The European parliament adopted a resolution on a 2016 Commission report on July 6, calling for the suspension of accession talks with Turkey if the government in Ankara implements constitutional changes approved in a contested referendum in April, which granted sweeping powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Given the frosty relations between Ankara and Brussels and growing concerns in European capitals over Turkey’s human rights and the quality of its democracy, the European parliament’s decision came as no surprise. This, however, was a rather symbolic vote, because the report adopted by the parliament on Turkey’s progress towards accession is non-binding. At the end of day European leaders have the final say over the bloc’s relations with Turkey. 

The vote took place less than two months after Erdogan held talks with top EU officials in Brussels. Following his visit, the EU presented Turkey with a 12-month plan to improve ties. 

MEPs approved the report, penned by Turkey rapporteur Kati Piri, by 477 votes to 64. It calls on the EU Commission and the EU national governments “to formally suspend the accession negotiations with Turkey without delay if the constitutional reform package is implemented unchanged”.

“You cannot just sit around, wait, and talk nice with President Erdogan while you see that the situation inside Turkey is only further and further deteriorating. The EU has to speak out and that is what this parliament is doing,” Piri, a Dutch member of the Socialists and Democrats group, said on July 5, the day before the vote. 

Mixed messages

Many European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, share Piri’s concerns and criticise Turkey’s democracy and human rights records but at the same time they flatly reject the idea of ending accession talks. This is because Turkey is too valuable to them as a strategic partner: it keeps more than 3mn refugees from Syria inside its borders, and with its large army Ankara helps the West contain the threats posed by Islamic State. 

“Turkey is an important partner in the fight against Islamist terror and it is in the EU's and Nato’s interests to have good relations with Ankara… You should not just push away such a partner, even in view of negative developments that we must address,” Merkel, who was the architect of the migrant deal signed between Turkey and the EU last year, told German media in May.

Overall, however, it appears that European leaders do not have a clear plan for Turkey. European politicians admit that Ankara will not be able to join the bloc for many years to come, but say that the EU should maintain close ties with Turkey in the areas of security and trade. This inconsistent approach, naturally, angers Ankara. 

Turkey is upset that it has been kept in the waiting room for EU membership for what it sees as way too long. Ankara applied for EU membership in 1987 and was declared an eligible candidate in 1999. Formal accession negotiations started in 2005, but talks have stalled over the past couple of years as the pace of reforms in Turkey has slowed. Now Ankara is asking what the point of holding accession talks is, if Turkey will never be admitted to the bloc. 

Responding to the vote in Strasbourg, Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik said: “We reject it. The call by the European parliament to suspend talks is a political decision”. 

“The backbone of the relationship between Turkey and the EU is accession negotiations,” Celik told reporters in Ankara, according to Hurriyet Daily News. 

“We will return this report as soon as we receive it without even reading one page of it,” Celik scolded. 

Backsliding on human rights 

During the debate, MEPs voiced concern about Turkey backsliding in the rule of law, human rights, media freedom and the fight against corruption. They support upgrading the EU-Turkey Customs Union, and asking for human rights and fundamental freedoms to be part of a new agreement

EU lawmakers also criticised the support for the reintroduction of the death penalty by Erdogan, which several European officials have repeatedly said will only lead to an immediate end of EU accession talks.

Erdogan floated the idea of reintroducing the death penalty in the wake of the botched coup attempt and said that Turkey could hold a referendum on the issue. However, he has not talked about the death penalty for weeks now. 

MEPs condemned the coup attempt but criticised “the Turkish government’s disproportionate response … resulting in large-scale dismissal of civil servants, the closing of media outlets, the arrest of journalists, judges and human rights defenders, and the closure of schools and universities”.

The state of emergency, which was declared immediately after the botched putsch, allows the government to rule by decree. Erdogan has given no indication as to when it might be dropped.

Nearly 50,000 people have been arrested and more than 800 companies with assets of around $10bn have been seized over alleged links to the coup plotters.

For its part, the government in Ankara maintains that the EU fails to understand the gravity of threats to Turkey. 

The decision to adopt the resolution was based on false claims and allegations, and undermined the European parliament's reputation, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said on June 6. The parliament’s criticism towards Turkey about human rights is unfair, he added. 

But a day before the vote, Turkish police detained nine human rights activists, including Idil Eser, director of Amnesty International Turkey. Two foreign trainers - a German and a Swedish national – were also arrested as they gathered for a digital security and information management workshop at a hotel on Buyukada, one of the Princes’ Islands off Istanbul. Taner Kilic, the chair of Amnesty International Turkey, was then taken into police custody on June 6. He is being held in detention pending trial.

The Helsinki Citizens Assembly told BBC Turkish that the rights activists are being held in five different police stations across Istanbul. Two members of the Citizens Assembly were among those who were detained. 

The police did not say why the rights activists were arrested. 

“We are profoundly disturbed and outraged that some of Turkey’s leading human rights defenders, including the Director of Amnesty International Turkey should have been detained so blatantly without cause,” Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said. 

He said that Eser and those detained with her must be immediately and unconditionally released.

Uncertain future

“The EU has to change its current policy. Right now EU leaders, except for this European parliament, choose a strategy awaiting, hoping, that things will one day go better in Turkey. They are not setting limits. With that they are boosting authoritarianism in the country,” Piri said. 

It is difficult to see how the EU could break the current deadlock which in any case is likely to be unsustainable in the longer term. The question is whether it has any political leverage left over Turkey to push Ankara to implement the necessary reforms. Ankara is likely to resist calls from the EU as it thinks that Brussels needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the EU. 

The European parliament is planning to send an ad-hoc delegation to Ankara in the autumn with the aim of renewing parliamentary dialogue.

“The key issue is opening up new negotiation chapters. And that is not likely to happen as long as the current state of emergency implementations do not change in a positive direction,” political commentator Murat Yetkin wrote in a June 22 article for Hurriyet Daily News. 

On April 25, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decided to place Turkey back on a human rights watch list after 13 years. Erdogan dismissed PACE’s decision as “entirely political”. “We don’t recognise it,” he said at that time.

Diplomatic sources told Yetkin that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a May 25 meeting that the Council of Europe’s monitoring of Turkey was a fixed benchmark and they could not move forward in accession talks with a country still under monitoring. 

Erdogan reportedly replied to Juncker that Ankara would “cooperate with the Council of Europe and take the necessary steps to reach the status quo ante”. This, according to Yetkin, was interpreted by the EU as a hint that Turkey could lift the state of emergency. “However, that may be a misinterpretation because Erdogan has not hinted anything similar in his remarks in Turkey since then,” Yetkin wrote. 

“Ties with Turkey are “an open-door policy. We are not going to be the ones to close that door. It is up to Turkey to pass through it, and Ankara knows what it has to do for that,” one ranking European source said.