FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
In an effort to warm relations, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will visit Turkey on Friday...
After seeing Turkey as a problem for years, the European Union is now seeing it as part of the solution. As peace negotiations in Ukraine gain momentum, Turkey’s potential role in the post-war order, particularly as a regional peacekeeper and power broker in the Black Sea, makes it a critical partner for the EU. Yet Brussels is taking small steps with a country that has lagged behind in democracy and whose Islamist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has imprisoned high-profile political opponents.
In an effort to warm relations, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will visit Turkey on Friday. Ahead of her trip, Kos told POLITICO in a written statement: "Peace in Ukraine will change the realities in Europe, especially in the Black Sea region. Turkey will be a very important partner for us. Preparing for peace and stability in Europe means preparing for a strong partnership with Turkey."
Turkey is a major military power. It has the second-largest armed forces in NATO and holds a crucial strategic position in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Ankara's control of the Bosphorus gives it major influence over regional security, and it played a key role in brokering the Black Sea deal in July 2022 that granted safe passage to ships carrying Ukrainian grain.
The country of 88 million has also said it is ready to send peacekeepers to Ukraine if a deal is reached with Russia and that it will take a leading role in Black Sea security. However, relations between the EU and Turkey have deteriorated over the years and have hardly been helped by Erdogan's turn towards autocracy and the crackdown on opposition mayors. Although officially a candidate to join the EU, negotiations have been frozen since 2018.
"In recent EU enlargement reports we have seen steps away from EU standards, especially in the rule of law and democracy. I know that Turkey has a very long democratic tradition and also a strong civil society, and this is what we need to see strengthened to build trust between the EU and Turkey ," Kos said.
In Ankara, to take the first steps towards rapprochement, Kos will attend a ceremony at which the European Investment Bank and Turkey will sign a 200 million euro loan agreement for renewable energy projects. The EIB suspended new lending to Turkey in 2019 due to a dispute over oil and gas drilling near Cyprus.
Also on Friday, the Commission will unveil a study on “advancing an interregional connectivity agenda” with Turkey, Central Europe and the South Caucasus. The study, seen by POLITICO, sets out how investments are needed to strengthen transport, trade, energy and digital links along the Trans-Caspian Corridor, which connects China, Central Asia, the South Caucasus and the Black Sea.
These are the first symbolic steps towards Ankara’s return to the EU, but they are not what Turkey really wants from the EU, which would be an updated customs union agreement. New trade deals signed by Brussels with India and the Mercosur group of South American countries put Turkey at a competitive disadvantage. Once they come into force, Ankara will be forced to grant duty-free access to goods from these countries, but this benefit will not be reciprocal.
Even Ekrem Imamoglu, the democratically elected mayor of Istanbul, whose arrest last March sparked massive nationwide protests and international condemnation, spoke out in favor of improving the customs union agreement.
In a plea sent from his prison cell to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Parliament President Roberta Metsola, Imamoglu urged the EU to modernize the customs agreement with Turkey.
" The Customs Union remains the only normative and rules-based framework supporting Turkey-EU relations. Following the EU's free trade agreements with Mercosur and India, the asymmetric consequences for Turkey have become increasingly apparent ," İmamoğlu said in a post on social media on Thursday.
Updating Turkey's deal would require approval by the European Council. However, Greece and Cyprus are categorically against warming relations without a goodwill gesture from Ankara. Cyprus wants Ankara to allow its ships to enter Turkish ports, according to an EU official. Ankara does not recognize Cyprus because of the island's division in 1974 after a Turkish military invasion.
" The strength of any future partnership must be underpinned by good political relations with our member states, and in particular by good neighbourly relations and relations with Cyprus ," Kos said.
Cyprus' Deputy Minister for European Affairs, Marilena Raouna, told POLITICO that the country's presidency of the Council of the EU "could be an opportunity" for EU-Turkey relations. She said Cyprus has been constructive. And we expect Turkey to engage constructively as well.
So far, Ankara has shown little appetite for offering an olive branch. Last year, it rejected a proposal by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides that Turkey open its ports to Cypriot-flagged ships in exchange for easier access to European visas for Turkish businessmen.
But US President Donald Trump's reshaping of geopolitical and trade relations could push Europe and Turkey back towards each other.
“ The world is changing and history is accelerating. Turkey-EU relations also need to adapt. The way these relations can be strengthened is by being based on mutual interests. We hope that we can build on this philosophy in a very concrete way. Turkey’s strategic objective continues to be membership in the European Union and this should be the guiding light in our relations ,” Turkey’s ambassador to the EU, Yaprak Balkan, told POLITICO.
Resuming EU membership negotiations is not yet on the EU's mind. However, Kos said that "we need to look at our relations with Turkey with new eyes."
" My visit to Ankara... is about rebuilding trust and exploring how we can make our economic relationship work better for both sides ," Kos said./ Adapted from "Politico"
Lini një Përgjigje