Action expected from Bağış

A French colleague Jerome Bastion and I are contributing to a program that is broadcast live from TRT Türk, the state’s radio and television’s new channel. The program, which is broadcast on weekdays, is based on the exchange of views between a Turkish journalist and a foreign journalist.

Jerome and I inaugurated the program on a Monday two weeks ago. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statements against Turkey’s European Union bid had made headlines, this was the first issue about which we exchanged views.

Bastion, who by the way speaks excellent Turkish, and I agreed that these statements were part of the electoral campaign as the European Parliament elections set for June 7 was nearing.

Last Monday, we had to start our third program together with the same issue, as Turkey’s negotiator Egemen Bağış’s statements against Sarkozy and Merkel had made headlines in daily Hürriyet. "Which role model do you prefer, that of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or that of Taliban?" he was asking the two leaders.

I was in Germany a day before Bağış’s statement appeared in the press. I asked some German politicians and experts present at the seminar that I attended whether Turkey bashing will increase as there are only few days left before the elections. "The economic crisis marks the campaign, not Turkey bashing. Merkel and Sarkozy’s statements did not even appear in the press," I was told.

Apparently, the press in Europe showed interest in the subject only after the Turkish leadership criticized Merkel and Sarkozy for their statements.

Returning to Istanbul, I realized that the repercussions of a statement made 15 days ago and hardly noticed in Europe were still continuing in Turkey. Let’s set aside the mistake of comparing Turkey’s prime minister with a terrorist. What is expected from Bağış is to give impetus to Turkey’s accession process, not to spend his energy making statements that are not contributing to the technical negotiation process. Bağış was picked for this job in order to force the bureaucracy to act more quickly and to eliminate obstacles in the reform process.

One would have expected Bağış to break the cycle of starting negotiations on only two chapters during each presidency. Yet it looks like talks on only one chapter, the one on taxation, will start during the Czech presidency. And that is not even for sure, since the Turkish side has left everything to the last minute. Actually, the aim was to start talks also on the chapter of social policy and employment.

Yet the government could not pass the law on trade union rights. The main reason behind the impasse is the fact that both employers and the trade unions are opposed to the draft of the new law.

The European Union insists that the threshold for any trade union to go to strike should be 30 percent. That is, 30 percent of the trade union members should give their green light to go to strike. The threshold at the actual draft law is 50 percent. Employer unions are opposed to that change. In Turkey workers can get organized in trade unions according to their sectors. However, the EU demands Turkey to allow the founding of separate trade unions in each and every working place.

On the other hand, the EU’s demand to decrease the number of necessary conditions to get union members makes workers happy. But the EU demand to expand members’ rights and trade union administrations to be more transparent and democratic is opposed by trade union "bosses."

What is expected from Bağış is to eliminate problems about this draft by working day and night, not to respond to Europeans. It is not an accomplishment to shelve social policies and employment chapters by saying to the EU, "There is economic crisis."

The radio station in which my colleague Jerome works is on strike. As I told him, I am a stranger to strikes. And it seems that I would continue to be.