Turkey's EU Accession is not Realistic

• 10.26.2015, 20:24
•  Europe,  "Insight" Analytical Center ,  Analytics

The conflict in Syria and as a result Migration Crisis have raised many problems for the EU not only connected with social issues. Once again, differences between EU countries, opposing interests arose. The views of senior EU officials in some areas began to contradict each other. The crisis made the EU to change its way of dialogue also with Turkey.

The role of Turkey for the EU has increased. The EU and Turkey managed to agree an Action Plan about the Migration Crisis. The EU wants Turkey to ensure that refugees from Syria stay in Turkey and their transit to the EU is prevented. Turkey also took an obligation to give the asylum seekers a right to work.

Turkey, in its turn, asked for financial support and speeding up visa liberalization process, accession negotiations and recognition of Turkey as a safe country.

The visa liberalization for this step refers only to the business trips, Turkey must meet 72 preconditions, set by the EU to sign the visa liberalization. The Readmission agreement, signed in October 2014 is also not fully implemented, which is also a precondition for visa liberalization.

The negotiations on Turkey’s membership to the EU is more difficult than with other states. Europe is not ready to open its doors for the 76 million Muslim population of Turkey.

Even if the EU wants to give a helping hand to Turkey, any compromises will hardly be connected with the admission process. The document, negotiated with Turkey consists of 35 chapters, and only 14 of them are open for negotiations, only 1 is agreed and closed. 8 of the chapters are blocked by the decision of the Council of the EU, 6 are blocked by Cyprus and 3 by France.

Although Turkey plays an important role for the EU today and this can be a reason for some concessions, they will probably refer to the assessments of the upcoming elections in Turkey, the policy of the Turkey concerning the Kurds, maybe also to the visa liberalization process for some groups of the society. It’s not realistic to wait for changes in the process of admission of Turkey to the EU.

On the other hand, reserved reaction of the EU to the internal processes in Turkey also contain a number of risks and let Erdogan increase pressure and aggressive rhetoric not only in internal but also in foreign policy.