2023-07-11 16:57:15
► What does the question of EU membership have to do with a NATO summit?
The EU is indeed one of the guests of the Vilnius summit, simply because 22 of the 31 Member States of the Atlantic Alliance are also members of the European Union. Brussels plays a central role in aid to Ukraine, with 50 billion in support of all kinds over four years. As such, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, made the trip to Lithuania.
However, he did not expect the last-minute demand from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who linked the green light from Ankara to integrate Sweden into NATO to the relaunch of negotiations for the accession of the Turkey to the EU. “Good meeting with President Erdogan at the NATO summittweeted Charles Michel after an exchange. We explored opportunities for our cooperation to become meaningful again and to reinvigorate our relationship. » This request from the Turkish President is ” good news “, believes Bayram Balci, researcher at Ceri (International Research Center) Sciences Po Paris. “After years of turning to the east, towards China or Russia, the Turkish president shows that he is not indifferent to Europe. »
► Where are Turkey’s EU accession negotiations at?
Turkey has officially been a candidate for the EU since 1999, and discussions have been at a standstill since 2018. The process had however experienced a form of rebound in 2016, at the time of the EU-Turkey agreement: in exchange for mastering the migratory flows, Brussels had promised significant funding (3 billion euros every two years) to Ankara and had agreed to reopen negotiations with a view to liberalizing the visa regime for Turkish nationals.
Ankara ended up fulfilling its part of the contract, despite the passes of arms, to stem the arrivals in Greece. For its part, the EU has contributed financially, but without going so far as to facilitate the movement of Turks within the Union. There are many obstacles: violations of the rule of law in Turkey since the failed putsch of 2016, demographic weight of the country, place of Islam, Cypriot dispute, Syrian and Libyan issues, conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh…
► Why this “revitalization” of relations?
This desire for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rapprochement with the EU comes in the context of Ankara’s double risk-taking vis-à-vis Russia. Turkey, which was to keep the commanders of the Azov regiment on its soil until the end of the war in Ukraine, finally allowed their return to glory in kyiv. Added to this is the lifting of the Turkish veto against Sweden’s membership of NATO on the night of July 10 to 11, which is not to please Moscow either. “You have to understand the anxieties of a country militarily surrounded by Russia, present in the Black Sea as in Syria”explique Bayram Balci.
Rather than considering pure and simple EU membership, Erdogan and Charles Michel are aiming instead for a revival of military, economic and cultural cooperation. Turkey can once again hope for visa exemption. It could also ask for progress, for example, in learning Turkish within the EU. “There are no Turkish Capes in France, while French is taught everywhere in Turkey, it is this kind of imbalance that could be corrected”, believes Bayram Balci. Another major issue to reopen: the renegotiation of the 1995 customs union with the EU, which only covers manufactured products and agricultural commodities. However, the European market represents more than 40% of the country’s exports.
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