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Abstract
A decade of accession negotiations with the EU has not brought Turkey significantly closer to EU membership. In part, the reasons lie with Turkey. This article, however, explores the position of the EU and the ‘supply-side’ of enlargement. It reflects on developments in how the EU has engaged with Turkey on the question of membership, situating Turkey’s candidacy and the EU’s position within the broader comparative context of how the process and politics of EU enlargement have evolved over the last 10 years. It focuses on a set of supply-side variables that are key to determine the progress that applicants can make towards membership: member state preferences, the activism of supranational institutional actors, the EU’s integration capacity, public opinion in the EU towards enlargement and the narratives deployed in justification of enlargement. The article also considers the state of Turkey’s accession negotiations and how they have been and potentially will be affected, assuming they are meaningfully revived, by the evolving nature and substance of EU accession negotiations more generally and EU’s approach to conditionality.
Notes
1. For earlier comparative work, see Verney (Citation2007).
2. The areas covered include: visas, mobility and migration, energy, trade and the customs union, political reforms, fight against terrorism, foreign policy dialogue and participation in EU programmes.
3. Concerns about corruption have since increased, particularly in the light of the December 2013 allegations against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then Prime Minister of Turkey, now President, various ministers, their relatives as well as various public officials and businesspeople, and the manner in which the allegations were investigated and the significant number of reassignments and dismissals in the police, judiciary and civil service. The Commission in 2014 was pointed in its comment that: ‘[t]he handling of these allegations of corruption raised serious concerns that allegations of wrongdoing would not be addressed in a non-discriminatory, transparent and impartial manner’ (European Commission Citation2014, 14). In 2015, it noted no progress in Chapter 23 instead flagging problems regarding the state of Turkey’s judicial system, the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the separation of powers, the investigation and prosecution of high-level corruption cases and the political pressure being placed on judges, prosecutors, the media and free speech (European Commission Citation2015a, 55).
4. See Agnantopoulos (Citation2013).
5. Cameron’s statement: ‘In terms of Turkey’s membership of the EU, I very much support that. That’s a long-standing position of British foreign policy which I support, and we discussed that again in our talks today’ (UK Government Citation2014).
6. Emphasis added. The 11 foreign ministers came from: Lithuania, Sweden, Latvia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and the United Kingdom.
7. Another more subtle but nevertheless symbolically important example of Sarkozy-inspired French opposition to Turkish accession was the insistence in December 2007 that the wording of the draft General Affairs Council conclusions on Turkey’s accession negotiations be stripped of any references to ‘accession’ or ‘membership’ and instead the accession negotiations be referred to simply as ‘intergovernmental conferences’ (The Economist Citation2007).
8. In December 2006, German opposition to Turkey was particularly pronounced. In Council discussions on suspending negotiations on eight chapters it was reported that the German position was to freeze 21 of the 35 chapters (The Economist Citation2006). If the alleged German position had prevailed, the accession negotiations would most likely have broken down just one year after they had begun.
9. Austria did not, however, manage to secure in the framework for negotiations the desired reference to a ‘privileged partnership’ as an alternative to accession.
10. For more detailed analyses on public opinion and discourses on Turkey, see Canan-Sokullu (Citation2011); Ruiz Jiménez and Torreblanca (Citation2007).