Turkey Both Under PACE Monitoring and an EU Candidate?

• 05.03.2017, 16:19
• Greta Avetisyan
•  Europe,  Region,  "Insight" Analytical Center ,  World,  Analytics

Another reason for the escalation of Turkey-Europe relations and criticism of Turkey towards Europe became the decision of the majority of PACE delegates to reintroduce monitoring on Turkey. Reasons for such a move became the decisions made by the Turkish authorities after the military coup attempt, which led to limitation of freedom of speech, violation of human rights, persecutions and arrests, which contradict democracy and European values.

It should be mentioned that PACE monitoring presupposes regular visits by a pair of rapporteurs, who conduct an ongoing dialogue with authorities, and occasional plenary debates to ensure that a state's progress and problems are honestly assessed. All those countries that become a member of the Council of Europe are being given status of a country "under monitoring" and they come out from that status after they carry out reforms in their countries, which correspond to the CoE standards.

Turkey was under PACE monitoring from 1950-2004 and in 2017 it became the first CoE country, which was again given the same status. By reintroducing monitoring, PACE, in fact, puts under question the correspondence of CoE member Turkey to the aims and values of the Council of Europe. The situation created around Turkey is quite interesting, as this country is now both under the PACE monitoring and is considered as an EU candidate country. This, of course, is not natural and acceptable.

In this context it would be logical, if certain EU officials, for preserving the EU reputation and not subordinating values over the interests, should start voicing the need to suspend Turkey’s EU membership talks and depriving it from candidate status. Moreover, they should do their best to bring these issues to the EU agenda.

Turkey, surely, understands the possibility of such a scenario. It is not by chance that after the PACE decision Erdogan again resorted to his traditional tool of threatening – to quit the membership negotiations. This is quite a thoughtful step in case of such developments to show that it is Turkey’s initiative.

Thus it should be stated that Turkey continues to remain "Europe’s ill man", which Europe starts gradually to perceive more. Nevertheless, conditioned by mutual interests, Europe does not resort to tougher steps, which will escalate relations with Turkey. In this regard PACE’s decision, of course, became an aggravating factor, but not a decisive one. As for the possibility of depriving Turkey from the status of EU candidate country, then it will be a serious threat for the EU to lose its partner in the region. Taking this into consideration no such decision will be made in the near future and everything will be limited on the level of announcements. Of course, it  such development of the events which will quicken the happening of such a scenario should also not be excluded.