Turkey has tough decisions to make as it looks to join the EU

Some may be surprised by the Turkish government’s renewed eagerness to join the European Union (EU). The Turkish government has, after all, been busy passing a batch of internet surveillance laws, blocking Twitter and YouTube, reining in the judiciary and policing protests as if each and every one was a mob at the palace gates.

All of which, it goes without saying, is very un-EU-like.

For a few years Turkey’s EU bid seemed like it was dead. Having endured the condescension that accompanied certain European views of Turkey’s EU prospects, Turkish politicians revelled in the contrast between Eurozone crises and Turkey’s record growth. The prime minister even suggested Turkey would quit Nato, another pillar of Europe, and throw its lot in with China and Russia. But now, of course, things are different.

First, Turkey is gearing up for a period of great uncertainty. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised nothing less than a fundamental transformation of Turkish society. Newly appointed prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu faces general elections in 2015. Economic growth is slowing. A season of contentious policy-making is here. The government’s re-energised EU negotiations will help Turkey finesse one of its most important critics – the EU – during the controversies to come. Plus, if the government’s domestic critics are turning to the EU, the government will do well to crowd the front of the line.

Second, ISIL, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey’s own Kurdish “question” promise a knife-edge year in which the only sure prediction seems to be the unforeseen event. Undercutting its previous foreign policy pretensions and affecting policy on refugees, export markets, terrorism, and more, the Turkish government knows these crises are desperate. The government’s recent EU strategy paper mentions this front and centre. That an urgent strategic imperative binds Turkey to Europe is now harder to ignore.

Third, the Turkish government knows it must reform its education, labour, and other policies if its economy is to grow beyond low value-added sectors such as construction. But the necessary reforms are politically risky. EU requirements can provide cover. In short, there is clear utility, even necessity, in Turkey’s EU policy.

But it isn’t clear the government has accepted what a real bid for EU membership will eventually require: a fundamental choice between irreconcilables.

Will Turkey be a EU-style liberal democracy, with individual rights and institutional independence so well protected that Turkey’s major social issues, such as the Kurdish “question”, cronyism, and the relationship between politics and religion can be effectively and progressively governed by courts, legislation, and public policy debate?

Or will Turkey remain a country where citizens are governed by paternalistic rulers that expect deference, muted criticism, and who reserve the right to discipline society according to particular interests and ideology, and “solve” social issues with social engineering?

This second model is where the government is today. And in their efforts to reshape society, the government has inherited a long and steady tradition that stretches back to (and even beyond) the founding of modern Turkey.

The conventional wisdom says it is the Kurdish nationalist movement that can make or break the government’s efforts to pass a new constitution that will give Mr Erdogan executive powers – the foundation of the government’s plans to engineer what it calls “New Turkey” and a more conservative, pious society.

To capture the Kurdish swing vote, Mr Erdogan, through his aides, has been negotiating with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and working to maintain Ocalan’s prestige and influence among nationalist Kurds. Dangling incentives, such as Ocalan’s possible transfer to house arrest, Mr Erdogan wants Ocalan to have the PKK disarm and to deliver the Kurdish national vote for the new constitution.

But all this looks to be in jeopardy. Selahattin Demirtas’s presidential campaign broadened the Kurdish nationalist platform, most significantly in the minds of many Turkish citizens, away from Ocalan’s prison cell, and boosted the case that the party, more than the prisoner, should speak for its constituency.

Also, as long as ISIL remains a threat, the PKK can’t disarm. Moreover, as it fights ISIL the PKK will gain in power, prestige, and even increase its armaments. PKK leaders in Northern Iraq will matter more than the force’s nominal, imprisoned leader.

In other words, the poles of Kurdish influence are shifting away from the Erdogan-Ocalan axis. And as such, the chance for their limited bargain, which required no deep democratic restructuring reforms, might have passed. It is now difficult to see the basis upon which the Kurdish national movement can be persuaded to settle for anything less than a Turkey fully in line with EU norms. As the current crisis increases the urgency of solving Turkey’s Kurdish “question”, Turkey’s leaders have a fundamental decision to make.

Caleb Lauer is a freelance journalist who covers Turkey