervene before the end of 2010. Gazprom’s anticipation and calculations on European demand for imported gas apparently proved to be too ambitious and optimistic. That is why it seems quite unlikely that those countries that are primarily concerned by South Stream will conclude long-term contracts with Russia in the coming years. The gas volumes, already earmarked for North Stream and flowing through Ukraine, would be largely sufficient until 2015. Those European countries would also prefer to wait more to see whether Nabucco would materialise. The signatures of Italy and several Balkan countries alone would not be sufficient to justify the high costs of South Stream. No Reliable Supplies from Turkmenistan Russia and Gazprom are relying on Turkmen resources to replace the Russian ones in the case of an unexpected rise in European gas consumption before 2015, rendering South Stream more urgent. However, that option is becoming 8 Author’s interview in Moscow: energy expert, April 2009. 9 Alexey Miller, op. Cit. Author’s interview, Gazprom, International Medias Division, May 2009. 10 Alexey Miller, ibid.


less plausible. On 9 April, an explosion struck the old Central Asia-Tsentr-4 pipeline that connects Turkmenistan to Russia. Both countries blamed each other for the blast. Turkmenistan argued that Gazprom ordered a 90% reduction in gas deliveries, causing a technical problem, while Russia replied that the Turkmen officials should have better monitored this aging pipeline system. In fact, regardless of this crisis, relations between Turkmenistan and Russia had already been deteriorating for months. First, the Turkmen President Berdymukhamedov reported in March 2009 the signing of an East-West trans-Turkmen pipeline construction agreement. The new pipe was planned to plug into the existing Caspian Coastal Pipeline, carrying Central Asian gas via Kazakhstan to Russia, which is due for full reconstruction and capacity expansion according to a tripartite intergovernmental agreement signed in May 2007. This has not materialised due to the ineffective nature of the post-Soviet administration. Secondly, shortly after the explosion, Gazprom cancelled a previous accord (concluded in March 2009) to buy up 50 additional BCM of Turkmen gas annually at $340 per BCM. This move angered the Turkmen authorities. This, however, has satisfied many in Russia, since the agreement to pay “European price” for Central Asian gas was unanimously considered as a mistake in a context where the prices in Europe are falling. Turkmenistan will in any case need to sell parts of its gas to Russia, but both countries will first have to review some strategic issues, most notably the changing price levels and the capacity of the old pipeline system to carry the increasing gas volumes. South Stream’s Weak Incentives The contractual framework of the South Stream which is supposed to build a “South Stream Community”, is far from being as structured as the ambitious project aspires to be. The South Stream pipeline includes Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Italian, Hungarian, Austrian and Romanian governments, as well as some of their major energy companies. So far, Russia and Gazprom, as the leading managers, have only established binding and prospective agreements with the Italian ENI as the other leading partner (Memorandum of Understanding in June 2007, South Stream AG in January 2008), with Greece (intergovernmental agreement, completed by a detailed document to constitute a joint-venture with Greek energy companies) and with Serbia (intergovernmental agreement, completed by a detailed document to constitute a joint venture with Srbijagas). In addition to these, during the signing ceremonies in Sochi on 15 May 2009, Gazprom and ENI have also signed an implemen-


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tation agreement that sets the terms for Gazprom’s acquisition of a 51% stake in OOO SeverEnergia, the first Russian-Italian company. This new-built company is set to conduct exploration activities in Western-Siberia fields and is not directly related to the South Stream Project. Regarding the other countries with significant importance to South Stream; namely Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria; the contractual frames have only partly been achieved. In Austria, even though relations between Gazprom and the energy company OMV have been strong for decades, the Austrian government is still reluctant to sign even an intergovernmental agreement with Russia.11 In the case of Bulgaria, both an intergovernmental agreement (January 2008) and a cooperation agreement signed with the Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD exist, but this second document is only limited to the parties’ interaction for the preparation of the feasibility study. Furthermore, a decision taken by the new elected centre-right government at the beginning of August 2009 has suspended all the Bulgarian energy-related engagements with Russia and Russian-led partners, including South Stream, the Burgas-Alexandropolis oil pipeline and the Belene nuclear power plant, pending a detailed review of their terms (Socor, 2009)12. In Hungary, authorities have accepted to take part in the project (intergovernmental agreement in February 2008) but Gazprom could only associate with the Hungary’s Development Bank (March 2009) to conduct all studies and works of the South Stream’s local section. Gazprom has begun talks with Slovenia and Romania, yet without any results so far. Although the project is still at its initial phase, Gazprom’s shortcomings in Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria suggest that Russia fails to convince its potential partners of the reality and the perspectives of its plan. It may not even be exaggerated to ask whether the Russian authorities themselves believe in the project. Russian Realities Beyond: Making Gazprom a Normal European Economic Actor Opening the European markets to Russian companies and to Gazprom in particular has probably been one of the main objectives of Russian authorities since the beginning of the decade. Considering the substantial Russian comparative advantage in energy matters, this sector has been at the forefront 11 An accord is said to be in preparation for the end of the summer. 12 The new Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and his government are concerned that those projects might involve onerous long-term obligations for Bulgaria, unilateral advantages to Russian monopolies at Bulgaria’s expense, and possibly conflict of interest situations.


of Kremlin’s economic external strategy. Today, thanks to the North Stream Project which is already on track, Russia has considerably reinforced its ties with Germany. Furthermore, Gazprom is determined to become one of the main energy players in the northern European markets, comparable to its North Stream partners, namely E.ON Ruhrgas and BASF/Wintershall, at least for all the supply aspects (and not in terms of distribution for the moment). South Stream is serving a parallel strategy in the South towards Italy. Moscow needs to maintain its privileged partnership alive with Rome and to a lesser extent with Athens. Without mobilizing projects, relations between both partners could loosen. These cooperation perspectives, opened by the South Stream Project, allow the Russians to negotiate plenty of other energyrelated deals, which increase Gazprom’s positions and interests in the southern markets. The Balkans objective in particular should not be underestimated. Russia and Gazprom plans to make Serbia their Trojan horse. Moreover, the Balkans are included in the plans as the future markets of the South Stream13. What really matters is not necessarily the pipeline itself, but the possibilities that it opens. If the South Stream is eventually built, the gains might be even bigger. If it is not, then the Russian company could in any case reap the benefits and advance its position. TURKEY’S PATH TOWARDS REGIONAL LEADERSHIP Energy and the developments in the South Caucasus may be essential bargaining tools for Turkey to substantially improve its stance from the Black Sea to the Caspian, utilising its new emancipated position from US influence and thus becoming a real regional power in that area. There are certain opportunities to seize and some strategic steps to take in at least four main areas, namely Russia and the EU on energy matters, Armenia, Georgia and Iran. Turkey’s Energy Card: Becoming a Hub This goal is of high strategic importance to Turkish authorities. It implies multiplying diplomatic contacts with all its neighbours and moving even beyond to create energy channels, oil and gas exclusively transmitting through Turkish territory. The 6th of August agreement with Russia on oil delivery to Samsun can undoubtedly be considered a success in this context. The IGA ceremony held on 13 July for the EU-supported Nabucco pipeline, signifi13 Author’s observation, Duma’s Parliamentary Meeting between Just Russia and the European Socialist Party, April 2009. Author’s interview, Duma Deputy, Moscow, April 2009.


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cantly asserts the project’s reality, demonstrating both European political will and suppliers’ readiness to implement it in the coming years. By the end of 2009, Turkey will see gas flowing from six different sources: westward from Russia through Ukraine, from Russia under the Black Sea (Blue Stream I), eastward from Azerbaijan through Georgia (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum), from Iran (in small quantities, when the pipeline is working), from Iraq (yet to be finalised), from Egypt through Syria (yet to be finalised). In addition to these, there is a new but carefully-managed commitment to South Stream, agreed between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin during Putin’s latest short visit to Turkey in August 2009. Regarding oil, Turkey has four potential suppliers: Saudi Arabia by tankers, Azerbaijan through the Baku-TbilisiCeyhan, Iran on the East side and Russia to Samsun. However, it seems that gas in particular is bound to give the Turkish hub its decisive added value, even though some of the engagements can appear contradictory. For the past two years, the EU and Russia have been taking opposing positions on the supply routes, South Stream or Nabucco, the Russian choice or the European energy independence. Indeed, as shown in the revised model of Prisoner’s dilemma below, both countries would bear considerable losses if both projects were built. Russia could even lose more, considering that South Stream would either cost a lot or would never bring the expected results or it could perhaps never even be implemented. Nabucco Against South Stream14 European Union15

Nabucco

/

–10

–20

Russia

South Stream

-15

/

+20

+ 20

–20

0

0

14 There are two options for each country: either it builds its project or it does nothing. To do nothing or to build its project in second place (whereas the other’s project is already operational) is considered equal. 15 The 2 entities have to make a rational choice without knowing what the other’s decision is. Figures do not represent any statistical calculation. They only give a range of loss and gains.


Based on this double hypothesis of simultaneity of choice and rationality, it appears that the EU and Russia are better off building their own project pipeline, despite the choice of the other. However, the table also suggests that both entities would fail to achieve the best outcome if they acted unilaterally. Theoretically, the EU and Russia should do nothing...or nothing alone, without consulting each other. In that sense, Turkey is to play an important pivotal role. To make the maximum of gains, the EU and Russia have to cooperate, and this cooperation should not include any other state but Turkey. The Turkish Prime Minister himself persistently tries to soften the obvious competition between unconciliatory plans, such as Samsun-Ceyhan versus Burgas Anlexandropoulis or Nabucco versus South Stream. He thus keeps repeating his belief that those routes may be complementary. Regarding South Stream however, Turkish interests are not immediately clear and understandable. Gains from a pipeline laid on Turkish continental shelf look very uncertain, given the difficulties it may provoke for Nabucco. It appears that from Turkey’s point of view, its pivotal role should not be articulated between Nabucco and South Stream, but between Nabucco and a second Blue Stream project, to ensure more financial and geopolitical advantages. The South Stream card is only one step in a wider Russo-Turkish negotiation aiming at reviving the Blue Stream II pipeline. The Blue Stream I, under the Black Sea between the Krasnodar Krai and Samsun, has been in operation since its completion in 2003, carrying between 10 and 15 BCM of gas annually. Recurrent disputes on prices and volumes stopped additional projects. The second trunk, planned to bring 16 other BCM was discussed, only to be dropped in 2007 in favour of South Stream, whose raison d’être was to bypass as many non-European countries as possible and directly reach southern Europe. The difficulties with South Stream and the rational choice models suggest that it is in Russia’s primary interest to review its position and reinstate the Blue Stream II. Indeed, that route to Turkey would be cheaper and technically easier, with a faster rate of implementation. Russia would thus have a comparative advantage on Europe. The Blue Stream II also opens the way to the Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian and Cypriot markets for Russian gas.16 Russia progressively comes back to the Blue Stream II option. Gazprom has already expressed an interest in it on several occassions.17 In March 2009, Alexey Miller concluded a preliminary 16 Interfax, 7 August 2009. 17 Author’s interview, Gazprom, International Media Relations Division, May 2009.


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agreement with Turkey’s governmental representatives. Russian high political authorities have already begun to re-discuss it with their Turkish counterparts. In May 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to the new Turkish Energy Minister, Taner Yildiz, to re-launch the prospects on that issue. Similarly, in Ankara in August, Putin has confirmed his offer to reformulate the Blue Stream II project. Under a protocol to be signed on cooperation in the gas sector, the two sides will consider building this pipeline in Turkey as a joint project, in which ENI will not be included. According to the Russian Energy Minister, Sergei Shmatko, it remains to be decided whether Turkey will simply provide transit service for Gazprom, or will also enjoy re-export rights for a portion of the gas volume in transit. The second solution is the most preferable one for Turkey and some strong political, academic and economic lobbying groups in Turkey are already pushing in that direction (Pamir, 2009). It should, however, not be forgotten that the South Stream Pipeline, which is still on the table, will probably be used as a bargaining tool by Russia. Russia will most probably be asking significant concessions from Turkey in exchange for its “abandonment” of the South Stream as a strategic priority. There is a strategic Russian logic in multiplying declarations and initiatives on paper and then giving them up against certain concrete political benefits. The Opening with Armenia and the Growing Spaces of Negotiations on the East The long-expected normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia is now on track. After a first visit by President Gül to Erevan to attend a football match and after months of negotiations, bluffs and set-backs; on 1 September 2009, Turkey and Armenia have agreed on draft protocols to normalise their relations. Many experts had then argued that the presidents could sign an agreement to reopen borders and reestablish their diplomatic ties after the protocols were ratified by parliaments within a reasonable timeframe.18 The protocols were eventually signed in Switzerland on 10 October 2009. At first sight, it seems as if Turkey has chosen to overcome the views of its traditional and historical Azerbaijani ally, which has for long argued against the restoration of diplomatic ties between Turkey and Armenia unless the territories bordering the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh are returned under Baku’s control. Hence, one may argue that Turkish interests have simply prevailed 18 Eurasia Insight, 1st September 2009.


over outdated foreign policy calculations.19 Nevertheless, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan has also declared that the protocol would not be ratified in the Turkish Parliament unless a settlement is reached in Nagorno-Karabakh. Hence the normalization process itself is still subject to obstacles. In terms of economic and material aspects, Yerevan would benefit from this rapprochement far more than Ankara. The former still lives under a neartotal blockade regarding its exports: 2 million US dollars worth of Armenian products are exported to Turkey against 250 million US dollars worth of Turkish goods imported into Armenia.20 The normalisation process will largely help to correct this catastrophic trade imbalance. International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials expect “a significant growth in the economy, with an increase in the volume of exports and a growth in investments”. For instance, among pending projects that depend on the normalisation process, is a deal between the Turkish UNIT Company and high Voltage Electric Networks of Armenia to sell 1:5 billion kilowatt/hours of Armenian electricity to Turkey. The size of this contract clearly demonstrates the potential for cooperation and mutual benefits.21 On the Turkish side however, gains prove to be more symbolic and intangible, materialising into political achievements on the regional scene. Through this process, Turkey seems to have substantially raised its influence in the South Caucasus, easing some of the inconvenient pressures which came from Azerbaijan and Georgia. This can be considered as a very well-played foreign policy coup. Despite some minor criticism toward the protocol, the main opposition party leader Deniz Baykal recognizes the achievement of Turkish diplomacy.22 Regarding Azerbaijan, Turkey’s move is clearly a success. The first reports announcing a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement triggered furious outrage among Baku decision makers. They used any levers available to try to change Ankara’s willingness to go further with Armenia. On the one hand, they focused on this unfair privilege allowing Turkey to lift-off, for its own consumption needs, 15% of gas volumes sent to the EU and to pay for it at a far cheaper rate. On the other hand, Baku played on the cultural, linguistic and ethnic proximity with the Turkish people, requiring some solidarity with Azerbaijan and raising domestic criticisms 19 Armenia is usually considered as Russia’s forefront in the South Caucasus. Reopening the border with Turkey might shift the alliance, weakening Russian-Armenian ties and strengthening TukishArmenian relations. 20 IWPR Caucasus Reporting, n 512, 25 September 2009. 21 IWPR, ... Ibid 22 www.nethaber.com, 16 September 2009.


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against their leaders’ choices regarding Armenia. None of these arguments survived the end of the summer. Ankara accepted not to make this 15% a prerequisite for its participation in Nabucco, but did not engage to give it up. Negotiations have continued even after the Intergovernmental Agreement in Turkey on 13 July. More importantly, the growing domestic discontent has been softened by some new Turkish guarantees on Nagorno-Karabakh. As for Georgia, breakthroughs are less evident and more symbolic. Ankara simply signifies Tbilisi that in the long-term, its unique position as the sole transit Western-oriented country for East-West trade is put into question. From Turkey’s point of view, Georgia’s strategic role should not be overestimated. The NATO-Russo-Georgian Compromise: A Turkish Bet Status quo in the South Caucasus does not seem to be in Turkey’s interest. Following Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008 and its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Turkish authorities, in their proposal for a Caucasian Stability and Cooperation Platform in September 2008, have clearly opted for stability and sought to maximally avoid any further change based on this precedent. Willing to preserve its good and friendly relations with Tbilisi, Ankara had not initiated any contacts with Abkhazia and its representatives. Things have changed in the last several weeks. On 18 September, Ünal Çeviköz, the Deputy Under Secretary for Political Affairs in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, who is of Circassian descent, visited Sukhumi and met with the Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba. This official visit can in fact be considered as a preparation for a following visit to be made by the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, to “get acquainted with [Abkhazia] and attempt to regulate its relations with Georgia” (Goble, 2009). On Çeviköz’s return, Davutoğlu also highlighted that the existence of the Abkhaz community in Turkey compels Ankara to consider how to attain stability in South Caucasia. If Ankara’s authorities decide to deal with the Abkhazian issue, they would at least have one very audacious but very beneficial diplomatic chance to move towards regional leadership. This would, however, require a three step scenario. As a first step whose political costs are not too high, direct sea and air passenger lines could be made available to Abkhazia. Turkey, which is by definition not legally constrained by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), has so far de facto limited its contacts with Abkhazia to energy resources, raw and building materials, as well as agricultural products and shipping. According to Georgian laws, trade with Abkhazia is illegal and thus


more than 60 Turkish convoys have been arrested in the last decade for illegally crossing into Georgian territorial waters for purposes of such trade. Recently, two captains, one Turkish and the other Azerbaijani, have been sentenced to 24 years in prison by a Georgian court under that charge.23 However, especially after the 2008 war, it appears that Georgia needs Turkey far more than Turkey needs Georgia. The second and third steps would in any case completely change the diplomatic scale of the proposed scenario. Turkey has to take into account Russian interests and to manage the possible reactions in Moscow to Abkhazia’s genuine independence. As second and third steps, which are deeply related to one another, Ankara could propose to exchange Georgian integration into NATO against Turkish official recognition of Abkhazia’s independence after a certain term and under certain conditions. Abkhazia could be recognized on the condition that Georgia becomes a full NATO member and that Abkhazia confirms its democratic path, guaranteeing free press24, free political associations and fair electoral consultations. Presidential elections in December 2009 will be a first test, but the subsequent elections in 2014 will serve as a better landmark to estimate the Abkhazian progress on democracy and liberalisation. Within this schema, it becomes essential that Turkey recognizes Abkhazia’s sovereignty only and not that of South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh or Transdniestria. This would give the Turkish authorities the credibility to refuse the Kurdish separatist claims within its own territory. Through this 3-step move, Turkey (and subsequently NATO) could gain significant political prestige and regional authority. Firstly, Turkey would impose itself as the main political broker in the South Caucasian region, able to achieve certain breakthroughs when needed. The next challenge would be the Nagorno-Karabakh issue which could be prone to new developments following the Armenian-Turkish dialogue. Secondly, Turkey’s stance towards Abkhazia would prove to Russians that it should be taken seriously and not be treated as an under-ally. Thirdly, this engagement would substantially raise Turkey’s attractiveness for the EU. Brussels has so far proved incapable of deploying a coherent political strategy in the South Caucasus. Frightened to displease Moscow, the EU kept a low, economic profile 23 Sunday’s Zaman, 6 September 2009 24 Some doubts were raised on this particular matter when, on 21 September, a journalist named Anton Krivenyuk has received a three year suspended sentence for an article criticising President Bagapsh’s decision to hand over the railway network to Russian control. IWPR Caucasus Reporting, n 512, 25 September 2009.


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in the region. Turkey would thus be offering a reliable and safe political forefront, fitting far more with EU’s interests than Russian influence and the logic of zero-sum games in the region. Iran, as a Powerful but Non Regional Player In historical terms, Iran feels entitled to claim an influence on the South Caucasus. Nevertheless, Iranian tools of influence in the three South Caucasian states are currently of minor significance. Shi’ism in Azerbaijan proves to be far from constituting a sufficient Iranian asset. Differences with Sunnism are indeed quite large and the nationalist feeling tends to overcome any other identity factor including religion. Iran is reinforcing its economic presence in Armenia. Iranian interests, however, are close to zero in Georgia. Against this background, including Iran in any informal or formal regional political project would be useless, or even counter-productive. It would only add to the pretentions of an aspiring local power, hoping to see its influence increase in a zone where it has no “natural” relays. Turkey seems to be well-aware of this fact, judging by its proposal for the Stability and Cooperation Platform, which first included only Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Russia, however, does not seem to be having problems with dominating the Caucasus together with Turkey and Iran, as long as the US and the EU are excluded. Duma Deputy Serguei Markov has explicitly highlighted that: “There are several scenarios for the Caucasus. The first one is Balkanisation, with each of the three countries following their own interests without or against the others. The second one is another Great Game, where each of the three countries becomes a stake in a major powers’ rivalry. The third one is a kind of a superstructure dominated by an alliance between Turkey, Iran and Russia, clearing out any EU and US presence.”25

Serguei Markov, however, does not elaborate the extent to which a Turkish-Iranian-Russian cooperation could be effective in the region. From the perspective of Moscow, the problem does not lie in making this triumvirate operational, but in limiting the natural Turkish inclination towards this zone, which became particularly stronger after the openings with Armenia. Turkey has to stick with this practice of distinguishing strictly between Iranian issues and Russian partnership.26 In other words, it is essential for 25 Author’s interview with Serguei Markov, Foros Conference, Abkhazia, 22 July 2009. 26 Author’s interview with Mehmet Ali Tuğtan, ... ibid.


Ankara’s decision-makers to deal with Iran not as a regional player but as an international question. It is necessary to “internationalise” or to widen as much as possible any contact, any relation and any negotiation that Turkey could undertake with Iran. Some of them, such as the nuclear Iranian project or the radical Shi’ite connections in Iraq and Lebanon, are already internationalised. For others, such as potential Iranian gas supplies to Nabucco pipeline or Iran’s interests regarding new Abkhazian sovereignty27, certain efforts are needed. Regarding the first one, Turkey should play the role of a mediator between Iran and the European Union. It is indeed in Turkey’s strategic interest to become a gas hub. Turkey, acting as a shell-country for Iranian and other Middle-Eastcen (Egypt, Iraq) resources, would serve more than a simple regional role: it would embody the energy link between Iran and the EU. As far as Abkhazia is concerned, Turkey surely has no interest in seeing Iranian direct contacts developing. However, the question remains as to what Iran could do or what it could offer to the Abkhazians? It is up to Turkey to take or retake the initiative on that issue. CONCLUSIONS If all these successful challenges are met successfully, then Turkey will move to the gravity centre of an EU-Russia-Iran triangle where it will be in a pivotal and geostrategic position. Turkey could be in a position to compete on an equal footing with Russian influence from the Black Sea to the Caucasus. Together in the western Eurasian area, the two countries could maintain some oligopolistic positions, keeping outside any other aspiring powers such as Iran and the US, as well as the European Union. For example, they would be able to decide and influence positively the frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the future of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There is also a little chance, as far as military affairs are concerned, that the Montreux Treaty status quo will be put into question. Secondly, with Iran, Turkey has to keep to its stance of developing a bilateral dialogue and rapprochement, playing a mediator role between Iran and the West. Turkey alone has to connect Iran with those external actors and thus emphasise the international dimension of the present Iranian problem. Russia here, from a Turkish perspective, is one actor among others. Thirdly, towards the EU, there is the Russian bargaining card to play where it should balance new involvements in South 27 An Iranian delegation visited Abkhazia from 11 July to 14 July 2009. Author’s interview, Sukhum, Abkhazia.


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Stream with Nabucco commitments. Ankara seems to be using this strategy wisely. Going that path, Turkey in fact reaches a paradoxical stalemate in its relations with the EU. Having become a regional leader, membership into the EU may prove to be far less attractive for Turkey. However, from a European perspective, a strong Turkey that is influential in its regional environment is what Brussels actually needs. If the EU will not in the foreseeable future be ready to integrate Turkey, arguing that the Europeans would lose the sense of their mission and raison d’être, then Turkey itself should not lose time waiting for the EU. It should instead actively engage with its regional strategy, leaving the EU with the responsibility to decide whether it wants to become a political power or to remain as a safe and more comfortable haven, yet bound to immobility.

Bıblıography Books, Articles and Commentaries Kardaş, Şaban (2009). “Turkish-Russian Grand Bargain in Energy Cooperation”, Jamestown Foundation, Vol. 6, No. 152. Khandokin, Vladimir (2009). “Meeting Europe’s Growing Energy Demand: North Stream and South Stream”, Blue Fuel Gazprom Export Global Newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 2. Pamir, Necdet (2009). “Turkey’s Energy Challenge”, Blue Fuel Gazprom Export Global Newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 2. Vinatier, Laurent (2009). With or Without South Stream? Russia’s Energy Strategy between the European Union and Turkey. Commentary for the Thomas More Institute, accessible at www.institut-thomas-more.org . Vladimir, Socor (2009). “Bulgarian Government Suspends Energy Negotiations with Russia Pending Review”, Jamestown Foundation, Vol. 6, No. 151. Newspapers, Newsletters and Electronic Sources Moscow Times Sunday’s Zaman Taraf Blue Fuel Gazprom Export Global Newsletter Eurasia Insight IWPR Caucasus Reporting http://south-stream.info/index.php?id=3&L=1 http://www.nord-stream.com/en/the-pipeline/pipeline-route.html http://www.nethaber.com

6 Turkish Elites’ and Public Opinion’s Attitudes Towards the European Union within the Framework of Turkey’s Full Membership Process to the European Union Nıcolas Monceau

INTRODUCTION n recent years, most of the literature devoted to Turkey-EU relations have usually developed two main approaches: 1 - A historical approach, which consists of drawing a chronology of Turkey-EU relations from the signing of the Association Agreement in 1963 to the official start of Turkey’s negotiations for full membership to the EU in 2005; 2 - An institutional approach, which focuses on the political and economic dynamics of Turkey’s European integration process. These approaches mostly emphasise the difficulties and challenges faced by Turkey on the road to European integration. On the one hand, EU expectations, which have been formulated during successive European Councils, are highlighted through taking into account the progress made by Turkey as an applicant country in fulfilling the Copenhagen political and economic criteria (in particular the human rights issue including minority problems, the Cyprus issue, or the economic stability issue). On the other hand, the effects of the European integration process on the Turkish political, economic and legal system are emphasised through the reforms carried out by the Turkish authorities. Meanwhile, little research has been carried out on a crucial dimension of EU enlargement to Turkey: the elite and general attitudes towards Turkey’s European integration. Often evoked in the European debate, public opinions have become a growing issue in Turkey-EU relations. As negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the EU are planned to continue for about 10 or 15 years, EU member states cannot but be aware of their citizens’ opi-

I


nions, who tend to be reticent about this prospect, thus giving credit to those who regularly blame the European “democratic deficit”. Measuring Turkish elite and public opinion’s attitudes towards European integration will, however, also be a primary issue in the coming years, as growing euroscepticism is now observed in Turkey. A better understanding of the attitudes and opinion trends thus represents an essential component in the current EU enlargement process and Turkey’s European integration. Turkish citizens’ attitudes towards Europe are regularly measured by public opinion surveys, both national and international (in particular through the Eurobarometers since 2001). However, most of the studies dealing with Turkish elite attitudes towards European integration are based on an analysis of political discourse. We, however, chose to use quantitative approach in this research in order to measure the Turkish elite attitudes towards European integration within the framework of Turkey’s application for full membership to the EU. The fieldwork of this research is based on the findings of an empirical survey on the Turkish elite and the EU, which was carried out in Turkey within the framework of a Ph.D. thesis prepared at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies (Pierre Mendes France University, France).1 This paper first presents the research methodology and focuses on the Turkish elites’ social and political backgrounds, focusing on a prominent group of the civil society elite. Secondly, this paper discusses three main issues concerning elite attitudes towards European integration: To what extent do Turkish civil society elites support Turkey’s European integration? How have perceived forms of European integration influenced the attitudes of Turkish civil society elite? Is there any correlation between awareness of identity or attitudes towards democracy and attitudes towards European integration? Comparisons will be made with Eurobarometer surveys when noteworthy variations or trends can be observed. INVESTIGATING THE TURKISH ELITE The main data was gathered in Turkey through a quantitative survey carried out between December 2004 and February 2005. In order to investigate the 1

The survey on Turkish elite and the EU was carried out by the UMR 5194 PACTE (Sciences Po Recherche - CNRS Laboratory, Grenoble Institute of Political Studies) under the scientific supervision of Nicolas Monceau, within the framework of an agreement between the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies (Pierre Mendes France University), the History Foundation of Turkey (Istanbul) and the French Institute of Anatolian Studies – Georges Dumézil (Istanbul) and with the technical collaboration of S.A.M. Research and Consulting Inc. (Istanbul).

6. turkish elites’ and public opinion’s attitudes towards the european union within the framework of turkey’s

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Turkish elite, we designed a questionnaire which comprised of 80 questions. The survey aimed at assessing Turkish elite attitudes towards major current issues dealing with European integration, such as the perceptions of the EU, the nature of the political system in Turkey (particularly democracy and human rights issues, and the relationship between civil and military authorities), the relationship between state and society, or the perceived role of the elite in European integration and democratisation processes. The sample survey comprised of 1250 respondents, who are members of a leading Turkish NGO - The History Foundation of Turkey (Türkiye Tarih Vakfi). The survey questionnaire was translated into the Turkish language and sent by post to the sample members, with all conditions of anonymity and confidentiality respected. The response rate was approximately 28%. During the planning and design of this survey, the representativeness of the sample was one of the most important theoretical and methodological issues. How can the elite be defined within the Turkish national context? Which relevant criteria can be formulated in order to determine the representativeness of a sample of the elite? We were thus faced with two main difficulties. At the theoretical level, the sociology of the elite highlights the polysemy of the term as well as the diversity of the elite in political, economic, social or intellectual fields (Scott, 2000; Coenen-Huther, 2004). At the empirical level, fieldwork in Turkey was characterised by legislative and logistic constraints, which would make it difficult to carry out quantitative surveys with certain categories of political and social protagonists. Three reasons may explain such difficulties faced during the fieldwork of this research. First, one may recall that the market of public opinion surveys is recent in Turkey. It has developed over the last twenty years, after the 1980 military coup, with the establishment of a flourishing private sector in this field. Consequently, the number of private marketing survey companies increases regularly. In other words, the ‘culture’ of public opinion is not yet very widespread. Secondly, specific authorisations, which are hard for foreign institutions to obtain, are required in order to carry out quantitative surveys with various state officials. This has been the case for example of a survey on members of the Turkish Parliament. Lastly, the representativeness of the sample survey is becoming much more difficult to determine because of the scattered nature and the heterogeneity of the different categories of Turkish elite within a range of national organisations. In the economic field, the Turkish elite is represented by dozens of or-


ganizations whose statutes and ideological orientations are very different among which one can cite the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), the Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations (TISK), the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen Association (TÜSIAD), the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association (MÜSIAD), or the Young Businessmen Association of Turkey (TÜGIAD). In this case, investigating the Turkish economic elite would require considerable financial and logistic resources to carry out comparative surveys among these various organizations. In order to solve such theoretical and methodological difficulties, this research does not investigate the political or economic elite in Turkey but focuses on a group of elite which is influential within the field of civil society. The Civil Society Elite as a Case Study of the Modernising Elite in Turkey The reasons for investigating the Turkish civil society elite are also related to the political and social changes experienced in Turkey in the last twenty years. The debate on civil society has emerged in Turkey in the 1980s with the growing establishment of Turkish NGOs in various fields. A number of them started to claim to being new entities in the Turkish public sphere, and have attempted to influence policy-making decisions. Indeed, the Habitat Summit held in Istanbul in 1996 by the United Nations is considered by many commentators as a turning point with the participation of dozens of “civil society organizations”, stating a new public discourse. The 1999 earthquake in western Anatolia highlighted ‘the dynamism of civil society’ with the involvement of numerous civil organisations in the areas faced with the collapse of Turkish public authorities. Several explanations were formulated in the academic field in order to explain the emergence of this civil society, either within the framework of new social movements (Göle, 1994), or in relation to the secularisation issue (Toprak, 1996) or seen as a new political power engineering (Navaro-Yashin, 1998). Other studies also focused on the independence of Turkish NGOs from public authorities and from nationalist ideological discourse (Seufert et. al, 2000). However, quantitative research on Turkish civil society elite is not yet common in the academic field. In Turkey, such studies are conducted mainly on the political or economic elite, and have focused on members of the Parliament or the new Turkish liberal bourgeoisie (Frey, 1965; Turhan, 1991; Vorhoff, 2000). Hence, implementing quantitative methods in this research does not aim to search for new paradigms of analysis concerning


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the civil society issue in Turkey, but to assess the social and political profiles of the civil society elite and their attitudes towards European integration. In order to assess the attitudes of the Turkish civil society elite towards European integration, we chose to study the History Foundation of Turkey. Established in Istanbul in 1991 as a non-governmental organisation, the History Foundation of Turkey (latter called History Foundation) is based on the joint initiative of a group of people from various backgrounds and professions, most of them historians and social scientists. It endeavours to influence public opinion and the decision-making process in Turkey through developing and extending of awareness of history in order to make the subject of history a field for civic action. The History Foundation reveals itself as a relevant case for study for three main reasons. First, its activity is characterised by two distinctive features: its modernising orientation and its capacity for social influence. The History Foundation has been playing a pioneering role since 1991 in giving direction to the current public debate about Turkey’s textbook revision in order to fit history teaching to European standards rather than to nationalist discourse. In 1998, the History Foundation also succeeded in convincing the Turkish political authorities to permit it to organise official celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic. The first time for a Turkish NGO, the History Foundation endeavoured to address Turkish Republican history with an ‘alternative vision’ and to promote it among Turkish public opinion (Monceau, 2000). Secondly, the elitist orientation of the History Foundation is reinforced by the social composition of its members. History Foundation membership is based on very selective recruitment by cooptation. Criterion for selection are designed to combine three main factors: 1- Higher social positions, top-level posts and professional competences and skills; 2- Social influence, through financial resources and interpersonal and institutional networks; 3- Widespread public notoriety. The strategy of communication elaborated by the head of the organisation was based for ten years on the social prestige of its members. The modernising and elitist orientation of the History Foundation is also confirmed by two self-perception indicators in the survey concerning respondents’ status and social influence within society. 82% of those who answered our questionnaire have defined themselves as ‘intellectuals’ (aydın). Such a high rate represents a strong adherence to the official discourse stated by the History Foundation. Moreover, 72% have estimated that intellectuals play


a very or a rather important role as opinion leaders in contemporary Turkey. In Turkish republican history, this reference to the ‘aydin’ whose ‘mission’ is to provide direction to public opinion is clearly related to the action of a modernising elite as a vector of the modernizing policies ‘from above’. Indeed, it conveys the will of the republican intellectuals to assume the role of a mediator between the State (Devlet), to which they strongly identify themselves, and the Nation (Halk), which needs to be woken up and guided by the opinion leaders. Lastly, the modernising orientation of the History Foundation may be observed through its members’ motivation for joining the NGO. A question in our survey puts forward a selection of twelve possible ‘incentives’ to the respondents in order to find out the reasons why they joined the History Foundation. The three top answers were the following: ‘To contribute to the expansion of social sciences in Turkey’ (89% of the respondents); ‘To strengthen civil society in Turkey’ (84%); ‘To contribute to democratisation and human rights in Turkey’ (77%). In conclusion, the criteria for the definition of the sample survey does not focus on the representativeness of the group, but on the framing of its action and its ability to influence the national and international entities (the public authorities, national and international sponsors, public opinion and the media). In other words, the Turkish civil society elite of this sample survey can be identified as members of a specific and influential group of reference, who follow in the path of the long tradition of the modernising elite since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and even further since the Ottoman period of Western-rooted Tanzimat reforms from the middle of the nineteenth century. Profile of the Civil Society Elite in Turkey The findings of the survey highlight that there is a relative degree of cohesion and unity among the members of the History Foundation. The civil society elite who have responded to the questionnaire are composed of people of similar social origins, similar educational backgrounds and similar occupational careers. Furthermore, they also share a common political involvement. Their mean features can be outlined as follows: Gender and Age There is significant male domination among the members of the History Foundation. Men represent 74% of those who answered the question-


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naire. The age distribution shows that respondents are also overwhelmingly middle-aged, although older people make up the second largest group. 55% are aged 40-59 years old and 34% are at least sixty-years years old. Educational Levels, Education and School Types, Foreign Language Ability According to most of the studies on the elite, both the quantity and quality of education are substantially effective on the circulation of the elite. The type of education and the type of school also affect the elite recruitment process. The findings of the survey show that the Turkish civil society elite who answered the questionnaire have a successful educational background. 63% of the History Foundation members have graduated from prestigious universities, such as the Ankara University (SBF, the Faculty of Political Sciences), Istanbul University, Middle East Technical University (Ankara), or Bosphorus University (Istanbul). 34% have a post-graduate degree (Ph.D.). Respondent’s type of education is also an important variable which affects future career patterns in elite circles. It appears that the social sciences (including economics and political science) and technical sciences lead as areas of study among civil society elite. History Foundation members were primarily educated as economists (26%), civil engineers (16%), lawyers, statesmen and bureaucrats (14%), historians (14%) as well as architects and technical experts (11%). Lastly, a further important factor which is related to the education of the elites in Turkey is foreign language ability. A substantial number of the History Foundation members who responded to the questionnaire have received a western education in foreign languages. 44% have been educated in prestigious elite high schools, such as Robert College, Galatasaray high school, or other western-oriented high schools. 39% also studied in a university located in Europe or in the USA. According to the findings of the survey, 87% of the respondents speak at least one foreign language, mostly from western countries (primarily English, French and German). These broad cultural resources held by its members, mainly based on a knowledge of western culture and language, provide an essential resource to the History Foundation in order to open up the Turkish academic fields towards international scientific works by promoting a range of translated publications.


Occupational Backgrounds The occupational backgrounds of the members of the History Foundation are a further indicator of their socio-economic status as members of the elite. Three main groups of occupational activity can be identified among the respondents of the questionnaire: – The ‘economic’ group, which includes industrialists and businessmen, publicists, and more largely entrepreneurs; – The ‘technical’ group, composed of engineers, architects, high level civil servants and ‘experts’; – The ‘intellectual’ group in a broad sense, which gathers academics, journalists, publishers, writers and artists. A fourth group is not included here since its members did not answer the survey: namely the ‘political’ group, which brings together statesmen and political leaders, such as former ministers and members of parliament. Political backgrounds: A political activism in left-wing organizations since the 60s: The coherence and unity of the sample members of the survey is reinforced by a common political background. Three distinctive features can be observed among the members of the History Foundation who responded to the questionnaire: a high level of politicisation, significant involvement in political parties and organisations and the sharing of common ideological values. 87% of the History Foundation members who answered the questionnaire highlighted that they are interested in politics (43% of them ‘very interested’). 83% and 93% mentioned that they used to read political newspapers and journals or discussed political matters in their youth. A large number of them have agreed that they feel close to (or used to feel close to) at least one organisation or movement, such as a party (57%, including 22% of them as political activists), a trade union (20%), or a youth movement (45%). Almost all the organisations quoted by the respondents were left-wing, mainly socialist, social democrat and communist movements, such as the Turkish Labour Party (Türkiye Isçi Partisi, 1961-1971 and 1975-1980) (33% of the respondents), the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) (75% of the respondents), several Teachers’ Associations, the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers Trade Unions (DISK) or the Federation of Idea Clubs (Fikir Kulüpleri Federasyonu). Lastly, the data suggests that the respondents perceive themselves on the left of the political spectrum (77% on the positions from 1 to 4), including 9% on the extreme left (position 1) and 48% on the


107

left (positions 2 and 3). The findings of the survey also highlight the effects of the coup d’etat on the political trajectories of the members of the History Foundation. Most of the respondents aged at least 55 years old have been very positively influenced by the 1960 military intervention, which is perceived as a liberal – or even a ‘leftist’ – state coup. On the other hand, the 1971 and 1980 state coups are mostly considered as reactionary interventions, as they led to a strong repression of leftist political activists. In the second part of this paper, we will discuss three questions: do Turkish civil society elite develop specific attitudes towards European integration? In other words, to what extent do the Turkish civil society elite support Turkey’s European integration? How have perceived forms of European integration influenced the attitudes of Turkish civil society elite? Is there a correlation between awareness of identity or attitudes towards democracy and attitudes towards European integration? TURKISH ELITE AND THE EU A Strong Support for European Integration The main indicators of support for European integration demonstrate strongly positive views of the EU among the Turkish civil society elites who responded to the questionnaire.2 TABLE 6.1 Main indicators of Eurosupportiveness Full membership: a good thing Full membership: advantages for Turkey Positive image of the EU Confidence in the EU

Yes

No

Neutral

87% 91% 69% 66,8%

3% 6% 6% 27%

8% / 24% 5,9%

Source: Survey on Turkish elite and the EU carried out by Nicolas Monceau (UMR 5194 PACTE and Grenoble IEP-University Pierre Mendes France). Fieldwork: Turkey, December 2004 – February 2005.

2

In order to be able to make comparisons with Eurobarometer data, the same questions were used in the survey. The first question was: “Generally speaking, do you think that Turkey’s membership of the European Union will be? A good thing, a bad thing, neither good nor bad”. The second question was: “Taking everything into consideration, would you say that Turkey will benefit or not from being a member of the European Union?”. The third question was: “In general, does the European Union conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative or very negative image?”. The last question was: “For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?”.


According to the findings of the survey, 87% of the respondents believe that full membership of the EU would be a ‘good thing’ for Turkey. In a similar vein, 91% argue that Turkey’s accession to the EU will provide benefits for the country. 69% have a positive image of the EU. Lastly, they feel great confidence in the EU. Indeed, the European Union is among the top three national and international institutions in which the respondents tend to trust the most, along with non-governmental organisations (73,7%) and universities (67,8%) (for a presentation of the whole list, see Table 1 in the appendix). In the Eurobarometer survey of Autumn 2004, the European Union remained in 8th position among the institutions in which Turkish people tend to trust, with 51% of positive opinions3. The fact that the members of our sample survey are involved in a prominent NGO in Turkey may explain to a large extent the position of NGOs among the institutions in which they tend to trust the most. Another notable aspect of the findings of the survey is that the level of confidence in the EU appears to be higher than the level of confidence in the army (which stands in fourth position in the list, with 60,9% of trust) which is usually the institution in which people trust the most in Turkey (for comparison, during the autumn of 2004, 89% of the Turkish people said that they tended to trust the army in Turkey).4 In addition to these, comparisons with Turkish public opinion trends show that the support for European integration by the Turkish civil society elite tends to be higher than Turkish citizens’ support. As the figure below presents, in fall 2004, around 62% of the Turkish population was considering that the full membership of the EU would be a ‘good thing’ for Turkey. Such differences between elite and public opinion’s support levels for European integration have been highlighted in several studies carried out in Europe. In particular, relevant correlations were observed between variables such as the social position or the cultural capital (in particular the educational degree) and support for European integration. According to these studies, the ‘Europe of scholars’ revealed itself as more pro-European (Percheron, 1991). In the case of this survey, high educational backgrounds and top-level occupational posts of the sample members suggest in the same way that the ‘Turkey of scholars’ tends to be much more pro-European than the average Turkish public opinion. Another significant aspect of both Turkish elite and public attitude towards Europe is the sharing of a high level of support for European integra3 4

See the Eurobarometer 62. Turkey National Report, autumn 2004, p. 28. Ibid.


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FIGURE 6.1 Turkish Public Opinion’s Support for European Integration A good thing

A bad thing

A thing neither good or bad

80%

70%

71%

71% 65%

60%

65%

67%

67% 62% 59%

59%

50%

40%

30%

20%

19%

18%

17%

14%

13%

10%

18% 13%

14% 11%

20%

18% 10%

13%

20% 17%

12%

9%

7% 0% Winter 1999

Fall 2001

Spring 2002

Fall 2002

Spring 2003

Fall 2003

Spring 2004

Fall 2004

Spring 2005

Source: Eurobarometers. Turkey. National reports.

tion. A number of studies highlighted the existence of a ’permissive consensus’ among European mass publics up to the early 1990s, which implied general support of public opinion. In the 1990s, a rise of euroscepticism within the public opinion in Europe started to create a growing divide with the elite ‘philosophy of the will’ on European construction (Bréchon et.al, 1995). It seems that such a divide has not yet happened in Turkey between elite and public opinion. How can the strongly pro-European attitudes of both Turkish elite and citizens be interpreted? In order to understand the high level of support for European integration, the effects of the official ideology on the European integration issue in contemporary Turkey needs to be analysed. Reaching the levels of Western civilisation has been considered by the Kemalist ideology as the ultimate goal since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Indeed, European integration is seen as the last step of the modernising process in Turkey, with the Kemalist ideology having played a major role in the formation of a consensus on the European issue within Turkish public opinion. Yet there is a significant gap between European countries and Turkey on this


consensus between elite and public opinion. In most European countries, one may observe that European integration has provoked a long-lasting divide between the elite and public opinion. In Turkey, on the contrary, the prospect of Turkey’s accession to the EU is considered positively both by the elite and the citizens. It would also be necessary to assess the effects of current political and economic variables on the trends in Turkish public opinion. Many studies have highlighted the relationship between the changes in pro-European attitudes and the evolution of the main macroeconomic indicators (like the unemployment rate or growth rate of the GDP) within the EU Member States (Bréchon et al., 1995; Cautrès, 1998; Cautrès and Denni, 2000). In the same way, one can observe in Turkey the effect of the political debate and economic situation on public attitudes towards Europe. Thus, the period between winter 1999 and autumn 2001 shows a decline in support for Europe from 71% to 59% and the rise in opinions against Europe from 7% to 14%. Two interpretations can be offered in explaining this rise of euroscepticism in Turkish public opinion. As the fall of confidence in Europe expressed by the EU public opinions is closely related to the growing economic recession, the spread of a deep economic and financial crisis in Turkey throughout the years 2000 and 2001 could have contributed to a - temporary – rejection of the European integration process. The effect of a psychological shock, related to the public disappointment which followed the Helsinki European Council (1999), could also have played a role in the decline in support for Europe. While recognising a ‘European vocation’ for Turkey, the decisions of the European Council have indeed pushed back the start of EU entry negotiations. Turkish Elite and Public Perceptions of Europe: Democracy or Economic Prosperity? A second relevant aspect of the Turkish elite attitudes towards European integration deals with perceptions on the EU. How do the elite and public opinion perceive Europe in Turkey? Which dimensions of European integration are considered as the most important? Turkish political discourse on European integration usually claims that Turkey belongs to Europe on the grounds of a common history as well as the sharing of common political, cultural and social values. In this research, we attempted to assess whether this basic assumption is shared by the


111

civil society elite through the indicator of the perceptions on Europe. In order to compare the data with the Eurobarometer surveys, the same question was asked in the survey: “What does the EU mean to you personally?”. Twelve items were listed to the interviewees to choose from. FIGURE 6.2 Turkish Civil Society Elite and Public Opinion Perceptions of Europe

Civil Society Elite More crime Social protection

Public Opinion

8%

0%

34% 30% 35%

21%

Freedom to travel, study and work anywhere in the EU

29%

Peace Loss of our cultural identity

7%

Democracy

17%

48%

22%

Uneployment 17% 14%

Strongersay in the world Economic prosperity

41%

8%

Euro Waste of money

73%

20%

Cultural diversity

Not enough control at external frontiers

33%

24%

0%

48%

4% 6%

1%

8%

4% 4% 2% 2%

Bureaucracy Other 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Source: Survey on Turkish elite and the EU carried out by Nicolas Monceau (UMR 5194 PACTE and Grenoble IEP-Pierre Mendes France University). Fieldwork: Turkey, December 2004 - February 2005; Eurobarometer 63.4., autumn 2004.

A comparison between the findings of this survey and the Eurobarometer data highlights two main differences. First, in Turkey, civil society elite and the public opinion do not share the same perceptions on the EU. According to the findings of this survey, the political and cultural dimensions of European integration seem to be a priority for the Turkish civil society elite who responded to the questionnaire. Indeed, the top three meanings of Europe for the members of the History Foundation are ‘Democracy’ (73%), ‘Cultural diversity’ (48%) and ‘Economic prosperity’ (41%). The economic and social dimensions of European integration, however, are regarded as the most important priorities for Turkish public opinion. Europe is first perceived as a source of economic development and social welfare guarantees.5 During spring 2005, the top three meanings associated with 5

This trend has been measured in the Eurobarometer surveys of the last five years.


the EU by Turkish citizens were ‘Economic prosperity’ (48%), ‘Social protection’ (34%) and ‘Freedom to travel, study and work anywhere in the EU’. The ‘desire for Europe’ claimed by the Turkish people means hope for better standards of living rather than expectations of improvement of democracy and cultural diversity within the country.6 Comparisons between perceptions of Europe in Turkey and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe reveal a significant difference in public expectations of European integration in the wider Europe. ‘Peace’ represents one of the top priorities associated with European integration for the half of the CEECs which joined the EU in May 2004. Their political and geographical position as former ‘satellites’ of the USSR during the cold war may explain to a great extent such priorities in their perceptions of Europe. Perceptions among Turkish public opinion, which favour the economic and social dimensions of European integration, introduce a significant difference with the Turkish political elite discourse which primarily justifies Turkey’s European integration on the grounds of the sharing of cultural, social and political values inherited from a common historical past. Secondly, the varied perceptions of the EU also highlight another relevant divide related to the cultural dimension of European integration. The findings of this survey and the Eurobarometer data show that this dimension is regarded as important for both Turkish civil society elite and the public opinion, but in an opposite way. It conveys a positive connotation for the members of the History Foundation members who responded to the questionnaire, whereas it brought out a negative connotation for Turkish citizens. Indeed, the cultural perception of Europe is associated with ‘Cultural diversity’ for the Turkish civil society elite (48% of the respondents). On the contrary, Europe is rather associated with fears such as ‘Loss of cultural identity’ for Turkish citizens (17% of the respondents). This divide may be interpreted through the rise of euroscepticism which has recently been measured in Turkey. According to Eurobarometer data, the cultural dimension is indeed prominent in fears related to European integration, such as the ‘Loss of the language’, ‘Loss of national money’, or ‘Loss of national identity and culture’. Differences in socio-economic status between the Turkish elite and the citizens may explain to a certain extent such varied perceptions of Europe. 6

The same tendency is measured by other Eurobarometer indicators, such as the significance of European citizenship.


113

Belonging to the highest levels of society in terms of cultural, social and economic capital; the sample members of this research do not have particular economic or social expectations from Turkey’s full membership of the EU. In the same way, their knowledge of western societies is mainly based on regular and long-term contact with European countries or the USA, through their education at university or professional reasons. Most of them have benefited from freedom of travel and work in Europe for a long time. The Cultural Dimension of European Integration: Feeling National or European? Turkey’s European integration process has provoked an intense debate in Europe on European identity, focusing in particular on its cultural and religious dimensions. Except for the Eurobarometers, quantitative surveys carried out in Turkey do not attempt to assess Turkish people’s awareness of European identity. Do the Turks consider themselves as Europeans? Do they feel that they share a common identity with EU citizens? The findings of this survey highlight a significant divide between the Turkish elite and public opinion’s awareness of national and European identity. Feelings of European identity tend to be more profound for the Turkish civil society elite than for other Turkish citizens. As the figure below presents, Turkish public opinion’s awareness of national identity is clearly predominant. 64% of Turkish citizens feel themselves ‘Only Turkish’ and 26% feel themselves ‘more Turkish than European’, where 1% feel themselves ‘more European than Turkish’ and ‘Only European’. In the same way, attachment to the nation (96% during the spring of 2005), in spite of fluctuations, strongly prevails over attachment to Europe (30% during the spring of 2005) for Turkish citizens. Turkish civil society elite’s awareness of European identity tends to be higher. 58,5% of the respondents to this survey feel themselves ‘Both national and European’ and about 10% feel ‘More European than national’. In the same way, only 5,2% feel themselves ‘Only National’ and 18,7% ‘More national than European’. The awareness of the Turkish civil society elite of a significant European identity can be explained by two main factors: the educational backgrounds of the respondents, in particular their western education in foreign-language spoken elite high schools and universities; and more generally, their in-depth knowledge of western countries and cultures, due to long-lasting trips and


FIGURE 6.3 Turkish Civil Society Elite and Public Opinion’s Awareness of National and European Identity

Turkish civil society elite

Turkish public opinion

EU25

70% 60% 50% 40% 30% EU25

20%

Turkish public opinion

10%

Turkish civil societiy elite 0%

Only national

More national than European

Both national and European

More European Only European than national

None national nor European

Source: Survey on Turkish elite and the EU carried out by Nicolas Monceau (UMR 5194 PACTE and Grenoble IEP-Pierre Mendes France University). Fieldwork: Turkey, December 2004 – February 2005; Eurobarometer 63.4., autumn 2004.

stays in European countries and in the USA for educational or professional purposes. Most of them have a western life-style and identify themselves as ‘Europeans’ or ‘Westerners’. Do variables such as culture and identity have an impact on attitudes towards European integration? The findings of the survey reveal a strong correlation between respondents’ awareness of national and European identity and support for European integration. The more the respondents feel a European element within their identity (covering the entire spectrum from ‘Only National’ to ‘Only European’), the more they support Turkey’s accession to the EU and feel confidence in the EU. European Integration and Attitudes towards Democracy Following the European Council decision of Helsinki (1999) which granted Turkey the status of applicant country, Turkish governments have carried out a long-term program of constitutional and legislative reform in order to fulfil the Copenhagen political and economic criteria. Since 2001, the Tur-


115

kish Parliament has enacted eight comprehensive ‘democratization packages’ and ‘harmonisation laws’.7 In the framework of this research, we tried to assess the impact of this ‘post-Helsinki context’ in Turkey on elite attitudes towards democracy and the EU. Do the successive waves of reforms which have been enacted since 2001 contribute to establishing a ‘democratic climate’ in Turkey? Is there any correlation between attitudes towards European integration and attitudes towards democracy? The results of the survey highlight three main findings on these issues. First, they reveal a high level of satisfaction with the ‘post-Helsinki context’. 70% of the respondents claim to be very or rather satisfied with the way democracy is developing in Turkey whereas 31% express the opposite view. However, the human rights issue seems to be more controversial. About 46% of the respondents feel that there is a lot of or some respect for individual human rights in Turkey nowadays.8 Although such a rate seems rather low, it turns out to be significantly higher than the average trends which have been measured in Turkey since 2001. Secondly, the findings of the survey show a strong bond between European integration and the democratisation process. 93% of the respondents claim to be very or rather convinced (63% of them ‘very’) that Turkey’s membership of the EU will contribute in the future to reinforcing Turkish democracy (for further findings of perceived effects of European integration on local fields, see Figure 1 in the appendix). Lastly, the positive perceptions of the effects of European integration on local democracy are strongly correlated with attitudes towards democracy and perceptions on the EU. Attitudes towards democracy have been measured in the survey with two questions from the World Values Survey. The findings of the survey show that the Turkish civil society elite who answered the questionnaire have very strong pro-democratic attitudes. In questions on various types of political systems, ‘having a democratic political system’ is considered very or fairly good by 97,6% of the respondents (very good by 7

8

Among the main democratisation reforms, one can mention the following: abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances; reinforcement of civilian control over the army through the reform of the ‘National Security Council’ and suppression of military jurisdictions; reinforcement of gender equality; development of the freedom of expression, association and the press; conformity of the legal system with European standards; establishment of the primacy of the international agreements in the field of fundamental freedoms in national legislation; reform of the civil and penal codes; protection of cultural rights allowing the use of mother tongues in broadcasting. These two questions about local democracy and human rights are inspired by the World Values Survey questionnaire.


81,3%). In a similar way, 98% of the respondents believe that ‘democracy may have problems but it is better than any other form of government’. Cross-tabulations suggest that the more the respondents are attached to democracy as a political system, the more they support Turkey’s European integration and the more they are convinced of the positive influence of European integration on the reinforcement of democracy and the development of the economy. Percheron (1991) have highlighted that in the case of Europe, there is a relevant correlation between pro-democratic and pro-European attitudes. The Turkish case similarly demonstrates that Turkish democrats tend to support Turkey’s European integration more. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between perceptions on the effects of European integration upon local democracy and perceptions of Europe. Respondents who associate Europe primarily with democracy are more willing to positively assess the impact of European integration upon the reinforcement of local democracy than those respondents who associate Europe with other variables. CONCLUSION The confidence in the EU appears here to be one of the most relevant indicators in assessing the way in which Turkey’s European integration process is perceived in Turkey. Cross-tabulations reveal a strong correlation between trust in the EU and several other indicators, such as the evolution of Turkish democracy as well as perceived effects of European integration on local democracy and the economy. Respondents who tend to trust the EU are more satisfied with the way democracy is developing in Turkey than the respondents who do not tend to trust the EU (see Table 2 in the appendix). In a similar vein, respondents who feel confidence in the EU hold much more positive views on the effects of European integration on local democracy and the economy than those who do not have confidence in the EU (see Table 3 in the appendix).


117

APPENDIX TABLE 1 Confidence in National and International Institutions (percent) National and international institutions

Confidence levels (percent)

Non-Governmental Organisations Universities The European Union The army United Nations Social protection system Justice / the legal system The national parliament Public health system NATO Big companies Trade unions The public administration Political parties The press The education system The presidency of religious affairs (Diyanet) The police

73,7 67,8 66,8 60,9 50,9 38,1 37 33,6 30,8 28,4 27 22,1 20,1 15,6 15,2 14,5 12,1 10,4

Source: Survey on Turkish elite and the EU carried out by Nicolas Monceau (UMR 5194 PACTE and Grenoble IEP-Pierre Mendes France University). Fieldwork: Turkey, December 2004 - February 2005.


FIGURE 1 The Effects of European Integration on Turkey’s Different Fields

Negative effects

Positive effects 86%

Effects on Turkey’s economy

10% 88%

Effects on Turkey’s regional role

9%

Effects on national culture and identity

31% 72%

Effects on Turkey’s security

22% 43%

Effects on national sovereignty and independence

53% 93%

Effects on Turkish democracy 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


TABLE 2 Satisfaction With the Way Democracy is Developing in Turkey in Relation to the Confidence Level in the EU

Satisfied with the way democracy is developing in Turkey

Confidence in the EU 75% No confidence in the EU 53,2% Number of responses 185

Not satisfied with the way democracy is developing in Turkey

Number of responses

25% 46,8% 84

192 77 269

Source: Survey on Turkish elite and the EU carried out by Nicolas Monceau (UMR 5194 PACTE and Grenoble IEP-Pierre Mendes France University). Fieldwork: Turkey, December 2004 - February 2005


119

TABLE 3 Perceived Effects of European Integration on Local Democracy and the Economy in Relation to the Confidence Level in the EU

Positive effects of European integration on local democracy

Confidence in the EU 99% No confidence in the EU 91% Number of responses 260

Positive effects of European integration on the local economy

Number of responses

95% 75% 240

192 77 268


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