Turkey's Accession Negotiations: Where Armenians Fit In

At  the end of September, the European Parliament had passed a severe judgement on this first year of talks, and noted a slowdown in Turkey’s reform process. The European Commissioner in charge of the file, Olli Rehn, made a similarly gloomy assessment, and warned that the dispute over Cyprus risks causing a “train crash” if Turkey continues to refuse to establish trade relations with Cyprus, a member of the EU.

This anniversary was also marked by French President Jacques Chirac’s declaration, unprecedented for an EU Head of State, calling on Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide before it joins the European Union. This year the European Parliament also forcefully repeated its own call for genocide recognition.

Yet in spite of the French President’s recent change of heart, recognition of the Armenian genocide is not one of the conditions for Turkey’s EU membership and it does not even feature on the agenda of official Turkey-EU discussions. Furthermore, the EU has apparently not communicated to Ankara that it will have to establish relations with Armenia if it hopes to join the EU one day.

How can such inconsistencies be explained? How do the European institutions in Brussels approach these questions? And under which powers and policies does the EU address them, if at all?

Genocide recognition- not a condition for membership

It has been clear for a while that genocide recognition is not a condition for Turkey joining the EU- that much has been made plain by the EU executive, the European Commission. Our enquiries have made clear, furthermore, that the question has never been debated at the EU’s Council of Ministers- the ultimate decision- making body in Europe-  and no Member State has so much as raised the issue within that body.

This omission is not only justified by Europe’s caution in the face of Turkey’s explosive reaction to such issues. It can also be explained by the EU’s understanding of the issue as a “historical dispute”.

In the 1990’s, as the EU was working on its major enlargement in Central and Eastern Europe, a number of historical disputes came to complicate the process. Italy once tried to extract compensation from Slovenia on account of the Italians expelled and expropriated by Marchal Tito after World War II. Germany’s Chancellor Kohl launched a controversy over the expulsion of Germans from Tcheckoslovakia, also after World War II.

But the Europeans excluded these questions from the agenda of official negotiations, underlining that they would restrict their dealings to the so-called “Copenhagen criteria” (read about the Mechanics of Accession) and that the then 15 Member States could not allow themselves to become the arbiters of ancient quarrels. Those are the precedents that later led the EU to dismiss calls to include genocide recognition among the conditions to Turkey’s EU accession.

So Europe does not aspire to becoming the arbiter of history; if nothing else, that view can be credited for its consistency. But the refusal of the European Commission and Council to mention the genocide, and their habit of resorting to customary euphemisms- “tragic events” or “events of 1915/1916” is more difficult to justify. In October this year, European Commissionner Olli Rehn went one step further when he urged France not to adopt the legislation that will make it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide, though it is already illegal to deny the Holocaust in several EU countries. The Commission no doubt legitimately feared the draft legislation would further damage EU-Turkey relations but it may seem a little late in the day to discover the political relevance of an issue it had ostensibly and persistently excluded from its remit.

Minorities in Turkey

While it refuses to get involved in historical disputes, the European Union does consider the fight against all forms of discrimination relevant to the accession talks. The issue is indeed covered by the EU treaties and by several pieces of European legislation, thus providing a basis to demand that Turkey treat fairly its minorities, including its small Armenian minority.

The discrimination suffered by Turkey’s Armenians is the result both of specific legislation, and of well established practices. They aim to prevent Armenians and other non-Muslims communities from developing and driving them towards assimilation or into exile. The EU has often focussed on the arbitrary expropriations of buildings owned by the Armenian Church which are routinely carried out in Turkey. Generally speaking, the Commission has acknowledged and criticized these and other practices, and it has clearly stated that Turkey will have to end them if it hopes to join. But in 2006, the Commission sadly remarked in its official report that “Turkey’s approach to minorities has not changed”.

Europe pushing for freedom of speech

To date however, the Union has most effectively challenged State denialism in Turkey by insisting forcefully on effective freedom of expression in the country.

Until 2005, before the start of the actual accession negotiations, Brussels often found it hard to understand what so troubled the Armenians. Had not the Turkish government offered to start a historical dialogue with the Armenian government?  Most EU decisions-makers ostensibly failed to understand the Armenian Diaspora’s insistence on pursuing their case through European political institutions rather than through direct dialogue with Turkey or with Turks.

Successive trials against journalist Hrant Dink, writer Orhan Pamuk and many others for allegedly insulting Turkish identity have transformed the perception of this problem among the European institutions. The European spotlight finally revealed state denialism in Turkey for what it was, as the controversy touched upon one policy area undoubtedly central to the Copenhagen criteria: freedom of expression. Trial after trial, a consensus was formed in Brussels to demand the withdrawal of article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which allows such abusive prosecutions.

A new battle of wills is thus under way between Brussels and Ankara, and it is undeniable that Turkey’s accession process has already opened a window of freedom in Turkey. In addition to many of the books and articles published in the last two year or two, the unprecedented conference on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, organised in Turkey in September 2005, could never have been organized in the past.

The struggle against racism and xenophobia.

The EU has thus shown some mettle when pressing for freedom of expression. What then of fighting denialist policies, particularly those which the Turkish government promotes within the EU’s borders?

The European Union does have authority in the fight against racism and xenophobia, of which genocide denial is but one expression. In 2000, the Union founded a new agency in Vienna, the European monitoring centre on racism and xenophobia (EUMC), which reports on the development of racism and xenophobia in Europe and advises the EU and its Member States. It has also published reports on specific forms of racism such as islamophobia and anti-semitism.

But for the time being this agency does not cover the Republic of Turkey, and it has not yet been asked to investigate Armenian concerns. One might hope that it will be: the EUMC may have no other power than to write reports, but that does allow it to highlight specific problems and to bring them to the attention of policy-makers. An EUMC report on the subject of Turkish discourse regarding Armenians would effectively amount to a legitimation of Armenian concerns and to their translation in terms of EU policymaking.

Good neighbours?

Oddly enough, the question of genocide recognition by Turkey has not been envisaged by the European institutions from the point of view of relations between Turkish and EU citizens; instead, it has been portrayed as a bilateral dispute between Armenia and Turkey, with the “tragic events of 1915” just one component of a more intricate quarrel between neighbours.

Since 1993, successive Turkish governments have refused to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia, and they have joined Azerbaijan in its blockade of Armenia. It so happens that these relations are also relevant to Turkey’s accession negotiations. The document that defines the EU’s position in the accession talks insists that Turkey must maintain “good neighbourly relations”. It commits Turkey to “resolving tensions that could exist with its neighbours and to abstain from initiatives which may harm good neighbourly relations and conflict resolution”. The same document notes that “the border between Turkey and Armenia is still closed and [the EU] hopes that, through dialogue, bilateral relations will improve”.

A diplomat at the Council of Ministers justifies this rather vague stance by recalling that there is no legally binding common EU position with regards to Armenia. In the absence of clear criteria to judge “good neighbourliness”, all that Turkey is in fact asked to do at this point is to try its best.

Trade rules

Yet there is one area of the EU’s external relations that is part of the core mandate of the European Union: its common commercial policy. The 25 Member States have common rules governing their trade with third states such as Armenia, and must follow EU decisions regarding customs duties, quantitative restrictions to trade and technical standards for example. And it so happens that the EU has signed an agreement with Armenia on the subject- the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement.

Now in February 1994, Greece put in place an embargo on the newly independent former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia because it believed its small neighbour had designs on Greek territory. Within two months, the EU demanded that Greece lift the embargo, and even sued the Hellenic State before the European Court of Justice. The Commission then believed the Greek embargo to be in violation of EU trade rules. The parallel between the Macedonian case and Armenia’s is obvious; the only significant difference between the two cases is that Greece was then a member of the EU, while Turkey is not yet.

In theory, Turkey will therefore have to establish commercial relations with Armenia before it joins, as Greece was forced to do with Macedonia. But the issue has never yet been raised in the course of discussions between Europe and Turkey, if the Council’s diplomats are to be believed. In today’s delicate circumstances, furthermore, Member States clearly do not wish to add to tensions between Turkey and the EU, and are doing everything to keep new and delicate issues off the agenda, at least until the forthcoming elections in Turkey.

A self-inflicted train crash?

The EU’s position thus does allow us to look forward to a meaningful expansion of freedom of expression in Turkey and a rollback of discrimination against the Armenian minority. In the future, Europeans may come to press Turkey to establish trade relations with Armenian. They might even come to object to official Ankara’s hostile discourse on Armenians. These may be interesting topics for Armenian organisations in Europe to investigate. On the other hand, in spite of numerous European Parliament resolutions, it is unlikely that genocide recognition as such might become a condition for Turkey’s membership of the EU.

Conditions for membership clearly are usually not so much the outcome of political decisions as the application of European law, including precedents established in earlier enlargements. For Armenians’ concerns to be taken on board, they must first be expressed in terms of European law and in terms of the accession criteria. Armenians must also make their case convincingly: is genocide recognition to be dealt with as one of the dimensions of the relations between Turkey and Armenia, as the Council of Minister maintains; or is it part of the struggle against racism and for the defence of fundamental rights? Is Turkey’s policy towards Armenia a reasonable response to conflict in its neighbourhood, or a breach of EU commercial policy...?

In theory, politics can take over where law does not provide clear guidance in solving a problem. It often does, on issues touching on Member States’ major interests. But for this to happen in the context of Turkey’s EU accession process, it requires unanimity among member states, a requirement which is almost impossible to satisfy.

In the final analysis, it thus seems that while Europe is acting decisively in ensuring Turkey’s enforcement of EU legislation on ceramics or alcoholic beverages, it is remaining obstinately indifferent to questions that go to the heart of its political legitimacy- ensuring peaceful coexistence and good neighbourly relations between peoples and protecting them from such horrors as war and the Holocaust.

Europe is now pursuing negotiations while skirting issues which may derail the entire process one day. Its executive, the Commission, has not even explored the subject of Armenia-Turkey relations. It has supported no initiative aimed at promoting education in Turkey, dialogue between Armenians and Turks, or cross-border relations between Armenia and Turkey, and has yet commissioned no research on the subject of Armenia-Turkey relations.

This situation will undoubtedly contribute to increasing tensions between the bureaucratic aspect of the accession negotiations, technical and secret as it is, on the one hand, and the political process on the other. France has already significantly changed the rules of the game by providing for a referendum on future enlargements. As a result one may well look forward to a political crisis a few years down the line, when the Armenian question, and others, may wreck the process. Unless the EU decides to address Armenians' concerns before that.

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This article is part of a joint project with les Nouvelles d’Arménie Magazine (Paris) and Orer Magazine (Prague). It is supported by the European Commission and the AGBU.

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This project is supported by the European Commission and the Armenian General Benevolent Union.