Examination of Witnesses (Questions 175
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 13 MARCH 2002
THE RT
HON JACK
STRAW, MP, MR
PETER RICKETTS,
CMG AND MR
JOHN MACGREGOR,
CVO
Chairman
175. May we now open this part of our meeting
on Turkey. Mr John Macgregor, Director for Wider Europe, has joined
the Secretary of State and Mr Ricketts.
(Mr Straw) I have an opening statement
which I will summarise as time is short. Your Committee, Chairman,
has just been to Turkey. I greatly welcome the fact that you have
made the visit. It is a country which I have been taking an interest
in myself. It repays re-visiting. I have been there twice myself
in the last five months. We think that there are encouraging signs
that Turkey's reforms are beginning to develop momentum but since
you and your colleagues have been there more recently than I have
and have been able to spend a great deal more time there than
I have been able to, I would be very interested to hear your conclusions
as well.
Chairman: That will come out in the wash of
the Committee's questions. We are as a Committee most grateful
to our Ambassador in Ankara, our Consul-General in Istanbul, who
are models of what a Committee could expect from diplomatic representatives.
Ms Stuart
176. Foreign Secretary, We are very grateful
for the submission of the Foreign Office in relation to UK/Turkey
relations[5].
I got no sense, reading through that, of to what extent an assessment
has been made by the Foreign Office about whether it would be
in the United Kingdom's interests to have Turkey as a full member
of the European Union and in particular there are two aspects
which I should like you to address in the answer. Following Laeken
it became quite clear that in terms of Turkey's application to
become a member, even though no formal date has been set, it is
no longer regarded as 15 current members, 12 candidate members
plus one, but Turkey has a full place which equals the other candidate
members. In that assessment there are two aspects. One is, what
would be the main areas where Britain's strategic interests would
be best served by membership of the European Union by Turkey,
and the second is, what is your assessment of at what stage Turkey
could make sufficient progress to become a full member? During
our visit to Turkey we heard anything from, "Give us a date
and we can do it in six months" to, "We can look at
10 to 12 years".
(Mr Straw) We have long supported Turkey's
membership of the European Union but that has to be on the basis
of the criteria set out in Copenhagen in June of 1993, which apply
to Turkey as equally as they apply to any of the other applicants.
It will be recalled that membership requirements of the candidate
country are to achieve stability of institutions guaranteeing
democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection
of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as
well as the capacity to cope with the competitive pressures and
market forces within the Union. It presupposes the candidate's
ability to take on the obligations of membership and adhere to
the aims of political, economic and monetary union. Those are
the criteria laid down. You will also be aware, Ms Stuart, that
in Helsinki it said in paragraph 12 that Turkey is a candidate
destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as
applied to other candidate states. Turkey, like other candidate
states, would benefit from a pre-accession strategy to stimulate
and support its reforms. That is the basis. We want to see Turkey
in. However, we want to see Turkey in on the same basis as any
other member and we think that is not only important for the integrity
of the Union but also important for Turkey, so it can take a full
and confident place at the table. In terms of its status in accession,
it is, as I think you know, at the pre-screening stage. Although
I think in many other respects it has been treated in a similar
way to other candidates who are further down the track, in terms
of where it is in timescale it is further back than any other
candidate at the moment. You are saying when will they make good
progress, when will they be in? I cannot put a date on that. They
will come in when they have got through the screening process
and when they have been able to show tangible progress on each
of the chapters, those chapters have been closed and there has
therefore been agreement to their accession. You ask about our
United Kingdom strategic interests. Size, geographical position
and its neighbourhood, to put it as delicately as that, mean that
Turkey is an extremely important ally for us. They have been a
loyal, faithful ally of the United Kingdom and the other now 17
members of NATO. They have played, as you know, a very important
part in the continuation of the action which has been necessary
against Iraq. They have played a key role in the fight against
terrorism and we hope very much that they will take over as lead
nation on ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, in
Afghanistan. Our own judgement is that our strategic interests
with them are reasonably well served at the moment but would be
better served if they were members of the European Union. For
example, under ESDP a lot of the difficulties which they face
at the moment would fall away when they were a member of the European
Union.
177. Does the United Kingdom have a position
on the question of whether Turkey should be given a date to start
the negotiating process? The reason why I ask that is that we
very much picked up during our visit that the perception in Turkey
was that everybody makes a lot of positive noises but these noises
are never followed by real action, that EU membership for those
who want to continue their modernisation process in Turkey is
an extremely important vehicle, but it could also be potentially
destabilising and therefore once dates are given it gives a kind
of milestone along which you can manage that process. Hence my
question, do we want to give them a date and what is our realistic
assessment on which that could be achieved?
(Mr Straw) We have not given them a date yet and I
do not think we would give them a date until they have gone past
the present pre-screening situation. That is because it has been
collectively judged that it would not be appropriate to offer
them a date at the moment. For example, if you take their big
human rights agenda, when I was there, which was initially mid-October,
these 34 separate constitutional amendments had just been passed
through and the President and the Prime Minister and other people
I spoke were all very pleased about that, but that was getting
agreement in principle to these changes. They have then got to
get them through in detailed texts and then they have to be sure
that they operate on the ground. That is in a sense a bigger agenda
than is faced by most, not all, other accession countries. However,
if your Committee were to say that you think that we should consider
setting a date, which is not a recommendation I have had put to
me up to now, then of course I would pay very careful attention
to that.
(Mr Ricketts) Could I just add one sentence, Chairman,
just to say that, as the Foreign Secretary says, it is difficult
to set a date because in the end it is up to the Turks themselves
and the pace of their own economic and political reform programmes
which will determine how quickly they move through this process
leading to the accession negotiations.
Chairman
178. But if they were to do well, if they were
to fulfil the criteria, can we take it that they will join, because
there is a clear feeling in Turkey that not with the UK but with
some EU members there is a hidden agenda, an unspoken nature of
objection, which would prevent Turkey for other reasons joining
the Union?
(Mr Straw) Yes, is the answer to that. We are completely
committed to them joining if they fulfil the Copenhagen criteria.
They know that. I accept entirely the implication behind your
question, and what was said more explicitly by Ms Stuart, which
is that the very process of seeking membership in an active way,
which they have been, is obviously acting as a dynamic to the
internal politics of the country in Turkey and if that dynamic
was stalled, and unfairly stalled, that could have quite a serious
adverse effect on the domestic stability of Turkey, and we acknowledge
that.
Ms Stuart
179. You made reference in the submission about
the exchange between British officials and Turkish officials and
you yourself said that you had visited Turkey twice in the recent
past. Are you aware of any plans of the Prime Minister intending
to visit Turkey, because that certainly was something which was
mentioned to us on a number of occasions, and secondly (a more
administrative question), are you satisfied that the current numbers
of Turkish speakers you have access to within the Foreign Office
is sufficient to work constructively with Turkey?
(Mr Straw) I will ask Mr Macgregor and Mr Ricketts
to comment on the exchange of officials. The Prime Minister's
visit programme has a lot of demands on it but it is kept under
close review and again I am sure that if your Committee, Ms Stuart,
were to say they thought a visit by the Prime Minister was a priority
that would be considered closely.
5 See Evidence, pp Ev 56-Ev 63. Back
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