By PHK

Just four months ago, Turkish accession talks with the European Union were being written off by the media as a train wreck. Forecasting doom, gloom, war and premature death make good headlines and sells newspapers but I’ve never been convinced that such skim-the-surface reports are anything more than superficial recounts of what each side wants the public to hear at the moment and what reporters – all but the few skilled in reading complex negotiating tea leaves - can themselves make out of the puzzle palace that envelopes lengthy and complex negotiations especially those relating to the EU and other multilateral organizations.
Reports from Germany over the weekend suggest that this was indeed the case – and that German Chancellor Angela Merkel –since joining a coalition government with the Social Democrats who supported Turkish full membership under Gerhard Schröder – is now apparently backing away from her earlier opposition to it. Even before Merkel’s public remarks, Turkish membership negotiations on enterprise and industry issues were quietly reopened last month, according to the EU Observer on April 16.
Like it or not, it seems to me that international negotiations often take on many twists and turns of the 
bazaar. Negotiations that involve more than two countries move from plane geometry to solid geometry and perhaps calculus. They are far more complex and difficult for outsider or even insider to understand – because of their interrelatedness and multidimensionality. To succeed, negotiators need to figure out what’s happening at and under the table as well as in the corridors, delegation rooms, restaurants, bars, parties, back home and elsewhere people get together to work out deals and find common positions.
On the surface, the EU – Turkish talks ostensibly ran up against a wall in January because of the Turkish refusal to allow Greek Cypriot ships and planes to dock or land at Turkish ports – or at least all but one Turkish port or airport. This issue remains unresolved – but it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily a “deal-breaker” as described by the media in January – but it is a powerful Turkish bargaining chip.
The Greek Cypriots argue that the Turks are reneging on promises made and breaking the EU rules of open trade. The French and the Dutch supported the Greek Cypriots, but for another reason: the Muslim fear card which plays well with portions of their electorates – despite the fact that most Muslims in France come from North Africa not Turkey. Although the Netherlands has more Turkish Muslims than any other single Muslim immigrant group there aren’t that many more Turks than Moroccans and besides the Turks are considered more westernized.
It was, after all, a militant Islamic Moroccan with dual citizenship, not a Turk, who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh after he made a controversial film in 2004 about a Somali émigré woman forced into an arranged marriage.
Yet this non-deal-breaker “deal-breaker” has, of course, multiple dimensions. It is clear that there are also various political conditions which Turkey still needs to meet particularly with respect to the human rights dimension. The most visible one is the abolition of the controversial Article 301 – or protection of “Turkishness” under which leading writers have been charged and in Hrant Dink’s case convicted (and then murdered by a susceptible youth who had come under the sway of an Islamic fanatic) – as well issues of freedom and property rights for religious groups which hurts the small Christian minorities and has deep Kemalist roots.
There are other reasons besides the Cyprus conundrum as to why Turkish entry will be a long time coming – living standards, corruption, honor killings and the Turkish government’s treatment of the Kurdish and other minorities also stand as impediments. But the government’s abolition of the death penalty and its willingness to allow the Kurds certain cultural freedoms they did not have until recently were implemented to move the country towards compliance with EU human rights standards. These are necessary preconditions for Turkish membership.
But I think it’s worth delving a little deeper into the reasons the Turks have dug in their heels on the ships and planes “deal breaker” – at least right now. Could one reason for Turkish recalcitrance and Greek Cypriot insistence on a Turkish opening of its ports to Cypriot flag ships relate to oil, gas and potential transport revenues?
The port of Ceyhan which is located on Turkey’s south coast east of Antalya is the end point of the recently opened Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline which transports oil from the Azerbaijani oil fields through Georgia across the Black Sea to eastern Turkey and then to the Eastern Mediterranean. There are other pipelines that end – or may end there, too making Ceyhan the oil depot of the northeastern Mediterranean.
Bypassing the Bosporus: A Los Angeles traffic jam at rush hour
This newly opened pipeline (BTC) is the first to evade the Russian stranglehold on transshipments of 
petroleum products from Central Asia to Europe. The Baku-Tbilisi -Ceyhan pipeline also bypasses the overcrowded Bosporus, the spectacular waterway between the Black Sea and the Dardanelles that bisects Istanbul, the dividing line between Europe and Asia. The Bosporus already resembles a Los Angeles traffic jam at rush hour. An oil tanker wreck on it would be catastrophic.

So here’s the argument: the Turks control the port of Ceyhan. Greek Cypriots and other ship-owners who fly the Cypriot flag own tankers and understand the large profits to be made from transshipment of the liquid gold from Ceyhan to Western Europe.
Reflagging privately owned ships is a way around a nation-based blockade, but then, although ship owners may prosper, the country doesn’t. Cyprus “has the sixth largest fleet in the world.” It is itself an "open registry" or “flag of convenience” country with around 2,700 ships on its registry that brings in “some 120-140 million pounds a year and employs 4,000 people, more than half of whom are Cypriots” according to the Cyprus Mail.
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