Can Turkey and the UK learn from each other’s EU strategies? by Katinka Barysch
David Cameron’s Conservative Party wants to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU, hoping to obtain a looser, more flexible relationship. Turkey may also soon ask for a new kind of ‘associate membership’. Although there are different, and deep-rooted reasons for euroscepticism in each country, Turkey and the UK have certain things in common: an imperial past, great power aspirations and an attachment to traditional notions of sovereignty, sometimes at odds with EU supra-nationalism. They also happen to be fed up with the EU. But the similarities stop there. Turkey began accession talks eight years ago but progress has been painfully slow. Negotiations have started on only 13 of the 33 chapters of EU law that Turkey needs to adopt to become a member; and no new chapter has been opened in the past 36 months. Cyprus continues to block parts of the accession talks, as does France, even under its new president, François Hollande. Meanwhile, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is losing its appetite for democratic change and economic opening. In some areas, such as press freedom, it is moving backwards. The stalemate in the accession talks is creating a poisonous atmosphere that makes it hard for the EU and Turkey to work together in foreign policy, migration, trade or energy – all areas where there are potential synergies. That is why Sinan Ülgen – an analyst at Carnegie Europe – suggests that Ankara and Brussels start
looking for a way out. His model of a ‘virtual membership’ for Turkey is not meant as an alternative to full membership. Rather, he hopes that new forms of association will create the kind of trust and goodwill that will be needed to rekindle the accession talks once political circumstances are more propitious. Turkey does not want to join the long list of the Union’s ‘strategic partners’ that includes Russia, China, Indonesia and South Africa. Strategic partners do not align their policies with the EU. But Turkey already has a customs union with the EU and has moved towards European standards in areas ranging from competition policy to prison management. Nor does Turkey want to emulate Norway and the other members of the European Economic Area. Having been promised full membership, Turkey would rightly refuse any model that requires it unilaterally to