As NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius for their latest summit,
international attention was focused on the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
After months of heated negotiations,
many wondered whether he would finally allow Sweden to join the organisation.
However, in a surprise move, the Turkish president appeared to link
the decision to Turkey's long-stalled European Union membership talks.
Although he eventually accepted Swedish membership,
many nevertheless wondered what he had hoped to achieve by raising this issue.
So, what exactly was it about? And is this the start of a new
relationship between Turkey and its European partners?
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay,
and here I take an informed look at international relations, conflict, security, and statehood.
Even the strongest allies can sometimes have their differences.
But sometimes, a member of an organisation can drift so far
from its partners that its place in the group is called into question.
There are a few cases in modern international relations as stark
as Turkey's relationship with the West.
Long seen as an integral part of the club - as a member of NATO,
the Council of Europe, and even the candidate for EU membership - over the past decade,
it's become increasingly distant from its Western partners.
While a degree of blame must undoubtedly be placed on the shoulders of European leaders,
much of this has rested on the policies of Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan.
Over the past decade, he has strained relations to breaking point.
And yet, suddenly, there are signs that perhaps he
wants to rebuild his ties to Turkey's traditional allies.
So, what exactly is going on?
The relationship between Turkey and Europe can be traced back centuries to the Ottoman Empire.
Having once ruled over a large part of the Balkans, it had even come to the gates of Vienna.
However, the situation had changed by the end of the 19th century.
As its European territories won independence, it became the so-called 'sick man of Europe'.
But our story really begins after the First World War.
As the victorious European powers planned to carve out what remained of the Empire,
Turkish nationalist forces fought back under the command of General Mustafa Kamal.
And on 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey was formally proclaimed.
From the outset, the new country looked towards Europe and the West.
As well as implementing a radical social reform program designed to minimise
Islam's role in the country, Kemal - better known as Ataturk - introduced
a new Latin script and took other steps to move it closer to Europe.
This continued after he died in 1938.
Although Turkey remained neutral during the Second World War,
in 1949, it became one of the first members of the Council of Europe - a
new body designed to uphold democracy and human rights in Western Europe.
Then, three years later, as the Cold War took hold, it joined NATO.
However, perhaps the most significant step came in 1963 when it signed an association agreement
with the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union.
But while the hope was that turkey would eventually be able to join the community,
its path was blocked by several significant obstacles.
Internally, it was plagued by political instability, leading to several military coups.
Externally, tensions with neighbouring Greece over
the Aegean Sea and the 1974 invasion of Cyprus also hampered membership.
By the late 1990s, however, things appeared to be changing.
Although Turkey's application to join the European Union was again rejected in 1997,
everything changed two years later when a massive
earthquake in Western Turkey opened the way for rapprochement with neighbouring Greece.
As a result, Athens agreed to drop its objections to Turkish membership.
But the most profound change came in November 2002 when the Justice and Development Party,
the AKP, won the Turkish general elections under its charismatic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The new Turkish government set EU membership as its highest priority.
As well as continuing the rapprochement with Greece,
Erdogan supported a United Nations plan to reunite Cyprus.
But while the UN effort eventually failed in April 2004, when the Greek
Cypriots voted against the proposed unification plan,
the European Union nevertheless rewarded Turkey for its constructive role.
In 2005, EU leaders finally agreed to open membership negotiations.
Over the following years, Turkey continued to make headway towards joining the European Union.
As well as reforming its internal politics and reducing the power of the military,
it began discussions on the acquis communautaire,
the EU's body of laws - eventually opening 16 of the 33 chapters.
But despite the promising start, by the end of the decade, problems were emerging.
While Erdogan began as a reforming democrat, he was now becoming increasingly authoritarian.
This all came to a head in May 2013 when mass protests erupted across Turkey after
a decision to clear out a peaceful protest in a small park in Istanbul.
Although Erdogan managed to retain control, he now tightened his grip on power.
This became particularly pronounced in July 2016 when, following an attempted coup,
he launched a huge crackdown against political opponents.
This led to mass purges of anyone suspected
of harbouring strongly critical views of the AKP administration.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands sacked from the civil Service, the judiciary,
the military, and academia, tens of thousands were jailed.
To top it all off, he also changed the constitution
creating a U.S style presidential system that significantly increased his personal power.
All this had a considerable impact on Turkey's relationship with the West.
For a start, despite having opened half the required chapters,
membership talks with the European Union now ground to a halt amidst
claims that Turkey no longer met the democratic criteria to join.
At the same time, EU-Turkey relations became strained by other issues, including the 2015
migrant crisis that saw around a million people cross the Aegean from Turkey into Greece.
Meanwhile, relations with the United States and NATO also became increasingly difficult.
Ankara's ties with Washington deteriorated as Turkey accused the United States of harbouring
Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader Turkey accused of having been behind the attempted coup.
At the same time, Turkey's growing ties to Russia became a concern, underscored
by Ankara's decision to buy a Russian-made anti-aircraft system, much to U.S anger.
Even Turkey's place in the Council of Europe was called into question,
not least of all by the arrest and indefinite detention without
trial of a leading business figure for alleged involvement in the 2016 coup.
On top of all this, the country also came into criticism for pulling out of
the Istanbul Convention protecting women's rights.
But it was the start of the war in Ukraine that really brought things to a head.
Unlike the European Union and the United States, Ankara refused to impose sanctions on Moscow.
While it argued that it was acting as an intermediary between Russia and the West,
and included brokering a deal to export Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea,
many saw it as further proof of Erdogan's untrustworthiness.
However, the most significant step came in May 2022 when Sweden and Finland abandoned
their long-standing policies of neutrality and non-alignment and applied to join NATO.
Seen as a huge step forward for Western security, Ankara promptly announced that
it wouldn't accept their membership, citing their failure to tackle Kurdish terrorism.
Although Erdogan eventually relented on Finnish membership, he held firm on Sweden.
More to the point, despite significant anger in NATO circles,
and Swedish efforts to address Turkish concerns, it appeared that he wasn't willing to back down.
And it was at this point, as NATO leaders prepared to meet for their latest summit in Vilnius,
Lithuania, that he suddenly brought up the link to Turkey's EU membership.
While it appeared that this would now derail Sweden's hopes of joining the organisation,
following a meeting with the Swedish prime minister and NATO Secretary
General on the summit's first day, Erdogan finally agreed to forward
the application to the Turkish Parliament for ratification.
Of course, there was never any chance that the European Union would have
restarted membership talks after such a brazen act of political blackmail.
So, what exactly was it all about? And why did Erdogan back down so quickly?
For a start, there's the immediate political context to consider.
The debate over Swedish membership came as Erdogan had been preparing
for a particularly brutal re-election campaign.
Facing an opposition candidate many felt had a realistic chance of winning,
Erdogan played the nationalist card.
But having secured yet another term in power, he now felt able to back down.
But while this partly explains the situation,
it can't fully account for such a dramatic and swift turnaround.
Instead, the decision is underpinned by a huge problem.
Simply put, the Turkish economy is in a mess.
Having persistently run a budget deficit, and needing to try to prop up the Turkish lira to
control inflation, the country is now running dangerously low on foreign currency reserves.
Added to Erdogan's long-standing opposition to using interest rates to fine-tune the economy,
the country is widely understood to stand on the brink of a financial crisis.
And with signs to the supporters in the Gulf Arab states are prepared to prop him up anymore,
it seems that Erdogan is now looking to his Western partners for support.
All this has seen what amounts to some dramatic moves from the Turkish leader.
As well as opening the way for Sweden's NATO membership, he's also expressed
support for Ukrainian membership, and even handed over Ukrainian prisoners of war.
But while this has sparked anger in Russia,
it's delivering early dividends for the Turkish president.
As well as a slew of high-profile meetings with senior EU officials,
he also met with President Biden on the margins of the NATO Summit.
And all this also seemed to deliver another important result when the U.S Administration
said that it was finally willing to approve the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey - a
purchase that had been high on Ankara's military wishlist for quite some time.
And of course they'll be the hope that Western partners will now be
more willing to help Turkey if the economy does enter a crisis.
But what about the possibility of renewing EU accession talks?
Is this in any way a possibility?
In a word, no.
For a start, there is simply too many serious problems to restart the process at this stage.
Leaving aside Turkey's outstanding issues with its neighbours, Erdogan's
authoritarianism means that Turkey doesn't pass the democratic requirements for membership.
More to the point, there's no appetite for membership within
the European Union - either amongst the leaders or the popular level.
While most member states once genuinely supported Turkish membership, those days have long passed.
And public support is also incredibly low.
Although there's little recent data available,
support seems to have steadily dropped since the mid-1990s.
But while all this may seem like bad news for Erdogan,
it isn't as much of a problem as it appears.
There's a good argument to suggest that he's not keen on EU membership either.
While he certainly values the validation that comes with membership talks,
and it's helpful to be able to argue that the process remains intact,
he certainly won't want to have to make many of the changes needed to get into the Union.
In this sense, we're now in a rather strange place.
While neither side wanted to take the talks forward when relations were bad, both were equally
content to leave them in limbo - rather than stoke problems by trying to break them off altogether.
But if relations are set to improve, then things could become a little trickier.
Both sides will want to maintain good working relations, but avoid ending up in a position where
they have to restart negotiations - or even have to begin seriously talking about reopening talks.
More to the point, it seems that both sides seem to understand this.
After meeting with Erdogan, it was telling that the President of the European Council,
Charles Michel, suggested that the two sides could establish a renewed relationship,
but carefully avoided any mention of membership talks.
Overall, as significant as the steps taken at the NATO Summit undoubtedly were,
given the damage of recent years few Western leaders will have gone home thinking that this
genuinely marks the beginning of a new era of relations between Turkey and its partners.
For that to happen, it will take a lot more work from Ankara.
There's a lot it will need to do to build up trust and also to address
the country's political and human rights shortcomings.
Meanwhile, if this charm offensive by Erdogan is any indication of just how
deep the country's financial problems really are, many of those leaders
will no doubt be wondering just how much this rediscovered friendship is going to cost them.
I hope you found that interesting.
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Thanks so much for watching, and see you in the next one.