Türkiye might not want to join the EU at the moment, but it would certainly like a lot more out of its current relationship with Brussels.
During the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign, Boris Johnson, who would later become the UK’s prime minister, made great play of the fact that Türkiye would soon become a member of the European Union and that its citizens would, as a consequence, have the right to live and work in the UK. It was one of many scare tactics used by the Leave campaign to whip up support against the EU. Together, they were enough, with Leave infamously winning the referendum by 52 per cent to 42.
What Johnson (whose great-grandfather was Turkish) must have known at the time (but many UK voters didn’t) was that Türkiye’s EU membership bid had by then stalled. Having signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995, Türkiye became an official candidate for membership in 1999. Accession talks began in 2005, and its first accession chapter was completed a year later (Science and Research). Since then, no further negotiation chapters have been completed. Talks came to a formal standstill in 2018, the process stalled due to democratic backsliding, concerns over the rule of law, and unresolved political disputes involving Cyprus.
Türkiye’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has since stated that EU membership is no longer a priority for the country, which begs the question: What does Türkiye actually want from the EU, and what does the EU want from Türkiye?
The big freeze
We got part of the answer earlier this summer when Hakan Fidan, Türkiye’s foreign minister, met with Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, and Marta Kos, the enlargement commissioner. The three agreed to improve how the Customs Union operates and to treat security as common ground. Kos had made the same trip in February, leaving with a letter of intent on 200 million euros of European Investment Bank lending to Turkish state firms. Ankara’s business lobby, the Foreign Economic Relations Board, had written to the presidents of the Commission, Council and Parliament a month earlier, in January, demanding a “paradigm shift”, urging the EU to advance Ankara’s membership bid. Erdoğan seemingly ignored his copy of the letter, or simply didn’t get one.
Indeed, to find out precisely what Ankara wants is best heard from the president himself. Standing next to Austria’s chancellor, Christian Stocker, in Ankara earlier this month, he said steps on the Customs Union and visa liberalisation would “benefit all of us”. His problem with the Customs Union is that it covers industrial goods and processed farm products, and not a great deal else, with services and agriculture falling outside of its scope. It is also, arguably, a somewhat one-sided agreement. When the EU signs a trade deal, third countries can send their goods to Türkiye tariff-free while Turkish exporters get very little (indeed, virtually nothing) in return, a state of affairs that becomes more and more awkward with each new agreement. Visa-free travel meanwhile, a carrot dangled ever since talks on the subject first began back in2013, remains stuck on Ankara’s refusal to tighten its terrorism laws.
Beyond trade, Türkiye wants access to money and machinery. Ömer Bolat, the trade minister, claimed a place in the EU’s ‘Made in Europe’ industrial framework in March, calling it the first step toward a genuine overhaul of the current Customs Union deal. Kos’s February visit restarted European Investment Bank lending after a long freeze. Cevdet Yılmaz, a deputy president, noted concrete progress on membership, the Customs Union, and visas “vital”. Yet Ankara has had to watch as the EU set up a 150 billion euro defence fund, SAFE, in which it is not allowed to participate. Türkiye may be a NATO member but it currently has no security pact with the European Union, largely because Cyprus would in all likelihood veto any such proposal.
March marked a decade of the EU’s much-vaunted migration agreement with Türkiye, under which Brussels pays Ankara to do all it can to halt illegal migration. Though there have been some large influxes of migrants using the Turkish route since then, Türkiye has in the main kept its end of the bargain, and continues to host around four million refugees (most of them from Syria), more than any other country. Brussels has in turn paid Ankara billions of euros.
Where co-operation has also been mutually beneficial is defence. Türkiye can claim NATO’s second-largest army and is home to a drone industry that is the envy of the rest of Europe. Italy’s Leonardo is preparing to build uncrewed aircraft with Baykar; the Turkish firm Repkon is putting up an artillery plant in Germany; Poland bought surveillance kit from Aselsan and signed a defence-cooperation deal with Ankara in December last year. Friedrich Merz’s government dropped its block on selling Eurofighters to Türkiye and backed its entry into a German-led air-defence scheme. On the seas, Türkiye controls the Bosphorus, has (up to a point) joined the ‘coalition of the willing’ on Ukraine, and is edging toward leading a Black Sea naval mission for Kyiv’s allies. NATO appears to have little trouble with Ankara, and its leaders met in the city in July.
All well and good, but none of this really removes the main blockage, which is Cyprus. Türkiye recognises only the north of the island, does not apply the Customs Union to the rest, and blocks its NATO membership. In June, the Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, made is clear that any progress must be tied to a settlement over the island’s future. Rule of law is another major obstacle. Ekrem İmamoğlu, hitherto the mayor of Istanbul and once Erdoğan’s likeliest challenger in 2028’s presidential election, is in prison, while in May police raided the offices of the opposition CHP. The European Parliament voted in 2025 to keep accession frozen, and despite the progress on migration and defence, that is the form it is likely to keep for the foreseeable future.
Photo: Dreamstime.