March 29, 2010
Turkey Faults Germany and France on Military Sales to Greece
By STEPHEN CASTLE
BRUSSELS — Just as the German chancellor arrived in Ankara on Monday for bilateral talks, fraught with differences over education and accession to the European Union, a fresh rift seemed to have emerged over policies toward Greece, Turkey’s regional rival.
Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief negotiator with the European Union, has criticized Germany, along with France, for seeking to sell military equipment to Greece while pressing the government in Athens to make drastic public spending cuts as a result of its dire financial crisis. The pointed critique of Berlin and Paris was made in an interview last week in Brussels.
Mr. Bagis’s visit to see E.U. officials took place as Greece’s debt problems dominated the European Union’s agenda, having plunged the euro into the worst crisis in its history. On Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel played a central role in an E.U. summit meeting that put in place a financial safety net for Athens, but only reluctantly and after insisting on a tough austerity package in Greece.
Mr. Bagis also said that to help Greece escape its “economic disaster” and reduce regional tensions, Ankara would reciprocate if the Greeks froze or cut defense procurement.
“One of the reasons for the economic crisis in Greece is because of their attempt to compete with Turkey in terms of defense expenditures,” Mr. Bagis said.
“Even those countries that are trying to help Greece at this time of difficulty are offering to sell them new military equipment,” he added. “Greece doesn’t need new tanks or missiles or submarines or fighter planes, neither does Turkey. It’s time to cut military expenditure throughout the world, but especially between Turkey and Greece. Neither Greece nor Turkey needs neither German nor French submarines.”
The Greek Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Mr. Bagis’s comments.
Under pressure from the European Union, Greece recently approved a deep package of cuts to reduce the budget deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product by 4 percentage points this year. The latest austerity measures include an increase in value-added sales tax, an increase on taxes for fuel, alcohol, cigarette and alcohol and a cut in supplements to wages for civil servants.
According to NATO, in 2008, Greece spent 2.8 percent of G.D.P. on its military, or about €6.9 billion, or around $9.3 billion. Turkey spent 1.8 percent of G.D.P. on its military, or the equivalent of about €11.5 billion, in 2008, according to NATO.
Talks between the Turkish and Greek leaders are due to be held soon.
“It is good to have positive rhetoric, but it needs to be followed up by positive action,” a Greek official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Mr. Bagis did not identify any specific military projects, though the Greek Navy has had a longstanding order to buy four German submarines.
Mrs. Merkel, who met the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gave a cool reception to his suggestion that Turkish-language schools should be set up in Germany.
“Of course Turkey also can have schools in Germany” she said while adding that they must not be “an excuse for Turks living in Germany not to learn the German language,” The Associated Press reported.
She also described Turkey’s E.U. accession talks as “open-ended,” The A.P. reported, but did not repeat her longstanding suggestion, and that of France, of offering Ankara a “privileged partnership” that falls short of full E.U. membership.
Ankara is pleased that Mrs. Merkel has changed her language, and Mr. Bagis said that the fact that this “insulting phrase” was “no longer being used by those countries is a good sign.”
Nevertheless, Turkey’s bid for E.U. membership has lost momentum. Negotiations in only one area, research and development, have been provisionally completed. Talks on 11 of the 35 subjects, or “chapters” in E.U. jargon, have been opened, but 8 remain blocked over Turkey’s failure to carry out the Ankara Protocol, which was signed in 2005 and states that Turkish ports should be opened to products from the European Union, including Greek Cypriot goods.
Mr. Bagis said he wanted to start talks in four more areas this year and expressed optimism about progress in talks on the reunification of Cyprus, adding that the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders had met “almost 70 times” during the past two years or so.
“It might not be a comprehensive solution that touches every single issue on the island, but they must have achieved something,” he said. “The rumors we hear are that they have achieved a lot”
But Mr. Bagis rejected the idea of a unilateral gesture from Turkey to open its ports without a move to end the economic embargo of Northern Cyprus that came about after the island’s partition in 1974.
This would be impossible, he said, “because Turkey is not a sultanate or an emirate — Turkey is a democracy where we have an opposition and a public opinion that matter.”
Mr. Bagis also dismissed the idea that the Turkey’s E.U. accession process could be plunged into crisis this year over the Ankara Protocol. The talks, he said, are “so important that neither Turkey nor the E.U. can afford to have a wreck.”
A recent controversy over a supposed military coup plot had made Turkey more open and transparent, and that process will be encouraged by a new constitutional amendment package, Mr. Bagis argued.
Meanwhile, he said, Turkey’s place as the 16th-largest economy in the world and the 6th-largest economy in Europe, makes his country centrally important to the European Union.
“Especially in the aftermath of this major economic crisis that had its influence throughout Europe,” Mr. Bagis added, “Turkey’s economic strength has made it a very attractive candidate country.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/world/europe/30iht-turkey.html
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