Turkey and Immigration

‘when Turkey finally does accede’

Turkey will accede to the EU over the cold, dead bodies of half the politicians in France and Germany. Barring the Franco-Germans needing a big big favour from the rest of us, it ain’t gonna happen. QMV? The Franco-German axis may not be what it was, but it can still get together a big enough voting bloc to stymie Turkey.

Thump! One up to Henry. Couldn’t remember whether it was QMV or unanimity, so I put the last bit in to cover my proverbial. Thanks- have to say that if it’s unanimity, I would put chances of Turkey joining at zero over the next quarter century. In my view, not comparable to Central/East Europe: the Germans and French both have long-standing immigrant populations, dating back to at least the 19th Century, from places like Poland, whom they have assimilated without too many problems, but they feel very differently about brown-skinned mainly Muslim immigrants. One of my best friends is an Arab-German, often mistaken as a Turk by his German compatriots, and it does seem as if there is very little assimilation of Germano-Turks, and a hell of a lot of suspicion and hostility.

There are long-standing client-partner relationships between both France and Germany and different Central/East European countries: I think you have to go back to Wilhelmine Germany and the last days of the Caliphate to say the same about Turkey. But the Turks are very close to the US and have a very important military cooperation deal with Israel: this may change given the rise of Turkish Islamism, but if it doesn’t both these points will count big against Turkey.

And Turkey is just a lot bigger than any of the Central/East European republics: it would join Britain, France and Italy on the ‘biggest population bar Germany’ rung, and it would have more military heft than any country bar Britain and maybe France. (A lot of countries spend more in absolute terms on defence than Turkey, but the Turkish military, like the British, is capable of fighting battles, which most other European forces aren’t.)

Maybe we should have a bet on this, to be decided in ten years…

Don’t the close US-Turkey ties cut the other way, i.e., the US will publicly support Turkey’s admission to the EU, making not-so-veiled suggestions that European opponents of admission are racist and anti-Muslim. France and Germany, being in a global p.r. war with the US for influence in the Third World, including the Muslim world, will be hard put to refuse admission. And I don’t think that the Germans are yet in a position where they can trumpet the fact that a friend to the Jews is no friend to Germany.

Do they stand to gain, as a state, if their people are free to emigrate?

Well, it would reduce the level of unemployment in Turkey, and expatriate workers tend to send hard currency back to their families in the motherland, so it probably would be of economic benefit to Turkey.

“anonymous coward” – a quibble, but I don’t see that the EC/EU distinction is relevant here – most likely the EU will have legal personality by the time that this question becomes a live one. And surely you’re stating it a little strongly when you say that the ECJ has no power whatsoever to review accession treaties? It surely has the power to interpret them as it does other Treaty texts – and to seek to resolve incompatibilities or incongruities through such interpretation. Perhaps there is some well established doctrine limiting its powers to interpret here – is there some caselaw on this that you’re referring to?

I’ve done a fair amount of research on this from the political angle (not the legal angle), even going so far as to consider this as the topic for my ma thesis.

That being said, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
a. France, and a few other smaller (and surprising) countries will do everything they can to stand in the way of Turkish accession. I believe you can look to a country like Ireland or Austria for this. On the other hand, I don’t think Cyprus will be able to stand up against Turkey very well without looking like sore winners – kind of like they did after the referendum, where their vote against the Annan plan actually made Turkey gain momentum.
b. Turkey will do a lot to change its policies on the books, and the EU has recognised that. But I think that as time goes on, if the EU decides to begin accession talks, they’re going to be sticklers about a lot of things “on the ground,” so to speak. Don’t get me wrong – that’s a good thing for the betterment of minority rights, the rights of prisoners, women, etc. But as they make more and more demands, the Turkish public will be less inclined to accomodate them. Not only that – whenever you impose change quickly on a population, it gets flustered. And while the Turkish population is in favor of accession, a number of fringe groups and political parties against accession are starting to rise. If it seems hopeless, their popularity will increase. On the other hand, the fact that the religious-based party that is currently in power (AKP) supports accession shows that it may take a while for anti-EU powers to gain lastng credence. The AKP’s predecessors were not as eager about accession as they are.
c. I really think that the EU is looking to expand its credibility in the Middle East, etc., in large part because of the missteps it perceives in U.S. action. With Turkey, an active and prominent member* of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference), they gain a vocal proponent. I don’t think they will necessary try to use Turkey against the U.S., as someone above alluded to, but rather in competition with America. And the EU’s current leaders see this as vital both economically and politically. That’s why you’ll see Chirac, who plays for an international audience, speak out in favor of Turkish accession, whereas his Prime Minister goes the opposite direction.
d. The immigration issue isn’t as big of a deal as some suggest. When Spain and Italy joined the EU, immigration from those countries was banned for the first 7 or so years, and then slowly ratcheted up after that. I see no reason why the same can’t be applied to Turkey.

So what does that mean? Since the EC gave the green light, I think the EU’s going to dangle the carrot. They’re going to begin talks, but set no specific deadlines so they can appease both sides. If they don’t, I think the EU’s going to have one pissed off neighbor – heightened by the fact that Turkey has been trying for this for so long (since 1962 with the Ankara Agreement).

The other eventual option is some kind of regionalized economic partnership on the European side of the country; something like the Free Economic Zones on the border of North and South Korea and DPRK and China. I’m not too sure how well that would work out, but it would lead to an arrangement wherein Turkey would get many of the economic benefits but would not have a seat at the political table. This is more plausible since the Treaty of Nice (I may be off on what it’s called, but I think that was it), which rearranged the voting rules to acommodate for Central/Eastern Europe, did not leave room for a large country like Turkey to join.

Oh, one last thing: if Turkey does join, the Constitution will be set beforehand. See the debate about whether or not to include God in it as to why.

*Turkey’s not actually a member of the OIC because they are not an Islamic state. They do have permanent observer status, the best military in the bloc, one of the stronger economies and larger populations, and happen to be 99.8% Muslim, so their voice gets heard.

“The fear that, once Turkey joins, huge numbers of poor Muslim immigrants will stream west is probably the biggest single impediment to its membership.”

I’ve spent some time reading about migration from an economic and historical perspective. This is not an uncommon fear from states and labour unions. However, their fears are rarely realized. Probably this is due to economic predictions often miss out and ignore more ‘esoteric’ parts of human behavior. Usually, people do not want to leave their home country unless there’s quite a lot of push and pull factors to make them move.

Before the recent expansion of the EU there was a typically un-informed debate here in Sweden about the risk of so called “social turism”, ie an influx of citizens from the new member countries that would stream into the country and take advantage of the generous welfare system. As far as I know, they still haven’t found a single example of this.

While from an economic and rational perspective the people might have reasons to do this, there seems to be a lot of other factors that has the effect that unemployed poles doesn’t leave all their friends and family and move to an empty appartement in a strange county where people speaks a language they do not understand and tries to live of their welfare system.

Poor people in Turkey will probably not come in huge hordes to Europe unless there’s some kind of push factor. This is something that Kurds might still have in the future. They also have the advantage of already having relatives ‘inside’ Europe that would ease their move. But on the other hand, there’s reason to believe that the Turkish govt would have to improve in their attitudes against the kurdish minority to be allowed in in the first place.

Just a couple of eurocents.

What exactly will it mean to have a “union” which reaches from the tip of Scotland to the border of Iraq and includes cultures as diverse as Finland and Turkey?

Well, it’s been done before – the Sami weren’t part of it then, but the Romanians, the Libyans, the Brits and the Egyptians were all part of it.

It’s also funny that you should pick those two – you do know that they’re historically related, and that the Sami don’t have any cultural-linguistic connection with the rest of Europe? They’re Finno-Ugric, instead of Indo-European.

So that’s kind of like saying “as diverse as the Italians and the Greeks,” though nobody knows the prehistoric reasons behind the exodus of a bunch of Ugaritic colonists to the frozen north.