Selected Books
Turkey in Europe & Europe in Turkey
Turgut Özal

The Request for Membership of the European Community

"The tension between opposites is good, and the most beautiful harmony is born out of conflict; everything evolves through discord."
Heraclitus of Ephesus

Turkey did not submit her request to become a full member of the European Community until she had reached the appropriate stage of development: the date was 14 April 1987.

Membership of the European Community requires the fulfillment of three fundamental conditions: the country must be European, democratic, and the level of its economy must allow it to assume the obligations imposed on it by the Treaty of Rome. In Turkey's case associate membership had been established by the Accord of Ankara in 1963, with full membership as its ultimate aim (4th paragraph of the Preamble and Article 28). Turkey is also a member of all the European and Western institutions (Council of Europe, OECD, NATO).

I have indicated that after an interval of three years we were able to return to a democratic regime with the elections of 1983, and that the elections of 1987 were entirely free and open to all. It is true that during the previous forty-five years the democratic regime in our country suffered some eclipses, but one does not have to go back a very long time to see that the same was also the case, not only among the most recent members of the Community, but even among certain founder members.

Certainly Turkey does have some problems, and we are aware of them. For example, our population is increasing, but the area of our country is more or less equal to that of the Federal Republic of Germany and France combined. At present the proportion of young people below the age of fourteen is much higher in our country than in western Europe, which means that we have a relatively small work-force compared with the total number of our population. However, smaller manpower means a small number of unemployed in spite of a high percentage. The number of those unemployed has already fallen significantly during the last two years, both in absolute and percentage terms.

Now that European countries themselves have many unemployed people, they are no longer able to offer work to a supplementary work-force, as was the case in the sixties. It is out of the question, therefore, for our workers to seek employment in other countries, and we are taking steps to ensure that the number of our `jobless' is reduced to a reasonable level prior to our entry into the Community.

A second problem is that of the difference between our per capita income and that of the European Community, which is ten times larger when calculated on nominal parities. However, when based on real parities, the difference is only 1 to 3. Our national per capita income will be around 4,500 dollars by the end of 1990133 and it could equal the average income of the Community towards the year 2000, if respective rates of growth remain constant. In the course of the first decade of the next century we could catch up with the most advanced country of the Community.

This hypothesis can be supported in another way. Our installed power capacity reached 75 billion kWh by the end of 1990. With an increase of 11 % a year, we could reach 165 to 170 billion kWh by the year 2000. The per capita consumption will then have increased 3.5 times. This shows that in the industrial context Turkey will catch up with the average level of Europe in the first years of the twenty-first century. In addition, the 87/88 edition of the Ramses report published by the IFRI envisages that by 2020 at the latest Turkey will exceed the gross national product of the Federal Republic of Germany, and probably the per capita gross national product of that country too, provided that the growth differential between the two is maintained.

Implementation of the GAP project will double our agricultural production, since it will enable two or three crops per year to be grown on an area of land almost equal in size to the cultivated land of the Netherlands. Such progress represents no threat to western Europe since we are supplying the market of the Middle East, a near neighbour, and will then be able to supply it still better. It will nonetheless take us many years to attain the level of productivity of western Europe in agriculture.

These forecasts enable us to assert with confidence that, when the time comes for our full and complete membership of the Community, we shall not be an economic burden on the other members. On the contrary, we shall represent a vast market for its high technology products, and we shall offer enormous opportunities for productive investments for its enterprises, because we have many major projects to undertake. You have in large measure completed your infrastructures: you are now in a position to help us. Your companies will be able to invest in this area and create a great deal of employment, both in your countries and in ours. Bearing in mind the differing wage costs of Europe and Turkey, you will be able to employ Turkish labour more economically in Turkey. Turkey will be able to play for the Community the role which the `sun-belt' played in the economic development of the United States. The most cursory study is enough to show that Turkey's membership of the Community will open up a whole range of new possibilities, rather than constitute a burden.

I do not need to emphasize the importance of Turkey to the security of western Europe. We have collaborated for thirty-five years within the framework of NATO. Europe has vital interests in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Middle East, and in the Gulf. These regions have a three-fold strategic importance due to their crucial sea-lines of communication, to their wealth in oil and gas, and finally to their commercial markets and the possibilities for investment which they represent. Moreover, the Mediterranean basin has throughout its history formed a cultural framework common to the Middle East and Europe. It is for these reasons that the Community is negotiating with the Gulf Cooperation Council to obtain a free-exchange zone.

It is only necessary to look at a map to see immediately the crucial importance of Turkey from all these points of view. After Great Britain left the zone to the east of the Suez Canal in 1973, the United States declared through Mr. Schlesinger, then the American Defence Secretary, that they had vital interests in the Gulf and South East Asia. Western Europe similarly has essential interests in these regions, but does not at present have the means to defend them herself, for it has not yet become a political and security union. It is the interests in the Middle East of these two pillars of the Atlantic Alliance, namely the US and western Europe, which have brought Turkey from its position as an outpost to its present place of central importance, thus reaffirming for the first time since the Roman Empire the complementary nature of the north and the south of the Mediterranean.

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