When Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained in February on charges of corruption, European officials were stunned. Imamoglu, widely regarded as the most important contender against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had faced legal challenges before. But few expected his dramatic detention in a dawn raid and his treatment as little more than a common criminal.
At the same time, another court case was launched against the leadership of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) to remove them from office, again on charges of bribery. “These steps risk setting Turkey-EU relations back by a decade,” a senior EU official fumed earlier this year. Five months forward, Ankara’s relationship with Brussels couldn’t be better.
The EU last year decided to deepen its dialogue with Turkey, and many questioned whether the hard-found momentum, after years of frozen EU membership negotiations, would last amid an increasing crackdown on the opposition.
In the weeks after the Imamoglu incident, EU officials met Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek as part of the Turkey-EU High-Level Economic Dialogue meeting in Brussels. In May, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attended an informal meeting of the EU foreign ministers, known as Gymnich.
The meetings continued uninterrupted as Turkish courts arrested more popularly elected mayors aligned with the CHP.
“Waiting for an EU’s reaction similar to Georgia’s one,” Nacho Sanchez Amor, a Turkey rapporteur at the European Parliament, posted on July 5, when three mayors were arrested. “A new test for a coherent foreign policy or an invitation to exhibit our traditional ‘double standards’?” That reaction didn’t come.
In July, Turkish Trade Minister Omer Bolat met his counterparts as the two sides held the Turkey-EU High-Level Trade Dialogue meeting. The next day, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya met his European counterpart as they held the Turkey-EU High-Level Migration and Security Dialogue meeting.
And finally, on Monday, the EU commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, met Fidan in Istanbul, releasing a joint statement that underlined areas of collaboration, from EU’s projects linking Europe to Central Asia to visa liberalization, an update to the customs union and Ukraine’s reconstruction.
“Commissioner Kos also emphasized that dialogue on rule of law and democratic standards is an integral part of our relationship and a commitment by Turkiye as a candidate country,” the joint statement said.
Kos and Fidan didn’t hold a news conference, a sign that neither side wanted to get antagonistic questions from media on Imamoglu’s case, among other issues.
“The EU doesn’t want to rock the ship,” a western diplomat told Middle East Eye. “The EU needs Turkey on Ukraine, on the defense industry overhaul and for the stability in the region as Syria recovers from the civil war.” The diplomat added that other concerns around human rights issues in Turkey are taking the back seat as the world enters a new era of conflicts and risks with Donald Trump’s presidency in the US.
EU with few options
Turkey has emerged as a global arms producer following a series of western sanctions that have restricted Ankara’s access to military equipment since 2016. Over the past two decades, the country has invested billions of dollars in its domestic defense industry.
Last year, Turkish firms exported $7.2bn worth of defense products to global markets, as Ankara now produces its own fighter jets, tanks, artillery, armoured vehicles and electronic warfare systems.
Turkey has been essential in supplying arms to Ukraine and hosting peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow since 2021. Despite Ankara’s refusal to join full international sanctions on Russia, Turkey has recently taken two important steps that indicate the direction Erdogan is taking in the war. “It has become clear once again,” Erdogan said on 11 April, “that European security is unthinkable without Turkey.”
Ankara earlier this month joined the “international drone coalition” supporting Ukraine by providing armed and unarmed military drones to Kyiv. Turkey is one of the three main drone producers in the world.
Turkey also in March joined the Coalition of the Willing to support Ukraine, and in July broadly committed itself to post-war security guarantees for the country.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, a regional director at German Marshall Fund, said the EU doesn’t have many options to counter Turkey’s democratic backsliding other than fully suspending the official membership negotiations, which isn’t seen currently as a real option since it would be too difficult to reverse once taken. Unluhisarcikli added that Trump assuming office has weakened the US security commitment to Europe and Europeans are looking for ways to fend for themselves if necessary.
“This encourages both the EU and Turkey to view each other more favorably in terms of security and defence industry cooperation, rather than within the framework of full membership,” Unluhisarcikli told MEE. “The EU does not want to weaken the option of strategic cooperation by criticizing Turkey based on its domestic political developments.”
With this spirit, the EU is looking forward to focusing on joint areas of interest, as alluded to by the joint declaration on Monday, said Samuel Doveri Vesterbye, a managing director at the European Neighbourhood Council.
This includes the Middle Corridor, a scheme also known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, which links Europe, including Turkey and the Caucasus, to Central Asia.
“Why is this a priority for EU and Turkiye? It’s because the Central Asian region presents many opportunities for industry, critical raw materials, renewable energy production, trade and geo-political considerations linked to Turkic, Central Asian nations,” Vesterbye told MEE. “And regional integration of wider Europe, which today includes countries like Tajikistan, Armenia, Turkiye, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and many others.”
A second western diplomat said the EU was focusing on the practical deliverables to improve EU-Turkey relations and keep Ankara on track while trying not to antagonize it – basically offering carrots rather than sticks to make progress on bilateral issues.
An ‘opportunity’ for Turkey
Marc Pierini, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and former EU ambassador to Turkey, however, has a differing opinion, saying that the EU government and its bodies all have expressed their dismay at the constant degradation of rule of law in Turkey.
“Given the worsened geopolitical situation in the world, an unavoidable evolution takes place: it’s called the hierarchy of crises. Big powers tend to prioritise those crises closer to their core interests,” he told MEE. “Simultaneously, Turkey’s leadership is probably seeing this geopolitical situation as an ‘opportunity’ to further consolidate its autocratic model for domestic and electoral reasons while western partners are otherwise preoccupied.”
But Turkey continues to face hurdles: for example in gaining access to the EU arms fund known as SAFE, which has a €170bn budget for European joint defence projects. SAFE mandates that 65 percent of projects are funded by firms in the bloc, the broader European Economic Area or Ukraine, only allowing Turkey to join the project with limited participation.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, however, last week continued to argue that Turkish firms won’t be able to participate in the SAFE program unless Turkey lifts its 1995 declaration of casus belli if Greece decides to increase its territorial waters from six to 12 miles.
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