The European Union is preparing to welcome new members in the more or less near future, but for Turkey, a perennial candidate, the end of the road seems unattainable, as accession negotiations have been frozen since 2018.

The European Commission today delivers its annual report on EU enlargement towards candidate member countries and all eyes will be on Ukraine or Moldova.

Nevertheless Turkey, which has been an official candidate for membership since 1999, will barely be mentioned.

The start of negotiations for the Turkey’s accession to the EU dates back to 2005. It was described as a historic event by Tony Blair, who was then Prime Minister of Britain.

But very quickly European leaders were faced with difficulties linked to the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus, a foretaste of the numerous problems the negotiations were to encounter.

For many Member States, accession negotiations, which have remained frozen since June 2018, will be at a standstill for a long time. In September, Austria, which has long opposed Turkey’s accession, requested that the proceedings be formally suspended.

European officials, who asked not to be named, think that would be more honest, but no one wants to take the first step.

Improving relationships

Relations between the EU and Ankara are currently essentially based on “give-and-give”. Turkey thus receives European funds in return for its help in controlling migration flows to Europe.

After Turkish elections in May, European leaders raised new hopes, asking the European Commission and the EU’s foreign minister to prepare a report on improving relations.

This report is expected in December, before a summit of the 27, but experts remain wary of the advances it could involve.

“I do not expect a significant revival of the relationship because there is a limited number of fields in which progress can be made,” says Senem Aydin-Duzgit, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Sabancı University.

There is a “discouragement” towards Turkey in Europe, admitted the rapporteur of the Turkish file in the European Parliament, Nacho Sanchez Amor.

“We are tired of keeping the accession process alive, when it is obvious that there is no real political will on the other side to go down the democratic path,” says this Spanish MEP.

EU accuses Turkey of backtracking on democratization particularly after the failed 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In this context, the report on Turkey is expected to be content with recommending an improvement of the customs union between the two parties. Even on this, however, the experts are cautious. “If the negotiations for the customs union become possible to start with the current (Turkish) government, I don’t think they will go very far,” Aydin-Duzgit estimates.

“Turkey doesn’t expect anything anymore”

Brussels sometimes sends mixed messages, but so does Erdogan. “Turkey no longer expects anything from the European Union, which has made us wait at its door for 60 years,” he said in early October, two months after he had given the possible green light for Sweden’s accession in NATO since the restart of negotiations with the EU.

Turkey’s ambassador to the EU Faruk Kaymaktsi he says he still supports his country’s accession. “What we expect is to have the same treatment as the other candidate countries”, he emphasizes.

In Brussels, as in Ankara, many believe that a clarification is necessary.

Already in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had clearly expressed their opposition to Turkey’s accession to Europe. Brexit has since caused Turkey to lose its main EU ally, Britain.

The United States, however, continues to press to keep the negotiation process alive, as they want to keep NATO member Turkey as far away from Russia as possible, especially after the Russian military invaded Ukraine.

But the prospect of Ukraine joining the EU, which could proceed today in the event of a positive opinion from the European Commission on the start of accession negotiations with Kiev, risks further distancing Turkey from Europe.

“The accession of Ukraine will change the EU and it will be impossible for it to accept a new member like Turkey”estimates a European official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter.