The big regression in the EU Progress Report

The Progress Report published by the European Union has raised the dose of criticism of Turkey to a noticeable degree compared with past reports, and, more than criticism, has adopted all of the propaganda arguments and the tone of the terrorist organizations PKK and FETÖ about Turkey. It has gone on record as a scandalous report, completely indifferent and devoid of empathy and understanding toward the many terrorist attacks, the coup, and the parallel state infiltration organized against Turkey's democracy, security and stability.

The report itself deserves to be made the subject of a report for its distortion of the facts, its surrender to terrorist organizations and its deliberate partiality. The first finding in such a probable report: in the tone, realism and impartiality of the EU report, not only has no progress been made, there is an obvious regression.

It is routine for the EU to keep progress reports on Turkey or on candidate countries for membership. How this routine has turned into an opportunity field for Turkey's enemies, against Turkey, should be dwelt on separately. But it is worth taking another look on this occasion at the course of relations between the EU, which holds to this routine, and Turkey.

We are speaking of a relationship with an up-and-down graph that has lasted for more than fifty years. Unfortunately, although most of the commitments made to Turkey by the EU with the Ankara Agreement have not been fulfilled, Turkey, from a historical perspective, has been the side constantly taking responsibility so that this relationship would not be broken.

Since the goal of EU membership in Turkey is a matter above governments, almost all Republic governments took steps on this. During the AK Party governments these efforts reached the highest level and eventually full membership negotiations could be started. However, after Turkey began to be treated not as an "equal partner" but as a "useful political argument," because of a number of crises the EU was experiencing within itself, disruptions and breaks began in the process.

As is known, the EU emerged from the bringing together of the European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. These three organizations, which acquired some common mechanisms with a treaty signed in 1965, were merged with the 1991 Maastricht Treaty and constituted one of the three pillars of the EU.

The origins of the organization's feeling the need to revise itself in this way were in fact also related to the end of the Cold War. For these structures had essentially been designed as economic cooperation organizations of Western European countries, and their defense had been left almost entirely to the NATO guarantee.

On the ground of the political debates that came with the end of the Cold War, the expectation arose, or was created, that the EU could also turn into a global power. The other two pillars created by the Maastricht Treaty mentioned above were to a large extent a result of this expectation.

Among these, the most important one, the debates on a Common Defense policy, began to be evaluated in the context of undermining NATO, and the US administration's beginning to openly oppose these efforts was perhaps the most important of the developments that deeply affected the process. The EU countries that tried to step outside the military umbrella of NATO with the Common Defense and Security Policy got caught in the margins of the new political environment formed after the Cold War and shelved the idea of an autonomous military structure.

The collapse of one of the pillars created by the Maastricht Treaty showed that the future of the Union was not very bright. On the other hand, the dream of a Single Europe taking the nation-states of societies out of their hands, in other words the destruction of the borders of phenomena created by about 400 years of sociological-historical-political realities, fed the far right in Europe and brought with it the rise of movements that defend the demand for the nation-state rigidly and turn xenophobia into political propaganda material.

This situation in fact showed that the EU project had also begun to collapse. In the end, we see that the EU's authorized bodies, which should be fighting these adversities, have adopted populism as a strategy by going with the flow. That Turkey is being made a side dish to this strategy of theirs is additionally sad.

It is very clear that the latest progress report published by the EU is likewise not in line with real EU values in this respect, and that it is trying, with extremely political motives, to profit from the rising Turkish and Islamic hostility in Europe.

The statements in the report about the state of emergency (OHAL), which is in force as a preventive strategy to enable the state to fulfill its minimum responsibilities toward its citizens in a country under intense attack by terrorist organizations and to secure the lives and property of civilians, are both devoid of empathy and incompatible with the facts.

If the EU had been able to make such recommendations to France too in a lofty tone, perhaps it could have been argued that what was said made some sense. But it is unacceptable that, while no voice is raised about the state of emergency practice in France, an attempt is made to read Turkey the riot act.

The statements that Turkey is moving away from the membership perspective are so funny that they could be the subject not of a political assessment but of a humorous theatrical play. Is it the EU that is moving away from the membership perspective, or Turkey? It is clear that the answer to this question is not Turkey.

Right at this moment, statements from the US that it is worried about elections under the state of emergency recall a saying used in Anatolia: One robs, the other takes out the overalls. Well, two naked ones suit a bathhouse anyway.