The EU, which cannot progress, and its Turkey report

The European Union's Progress Report on Turkey has been announced. Turkey and the European Union have a relationship that is quite different and special compared with the one the EU follows in the candidacy processes of other member countries. Turkey is the only country for which the EU has produced more than one Accession Partnership Document during the membership negotiation process.

There are of course dimensions of this situation that stem from Turkey. However, the effect of the confusion Europeans have experienced regarding Turkey's joining first the Common Market and then the EU, and of their unsettled views about Turkey, seems far more pronounced.

The history of Turkey's relations with Europe is as old as the periods when Europe named itself Europe. In relatively more recent times, roughly since the 1856 Treaty of Paris, Turkey can be said to have been accepted as a member of the European Concert of States. However, it is also observed that, again roughly since the 18th century, the European community of states' views about Turkey have been quite changeable. It can be said that the statements made today by EU institutions and EU officials on Turkey's EU membership are still nourished by such a historical memory.

Indeed, EU Minister Beril Dedeoğlu's disclosure that a proposal (!) was made to make the EU Progress Report "softer" in return for keeping Syrian refugees in Turkey shows that European politicians and bureaucrats still have not freed themselves from the effect of this two-hundred-year memory.

European bureaucrats had voiced such a proposal at various levels in October as well. In return for visa exemption for Turkish citizens, additional financial aid, the restarting of negotiations, and the invitation of leaders from Turkey to EU summits, it was proposed that Syrian refugees be made to stay in Turkey. These approaches clearly revealed how EU countries' understanding of matters like human rights should be understood. For the EU countries that staged a show of ostentatious humanism after the lifeless body of a child washed up on Turkey's shores, it was once again clearly observed from what angle the tragedy in Syria actually matters.

According to EU Minister Beril Dedeoğlu's statement, it is understood that the lobbying activities carried out against Turkey before the announcement of this year's Progress Report were also intense compared with previous years. To the question of who carried out this lobbying, the Honorable Minister politely prefers in some way not to answer, but it is plain as day that the group conducting this lobbying is the Parallel Gang. Moreover, they perform the job of complaining about Turkey and trying to obtain support by distorting the facts skillfully not only in EU institutions but also in the US.

The criticisms directed at Turkey in the Progress Report on press freedom and the fight against terrorism also appear disproportionate and far from the truth. The EU needs to understand that the fight against the parallel structure, which has become a terrorist organization threatening Turkey's national security and national interests, must contain resolute elements outside the usual methods. That EU countries, which have been exposed on the human rights issue they talk so much about because of the Syrian crisis, try to shake off their embarrassment before Turkey by using Turkey's fight against extra-legal structures as an occasion is in any case a situation that can be explained precisely by "Western cunning."

As I stated in the introduction, Turkey-EU relations have an extremely special history and content. To write a Progress Report and wait with the air of "fulfill the requirements of this report" is contrary both to the logic and to the content of the relationship. Just as the EU has expectations of Turkey, Turkey too has expectations of the EU, and a healthy relationship between Turkey and the EU can be possible only if the expectations of both sides are met at a minimum level.

While Turkey is fighting a fascist terrorist organization that threatens the security of its citizens in a part of the country and leads even children under 18 to their deaths, if EU member countries make common cause with some extensions of this organization; if they are determined to create weakness in Turkey's struggle against the Parallel Gang, which threatens Turkey's national security and national interests and pumps the threat of fear and violence into society in a format different from the usual terrorist organizations, this relationship cannot reach a healthy level.

Considering that Russia is seriously threatening the security of the Transatlantic World in Ukraine and Syria, it can clearly be seen that relations between Turkey and the EU countries, which are also allies within NATO, need to be put back on track. For this Turkey will do its part, but the EU too must see the necessity of fulfilling the commitments it has not fulfilled to date.