Friday, December 19, 2014

JOOST LAGENDIJK - Turkey and the EU: neither with nor without each other

Turkey and the EU: neither with nor without each other

One of the results of last weekend's arrest of Turkish journalists has been a new round of debate in Europe on the future of Turkey-EU relations. Several leaders of EU member states spoke out strongly against the repression of opposition media, seen as just one part of an extremely worrying overall slide toward authoritarianism in Turkey. Those concerns were, however, not translated into concrete actions against Turkey for reasons we all know: The EU needs Turkey to deal with other, more pressing, issues (European jihadists, the Islamic State [also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)], Russia and energy).

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