The EU-Turkey: Liar’s poker

CENGİZ AKTAR

Reports from irresponsible local media outlets want readers to believe that Turkish-EU relations have entered a new era. Turks will be able to travel to Europe without visas starting in October 2016 and it seems as though Turkey will soon become a full EU member. Let me elaborate on what did and did not happen in Brussels on Sunday afternoon.

- As if to refute Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's high-sounding “historic deal” remarks, the Belgian and Dutch prime ministers declared that the bargain-hunting was only about refugees. Not to mention European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's insinuations that visa exemption and membership negotiations will be subject to requirements that Turkey will have extreme difficulties fulfilling.

- Visa exemption has its own independent roadmap consisting of 72 requirements. The European Stability Initiative (ESI) maintains the scorecard for this roadmap. According to the scorecard (www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=555), Turkey was miles away from fulfilling these requirements last year. Some of the requirements include signing personal data conventions and ratifying the fourth and seventh protocols to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Since last year, barely any progress has been made on these requirements. At this point however, the greatest obstacle to visa exemption is the presence of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Turkey. Even 3,000 or so ISIL militants, as declared by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), are enough to annul visa exemption. To the psychosis created by such eventuality, we may add local unemployment as well as Turkish asylum seekers whose number is rising due to chronic human rights violations. It seems fair to predict, like so many other fancy “important” dates provided by politicians in the past regarding Turkey's accession, that October 2016 too may just come and go.

Independence of Central Bank of Turkey improbable

- As for Turkey's EU accession negotiations, the Dec. 14 date given for the opening of the chapter on economic and monetary policy that concerns the euro has only symbolic value. In order for this chapter to be closed successfully, the independence of the Central Bank of Turkey is a must, but under present conditions that looks very improbable. More significantly, there are serious structural economic reasons that will keep Turkey out of the eurozone for the foreseeable future.

- It is not clear at this point what other chapters might be opened, although there have been references to them. Three chapters that could have been opened without political obstacles, namely those on public procurement, competition policy and social policy, cannot be opened due to Ankara's unwillingness to comply with the opening benchmarks. In other words Turkey didn't have to wait for the so-called “historic deal” of Sunday to open chapters. In the meantime, the chapter on justice, freedom and security -- unilaterally blocked by Cyprus for a long time now -- deals, inter alia, with the refugee policy, the very issue of Sunday's summit. The reason Syrians are trying to go to Europe is Turkey's nonexistent refugee policy, due to its geographic reservation clause to the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention. The chapter on justice, freedom and security would indeed require Turkey to withdraw its reservation from the 1951 Refugee Convention.

However, in negotiating with Turkey concerning refugees, the EU is not discussing the matter within the framework of the accession negotiations, as it is normally expected to do, but seeks to make Turkey police those refugees in an ad hoc manner. The final declaration's provision, “other chapters may be opened without prejudice to the positions of member countries,” means that Cyprus will continue to veto the opening of six chapters. Looking at the minimum progress made on 13 chapters that are open, we can safely conclude that neither side is putting any real priority on the accession negotiations.

- As for the funds worth 3 billion euros, 500 million euros will be provided from the EU budget while the rest will be granted by member states. Of the member states, only the UK has mentioned a figure so far. It is not clear if the commission will pay 500 million euros from a new financial facility or from the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA), already budgeted for Turkey. In any case, the EU usually transfers these funds via specialized UN agencies and continuously monitors and audits how they are spent. How these funds will be audited in a country that lacks financial auditing mechanisms is not clear.

What the EU has accepted

- Within this framework, the predicted 3 billion euros to come from the EU is meant to counterbalance the $8 billion Turkey claims to have spent on refugees, but which has not been officially registered anywhere. Despite the lack of hard data on this monetary figure, one which top Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials love to mention over and over in public speeches, it appears that the EU has accepted this as fact. This, in and of itself, is not normal.

- According to the agreement, the EU is to resettle refugees into various EU countries in an orderly manner. This is, however, a stage of the procedure that will depend on the stance of the individual member states. In other words, it may be followed, it might not be followed or perhaps only the most qualified of refugees will be accepted while the others are turned away; we will just have to wait and see.

- Let's talk about the EU's expectations from Turkey. First of all, unless you are North Korea, i.e., with tightly restricted borders guarded by the military, refugees will continue to flow into the EU; Turkey may make a show of keeping them in, but rest assured they will keep coming.

- The carrot offered by the EU to keep the 2 million Syrian refugees here in Turkey includes Arabic language education opportunities, social security and regular jobs. Brussels is clearly dealing with nonsense on this front!

- The proposal that Turkey will re-admit rejected refugees whose asylum claims have been rejected by the EU is a swaggering, bravado-filled promise on paper. In reality however, the readmission agreement's effective implementation rate is less than 5 percent of cases.

In the end, the recent Brussels agreement that we are all reading about these days was clearly not reached in order to re-energize Turkey's EU accession process. On the contrary in fact, the agreement highlights the reality that neither side herein has any real priorities; it may even signal the de facto end of the accession process. Since last summer, the EU has ignored the outright trampling of democracy, human rights and the rule of law that has been clearly on display in Turkey. When it comes to Turkey, Brussels seems to completely discount its own values and principles. In redefining its relations with Turkey, the EU has now downgraded it to the status of a Third World country which you deal with occasionally and on a “project basis.” Other than some monies that may flow in from the EU, we will see no tangible results from this agreement. Alas, the real effects will be on the plight of refugees who will have more hardship and on those liberal segments of Turkish society who are now on their own in their struggle to save and keep alive the ailing Turkish democracy.