Post by Bozur on Apr 29, 2009 1:49:52 GMT -5
Do the Balkans belong to Europe?
Today's Zaman - 7 hours ago
It is still difficult to indicate what possible obstacles Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and particularly Kosovo could encounter from other countries ...
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Do the Balkans belong to Europe?
by Hajrudin Somun*
There should be no doubt even for school students that the Balkans belong to Europe and consequently, that Turkey is as much European as it is Asian. When we come to the terms of the Balkan countries' accession to the European Union, however, there are people still trying to make the Balkans belonging to Europe dubious.
They talk about European enlargement or about the process of expansion of Europe to the Balkans and Turkey. Although some may accuse me of linguistic pedantry, such a simplification more or less has its conscious psychological background in the old Euro-centric view of the world. Whatever came from its southeast, Europe considered troublesome -- not really European -- and distant from the values of the Western world. Thus, if there had not been higher interests, the criteria for EU membership would have been harder when applied to the Balkan countries.
When we come to the actual phase of the EU's further expansion there is an emphasis being given to bilateral disputes the remaining aspirants for Euro-Atlantic integration have with EU member states. SETimes.com stressed at the beginning of April that "many Southeast European countries' Union bids may be a problem if member states with existing bilateral grudges continue to block their nemeses from joining the EU." The European Parliament's recent report on consolidating stability in the Western Balkans states that bilateral issues should not block the EU accession process. In its special resolutions on Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey, adopted in the middle of March, the European Parliament also pointed out the interdependence of bilateral disputes and EU membership.
It is true that Croatia's accession negotiations have so far been blocked because of a border dispute with Slovenia. The last proposal by the EU that the two countries reach a compromise through international mediation led by the famous Finnish negotiator Martti Ahtisaari was rejected last week by Croatia, which insists that the International Court of Justice in The Hague seek a solution. If the Netherlands keeps its word, it will veto Serbia's accession to the EU until Ratko Mladic, responsible for Srebrenica and other war atrocities in Bosnia, reaches The Hague's International Criminal Tribunal. Already having candidate status, Macedonia can't continue the EU accession process due to a dispute with Greece over its name -- also the only reason for Macedonia's non-acceptance into the NATO family. There was some information from Washington a few days ago that Greece would accept a UN mediator's proposal of the Republic of North Macedonia to be adopted instead of the ridiculous name The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia -- the only geopolitical term where already non-existent Yugoslavia formally still exists. There is little hope that the Macedonian government will accept the proposal.
Finally, Cyprus' objection to several chapters in Turkish accession talks with the EU is still there, but it could be eased by ongoing efforts for the island's reunification. It seems that the "Cyprus connection" is an everlasting one. I was told recently by the European Commission's ambassador in Sarajevo, Dimitris Kourkoulas, Greek by nationality, "Even when Greece requested joining the EC in 1964, they told us to first solve the problem of Cyprus and Turkey."
It is still difficult to indicate what possible obstacles Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and particularly Kosovo could encounter from other countries once they reach the upper phases of the EU accession process. If few EU member-states refuse to recognize the independence of Kosovo, how will they behave if that country requests to join the EU? Or, once Serbia joins the EU, it might block for good Kosovo's Euro-Atlantic integration.
EU accession dependent on many factors Kosovo -- although not only Kosovo -- was a good example of the problems which are much more serious than bilateral disputes that make the Balkans accession to the EU delayed and dependent on broader international considerations. Besides being the cause of the latest regional military conflict and NATO engagement, Kosovo was directly implicated in creating a new international crisis in Georgia. This leads us to a further conclusion -- apart from the fact that the overall reform process within southeast European countries was hampered by general economic underdevelopment, organized crime, widespread corruption and ethnic intolerance -- it is not yet possible to speak about satisfactory political stability as the first prerequisite for the region's full accession to the EU.
In that regard, it could be worth revisiting the most recent analysis resulting from a panel discussion held at the United States Helsinki Commission on April 2, under the title "The Western Balkans: Challenges for US and European Engagement." Before citing some of its participants, let me repeat my objection to the term "the Western Balkans," which no-one has yet defined. It refers mostly to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. If the criteria for such a division of a region already divided enough were EU non-membership, then the remaining part of the Balkan Peninsula includes member-states Bulgaria, Greece and Romania. But nobody calls that area "the Eastern Balkans" because in that case, it should refer to Turkey as well,
The main speaker at the above-mentioned panel was Lord Paddy Ashdown, a prominent British politician who focused the discussion on the particularly worrying situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he has served as high representative since May 2002. Other panelists supported his view that "there is only one lever that we have to drive the process forward in the Western Balkans, and that is the lever of the stabilization and association and ultimately membership process of the EU." Ivo Banac, a professor at Yale University, thinks that EU expansion is in trouble "as a result of the world economic crisis, obstacles to the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon after the Irish referendum last June and also as a result of lack of political leadership in a number of EU countries."
James Lyon, from the Democratization Policy Council (DPC), directed the debate to the US policy toward much of the Western Balkans, that is, with the exception of Kosovo, "best described as leaving the region to the EU, with Washington supporting whatever foreign policy Brussels could create." And the EU, in his words, "relied solely on what we call soft power -- that is, the stabilization and association process, and the lure of eventual EU membership." Preventing renewed conflicts and crises in Bosnia and elsewhere in the Western Balkans will require renewed and robust US diplomatic engagement in support of a credible and strategically coherent EU policy to "bolster the EU's soft power." "Should Washington remain disengaged," concluded Lyon, summing up the prevailing judgment of the whole panel, "it will share in a policy failure that will incur considerable cost in the region with the EU and the wider world." The "wider world" could extend to Russia, which still tries to keep "a certain amount" of influence in the Balkans.
The particular intention of such a great appeal for greater US engagement in the region, was to reach the ears of President Barack Obama, who did not pay much attention to the European southeast during his presidential campaign. Only two days after the panel, at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, he sent a "soft message" to Europeans in a "take care about the Balkans" style, but he did not close the door to more active US policy in the region. To leave the region completely to European judgment would mean the application of different standards even in the matter of EU enlargement. As the Croatian scholar Zarko Puhovski stressed, "If EU interest -- as a group or only one state -- prevails, it is not important how far the reforms are achieved." Otherwise, he notes, how did it happen that Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia entered the EU, while they all have "a negative score, at least in their approach toward national minorities."
From a wider perspective, Lord Ashdown made an interesting remark speaking about his experience in Bosnia and the Balkans at the panel discussion. "There is a sad, bleak history of international interventions after wars, which is that we always leave too early. We leave before the job is finished." I got satisfaction from his comments as I had observed in one of my previous contributions to Today's Zaman that the big European powers had left undefined situations in this region for almost a century, just to keep a space open for their own particular interests.
*Hajrudin Somun is the former Bosnia and Herzegovina ambassador to Turkey.
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