The Progress Report published by the European Union remarkably surpassed the other reports in terms of its dose of criticism; beyond criticism, it adopted the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Fetullah Terror Organization (FETÖ) terror groups’ comprehensive propaganda arguments and style in relation to Turkey. It went on record as a scandal report that is completely indifferent toward all the terrorist attacks organized against Turkey’s democracy, security and stability, toward the failed coup and parallel state infiltration, and that lacks empathy and understanding.
The report itself is one that deserves to be noted in terms of its distortion of facts and submission to terrorist organizations and intentional bias. The first determination in a report like this is that just as there is no progress in the style, reality or objectivity, there is blatant regress. The EU keeping progress records about Turkey or countries that are candidates for membership is a routine task. We must focus on how this routine has turned against Turkey, and turned into an area of opportunity for Turkey’s enemies. However, there is benefit in reviewing the course of relations between the EU – which has this routine – and Turkey again following this occasion.
We are talking about a graph of relations that has been fluctuating for over 50 years. Unfortunately, even though the majority of the practices guaranteed to Turkey by the EU with the Ankara Pact have not been fulfilled, Turkey has always been the party boasting a historic perspective to take responsibility to prevent this relation from breaking off.
As the EU membership goal in Turkey is a matter above the state, almost all government of the Republic of Turkey took steps in this direction. During the Justice and Development (AK) Party term these efforts reached a peak and as a result, full membership negotiations were enabled. In addition to this, after Turkey started to be regarded as a “useful political argument” instead of an “equal partner” due to certain crises the EU experienced within its own structure, delays and ruptures started to take place in the process.
As is known, the EU emerged from the union of the European Economic Society, European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. These three organizations, which obtained certain joint mechanisms with a pact that was signed in 1965, formed one of the EU’s three pillars after being merged with the 1991 Maastricht Treaty.
The roots of the organization feeling the need to revise itself in this way was essentially related to the end of the Cold War. These structures were essentially designed as the economic cooperation organizations of Western European countries and their defense was almost completely left to NATO’s safekeeping.
At the foundation of the political arguments that arose with the end of the Cold War was the expectation - which was formed or created – that the EU could become a global power. The two other pillars formed by the Maastricht Treaty mentioned above were largely a result of this expectation.
The most important among these developments that deeply affected progress was perhaps the arguments aimed at a Joint Defense policy being viewed in the context of undermining NATO, and the U.S. administration starting to openly oppose these efforts. EU countries, which tried to get outside NATO’s military umbrella with the Joint Defense and Security Policy, got caught in the margins of the new political atmosphere that formed post-Cold War, and put the idea of an autonomous military structuring aside.
The collapse of one of the pillars formed by the Maastricht Treaty was showing that the union’s future was not too bright. Meanwhile, the dream of One Europe and the understanding of nation-states were taken from communities. In other words, the destruction of the borders of phenomenon created by approximately 400-year-old sociological-historical political realities played into the hands of the far-right in Europe and led to the rise of movements that strictly defend the nation-state demand, that turn xenophobia into an item of political propaganda.
This was actually a sign that the EU project was starting to collapse. We see that eventually, the EU’s authorized bodies that are supposed to fight these mishaps go with the flow and embrace populism as a strategy. Moreover, it is upsetting that they are trying to use Turkey for these strategies.
It is very clear that the latest progress report published by the EU does not comply with EU values in this sense, and that it is trying to exploit the rising anti-Turkey sentiment and Islamophobia in Europe with extremely political motives.
The statements in the report about the state of emergency which is enforced as a preventative strategy by a country who is under intense attack of terrorist organizations to be able to fulfill its minimum responsibilities toward its citizens and protect the lives and properties of civilians are far from empathetic and also far from the truth.
Had the EU been able to make such suggestions to France as well, it might have been able to defend that what is being said is partly meaningful. However, remaining silent to France’s enactment of a state of emergency while criticizing Turkey for it is unacceptable.
Statements that Turkey has distanced itself from membership perspective are funny enough to be the subject to a comedy play, not a political evaluation. Is it the EU or Turkey that has moved away from the membership perspective? It is clear that the answer to this question is not Turkey.
For the U.S. to issue statements about an election in a state of emergency right at this moment bring to mind an idiom that is used in Anatolia: When two hungry people lie together, a beggar is born.
