Despite protracted negotiations, there is currently no prospect of Turkey being accepted into the EU. The hopes that the Community once placed in Erdoğan have long since melted away. And how much would Kulacdaroglu change things?
Relations between the EU and Turkey are not just cool – they are deeply frozen. For years, Brussels has not made any attempts to revive the accession negotiations – for the EC, they seem pointless until then, as long as Recep Tayyip Erdogan is at the head of the country, writes ARD’s correspondent in the Belgian capital, Helga Schmidt.
For this reason, the results of the polls in Turkey are closely monitored in Brussels. Something could change, the end of the Erdogan era is not out of the question. For this purpose, however, fair elections must be held, in connection with which the EU is not without concern. “We expect that Turkey will stick to the democratic rules of the game,” EC spokesman Peter Stano said this week.
The importance of the Turkish elections for the EU
For Brussels, the most important elections this year are not on the territory of the Community, but in Turkey. What happens after the vote on May 14 in the country with the second largest army in NATO, which has a key geopolitical role between Europe and the Arab world, is crucial for the EU.
Turkey plays an important role in almost all current crises and conflicts affecting Europeans, such as in Syria or Libya. In terms of the refugee crisis, the EU depends on Ankara’s support, and in the context of the war in Ukraine, it has certainly been impressed by how, thanks to its ties to Putin, Erdogan has become a successful mediator in resolving the grain conflict. In NATO, the ruler from Ankara has already been able to block the admission of Sweden for months – against the will of almost all partners in the Alliance, recalls ARD.
The end of Erdogan will not solve all problems
What would change if the opposition candidate Kemal Kulçdaroğlu wins on Sunday? According to political scientists, the answer is not clear-cut. Yanez Tesman of the Mercator Foundation’s Istanbul office does not expect that if Erdogan loses the election, all problems will automatically be solved. But if the government in Turkey changes, a certain warming in relations with the EU could definitely be expected, he predicted to ARD.
For example, Ankara could agree to Sweden’s membership in NATO. Or to release political prisoners like cultural patron Osman Kavala. “These would be first steps with a huge impact,” Tesman points out. There will certainly also be a change in communication with Europeans.
But on other contentious issues, the EU cannot hope for quick progress. Kulçdaroğlu questions the EU refugee deal, and the majority of Turkish voters support it. In the election campaign, the opposition candidate promised to return all Syrian refugees to their country within two years. Yanes Tesman expects that this topic will become the most serious test for Turkish-European relations. He expects continuity rather than a change in policy towards Syria and the dispute over Cyprus.
The long road to Europe
ARD also raises the old question of whether Turkey belongs in Europe, asking how realistic it is to expect that it can enter the Community. Turkey is the oldest candidate country in the EU – since 1999. But no other candidate country is as far from joining as it is, Helga Schmidt points out. Kulçdaroğlu promised that he would fulfill the democratic standards of the European Union. But that’s what he said 20 years ago, and Erdoğan, who had high hopes at the time, recalled the German media.
Then came the cooling. “Turkey does not belong either geographically, historically, or culturally to Europe,” said the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. “We do not imagine and do not want full membership,” Angela Merkel said in turn in 2009 and proposed a “privileged partnership” for Turkey.
However, the reformative steps that Erdogan was ready to take did not reach even that, notes ARD. Within the accession negotiations, only one of the 33 chapters was closed. At the same time, the question of whether Erdogan took the accession process seriously at all remains open.
Mistakes in EU policy towards Turkey
The famous journalist Bülent Mumay, who recently received a 20-month suspended sentence from a Turkish court, commented that the Europeans put too little pressure on Erdogan. “This hypocritical attitude of Europe during Erdogan’s rule has greatly disappointed the democrats in Turkey,” he said, quoted by ARD.
Mumay, who also works for Deutsche Welle, calls for a possible political change in Turkey for Europe to establish very clear and open relations with Ankara. His opinion is that Europe should stop turning a blind eye to the anti-democratic events in Turkey for its own interests – so as not to disappoint the country’s democrats once again.
The material has been published here
2023-05-13 13:01:12
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