The IMF might have been the most important part of the mix, but it was just one element in the ballast that helped stabilize Turkey in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis. The global environment, a lot of excess liquidity sloshing around, made it easier to attract direct foreign investment. Turkey went from zero as outside investors started buying into the country’s recovery. But there was also the prospect of EU membership, which forced the world to look at Turkey with new respect. The Helsinki summit of 1999 gave Turkey the prospect of EU membership, and by 2005 Ankara was at the negotiating table.The first Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government showed great earnestness in getting the accession process started. It showed less enthusiasm for getting a sprint start off the blocks. Their job might not have been easy. Newspaper revelation after revelation is only now giving us a glimpse into the conspiracies that tried to prevent this government from governing. However, it was not the backroom boys running Ergenekon that stopped the government from repealing repressive legislation like Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) or making the government tender process more transparent. I used to quip that Turkish governments were more serious about wanting to be full candidates for the European Union than they were about wanting to be a full member. Candidacy was a fine advertisement to the outside world that the economy was stabilizing, whereas progress towards actual membership meant an end to “politics-as-usual.”
We now live in more turbulent times, and there is less foreign investment and far less external demand for Turkish goods and services. The latest Turkish figures show little change in the rate of the urban population out of work (15.6 percent), and it remains difficult for young people to break into employment -- one in four is looking for a job. Alas, it is not just in Turkey that economists talk about the “jobless” or even “job loss” recovery where growth resumes without a concomitant rise in people back at work. So even if Turkey believes it can keep its public finances under control without a taskmaster from the IMF, it still needs to rethink its structural priorities if it is going to be able to provide the opportunities its population craves.
Is this also a problem that Turkey can solve on its own? The notion that the EU can be a guiding light in the period ahead is not just that its leverage over Turkish policy is much reduced but that it is experiencing troubles of its own. The eurozone is a region of uncertainty, and from the Aegean to the North Sea, Europe itself is faced with hard choices. Even before the crisis Europe was experiencing pangs of enlargement fatigue. A conservative right in France and Germany tried to stall the whole accession process. The question is whether this actually suited a Turkish government for whom the notion that “Europe doesn’t really want us” was a cultural reflex. Might not European misgivings be just the right excuse for its own reluctance to get on with the job?
The answer is no, if we are to believe Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turkish foreign minister. “Turkey’s membership is an opportunity for the EU, and EU membership is an extremely important strategic essential target for Turkey,” he said with the EU enlargement minister, Stefan Füle, sitting by his side. The logic behind these remarks is the logic that kick-started membership talks in the first place. This is that a stable Turkey makes for a more prosperous Europe and that Europe can still provide an institutional model for a Turkey that cannot get its own internal balances right. It is a thesis that will be tested in the days ahead.
