The alarming ramifications of Europe’s chronic cluelessness over the migrant crisis were illustrated last week by something that did not happen in Brussels: the European commission’s annual progress report on Turkey’s EU membership application, due out on Wednesday, failed to appear.
The problem was not a shortage of paper and ink. The problem was how Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s choleric president, might react to the report’s expected criticisms of his government’s blatant disregard for EU principles concerning free speech, impartial courts, minority rights, independent media and respect for the rule of law.
Progress report is a bit of a misnomer. Turkey has been trying to join the European club since 1987. It has steadily got nowhere. This lack of progress is due in part to opposition from Germany, among others. By regularly focusing attention on Turkey’s poor human rights record, the report handily obscured the less laudable motivations of some EU members, such as anti-Muslim bias.
This year’s calculated attempt to do the exact opposite and avoid embarrassing Erdogan, a move actively supported by David Cameron, shows how radically the balance of interest has shifted. The report is now due to be published on 21 October, a safe distance from today’s visit to Ankara by Angela Merkel. Germany’s chancellor, once again acting as EU chief and top firefighter despite criticism at home, will try to seal the deal with Turkey on migrants that was tentatively arranged at last week’s EU summit.
Even if Erdogan agrees to help, it is uncertain how effective such assistance will be. Turkey hosts more than 2 million Syrian refugees. Many live unregistered in towns and cities, rather than in camps. Preventing them from heading for western Europe if they wish, and closing down smuggling networks into Greece and the Balkans, would tax the best-resourced, best-disposed of governments. With or without a proposed €3bn in EU aid, Turkey is not in this category.
A larger objection to Merkel’s mission lies in the unsavoury, unwise compromises EU leaders appear ready to make to secure Ankara’s co-operation. Dangling the prospect of accelerated accession negotiations sets a terrible precedent. Floating the idea of visa-free travel in the Schengen area for 70 million Turks looks dishonest, given that many national parliaments, not least Germany’s, would strongly object. Offering a de facto bribe to pay for police to keep migrants away from western Europe’s borders, turning Turkey into a sort of low-rent buffer zone, is offensive and wrong.
More dangerous still for a Europe that continues, despite growing evidence to the contrary, to pride itself on its liberal, democratic values is Erdogan’s implicit, reciprocal demand: that the EU turns a blind eye to the many abuses that have become routine in what, under this divisive president and his ruling Justice and Development party, is rapidly turning into a frightened, violent and authoritarian police state.
Sadly, this is no exaggeration. When 100 or more peace marchers are blown to pieces, unprotected by security forces, as happened in Ankara last weekend, and the media are barred from reporting the unconvincing official investigations, alarm bells ring loudly. Ankara was, after all, only the most recent, and worst, of many similar outrages, celebrated, if not perpetrated, by Turkey’s ugly, out of control far-right nationalists. When elected opposition politicians are vilified as traitors and stooges of foreign powers, when their party offices are bombed and supporters arrested, and when a critically important peace process (with the Kurds) is sabotaged for electoral gain, it is necessary to think hard about what kind of partner Erdogan really is.
When young demonstrators are killed or gassed, as in Taksim Square in Istanbul, when electoral fraud goes unchallenged, when newspapers and journalists who question the president’s actions are attacked, jailed or sacked, and when high-level corruption scandals are swept under the carpet by tame prosecutors and judges, it is time to listen to the public, not its repressive so-called master or “reis”.
As general elections on 1 November approach, and as Erdogan ruthlessly pushes for an all-powerful executive presidency, Turks are witnessing, in the words of one brave, independent columnist, Kadri Gursel, the “murder of democracy over time”. Angela Merkel should have no part in this. Whatever the stakes, on migration or Syria or anything else, neither should the EU. This is not a moment to make Erdogan look respectable. It is a moment to take a stand.
