The end of Turkey’s EU prospects

“I don’t see them ever joining and I had never believed that it would happen,” Angela Merkel said in a televised election debate with her rival Martin Schulz on Sunday, speaking about Turkish membership in the EU. As Jamesinturkey.com writes in an article "The end of Turkey’s EU prospects", after Brexit, Merkel's position may to an end to Turkey's membership aspirations.

Although the talks were frozen a long time ago, the reason for Merkel's harsh remarks was arrests of German citizens in Turkey, as well as the fact that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged to vote against Merkel and Schultz in the upcoming federal elections. This can help Turkish President, if he is looking for a way out of the membership talks, but does not want to initiate it.

It’s been 12 years since Turkish membership talks began and 30 since Turgut Özal asked to become a full member. Turkey first applied to become an associate member in 1959. The idealism that surrounded the prospect of Turkish membership at the turn of the century has all but evaporated. Britain’s impending exit from the European Union already meant Turkey had lost the most vocal advocate. Ms Merkel appears to have sealed its doomed fate.

Turgut Özal

Few people think Turkey could actually have become a full part of European Union on the same terms as the existing members, but the accession talks themselves were once a force for good. They helped improve the way of life in many, mostly boring ways for Turkish people. Pro-EU reforms helped make courts more accessible, harmonised company law with the rest of Europe. They helped make Turkey a more reliable place to invest in – and, therefore, richer.

The reason for Ms Merkel’s ire, twelve years into her chancellery, is current events. There has been an alarming crackdown on civil liberties in Turkey that has seen German citizens arrested on political charges. And President Erdoğan provocatively called on German Turks to vote against her – and Mr Schulz too – in this month’s federal election. And yet it is hard not to ask how things might have been if Germany and Europe had put more heart into Turkish membership talks. As many as half of the negotiation chapters of EU law have been frozen for the past decade, ostensibly as a way to coax Turkey into an agreement over the Cyprus dispute and to assuage hostile public opinion in countries such as France and Austria.

But keeping the chapters frozen has stalled progress and development. Is it any wonder, Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has often mused, why Turkish courts are in the state they are when the “Judiciary and Fundamental Rights” chapter hasn’t even been opened?

Ms Merkel’s remarks are a blow because it confirms attempts to Europeanise Turkey will fail. Ms Merkel blinked first. Mr Erdoğan got what he wanted.