The simple answer is that it has certainly gone into hiding during this “double” election year. The Parliament will have to elect a new president in May and the electorate will have to elect a new parliament by November. The governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is reasonably popular with the public and it is also popular with the markets who are convinced that the Treasury will do everything in its power to stay the course in keeping the virtuous circle turning of bring down inflation, lowering interest rates and reducing debt. Turkey’s allies both in Brussels and Washington are also happier listening to the single voice of the current government than the cacophony of coalitions past. The most determined opposition to the government is not in parliament or in the country or even in foreign capitals but from Turkey’s own bureaucracy wary of its neo-Islamic tint. The military in particular do not want to see the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan have himself elected president and grab the power of appointment the office holds. Those close to these “state-ist” interests accuse the US of backing the AK Party as “good Muslims” as part of a grand design for a Greater Middle East. The AK Party in turn fears events, like the recent assassination of newspaper editor Hrant Dink, are being orchestrated against it by those out to destabilize their authority ahead of the election. They are wary at being outflanked by a flag-waving opposition.
This might explain why nationalism has become such a potent force now, even though for the past 10 years Ankara has been fighting tooth and nail for the right to negotiate away its sovereignty by starting accession talks with the EU. It used a rude shock to those inside the EU who rant against the tyranny of Brussels, that for many Turks, EU membership holds out the promise of being better ruled. EU accession not only appeals to the age-old dream of modernization, but comes with a thick instruction manual (the 80,000 pages of acquis communautaire) of how to get it done. This enthusiasm, however, is fast loosing ground.
To be fair to Turkish nationalists, they are not so much Euroskeptics as skeptical about the whole world. Their watchword is that “Turks have no friends other than themselves,” which they do their best to make a self-fulfilling prophesy. With postmodern skills at self-pastiche, the strategy is less to convince Turks to renounce Europe than to snarl and rant so that Europe rejects Turkey first -- and then to capitalize on the resentment this causes. A new crop of European politicians led by French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy are more than willing to play along.
All the same, in this election year no Turkish politician wants to be seen to be seeking admission to a club that treats its application with less than enthusiasm. Yet the political reality is that no one in Turkey, and that includes the military, wants to take the blame for officially scuppering the European project. Even the far-right National Action Party abandoned their cherished hope of hanging the convicted PKK leader while serving in a coalition that abandoned the death penalty in 2002 under EU pressure.
The key here is that, as in Central Europe, the big boost to the economy comes in the run-up to membership and not when the country has to abide by all those expensive rules. The Turkish economy is mending nicely after the economic crises in 2000-2001, which helped bring the current government to power. Foreign banks, from Citicorps to Paribas, are falling over themselves to grab a Turkish partner, lured by prospect of a quantum leap in business as this economy of over 70 million people grows and grows. From their perspective Turkey is already inside the European economic zone. For over 10 years Turkey has had a customs union with the EU. Manufactured goods already go in and out of the country duty free.
“It would take three to four years to complete all the technical negotiations,” said Ali Babacan, the economics minister who is in charge of talks with Brussels. But he knows that Turkey cannot enter the promised land for another decade at least. Like any politician he measures time not in years but in the number of times that key member states have to go to the polls before it becomes time to sign off on Turkish admission. In some countries, that could mean two or three governments from now. From this perspective, it is hard to see how the ball is entirely in Turkey’s court.
