Spain’s Clos: Turkey’s EU accession should be a love affair, not a marriage of interests

“I think that Turkey is Europe, and we should keep talking and explaining to each other to make that a non-negotiable fact. The Turkish accession to the EU should be considered as a love affair, not just as a marriage of interests; there should be more love than interests,” Clos said in an interview with Today’s Zaman.

The EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005. Countries hoping to join the bloc must fulfill requirements in 35 policy negotiating areas, or chapters. With an intergovernmental conference held last month in Brussels where negotiations with Turkey on one new policy area, namely the environment chapter, was opened, Ankara has so far formally opened 12 chapters, of which it has provisionally completed negotiations on just one, science and research.

In addition to eight chapters frozen since 2006 due to a customs dispute, France is blocking another five chapters that are directly linked to full membership and Greek Cyprus plans to block talks on six other chapters.

Spain is a staunch supporter of Turkey’s EU bid and is co-sponsoring the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) initiative with Turkey, launched in 2005 under the aegis of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Turkish diplomats say the two countries enjoy “a team spirit,” while defining Spain as a rising star within the 27-member EU. In April 2009, İstanbul hosted an intergovernmental conference between Spain and Turkey, as well as the high-profile Second Forum of the UNAOC.

‘I think that in the debate on Turkey’s accession to the EU, the geo-strategic argument is overused. … Not much weight is given to the immense opportunity that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in sharing our democratic and socio-economic values,’ says Ambassador Clos

Despite the presence of strong empathy and mutual goodwill between Ankara and Madrid, one cannot ignore the fact that Spain has taken the rotating presidency of the EU at a time when many assume there are only a few remaining chapters available to be opened in regard to Turkey’s negotiation process.

‘Accession a complex, difficult process’

“Spain has always been supportive of full membership for Turkey. We keep on defending this position. From our own accession process, we know that accession is always a complex and difficult process where the most important thing is to maintain the direction and the political will. I think that the most important thing is that Turkey keeps doing all the necessary things to become a full member of the European Union,” Clos noted initially when reminded of those assumptions.

“Turkey should also take into account that apart from the chapters, there are also other ways to advance in the accession process, mainly through political reforms. I am sure we can generate a new positive attitude in Europe in this field. Apart from the chapters, we can put more value on the new processes that Turkey is taking toward Armenia and the Kurdish issue. We should recognize the difficulties on each side at the moment, in order to avoid deception and a loss of interest among people. I think this loss of interest is the worst thing that could happen. Perhaps it’s what the ones who are against it on both sides are looking for,” Clos said.

The Spanish ambassador, representing his country in Turkey since July 2008, highlighted the huge ongoing process of change and adaptation within the EU itself. The adaptation to the enlargement to 27, the introduction of the requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and a new culture of majorities and minorities in the voting system are part of it, he said, adding that this will require a process of adjustment to see how they adapt to the new situation.

According to Clos, one should also not ignore the impact of the economic and financial crisis, which has also generated a more conservative and precautious stance in the EU.

“The mood now within the EU is to weather the crisis, to try to escape from it as soon as possible. But we are not seeing a very well-coordinated response. That is generating a kind of wait-and-see approach to most of the big issues in the EU. The EU itself is now in a challenging period. It’s trying to digest the last enlargement, which has been and still is a compelling exercise. If we understand that, we can be more realistic about calendars and on the advancing of some issues,” Clos continued.

“When our foreign minister [Miguel Angel Moratinos] met Mr. [Foreign Minister Ahmet] Davutoğlu in Córdoba, he said very clearly that we will try to do our best to make the accession process during our presidency an irreversible situation,” Clos said.

Ankara criticizes the blocking of negotiations on new policy areas for political reasons and states that the current obstacles in Turkey’s path toward becoming a full member of the EU are not objective but rather subjective. Ankara also frequently voices disappointment that EU members who oppose Turkey’s accession are actually making a grave strategic mistake.

Clos, however, questions the efficacy of such arguments by Ankara.

“I think that in the debate on Turkey’s accession to the EU, the geo-strategic argument is overused. It’s clear that Turkey is placed in a strategic region and has much economic value and is close to energy resources, but I think that the most important argument for the Turkish accession to the EU should not be economic and geo-strategic but political. This is because Europe is now a little bit indifferent to geo-strategy, but not so to democratic values and the acquis communautaire. Not much weight is given to the immense opportunity that the people of Turkey and Europe will have in sharing our democratic and socio-economic values,” Clos told Today’s Zaman.

The Kingdom of Spain became a full member of what was then known as the European Community in 1986. Most commentators considered the formal incorporation of the Iberian Peninsula into the larger European context as the beginning of an era, and the same commentators also asserted that the transformation of the country’s economy into one of the EU’s strongest was an undeniable reality.

Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, membership has also served as a catalyst to dynamic economic development in Spain, analysts explain, emphasizing how the EU has helped shape the political process in Spain.

“In the Spanish accession process, when we talked about interests and strategy, we never succeeded in the argument. We never moved the hearts of the Europeans when we said we were close to the Strait of Gibraltar, were very important for Europe or when we said our agriculture was very important and we had the largest area of farmland,” said Clos, who was the mayor of Barcelona from 1997 until 2006, when he was appointed minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade in the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

“But when we talked with our European fellows and said, ‘Look, we want to be in the EU because we want to stabilize our democracy forever,’ this was something understood by every European citizen on the street. To give weight only to strategic and business reasons for European accession is purely an argument of interests. To put emphasis on values is a much deeper emotional question. There are countries which have geo-strategic value and position apart from Turkey, but the kind of democracy that you have reached with the republic and that you are trying to improve through governmental and everybody’s efforts makes the difference for Turkey in relation to your neighborhood. This should be the main driving force. Democratic Europe cannot lose a growing democracy in this part of the world. If you ask a German, Frenchman or Spaniard, ‘Do you want to help Turkey to be a European-like democracy with our values or not?’ the answer would be yes. This is more important than oil or agriculture,” he remarked.

Differentiating between terrorism and socio-economic problems

Clos applauded Turkey’s ongoing efforts for the normalization of its relations with neighboring Armenia through establishing diplomatic ties and opening borders as well as for the democratization initiative launched by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government last summer, seeking to settle Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish problem by expanding the democratic rights of its Kurdish citizens.

“I think that the Armenian and Kurdish initiatives, the democratic initiative, are a kind of tectonic movement in Turkish policy. Not so many years ago, it was unthinkable that there could be public debate or a parliamentary debate on those issues. I believe this is a very profound and positive movement in the direction of the Turkey’s 21st century policy. And also the approach to the neighboring countries, which I sincerely consider is not against the EU but the opposite, in favor of the EU. There is a kind of centenary change of direction, and there are real, deep, strategic movements in Turkey which we value a lot,” Clos said.

Last month, the Constitutional Court shut down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) on charges of ethnic separatism. While announcing its ruling, the Constitutional Court also mentioned the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in favor of the closure of Batasuna, the political arm of the ETA, which was banned in Spain in accordance with the 2002 Political Parties Law. A considerable number of experts questioned the appropriateness of such a link between the two cases, suggesting that Turkey’s case laws reflect that talking about independence in Turkey is a legitimate reason to ban a political party even if that political party does not support violence.

Clos was very careful in his remarks when asked whether Spain’s experience could act as an example for Turkey in resolving its Kurdish issue since Spain successfully made a distinction between ETA terrorism and the Basque issue.

“I will answer that by saying that those are difficult issues -- you cannot offer magic solutions, and there are no models. These are very serious and complex issues, and tackling them is specific to every case,” Clos noted.

“The Belgian case is different from the Irish issue, and the Irish issue totally different from the ETA solution. There is no theoretical road map to solve the problem. You will find your way because Turkish history is the essence of it. We can offer what we have found most valuable in our case if you can take something, not everything, from it because the subject is different. In our case, it was very important to differentiate between the social problem and the terrorism problem. Terror is terror, and we should fight terror. That means that if there is a socio-economic or cultural problem, then you should face this problem although there is terrorism, because if you don’t solve the socio-economic and cultural problem, you are caught in the terrorist trap. In our case, the socio-economic and cultural problems were faced with a new Constitution in 1978. And the terrorism problem was solved in another place, by the police in the Interior Ministry,” Clos said.

“It’s quite clear; one thing was to solve the social and identity demands of the Basque people -- 99.99 percent of whom are not terrorists, of course -- and a very different thing was to fight against the small minority who use arms to fight and in killing do not respect human rights. The solution to the Basque political, cultural and socio-economic demands was in the Constitution, and, very importantly, it was not specific to the Basques. Terror should be fought with anti-terrorist measures, and political, cultural and socio-economic issues should be faced through the work of the parliament and political parties.”

Ending the Clausewitz paradigm

Clos believes that every effort to promote understanding among people on earth is extremely relevant and therefore believes that the UNAOC has an important mission in discovering why humanity still has wars, even though when the Cold War finished, everybody thought the world was approaching an era without wars.

“This is the main objective of the Alliance of Civilizations: to have a serious debate on why we keep misunderstanding each other and why we still have wars in the 21st century. Clausewitz said that ‘war is merely the continuation of politics by other means.’ We should put an end to the Clausewitz paradigm.”