In Europe, Some Contemplate a New Kind of Relationship With Turkey
wsj.com · by Laurence Norman · August 4, 2016
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at the presidential palace in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Thursday. Photo: Reuters
When Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said this week it was time for the European Union to reconsider membership talks with Turkey, he set off a diplomatic firestorm.
“Austrian PM calls our accession negotiations a ‘diplomatic fiction.’ Actually what is fiction is a democracy where far-right prevails,” Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Omar Celik said in one of a series of outraged tweets Thursday—referring to Austria’s October redo of a tight presidential race in which the right-wing Freedom Party’s candidate now leads.
“Suggesting to halt Turkey’s negotiations is not defending EU values,” Mr. Celik said in another. “It only pleases far-right in Europe and the coup-plotter terrorists.”
Yet Mr. Kern’s remarks echo a growing view in Europe that after 11 years of tortuously slow membership talks, the negotiations have become a diplomatic sideshow whose main purpose is to avoid a fight over shutting them down.
Nor is the frustration a one-way street. Turkish officials argue that many EU capitals have long opposed Turkish membership but just wouldn’t admit it.
“What the chancellor said is probably shared by a lot of his colleagues,” said Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Turkey and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. “But so far we have seen just about everybody being very careful not to say that.”
In Turkey, he said, “the words are still there—democracy this and that—but the reality is a very profound gap in political culture between Turkey and the EU.”
The spark for the renewed debate over the accession talks was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s response to the July 15 military coup, which left 271 people dead. Accusing his erstwhile ally Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the plot, Turkish authorities detained more than 18,000 people and suspended more than 50,000 civil servants, largely for suspected links to the U.S.-based Turkish imam.
Mr. Gulen denies any role in the coup and says he is opposed to violence. Turkey designated his religious network a terrorist organization in May.
Mr. Erdogan has lashed out at the U.S. and Europe, accusing them of failing to denounce the coup—although the EU swiftly said it stood firmly with Turkey’s democratic institutions and government. But Western attention quickly turned to Mr. Erdogan’s crackdown. The president’s suggestion that he may reintroduce the death penalty prompted a warning that membership talks—which started in 2005 and have since made only limited progress—could be suspended.
Concerns about Turkey’s democratic direction have rippled across Europe’s political and geographic landscape in recent months.
Traditional skepticism on the center-right has burgeoned among left-leaning parties since the 2013 crackdown on protesters in Istanbul. Even in Britain, long a cheerleader of Turkish accession, the recent EU referendum campaign exposed fading enthusiasm. Facing claims from the Leave campaign that Turkish accession could spur millions of its citizens to come to the U.K., former Prime Minister David Cameron, who made closer Turkish ties a priority upon taking office in 2010, declared it would take decades for Turkey to become a member.
Yet there are some who believe that removing accession as the fulcrum for diplomatic relations could benefit both sides. While no specifics have been formulated, some within the Brussels machinery are starting to think about how such a relationship could work.
The argument is twofold: It could remove the constant sniping between Brussels and Ankara over every step the EU believes Turkey takes away from European values.
It would also allow officials on both sides to put their full focus on concrete plans of mutual interest. That could mean anything from deepening Turkey’s access to the EU market to a major upgrade in energy ties.
“The accession perspective is actually a problem, not only because it’s not realistic but because it saps energy for what could truly be a relationship between equals. This is a strategic partner with whom we have some beef…but with whom we also have clear common interests—energy, migration, economic ties,” said one senior Brussels insider. “In the medium-term, we need to put this relationship onto a different footing.”
Mr. Kern wants the membership talks to be discussed at an informal meeting of EU leaders in September, yet few believe policy change is imminent. In a German television interview Thursday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said ending the negotiations would be a “serious foreign-policy mistake.”
In Europe, there are fears that pulling the plug on talks would push Mr. Erdogan to scrap the migration deal with the EU, which has helped stem the migrant inflow from Turkey into the bloc.
There are longstanding concerns that ending talks could isolate remaining pockets of Turkish government, business and civil society who remain pro-EU and are pushing for economic and political reform.
An EU decision to scrap the talks could also push Turkey, a critical member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, further away from the West when Ankara is seeking to mend ties with other neighbors, including Russia.
Mr. Pierini says an end to the talks and a new relationship might take “a few years” and follow a sharply changed political balance in EU capitals.
“What I don’t see on the horizon is a cool, structured decision…that it’s off with the accession negotiations,” he said.
—Valentina Pop in Brussels and Emre Peker in Istanbul contributed to this article.