The issue of possible Turkish membership of an expanded European Union caused deep divisions within Finland's foreign policy leadership in the early weeks of Finland's stint as the rotating EU Presidency in 1999.
At the time, the then Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen (SDP) were vigorously in favour of the candidacy venture, while the Foreign Minister Tarja Halonen, Lipponen's party colleague, took a much less enthusiastic view, citing Turkey's poor human rights record and the unresolved Kurdish question. Helsingin Sanomat has attempted to piece together the details of what happened in the summer of 1999, after Finland took over the helm of the EU as its rotating Presidency.
One fact to surface is that relations between State Secretary Jaakko Blomberg - who put together the draft for getting the Turkish candidacy question on the agenda - and the then Minister for Foreign Affairs Tarja Halonen became increasingly strained during the process.
President Halonen does not directly acknowledge the claims made about her position. "Let's say that the Turkish membership process is an extremely difficult and extremely delicate matter. I'm very satisfied that we have got as far as we have", commented Halonen late last week.
It has also emerged that the United States had a significant role in the background to the discussions of Turkish accession. The then U.S. Ambassador in Helsinki Eric Edelman did not mention Halonen's name when he was asked which Finns he had most dealings with on the matter.
Turkey accepted the EU's conditions and took on candidate status at the Helsinki Summit of December 1999.
"The European Union itself eventually came and rang the Turkish doorbell" said the then Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit in a Helsingin Sanomat interview last week.
The entire subject of the Turkish candidacy and how events played out five years ago will be examined in an extensive weekly article to be published on Tuesday. The two articles linked below are taken from the week of the European Council summit itself.
