Accession of Turkey to the European Union (EU) is on the agenda for future enlargement of the EU.
Turkey is negotiating its accession to the European Union (EU) as a member state, following its application to become a full member of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the EU, on 14 April 1987.
After the ten founding members in 1949, Turkey became one of the first new members (the 13th member) of the Council of Europe in 1950. The country became an associate member of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1963 and was an associate member of the Western European Union from 1992 to its end in 2011. Turkey signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and was officially recognised as a candidate for full membership on 12 December 1999, at the Helsinki summit of the European Council.
Negotiations for full membership were started on 3 October 2005. Progress was slow: out of the 35 chapters necessary to complete the accession process, only 16 had been opened and one had been closed by May 2016. The early 2016 refugee deal between Turkey and the European Union was intended to accelerate negotiations after previous stagnation and allow visa-free travel through Europe for Turks.
Since 2016, accession negotiations have stalled. The EU has accused and criticized Turkey for human rights violations and deficits in rule of law. In 2017, EU officials said that the strong presidency created by the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum would violate the Copenhagen criteria of eligibility for an EU membership.
On 20 February 2019, a European Parliament committee voted to call for suspension of the accession talks, sparking criticism from the government of Turkey. Turkey's accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill and no further chapters can be considered for opening or closing and no further work towards the modernisation of the EU-Turkey Customs Union is foreseen.
On 30 January 2023, the main opposition alliance Nation Alliance in Turkey released a memorandum of understanding for common policies. It re-affirmed the opposition's intent to continue the EU accession talks if they were to be elected in that year's elections. CHP leader and Turkey's main opposition leader Özgür Özel announced that if he wins the next Turkish general elections, his country will rapidly continue its accession negotiations with the EU and his country will become a member of the EU as soon as possible. It is one of nine current EU candidate countries, together with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine.
History
Background
After the Ottoman Empire's collapse following World War I, Turkish revolutionaries led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk emerged victorious in the Turkish War of Independence, establishing the modern Turkish Republic as it exists today. Atatürk, President of Turkey, implemented a series of reforms, including secularisation and industrialisation, intended to "Europeanise" or Westernise the country. During World War II, Turkey remained neutral until February 1945, when it joined the Allies. The country took part in the Marshall Plan of 1947, became a member of the Council of Europe in 1950, and a member of NATO in 1952. During the Cold War, Turkey allied itself with the United States and Western Europe. The Turkish position vis-à-vis Europe has been characterized as "Europe has been an object of desire as well as a source of frustration for Turkish national identity in a long and strained history".
Brief history of major events TimelineDateEvent 14 April 1987 Turkey applied for membership to join the European Economic Community (now the European Union). 13 December 1997 Luxembourg Council declares Turkey eligible to become an EU member. 11 December 1999 Helsinki Summit European Council declares Turkey a candidate country. 24 March 2001 Council adopts Accession Partnership for Turkey. 3 August 2002 The Turkish parliament abolished the death penalty to pave the way for the start of EU accession negotiations. 19 May 2003 Council adopts revised Accession Partnership for Turkey. 16 December 2004 European Council declares that Turkey sufficiently fulfils the criteria for opening accession negotiations beginning in October 2005. 3 October 2005 Council adopts negotiating framework and negotiations are formally opened. Screening process begins. 1 June 2006 Negotiations are opened and closed on Chapter 25 – Science and Research. 11 December 2006 Because Turkey refused to apply to Cyprus the Additional Protocol to the Ankara Agreement, Council decides that eight chapters will not be opened. 19 February 2008 Council adopts revised Accession Partnership for Turkey. 30 June 2010 Negotiations are opened on Chapter 12 – Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Policy. 17 May 2012 Positive Agenda intended to bring fresh dynamics into the EU-Turkey relations was launched. 5 November 2013 Negotiations are opened on Chapter 22 – Regional Policy and Coordination of Structural Instruments. 16 December 2013 Visa liberalisation dialogue launched and EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement signed. 29 November 2015 First EU-Turkey Summit held and Joint EU-Turkey Action Plan activated. The EU welcomes Turkey's commitment to accelerate the fulfilment of the Visa Roadmap benchmarks in return for halting the flow of Syrian refugees from Turkey to Greece. 14 December 2015 Negotiations are opened on Chapter 17 – Economic and Monetary Policy. 30 June 2016 Negotiations are opened on Chapter 33 – Financial and Budgetary Provisions. 24 November 2016 MEPs vote overwhelmingly to suspend negotiations with Turkey over human rights and rule of law concerns. 6 July 2017 EU parliament called for the suspension of accession negotiations with Turkey. 20 February 2019 EU parliament committee votes to suspend accession talks with Turkey. 13 March 2019 The European Parliament unanimously accepted the call for the suspension of full membership negotiations between the EU and Turkey. 19 May 2021 The European Parliament unanimously accepted the call for the suspension of accession negotiations between the EU and Turkey.
1950s–1990s Turkey first applied for associate membership in the European Economic Community in 1959, and on 12 September 1963 signed the "Agreement Creating An Association Between The Republic of Turkey and the European Economic Community", also known as the Ankara Agreement. This agreement came into effect the following year on 12 December 1964. The Ankara Agreement sought to integrate Turkey into a customs union with the EEC whilst acknowledging the final goal of membership. In November 1970, a further protocol called the "Additional Protocol" established a timetable for the abolition of tariffs and quotas on goods traded between Turkey and the EEC.
On 14 April 1987, Turkey submitted its application for formal membership into the European Economic Community. The European Commission responded in December 1989 by confirming Ankara's eventual membership but also by deferring the matter to more favourable times, citing Turkey's economic and political situation, as well its poor relations with Greece and the conflict with Cyprus as creating an unfavourable environment with which to begin negotiations. This position was confirmed again in the Luxembourg European Council of 1997 in which accession talks were started with central and eastern European states and Cyprus, but not Turkey. During the 1990s, Turkey proceeded with closer integration with the European Union by agreeing to a customs union in 1995. In 1999, following the Greek-Turkish earthquake diplomacy, Greece lifted its opposition to Turkey's accession to the European Union. Moreover, the Helsinki Summit European Council of 1999 proved a milestone as the EU recognised Turkey as a candidate on equal footing with other potential candidates.
2000s The next significant step in EU–Turkey relations came with the December 2002 Copenhagen European Council. According to it, "the EU would open negotiations with Turkey 'without delay' if the European Council in December 2004, on the basis of a report and a recommendation from the Commission, decides that Turkey fulfills the Copenhagen political criteria." French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder expressed joint support for the December 2004 European Commission summit meeting agenda for Turkey joining the European Union. On 28 September 2005, the European Parliament unanimously adopted a preliminary invitation to start EU accession negotiations with Turkey. The invitation included a call for Turkey to formally recognize the Armenian genocide and to formally recognize the Republic of Cyprus and establish diplomatic relations. The European Commission recommended that the negotiations should begin in 2005, but also added various precautionary measures. The EU leaders agreed on 16 December 2004 to start accession negotiations with Turkey from 3 October 2005. While Austria and Germany initially wanted to leave open the possibility that negotiations with Turkey would lead to a privileged partnership, less than full membership, accession negotiations were ultimately launched with the "shared objective" of membership.
Turkey's accession talks have since been stalled by a number of domestic and external problems. Both Austria and France have said they would hold a referendum on Turkey's accession. In the case of France, a change in its Constitution was made to impose such a referendum, but later another constitutional change has enabled the parliament (if a large majority of its members agrees) to prevent such a referendum. The issue of Cyprus continues to be a major obstacle to negotiations. European officials have commented on the slowdown in Turkish reforms which, combined with the Cyprus problem, led the EU's Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn in March 2007 to warn of an impending 'train crash' in the negotiations. Due to these setbacks, negotiations again came to a halt in December 2006, with the EU freezing talks in 8 of the 35 key areas under negotiation.
In 2007, Turkey stated that they were aiming to comply with EU law by 2013, but Brussels refused to back that as a deadline for membership. In 2006 President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso said that the accession process will take at least until 2021. In a visit to Germany on 31 October 2012, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made clear that Turkey was expecting membership in the Union to be realised by 2023, the 100th Anniversary of the Turkish Republic, implying that they could end membership negotiations if the talks had not yielded a positive result by then. Turkish President Abdullah Gül said that upon completing the accession process Turkey will hold a referendum for Turkish membership in the European Union.
In December 2009, EU member the Republic of Cyprus blocked 6 chapters of Turkish accession negotiations, including those on Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, Energy and Education and Culture, arguing that Turkey needs to first normalise relations with Cyprus. As a result, no chapters have been opened since June 2010. Hence, there is no chapter Turkey could open other than the difficult and economically detrimental chapters Competition Policy, Social Policy and Employment, and Public Procurement that most candidate countries open at the end of accession as all other chapters were blocked. In February 2013, Turkish Deputy Undersecretary of the Ministry for EU Affairs, Burak Erdenir, claimed that the EU had yet to communicate to Turkey the benchmark criteria for opening chapters 23 and 24, Judiciary & Fundamental Rights and Justice, Freedom & Security, which was to be done after screening of the chapters was completed in 2006, thus making it impossible to comply with them. He also suggested this was a deliberate attempt to slow their accession process.
Positive agenda (2012–13)