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İş dünyasında bir çırpıda büyüyen şirketlerin yanı sıra bir de yavaş yavaş ama sağlam adımlarla büyüyen şirketler vardır. Büyük bir hızla büyüyen şirketlerin yıldızı hemen sönebilir. Ama adım adım ilerleyenleri sarsmak biraz zordur.

DR. ERDEM ABD BASININDA

Tarih: 11.06.2005
  Yazdır

 

Türkiye’nin Avrupa Birliği konusundaki sabrı her geçen gün azalıyor

Türkiye’nin Avrupa Birliği konusundaki sabrı her geçen gün azalıyor

Türkiye’nin önde gelen işadamlarından Zeynel Erdem, Körfez’in önemli sanayi kenti İzmit’te katıldığı konferansta 400 dinleyiciye şu mesajı verdi: “ Avrupa Birliği’ni hiç hesaba katmayın. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin bizim gerçek dostumuz olduğunu sakın unutmayın “

Sayın Erdem’in bu sözleri, Türkiye’de, özellikle Fransa ve Hollanda’nın AB Anayasası’na “Hayır” demesinden sonra oldukça hızlı yayılan bir düşünceyi anlatıyor. Türkiye’de birçok kişi Avrupa Birliği’nden umutlarını keserek yeni arayışlar ve geleceğini şekillendirecek yeni stratejiler yaratma sürecine girdi. Öncelikli olarak Irak’a müdahelenin ardından giderek bozulan Türk-ABD ilişkilerinin hızla onarılması ve dostlukların tekrar sağlamlaştırılması gündemde.

Cuma günü New York’ta bir açıklama yapan Başbakan Recep Tayip Erdoğan, “Türkiye’de demokrasinin prensiplere son derece bağlı olduklarını belirterek, bir tercih yapmanın şu an için söz konusu olmadığını, AB ve ABD arasında bir seçim yapmadan, her ikisine de aynı mesafe ile yaklaştıklarını” dile getirdi. Bu açıklamaların samimi olduğuna inanıyoruz ancak Türkiye’nin tam üyeliğin gerçekleşmesi konusunda yaşanan hayal kırıklığının giderek arttığını ve AB ‘nin geleceğine yönelik inancın azaldığını da gözden kaçırmamak gerekiyor

http://www.iht.com 
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/11/news/turkey.php 
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/11/international/europe/11turkey.html

 

BU HABER 11 HAZİRAN TARİHLİ – INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE VE THE NEW YORK TIMES - GAZETESİNİN – İLK SAYFASINDA YER ALMIŞTIR.

Turkey grows impatient with Europe

By Craig S. Smith The New York Times

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2005

IZMIT, Turkey Zeynel Erdem, a leading Turkish businessman, came to this seaside industrial town to give 400 of his prominent peers a message.

"Don't count on the European Union," he told the crowd after a chicken dinner in a hotel ballroom here. "Look to the U.S.; they're our real friends."

That view is spreading in this sprawling land of 70 million people who have yearned for decades to become a part of Europe. With the EU in political disarray following the French and Dutch rejections of a new European constitution, and opposition to Turkish membership gaining ground in Europe, many Turks are beginning to wonder whether their European dreams are worth the effort. They are reassessing instead their relationship with the United States, which has suffered since the start of the Iraq war.

Turkey's stated goal is still to join the EU. And in an interview in New York on Friday, Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan said that Turks had a high regard for the democratic principles of both Europe and the United States and did not make a distinction between the two.

"The EU and the U.S. are not mutually exclusive for Turkey," he said, adding that citizens of all countries had "emotional reactions" to immediate events. "If you look at the polls, support for the EU may have gone down just a little bit, but it is still at 60 percent."

But the shift in sentiment signals a deepening ambivalence.

This ambivalence, toward the vaunted vision of shared sovereignty, exists both inside and outside of Europe.

Just as French and Dutch voters expressed dismay at the increasing European-level control over their lives and worried aloud about immigrants diluting their nations, many Turks are now questioning whether their country should see its future as part of Europe.

Of course, few Turks have bought into the U.S. program for reshaping the Mideast, and relations with the United States lost their pre-eminence in the wake of the Iraq war, which Turkey opposed. Turkey's focus shifted to Europe.

That is beginning to change. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's fence-mending trip to Washington this week played well here. Erdogan even won some support from Washington in ending the economic and political isolation of Turkish Cypriots.

EU leaders agreed in December to begin membership negotiations with Turkey on Oct. 3, and the country has done a great deal required to make that happen. It has implemented a new penal code and agreed to sign a protocol extending its customs union with the EU to all of the Union's new members - including the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus.

Yet, despite all that, the prospects for Turkey's membership look gloomier than ever. Turkey will have a larger population than any EU country by the time it completes its membership process - a projected 80 million - and will likely still be far poorer. More troubling to many Europeans is that Turkish membership would create a powerful Muslim presence within the union and push Europe's eastern borders out to Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Some European politicians have started talking openly about offering Turkey a "privileged partnership" instead of full membership, something roundly rejected here. The idea, first mooted publicly three years ago by the former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, has most recently been taken up by Germany's Christian Democrats, whose leader, Angela Merkel, is expected to run against Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in September. Merkel's party has stated unequivocally that it will try to block Turkey's membership if it comes to power.

Hanging in the background is the pledge last year by President Jacques Chirac of France to submit Turkish membership to a national referendum. After last month's rejection of the constitution, few people believe such a referendum would pass.

Many Turks say they are getting fed up with meeting Europe's manifold demands without some guarantee that they will become a part of Europe in the end.

"Europe is playing a dangerous game with Turkey," said Can Paker, chairman of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation. "It's giving a stronger hand and more motivation to people who want the status quo to prevail." It's also fueling Turkish nationalism. In April, General Hilmi Ozkok, head of Turkey's powerful military, complained that Europe was "trying to change our national culture by imposing foreign values, fashion and languages that do not match Turkish customs and traditions."

Nationalist sentiments were stirred again when the European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that Turkey must give the Kurdish separatist Abdullah Ocalan a new trial.

Some Turks are beginning to imagine a day when Turkey doesn't need Europe at all, particularly because it gets so much support from the United States.

Turkey's economic output surged nearly 10 percent last year and is expected to grow as much as 6 percent this year. The current 10 percent inflation rate is the lowest in more than 30 years. Foreign investment from the West, slow because of Turkey's chronic corruption, has picked up.

Pekin Baran, a Turkish shipping tycoon, believes negotiations with Europe will start in October, as planned, but that "it will be a very, very nasty ride."

Under the negotiating rules laid out in December, all 25 EU members have to agree. That gives Cyprus or any other country hostile to Turkish membership effective veto power.

"The pity is that we are convinced that Turkey could have contributed to the future of Europe much more than she could reasonably have expected to get in exchange," said Baran, in his office overlooking the glittering Bosporus.

He nonetheless maintains that Turkey should stay the course and press ahead for full membership, in part because the negotiation process itself is valuable in driving ahead political and economic changes.

While there is still strong support for EU membership, polls have recorded a steep decline in national enthusiasm and Hans-Jorg Kretschmer, the EU representative in Turkey, warns that without better understanding on both sides, Turkish attitudes could turn quickly.

"Strong support based on ignorance is not good, because it can collapse very quickly," Kretschmer said before meeting Tuesday with representatives of nongovernmental organizations in the Black Sea port of Trabzon.

"The key element is that Turkey does its homework and completes the necessary political and other reforms," he said. "No one will say no to a Turkey which has become a liberal democracy in the European understanding."

During the interview Friday, Erdogan said in regard to polling on support on the EU: "In fact, in the last couple of weeks the situation in France and the Netherlands may have had a negative effect that brought down the numbers, but when the time arrives to begin the negotiations in the fall, I think that these numbers will start climbing up again in support of membership."

Saban Disli, deputy chairman in charge of foreign affairs of the Justice and Development Party said Europe shouldn't try to project a decision of 10 years from now by looking at Turkey today. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe in 10 years' time, it will be Turkey who holds a referendum to see if Turks still want to become a part of the EU."

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from New York.

 

 

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