Talking Turkey

By choosing to end his grand tour of Europe in Ankara and Istanbul this week,Barack Obama fulfilled his pledge to visit a Muslim country...

By choosing to end his grand tour of Europe in Ankara and Istanbul this week,Barack Obama fulfilled his pledge to visit a Muslim country during his first 100 days in office. He took the opportunity of his address to the Turkish parliament to reaffirm that America was not at war with Islam. But his visit was also testimony to Turkey8217;s strategic importance for the West as a whole.

That reflects partly geography,partly geopolitics. As Mr Obama pointed out,Turkey is a natural bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Its potential as an energy transit corridor to Europe was again made obvious during January8217;s gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Turkey has the chance to play a pivotal role in the troubled Caucasus region,especially if its current efforts to repair relations with Armenia succeed. Militarily,Turkey has NATO8217;s biggest army after America8217;s,and hosts a large American airbase at Incirlik. Recently its prime minister,Recep Tayyip Erdogan,has also engaged robustly in Middle Eastern diplomacy,mediating between Syria and Israel,talking to Iran and keeping a beady eye on the aspirations for self-rule of the Kurds of northern Iraq.

Turkey matters for another reason too. It is a working example of a secular democracy in a Muslim country. It would be wrong to present it crudely as a model for the Muslim-especially the Arab-world to follow. Turkey8217;s history and geography make it a special case. But it does help disprove the widespread belief that Islam and overtly Islamist political parties must always be incompatible with a functioning democracy.

Almost since it first came to power in 2002,Mr Erdogan8217;s mildly Islamist Justice and Development AK Party has been under attack from Turkey8217;s secular Ataturkist establishment,particularly the generals. Yet although AK suffered a setback in recent local elections,the prime minister and his party have retained broad support among voters. And they have largely,if not always consistently,stuck to the path of liberalising reforms that passed a milestone in December 2004,when Mr Erdogan triumphantly secured a date to open formal negotiations for Turkey8217;s membership of the European Union.

Those negotiations have not been going smoothly. The obstacles to Turkish membership are numerous and as large as Turkey itself. Public opinion in many EU countries is less than welcoming. The French president,Nicolas Sarkozy,has loudly and repeatedly made clear that he is against Turkish membership; so,less vociferously,has the German chancellor,Angela Merkel. A settlement of the long-drawn-out Cyprus dispute is anyway an essential precondition for Turkish entry. Troublingly,partly in response to Europe8217;s perceived lack of enthusiasm,Turks8217; appetite for more reforms to fulfil the EU8217;s terms of entry has waned. Public opinion in Turkey has recently taken on a noticeably anti-American and anti-European tinge.

From Brussels,not Washington

Given all this,it is understandable that Mr Obama repeated America8217;s view that the EU should admit Turkey. Yet it was a tactical mistake. The EU8217;s leaders not only Mr Sarkozy do not take kindly to outsiders telling them publicly who should join their club-any more than Mr Obama would like to be told by Europeans that he should throw open the United States8217; border with Mexico. They must be persuaded on the merits of the case,not by lobbying that might make Turkish entry seem like an American idea. Above all,they need to believe that the Turks themselves are prepared to make changes at home to qualify. Turkish membership of the EU is,at best,many years off. Keeping it on the table is the job of political leaders in Brussels and Ankara,not Washington.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009