Cameron Vows to Support Turkish Quest to Join European Union
Cameron Urges Acceptance of Turkey to EU
Jock Fistick/Bloomberg
David Cameron's call for acceptance of Turkey puts him at odds with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel.
David Cameron's call for acceptance of Turkey puts him at odds with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called on other European Union nations to drop their objections to Turkey’s joining the 27-nation bloc.
“I will remain your strongest possible advocate for EU membership and for greater influence at the top table of European diplomacy,” Cameron said in a speech in the Turkish capital, Ankara, today. “Together, I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.”
Cameron’s call puts him at odds with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both opponents of Turkish membership. Mounting opposition in the EU to letting in a predominantly Muslim country has provoked growing indifference in Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pursued a less western-oriented foreign policy, seeking closer links with Iran and downgrading ties with Israel.
“When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a NATO ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been,” Cameron said. “It’s just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent.”
Cameron began a four-day foreign tour in Ankara last night that will also take him to India, accompanied by Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley, Vodafone Group Plc CEO Vittorio Colao and more than 30 other executives from U.K. companies, as he seeks to put trade at the center of British foreign policy.
Trade Goal
Cameron said he wants to double U.K. trade with Turkey, currently $9 billion a year, over the next five years.
“We cannot let the protectionists win,” he said. “The truth is that trade is the biggest wealth creator we’ve ever known, and it’s the biggest stimulus we can give our economies right now.”
Erdogan, speaking at a joint press conference with Cameron after the two leaders held talks in Ankara, said relations between Britain and Turkey were entering a “golden age.”
Cameron said he was struck by the “immense pace” of Turkish economic growth, which accelerated to an annual 11.7 percent in the first quarter, the most in almost six years. The economy was on course to exceed those of Canada, Spain and Italy by 2025, he said.
Rising Opposition
Opposition to Turkey’s entry rose in nine of 11 EU countries surveyed by a U.S. research institute, the German Marshall Fund, last September. Around 48 percent of people in France want to keep Turkey out. Merkel said on a visit to Ankara in March that deepening ties among EU members made it more difficult for Turkey to meet conditions for joining the bloc.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Bild newspaper today that Turkey isn’t “capable of joining” at present, “but we have a great interest in seeing Turkey orient itself toward Europe.”
Turkey “has an impressive constituency of favourable countries backing its joining the EU - the U.K., Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal and Italy as well as Bulgaria and Romania,” Fadi Hakura, a Turkey analyst at the Chatham House research institute in London, said in an interview. “It needs the U.K. to mobilize that coalition.”
‘Polarized, Prejudiced’
In his speech, Cameron attacked those who see Turkey as an economic threat, “the polarized,” who think Turkey has to choose between East and West, and “the prejudiced, those who wilfully misunderstand Islam” and who “see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists.”
President Barack Obama traveled to Turkey last year for his first visit to a Muslim country and used a speech in Ankara to say the U.S. isn’t “at war with Islam.”
EU accession talks in eight areas have been frozen since 2006 to punish Turkey for barring air and sea traffic from EU member Cyprus, the Greek-speaking Mediterranean republic whose northern part has been occupied by Turkey’s army since 1974.
A Marshall Fund survey last year found that just 32 percent of Turks held a favorable view of joining the EU, while only 34 percent felt they share common values with the West.
“I’m not asking you to be a different country, to abandon your values, your traditions or your culture,” Cameron said. “But we want you to push forwards aggressively with the EU reforms you’re making.”
Split Over Iran
It’s Cameron’s fifth overseas trip since taking office in May. After visits to France, Germany, Afghanistan and the U.S., the decision to go to Turkey reflects the importance the U.K. attaches to its relationship with the country, Cameron’s office said in an e-mail.
Turkey voted last month in the United Nations Security Council against imposing new nuclear sanctions on Iran. It previously brokered with Brazil a nuclear-fuel deal with the Iranians that the U.S. dismissed as a “transparent ploy” to avoid sanctions.
Cameron denied Turkey’s opposition to new curbs on Iran would hinder relations, saying Britain and Turkey shared the same goal. “We have very many shared interests,” Cameron told reporters. “Of course there will be different perspectives but on Iran we want to see Iran without nuclear weapons.”
The prime minister also urged Turkey to “remain a friend of Israel.” Relations between the two nations were strained after Israeli troops killed nine Turkish activists on an aid convoy bound for the Gaza Strip.
Cameron condemned the attack as “completely unacceptable” and said Gaza “cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp” with restrictions on the flow of humanitarian goods and people in and out of the Palestinian territory.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in Ankara at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net.
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