EU accession: Germany’s rhetorical ‘no’ changes nothing, expert says

Criticism comes from German opposition party The Greens. Manuel Sarrazin (27), a member of the Bundestag from The Greens, told Sunday’s Zaman that the paragraphs on accession would be meager and contrary to what was needed. “Turkey needs a strong signal,” Sarrazin claims. “The government’s policy would be ‘clientele policy’ to please their conservative voters and populist anti-Turkey bluster.”

Admittedly, the disputed passages do not come across as a clear “no” as much as the Bavarian position: On page 117 of 134, the agreement claims that negotiations between the EU and Turkey “with the aim of accession are an open-ended process which does not imply any automaticity and whose outcome cannot be guaranteed at the outset.” And surprisingly, this and other sentences are in fact even identical word-for-word with the wording in the 2005 coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which together with social-democrat Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier favored and still favors Turkish accession. Thus, what has changed? What will change?

Heinz Kramer, an expert on German-Turkish relations at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, argues that not much will change, if anything at all. As the wording of the old and new coalition agreements is identical, Kramer argues, the liberal FDP would have stood up to the conservative “big C” parties in the coalition negotiations, though the FDP is the small partner in this new “coalition of three.” In its own party program the FDP does not explicitly favor Turkish accession but refers to the Copenhagen criteria that define whether a country is eligible to join the EU.

Kramer expects the agreement to work as a guideline and does not therefore anticipate much change in Germany’s policy regarding Turkey’s accession plans. Thus, Kramer says, “The federal government will make neither positive nor negative initiatives at the Council of the European Union,” but will “follow along the line of the other 26” member states. Anyway, even if the German coalition follows the CSU anti-Turkey route, it might not have much of an effect, as the aim of negotiations between Turkey and the EU is stated in the documents: accession. Other policies such as the so-called privileged partnership, a term used by CDU and CSU politicians, were not even negotiable in the current process,” Kramer notes.

The privileged partnership had been proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then opposition leader, to the Turkish government in 2004 as an alternative to EU membership but was vehemently rejected by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government. Though it is still the alternative both the CDU and CSU are proposing, Kramer regards it as “vague and undefined,” being “nothing else than another formulation for a ‘no’ to accession,” euphemistically termed as an alternative.

Now regarding the practical outcome of Germany’s politics, all eyes are on new Foreign Minister Westerwelle, who has chaired his FDP since 2001 and was its general secretary since 1994. Rather a newbie in foreign politics, with this being his first time in public office after a long and fast party career, many Germans are skeptical of his ability in foreign politics.

Regarding Turkey, although he did not mention the country in his inaugural address, Westerwelle expressed some favor for Turkey’s accession plans when he said Turkey “is rightfully expecting that Europe will not deny its wish of accession as a matter of principle,” in an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel in May.

In Germany Westerwelle was considered more an entertainer than a politician, an image that derived from his former election campaigns in which he tried to give his liberal party the image of a “fun party” and a TV appearance at this time where he showed off his shoe soles painted with a yellow “18” -- his ambitiously declared percentage aim for the elections. When the FDP ended up with just 7.4 percent, his political star seemed to be waning. But while his party gained during the financial crisis, Westerwelle succeeded as well in changing his image. Winning 14.6 percent of the vote in the 2009 elections not only gave his FDP third place in the party ranking in the German Bundestag but also made Westerwelle the party’s undisputable leader.

In public, however, he remains disputed. Sometimes it is about his cheeky tone -- after the elections, he scolded a BBC journalist who asked a question in English and asked for Westerwelle’s answer in the same language. Videos of Westerwelle’s outburst and of him speaking English received millions of views on video-sharing Web site YouTube. Ever since, some satirists have been making fun of his English skills on channels on micro-blogging platform Twitter and the Facebook social networking site called “Westerwave” -- translating his name literally.