Survival

Global Politics and Strategy

ISSN: 0039-6338 (Print) 1468-2699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsur20

The European Union and Turkey

B. Buzan & T. Diez

To cite this article: B. Buzan & T. Diez (1999) The European Union and Turkey, Survival, 41:1,
41-57, DOI: 10.1093/survival/41.1.41

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1093/survival/41.1.41

Published online: 07 Dec 2010.

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 The European Union and Turkey 41

The European Union

and Turkey
○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

Relations between Turkey and the European Union (EU) have gone badly
wrong. After decades of standing in the queue, Turkey is the only country with
a current membership application against which the EU door has been
slammed shut. That door is bound to remain closed for the foreseeable future, a
situation that poses problems not only for both sides, but also for the whole
framework of security in the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. Since the US is more enthusiastic about Turkish membership of
the EU than are most EU members, it could even damage transatlantic
relations. The EU’s December 1997 sidelining of Turkey’s application for full
membership upset long-standing expectations and commitments, however
shaky they may have been, and threw open an array of possibilities, some of
them worrying. Particularly dangerous would be a worsening of Turkey’s
resentful reaction against the EU, a reaction very much evident when Turkey
suspended all political relations (but not the customs union) with the EU after
its rejection.1 Understandable as it may seem from the perspective of the
Turkish government, such a reaction threatens to make cooperation between
the EU and Turkey even more difficult.
There is no consensus either in Turkey or in the EU about how their
relationship should develop, and there is a considerable danger that emotional
reactions radiating from the breakdown will poison the possibilities. The
polemics arising from Italy’s refusal in late 1998 to extradite Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan to Turkey showed the potency
of that poison. A central difficulty lies in the way that the EU–Turkey
relationship penetrates deeply into the domestic politics of both sides. The
internal political constitution and the basic construction of collective identity in
both entities is deeply intertwined with the nature of the relationship between
them. (In the case of Europe, the identity issue revolves around who can and
who cannot be considered ‘European’.) This relationship is thus important not
only in itself and for its regional consequences, but also because it is
fundamental to the future development of the political form and the identity of
Turkey and the EU alike.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Barry Buzan is Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster, and Director
of the project group on European security at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI).
Thomas Diez is a Research Fellow at COPRI.

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© International Institute for Strategic Studies
42 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

There is an urgent need to reassess the current policies between Turkey and
the EU, which are largely still rooted in the past, and to develop alternative
visions for their future relationship. That Turkey will not become a full EU
member in the foreseeable future need not be seen as an inherently bad thing.
A Turkey that is closely linked to the EU, but not fully part of it, may find it
easier to develop more tolerant and pluralistic forms of national identity and to
intensify its relations with its neighbouring states in the Caucasus and other
Turkic states in Central Asia. The EU, for its part, may continue to support
further democratisation and liberalisation in Turkey, while not running the risk
of being drawn into tensions and conflicts in which it does not have to be
directly involved.
Building such a new relationship will not be easy, because it requires both
parties to reflect on their self-definitions – definitions with which they felt quite
comfortable throughout the Cold War, but which now seem increasingly
contradictory. Failure to build such a new relationship will mean that both
parties continue to store up a legacy of troubles that will have repercussions far
beyond either their domestic politics or the particulars of the relationship
between them.
Rethinking the relationship between Turkey and the EU requires attention
to two conceptual points. First, the old game between the EU and Turkey (and
indeed between the EU and all of its periphery) has been played too much
according to strict ‘inside/outside’ understandings about which relationships
are possible and desirable within the EU framework.2 Putting too much
emphasis on being wholly ‘in’ or ‘not in’ has narrowed political visions in an
unhelpful way, and runs counter to the EU’s increasingly ‘postmodern’
character.3 Second, there has been excessive blurring of the distinction between
Turkey’s relationship with Europe on the one hand, and with the West
(particularly the US) on the other. This issue is linked to a wider confusion
about differing concepts of the ‘West’. These distinctions have to be kept clear if
a new course is to be charted.

The Old Game between Turkey and the EU

The old game between Turkey and the EU can be summarised as follows:

• apparent promises of full membership to Turkey by the European

Community;
• strong commitment to, and expectation of, eventual membership by Turkey;
• slow implementation of their commitments by both sides.

The 1963 Ankara (or Association) Agreement gave associate membership of the
EC to Turkey. This status was granted mainly to improve Turkey’s economic
performance and living standards. Beyond that, the preamble and Article 28 of
the Agreement stressed that this improvement should facilitate later EC
membership, which would be considered once full implementation of the
Agreement had indicated that Turkey was ready to take over the respon-

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 The European Union and Turkey 43

sibilities emanating from the EC Treaty.4 The Agreement thus seemed to

recognise Turkey’s claim to be a European state. Given Turkey’s relatively low
level of economic development, its strong authoritarian political traditions and
weak civil society, the Agreement opened up a long road, but one with a
definite terminus. The underlying assumption on both sides, but particularly in
Turkey, was that implementation of the Agreement would help to bring about
an ‘economic miracle’.5 But Turkey was subsequently excluded from the
various widenings of the EC/EU in 1973, 1981, 1986 and 1995. Its application
for full membership in 1987, after nearly seven years of standstill in the wake of
the 1980 military coup, was politely rejected in 1989. The grounds of the
rejection included failure to qualify on a long list of ‘standard of civilisation’
issues, such as insufficient political pluralism, too many human-rights
violations and problems over Cyprus. The Commission instead urged more
cooperation to bring Turkey gradually closer to the Union. This led to the
reinvigoration of the Agreement, and in 1996 Turkey finally achieved the
unique status of having a customs union with the EU.6 The debate surrounding
the rejection of immediate full membership made clear the growing concern
over the economic and political implications of taking into the EU a large state
with enormous regional differences in economic performance. But it also
highlighted concerns about the expected increase in migration due to freedom
of movement within the EU. German politicians in particular raised this issue.
Whereas in the 1960s, Turkish immigrants were welcome as a source of badly
needed labour, later discussions about migration emanated from a very
different economic situation in the major EU states, with more concern that
further migration might provoke social conflict.7 The final blow came in
December 1997, when the EU’s Luxembourg European Council meeting
effectively pushed Turkey off the list of prospective full members. The Council
reiterated ‘Turkey’s eligibility for accession to the European Union’, and asked
the Commission to prepare a strategy for assisting Turkey with further reforms
– the so-called ‘European strategy for Turkey’. However, given the queue of
other applicant states with more favourable prospects, the effect of this
decision was to put off full membership indefinitely. Out of 12 recognised
applicants, Turkey remains the only country that is not yet visibly on the track
to membership.8
Since 1981, crises in the EU–Turkish relationship have been partly due to the
demands of the new EC member Greece, a major obstacle, for example, to
reinvigorating the Ankara Agreement and then implementing the customs
union. But stops and starts in the EU–Turkey relationship have also been
driven by domestic developments in Turkey. Military interventions in
government there during 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997 have been particularly
troubling to the relationship, and it is claimed that the military had more
influence on the Turkish government in 1998 than at any time since the last
democratisation of 1983.9 Corresponding human-rights violations in Ankara’s
treatment of both the Kurdish population and other critical voices were
especially egregious during the 1970s and 1980s, but a more recent example

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44 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

was the attempt at prohibiting the author Ayse Zarakolu from leaving the
country to receive the Freedom to Publish award at the 1998 Frankfurt Book
Fair.
Within Turkey, the legitimacy of the political and military élite’s ‘Kemalist’
project of Westernising the country has depended, to a significant degree, on a
plausible prospect of EU membership. Kemalism – the state ideology be-
queathed by Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey – rests on six pillars:10

• secularism (removing the direct influence of religious leaders on political

decisions and education);
• republicanism (organising the polity as a modern state, as opposed to the
Ottoman Empire);
• populism (not accepting class divisions, but making the well-being of the
people as a whole the central aim of politics);
• nationalism (establishing a single, unified Turkish nation beyond religious
or ethnic allegiances);
• etatism (securing state influence in the economy);
• reformism (continuous adaptation of the state to new conditions).

This overall design is still upheld by the Westernising élite, despite some
changes in detail. Even where it has been abandoned, as in the case of etatism
since the 1980s, its legacy is still strong: the state-run sector still accounts for
11% of value added in industrial production.11
In decades past, the promoters of Kemalism justified their programme
partly on the grounds that it was a path leading to eventual membership of the
EC/EU. At the same time, advocates of Turkey’s EC/EU candidacy, both in
Turkey and in EU member-states, have considered it something of a sacred
truth that membership is a necessary anchor for Westernisation. A Turkey
remaining outside, according to the standard argument, would be prey to
Islamist forces, would draw away from Europe and towards the Middle East,
and thus would become a factor of instability and a threat to Europe’s south-
eastern border. Such arguments as are put forth by Turkish politicians – our
country is ‘European’, our neighbours are not – is a refrain common to EU
membership applicants.12 In the case of Turkey, however, such arguments
ignore the differences between the Kemalist definitions of the ‘West’ and those
prevalent in the EU.
Ankara’s Westernisation strategy has, in fact, effectively led to an increasing
or at least unchanged distance from the EU when it comes to issues of
pluralism, democracy and human rights. The November 1998 report of the
Commission on Turkey writes of an ‘excessively narrow interpretation of the
Constitution and other legal provisions … concerning the unity of the state,
territorial integrity, secularism and respect for formal institutions of the state’.13
At the same time, Westernisation understood in such a limited way denies the
historical and cultural differences between Turkey and Europe, as well as
within Turkey itself.

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 The European Union and Turkey 45

Thus, the Westernisation project poses a cultural problem on two levels.

First, under the surface of ‘Westernisation’ one finds different political
cultures.14 Some liberals in Turkey hold democratic, pluralist views of
Westernisation that are broadly in line with current understandings in the West
itself. But some Islamists in Turkey reject any sort of Westernisation, and some
Kemalists pursue a vision of Westernisation that owes more to its nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century nationalist and authoritarian traditions, than to
late twentieth-century liberal ones. Second, to strengthen the current Western-
isation movement is to deny many Turks their right to cultural self-
determination. From this perspective, the culturalist undertones of membership
rejection in 1997, most explicit in statements of Christian Democrat leaders
after a meeting of the European People’s Party in March 1997, in which their
argument against an early EU membership of Turkey was partly based on
civilisational and cultural difference, cannot be easily dismissed out of hand.15
Likewise, there is some merit to similar culturalist claims within Turkey. But
both fall into the same trap. Their worldview is of a civilisational black and
white, with clear divisions and borders. In short, they both violate cultural
pluralism.
The problem of discordant understandings of Westernisation, both within
Turkey and between the Kemalist élites and the West, is reflected in the
different character of Turkey’s relationship with the EU on the one hand and
with the US on the other. In thinking about the future it is vital to keep the
different character of these relationships distinct. The passion of Turkey’s
Kemalist élites to legitimise their Westernising project has led to a general
embracing of all available linkages to the West. But the Kemalist project’s
narrow and old-fashioned understanding of Westernisation – particularly the
strength of its statist, nationalist and authoritarian elements, and the weakness
of its commitment to democracy and pluralism – makes some relationships
easier, others more difficult to sustain. Turkey’s social and political differences
from the West do not stand in the way of its memberships in NATO, the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). These member-
ships in part reflect the successes of the Kemalist project, though they also
reflect the exigencies of the West’s strategic needs during the Cold War. In
particular, domestic differences matter little in primarily military relationships,
which explains why Turkey’s relationship with the US is much less troubled
than its relationship with the EU. While Turkey’s relationship with the US is
largely strategic, with the EC/EU it additionally incorporates the embracing of
a Westernising identity project – to become a European state – where domestic
differences matter. In pursuit of this goal, Turkey has both imposed a rather
harsh version of Westernisation on its own people, and sought memberships in
European bodies. It has gained not only its various agreements with the EU,
but also membership of the Council of Europe and, since 1992, associate
membership of the Western European Union (WEU), upgraded in 1995 to
include voting rights. But going much further than this runs into the barriers of

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46 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

what might be called ‘identity politics’ or ‘societal security’.16 The contradiction

is clear. Further integration between Turkey and the EU threatens the social
and political self-identification of each to an unsustainable degree. Domestic
differences that are acceptable in more general strategic and economic
relations, become unacceptable when the project is a quite deep integration of
economy, law and politics such as that being undertaken by the members of the
EU.
The end of the Cold War exposed differences between the EU and the US
concerning relations with Turkey. During the Cold War, the strategic partner-
ship overshadowed most other considerations. Since 1990, the deep problems
thrown up by Turkey’s aspiration to membership have moved to the forefront
of the EU’s concerns, whereas the US still retains a primarily strategic view of
Turkey as a useful regional partner.17 Strong US support for Turkish acceptance
into the EU creates tensions within NATO. This US position reflects the inertia
of Cold War thinking in Washington, insensitivity to the real problems that
Turkey and the EU pose for each other, and a lack of imagination for rethinking
the question of EU membership specifically (and EU–Turkey relations more
generally) in the light of post-Cold War realities.
The old game is now over. The EU has effectively withdrawn the promise
of full membership for the foreseeable future, while within Turkey the Kemalist
vision is increasingly challenged by Islamist élites who reject the Westernising
project, not least because it denies them the construction of their own identity.
The future, by contrast, seems to provide Turkey with a wider range of
opportunities. With the independence of former Soviet republics in Central
Asia, many Turks saw a new role and a new identity for their country, both
within the Turkic and Islamic worlds.18 Moves towards democratisation in the
second half of the 1980s provided domestic political space for alternatives to
the Kemalist vision, resulting in a differentiation of the party system and
culminating in the coming to power of the Islamic-based Refah (Welfare) Party
in 1996.19 Although pressured out of government in 1997 by the military, and
subsequently banned by the Constitutional Court, Refah had set up the most
efficient structure of any political party in Turkey, and re-emerged after its
banning as the Fazilet (Virtue) Party.20
Much of the outcry about Islamisation is overstated. Where Refah was in
government at a local level, it often proved to be more effective than most of its
predecessors. The reactions of the old political establishment to these successes
– for example, the banning of Istanbul’s Mayor Recep Tayip Erdogan from
politics for quoting a popular, albeit blood-filled national poem – in some ways
seem to be more fundamentalist than the Refah politicians themselves. This is
not to praise the latter, but merely to argue that the reactions in Turkey, the US
and the EU are based on the old concept of Westernisation.
The construction of a new relationship requires a new vision that takes into
account:

• the realities of identity politics in both Turkey and the EU, and the

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constraints and opportunities that these pose for how they relate to each
other;
• the distinction between Turkey’s relationship with the EU and with the
wider West, plus a reconsideration of what ‘the West’ means for each side;
• the many common interests shared by Turkey and the EU;
• the long-term differences that are likely to set them apart.

Joint Interests
Joint interests start with strategic geography. Turkey sits at the edge of three
more-or-less distinct regions of conflict – the Balkans, the Middle East and the
Caucasus – and has a role in two more that are at a slight geographical remove
from it – west Central Europe, and the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) region. From a systemic perspective, it plays the role of an insulator, a
peripheral actor in all of the security regions surrounding it, but not centrally
involved in any. This should not be read as Turkey being unimportant to its
neighbours; its main function, in practice, is to separate other regional security
dynamics from each other.21 This insulating position is unusually complicated.
The danger for Turkey is that it will become party to conflicts on more than one
front. Given the complexity of its security environment, Turkey needs to
cultivate stability on as many fronts as possible if it is to avoid living in a zone
of permanent conflict. Whether this can be achieved by bringing Turkey
squarely into the EU seems doubtful. It is more likely that such a situation
would lead to a direct entanglement of the EU in the security dynamics of the
Middle East and the CIS. Meanwhile, Turkey’s security links to the Western
powers via its NATO membership should be sufficient to meet its own security
concerns.
The strategic interests shared by Turkey and the EU should be obvious. For
the EU, Turkey can provide security insulation from the Middle East, and a
partner in stabilising the Balkans. For Turkey, the EU can provide a stable and
supportive relationship, a partner in containing conflict in the Balkans
generally, and the Greek–Turkish conflict in particular. Although Greece is
itself part of the Union and has influence over the EU’s foreign policy, it also
seems likely that EU membership contributes to some restraint on the part of
Athens. Should things turn bad in the CIS region, some aspects of the Turkish/
EU mutual interest against Soviet/Russian problems, defined during the Cold
War partnership, might also revive. Both sides should want to prevent the
growth of any linkage between the security dynamics of the Middle East and
those of the Balkans.
Unfortunately, this assessment does not seem to be shared by all of the
governments concerned. Turkey’s emergent ‘alliance’ with Israel, and the
possibility of a Greece–Syria counter-axis, is particularly worrying in this
regard.22 The EU has no interest in becoming more involved in these conflicts
than it already is by way of Greece. Turkey’s assertive behaviour towards
Syria and Italy in late 1998 is a warning of just how badly things could go
wrong if no new foundations are laid for EU–Turkey relations. Although not

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indicated by some of its behaviour, Turkey’s interest in regional stability is

strong. Its leaders can have no rational interest in finding themselves at the
centre of a whole series of regional conflicts that they do not have the power
either to control or contain. And there has been a more positive side to
Turkey’s behaviour: for example its role, culminating in 1992, in creating the
Black Sea Economic Cooperation project (BSEC) as a bridge between East and
West;23 and its policy towards the Turkish-speaking newly independent
states.24 The vision of an intense system of cooperation between Turkic states
on the basis of a common language and cultural heritage may not have lived
up to early expectations. But it still has the potential to help in constructing a
positive identity for Turkey in the international system, and it may also help
the new Turkic states to find their feet in the turbulent regional politics of
Central Asia. In non-military security relations like these, there is undoubt-
edly considerable scope for Turkey to play some kind of bridging role
between the EU and countries further afield. There must also be a role for
Turkey in the Balkans, where it shares the EU’s interest in stabilisation.
Turkey’s re-engagement there started in the 1980s with the problem of the
Bulgarian assimilation campaign against Turks, and followed through with
its engagement in the sustained crisis resulting from the break-up of Yugo-
slavia. As a rule, Turkey’s Middle Eastern engagements create more ties with
the US than with Europe, whereas its Balkans and Black Sea engagements
create more ties with the EU than with the US.
Because of the primarily strategic nature of the ties between them, the US
and Turkey have far fewer identity questions to complicate their relationship –
although ties to the US do support the Westernisers within Turkey. For the US,
Turkey is a useful strategic partner in the Middle East and the CIS region.
Washington welcomes Turkey’s growing links with Israel, another close US
ally; the three countries have staged joint military training exercises. The US
does not have strong interests in the Balkans and is loath to be involved there.
For Turkey, the US is a supplier of arms (not always reliable), and a link to the
West which is independent of Turkey’s links with the EU. The danger is that
the US will exploit Turkey’s services, as in the 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath,
without paying much in return for the considerable costs incurred.

Enduring Differences
There are likely to be several durable points of difference between Turkey and
the EU, and these need to be taken into account if a new relationship is to be
built. The first is the EU’s general enlargement dilemma, discussed at further
length below. The second problem is Greek–Turkish hostility, and the division
of Cyprus. The decision of the Cypriot government in 1997 to station Russian
S-300 missiles on the island was no help in this respect. Although Cypriot
President Glafcos Clerides gave in to Greek pressure at the beginning of
January 1999, agreeing to station the missiles on Crete instead of Cyprus, this
solution will not ease the worries of Turkish military strategists. There is also
strong resistance even within the Cypriot government to withdrawing from the

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 The European Union and Turkey 49

deal, with Defence Minister Ioannis Omirou and Education Minister

Likourghos Kappas resigning in protest. The EU decision to open formal
membership negotiations with Cyprus is no less problematic. Hope for a
change of actors’ behaviour in light of the postulated economic benefits of
membership is mistaken. It is not economic, but societal security that is at issue
for those on the island, and political and military security for Greece and
Turkey. A much more likely outcome is the importing of the conflict into the
EU, with considerable destabilising effects on its internal politics and
institutions, and a deteriorating relationship with Turkey.25 The EU thus needs
to find a way to neutralise the ability of Athens to hold the overall enlargement
process hostage to Cyprus’ candidacy. One option would be to follow the
French line and argue for stricter political preconditions for membership, as has
been done vis-à-vis Latvia and Estonia with respect to the treatment of the
Russian minority. Simultaneously, the other EU members will have to make it
clear to Greece that alienating them and future member states cannot be in
Greece’s long-term interest, because such a development would reduce and not
enhance its influence on future policy decisions.26 Finally, a more flexible
approach to membership might also be helpful in the Cyprus case, not least
because it can hardly be expected that Turkey will accept full EU membership
of Cyprus as a whole, while Turkey itself must remain outside.
Third is the whole problem of ‘Europeanness’ for both the EU and Turkey.
What is involved here is more than just the name and the commitment in the
EC’s founding treaty to ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’.
Article O of the Maastricht Treaty specifies that it is ‘European’ states that may
become members of the Union. To state this requirement implies a definition of
who is European. If Turkey meets the criteria, then why not North Africa,
Russia or Central Asia? Morocco’s 1986 application was turned down
unambiguously because it was considered to be a non-European state.27 With
Turkey, things are more complicated because its claim of belonging to Europe
cannot so easily be dismissed due to history, geographical position, prior
international agreements and the way these are conceptualised in the public
debate. Article O’s criterion of ‘Europeanness’ means that the EU has to commit
itself either to the construction of a hard border distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’,
or to the construction of layered frontier zones in which the countries on its
periphery are ‘inside’ for some purposes but not for others.28
For Turkey, the problem of Europeanness is what to do with the Turkic and
Islamic underpinnings of the national culture. The Kemalist project of
Europeanisation is problematic, both because of its narrow definition of what it
means to be ‘European’, and because many Turkish citizens are unwilling to
see their own cultural heritage erased to the necessary degree. One way out of
this dilemma is to promote the model of Turkey – like Russia, Japan and Israel
– as a ‘Westernistic’ state which can never be purely Western or European by
definition.29 A Westernistic state aspires to synthesise its own culture with
Western ideas about organising the political economy, as Japan has done with
such conspicuous success. But it does not seek to replace its own culture with

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that of the West. Promoting a Westernistic rather than a purely Western

aspiration should help to ameliorate the alienation of Turkey from the EU that
the membership issue has caused. Such a concept is not alien to Turkey’s
historical relationship with the ‘West’. For much of the nineteenth century, the
Ottoman state élite attempted to both modernise and save what they could of
the empire through a Europeanisation that integrated elements of European
political culture into the old Ottoman framework.30
The fourth enduring problem between the EU and Turkey concerns human
rights in particular, and bad government in general. The human-rights issue
arises not only from Turkey’s authoritarian political traditions, and the strong
political role of the military, but also from the unresolved issue of Turkey’s
Kurdish minority, and the country’s apparent inability, or unwillingness, to
solve this question by democratic means. The Kurdish problem has been an
open sore in Turkish politics since 1984 when the PKK instigated an ongoing
insurrection. Human-rights issues, largely though not wholly connected to the
suppression of the Kurds, led to the suspension of the Ankara Agreement
between 1982 and 1988.31 Ankara’s treatment of the Kurds blends into a wider
problem of bad government in Turkey, and slow progress towards building a
democratic political culture – which is not a central pillar of Kemalism. Neither
the country’s élites, with their generally corrupt, inefficient, personalised and
ineffective system of political parties, nor the masses have moved far from the
authoritarian traditions of the Ottoman Empire and its weak civil society. The
government’s influence on the security apparatus is very limited, and the
military still functions as a quasi-autonomous entity.32 The 1998 military
intervention against Refah shows the durability of this problem, reinforced by
those – both inside and outside Turkey – who take the Westernisation claims at
face value and, by hyping an Islamist ‘threat’, help to legitimise the military’s
action. The military’s role in politics is an important part of what has
disqualified Turkey from full membership of the EU. In its ‘Agenda 2000’, the
European Commission noted critically that ‘recent developments in the
[Turkish] administration and education system, while intended to strengthen
secularism, nonetheless underline the particular role of the military in Turkish
society’.33
Although in principle a solvable problem, in practice it would require
generations before Turkey’s civic and political culture could take the same form
as that found in the EU’s core. Indeed, if Turkey takes an openly Westernistic
path of development, it might well reach a style of civic and political
modernisation that is significantly different from that developed in Europe, but
which still adheres to basic rules of democracy and human rights. Being off the
list of prospective entrants should take some of the heat out of EU–Turkish
relations, but even as an associate member, Turkey can expect to receive
continuous pressure from the EU about its domestic political life – and rightly
so. The EU is, by its entire logic, ‘post-Westphalian’: that is, it represents a
model of relations between states that goes significantly beyond the principles
of state sovereignty and non-intervention established by the 1648 Treaty of

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Westphalia. Part of the price to be paid even for partial association with an
international organisation such as the EU is tolerance of a high level of mutual
interference in domestic affairs, aimed at harmonising a wide range of legal,
moral and institutional practices.
The EU’s post-Westphalian character underscores a fifth and final durable
difference between Turkey and the EU. The EU project would be imperilled by
taking modernising states such as Turkey into its postmodern collective.34 The
EU as a security community – that is to say, as a group of states that neither
expects, nor prepares for, the use of force in relations amongst themselves –
would be threatened by accepting as members states that are still ready to go to
war with their neighbours, or which still seek the status of independent
regional powers. For such states, the predominant ‘other’ is their neighbour,
which contrasts starkly with an EU political identity founded on collective fear
of its members’ own past.35 From this perspective, the EU made a serious
mistake in admitting Greece in 1981. Like Turkey, Greece does not adequately
fit with the attitudes of ‘security community’ that characterise the rest of the
EU’s membership. While NATO has managed to cope with having two hostile
and potentially warring members within its ranks, it is far from clear that the
more delicate structures of the EU could withstand this kind of tension.
In this context, further problems flow from Turkey’s aspiration – revived
after the Cold War – to once again play the role of an independent middle-
sized power in its region. The long period of Turkey’s relative detachment from
the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia is over. Turkey has an
ambitious 30-year, $150 billion plan to build up a substantial defence-industrial
sector. Ankara wants greater military independence from unreliable Western
suppliers, one reason for its growing relationship with Israel as an alternative
source of military technology.36 In the years since its participation in the US-led
coalition against Iraq, Turkey has embarked on an ever more complex set of
relations in the Middle East. These include:

• an emerging ‘alliance’ with Israel (and seemingly also with Jordan, in order
to avoid too anti-Arab appearances);
• the enduring hostility to Syria, whose support for the PKK inspired Turkey
to threaten military action against it late 1998;
• a somewhat milder rivalry with Iran, reflecting the traditional hostility
between the Ottoman and Persian Empires;
• the frequent interventions against the Kurds in Iraq, and the general
entanglement that this creates with Syria and Iran because of the Kurdish
populations in those countries;
• tensions with Syria and Iraq over water supplies, arising from Turkey’s
dam-building projects on the upper reaches of the Euphrates river.

To the extent that Turkey wishes to, or cannot avoid, playing an independent
power role in the Middle East, it will further reduce the likelihood of gaining
membership in the EU. Up to a point, there is no necessary contradiction

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52 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

between a more independent Turkish role in the Middle East, and continued
close security links between the EU and Turkey. Turkey’s links with the US will
probably be even more tolerant of such a role. But the EU will want to keep
Turkey as a security insulator between itself and the Middle East, and to resist
at all costs Turkey’s becoming a short-circuit between the security dynamics of
the Middle East and those of the Balkans.
All these differences are sufficiently large and durable to make the 1997
Luxembourg decision seem correct – however ill-mannered and hurtful the
circumstances of its delivery. But the decision leaves an urgent, unanswered
question of how to acknowledge the differences, yet grasp the equally
compelling argument and durable joint interests to carve out a more stable
relationship that puts less stress on the domestic affairs of both parties.

Outlines of a New Direction

Turkey and the EU now badly need to develop some new and more realistic
expectations about their future relationship. The EU needs an alternative to the
stark choice between acceptance and rejection, and Turkey needs an alternative
to feeling rejected. One key to achieving this goal is to abandon the strict
‘inside/outside’ conception of the EU which has governed the old game. That
conception has now openly failed as a basis for EU–Turkey relations.
Turkey’s aspiration to full membership in the EU has given the latter
considerable leverage over Turkey’s domestic politics. This has been useful in
pushing forward agendas of both democratisation and economic liberalisation
in Turkey since the 1950s.37 The EU should not want to lose this role, and those
in Turkey who support the liberal agenda should not want to lose it either,
although both sides should be clearer about the differences in their political
aims. Turkey thus needs to be sufficiently a part of Europe to sustain its
economic, social and political development, though parts of this agenda can
also be pursued through Turkey’s wider linkages with the West. Given these
links, and the forms of cooperation already in place between Turkey and the
EU, it should not be assumed that Turkey will necessarily fall back on the
schedule of further democratisation once full EU membership is no longer
considered a first option. Turkey’s embeddedness in the ‘West’ – including its
human-rights commitments within the framework of the Council of Europe – is
too strong simply to be discarded.
For the EU, the main goal should be to develop Turkey as a close associate,
and perhaps as a model for the flexible relationships it needs to develop with a
whole set of states in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Different degrees
and types of functional integration will apply to different states and regions,
creating not a hard boundary between the EU and its neighbours, but a broad
zone of association. This is often discussed under the name of ‘concentric
circles’, but the emerging multifaceted regime of governance may well be
messier than this metaphor implies. The development of such an alternative is
imperative. The basic conflict between the EU’s deepening and widening
cannot be fudged or wished away: there are limits as to how many member

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 The European Union and Turkey 53

states with very different histories can be included in a supranational union

based on a single acquis communautaire.
The EU does not have, and should not aspire to, a single border. There will
almost certainly be an EU core, all of whose members are ‘inside’ for all
purposes. But there are already many states that are inside for some purposes
and outside for others. The UK, for example is ‘outside’ in some important
areas (monetary union, the Schengen Agreement reducing border controls) as
are several others. In principle, and increasingly in practice, the EU seems
likely to develop like many classical empires, fading away through a series of
frontier zones whose attachment to the core decreased as one approached the
outer edge of the imperial penumbra. In the case of the EU, the pattern of
concentric circles is less about imperial control than about types and degrees of
association. Turkey is well placed to be both the leading member of the outer-
circles group of associated states, and the model for how the EU relates to its
penumbra. Turkey’s position in this regard is strengthened by the quite
numerous and solid ties that it already has with the wider West. Whatever its
dissatisfactions over its exclusion from the EU core, Turkey can take con-
siderable comfort from the fact that it has achieved a level of integration into
European and Western institutions that is the envy of many comparable
countries. And by not being fully inside the EU, Turkey leaves itself more room
to take on its own leadership roles, and to style itself as an independent actor
and a regional centre in its own right. It can then accentuate its role as a bridge-
builder between different cultures instead of placing itself squarely in one
camp. At the same time, it would be able to preserve its insulating role in
matters of military security.
Once the old inside/outside approach is discarded, the challenge becomes
one of how to translate the new approach into concrete political institutions. This
question should be considered in the light of the distinction between Turkey’s
relationships with the EU and with the wider West. As a Westernistic country,
Turkey should be, and in many ways already is, tied into the whole of the
Atlantic world and its key clubs – NATO, the OECD and the OSCE, all of which
Turkey already belongs to. It is also a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement,
successor to the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls
(COCOM). In the case of NATO, Turkey has the distinction of being a full
member, and not just an associate in the Partnership for Peace (PFP). Turkey is
also a member of the Council of Europe, which while not an EU body
nonetheless strengthens Turkey’s claims for recognition as part of the European
system of states, and is a major force for the guarantee of human rights. F.
Stephen Larrabee has suggested, in addition, the setting-up of a US–EU–Turkey
consultative forum.38 Given their common interests in the Balkans, the Middle
East and the Black Sea area, and given also the advantage that Greece has in
being inside the EU, this seems a good idea. Due to the likely persistence of
Greek intransigence on relations with Turkey, some counterbalance is necessary.
Which position within an EU of concentric circles might Turkey take on? It
already has associate membership in the EU, and a full customs union, both of

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54 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

which should be maintained. The central task, however, will be to place Turkey
on the ‘cognitive map’ of the EU’s decision-makers, where it has so far (and
especially after the events of 1989–90) been ignored as a significant actor in its
own right, and more or less been treated as an object on the fringes.39 This has
reinforced Turkey’s feeling of being left at the sidelines at best, or becoming
Europe’s self-defining ‘other’ at worst. A vital step would consist in creating
fora in which Turkey and the EU could coordinate their policies without
entangling each and every issue into the membership problematic. In fact, such
fora do not have to be created out of the blue, but may be built upon current
institutions, among them the Association Council of the Ankara Agreement,
and the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. In a similar way, the
European Conference could be upgraded from a forum simply to discuss the
adjustment of applicant states’ political and economic systems to EU require-
ments, to a permanent conference including all ‘concentric circle’ states and
dealing with matters in which EU decisions affect others beyond its full
members. The Conference’s presidency would then have to rotate between all
its members, and not be reserved to the EU presidency.
The effects of such changes would be a continued participation of Turkey in
EU decision-making processes, and in particular in its Common Foreign and
Security Policy (CFSP) discussions, without having to become a full member.
Such a configuration would leave Turkey’s systemic position as insulator
intact, and would leave it with enough space to develop a leading role in the
regional security dynamics that surround it. It would also acknowledge and
enhance Turkey’s vital role in the EU’s regional cooperations in the Black Sea
and other areas, which occupy a central place in the EU’s relations with its
neighbours.40 Finally, such a set-up should be underpinned by Turkey’s
participation in the EU’s cultural and educational exchange programmes, such
as Socrates (the European Community action programme for cooperation in the
field of education). This would strengthen mutual understandings, as well as
the further development of a Westernistic culture within Turkey.
With respect to the perennial conflicts between Turkey and Greece, ideally
the EU and the US would use their combined leverage to press the two states
towards a general settlement of the Aegean and Cyprus disputes.41 In reality
these problems are so intractable that making their resolution – as opposed to
their containment – a condition for anything else would be unrealistic and
counter-productive. Greek–Turkish differences run deep. The Turkish military
seems quite unwilling to let go of its strategic hold on northern Cyprus, which
is a keystone to its whole conception of Turkey’s future regional role and
security needs; Greece and the Cypriot government have also contributed their
share of provocative actions. This means that Greece and Turkey are highly
unlikely themselves to generate proposals to settle the disputes between them.
In order for the US and/or the EU to generate such proposals, they would have
to have a clear sense of their own policy objectives in the area. But neither does.
US policy is made incoherent by the contradictory demands of supporting
Israel and maintaining its influence over the supply of oil. The EU has so far
failed even to develop the political machinery to mount a CFSP, but its
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 The European Union and Turkey 55

particular problem in this case is that Greece is among its members, and thus
able to prevent any policy that would run counter to Greek interests. Since
rectification of these faults is not in prospect, the EU and the US are not in a
position to push forward a comprehensive settlement of the Greek–Turkish
problem.
As far as the EU is concerned, it should recognise that it cannot approach
the conflict as if it were an outside player. However, even greater EU attention
to the problem, and a more critical EU attitude towards Greece, will not resolve
the conflict quickly. Probably the best that the US and the EU can do at this
point is to continue to restrain the two sides from sliding into war, while
helping to keep communication alive – an aim against which the opening of
membership negotiations with Cyprus was counter-productive, or at least not
helpful.
While the EU has much to do in order to reconstruct its relationship with
Turkey, Turkey also has some difficult tasks to confront. Perhaps the hardest –
but also the most necessary – is to recognise the realities of its historical legacy,
and accept a Westernistic rather than a Western self-definition. Doing so would
allow Turkey to cultivate its similarities and its differences with Europe. It
would free Turkey from the necessity to legitimate its own development by
strictly European standards of civilisation, and offer an alternative to the
destructive option of being either wholly in or wholly out of the EU. The
legacies of history and geography mean that Turkey has a complicated hand to
play. Its relationships with the US and the EU are potential trump cards.
The 1997 Luxembourg decision might go down in history not as a landmark
of diplomatic rudeness, but as a turning point from which a more sustainable,
and more mutually fruitful relationship began to develop. But this happier
scenario will require significant changes of attitude on both sides. Some of
these changes have already started to appear, such as Turkey’s reorientation
towards its northern and eastern neighbours and a more open debate about
redefining the Kemalist six pillars, and many of them can be based on a set of
heritages from the past, such as the modernisation strategies of the late
Ottoman Empire. One should also remember that Turkey in the 1970s, when its
relations with the US reached a low point, did draw a distinction between
constructing itself as a European state and being part of European (or, in that
case, North Atlantic) organisations.42 The idea that one may define oneself as
‘European’ without necessarily belonging to all European institutions as a full
member was not alien to Turkish politicians, at least in that period. Foreign
policy has not been as much debated within Turkey since the 1970s as it is
today, with a recognised need for a coherent vision for the future.43 At the same
time, the debate within the EU seems to have shifted towards a wider
acceptance of flexible integration patterns.44
A failure to pursue more radical changes of attitude means that future
relations will have as their foundation only the bitterness of Turkey’s rejection,
and the confusion and evasion of current EU policy. In such a poisoned
environment, much will be lost that might have been gained by the sensible
pursuit of mutual interests with respect for enduring differences.
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56 Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez

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 The European Union and Turkey 57

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