A New Chapter in EU-Turkey Negotiations: a Step too Small

Notes internacionals CIDOB, núm. 78

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Even if something is moving in relations between Turkey and the European Union, the steps are so modest that, for the present, they do not change the general impression that the relationship is still in crisis. One of these movements has been the opening, on November 5, 2013, of a new chapter in accession negotiations. This is chapter 22, which deals with regional policy. If negotiations between Turkey and the EU were symmetrical, a decision of this kind would be almost imperceptible. But Turkey’s candidacy is not like the others, nor do negotiations with Turkey unfold in a climate of normality.

Turkey has been knocking at Europe’s door for more than a half century; in fact, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing on the Ankara Agreement, which established the association of Turkey with the then young European Economic Community, and which affirmed that the ultimate purpose of this association was to smooth the path for the integration of Turkey into the common market. With its 74 million inhabitants and a per capita GNP that places it in the middle of the EU average, the incorporation of Turkey alone would pose a challenge similar to the accession of the ten countries that joined in 2004. This, in addition to the intense debate on European identity and the limits of Europe, is the reason why Turkey’s candidacy generates deep division in the EU. Some governments, political forces, and an important section of public opinion reject its accession, more or less explicitly, for political, economic and cultural reasons. To simplify, for these voices Turkey is too big, too poor, and too Muslim.

The feeling of exclusion, humiliation and discrimination felt not only by the elites, but also by a good portion of public opinion in Turkey has led the country to one of its lowest levels of support and confidence in the EU. It is not at all surprising that our Turkish interlocutors confess, with some bitterness, that a decade ago they had harbored great hopes for the process of accession to the EU, but that at present they feel obligated to consider a future outside the EU.

This frustration has become somewhat more bearable thanks to the recovery of confidence in their own country. Turkey must be seen, internally and externally, as an emerging economy that aspires, in the course of a decade, to be counted among the top ten world economies. Mega-projects such as the Maramaray, the first underwater rail link that will cross the Bosphorus to unite two continents and which was inaugurated in October 2013, are being celebrated. The growth indexes of the past decade (a 5% annual average, reaching 9% at certain moments) are a source of pride, along with resilience to the global crisis, the health of their financial system, of their reasonable levels of unemployment and inflation. The emphasis on these numbers seeks to minimize the fact that this is an economy vulnerable to quick changes in short-term investments flows, and that the country has very high and worrisome levels of social and territorial inequality, a bloated savings deficit, and the effects of energy dependency on broad sectors of the economy.

Naturally, not everything is economic, and for many years the perspective of accession to the European Union has been one of the main incentives to carry out ambitious political reforms: the abolition of the death penalty, the opening of spaces for minority languages, the subordination of the army to civil power, among others. There is still much to do, particularly in topics related to freedom of the press and assembly, but the debate on these questions is also open as to whether Turkey can take on these reforms without the need to take into account the European perspective, or if the EU should continue playing the role of the “great external reformer”.

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