EU says Turkey is bigger than President Erdoğan

"So what happened with the European Union?" a friend of mine asked in a Facebook post. She is a scholar who specializes in Turkey-EU relations. "If you don't understand, it's only natural for us not to understand," replied some of her friends.

The confusion stems from the contradictory steps and statements that we keep seeing from both sides. There are those on both sides who want to use every occasion to bash the other side, while others are left to try to conduct damage control. 

In addition, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's (PACE) decision to reopen the monitoring procedure on Turkey has further muddied the water in terms of Turkish-EU relations. How could it not?

PACE decided to place Turkey under the monitoring procedure until "serious concerns" about respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law "are addressed in a satisfactory manner." 

PACE is concerned about what the EU calls the Copenhagen criteria, which need to be fulfilled in order to be a candidate for EU membership. PACE's decision practically strengthens the arguments in Europe that Turkey's accession process should be officially suspended. I say "officially" because accession talks are physically frozen at present.

But the EU's political body avoided taking such a decision in its meeting last Friday, saying the door is still open to Turkey becoming a member and it was up to Ankara to do its part to keep this door open.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that despite the doubts expressed by some foreign ministers during the meeting, Brussels for now is in favor of continuing the protracted accession talks with Turkey.
"It is up to them to express their willingness to continue to be a candidate country...