New Blog: Steven Cook at CFR
Issandr El AmraniVeteran Egypt (and Turkey and Algeria) watcher Steven Cook, an expert on things military and much else, has a new blog at the Council of Foreign Relations website. Steven, who wrote a masterful comparison of the military regimes in those three countries in Ruling But Not Governing, is currently working on a book on Egypt-US relations since the 1950s, which should come out next year.
In his latest post, written from Ankara, he writes about whether Turkey needs the carrot of EU membership to carry out democratic change anymore. It's something I've been thinking about a lot right now, having come to see Turkey as a democracy (despite remaining problems about its treatment of minorities and some laws left over from the military dictatorship era). And in fact, the recent constitutional changes were carried out at a time when the EU connection is getting weaker.
When I think about EU policy towards the Arab world, I see a mixed bag: on the one hand, there are EU policies that incentivize reform and change towards democracy. On the other, I see many policies that would like to focus on minimal reforms but not real appetite for full-blown democracy promotion, conditionality, etc. The lack of serious implementation of human rights provisions in EU Association Agreements comes to mind, for instance. At the end of the day, the EU is an unreliable partner for democratic change, because its members (esp. France, Italy and Spain) have too much incentive to maintain the status-quo. They, and the US, will continue to lean towards support the dictatorships until a credible, broad-based opposition movement begins to pose a serious challenge. The problem now is that the regimes, and their foreign partners, maintain a situation where it is extremely difficult for such opposition movements to emerge. I very much agree with the work of Richard Youngs at FRIDE on these issues.
Anyway, here's what Steve had to say about Turkey:
It’s long been an accepted truth in the Turkey-watching community that the EU was an anchor of Turkish political reform. The structure of Turkish politics was such that Ankara needed the incentive of EU membership to drive democratic change. Many Turks believe this as well, but after 58% of voters said “Evet” (Yes) to a series of constitutional amendments in a September 12th referendum, some commentary—by no means a consensus—began popping up here arguing that Turkey no longer needs the EU to drive its political change. The amendments, the most important of which has to do with the selection of judges to Turkey’s highest judicial bodies, raised legitimate concerns about the government’s ability to pack the courts. Yet, the perception among many is that with the changes to the constitution, the Justice and Development Party government took an important step toward a more open and democratic government that (unlike an array of reforms undertaken in 2003 and 2004) were not specifically in response to Europe’s membership criteria.
Add to Turkey’s apparent ability to undertake change on its own; falling support for EU membership—between 45-50%, which is down 30 points from 2004; a younger generation of Turks who have no vested interest in joining Europe; and imploding EU economies, in contrast to Turkey’s solid growth, it may be time to rethink Ankara’s relationship with Brussels. I am not suggesting that Turkey cut its ties to the West. Europe remains Turkey’s most important trading partner and source of foreign direct investment. Turkey could, after all, continue to harmonize its political and economic systems with the EU, but not take the ultimate step toward membership. That’s what Norway did, and it was enormously beneficial.
And get his book!
Reader Comments (3)
Oh please...
"Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations has published a ‘contingency planning memorandum’ in favour of continued support to the regime, which, as he describes it, ‘has helped create a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power’. Less expensive at any rate than it would be in the event of an Islamist takeover that ‘would pose a far greater threat – in magnitude and degree – to US interests than the Iranian revolution’. This seems to be the Obama administration’s implicit wager, too. It’s bad news for ElBaradei and his supporters: bad news for all the Egyptians who fear that they will never know democracy because of the ‘American veto’."
It's fair enough to take Steve Cook to task for the memo, but it should also be read closely: it pretty clearly says US policy options depend on whether US leaders care about democracy in Egypt and think the current system should continue. It offers two different views, depending on which side of that question you take. Page 3 covers that. In his recommendations, he encourages the US to "quietly promote political change." (http://www.cfr.org/publication/19696/political_instability_in_egypt.html)
Now, that's not as forceful as I would like, but the work (for CFR and the US govt, after all) displays a clear understanding of US govt. approaches to Egypt. It's a more useful read than some think tank that wants to see democracy come to Egypt but has no clear way to implement it other than imagining some fanciful reversal of US policy. There is also an opportunity to reverse-engineer these kind of reports to see what is important to the US and how best to leverage US fears (if you're an opposition movement). That's why I read Steve Cook's work, and recommend you do too.
I'd be a bit cautious on Cook's comparison to Norway. Yes, like Norway Turkey is experiencing real growth that outstrips the rest of the EU, but the sources of that growth in the two cases are very different. Norway's is basically a rentier economy built on oil and increasingly natural gas, not on very much innovation. The Norwegians have captured a rent and having been poor for centuries and now built up a stable well-governed welfare state weren't in the mood to hand large chunks of the cash to other parts of the EU. Turkey on the other hand has improved macro-policies and concomitant governance feeding the growth and allowing innovation to spring up. This means the sources of its wealth are inherently tied to the broader world and its trading partners. I haven't studied Turkey closely enough to know if EU membership versus simply closer policy alignment would make a huge difference in their growth prospects, but it's certainly a far more valid concern than in the case of Norway. This is also where your broader point (does Turkey need an EU prod to keep reforming or not) is a very valid and important question. Maybe not, but there's enough instability in the current political economy of Turkey and in particular the risk of re-entering destabilizing inflation/balance-of-payments-crisis-mode and knock-on political impacts that this isn't a question that should be taken lightly. Maybe the EU is or isn't the right target, but I think there's a case to be made that Turkey could use some outside constraints and/or carrots to keep it on the stable development path it has entered. The gains have been impressive and steady over the past decade in particular, but there remains more fragility than I think many realize.