Erdoğan was in Brussels to receive a prize at the Crans Montana Forum, where he delivered a speech on EU-Turkey relations. He was accompanied by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Minister for European Affairs and chief negotiator Egemen Bağış. I organized a breakfast meeting with Bağış early last Thursday morning. Turkey is always a big crowd puller, and this time was no exception; over 200 people showed up for Bağış’s speech.Like the Putin-Medvedev tandem, Erdoğan and Bağış were very much in sync. Both of them are extremely charismatic speakers who know how to communicate. While Erdoğan speaks his “man in the street” Turkish, Bağış has perfect command of English, frequently using colloquial terms. They are both self-confident and know how to “sell” Turkey to an audience. Their message was the same: Turkey remains committed to the EU, Turkey is not interested in a privileged partnership, Turkey is re-engaging in the reform process but Turkey also expects the EU to play fair and honor its commitments. For me they both spent too long explaining the importance of Turkey to the EU and why the EU would be a better place with Turkey in it. Strong criticism was made about the narrow vision of some EU politicians and the exploitation of the Turkey issue in recent European Parliament sessions. But this is life and in real democracies people may say what they want for whatever purpose. Turkey must live with it. At the same time Bağış was adamant that Turkey wanted to continue with the “EU diet” because all other previous patients were happier and in better shape because of it.
Bağış also wanted to “share his joy” concerning recent reforms, explaining there would be no summer recess this year as Parliament would be busy with EU legislation. He was particularly proud of a reform carried out the night before which allowed for a considerable increase in money and personnel for the EU coordination secretariat. All Turkish ministries have an EU section and the EU Secretariat coordinates them. With the new reform, there will now be a staff of 300. Two hundred and thirty-five out of the 237 MPs voted in favor of this, which Bağış viewed as Turkey having bipartisan support for the EU. Frankly I am not convinced of that -- getting a few new bureaucrats to work on the EU dossier is one thing, getting the opposition to amend the Constitution is another. Apart from that, most of the reforms he mentioned were ones that had already been carried out -- Kurdish television, changes to the Citizenship Law, a gender issue committee in Parliament, etc. There was very little mention of those issues right at the top of the EU's “hit list.” For example, freedom of media and press; freedom of expression, judicial reform, civil-military relations, the situation in the southeast of the country, etc. On the issue of opening of the Halki Seminary , Bağış said it was an internal human rights issue and that at the same time Greece should take simultaneous action toward its own Turkish minority. Work is under way to try and move this forward, although I doubt it will be very quick. Indeed one could sum up that Turkey is following its own “reform roadmap” as opposed to the one laid out by the EU.
Both Erdoğan and Bağış were bombarded with questions concerning Cyprus and the Nabucco natural gas pipeline. On Cyprus both men cited that the EU should deliver on the promises it made to Turkish Cypriots and implement direct trade regulation if they wanted Turkey to meet its commitments. While it is true the EU has shamelessly failed Turkish Cypriots, this implementation will never happen because the Greek Cypriots will never allow it. The EU decision to allow a divided island to join the EU has turned out to be one of the worst foreign policy decisions ever made in EU history. As Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn stated, it is time to stop all this delving into the past and playing the blame game and focus on the future, going to the absolute limits to help the two Cypriot leaders, Mehmet Ali Talat and Dimitris Christofias, reach a solution.
Turkey's continued stalling on signing the Nabucco intergovernmental agreement is also clearly starting to “annoy” the other Nabucco consortium members, the EU, the energy companies involved and Azerbaijan. Indeed, to a certain degree, Turkey is slapping its so-called “kin” on the face by keeping up these incredibly hardball negotiating tactics. And of course this comes after the fallout over the Armenian border issue. But with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Baku two days ago, the Azerbaijanis are reminding Ankara that they have other cards on the table, too. Turkey should be extremely careful not to overplay its hand or it might just be outplayed at its own game.
