French EU fears are not entirely ridiculous

However the French had voted in last Sunday's referendum on the European Constitution, the result would have been bad for Turkey.

The Euro-Constitution was designed, among other purposes, for an enlarged European Union that would include Turkey. If the French had voted "Yes", the political elites would have interpreted the victory as occurring despite the unpopular prospect of Turkish entry.

If they had voted "No", as they did, the defeat would have been seen as a result of it.

Either a defeat or a victory would have been a defeat for the Turks. Now, there were in reality many other reasons for the surprisingly strong opposition to the Euro-Constitution in France.

They included the desire to strike a blow at an unpopular President Jacques Chirac; Europe's slow economic growth and high unemployment in part because of the euro; a rising hostility to the loss of powers from Paris to Brussels; growing popular opposition to high levels of immigration; and, above all, a widespread fear, linked to fear of economic competition and "globalisation", that the new enlarged EU would undermine France's generous social benefits.

Turkey, however, was implicated in almost all of these fears. Turkish EU membership would immediately admit Turkish goods into a France already worried about low-wage competition from Poles, Hungarians and Czechs.

It would eventually allow "free movement of labour" ie open-door immigration from a Turkey whose population is now 70 million and growing rapidly. And their arrival would raise the already heavy costs of France's generous welfare state.

In addition, the French have some specific fears about Turkey. After a few years it would be the largest state in the EU threatening the Franco-German dominance that has until recently determined EU policy.

It would, moreover, be a Muslim country in a continent that is increasingly unsure of its own civilisational identity. Its admission would bring the EU's borders into the Middle East next to Iran, Syria and Iraq.

All in all, French voters and politicians feared that Turkish entry would both weaken the EU internally by importing unassimilable ethno-religious minorities and externally by giving it porous borders alongside unstable countries with large populations.

These fears are exaggerated, but they are not ridiculous. The fact they reflect European weaknesses as much as Turkish strengths does not render them irrelevant.

So the likelihood is that the French will find some way to veto Turkish admission or, at the very least, to delay it indefinitely.

Leading French politicians, notably Chirac's likely successor, Nicholas Sarkoszy, and his predecessor, former president Giscard d'Estaing, have called for such a veto. And they will probably get it by holding a referendum on Turkish entry for the precise purpose of losing it.

Can lead to crises

Since the Turks have been seeking entry and getting half-promises of it from the Europeans since the early '60s, that is likely to create a series of international crises.

In Turkey itself the reaction would be profound and bitter.

The Turks would reasonably feel that they had carried out every reform requested by Brussels and still been rejected.

Both the major parties the traditional Kemalist opposition and the new Islamic conservative government would be weakened since both have supported the European orientation of Turkish foreign policy.

And the forces likely to be strengthened by rejection would be the Turkish army, extreme Turkish nationalists and Islamists.

Since these are all radically opposed to each other the army being secular and pro-American, the Islamists in favour of a Turkish identity rooted in Islam and closer links with the Arab world and the extreme nationalists, well, extremely nationalist there would probably be a series of crises in Ankara until a new political status quo was established.

Even though the United States has strongly supported Turkish EU entry, that status quo would probably be a Turkey more hostile to the United States as well as to Europe.

Second, Muslims everywhere would attribute Turkey's rejection solely to European hostility to Islam which, as we have seen, would be not quite correct but not wholly wrong either.

That perception would in turn strengthen anti-Western forces within Islam, notably Islamist terrorism and weaken the "apostate" governments that continue to work with the United States.

Long-term effects might include a growing gulf between the United States and Islam, and growing tensions within a Europe that has large Muslim minorities.

The third crisis is a sharpening of Europe's identity crisis. Turkey's rejection would suggest that there are geographical and cultural limits to the EU without establishing what they are.

Should Ukraine be eligible for membership? Or Russia? Or Muslim Bosnia? Or Morocco? If so, on what grounds? And is there such a thing as a "European" identity as opposed to a French, Italian or German one? If so, is it one that can accommodate Islam and assimilate Muslims?

Most European and Turkish politicians are sleepwalking into the crises behind the banner "There is no Plan B" Plan A being Turkey's EU admission. And Washington echoes the same slogan because it strongly supports the Turkish application.

In reality there is always a Plan B even if the politicians avoid considering it until Plan A has visibly collapsed. Under this particular Plan B, the United States would rescue Turkey and the EU from their joint crises while also advancing US interests in transatlantic integration.

Merge their markets

It would work as follows: First, the EU and the United States (together with its partners in Nafta) would merge their markets to form Tafta or a transatlantic free trade area.

Second, they would invite all the existing European countries not in the EU, including Turkey, Norway and Switzerland, to join this enlarged Tafta.

Third, while this Tafta would establish joint procedures for harmonising existing and new regulations between Nafta, the EU and non-EU states, their main regulatory rule would be mutual recognition of each other's regulations within a broad Tafta system of jurisdictional competition.

Fourth, free movement of labour would not be a provision in Tafta but there would be preferential immigration rules between members.

Fifth, if groups of nations for instance, France, Germany and Belgium wished to combine in a more tightly-integrated "coalition of the willing" within the overall Tafta framework, they would be free to do so provided that their arrangements did not violate Tafta's regulatory rules.

And, finally, Tafta members outside Nato would be invited to join the alliance.

Laid out in this way, such a Plan B inevitably sounds utopian. Many of its individual features, however, have been widely discussed for years.

John O'Sullivan, former adviser to Lady Thatcher and former editorial page editor of The Post, is editor-at-large of the National Review and a member of Benador Associates.