in the near future, Turkish tourists (but also, in the same package of measures, those from the Arabian Gulf or China) will no longer have to wait for months in never-ending queues to obtain a visa for Romania.

Bucharest also hopes to create a five-year visa for Turkish business executives. Quoting the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, România liberă notes that Turkey is the only country having signed a customs agreement with the EU whose citizens are forced to get a visa to enter the Union. From this perspective, "Romania represents a solution for Turks wishing to obtain visas," but it is only a partial solution as long as Romania is not part of the Schengen Area. Baring a veto from the Netherlands, this could change in September.

In a self-assured and deliberately provocative text, the author responds to Sarrazin and takes issue with attempts to make the Turkish community a whipping boy for Austrian integration. As Die Presse explains, he then goes on to enumerate five reasons why Turkey’s influence in Europe is growing -

Turks are younger, more ambitious, and more numerous and their economy is growing more rapidly. Turks are better. […] In his book, Türkmen portrays a booming and vibrant Turkey that has many lessons to teach Europe. For example: the percentage of women executives in Turkey is six times the European average, prosperity has increased in Turkey more than it has anywhere in Europe, and as a general rule the Turks have more drive.

The text of the bill implicitly targets the Armenian genocide of 1915-16, and the 1.2 million Armenians (two thirds of the Armenian population under the Ottoman Empire) who died in the course of officially sanctioned deportations and massacres. The bill, which will have to be approved by the French Senate and for a second time by the French parliament before it becomes law, has provoked the ire of Ankara, which has recalled its ambassador and threatened France with diplomatic and trade reprisals.

In Le Point, columnist Pierre Beylau deplores what he describes as a self-interested manoeuvre to attract more votes in the run-up to next year’s presidential election:

Is it really the time to raise the long-standing issue of the 1915 genocide, which no one serious actually contests? Obviously this is a vote-getting initiative backed by MPs for whom Armenian support may prove crucial. Acting to please a lobby, they have no qualms about the risk of causing considerable diplomatic and economic damage.

For French diplomacy in the Middle East "the power struggle with Ankara is absurd," adds Le Monde. However, the daily notes that the main problem rests in the nature of the bill itself:

It is not the role of the legislature – which has support in this regard from the Elysée – to say what is history. In recent years, French officialdom has come to adore the judicialisation of history, voting in memorial laws that make negationism a crime. But these measures are pointless. They do not even relieve the pain of those see their past (…) ignobly re-written so that it can be denied.

For its part, news website Mediapart interprets the quarrel in the light of the history of France and Turkey, two modern nations that have been marked by the influence of founding fathers — General de Gaulle and Mustapha Kemal — who continue to influence their respective political elites.

Both France and Turkey suffer to varying degrees from the same national pathology: an incapacity to cope with the loss of past grandeur; a desperate desire to hold on to a supreme saviour who protected the motherland with an ironclad mythology; a refusal to take an inventory of history, and to sort through it so as to acknowledge mistakes and crimes.

In Turkey, in the English version of the daily Zaman, columnist Bülent Keneş launches a direct attack on the French president: “By introducing bans to one side of the debate about a controversial issue that must be settled by historians and just ahead of the presidential elections, he showed everyone what democracy à la Sarkozy is.”

Given his now-well-established interest in creating dogmas via political and legal means over controversial incidents of the past, he should have turned a critical eye to France’s unquestionable colonial past instead of peering into Turkey’s dubious history. Banning views and ideas that may be voiced against a so-called “genocide” to which Armenians were allegedly subjected to in 1915, even before offering an official apology for the bloody massacres France had committed in Algeria until the very recent past, i.e., the second half of the 20th century, as well as for the French mass killings in other African countries, Indochina and in the French colonies in the islands could only be expected from a mealymouthed jester of French politics called Sarkozy.

In Milliyet, Mehmet Tezkan argues that the French President “has two reasons why he wants this law to be approved:”

One is a political investment in Armenian votes. The second is to damage relations with Ankara. Relations between Sarkozy and Erdogan are not good at all. From now on, all ties will be cut. Sarkozy's plan is to alienate Turkey from the EU with such manoeuvres.

Finally, Ali Bayramoglu writing for the daily Yeni Şafak points out:

According to the current interpretation of the 301st article of the Turkish Penal Code, it is a crime to say "there was an Armenian genocide". In France, it is a crime to say "the Armenian Genocide did not take place". Can we not realise that both attitudes restrict freedom of thought… and prevent both sides from questioning themselves? The French law will cause will major damage.

In spite of Erdogan’s declaration that "we go well together" delivered in German, and Merkel’s warmly applauded “I am also your Chancellor” addressed to Germany’s three million Turkish immigrants, the two countries remain divided over longstanding issues: the question of dual nationality for immigrants in Germany, demanded by Erdogan, and the obligation to learn German stipulated by Merkel. "Assimilation is a crime against humanity," comparable to anti-Semitism, insisted the Turkish Prime Minister while Angela Merkel remained impassive. The Chancellor also maintained an eloquent silence on the issue of Turkey’s accession to the European Union.

For Italian daily La Repubblica, in Berlin, Turkey "already said adieu to Europe. The paper added that "never have Europe and Asia seemed so far away as today" because, "Turkey, tired of waiting at Europe's door, yesterday for the first time affirmed, through its head of state, moderate Islamist Abdullalh Gül, that 'we will not accept to be a member of the European Union if the inhabitants of a single of its nations did not want us and considered Turkey as a burden'".

In a show of national pride, Turkey is angry at its stalled EU membership bid as well as flexing its newfound regional muscles, but according to La Stampa, the real cause of this dispute is more material. The huge Leviathan gas field, recently discovered in the waters between Cyprus and Israel, which the two countries are preparing to exploit, has prompted the Turkish navy and airoforce to conduct manouevres in the area.

“Ten months are long, and Erdogan will have plenty of opportunities to change his mind” La Stampa writes. But “Europe cannot afford to lose Turkey, not right now” because its future relations with new governments emerging from the Arab Spring depend heavily on Ankara's mediation and the model of a secular, western-friendly Islamic state it represents.

For the newspaper, "the history of Turkish immigration has been a success. The indigenous population and the immigrants get on well, better than they do in many neighbouring countries. The number of Turkish graduates is on the increase, the Turkish middle class continues to grow, there are Turkish MPs in many of the country’s regional parliaments, and the leader of the Green Party is Turkish.” In short, TAZ concludes, the Turks “have changed the face of Germany.”

Handelsblatt, on the contrary, thinks Germany’s position in the race for the “treasure of the Libyan oil” is under threat. For the German economic daily, Turkey, which has proposed $300 million in aid for the rebels, is “the winner of this stage.” Italy, “which built the well heads in Libya,” is well positioned, but Nicolas Sarkozy “will not accept” that France should make way for Italian companies. German industry won’t have an easy catch-up in this race, Handelsblatt continues, for by failing to back the rebels the German government has “spoiled the start”.

On its front page, Hürriyet publishes a photograph of the 1 August meeting, showing Erdogan chairing the YAŞ, which it compares it with a similar picture from last November, when he was flanked by the chief of general staff – a change that implies that "the army now appears to be subservient to political power as it is in democratic countries." For editorialist Cengiz Çandar, the situation "will give free reign to Erdogan, who will no longer be able to blame the ‘military factor’ when justifying his refusal to adopt a progressive interior policy. The road is now open to the Prime Minister to introduce the civil and democratic constitution" that he promised in his campaign for the elections of last June.

However, there is now greater justification for intervention in Syria than there was for action against the Libyan regime:  it is not simply a matter of protecting a civilian population against the threat of military force – as it was for the city of Benghazi when the UN authorised the use of air strikes – in Syria, military force has been used against civilians for quite some time.

The question is: why has the EU not adopted a firmer line? Could it be that we have yet to see a sufficient number of images to arouse the necessary indignation to fuel such a reaction? There may be some substance to this argument. However, it is no coincidence that the source of the sternest – and the most credible – demands for an end to the violence and democratic reforms has been Turkey. News of the conflict has come from the thousands of Syrian refugees forced to flee the fighting who are massing on the Turkish border. And their accounts of events in Syria are all the more precious, because the regime in Damas is refusing to allow representatives of the international media or independent observers to enter the country.

At the same time, there is an awareness that we simply do not have the means to force Assad to put an end to the repression. Without a diplomatic consensus – that is to say without the agreement of Beijing and Moscow, which are both opposed to any form of intervention – there is no possibility that the UN Security Council will adopt an effective resolution against the Syrian regime. So a repeat of the Libyan scenario is out of the question. At the same time, the limited effect of economic sanctions – the EU is Syria’s main trading partner and financial backer – has already been demonstrated. The sole remaining option is diplomacy. And in this field if the Europe does not carry sufficient weight to influence the Syrian regime, it should make a more determined effort to support initiatives proposed by Ankara, which remains a key ally in a region where the EU has yet to find its place.

The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on Romania’s and Bulgaria’s inclusion in Schengen in early June, while the final decision of the European Council – which will have to be unanimous – is expected in the autumn. Romania will have to secure "the second longest land border" in the EU, notes the Bucharest daily, which reminds its readers that the initial date for the inclusion of the two countries, 1st March 2011, was postponed when Germany and France exercised a veto.

Nabucco, on the other hand, appears increasingly unconvincing, adds the French daily, for want of sufficient natural gas reserves to justify its construction. Gazprom has in fact “methodically drained the Central Asian gas reserves by clinching multiple long-term purchase contracts in the region, thereby reducing by as much the volumes that Nabucco could carry". As Pierre Noël, an energy specialist at Cambridge University, explains to La Tribune, "By announcing the construction of the gas pipeline even before securing the gas reserves, Brussels killed the project."

But South Stream still has issues of its own to address. According to the EUobserver, Koen Minne, the CEO of the Belgian group Enex, is supposed to sign a deal for compressed natural gas (CNG) with Turkmenistan in November. Under that agreement, Enex and a consortium of European companies are to transport between 3 and 4 billion cubic metres p.a. of Turkoman gas to the EU. The gas would be shipped across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, then relayed to the EU via the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum Azero-Turkish pipeline.

First of all, he will be in a dominant position for next year's legislative elections, in which he is running for his third consecutive term. Next, he is depriving the army of its former privileged position in a number of important institutions. And third, Erdogan has brought his country yet closer to the European Union, which has imposed a number of membership requirements for Turkey, notably the need for greater democracy in the judiciary and in public life.

Paradoxically, the "Europeanisation" of Turkey will be set back a bit, because the party responsible for this referendum is a religious one. And this is why the vote, which has met with general satisfaction, has inspired a measure of prudence from Europe's capitals. But as for Turkey's eventual membership in the EU, the ball is now squarely in the hands of the Twenty-Seven. Erdogan can rightly claim to have put himself directly in the line of fire in order to satisfy Europe's demands. It is now up to them to take the risks – political risks – to bring the membership negotiations to fruition.

Gian Paolo Accardo

And things might well continue at the same pace. Following the summit of the "Big four" European powers set for 6 September – that the Belgian EU presidency threatens to boycott, fearing that its real purpose is to legitimise France's expulsions of the Roma  – there will be a meeting of foreign ministers, who are to discuss, among other topics, the issue of Kosovo (Berlin has suggested to Serbia that they would have an open door into the EU if they recognised Kosovo's autonomy). There is also the (less than inspiring) state of justice in Bulgaria and Romania, both trying to be a part of the Schengen zone. Next up are the referendum on the presidential election in Moldavia (a requisite condition for pursuing negotiations toward an eventual membership in the Schengen area), as well as one on Constitutional reforms in Turkey (ditto), not to mention the legislative elections in Sweden. Which leaves a lot on the plate of the Union's unusually quiet Belgian presidency, whose first hundred days will soon be coming to an end.

Iulia Badea Guéritée