Turk PM loses EU election card

Critics accuse Erdogan’s ruling party of submitting to patronizing and tortuous accession process

A fisherman looks across the Bosporus at a banner of Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday.

By Sibel Utka - Agence France-Presse

ANKARA – Launching Turkey’s membership talks with the European Union was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s greatest foreign policy achievement but, two years on, it is a subject he would rather avoid during his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) election campaign.

Instead, Erdogan is fighting opposition charges of “submitting” to what Turks have widely come to see as a patronizing, humiliating and tortuous EU accession process whose ultimate aim of membership for this mainly Muslim nation appears more elusive than ever.

Ankara’s enthusiasm for reform has waned and public support nosedived amid frequent rows with Brussels.

Some EU members, notably France, are actively pushing for alternatives that fall short of full membership for Turkey, whose candidacy has added to the bloc’s own indecision about its future.

In Turkey’s eyes, Brussels “is determined to siderail its application for all eternity,” Andrew Finkel, a veteran observer of Turkey, wrote recently. “So no ruling party in Turkey can go to the polls bragging that it has filled out the form to join a club that laughs at it behind its back,” he said.

The latest blow came in June when incoming French President Nicolas Sarkozy blocked the start of EU talks with Turkey on monetary policy.

“The government can gain nothing by making the EU process an election issue,” said Mehmet Ozcan from the Ankara-based think-tank USAK. The democracy reforms Erdogan’s AKP carried out to win the green light for accession talks in 2005 “led to a significant transformation in Turkey, but this is being completely ignored” ahead of Sunday’s poll, he said.

Domestic factors too helped to reduce the appeal of the pro-EU stance.

Fresh violence by separatist Kurdish rebels in southeast Turkey strengthened the hand of the AKP’s nationalist opponents who argue that EU demands for greater freedoms for the Kurdish minority are encouraging the insurgency.

Eager to capitalize on simmering public anger over the mounting death toll, opposition parties have slammed the AKP over its reluctance to heed army calls for an incursion into neighboring Iraq, where the rebels enjoy safe haven. Among them is the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which, although officially for EU membership, has shown little appetite for democracy reforms.

In April, it led an army-backed campaign that blocked parliament from electing Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to the presidency on the grounds that a head of state from the Islamist-rooted AKP would undermine Turkey’s secular regime.

The CHP has also opposed amending an infamous law that penalizes “insulting Turkishness” and landed several leading intellectuals in court. Among them were 2006 Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager in January.

The far-right Nationalist Action Party, widely expected to get more than 10 percent of the national vote needed to gain parliamentary representation in Sunday’s election, is hostile to the EU.

Its election manifesto says Turkey’s bid has become “a story of disillusion... blackmail, fiats and unjust demands” and calls for a pause in the process “for strategic reflection.” But public opinion surveys show that despite its woes, the AKP is still Turkey’s most popular party and stands a good chance of governing again on its own.

Analysts, however, say its declared commitment to reform will not suffice to revive Ankara’s membership bid as long as EU nations fail to resolve the bloc’s own rifts and send a unified signal that Turkey’s membership is genuinely desired. “Not even the most pro-EU party in Turkey can resolve the impasse if the EU’s internal problems remain unsolved,” Ozcan said.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s prime minister said yesterday that he would quit politics if his ruling center-right Justice and Development Party (AKP) does not win enough seats to form a government alone after Sunday’s parliamentary election.

Opinion polls suggest Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ex-Islamist, will secure enough support to form a single-party government again, though some analysts do not rule out a coalition. “If we cannot come to power on our own, I will withdraw from politics,” Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular politician, said in televised remarks during a campaign rally in southern Turkey. His threat appeared partly aimed at encouraging supporters who might otherwise prefer to stay on the beach during this holiday season to cast their ballots. Erdogan defied his main rivals to make a similar pledge, knowing that neither the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) nor the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has a realistic chance of forming a single-party government. Opinion polls show the AKP winning up to 40 percent of the vote, with the staunchly secularist CHP coming second on about 20 percent and the MHP on 10 to 15 percent. A large number of independent candidates, many of them supporters of more rights for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority, are also expected to win seats in the 550-member parliament.

Erdogan’s AKP has presided over strong economic growth, falling inflation, surging foreign investment and the historic launch of EU entry talks in the past five years. But increased attacks on Turkish security forces by Kurdish separatist rebels have bolstered support for nationalist parties. Officials said yesterday that two Turkish soldiers had been killed in a clash with rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey. In another development yesterday, a Turkish businessman running as an independent candidate in Sunday’s polls was shot dead, media reports said. Police suspect the attack on Tuncay Seyranlioglu, a 42-year-old company director, was linked to a financial dispute.