First EU step in three years

Ankara, which for some time has been trying to normalise its relations with EU member countries, will today host a critical meeting. In the building whose nameplate under the presidential system has changed to that of the EU Department, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Internal Affairs and Treasury and Finance and ministries will, along with senior civil servants responsible for the EU harmonisation process, mull over prospective steps to breathe life into the reform process. The goal is to take decisions on principles aimed at unblocking negotiations with the EU that have in practice ground to a halt.

Following meetings at which the awaited steps were not taken, belying the change of name from the “Reform Monitoring Group” to the “Reform Action Group,” the goal this time is to bring the item of reform back onto the agenda within the context of “democracy, human rights and the supremacy of the law.” Technocrats apparently held a preparatory meeting prior to the critical get-together. Within this context, Turkey initially aims to exit the “monitoring process” at the Council of Europe to which it was admitted last year following a hiatus of thirteen years. However, Ankara is aware that even this will take years.

Albayrak at the table, too

Sources, pointing out that the lifting of the state of emergency constituted the first step towards exiting the monitoring to which Turkey has been admitted following thirteen years, have underlined that to this end the goal is to achieve a reform process in which priority will be attached to the commission examining state of emergency applications and the “presumption of innocence” in the judicial system. The attendance at the meeting of President Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Minister of Treasury and Finance Berat Albayrak, is of further note.

With Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu indicating that he will attend the Informal meeting of EU Foreign Ministers (Gymnich) set to convene in Austria on 30-31 August, favourable winds have seemingly been blowing with the EU in recent days. Most recently, it was notable that Ankara’s reaction to French President Macron’s comments proposing “not EU membership, but the construction of a strategic partnership process” was limited to the Foreign Affairs Spokesperson.

Visas now a long-term goal

Even if steps in the direction of visa liberalization with the EU are included as an item on the agenda of the meeting to be held following a hiatus of three years, this process with Brussels is not expected to be reinvigorated in the short term. In an environment in which Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu connects every step taken to “fighting terrorism” and says of the Saturday Mothers’ vigil of 700 weeks’ duration, “What if we had turned a blind eye to motherhood being made into a cover for terrorism?” no move is expected towards amending the counterterrorism law that that is a condition for visa liberalisation. Conversely, there is a prospect that significance will be attached to the efforts of autonomous boards, which Turkey has steered clear of doing for a long time, in matters such as protecting personal data.

Reply to Macron from Spokesperson

Ankara, which for some time has refrained from heightening tension by replying at a low level to EU leaders’ criticism of Turkey, continued in this vein.

Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Hami Aksoy replied to French President Macron’s comments favouring, “not EU membership, but the construction of a strategic partnership process” with Turkey, which he said had been “Islamified under Erdoğan’s rule.” Aksoy said the following in the written statement he made, stating that he “greeted with sorrow” Macron’s words:

“In full defiance of the populism and discrimination that has become our world’s disease, our objective is a more powerful EU with Turkey as a member, based on shared values.

In this framework, we have observed that Macron has used words “Islamic” and “Islamist terrorism” in his speech. We would once again like to express that terrorism does not have a religion, nationality or race, and that we find it wrong to associate this calamity with any religion.”

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