The European Council and Turkey: Searching for a positive agenda

Briefing 30-06-2021

Turkey has featured regularly on the agenda of the European Council in recent years, notably in the context of the migration crisis and military operations in Syria, and as a result of an increasingly tense situation in the eastern Mediterranean, which led to a significant military build-up at sea during the summer of 2020. In all these cases, the European Council (re)acted swiftly, ensuring that the views of the Member States were taken into consideration. In the migration crisis, it stepped up cooperation with Turkey, reducing the influx of irregular arrivals on EU shores, while offering to 're-energise accession negotiations'. This offer has been disregarded, as Turkey has continued to drift away from EU values and principles, multiplying rule of law and human rights violations. In parallel, Turkey has started pursuing an increasingly assertive regional policy in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and, more recently, in the south Caucasus. Its assertiveness in the eastern Mediterranean led to the increase in illegal exploratory drilling activities in the Cypriot and Greek economic exclusive zones (EEZs), which the European Council has condemned on numerous occasions. In 2020, in an attempt to back de-escalation efforts, the European Council reiterated its offer of cooperation on a positive political agenda, including modernisation of the EU-Turkey customs union, making this conditional upon progress on restoring good neighbourly relations.