The way used by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to express his desire to get closer to the European Union again was not the most elegant –conditioning the end of his veto on Sweden’s accession to NATO to the reactivation of its accession process to the community club–, but the Twenty-seven picked up yesterday the gauntlet thrown by Ankara and declared their willingness to seek formulas to strengthen their cooperation.
“We agree that there is a reciprocal interest in developing stronger relations between Turkey and the EU, and that a sustainable de-escalation of the situation in the eastern Mediterranean would benefit the stability and security of the entire region”, summed up the EU’s high representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, at the end of the council of foreign ministers held yesterday in Brussels, whose agenda, for the first time in a long time, included a point dedicated to Ankara.
Although no one took Erdogan’s order to reactivate EU accession negotiations, de facto frozen for a decade, very seriously, his government is interested in updating its agreement on the customs union with the club and getting a more generous deal in terms of visas. The Union is willing to study both requests and other ways to improve bilateral cooperation, historically given to strong fluctuations, but with conditions.
The celebration, yesterday, of the 49th anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus to stop a coup attempt on the island sponsored by Greece (what Ankara commemorates as a Peacekeeping operation) served as a reminder of the territorial conflict that has faced the three countries since the 1970s. “There are 7,987 days. This has to end”, claimed the foreign minister of the Mediterranean island, Constantinos Kombos. “Resolving the Cypriot issue, in line with the United Nations resolutions” and a return to “a genuine dialogue” will be key to this reactivation of relations with Turkey, agreed Borrell, who also evoked the defense of the rights and freedoms defined in the European conventions.
The recent holding of elections in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus “offers a window of opportunity” to resume dialogue between the three countries and try to resolve old conflicts. The meeting, in Vilnius, on the sidelines of Erdogan’s NATO summit with the recently re-elected Greek Prime Minister, Kiriakos Mitsotakis, reaffirmed this vision and the common will to ease tensions. For its part, the new Cypriot government, which wants the EU to appoint a high representative to stimulate dialogue with Ankara on the future of the island, responded yesterday to Erdogan’s calls for dialogue and announced that it is willing to authorize the reactivation of Turkey’s accession negotiations to the EU if Erdogan resumes talks.
Erdogan used the NATO summit to extract new concessions not only from Sweden in exchange for lifting its veto on its entry into the military organization but also from the European Union. From his meeting in the Lithuanian capital with Charles Michel, President of the European Council, came the commitment that the European Commission will present in October not only the usual evaluation of the state of the accession negotiations, but also an additional report that proposes new ways to strengthen cooperation.
Ukraine’s candidacy for the EU, Borrell recalled, has created “a new dynamic in our neighbourhood, as the process will be accelerated throughout the Balkans and Turkey will also want to be part of that game.” Brussels has warned Ankara that there will be no “shortcuts” in this process, largely suspended due to the setback in recent years in terms of the rule of law and protection of human rights. “And yet it is essential that we always talk to each other – admitted the German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock – but let us not be naive because there are no gifts because these are difficult times”.
More immediate, on the other hand, may be the progress on updating the EU-Turkey customs union. Its modernization, diplomatic sources point out, could allow the EU to plug the legal loopholes that allow Russia to evade part of Western sanctions through Turkey. Although financing has already been provided to renew the 2016 bilateral agreement on migration control in the Aegean Sea, the coincidence of these talks may complicate the European strategy but, beyond the transactional nature of the Turkish offer, the EU has come to the conclusion that the new geopolitical context, marked by the war in Ukraine, forces it to improve relations with Ankara.
“Turkey is a strategic partner of the EU of the first order, it is one of the NATO allied countries and it is a fundamental country in the Mediterranean,” stressed the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, who recalled his role as mediator in the talks with Russia on Ukrainian cereals. Albares strongly condemned the Russian decision to block the renewal of the agreement and assured that the EU will help the countries “that are suffering the most in the short and medium term” through its bilateral cooperation programs.
Meanwhile, European foreign ministers discussed injecting 5 billion euros a year for four years into the section of the European Peace Facility dedicated to buying weapons from Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russian aggression. This and other decisions are part of the EU’s plan to join the long-term “security commitments” that the G-7 and NATO have offered to Kyiv.
