Turkey, the EU and the Middle East

Turkey has been under criticism for some time for becoming too involved in Middle Eastern affairs, thus distancing itself from the European Union and generally the Western world.

Of course, it takes two to tango, and it’s a fact that Turkey’s inclination to get more involved in Middle East affairs coincides with strong messages from within the EU from the mid-2000s onward that Turkey was not wanted as a full member.

There was also the Arab Spring factor, which excited (then Prime Minister, now President) Tayyip Eroğan about a “democratic Islamic” political wave, probably to be led by the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. That did not happen. Turkey is now hosting some 1.6 million Syrian refugees and dealing with terrible border security problems, especially after the emergence of a new-generation wave of terror by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A recent poll showed that more than 50 percent of Turks supported the EU membership target, after much lower results over the last three years.

After being elected president and promoting Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu as his successor in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), Erdoğan decided to try to get closer to the EU once again. Bringing Mevlut Çavuşoğlu, a former president of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, to the Foreign Ministry, and former diplomat Volkan Bozkır as the new EU minister, were among the indications of the government’s renewed will to resume relations.

Despite accumulated problems and the widening gap between Turkey and the EU, the government seems happy to have got a positive response from Brussels to its moves, reflected in the Dec. 8 meeting in Ankara.

The EU...