Parker Schab

October 18, 2025

“The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity, and equality between women and men prevail.” [1] This statement is Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, and its presentation early in the treaty demonstrates that the values embraced in the article are the most fundamental to the EU’s political commitments. 

Before their acceptance into the Union, the twenty-seven countries that comprise the EU went through an extensive application process. Prospective EU countries are examined by the EU’s main executive body, the European Commission. To gain acceptance, prospective countries must adhere to the “Copenhagen Criteria,” or exhibit readiness to follow it. 

The criteria is as follows: 

“stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities”;

“a functioning market economy and the ability to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the EU;”

“the ability to take on the obligations of membership, including the capacity to effectively implement the rules, standards and policies that make up the body of EU law (the ‘ acquis ’), and adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.”[2]

After the European Commission believes a country meets the “Copenhagen Criteria,” the prospective country is not automatically accepted into the EU. Instead, this country is granted “candidate status.” The candidate country undergoes a series of formal negotiations where they pledge to incorporate EU law into their domestic legislation.

The obligatory reforms a country must make in order to comply with EU law are split into thirty-five chapters. After a country passes through the negotiations of each chapter, they are officially admitted into the EU. The current candidate countries being vetted for membership into the Union are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Turkey. 

While many of these countries have only gained their candidate status in recent years, such as North Macedonia (2020) and Ukraine (2024), Turkey is distinct in that they gained candidate status in 1999. EU-Turkey relations started in 1963, with the signing of the Ankara agreement. This deal between the European Economic Community and Turkey was created to enhance trade through the creation of a customs union, with the end goal of coalescing Turkey into the broader European project. After formal negotiations started in 2005, Turkey opened 16 of the accession chapters; however, progress was stalled, as the EU suspended negotiations on eight of Turkey’s chapters. This action was largely due to Turkey’s unwillingness to add Cyprus, an EU country, to the Ankara Agreement. 

After a 2016 coup d’état in which a bloc of the Turkish Armed Forces attempted to seize control of the government and oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party. The resulting political instability led the EU to put a pause on Turkey’s accession negotiations. Following the coup, progression towards acceptance looked bleak. The country went through a period of democratic backsliding and suffered a significant decline of human rights protections as President Erdogan targeted opposition parties like the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and criminally targeted journalists, activists, and NGOs. [4]

In 2019, the EU’s direct legislative body passed a vote to formally suspend Turkey’s accession negotiations, writing:

“Notes with serious concern that in recent years, although Turkey is a candidate country, its government has pursued a continuous and growing distancing from EU values and standards; notes that, in addition to this, unilateral actions in the Eastern Mediterranean as well as strong and at times provocative statements against the EU and its Member States have brought EU-Turkey relations to an historical low point, having deteriorated to such an extent that it requires both parties to profoundly reassess the current state of these relations and their framework, in order to restore dialogue in a context of mutual trust and cooperation and effectively solve the root causes of the current conflicts;” [5]

In 2025, EU-Turkey relations have not changed much since 2019, as President Erdogan continues to erode Turkey’s democratic protections, controversially jailing his primary political opponent, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu of the Republican People’s Party, for “unsubstantiated corruption” and terrorism charges.

However, as thin as Turkey-EU ties currently are, the EU still maintains a longstanding interest in Turkey for a few strategic reasons. Turkey is one of the only candidate countries to have a customs union with the EU and still engages in discussions with the EU regarding potential plans to modernize and improve trade within the customs union. More importantly, Turkey possesses an extremely strong military, ranking 9th on the Global Firepower military power index. [3] Turkey has devoted significant resources to the expansion of its domestic arms industry and military defense units, producing highly advanced drone and missile interception systems.

Turkey’s military defense sector holds particular interest for the EU as it looks to quickly securitize Europe in light of recent geopolitical stressors, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late 2021. Increasing pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to boost defense spending and reduce reliance on the United States as the primary defense donor for military alliances like NATO is the primary reason for the urgency of EU countries to boost their military defense capabilities.

In May 2025, the Council of the European Union announced “Readiness 2030,” an 800 billion euro initiative to enhance the EU’s defense capabilities and provide military support for Ukraine. [6] Turkey, with its military production and defensive capabilities, will likely be viewed as a valuable actor for the execution of “Readiness 2030.” 

In June 2025, EU and Turkish officials began discussions about Turkey’s potential participation in the EU’s rearming and defense plans. Turkey expressed interest in joining the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, an umbrella project of “Readiness 2030,” and plans to allocate 150 billion euros to joint European defense projects. [7] Despite skepticism about the EU’s decision to include a non-EU country in defense programs, the European Commission formally recognized Turkey’s application to join the program in September.

 The European Commission’s willingness to include Turkey to achieve its security goals suggests that EU-Turkey relations may improve. The EU appears more willing to abandon its critiques of Turkey’s democratic backsliding and human rights violations, as it views current geopolitical movements as threatening and requiring swift action. However, the EU’s pragmatic view of Turkey raises significant moral concerns about the European Commission’s commitments to its moral values. Is it possible that Turkey will use the leverage it gains from these contributions to the EU’s defense plans to put pressure on the EU to reopen membership negotiations? As recently as March 2025, President Erdogan has been quoted stating, “Only through Türkiye’s full membership can the EU prevent its loss of strength.”

Despite the clear pragmatic reasons and benefits that Turkey provides the EU, it is imperative that the EU not let Turkey leverage its position to reopen its candidacy. This action would uproot and delegitimize the EU as a protector of all the values it lists in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union. The EU would enter into a legitimation crisis, as the normative power that its values held, which previously allowed it to project said values onto its candidate countries, would cease to exist, and the moral claims that the EU makes would be nothing more than tokenistic, superficial remarks.

Photo Credits: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=8937&picture=european-union-and-turkey

Works Cited

[1] Treaty on European Union, Article 2. Legislation.gov.uk. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eut/teu/article/2

[2] European Commission. “Copenhagen Criteria.” EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/accession-criteria-copenhagen-criteria.html

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[3] Global Firepower. “2025 Military Strength Ranking for Turkey.” https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.php?country_id=turkey

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[4] Human Rights Watch. “Turkey: Erdogan’s Onslaught on Rights and Democracy.” March 24, 2021. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/24/turkey-erdogans-onslaught-rights-and-democracy

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[5] European Parliament. “European Parliament Resolution on the 2019 Suspension of Accession Negotiations with Turkey.” 2019. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-0243_EN.html

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[6] Council of the European Union. “Readiness 2030 Initiative.” European Defence Policy, May 2025.

[7] European Commission. “Security Action for Europe (SAFE).” 2025. https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/safe-security-action-europe_en

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[8] Al Jazeera. “Here’s a Look at Türkiye’s Booming Defence Industry.” March 17, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/17/heres-a-look-at-turkiyes-booming-defence-industry

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[9] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Turkey’s Ambivalence Is a Threat to European Security.” April 2025. https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/04/turkeys-ambivalence-is-a-threat-to-european-security?lang=en

[10] The Economist. “Europe’s Reluctant Reset with Turkey.” April 24, 2025. https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/04/24/europes-reluctant-reset-with-turkey

[11] European Commission. “Enlargement Policy: Türkiye.” 2025. https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy/turkiye_en