EU-Turkey deal points to what could have been

If Turkey is relishing its newfound bargaining power with Europe, Sholto Byrnes says that is payback for how Europe treated the Muslim-majority country.

Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has found the Syrian conflict has improved his negotiating stance with Europe. Jean-Francois Badias / AP

On the face of it, the deal reached between the European Union and Turkey on Monday was a great success. More Syrians will be settled in both the EU and in Turkey, while the cost to the latter in shouldering so much of the burden in the current migration crisis has been recognised. A payment of $3.3 billion (Dh12.1bn) promised in October will be speeded up.

Turkey has also been promised visa-free travel for its citizens within the EU and the possibility of opening new talks on Turkish membership. The EU’s president, Donald Tusk, was surely right to hail the agreement a breakthrough.

Not everyone is quite so happy. "The sight of Europe's leaders kowtowing to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the hope he would switch off the flood of refugees to Greece, was sickening," thundered columnist Paul Mason in The Guardian. He was not alone.

On top of a series of measures aimed at silencing critics, Mr Erdogan's recent crackdown on media not wholly supportive of his government, such as Zaman, the country's largest circulation newspaper, has angered many.

The secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, Christophe Deloire, claimed that Mr Erdogan has been trampling on basic European values. “Until now, the European Union has demonstrated culpable weakness in response to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attacks on the media …‘Business as usual’ would be incomprehensible after he seized control of the main opposition media group in such a brutal manner ... Is the EU determined to let itself be humiliated?”

Other western papers have been even more condemnatory. "Despotism deepens in Turkey," was the headline in The Washington Post, while The New York Times bemoaned "democracy's disintegration" in the country.

“It can’t be that just because of the migration crisis we throw other values out of the window, like freedom of the press,” said the prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel. But that is exactly what the EU’s leaders have done.

"For the time being, they are merely holding their noses," commented The Economist. But, "desperate to enlist Turkey's help in tackling the migrant crisis" in future, they "may find themselves biting their tongues".

If Mr Erdogan is quietly satisfied at his continental counterparts’ discomfort, it would not be without justification. The fact that the EU finds itself as a supplicant begging for Turkey’s help is almost entirely its own doing.

The country’s application to join the EU has long been stalled. What is perhaps not so appreciated is just how long. After becoming an associate member of the European Economic Community in 1964, Turkey first applied for full membership in 1987. It had to wait until 1999 – after former Eastern Bloc countries were already in accession talks – for it to be recognised as a candidate on equal footing to others wishing to join.

Since then, there have been a series of declarations making very promising sounds – such as one in 2002 stating that, so long as certain criteria were met, “the EU would open negotiations with Turkey ‘without delay’” – but little progress. There have been issues of compliance, of the unresolved division of Cyprus, and countless other roadblocks that doubtless had some technical validity, but which could have been overcome if the will had been there. But it was not.

The impression given is that the real reason Turkish membership has not proceeded, nearly 30 years after its initial application, is that there are plenty of politicians in the EU who simply don’t want it to go any further.

Some have been explicit about this, such as the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has frequently stated that as far as he is concerned, Turkey is not part of Europe and it would be wrong to encourage the belief that it could ever join the EU. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, have also opposed Turkey’s membership in the past.

As far back as 2007, when Mr Sarkozy initiated one of the moves that froze the process, the Turkish commentator ­Sinan Ulgen warned that such actions gave “credibility to Turkish nationalists who say no matter what we do, we will never become a member of the club”.

It is hard not to sympathise with that view; just as it is equally hard to believe that objections to Turkish membership are not truly about issues of free speech, human rights and democracy, but about its predominantly Muslim population – a cavil that some politicians are willing to admit.

“An Islamic state like Turkey does not belong to Europe,” said the Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders last December. “We do not want more but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us.”

Having a moderate Muslim-majority country that has long been a western, and a Nato, ally in the EU could have led to greater cross-cultural and religious understanding. It could have been very helpful in the battle against radicalisation, and it could have served as a bridge to greater cooperation, trade and security between Europe and the Middle East. Turkish membership of the EU would also undoubtedly have had the effect of strengthening the values that Mr Erdogan’s critics accuse him of attacking.

Leaving aside all those lost benefits, however, the bald fact is that the EU snubbed and humiliated Turkey for years. Now the EU badly needs its eastern neighbour, the Turkish leadership is revelling in making European leaders grovel in return. Frankly, who can blame them?

Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia