A decade ago, the country was generally regarded as a poster child for Europe’s powerful draw – a predominantly Muslim nation that was on the way to joining the European Union and was accelerating its economic and political reforms. Lately, it has been closer to a symbol of the failure of Europe’s transformative potential.
Yet it was the rest of Draghi’s comment that encapsulated the EU’s approach to Turkey: “one must be frank in expressing differences of views … but also ready to collaborate, to cooperate, to ensure the interests of one’s country”.
Europe has been searching for that elusive balance that allows for a functional trade and security relationship with Ankara but does not inadvertently signal approval of Turkey’s departure from European norms and regulations.
Having laid out a framework for such action in the European Green Deal, Brussels is on the front foot and can use this to encourage the Turkish government to develop its economic relationship with Europe in a framework of rules – at a time when concerns about Turkey’s authoritarian turn and departure from European norms has blocked any other form of integration.
Additionally, entering into a discussion with Turkey on the European Green Deal is helpful to Turkey’s business community and civil society – which have been significant interlocutors for Europe over the years, and have emerged as the key advocates of Turkey’s European orientation.
While Europeans want to support the Biden administration’s climate efforts, they are well aware that they can only sustain their strategic autonomy through the development of unique policies.
Ankara’s relationship with Washington was even worse – despite the bromance between President Donald Trump and Erdogan – due to Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defence system, its cross-border incursions into Syria targeting US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, and the high-profile court case against former Turkish officials and Halkbank, a leading Turkish state bank, in New York.
Drifting from the West, Ankara also started to pursue its own strategic autonomy when it came to national security, as seen in its growing military footprint in the Middle East and North Africa.
Turkey was at loggerheads with Cyprus, Greece, and France after it signed a maritime demarcation agreement with Libya in early 2020, before deploying its exploration vessels off the Cypriot coast to stake its claim to resources in the area.
There were two main challenges for European diplomats throughout 2020: how to create the conditions for de-escalation with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean and Libya, and how to establish a more stable partnership with Turkey that safeguarded core European interests, including the 2016 refugee deal between the sides .
During the German presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel played a critical role in convincing Erdogan to pull back the exploration vessels off the coast of Cyprus that had caused concern among member states, and to start direct talks with Greece on bilateral maritime issues.
“The European Union is ready to engage with Turkey in a phased, proportionate and reversible manner to enhance cooperation in a number of areas of common interest”, said the Council conclusions of March 2021.
The Council will announce its decision on whether to pursue customs union modernisation with Turkey around a week after the first meeting between US President Joe Biden and Erdogan, which took place on 14 June on the margins of the NATO summit.
There is reason to be cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a stable relationship with Turkey – not because it is eager to return to EU norms or unlock the accession process, but because the offer on the table is a transactional economic partnership.
The human rights community in Turkey argues that the EU is not pushing the Erdogan government hard enough for its failure to abide by EU norms, including its refusal to honour European Court of Human Rights decisions on the imprisonment of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas and civil society leader Osman Kavala.
For Turkey to upgrade its customs union, it would have to form technical committees, involve businesses and the academic world, and eventually adopt the new set of green regulations and legislation that the EU is preparing.
In the absence of any progress on Turkey’s accession process, an economic dialogue that led Turkey to align with EU legislation could promote a rules-based order in the management of the Turkish economy.
States that are already adapting their economies to the climate challenge – or that have the resources to do so, or are helping others adapt – have an opportunity to gain geopolitical influence, and to drive other players further in terms of the action needed to fulfil headline commitments.
At Biden’s climate summit in April, the US administration extracted big promises from actors such as Brazil and China, and was met with a more urgent tone from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who set a goal to reduce Russian greenhouse-gas emissions below EU levels in the next 30 years.
But how will Europe lead or develop its strategic autonomy on issues where Washington is also pushing ahead? What exactly is European climate leadership? It cannot be simply replicating US efforts in a less effective way.
But, with the European Commission’s legislative proposals on the carbon border adjustment mechanism and other elements of the trade package of the European Green Deal delayed from spring to July 2021, there are worrying signs that the bloc is unsure of how to build up its climate sovereignty.
By bringing Turkey into the climate equation, Europeans can help meet their future energy needs, make an important contribution to addressing the climate challenge in the Middle East and North Africa, and burnish the EU’s credentials as an autonomous strategic climate actor.
Quite the opposite – by drifting away from the West in recent years, Turkey has abandoned some of the environmentally friendly regulations it imposed on Turkish industry as part of the accession process.
And they seem to be focused on developing strategies to bring their standards in line with the carbon border adjustment mechanism and other provisions of the European Green Deal.
Turkey’s business community – including TUSIAD, DEIK, and the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey – have been closely watching the legislative package that the European Commission plans to propose in mid-July.
As a country that is on the EU’s border and among the top ten exporters of electricity to the bloc , Turkey cannot escape a new push towards its own green new deal.
This would be in line with the EU’s January 2021 Council conclusions on the external dimension of the European Green Deal, which put forward the idea of energy diplomacy to increase uptake of renewables and strengthen “the energy security and resilience of the EU and our partners”.
With energy self-sufficiency as a goal, Ankara has in recent years focused not on wind and solar but on building its first nuclear reactor , constructing the TurkStream pipeline to import Russian gas via the Black Sea, and increasing its LNG imports.
The Turkish government has also been assertive in energy exploration not only in the Mediterranean but also in the Black Sea and the Aegean.
In the long run, such diversification would reduce political tensions in the eastern Mediterranean, where Ankara has found itself at loggerheads with the East Mediterranean Gas Forum – an alliance that plans to construct a pipeline that would bypass Turkey to connect Greece to Israeli, Cypriot, and Egyptian gas fields.
Encouraging Turkey and other Mediterranean countries to develop alternative energy policies would support the EU’s policy on its southern neighbourhood, which calls for a “new agenda for the Mediterranean”.
Biden invited Erdogan to the US climate summit in April, but the issue does not seem to be a priority in Turkish-US relations for the moment – which, as discussed, are encumbered by bilateral problems such as Turkey’s purchase of the S-400 and the criminal proceedings against Halkbank.
This would complement the high-level messaging from the US on the climate agenda, cement the EU’s influence in regions close to it, and test the bloc’s ability to encourage a transition away from carbon in countries with which it has close ties.
In the past few years, Europe has complained that it lacks such leverage and has been unsuccessful in influencing Turkish behaviour, particularly the country’s reversal of its democratic and economic reforms. European officials knew that, at its heart, this leverage problem came from the fact that – with the accession process effectively dead – Europe had nothing to offer to Erdogan’s Turkey.
Since the formation of the customs union in 1996, Ankara has revised many of its trade regulations to meet EU requirements.
But many of Turkey’s economic reforms from the early 2000s have either recently been reversed by the Erdogan government or have become outdated, contributing to the emergence of an economy that suffers from a personalised system of governance and relies on government interventions.
With a strong lobbying arm in Brussels, TUSIAD has already established a working group that focuses on identifying: key areas where Turkish industries need to adapt to the European Green Deal; which European funds are available for this adjustment; and how this might have an impact on various Turkish sectors.
The private sector seems more advanced and interested than Ankara in this transformation, but it would be possible to convince the Turkish government to go along by offering new adjustment funds and making a case for the initiative’s potential to boost Turkey’s global competitiveness.
Another advantage of the European Green Deal for Turkey comes from the opportunity to adopt a more balanced geopolitical disposition.
A shown by a survey of policymakers across the 27 member states that the European Council on Foreign Relations carried out in January, the US and China are the actors that EU policymakers primarily want to influence on climate action.
The EU would also have a model through which to define European climate leadership within the transatlantic partnership – one that is focused on the bloc’s neighbourhood, is based on partnership, and uses the full range of tools at its disposal, particularly trade.
As another core element of a green partnership with Turkey, the EU should offer the country a funding package to help it develop its renewables sector – as it has with EU member states through the Just Transition Fund.
While Turkish-European engagement on the European Green Deal would not improve Turkey’s democratic or human rights standards, it would help preserve Turkey’s existing ties with Europe in a legislative framework – thereby protecting whatever is left of Turkey’s European orientation.
In addition, as Turkey is a critical energy exporter to several member states, the EU could look to develop a common renewable energy area – helping Turkey build up its hydro-, wind, and solar power with an EU commitment to import the energy in the coming years.
One way of preventing the Mediterranean from becoming a theatre of regional rivalry on Europe’s doorstep is to encourage partnerships on the green economy between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities, as well as between Turkey and Greece, and between Turkey and Egypt.
It will be vital to bring the right players around the table, including stakeholders from Turkish and European business communities and civil society groups, as well as politicians on both sides.
This would make Europe immensely popular in Turkey, where a desire for climate action is spread across the political spectrum, and would create a new framework to guide a difficult relationship.
Asli Aydintasbas is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she works on Turkey’s foreign policy, relations with Western actors, and domestic evolution.
Susi Dennison is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and director of ECFR’s European Power programme.
We would also like to thank colleagues at ECFR for their thoughtful insights as we have developed our arguments, and in particular to Mats Engstrom for his comments on the draft.