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.”
EU diplomats who spoke to Al-Monitor cited the critical importance of the requirements that Turkey needs to adopt, placing particular emphasis on Chapter 23 of the accession talks, which deals with judiciary and fundamental rights. The diplomats said they would be interested to see how the separation of powers and judicial independence would evolve in the new era, but that the recent past didn’t leave them hopeful for a positive outcome.
The 2013 Turkey progress report by the European Commission has already outlined concern over an independent judiciary in the country. European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule, for example, drew attention in his remarks announcing the progress report that cooperation with Turkey had to be closer before new laws were conceived and that this was the only way the EU could remain a standard for reforms in Turkey. The EU report was clear in expressing its reservations over how the government changed laws after the December 2013 corruption scandal surfaced.
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