Today, Turkey’s prospects for joining the EU are the lowest they have been since talks began in 2005. Indeed, one of the few things Europeans and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can agree on is that for the moment, EU membership is out of question.
And, yet it would be a mistake for the EU to turn its back on its southeastern neighbor. Not only does Turkey remain an important partner when it comes to energy, security and trade; a rapid deterioration would strengthen — rather than weaken — the country’s increasingly authoritarian president. [...]
The EU is still by far Turkey’s dominant trading partner. The bloc takes in close to half of Turkey’s exports and provides about two-thirds of the foreign direct investment going into the country. And when it comes to matters of international trade — for instance, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel — Turkey would be far worse off fighting alone, rather than in coordination with the EU, with which it has been bound in a customs union since 1996.
The EU needs Turkey too. Notwithstanding the election results, the European Council agreed on June 29 to release the second tranche of €3 billion in financial assistance for Syrian refugees. Imperfect as it is, the EU-Turkey refugee deal reached in March 2016 to stem the tide of asylum seekers has stuck. With migration remaining a burning political issue in key EU countries like Germany, the partnership with Ankara is set to endure. [...]
If the EU were to pull the plug on membership talks, that would be a gift to the Turkish president. He will whip up nationalism and lay blame for whatever problems the country confronts — be it inflation spiraling out of control or an uptick of violence in the Kurdish-populated south-eastern provinces — at Europe’s feet. Far better to let Erdoğan to take this momentous decision, and deal with its consequences domestically.
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