Turkey's EU accession remains in limbo
While Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has raised questions with talk of building a "New Turkey" through an unclear "restoration" process, he has also sent out signals that he is serious about the EU accession process.
Reading the new government program at the general assembly meeting in the parliament Sept. 1, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s new prime minister, said the European Union membership process remains a strategic value for the country. He even announced that the target was “to crown the Republic’s centennial by EU membership.” Yet he also weighed in on building a “New Turkey” as a strategic mission through a “restoration,” saying that this has already been going on since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power over a decade ago.
Davutoglu’s desire for strategic accomplishments sends out a potentially contradictory message. “Few people really understand what the prime minister means by ‘restoration’ except that it signals a change in the current system,” Nilgun Arisan Eralp, an EU expert at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV, told Al-Monitor. “The EU accession process already puts a program before Turkey, and if the EU membership is really a strategic target for the country, there really is no need to talk about a separate restoration process. It only confuses the mind.”
