Efforts to resume negotiations and break three-year stalemate dashed in wake of Ankara's ruthless response to street protests
Turkey's chances of a breaking a three-year stalemate and relaunching its bid to join the European Union look like being dashed because of the government's ruthless response to three weeks of street protests amid worsening friction between Ankara and Berlin.
The foreign ministry in Berlin summoned the Turkish ambassador to Germany on Friday to explain the harsh language directed at the chancellor, Angela Merkel, by Egemen Bağis, the Turkish official in charge of negotiations with the EU.
Merkel had said earlier this week that she was "appalled at the very tough" response by the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in ordering riot police to clear central Istanbul of thousands of protesters last weekend.
Bağis accused the chancellor of playing domestic politics, said that anyone using Turkey for political purposes would suffer "an inauspicious end" and warned of severe retaliation if the negotiations were called off.
Turkey opened negotiations to join the EU eight years ago, at the same time as Croatia. While Croatia joins next week as the 28th member, Turkey's bid has been frozen for three years and it has closed just one of the 35 chapters of EU law required to complete the accession. Another 12 chapters have been opened.
Merkel and the German centre-right remain firmly opposed to Turkey joining. Her Christian Democrats' draft manifesto for the general elections in September states: "We reject full membership for Turkey because it does not meet the conditions for EU entry. Additionally, the EU would be overstretched because of [Turkey's] size and because of its economic structures."
Exasperated by the slow progress, Ankara has taken to warning that the EU needs Turkey more than it needs Europe. The Germans, French and Dutch take a different view.
Negotiations were supposed to resume next week after a long hiatus because the French president, François Hollande, lifted the block imposed by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, as a gesture of goodwill. Talks were to take place on regional development, an issue that could have influenced Ankara's policy towards parts of the south-east populated mainly by Kurds who have long been campaigning for greater rights and more devolved government.
But Germany and the Netherlands are refusing a green light for next week's resumption, triggering a European debate over the most sensible response to the turmoil in Turkey.
Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, is among those who argue strongly that Europe should not turn its back on Turkey but engage more fully. Advocates of engagement point out that resuming negotiations would help the protesters campaigning against what is seen as an increasingly authoritarian government, because the new protest movement is broadly sympathetic to a more European Turkey.
There are also calls to open two other policy areas for negotiation that would deal with justice, the courts, the rule of law, freedom of speech and assembly, and media freedoms – all crucial areas seen to be at stake in the current turmoil in which Erdoğan and Bağis have sought to criminalise the protesters as terrorists and extremists.
"Freezing all movement now will deepen an unscripted, long-term estrangement in which both sides are losing," said Hugh Pope, an expert on Turkey at the International Crisis Group, in an analysis published on Friday. "Frictions with the EU have grown since 2009. But European governments should not make a move that would effectively punish the majority of protesters, who are drawn from Turkey's modern, secular, western-oriented middle classes, a largely pro-EU constituency."
Apart from Franco-German resistance to talks, Cyprus is also vetoing several areas of negotiations because of the long-running dispute with Ankara over the partitioned island. Turkey refuses to admit goods from Greek Cyprus into its ports.
During the extreme police violence against the demonstrators last weekend, the European parliament sharply denounced the Erdoğan government's response. The prime minister reacted with vitriol, declaring that he did not recognise the legitimacy of the parliament and dismissing all international criticism while blaming the turmoil on external influences.
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