Brussels blog

Like the proverbial mad aunt, Turkey is a topic most European Union governments prefer these days to keep locked well out of sight. But if the EU isn’t careful, it will discover one day that the aunt, quite sanely, has decided she doesn’t want to be part of the family anyway.

I was reminded of this on Monday at a European Policy Centre think-tank discussion in Brussels. A questioner asked me and the other panellists if the EU’s newly proposed “Union for the Mediterranean” would harm Turkey’s EU membership bid.

I was tempted to reply that the only thing the Union for the Mediterranean – a brainchild of President Nicolas Sarkozy – had harmed so far was Franco-German relations and EU unity. But then I remembered that at last week’s EU summit in Brussels, I had been told something odd by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

He said that, when the EU’s leaders had discussed the Union for the Mediterranean over dinner on Thursday, the word “Turkey” had not crossed a single leader’s lips. I was surprised because it would seem obvious that Turkey, as an official candidate for EU entry and an important regional power, should figure prominently in the project. Moreover, one lurking suspicion all along had been that Sarkozy hoped to substitute the Mediterranean scheme for full EU membership for Turkey. Be that as it may, on Turkey there was silence at the summit.

The truth is that many EU leaders were lukewarm about Sarkozy’s project but none saw any political capital in making a public declaration of enthusiastic support for Turkey’s integration into the EU. Turkey is no longer a cause worth sticking your neck out for.

At a time when Turkey faces a potentially very serious test of its political stability and needs all the EU support it can get, this is little short of flabbergasting. I refer to the attempt by Turkey’s chief prosecutor to shut down the Justice and Development party (AKP), which just happens to be the democratically elected government. For good measure, the prosecutor also wants to ban Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from politics for five years.

The prosecutor was acting on behalf of the secularist establishment that has dominated Turkish political life for the best part of a century. Backed by the military, the secularists abhor the AKP as an Islamist threat – which it is not. By challenging the AKP’s right to rule, the secularists damage not the party but themselves and their country.

The EU must offer unequivocal support for Erdogan, the AKP government, Turkish democracy and Turkey’s status as a candidate for EU membership. To their credit, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn as well as the German and Swedish governments have criticised the prosecutor’s move. But it’s not enough. The EU’s half-hearted response is limiting the space for Erdogan to manoeuvre between the hardline secularists and the AKP’s grassroots activists and supporters.

For the moment, Erdogan is trying to keep alive Turkey’s commitment to EU integration. But if he and his supporters don’t get robust backing from the EU, they will quite rightly feel let down and see the EU as an organisation whose promises to treat Turkey fairly and equally are a bitter joke. This would destroy the prospects for a healthy EU-Turkish partnership.

Turkish public opinion is already much less enthusiastic about the EU than when the membership talks started in 2005. It would not be difficult to imagine public support draining even further if the EU fails to give a firm response to the latest political threats in Turkey.

But perhaps that is exactly what some in the EU secretly want?