A Century of Turkiye-Europe Relations: Europe's Diminishing Role.

• Author: Inat, Kemal

Introduction

There is no doubt that Turkiye's relationship with Europe (1) has been the most important issue in Turkish foreign policy in recent centuries. Just as the Ottoman Empire's expansion primarily occurred in Europe, the Ottoman government in Istanbul dealt with European states more than others during the empire's decline and disintegration. Due to the West's economic and military superiority in recent centuries, European countries naturally played a crucial role in shaping Turkish foreign policy in the Republican period. It is important to recall that Turkiye was compelled to address its main foreign policy issues of the interwar period, the fate of Mosul and Hatay, with Britain and France as opposed to Iraq and Syria. During the same period, European nations remained Turkiye's main trade partners.

Although Turkiye successfully refrained from joining the Second World War directly, Europeans mounted the most intense wartime pressure on Ankara. In the war's aftermath, the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), which the U.S. originally formed with European nations, in response to threats from the Soviet Union, and adopted a Western-aligned security policy during the Cold War. At the same time, Turkiye became a member of the Council of Europe and applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC), an organization of Western European states, to remain close to Europe politically and economically.

The rise of the U.S. and the Soviet Union in global politics, followed by the rise of Asia, however, caused Europe's centuries-long importance (especially over the last two centuries) in Turkish foreign policy to gradually decrease. Whereas the U.S. emerged as Turkiye's chief security partner during the Cold War, Ankara continued to pursue economic integration with Europe during that period. In the wake of the AK Party rise to power, however, the Turkish government experienced tensions with the U.S. over the latter's illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and immediately took steps to more closely align itself with the European Union. Although the Turkish accession process consequently started in 2005, marking an important stage in the country's membership bid, the opposition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which came to power in Germany the same year, to Turkiye's admission as well as mounting pressure on Ankara over the Cyprus issue brought the talks to a standstill. It is important to recall that Europe's right-wing conservative parties adopted an ideologically charged view on Turkiye--which factored into that standstill. (2)

Turkiye's rejection of European impositions regarding Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean and adoption of a policy toward the Middle East and the Caucasus, which was occasionally not aligned with the European Union, also caused European governments and the U.S. to assume a more interventionist stance toward the AK Party government. At this point, the European Union remains Turkiye's largest trading partner yet political tensions have taken a toll on economic relations. Whether the European Union's leaders would rather keep Turkiye, a major economic and security partner, on their side or alienate it amid the intensifying global power struggle will shape the future of the Turkiye-European Union relations. (3)

Main Determinants of Turkiye-Europe Relations

Security: From Partnership to a Balance of Interests

Security has traditionally been a key factor in Turkiye's relations with Europe. Between the Republic's early years and the end of the Second World War, the heart of world politics was still beating in Europe. At the same time, European countries, starting with Britain, were among the world's most influential global powers and played a defining role in shaping Turkish foreign policy. Turkiye signed the Treaty of Lausanne, the founding document of its Republic, with the aforementioned countries adding to Europe's importance vis-a-vis Turkish foreign policy. Furthermore, Britain and France were Turkiye's neighbors at the time because they controlled Iraq and Syria under the League of Nations' mandate system -which made Europe all the more important for Turkish foreign policy. The recently-established Republic of Turkiye had waged its War of Independence against European states, yet it was keenly aware that it needed to strike a rather delicate balance in its relations with the relevant nations to remain independent and ensure its economic development. In other words, the slightest misstep in foreign policy might have dragged Turkiye into any European country's sphere of influence. Thus seeking to perform a balancing act, the country took advantage of Europe's fragmentation. The Soviet regime's emergence in Russia during the First World War and the rise of Benito Mussolini's fascist movement in Italy shortly afterward fueled security concerns in Europe. In the wake of the Great Depression, another fascist government came to power in Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, and adopted revisionist policies that further deepened those concerns. That fragmentation made it easier for countries like Turkiye to perform a balancing act.

It is important to note that the Turkish government stuck to its balancing act during the Second World War to successfully refrain from directly joining the fight despite mounting pressure from the Allies. As a bipolar system emerged in the international arena after the war, however, it became impossible for Turkiye to continue its balancing act. The country was thus compelled to pick a side. In the face of the territorial demands of the Soviet Union, one of the new superpowers, Ankara concluded that it could not address these threats by itself and moved to establish a close security partnership with the other superpower, the U.S., and its Western European allies. That partnership, which emerged under the NATO umbrella, rendered Ankara safer against Moscow yet more vulnerable to U.S. and European influence and interventions.

Considering Turkiye as a major Cold War forward operating base as part of their policy of containment against the Soviet Union, those nations stepped in whenever any development, which they believed would make it more difficult for Ankara to perform its task, occurred and ensured that Turkiye would continue to orbit the West. (4) In other words, the security partnership between Turkiye and the West was never considered a partnership of equals by European nations and the U.S. Instead, they expected Ankara to endorse NATO's policies and generally align its foreign policy with the U.S. and Europe in exchange for the support it received against the Soviet threat. Although that relationship essentially survived the end of the Cold War, the Soviet threat's disappearance caused the West to need Turkiye less and, by extension, decreased the importance attached to the country by the European Union in terms of security. Nonetheless, as the Yugoslav Wars revealed Europe's vulnerabilities and shortcomings and Gerhard Schroder, an advocate of a uniquely European security architecture, came to power in Germany in 1998, a new opportunity emerged for Turkiye to move closer to Europe once again.

Turkiye's decision to take major steps toward EU membership in the AK Party government's initial years and the 2005 launch of membership talks were highly relevant to the security partnership between the country and Europe. Yet Angela Merkel, who became Germany's new chancellor in 2005, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who won the 2007 presidential election in France, publicly opposed Turkish membership--which caused the Turkiye-EU relations to gradually deteriorate. (5) Furthermore, Turkiye had increased its economic and military capacity in the initial years of AK Party rule and subsequently began to pursue a more independent foreign policy that strained its relations with the U.S. and European states. Unwilling to redefine their security partnership with Ankara by treating Turkiye as a sovereign and equal partner, the European Union and the U.S. increased their pressure and interventions in the 2010s to cause additional problems in Turkiye's relations with the West. At the same time, some European nations continued to (in)directly support terrorist organizations like the PKK/YPG and FETO that posed a threat to Turkiye's national security--which undermined the security partnership under the NATO umbrella. Some EU members, including France, became party to Turkiye's dispute with the Greek Cypriot administration and Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean and forced the EU to impose severe sanctions on Turkiye. These developments as well escalated those tensions. In contrast, the European Union needs Turkiye to stop illegal migration toward the continent and to help balance the global competition against China and Russia--which is why European governments remain determined to continue their security partnership with Ankara despite problems. Meanwhile, Turkiye continues to view the European Union as an important player in its balancing act, which it began to perform anew under the AK Party and recognizes that Europe continues to account for a significant portion of its exports. Those factors encourage the Turkish government to continue its security partnership with Europe. (6)

Economy: The Diminishing Influence of Europe

Having much stronger economic bonds with Europe than its security partnership, Turkiye has traditionally enjoyed very close relations with Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands in terms of external trade and foreign investments. The European states played an important role in the country's external affairs as early as the Republic's initial years. They maintained that level of importance after the Second World War and to date. Although the cumulative share of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France in Turkiye's exports slightly decreased from 62 percent to 60 percent between 1924 and 1938, it...