I congratulate Ministers on the Treasury Bench on singling out the topic of UK-Turkey relations and Turkey’s foreign policy when considering the estimates for the Foreign Office.
Turkey is a delightful country. I think you know that, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I think you have been there on a number of occasions. I was reminded of it only yesterday when I got into a taxi in Belfast with a number of colleagues. The taxi driver asked where we were going for our holidays and then told us that he was going back to the same hotel, in the same town in Turkey, as he had for the past 19 years. He and the hotel owner were on such good terms that he no longer had to pay for the hotel room, and just for his flights; I do not know how much Guinness he drank when he got there. I, too, shall spend time in Turkey over the summer recess. As many colleagues know, my wife is Turkish, but my interest in and commitment to supporting Turkey’s role in European institutions long predates my marriage.
Turkey is a fascinating country, and there are similarities with our own history. We lost an empire; Turkey lost its empire about 50 years before we lost ours. Turkey’s greatest area of influence, political, economic and cultural, is in the former Ottoman empire, and we ignore that at our peril. Conservative estimates suggest that the EU neighbourhood policy costs in the order of €1.4 billion a year. When we add the cost of the new EU External Action Service, we can see that the EU spends an awful lot of money on our neighbourhood. Our political and economic effectiveness, however, is dwarfed by Turkish foreign policy in that very same neighbourhood.
A key argument to embrace Turkey and its foreign policy is our joint approach to our common neighbourhood; most of Europe’s neighbourhood was, in fact, part of
the Ottoman empire. In areas of conflict and of post-conflict reconstruction, Europe has benefited from Turkey’s influence. In the Balkans, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, Turkish influence is not to be underestimated, and we should recognise that. In the Maghreb—the countries of the Arab spring—Turkey was the first back in, in terms of influence, and it had influence that predated us in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. In the middle east, Turkey’s influence on its near neighbours—Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Syria—is something on which we should capitalise, and which we should not ignore.
It is not just in areas of conflict or post-conflict that Turkey has influence; it has economic influence in the Balkans, the Maghreb and the middle east, as well as the Caucasus and central Asia, particularly the Turkic-speaking nations of central Asia. Europe’s neighbourhood is Turkey’s neighbourhood. The Ottoman empire, to which I referred, significantly predated the British empire. In the middle ages, it dislodged Byzantium. By the mid-19th century, it was in serious decline. It was Tsar Nicholas I of Russia who coined the phrase that Turkey was the “sick man of Europe”. He thought that Britain and France would stand by while he took control of the Crimea, but he was mistaken. We reacted, not because we wanted to prolong the rule of the Ottoman empire but because we wanted to limit Russian influence, which has very much been part of our foreign policy ever since.
The final demise came in world war one, when Turkey backed the wrong side. The treaty of Sèvres in 1920 effectively destroyed the unity of the Turkish state and partitioned the Ottoman empire between the allied powers. Many educated Turks—and this is key to modern Turkey—were totally dissatisfied with that. The war of independence, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who we now know as Ataturk, the name given to him by the Turkish Parliament, resulted in the 1923 treaty of Lausanne and the modern Turkish state.
Ataturk is somebody we should focus on. He was the man who wanted to create Turkey and reinforce it as a modern European state, a secular state. In the early years he set about banning the fez and the turban, and later the veil and the headscarf, all the paraphernalia of a religious state. Arabic script was banned and replaced by a Latin alphabet. Religious schools were outlawed. Women were given equal rights and universal suffrage. Islamic law was replaced by a civil code based on the Swiss model and a penal code based on the Italian model. This is the basis of modern Turkey.
The question which I know some of our colleagues in Germany and France still ask is, “Is Turkey a European country? Should it be a member of the EU?” We have already heard that it is a member of NATO, a founder member of the OECD, a member of the Council of Europe and a member of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It was an associate member of the Western European Union, and it participates in European Union battle groups, EU military operations and is also a participant in the European Court.
Turkey applied to join the European Union in 1963. That was also the year of the first French veto against our membership, but we joined eventually in 1973 and Turkey is still trying to join. In 1995 the customs union was concluded with the European Union, and 59% of Turkey’s exports go to the European Union—some 10% to Germany and 6% each to France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It is the fastest growing economy in
Europe. It grew by 9% in 2010 and by 8.5% in 2011. Growth is slowing this year, but Turkey is still the fastest growing economy in Europe.
Politically and economically, Turkey brings so much to the table that we delay her membership at our peril. There are those who say that Europe is a Christian club and Turkey is a Muslim country. I suspect that Turkey would not have succeeded in joining the Holy Roman empire, but this is the modern Europe. It is a place for all cultures and we should not be discriminating on the basis of the predominant religion in that country. Our own nation is a good example of that, as are many others. European Union membership for Turkey is not without its problems, but Turkish membership is in our interest economically, politically and strategically. Turkey has always been a strong ally of Europe and should be recognised as such today. Europe should recognise her contribution and grant her membership as soon as possible.
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